As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance Begins- Zimmerwald Conference

As The 100^th Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance Begins-   

The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an epic adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts (as foretold by the blood-letting in the American Civil War and the various “small” wars in Asia, Africa, and, uh, Europe in the mid to late 19^th century once war production on a mass scale followed in the train of other industrial production). Also trampled underfoot in the opposing trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest trash bin of the their respective parliamentary buildings were the supposedly eternal pledges against war in defense of one’s own capitalist-imperialist  nation-state against the working masses and their allies of other countries by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations (Anarchists, Syndicalists and their various off-shoots)representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. All those beautifully written statements and resolutions that clogged up the international conferences with feelings of solidarity were some much ill-fated wind once bullet one came out of gun one.

Other than isolated groups and individuals, mostly like Lenin and Trotsky in exile or jail, and mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood. (When the first international conference of anti-war socialists occurred in Switzerland in 1915 one wag pointed out that they could all fit in one tram [bus].) Almost all parties assuming that the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everyone could go back to the eternal expressions of international working-class solidarity after the smoke had settled (and the simple white-crossed graves dug). You see, and the logic is beautiful on this one, that big mail-drop of a Socialist International, was built for peace-time but once the cannon roared then the “big tent” needed to be folded for the duration. Jesus.  

Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in the hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long because “Long Live The Communist International,”  a new revolutionary international, would become the order of the day in the not distant future), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century (including forbears Marx and Engels), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.  

Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve ever since.)

Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already churning away in the first year as a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America “Big Bill” Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “Club Fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness got caught in the bogus information madness and supported Bush’s “paper war” although not paper for the benighted Iraqi masses ever since (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).

At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. “Be ready to fight” the operative words.

So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                  

Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100^th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

THE ZIMMERWALD MANIFESTO [43]

Workers of Europe!

The war has lasted for more than a year. Millions of corpses lie upon the battlefields; millions of men have been crippled for life. Europe has become a gigantic human slaughter-house. All science, the work of many generations, is devoted to destruction. The most savage barbarity is celebrating its triumph over everything that was previously the pride of mankind.

Whatever may be the truth about the immediate responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain: the war that has occasioned this chaos is the outcome of Imperialism, of the endeavours of the capitalist classes of every nation to satisfy their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labour and of the treasures of Nature.
Those nations which are economically backward or politically feeble are threatened with subjugation by the great Powers, which are attempting by blood and iron to change the map of the world in accordance with their exploiting interests. Whole peoples and countries, such as Belgium, Poland, the Balkan states, and Armenia, either as units or in sections, are menaced by annexation as booty in the bargaining for compensations.
As the war proceeds its real driving forces become apparent in all their baseness. Piece by piece the veil which has hidden the meaning of this world catastrophe from the understanding of the peoples is falling down. In every country the Capitalists who forge the gold of war profits from the blood of the people are declaring that the war is for national defence, democracy, and the liberation of oppressed nationalities. THEY LIE.
In reality they are actually burying on the fields of devastation the liberties of their own peoples, together with the independence of other nations. New fetters, new chains, new burdens are being brought into existence, and the workers of all countries, of the victorious as well as of the vanquished, will have to bear them. To raise civilization to a higher level was the aim announced at the beginning of the war: misery and privation, unemployment and want, underfeeding and disease are the actual results. For decades and decades to come the cost of the war will devour the strength of the peoples, imperil the work of social reform and hamper every step on the path of progress.
Intellectual and moral desolation, economic disaster, political reaction – such are the blessings of this horrible struggle between the nations.
Thus does the war unveil the naked form of modern Capitalism, which has become irreconcilable, not only with the interests of the working masses, not only With the circumstances of historic development, but even with the first conditions of human communal existence.
The ruling forces of Capitalist society, in whose hands were the destinies of the nations, the monarchical and the Republican Governments, secret diplomacy, the vast employers’ organizations, the middle-class parties, the Capitalist Press, the Church – all these forces must bear the full weight of responsibility for this war, which has been produced by the social order nourishing them and protecting them and which is being carried on for the sake of their interests.

Workers!

Exploited, deprived of your rights, despised – you were recognized as brothers and comrades at the outbreak of the war before you were summoned to march to the shambles, to death. And now, when militarism has crippled, lacerated, degraded, and destroyed you, the rulers are demanding from you the abandonment of your interests, of your aims, of your ideals – in a word, slavish submission to the “national truce.” You are prevented from expressing your views, your feelings, your pain; you are not allowed to put forth your demands and to fight for them. The press is muzzled, political rights and liberties are trampled upon – thus is military dictatorship ruling today with the iron hand.

We cannot, we dare not, any longer remain inactive in the presence of a state of things that is menacing the whole future of Europe and of mankind. For many decades the Socialist working class has carried on the struggle against militarism. With growing anxiety its representatives at their national and international conferences have devoted themselves to the war peril, the outcome of an Imperialism which was becoming more and more menacing. At Stuttgart, Copenhagen, and Basle the International Socialist Congresses indicated the path that the workers should follow. [44]
But we Socialist Parties and working-class organizations which had taken part in determining this path have since the outbreak of war disregarded the obligations that followed therefrom. Their representatives have invited the workers to suspend the working class struggle, the only possible and effective means of working class emancipation. They have voted the ruling classes the credits for carrying on the war. They have put themselves at the disposal of their Governments for the most varied services. They have tried through their press and their envoys to win over the neutrals to the Government policies of their respective countries. They have given to their Government Socialist Ministers as hostages for the observance of the national truce, and thus have taken on themselves the responsibility for this war, its aims, its methods. And just as Socialist Parties failed separately, so did the most responsible representative of the Socialists of all countries fail: the International Socialist Bureau. [45]
These facts constitute one of the reasons why the international working-class movement, even where sections of it did not fall a victim to the national panic of the first period of the war, or where it rose above it, has failed, even now, in the second year of the butchering of nations, to take up simultaneously in all countries an active struggle for peace.
In this intolerable situation we have met together, we representatives of Socialist Parties of Trade Unions, or of minorities of them, we Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Letts, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch and Swiss, we who are standing on the ground, not of national solidarity with the exploiting class, but of the international solidarity of the workers and the working-class struggle. We have met together in order to join anew the broken ties of international relations and to summon the working class to reorganize and begin the struggle for peace.
This struggle is also the struggle for liberty, for Brotherhood of nations, for Socialism. The task is to take up this fight for peace for a peace without annexations or war indemnities. Such a peace is only possible when every thought of violating the rights and liberties of the nations is condemned. There must be no enforced incorporation either of wholly or partly occupied countries. No annexations, either open or masked, no forced economic union, made still more intolerable by the suppression of political rights. The right of nations to select their own government must be the immovable fundamental principle of international relations.

