AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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

Sunday, April 19, 2015

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Artists’ Corner-Gustav Klimt

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 they 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 his high tea. Jesus what a blasted night that Great War time was.

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, artists, beautiful artists like Fernand Leger who could no longer push the envelope of representative art because it had been twisted by the rubble of war, by the crashing big guns, by the hubris of commanders and commanded and he turned to new form, tubes, cubes, prisms, anything but battered humankind in its every rusts and lusts, all bright and intersecting once he got the mustard gas out of his system, once he had done his patria duty, like speaking of mustard gas old worn out John Singer Sargent of the three name WASPs forgetting Boston Brahmin society ladies in decollage, forgetting ancient world religious murals hanging atop Boston museum and spewing trench warfare and the blind leading the blind out of no man’s land, out of the devil’s claws, like Umberto Boccioni, all swirls, curves, dashes, and dangling guns as the endless charges endlessly charge, like Gustav Klimt and his endlessly detailed gold dust opulent Asiatic dreams filled with lovely matrons and high symbolism and blessed Eve women to fill the night, Adam’s night after they fled the garden, like Joan Miro and his infernal boxes, circles, spats, eyes, dibs, dabs, vaginas, and blots forever suspended in deep space for a candid world to fret through, fret through a long career, and like poor maddened rising like a phoenix in the Spartacist uprising George Grosz puncturing the nasty bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie the ones with the real dough and their overfed dreams stuffed with sausage, and from the bloated military and their fat-assed generals stuff with howitzers and rocket shells, like Picasso, yeah, Picasso taking the shape out of recognized human existence and reconfiguring the forms, the mesh of form to fit the new hard order, like, Braque, if only because if you put the yolk on Picasso you have to tie him to the tether too.

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 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 ….

Reflections On Boston’s Cancelled VFP-Led Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade Day 2015 -

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Frank Jackman would not be marching this year on Saint Patrick’s Day, not at all. And he was mad as hell about the matter, mad enough to call his old time high school friend from Carver, Sam Lowell, and spill his guts about it, to try to make some sense of the situation since toward the end, only a few days before he thought he would march, when things had happened quickly that forced him not to march. I knew Frank only slightly back in Carver during high school, enough to each give the other a passing nod, the “nod” signifying in that schoolboy goodnight that while the parties did not hang together everything between them was “cool” (remind me to tell you the intricacies of the “nod” sometime but today we are concern with Frank’s anguish not his coolness). I was closer to Sam back then since he had lived at the end of my street, we had hung around together during junior high before he got into the corner boy life in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner up on Main Street near the Commons and had kept in touch since he had set up his law practice was in the old town and I had worked on the Carver Democrat for a while after college before moving on to Boston and elsewhere. He is the one who gave me the “skinny” on what the recent events Frank had spoken to him about.

The pair had gotten back in touch with each other after Frank had moved back east after many years on the West Coast and after Sam’s older son Brad had been killed in Iraq on his second tour of duty in 2005 and he had taken an interest what Frank, an active member of an anti-war veterans group, Veterans For Peace (VFP), and his comrades were up to. Sam had attended some of their activities and had previously marched in their contingent at various parades. He had again planned to do so this year before Frank called with his story. For those who failed to scan the title of this piece what Frank Jackman was not marching in and what he was mad about at the same time was that the fifth annual Veterans For Peace (VFP)-led Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade in South Boston. He had, in accordance with the publicity surrounding the event put out by VFP, expected to step off at noon on Sunday March 15^th an hour before the official “private” Saint Patrick’s Parade sponsored by the Southie-centered Allied War Council (AWC) stepped off at one o’clock. A last minute decision by a federal judge though forced the peace parade to be cancelled by the VFP leadership.

(The time lag between the two events is important since by local court decree reflecting a decision on the type of parade AWC was sponsoring the two parades to be separated by one mile so as the AWC desired no one would think the two parades were in any way together. The reasons given for the peace parade cancellation for 2015, to be described in more detail below, centered on legal advice not to do so in support of a civic court action being pressed by VFP in federal court and that due to “the late in the day” timing of the results of the legal wrangling a proper parade could not be put together.)

Frank, of course, had not been mad about not being able to march like he had been when he and Sam as kids were Boy Scouts from Troop Twelve in Carver and they were thrilled with the idea that they would go up to Boston some thirty miles away to strut their stuff. In those days back in the 1960s the parade, then sponsored in toto by the City would take place on March 17^th no matter the day. (under an Evacuation Day cover, you know, commemorating the day when the American revolutionaries kick butt on the occupying British forces something every Irish person could cheer as well as the “wink, wink” real purpose of the thing which is to celebrate Irish freedom from those same Brits and also to acknowledge some tale about the wicked old saint Pat kicking snakes out of the old sod when he got his dander up). The year Troop Twelve had been invited to march since it was their turn in the rotation of troops for Boy Scout Council Six wouldn’t you know that snow postponed the event for a week and due to some unforeseen circumstances that he never fully understood Troop Ten from Plymouth went instead. He had been furious since he had cousins that he would have been strutting his stuff in front of. The next year he having found himself a girlfriend or rather she found him he had dropped out of the Scouts and that was that.

Frank had spent the many, many years since that time going about the business of his life, some good some bad, not worrying or thinking much one way or the other about the parade, although he was always ready to sport the green come Saint Patrick’s Day wherever he was and whoever he was with and to lift a glass to the memory of the boys of Easter 1916 reciting William Butler Yeats poem of the same name to allwho would listen. One of the “some bad” parts of his life had been his service in the military during his generation’s war, the war in Vietnam, which had torn the country asunder, including in the military where those “cannon fodder” like him who were supposed to fight for who knows what reason were half in mutiny.

Frank always liked to make sure that everybody, including Sam with whom he had many arguments about the question and who had been 4-F (unfit for military duty) during that war due to a much operated on left arm that was about ninety percent useless, knew that while he had had some reservations about military service he had gone in with both eyes open when he received his draft notice. He also made sure everybody knew that while he was not by any means the best soldier in Vietnam he was not the worse. A few guys in his unit had even paid him the compliment that they would have not gotten out of a few messes alive in fire-fights with Charley if it had not been for his coolness under fire. So during his time of service in order to keep himself together he did not think about right or wrong on the war, on the war policy or on anything but keeping low and keeping the damn bugs and sweat off.

After Frank had been discharged in 1971 that was a different story. Even after a few days at home in Carver hanging around with Sam and the guys was too much after all he had been through and so he pushed on up to Cambridge where he wound up meeting a young Quaker woman whom he met at an anti-war rally who helped him sort things out, helped him get over the horror of what he had seen and done in Vietnam. A little. Just then lots of other veterans were also getting “religion” about the damn war and were doing something about it, organizing themselves into Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). For the next couple of years between that fetching Quaker woman and his ex-military ant-war comrades in VVAW he felt he had washed himself clean.

As the war petered out and as anti-war activity declined in the mid-1970s Frank drifted away from the organization and from that Quaker woman and headed west. Drifted west winding up in San Francisco, stayed in the west for many years, got married a few times, got divorced as many, had a few kids who all turned out pretty well considering, and did a lot of ad hoc anti-war and social concerns political work along the way. But Frank, as if those Vietnam days or maybe earlier his growing up poor childhood have never really receded to far from the horizon, also got caught up in some “wanting habits” (his term) addictions like drugs and con artistry along the way. I don’t know a lot of the details but some involved drug dealing connected with Mexico, some flim-flam insurance scams and a couple of swindles from what Sam who also was hazy on the same details told me Frank told him. After his last divorce in the mid-1990s he headed back East figuring a change of scenery would help.