Organized Workers!

Since the outbreak of the war you have put your energies, your courage, your steadfastness at the service of the ruling classes. Now the task is to enter the lists for your own cause, for the sacred aims of Socialism, for the salvation of the oppressed nations and the enslaved classes, by means of the irreconcilable working-class struggle.

It is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the belligerent countries to begin this struggle with all their power. It is the task and duty of the Socialists of the neutral countries to support their brothers by all effective means in this fight against bloody barbarity.
Never in the history of the world has there been a more urgent, a more noble, a more sublime task, the fulfilment of which must be our common work. No sacrifice is too great, no burden too heavy, to attain this end: the establishment of peace between the nations.
Working men and women! Mothers and fathers! Widows and orphans! Wounded and crippled! To all who are suffering from the war or in consequence of the war, we cry out over the frontiers, over the smoking battlefields, over the devastated cities and hamlets:

“Workers of all countries unite”

In the name of the International Socialist Conference:

For the German Delegation: George Ledebour, Adolph Hoffman

For the French Delegation: A. Merrheim, Bourderon

For the Italian Delegation: G. E. Modigijani, Consanino Lazzari

For the Russian Delegation: N. Lenin, Paul Axeirod, M. Bobrov

For the Polish Delegation: St. Lapinski, A. Warski, Cz. (Jacob) Hanecki

For the Inter-Balkan Socialist Federation:

(For the Rumanian Delegation) G. Rakovsky

(For the Bulgarian Delegation) Vasil Kolaro.

For the Swedish and Norwegian Delegation: Z. Hoglund, Ture Nerman.

For the Dutch Delegation: H. Roland-Holst.

For the Swiss Delegation: Robert Grimm.

September 1915.

---

TWO DECLARATIONS ON THE ZIMMERWALD MANIFESTO

I

The undersigned declare as follows:

The manifesto adopted by the Conference does not give us complete satisfaction. It contains no pronouncement on either open opportunism, or opportunism that is hiding under radical phraseology, the opportunism which is not only the chief cause of the collapse of the International, but which strives to perpetuate that collapse. The manifesto contains no clear pronouncement as to the methods of fighting against the war.

We shall continue, as we have done heretofore, to advocate in the Socialist press and at the meetings of the International, a clear-cut Marxian position in regard to the tasks with which the epoch of imperialism has confronted the proletariat.
We vote for the manifesto because we regard it as a call to struggle and in this struggle we are anxious to march side by side with the other sections of the International.
We request that our present declaration be included in the official proceedings.

Signed: N. Lenin, G. Zinoviev, Radek, Nerman, Hoglund, Winter.

II

The other declaration, which was signed in addition to the group that had introduced the resolution of the Left, by Roland Holst and Trotsky, reads as follows:

“Inasmuch as the adoption of our amendment (to the manifesto) demanding the vote against war appropriations might in any way endanger the success of the Conference, we do, under protest, withdraw our amendment and accept Ledebour’s statement in the commission to the effect that the manifesto contains all that is implied in our proposition.”

It may be added that Ledebour, as an ultimatum, demanded the rejection of the amendment, refusing to sign the manifesto otherwise.

---

AN OPEN LETTER TO JULES GUESDE

PARIS

30, October, 1916

To M. the Minister of State, Jules Guesde:

Before quitting the soil of France, under the escort of a police officer, who personifies the liberties over whose defence you stand guard in the National Cabinet, I deem it my duty to express to you a few thoughts which, while they will most likely not be of any use to you, will at least be of use against you. In expelling me from France, your colleague, the Minister for War, did not think fit to indicate the causes for prohibiting the Russian Newspaper Nashe Slovo [46], one of whose editors I was, and which had for two years, suffered all the torments of a censorship, operating under the aegis of this same Minister for War.