In the fall, October Sam thinks, of 2002 Frank had been in Boston on some unrelated business on a Saturday afternoon when he heard a band playing I Ain’t Going To Study War No More, the music coming from the Boston Common. This, as it turned out, would be the first serious anti-war demonstration of a few hundred people before the war drums of the 2003 Iraq war overtook all reason (and despite all reason is still on the front-burner until this day). What drew Frank’s attention though was a cluster of about forty flags, white flags embossed with the words “Veterans For Peace” in black and a dove of peace also outlined in black on each, being carried by older guys, guys from the look of it who had served in Vietnam times, or earlier. As the march stepped off the Common to walk up Tremont Street toward the Federal Building further up the street he joined in their contingent. That was the real beginning of his story to Sam.

Frank did not join VFP until several years later since the anti-war efforts against the Iraq war in late 2002 and early 3003 while intense before the war fell apart after the “shock and awe” campaign began in March of that year. He did however whenever he was around attend and march with the VFP. In November 2009 not having been doing much for a couple of years he received a notification by an e-mail that the VFP was attempting to march in the “official’ Veterans Day parade on the Common and he decided to join in. That day was an eye-opener, a shock in a way, since the “officials” were by might and main, mostly by having the police intercede and arrest anti-war veterans who refused to “stand-down” refused to let fellow veterans with a different message march in their precious parade. Frank and a number of others were arrested that day for disorderly conduct, were fined, and released. So maybe that, despite what Frank regarded as his start with VFP and their struggles for recognition in 2002, was really the beginning. VFP would continue without success to be part of the official Veterans Day Parade (a day by the way which they called, correctly, by its right name Armistice Day a name from the end of World War I).

For the next year or so Frank worked closely with VFP on various projects (in the meantime he had retired and therefore had some time to spent on such work), especially in 2011 when VFP got seriously involved with the potentially exciting but short-lived Occupy movement. He had also spent a great deal of his time, still does, after he first heard about the case in September of 2010, in supporting the defense and calls for freedom for heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Chelsea (then Bradley, having subsequently revealed that she considered herself a woman a fact that the Army has now acknowledged) Manning who the Army was keeping in solitary down at the Quantico Marine Base outside of Washington, D.C. (In August of 2013 Manning was convicted of about twenty of the charges against her and received an outrageous thirty-five sentence now being served at Fort Leavenworth pending the appeals process). The Manning case sparked something in him since here was a soldier, a soldier in Iraq to boot, who despite all the hell that was being rained down on her from top to bottom including torture had the courage to release important information about war atrocities and other nefarious acts of the American government in the Middle East and elsewhere. Having not done his bit when he had the chance, his chance, Frank was just trying to put paid to his own lack of courage through Chelsea.

In the spring of 2011 the leadership of the Boston VFP decided to apply to the AWC that had been running the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade for the previous twenty or so years. That request was summarily rejected and a member of that organization was quoted at some point in the process saying that he did not want the word “veteran” and the word “peace” put together in the parade. (This AWC having solely taken over the city parade had gone all the way up to the United States Supreme Court in order to have their parade declared a private event and therefore they could invite or not invite whoever they wanted. They had started out discriminating against the GLBTQ community and had now extended it to the peace community as well.) As a result of that exclusion the VFP put out a call for all the area peace, GLBTQ groups, and social justice activists to march with them after the official parade. And those five hundred or so who heeded the call marched through South Boston that day to generally good effect.

VFP over the next three years continued to attempt to enter the official parade, were summarily rebuffed or ignored, and each year organized the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade that increased in size and began to look like any regular parade in Boston with floats, band, a trolley and the ubiquitous duck boat, all in the service of peace and justice. As the organization prepared for the 2015 event they took a different tack, decided not to waste any effort applying to the official parade officials, but also decided that the late afternoon in March (usually starting to march well after 3 o’clock) well after the crowds for the official parade had left and therefore were walking down sullen streets interfered with their right of effective free expression and applied to the City of Boston for a noon start time.

That request was denied by the city and VFP thereafter filed a law suit in federal district court charging discrimination under the 1^st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and asked for injunctive relief requiring the city to grant the noon start time. A week before the parade date the federal judge turned down the request (although the legal civil case continues on). In response, as collectively agreed by the membership before the start of litigation, the failure to get the noon start time triggered the cancelling of the Peace Parade for 2015 (a stance which also dovetailed with the lawyers’ concerns about the court case adding fuel to their arguments about discrimination by the city).

A couple of days before the official parade was to start the AWC granted a gay rights organization’s application (Boston Pride) to march having previously granted the request of a group of gay veterans, OutVets to march. VFP and other peace groups were thus the only ones to have their parade rained on. Yeah, so Frank Jackman who over the previous four years had spent much time helping organize each parade, raising money, and a million other small tasks was not marching, and mad as hell about it. Do you blame him.

In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-Janaury 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Four

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For a number of years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 in each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s –Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose then was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period in honoring revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since every January

Leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered in separate incidents after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.

I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in which he eventually wound up in prison only to be released when the Kaiser abdicated (correctly went to jail when it came down to it once the government pulled the hammer down on his opposition), on some previous occasions. The key point to be taken away today, still applicable today as in America we are in the age of endless war, endless war appropriations and seemingly endless desires to racket up another war out of whole cloth every change some ill-begotten administration decides it needs to “show the colors”, one hundred years later in that still lonely and frustrating struggle to get politicians to oppose war budgets, to risk prison to choke off the flow of war materials.

I have also made some special point in previous years about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, the “rose of the revolution.” About her always opposing the tendencies in her adopted party, the German Social-Democracy, toward reform and accommodation, her struggle to make her Polish party ready for revolutionary opportunities, her important contributions to Marxist theory and her willing to face and go to jail when she opposed the first World War.

This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find, and are in desperate need of a few good heroes, a few revolutionaries who contributed to both our theoretical understandings about the tasks of the international working class in the age of imperialism (the age, unfortunately, that we are still mired in) and to the importance of the organization question in the struggle for revolutionary power, to highlight the struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, in order to define himself politically.

Below is a fourth sketch written as part of a series posted over several days before Lenin’s birthday on the American Left History blog starting on April 16^th (see archives) of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in the Russia of the Tsar toward the end of the 19^th century and early 20^th century which will help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and the ones that Lenin had to get a handle on.

*******

Ivan Smilga was sitting at the quay on the Neva River in Saint Petersburg forlorn, more forlorn than he had been since sometime in his early childhood when he found out that the land that he lived on did not actually belong to him, or rather did not belong to his father, and he had run out into the fields in rage, had not understood the almost feudal arrangement that his father had with landlord owner, including service by any sons in case of war decreed by the Tsar. He did not know much about that, didn’t care a fig about that military service part since he was well under any conscript age but he did rage that his father, every year his father never got ahead, never tired as well of talking about the miseries of his life that defeated any chance of his getting ahead on land that he continually said had been played out by the previous tenant, Tsachev. Still his father did nothing about it, not even when he had heard that some young people had come out from Moscow to organize them and instead threatened to turn them in if they dared step on “his land” (although in the end that organization effort came to naught since the city radicals had made the cardinal error of calling themselves intellectuals which set them apart as well as the fact that they, as was their wont in the cities, produced much literature which only a few like Ivan would have been able to read).

This day Ivan was forlorn because they had taken Elena off, off to Siberia a place he himself had known having served a two year sentence there a few years before for political crimes against the state, in short trying to kidnap state officials for ransom to get money and to make the point they could do the deed with impunity, when he had ill-advisedly and against his common sense took up with a revolutionary cell in Moscow and had been “fingered” by one of the worker comrades to the Okhrana in order to cut his own sentence. Elena had been taken in for trying to organize a demonstration for a shorter work day and other more political rights (ten instead of twelve hours days and half a day on Saturday, the right to organize trade unions, the right to free speech, etc.) in front of the Winter Palace on New Year’s Day to bring in the new year, and the new century [1900].