Still, I shall not conceal from you the fact that for me there is no mystery about the reasons for my expulsion. You feel the need for adopting repressive measures against an international socialist, against one of those who refuse to accept the part of defender or ready slave of the imperialist war.
But while the reasons for this measure have not been communicated to me, who am the one concerned and at whom it is directed, they have been stated by M. Briand to the deputies and to the journalists.
In Marseilles last August, a group of mutinying Russian soldiers killed their colonel. The investigation is alleged to have disclosed that a number of these soldiers were in possession of a number of copies of Nashe Slovo. In any case, this is the explanation given by M. Briand in an interview with Deputy and with the President of the Chamber Committee of Foreign Affairs, M. Leysques, who in turn, transmitted this version to the Russian bourgeois press.
To be sure, M. did not dare to assert that Nashe Slovo, which was subject to his own censorship, was directly responsible for the killing of this officer. His thoughts may be expressed as follows: In view of the presence of Russian soldiers in France, it is necessary to sweep Nashe Slovo and its editors off the soil of the Republic. For a Socialist newspaper that refuses to spread illusions and lies may – in the memorable phrase of M. Renaudel – “put bees in the bonnets” of the Russian soldiers and lead them into the dangerous path of reflection.
Unfortunately, however, for M. Briand, his explanation is based upon a scandalous anachronism. A year ago, Gustave Hervé, at that time still a member of the permanent Administrative Commission of your party, said that if Malvy were to kick out of France those Russian refugees guilty of revolutionary internationalism, he, Hervé, guaranteed that the public opinion of his janitors would accept such a measure without any objection. Obviously, there can be no doubt that Hervé quaffed his inspiration in a ministerial closet.
At the end of July the same Hervé whispered, semi-officially, that I was to be expelled from France.
At about the same time – i.e., still before the killing of the colonel at Marseilles – Prof. Durkheim, the President of the Commission for Russian refugees, appointed by the Government, informed a representative of the refugees, of the impending suppression of Nashe Slovo and the expulsion of the editors.
Thus everything had been arranged in advance, even the public opinion of M. Hervé’s janitors. They waited only for a pretext to strike the final blow. And the pretext was found at the moment the unfortunate Russian soldiers – acting in somebody’s interests – killed their colonel.
This providential coincidence invites an assumption which, I fear, may offend your still virginal ministerial modesty. The Russian journalists who have made a special investigation into the Marseilles incident have established the fact that in this affair, as almost always in such cases, an active role was played by an agent provocateur. It is easy to understand what was his aim, or rather what was the aim of the blackguards who directed him. They required some excess on the part of the Russian soldiers, first, to justify the regime of the knout which is still somewhat offensive to the French authorities, and then to create a pretext for measures to be taken against Russian refugees who take advantage of French hospitality in order to demoralize Russian soldiers in wartime.
It is not hard to acknowledge that the instigators of this scheme did not themselves believe that the affair would go so far or such was their intention. It is probable that they hoped to achieve ampler results by smaller sacrifices. But undertakings of this sort involve an element of professional risk. In this case, however, the victim was not the provocateur himself but Col. Krause and those who killed him. Even the patriotic Russian journalists, who are hostile to Nashe Slovo, have advanced the theory that copies of our paper may have been given to the soldiers, at the right moment by the same agent provocateur.
Try, M. Minister, just try to institute, through the services of M. Malvy an investigation along this line! You do not see that anything could be gained by such an investigation? Neither do I. Because – let us spreak frankly – agents provocateur are at least as valuable for the alleged “national defence” as Socialist ministers. And you, Jules Guesde, after you assumed responsibility for the foreign policy of the Third Republic, for the Franco-Russian alliance, and its consequences, for the territorial ambitions of the Czar, and for the aims and methods of this war – it remains for you to accept, along with the symbolic detachments of Russian soldiers, the in no way symbolic exploits of the provocateurs of His Majesty the Czar. At the beginning of the war, when promises were spread with a lavish hand, your closest companion, Sembat, gave the Russian journalists a glimpse of the highly beneficial influence to be exerted by the allied democracies upon the internal regime in Russia. Moreover, this was the supreme argument used persistently but without success by the government socialists of France and Belgium to reconcile the Russian revolutionists with the Czar.
Twenty six months of constant collaboration, of communion with generalissimos, diplomats and parliamentarians, the visits of Viviani and Thomas to Tsarkoe-Selo, in short, twenty six months of incessant “influence” exerted by the allied democracies upon Czarism, have only served to strengthen the most arrogant reaction, moderated only by chaos in the administration and have succeeded in transforming the internal regime of England and France until they have become very similar to that of Russia. As may be seen the generous promises of M. Sembat are cheaper than his coal. [47] The luckless fate of the right of asylum is thus but a striking symptom of police and martinet rule prevalent on both sides of the Channel.
Lloyd George and M. Astride Briand, for whose characterzation I beg to refer you, Jules Guesde, to your articles of earlier days – these two figures best express the spirit of the present war, its rectitude, its morality, with its appetite both class and individual. Can there be a worthier partner for Messrs. Lloyd George and Briand than M. Sturmer, this truly Russian-German, who has made a career by clinging on to the cassocks of the Metropolitans and the skirts of the court bigots? What an incomparable trio! Decidedly, history could have found no better colleagues and chieftains for Guesde the Minister.
How is it possible for an honest socialist not to fight you? You have transformed the Socialist Party into a docile choir which accompanies the choir-masters of capitalist brigandage in an epoch when bourgeois society – whose deadly enemy you, Jules Guesde, used to be – has disclosed its true nature to the very core. From all the events which were prepared by a whole period of world-wide depredation and whose consequences we so often predicted, from all the blood that has been shed, from all the suffering and the misfortune, from all the crimes, from all the rapaciousness and felonies of governments, you, Jules Guesde, you draw but one single lesson for the French proletariat: that Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph are two criminals, who, contrary to Nicholas II and M. Poincaré fail to respect the rules and regulations of international law.
An entire new generation of French working youth, new millions of workers morally awakened for the first time by the thunderbolts of the war, learn about the causes of this catastrophe of the Old World, what the Yellow Book of MM. Delcasse, Poincaré, Briand, want to tell them. And you, old chief of the proletariat, you sink to your knees before this Evangel of the peoples, and you renounce all that you learnt and thought in the school of the class struggle.
French Socialism, with its inexhaustible past, with its magnificent phalanx of fighters and martyrs, has at last found – what a fall, what a disgrace! – a Renaudel to translate, during the most tragic period in the world’s history, the lofty thoughts of the Yellow Book into the language of a press of the same colour.
The socialism of Babeuf, of Saint-Simon, of Blanqui,of Fourier, of the Commune, of Jaurès, and of Jules Guesde – yes, of Jules Guesde too – has at last found its Albert Thomas to consult with Romanov concerning the surest ways of capturing Constantinople; has found its Marcel Sembat to promenade his dilettante nonchalance over the corpses and ruins of French civilization; it has found its Jules Guesde to follow – he too – the chariot of the triumphant Briand.
And you believed, you hoped that the French proletariat, which has been bled white in this senseless and hopeless war by the crimes of the ruling classes, would continue to tolerate quietly, to the end, this shameful pact between official socialism and the worst enemies of the proletariat. You were mistaken. An opposition has come forward. In spite of the martial law and the frenzy of nationalism – which, whatever its form, be it royalist, radical or socialist, always preserves its capitalistic substance – the revolutionary opposition is gaining ground every day.
Nashe Slovo, the paper that you have strangled, lived and breathed in the atmosphere of awakening French socialism. Torn from the soil of Russia by a counter-revolution which triumphed thanks to the aid of the French bourgeoisie – which you, Jules Guesde, are now serving – the group of Nashe Slovo was privileged to echo even if in the incomplete form imposed upon it by the censorship – the voice of the French section of the new International which is raising its head amidst the horrors of fratncidal war.
In our capacity as “undesirable foreigners” who linked our fate with that of the French Opposition, we are proud of having sustained the first blows of the French Government – your government, Jules Guesde!
We have the honour together with Monatte, Merheim, Soumoneau, Rosmer, Bourderon, Loriot, Guilbeaux and so many others, to be accused, all of us, of being pro-German. The Paris weekly of your friend Plekhanov, who shared with you your glory as he shares with you your fall, denounced us week after week to the police of M. Malvy, as agents of the German General Staff. Time was when you knew the value of such accusations, for you yourself had the honour of being their target. Now you stamp your approval upon M. Malvy, for the government of national defence, the reports of the stool-pigeons. Yet my political files contain a very recent prison sentence pronounced upon me, in contumacium, during the war, by a German court, for my pamphlet The War and the International.
But aside from this brutal fact, which ought to make an impression even upon the police brain of M. Malvy, I believe I have the right to assert that we revolutionary internationalists are far more dangerous enemies of German reaction than all the governments of the Allies taken together.
Their hostility to Germany is, at the bottom, nothing but the simple rivalry of the competitor; whereas our revolutionary hatred of its ruling class is indestructible.
Imperialist competition may unite again the enemy brethren of today. Were the plans for the total destruction of Germany to be realized, England and France, after a decade, would again approach the Empire of the Hohenzollerns to defend themselves against the excessive powers of Russia. A future Poincaré would exchange telegrams of congradulation with Wilhelm or with his heir; Lloyd George, in the peculiar language of the clergyman and the boxer, would curse Russia as the bulwark of barbarism and militarism; Albert Thomas, as French ambassador to the Kaiser, would receive lilies of the valley from the hands of the court ladies of Potsdam, as he did do recently from the Grand Duchesses of Tsarkoe-Selo. All the banalities of present day speeches and articles would be warmed over, and M. Renaudel would have to change, in his articles, only the proper names, a task entirely within his capacities.
As for us – we shall remain what we have been and are, sworn enemies of Germany’s rulers, for we hate German reaction with the same revolutionary hatred that we have vowed against Czarism or against French plutocracy. And when you dare, you and your newspaper lackeys to applaud Liebknecht, Mehring, Luxemburg and Zetkin as the intrepid enemies of the Hohenzollerns, you cannot deny that they are of our own stripe, our comrades-in-arms. We are allied with them against you and your masters by the indissoluble unity of the revolutionary struggle.
Perhaps you will console yourself with the thought that we are few in number? Yet we are greater in number than the police of every grade believe. In their professional myopia, they do not see the spirit of revolt that is rising from every hearth of suffering and spreading throughout France, though all of Europe in the workmen’s suburbs and in the countryside, in the shops and in the trenches.
You have incarcerated Louise Saumoneau in one of your prisons; but have you thereby diminished the despair of the women in the land? You can arrest hundreds of Zimmerwaldists after having ordered your press to besmirch them again with police calumnies. But can you return husbands to their wives? Can you restore sons to their mothers, fathers to their children, strength and health to the sick? Can you return to a duped and debilitated people the trust in those who have deceived them?
Jules Guesde, get out of your military automobile, leave the cage in which the capitalist state has imprisoned you. Look about! Perhaps, fate will have pity, for the last time upon your wretched old age, and let you hear the muted rumble of approaching events. We expect them, we summon them, we prepare for them! The fate of France would be too frightful if the Calvary of its working class did not lead to a great revenge, where there will be no room for you, Jules Guesde, and for yours.
Expelled by you, I leave France with a profound faith in our triumph. Over and above your head, I send fraternal greetings to the French proletariat, which is awakening to its grand destiny.
Without you and against you.
LONG LIVE SOCIALIST FRANCE!