The direct reason for Ivan’s agitated state was that he had become “engaged” to Elena and had come to depend on her for his emotional support. (This engagement thing was not the old-fashioned type involving dowries and exchanges but a “new-type” where that “engagement” signified that they had already slept together in anticipation of marriage, or in more advanced circles just slept together. Ivan and Elena were the former.)

Yes, the year 1899 had not been a good year for the left-wing political struggles in Russia. The Tsar and his ministers had determined to crush any opposition in the bud and so even the organizing of trade unions, illegal but semi-tolerated especially in the foreign concessions, had become a point of contention. Ivan and Elena had clashed many times over that question. Elena, after they had met, or rather had re-met having worked in Moscow together at the Smythe and Son textile factory, at the Putilov Iron Works where he was an apprentice blacksmith and she worked in the foundry, had been involved in a strike action in which Elena was a central figure that wound up getting a number of fellow workers back on the job after they had been fired. As a result of that victory the previously hesitant Ivan (hesitant due to that very trip to Siberia of his own and a desire not to go back and well as fears for Elena that had now come true) had met Elena “half-way” and worked with her on trade-union organizing issues. He would however have no truck with the broader issues, the question of democratic right when he would have to confront the state in a more direct manner. He had had enough of that. Besides he had come to think, under the influence of various liberal and radical thinkers who were popping up in the capital and who were making some sense to Ivan’s mind that if they, the workers, could just get more pay, less work, and some time off that things would be better. Let others, other, smarter people worry about the larger issues. That day to day struggle fight was all that could be expected and that was enough.

When Elena (and her fellow political workers, mainly students at Saint Petersburg University and radical workers from the Vyborg, the working class quarters) determined that trade union organizing was not enough and that the Tsar had to be confronted with the issue of democratic rights and a street demonstration Ivan had gone off in a fit, had left Elena alone for several days to stew outside Saint Petersburg. During that time Elena, a crackerjack organizer and also a very committed revolutionary, had organized the march set for New Year’s Day. On that day there was no turning back for her and her comrades. The minute they stepped off at noon they were surrounded by sabre-welding Cossacks and arrested. Before Ivan could get back to the city, before he could attempt once again to talk her out of the rash action she had been arrested and faced deportation to Siberia. That is why one Ivan Smilga was sitting before the Neva River forlorn. But that is also one reason why Ivan thought that maybe, just maybe Elena had been right, that the struggle for a better life for him and her, them might need some more thought on his part.

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens

Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song some years back, maybe in 2005, when he was in thrall to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June Carter in the film about her husband Johnny Cash, his addictions, his pursuit of her, and her settling him down a bit Walk The Line. At that time Kenny, like a lot of us who get the bug on some subject, got into all things Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy whom he had met many years before in the early 1970s on the road out in California and whom Kenny would go up and see up in the remnant of his communal cabin which he had shared with a revolving door mix of ex-hippies, wannabe hippies and the just misbegotten when he had a chance, had hipped him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard Square. (Really at Sandy’s located between Harvard and Central Squares, a folk institution around town where until recently Sandy had held forth since the early 1960s folk minute when everybody was desperately looking for roots music and that was the place around Boston to look first. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A Few Old Memories and the classic Hills of Home knocked Kenny out. The latter, moreover, seemed kind of familiar and later, a couple of months later, he finally figured out why. He had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when as part of his then seemingly never-ending hitchhike road drama had headed back east through the Southern route since the weather was starting to get cold in the Rockies and was down in the those very hills and hollows that are a constant theme in her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming down the crevices. What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard Hazel or that 1970 time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.