Leon Trotsky

---

Notes For Part III

36. The General Association of German Workers was founded at Leipzig on 23rd March 1863. President: Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864); Vice-President: Dr. Otto Dammer; Secretary: Karl Julius Valteich, a shoemaker(1839-1915).

37. The Paris Commune: Following France’s defeat in the war of 1870-71, the workers of Paris seized power. On March 28, 1871 the Commune was declared. It was drowned in blood May 21-28, 1871. Some 20,000 to 30,000 Communards, including women and children, were killed, 270 executed after “trial”, 400 jailed, 7000 transported from the country. The Commune marked the end of monarchy in France and the beginning of the Third Republic. The International Workingmen’s Association (the First International) was founded by Marx and Engels in 1864. In its “first phase” it served as the rallying point of various European national sct ions. After the Paris Commune, in 1872, the centre was moved to New York. It was dissolved in 1876.

38. Chartism: An English movement for parliamentary reform (universal male suffrage, annual parliaments, vote by ballot, payment of MPs, equal electoratc, abolition of property qualification, etc.) began in 1838 as a campaign to collect signatures to the People’s Charter. It had some violent episodes (24 killed at Manchester and Newport on November 3, 1839). had its ups and downs and flared up finally in April 1848.

39. In the Summer of 1866 British Railways tried to import cheap Belgian labour. The First International committed itself to stop blacklegging. (See Minutes of the General Council 1866-68, p.333).

40. Although the Stuttgart Conference of the Second International (1907) was able to achieve unanimity on the attitude to war, on the colonial question it was sharply divided. An anti-colonial resolution was passed 127 to 108, with the Germans (though divided among themselves) voting solidly for the ‘colonialists’.

41. In September 1914, the Cathedral of Rheims, where every French King from Clovis to Louis XVI had been crowned, was shelled by German guns.

42. Lassalle made his famous analysis of the essence of constitutions in a speech to a Berlin audience on April 16, 1862.

47. The Zimmerwald (anti-war) Conference was held in Switzerland in September 1915. Though only 42 delegates attended, (four coaches held them all, Trotsky relates) the Conference laid the foundations for a new, the Third International.

48. The Stuttgart Conference of the Second International took place in 1907, (See Note 40): the Copenhagen Conference in 1910, and the BasIc Conference in November 1912.

49. The International Socialist Bereau was the executive of the Second international established by the Paris Congress of 1900 with Headquarters in Brus- sels.

50. Nashe Slovo (Our Word) published in Paris by unemployed Russian printers from January 29, 1915 to October 15, 1916, succeeded Golos (The Voice) and was succeeded by Nachalo (The Beginning). It ran 213 numbers. Trotsky arrived in France from Switzerland late in Novembr 1914.

51. Marcel Sembat was French Minister of Public Works 1914-1916.

---

Glossary Of Names

Babeuf, François Noël (Gracchus) (1760-1797): Egalitarian, utopian Socialist in the French Revolution. Planned the “final revolution” called the “Conspiracy of the Equals” for 11th May 1796. Arrested on its eve, was executed a year later.

Ballod, Karl (1864-1931): Bourgeois economist. Professor University of Berlin from 1905. “Expert” on Russian statistics.

Bebel, August (1840-1913): Marxist of worker origin, Co-founder with Wilhelm Liebknecht of the German Social Democracy 1869. In Reichstag from 1867. Sentenced with Liebknecht to two years’ imprisonment for “treason” (opposition to Franco-German War) in 1872. Leader of the German SD and the 2nd International in pre-war years.

Bismarck, Otto von (1815-1898): Dominated the German and European political scene 1862-1890 as Chancellor. Unified Germany under the domination of Prussia and the Hohenzollerns. Author of the anti-Socialist laws. Dropped by Emperor Wilhelm II in March 1890.

Blanqui, Louis Auguste (1805-1881): French revolutionary, a romantic and colourful character, who believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat through a conspiratorial putsch. He was twice condemned to death and spent 33 of his 76 years in prison.

Bourderon, Albert (1858-1930): French Socialist and trade unionist. Joined the Zimmerwald movement, later moved to the Centre and advocated coalition with bourgeois governments.

Brentano, Lujo (1844-1931): German economist, one of the “State” or “Professorial Socialists” (of the Chair – Kathedersozialisten), who founded the Society for Social Politics in 1873 opposed to the Social Democracy.

Briand, Aristide (1862-1932): Once a militant member of the French Socialist Party; fought Millerand and his “Ministerialism” but later became Minister of Education 1906-1909. Expelled from SP, he founded the Republican Socialist Party with Millerand (1911). Premier several times, especially October 1915-March 1917. Delegate to the League of Nations.

Delcasse, Theophile (1852-1923): French Foreign Minister 1898-1905, 1914-1916. Promoted Entente Cordiale with British.

Fourier, François Marie Charles (1772-1837): Great French Utopian Socialist.

Franz-Joseph I (1830-1916): Habsburg emperor of Austria, king of Hungary and king of Bohemia from 1848 until his death in 1916.

Geissler:

Guesde, Jules Basile (1845-1922): Communard. Founder member of French Workers Party 1879. Left-wing socialist. Deputy 1893-1921. Fought reformism and ministerialism. During the War advocated “Sacred Union” with the bourgeoisie. Minister without Portfolio August 1914 to October 1915.

Guilbeaux, Henri (1885-1938): Originally anaracho-syndicalist. Later French Socialist. In War a pacifist, later left Zimmerwaldist. Supported Russian Revolution and attended Comintern Congresses (1st, 2nd and 5th). Sentenced to death in absentia 1919, amnestied 1924. Later became anti-Soviet and anti-Semite.

Heine, Wolfgang (1861-1944): German Social democrat. Lawyer. Prominent revisionist. Social chauvinist during World War I. Prussian Minister for justice November 1918-January 1919.

Hervé, Gustave (1871-1944): Former anarchist. Leader of extreme left inside the French Socialist party and prominent anti-militarist in the Second International until outbreak of World War I. Became rabid French patriot, monarchist and all-round reactionary.

Hohenzollerns: Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremburg, was made elector of Brandenburg in 1415. Up to 1609 Brandenburg was a barren region between the Middle Oder and the Middle Elbe. In 1616, the Dukedom of Prussia, a Polish fief since 1466, devolved on Frederick William of Brandenburg, “the Great Elector”. The Dynasty rose after the Peace of Westphalia 1648 with the help of France and England who backed the Protestant rulers against the Roman Catholic rulers of Austria. Under Bismarck’s leadership, the dynasty emerged as the principal power in the North German Federation. After the victory against France 1870, the King of Prussia became Emperor of Germany. The Dynasty ended with the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, on November 9th 1918.

Irmer, Georg (1853-1931): German imperialist. Member of colonial service and later journalist. Governor of the Marshall Islands 1894-1897. German Consul-General in Australia 1907-1911.

Jaurès, Jean Auguste (1859-1914): French Socialist leader. Founder and editor L’Humanité 1904-1914. Right Winger, Leading figure in the 2nd International. Anti-militarist. Assassinated by French officers on 31st July 1914, the eve of the War.

Lassalle, Ferdinand (l825-l864): German socialist. Founder of the General Association of German Workers (1863). As the only leading German Socialist of his generation not forced into exile, he was able despite his shortcomings, to exert a great influence on the German working class movement. His followers later helped form the German Social Democracy.

Liebknecht, Karl (1871-1919): Left Wing German Social Democrat. Member German Reichstag and Prussian Landtag. Anti-militarist. He was the first, and at first only, Deputy to oppose war credits in the Reichstag in 1914. Drafted during the war, he was imprisoned for anti-war activity, May 1916 to November 1918. Leader International Group and later, Spartacus League. One of the leaders of the Berlin uprising 1919. Assassinated by counter-revolutionary soldiers, January 15th 1919, with Rosa Luxemburg.