Kenny Jackman like many of his generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors at the local draft board in old hometown North Adamsville (declared 4-F in those high draft days because he had a seriously abnormal foot problem which precluded walking very far, a skill that the army likes its soldiers to be able to do and a constant problem on the hitchhike road if he needed to walk any distance between rides). Kenny, every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his (our) mad man friend the late Peter Paul Markin with some heavy cultural message a la Jack Kerouac and his beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and it, were still in one piece no pun intended Kenny told me since the country was in about fifteen pieces then).

On one of these trips he found himself stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf or some pot roast like his Irish grandma used to make in a huge pot on the old iron stove in her kitchen or that was how it was advertised. When he entered the mid-afternoon half-empty diner he sat down at one of the single stool counter seats that always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths in such places. But all of this was so much descriptive noise that could describe a million, maybe more, such eateries. What really caught his attention though was a waitress serving them “off the arm” that he knew immediately he had to “hit” on (although that is not the word used in those days but “hit on” conveys what he was up to in the universal boy meets girl world). As it turned out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay, and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny weary-eyed fetching, was young, footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn a bead on him as he entered the place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so let us just leave it as one thing led to another and let it go at that.

Well, not quite let’s let it go at that because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one ex-waitress Fiona Fay was standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was leading nowhere, nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and really, really a dink town named Pottsville, just down the road from big town Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, wind-swept green, green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the reason two footloose and fancy free young people were heading to Podunk is that a close cousin of Fiona’s lived there with her husband and child and wanted Fiona to come visit (visit “for a spell” is how she put it but I will spare the reader the localisms). So they were on that hell-bend road but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this trip and only doing it because, well because Fiona was the kind of young woman, footloose and fancy free or not, that you followed, at least you followed if you were Kenny Jackson and hoped things would work out okay.

What Kenny dreaded that day was that he was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to go to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw himself as strictly a Yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and incidentally save the union” Yankee for one and all to see back in old North Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yeah, Fiona had better be worth it.

Kenny had to admit, as they picked up one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or anywhere else, especially if you had longish hair and a wisp of a beard), that the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the shacks got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael Harrington Other America no running water, outhouse, open door, one window and a million kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is vision. But they got to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura and Stu) turned out to be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny and Fiona stayed in town long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town barn (red of course, run down and in need of paint to keep red of course) that had seen such dances going back to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through Pottsville on their way back to Clinch Mountain.

Kenny buckled at the thought, the mere thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good music. Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he used to hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two left-feet, one way out of whack, draft-free out of whack, Kenny, could dance to with Fiona.

So Kenny was sipping, well more than sipping, and dancing and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this local woman came out of nowhere and began to sing, sing like some quick, rushing wind sound coming down from the hills and hollas (hollows for Yankees, okay, please). Kenny began to toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but from some strange feeling, some strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s voice was a call from up on top of these deep green hills, now mist-filled awaiting day. And then she started into a long, mournful version of Hills of Home, and he sensed, sensed strongly if not anything he could articulate that he was home. Yes, Kenny Jackson, Yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was “home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time in 1970, see.

[As for Fiona Fay she stayed on the road with Kenny until they headed toward the Midwest where she veered off home to Valparaiso in Indiana, her hometown, back to the business school she was attending and had taken time off from to “find herself” just as Kenny and ten million other generational wanderers were trying like hell to do. Kenny headed west via Denver and the Utahs to California, to Big Sur and a different mountain ethos, splashed by the sea, splashed by the Japan seas, splashed by everything that in his everlasting life needed to be washed clean. They were supposed to meet out there a few months later after she finished up the semester and attended to some family business. They never did, a not so unusual occurrence of the time when people met and faded along the way, but Kenny thought about her, about that red barn dance night, about that lady of the mountains and that wind-swept mountain coming down the hollows night for a long time after that.]

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Socialist Future

Logo Of The Communist Youth International

Click below to link to a Communist Youth archival site

http://www.marxisthistory.org/subject/usa/eam/yci.html

Markin comment:

One of the declared purposes of this blog is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past, spotty and incomplete as they may be, here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. Historically these lessons would be centrally derived from the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, especially in France, the Paris Commune of 1871, and most vividly under the impact of the Lenin and Trotsky-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, a world historic achievement for the international working class whose subsequent demise was of necessity a world-historic defeat for that same class. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over.