Liebknecht, Wilhelm (1826-1900): Friend of Marx, founder and leader of the German Social Democracy. Reichstag Deputy. Jailed 1872 for opposition to the Franco-Prussian War.

Lloyd-George, David (1863-1945): Welsh M.P. Premier of Great Britain 1916-1922.

Luxemburg, Rosa (1870-1919): Polish Socialist. Joined German Social Democracy 1897. With Karl Liebknecht led Left Wing. Brilliant theoretician (Lenin called her “an eagle”). Imprisoned many times for anti-war activity. Leader of the “Spartacists” and founder of the German Communist Party. Assassinated by reactionary officers January 15th, 1919.

Mehring, Franz (1846-1919): German scholar and historian. In later life joined the Social Democracy and was leading member of the left wing. Spartacist and founder German CP. Author of biography of Karl Marx, and history of Social Democracy. Died soon after assassination of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

Nicholas II (1868-1918): Tsar of Russia from 1894 until his abdication during the February Revolution in March 1917. Executed in 1918.

Plekhanov, George Valentinovich (1856-1918): Pioneer Russian Marxist. Patriot in World War I, and opposed Russian Revolution 1917.

Poincaré, Raymond Nicholas Landry (1860-1934): Premier of France 1912, 1922-24, 1926-29. President 1913-1920. Militarist.

Rakovsky, Christian Georgievich (1873-1941?): Bulgarian by birth. Member Rumanian Social Democracy since the 1890s. Zimmerwaldist. Imprisoned 1916 for anti-war activity. Released by Russian troops 1917, went to Russia and joined the Communists. Held various Governinent and diplomatic posts. As friend of Trotsky, expelled 1938. Reinstated later. Sentenced to prison 1938. Said to have died 1941.

Rappoport, Charles (1865-1941): Member Russian “People’s Will”, later the Social Democracy. Emigrated to France, member Socialist Party and later Communist Party.

Renaudel, Pierre (1871-1935): Left-wing French Socialist. During War led Majority. Deputy 1914-1919 and after 1924.

Rosmer, Alfred (1877-1964): French syndicalist. Leader CGT minority. Zimmerwaldist. Joined French CP 1920. Member ECCI, 1920. Expelled from French CP 1924. Close friend of Trotsky till the end.

Saint-Simon, Claude Henri (1760-1825): French Utopian Socialist.

Saumoneau, Louise (1875-1949): French socialist feminist of working class origin. Jailed for her opposition to the First World War.

Sembat, Marcel (1862-1922): French Socialist. Deputy from 1893. Chauvinist in War. Joined Cabinet of National Defence as Minister of Public Works August 1914-September 1917.

Thomas, Albert (1878-1932): French Socialist. Deputy 1910-1914, 1919-1921. Minister 1914-1917. Visited Russia in Spring 1917 in attempt to get revolutionary Russia to resume the War.

Wilhelm II (1859-1941): German Emperor 1888-1918. Last Hohenzollern ruler. Overthrown by the November 1918 revolution, retired to Holland.

Zetkin, Clara (1857-1933): Left-Wing German Social Democrat. Organizer of women’s movement. Founder German CP. Active in Comintern Executive, Member of Reichstag.

Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth

Howling At The Moon-When Howlin’ Wolf Held Forth  

 

 

 From The Pen Of Bart Webber

One night when Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris were sitting in Johnny D’s over in Somerville [this night was several years before the recent 2015 announcement that that central spot for the blues tradition and up and coming newer musical genre was closing after a forty year run], over near the Davis Square monster Redline MBTA stop sipping a couple of Anchor Steam beers, a taste acquired by Sam out in Frisco town in the old days on hot nights like that one waiting for the show to begin and picked up by Ralph along the way when drinking his life-time scotch whiskey became verboten after a bad medical check-up about ten years before Ralph mentioned that some music you acquired kind of naturally. A lot of their conversations of late, the last few years as they slid into retirement Ralph giving the day to day operations of his specialty electrical shop over to his youngest son and Sam giving the day to day management of his high volume printing business to his longtime employee, Jimmy Jones, who held the place together at the beginning while Sam headed West with a gang of other Carver corner boys in search of the great blue-pink American West night that animated much of the late 1960s had centered on their lifetime of common musical interests (except folk music which Sam came of age with, caught the drift as it came through Harvard Square where he would hang out to get out of the house when tensions boiled  o to some extent but which mostly even with Bob Dylan anti-war protest songs made him grind his teeth.

By naturally Ralph meant, you know like kids’ songs learned in school. Songs like The Farmer in the Dell, which forced you a city kid like Ralph born and raised in Troy, New York a strictly working class town then, and now,  although you might not have designated yourself as such at that age to learn a little about the dying profession of family farmer and about farm machinery; Old MacDonald, ditto on the family farmer stuff and as a bonus all the animals of the farm kingdom and their distinctive noises that still rattled Ralph’s head on hard drinking night if he got melancholy for his tortured childhood; Humpty Dumpty, a silly grossly overweight holy goof of the rankest order, an egghead to boot and that didn’t mean intellectual, far from it, who couldn’t maintain his balance come hell or high water although you might not have thought of that expression, that hell or high water expression, or used it in the high Roman Catholic Saturday-go-to-confession-to confess those damns, hells, and fucks that had entered you vocabulary through osmosis and Sunday-go-to-communion-to-absolve-all-sins Morris household out in Troy where Ralph still lives; and,  Jack and Jill and their ill-fated hill adventure looking for water like they couldn’t have gone to the family kitchen sink tap for their needs but thinking about it later what were they really doing up there. All this total recall, or mostly total recall showing indeed whether you designated yourself as a city kid or not you were one of the brethren, etc. you have embraced that music as a child in case you have forgotten. Music embedded in the back of your mind, coming forth sometimes out of the blue even fifty years later (and maybe relating to other memory difficulties among the AARP-worthy but we shall skip over that since this sketch is about the blues, the musical blues and not the day to day getting old blues).