More importantly, for the long haul, and unfortunately given that same spotty and incomplete past the long haul is what appears to be the time frame that this old militant will have to concede that we need to think about, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. An education that masses of previous generations of youth undertook gladly but which now is reduced to a precious few. That is beside the question of numbers in any case no small or easy task given the differences of generations (the missing transmission generation problem between the generation of ’68 who tried unsuccessfully to turn the world upside down and failed, the missing in between generation raised on Reagan rations and today’s desperate youth in need of all kinds of help; differences of political milieus worked in (another missing link situation with the attenuation of the links to the old mass socialist and communist organizations decimated by the red scare Cold War 1950s night of the long knives through the new old New Left of the 1960s and little notable organizational connections since); differences of social structure to work around (the serious erosion of the industrial working class in America, the rise of the white collar service sector, the now organically chronically unemployed, and the rise of the technocrats); and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses (today’s computer, cellphone, and social networking savvy youth using those assets as tools for organizing).

There is no question that back in my youth in the 1960s I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available on-line at the press of a button today. When I developed political consciousness very early on in my youth, albeit a liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.

As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.

**********

Third Congress of the Communist International

The Communist International and the Communist Youth Movement

Source: Theses Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congress of the Third International, translated by Alix Holt and Barbara Holland. Ink Links 1980;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

12 July 1921

1 The young socialist movement came into existence as a result of the steadily increasing capitalist exploitation of young workers and also of the growth of bourgeois militarism. The movement was a reaction against attempts to poison the minds of young workers with bourgeois nationalist ideology and against the tendency of most of the social-democratic parties and the trade unions to neglect the economic, political and cultural demands of young workers.

In most countries the social-democratic parties and the unions, which were growing increasingly opportunist and revisionist, took no part in establishing young socialist organisations, and in certain countries they even opposed the creation of a youth movement. The reformist social-democratic parties and trade unions saw the independent revolutionary socialist youth organisations as a serious threat to their opportunist policies. They sought to introduce a bureaucratic control over the youth organisations and destroy their independence, thus stifling the movement, changing its character and adapting it to social-democratic politics.

2 As a result of the imperialist war and the positions taken towards it by social democracy almost everywhere, the contradictions between the social-democratic parties and the international revolutionary organisations inevitably grew and eventually led to open conflict. The living conditions of young workers sharply deteriorated; there was mobilisation and military service on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasing exploitation in the munitions industries and militarisation of civilian life. The most class-conscious young socialists opposed the war and the nationalist propaganda. They dissociated themselves from the social-democratic parties and undertook independent political activity (the International Youth Conferences at Berne in 1915 and Jena in 1916).

In their struggle against the war, the young socialist organisations were supported by the most dedicated revolutionary groups and became an important focus for the revolutionary forces. In most countries no revolutionary parties existed and the youth organisations took over their role; they became independent political organisations and acted as the vanguard in the revolutionary struggle.

3 With the establishment of the Communist International and, in some countries, of Communist Parties, the role of the revolutionary youth organisations changes. Young workers, because of their economic position and because of their psychological make-up, are more easily won to Communist ideas and are quicker to show enthusiasm for revolutionary struggle than adult workers. Nevertheless, the youth movement relinquishes to the Communist Parties its vanguard role of organising independent activity and providing political leadership. The further existence of Young Communist organisations as politically independent and leading organisations would mean that two Communist Parties existed, in competition with one another and differing only in the age of their membership.

4 At the present time the role of the Young Communist movement is to organise the mass of young workers, educate them in the ideas of Communism, and draw them into the struggle for the Communist revolution.