Sam nodded his head in agreement then chimed in with his opinion the music of junior high school as he thought, looking behind the bartender’s head to the selection of hard liquors displayed with the twinkle of an eye, about switching over to a high-shelf scotch whiskey, Haig &Haig, his natural drink of late, despite the hot night and hot room beginning to fill up with blues aficionados who have come to listen to the “second coming,” the blues of James Montgomery and his back-up blues band. (Sam unlike Ralph suffering no medical warning about the dire consequences to his system about throwing down a few shots since his health was in better shape than Ralph, Ralph having taken a beating in that department with whatever hellious chemical his government, or rather the American government for which he refused to take any credit or blame, was throwing on the ground of Vietnam from the nightmare skies during that long, bloody lost war).

That “second coming” referring to guys, now greying guys, who picked up the blues, especially the citified electric blues after discovering the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Magic Slim and James Cotton back in their 1960s youth, made a decent living out of it and were still playing small clubs and other venues to keep the tradition alive and to pass it on to the kids who were not even born when the first wave guys came out of the hell-hole Delta South of Mister James Crow sometime around or after World War II and plugged  their guitars into the next gin mill electric outlet in places off of Maxwell Street in Chicago, nursing their acts, honing their skills.  

Yeah, getting back to junior high, Sam thinking about that hormonal bust out junior high weekly music class with Mr. Dasher which made Sam chuckle a bit, maybe that third bottle of beer sipping had gotten him tipsy a little, as he thought about the old refrain, “Don’t be a masher, Mister Dasher” which all the kids hung on the poor, benighted man that time when the rhyming simon craze was going through the nation’s schools. Thinking just then that today if some teacher or school administrator was astute enough to bother to listen to what teenage kids said amongst themselves, an admittedly hard task for an adult in any era, in an excess of caution old Mister Dasher might be in a peck of trouble if anyone wanted to be nasty about the implication of that innocent rhyme.  Yeah, Mr. Dasher, the mad monk music teacher (who on the side in those days, not unlike these days, when teachers couldn’t live on their teaching incomes led an old-time, old time to Sam and his classmates Benny Goodman-style swing and sway big band at special occasions and as a regular at the Surf Ballroom over in Plymouth on Friday nights), who wanted his charges to have a well-versed knowledge of the American and world songbooks. Thus  you were forced to remember such songs as The Mexican Hat Dance, God Bless America, and Home On The Range under penalty of being sent up to the front of the room songbook in hand and sing the damn things. Yes, you will remember such songs unto death.

Sam and his corner boys at Doc’s Drugstore found out later that the Dasher was motivated by a desperate rear-guard action to wean his charges away from rock and roll, away from the devil’s music although he would not have called it that because he was too cool to say stuff like that, a struggle in which he was both woefully overmatched by Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Bo, and the crowd and wasting his breathe as they all lived for rock and roll at Doc’s Drugstore after school where he had a jukebox at his soda fountain. And they were not putting their three selections for a quarter to hear hokey Home on the Range.   

Ralph agreed running through his own junior high school litany with Miss Hunt (although a few years older than Sam he had not run through the rhyming simon craze so had no moniker for the old witch although now he wished he had as he chuckled to himself and turned a little confession red although he not been into that stifling confession box on his gamy knees in many years, and it would not be nice either). Ralph added that some of the remembered music reflected the time period when you were growing up but were too young to call the music your own like the music that ran around in the background of your growing up house on the mother housewife radio or evening record player which in Ralph’s case was the music that got his parents through his father’s soldierly slogging on unpronounceable Pacific islands kicking ass against the Nips (his father’s term for the dirty bastard Japanese) and mother anxiously waiting at home for the other shoe to fall or the dreaded military officer coming up to her door telling her the bad news World War II.

You know, guys like Frank (Sinatra, the chairman of the board, that all the bobbysoxer girls, the future mothers of Sam’s and Ralph’s generation swooned over), The Andrew Sisters  and their rums and coca colas, Peggy Lee fronting for Benny Goodman and looking, looking hard for some Johnny to do right, finally do right by her, etc. Other music, the music of their own generation, classic rock and rock came more naturally since that is what they wanted to hear when they had their transistor radios to their ear up in their bedrooms or could hardly wait to hear when the jukebox guy came into Doc’s to put the latest selections in (and to have his hand greased by Doc for “allowing” those desperately desired songs onto his jukebox to fill his pockets with many quarters, see he was “connected” and so along with the jukebox hand over fist money-maker cam the hand).

That mention of transistor radios got Ralph and Sam yakking about that old instrument which got them through many a hard teenage angst and alienation night. That yakking reflecting their both getting mellow on the sweet beer and thinking that they had best switch to Tennessee sipping whisky when the wait person came by again since they had moved from the bar to a table near the stage to get a better view of the band if they were to make it through both sets that night (and Ralph thinking, just this once, just for this bluesy night he would “cheat” a little on that scotch whiskey ban). This transistor thing by the way for the young who might wonder what these old geezers were talking about since it was clearly not iPods was small enough to put in your pocket and put up to your ear like an iPod or MP3 except you couldn’t download or anything like that.

Primitive technology okay but life-saving nevertheless. Just flip the dial although the only station that mattered was WJDA, the local rock station (which had previously strictly only played the music that got all of our parents through their war before the rock break-out made somebody at the station realize that you could made more advertising revenue selling ads for stuff like records, drive-in movies, drive-in restaurants, and cool clothes and accessories than refrigerators and stoves to adults).

Oh yeah, and the beauty of the transistor you could take it up to your bedroom and shut out that aforementioned parents’ music without hassles. Nice, right. So yeah, they could hear Elvis sounding all sexy, her word whether she knew the exact meaning or not, meaning all hot and bothered, according to one girl Sam knew even over the radio and who drove all the girls crazy once they got a look at him on television. Chuck Berry telling our parents’ world that Mr. Beethoven and his crowd, Frank’s too, all had to move over because there was a new sheriff in town.  Bo Diddley asking a very candid question about who put the rock in rock and roll and offering himself up as a candidate. Buddy Holly crooning against all hope for his Peggy Sue (or was it Betty Lou), Jerry Lee inflaming all with his raucous High School Confidential from the back of a flatbed truck, etc. again.