The Communist youth organisations can no longer limit themselves to working in small propaganda circles. They must win the broad masses of workers by conducting a permanent campaign of agitation, using the newest methods. In conjunction with the Communist Parties and the trade unions, they must organise the economic struggle.

The new tasks of the Communist youth organisations require that their educational work be extended and intensified. The members of the youth movement receive their Communist education on the one hand through active participation in all revolutionary struggles and on the other through a study of Marxist theory.

Another important task facing the Young Communist organisations in the immediate future is to break the hold of centrist and social-patriotic ideas on young workers and free the movement from the influences of the social-democratic officials and youth leaders. At the same time, the Young Communist organisations must do everything they can to ‘rejuvenate’ the Communist Parties by parting with their older members, who then join the adult Parties.

The Young Communist organisations participate in the discussion of all political questions, help build the Communist Parties and take part in all revolutionary activity and struggle. This is the main difference between them and the youth sections of the centrist and socialist unions.

5 The relations between the Young Communist organisations and the Communist Party are fundamentally different from those between the revolutionary young socialist organisations and the social-democratic parties. In the common struggle to hasten the proletarian revolution, the greatest unity and strictest centralisation are essential. Political leadership at the international level must belong to the Communist International and at the national level to the respective national sections.

It is the duty of the Young Communist organisations to follow this political leadership (its programme, tactics and political directives) and merge with the general revolutionary front. The Communist Parties are at different stages of development and therefore the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International should apply this principle in accordance with the circumstances obtaining in each particular case.

The Young Communist movement has begun to organise its members according to the principle of strict centralisation and in its relations with the Communist International – the leader and bearer of the proletarian revolution – it will be governed by an iron discipline. All political and tactical questions are discussed in the ranks of the Communist youth organisation, which then takes a position and works in the Communist Party of its country in accordance with the resolutions passed by the Party, in no circumstance working against them.

If the Communist youth organisation has serious differences with the Communist Party, it has the right to appeal to the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

Loss of political independence in no way implies loss of the organisational independence which is so essential for political education.

Strong centralisation and effective unity are essential for the successful advancement of the revolutionary struggle, and therefore, in those countries where historical development has left the youth dependent upon the Party, the dependence should be preserved; differences between the two bodies are decided by the EC of the Communist International and the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International.

6 One of the most immediate and most important tasks of the Young Communist organisations is to fight the belief in political independence inherited from the period when the youth organisations enjoyed absolute autonomy, and which is still subscribed to by some members. The press and organisational apparatus of the Young Communist movement must be used to educate young workers to be responsible and active members of a united Communist Party.

At the present time the Communist youth organisations are beginning to attract increasing numbers of young workers and are developing into mass organisations; it is therefore important that they give the greatest possible time and effort to education.

7 Close co-operation between the Young Communist organisations and the Communist Parties in political work must be reflected in close organisational links. It is essential that each organisation should at all times be represented at all levels of the other organisation (from the central Party organs and district, regional and local organisations down to the cells of Communist groups and the trade unions) and particularly at all conferences and congresses.

In this way the Communist Parties will be able to exert a permanent influence on the movement and encourage political activity, while the youth organisations, in their turn, can influence the Party.

8 The relations established between the Communist Youth International and the Communist International are even closer than those between the individual Parties and their youth organisations. The Communist Youth International has to provide the Communist youth movement with a centralised leadership, offer moral and material support to individual unions, form Young Communist organisations where none has existed and publicise the Communist youth movement and its programme. The Communist Youth International is a section of the Communist International and, as such, is bound by the decisions of its congresses and its Central Committee. The Communist Youth International conducts its work within the framework of these decisions and thus passes on the political line of the Communist International to all its sections. A well-developed system of reciprocal representation and close and constant co-operation guarantees that the Communist Youth International will make gains in all the spheres of its activity (leadership, agitation, organisation and the work of strengthening and supporting the Communist youth organisations).

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Sunday, April 19, 2015

The Communist International and the Communist Youth Movement

12 July 1921

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