The blues though, the rarified country and electric urban blues of the likes of Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, and Howlin’ Wolf was an acquired taste. Acquired by Sam through listening to folk music programs on that very same transistor radio in the early 1960s after flipping the dial one Sunday night once he got tired of what they claimed was rock music on WJDA and caught a Boston station, WBZ and later WCAS. The main focus was on other types of roots music but when the show would take a break from down home mountain music, western swing ballads, and urban protest music the DJ would play some cuts of country or electric blues. See all the big folkies, Dylan, Tom Rush, Dave Van Ronk, people like that were wild to cover the blues in the search for serious roots music from the American songbook. So somebody, Sam didn’t know who, figured if everybody who was anybody was covering the blues in that folk minute then it made sense to play the real stuff.  (Sam later carried Ralph along on the genre after they had met down in Washington, D.C. in 1971, had been arrested and held in detention at RFK Stadium for trying to shut down the government if it did not shut the Vietnam War, had become life-long friends and Ralph began to dig the blues when he came to Cambridge to visit Sam although he would shutter his ears if Sam played some folk stuff).

The real stuff having been around for a while, having been produced by the likes of Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf going back to the 1940s big time black migration to the industrial plants of the Midwest during World War II when there were plenty of jobs just waiting (and plenty taken away when the soldiers and sailors, white soldiers and sailors came home on the overcrowded troop transports looking to start life over again and raise those families they dreamed about in the muds of Europe and the salty brine of the atoll Pacific). But also having been pushed to the background, way to the background with the rise of rock and roll (although parts of rock make no sense, don’t work at all without kudos to blues chords, think about Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 and Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll, check it out). So it took that combination of folk minute and that well-hidden from view electric blues some time to filter through Sam’s brain.

What did not take a long time to do once Sam got “religion” was going crazy over Howlin’ Wolf when he saw him perform down in Newport when everybody who was anybody that high school and college kids wanted to hear in that folk minute showed up there.  Once Sam had seen him practically eat that harmonica when he was playing that instrument on How Many More Years. There the Wolf was all sweating, running to high form and serious professionalism (just ask the Stones about that polished professionalism when he showed them how to really play Little Red Rooster which they had covered early on in their career as they had covered many other Chess Records blues numbers, as had in an ironic twist a whole generation English rockers in the 1960s while American rockers were basically clueless until the Brits told them about their own roots music) and moving that big body to and fro to beat the band. Playing like god’s own avenging angel, if those angels played the harmonica, and if they could play as well as he did.

They both hoped that greying James Montgomery, master harmonica player in his own right, blew the roof off of the house as they spied the wait person coming their way and James moving onto the stage getting ready to burn up the microphone. And he and his band did just that. Yes, that blues calling from somewhere deep in the muds is an acquired taste and a lasting one.    

From The Class Struggle Archives-Stop The Trans-Pacific Partnership-Then- And Now Too!

From The Class Struggle Archives-Stop The Trans-Pacific Partnership-Then- And Now Too!   

 

Stop The Sweetheart Deals For International Big Business-Organize the Unorganized Internationally-Built The International Workers Front!

 

 

 

Building A Thing From Which You Have To Run-With The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) In Mind 

By Sam Lowell

“I’m not a Luddite, I’m not a guy who thinks we should go back and live in the caves, fearful of beasts, natural disasters, smirking shadows on the walls, bemoaning fate dealt by some unmerciful god. Not a guy either, maybe even less so these days when we are trying to downsize our lives, Melinda and me, who needs the latest gadget to prove that he has made something of himself in his ordinary clay life,” Josh Breslin told his three companions (plus that down-sizing- crazed Melinda) one night as they sat across from each other in Lenny’s, the best place by far in Portland (east side America version up in Maine not tree-hugger-crazed Oregon) for super local wines and equally super crabs and clam-cakes. They, Frank Jackman, Zack James, and Jimmy Jenkins were in Maine as guests of their old-time friend Josh who after many years of living in Cambridge down in Massachusetts when he had finished up a half-bright feet of ordinary clay career as an independent writer for half the unread radical magazines and journals in the country. You know the ones that every half-sensate intellectual or wannabe had on his or her coffee table to display come small intimate party time to show-off to their compatriots how “hip” they are (and Josh in his more candid moments grateful for those guilt-edged subscription bases which helped with alimony, child support and college tuitions for two ex-wives and four bright kids, two and two).

That last point, the point about Josh’s writing for many of the glossy and un-glossy publications of the past half century is important since the subject under discussion that night that bought out a spark of Josh’s old confrontational self was the recent passage by the United States Congress of President Obama’s negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trans-Pacific that is with everybody who wanted in on the cozy deal, for oligarchs, big business and governmental bureaucrats except the elephant in the room, China (formerly known in Josh’s and his kindred’s youth as Red China, to distinguish it from the “real” China of the day-Taiwan). This whole pact was meant as nothing else than as a move to counter growing Chinese influence in that section of the world to the advantage of the United States, to the serious advantage of the United States.         

Josh, and his fellows at table, all politicos, mostly left of the Democratic Party leftists, not so much independents which in the current coin of political usage means independent but subject to selecting between those two non-choices, elephants (no relations to China, an elephant in the room of a different sort) and donkeys (not asses, which are a different animal no matter how appropriate a mascot they might rightly be) but the kind who might support Ralph Nader in his various candidacies, Cindy Sheehan, Bernie Sanders if he ran as an independent socialist had spent plenty of hours opposing previous international big-business rip-offs. Rip-offs like super-rip off of the Mexican peasant NAFTA, CAFTA and Frank’s favorite, LAFTA (who being born and raised in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston made everybody chuckle when he said it-LAFTAH, like a response to a joke, a poor joke on the peasants and urban poor of South America).

They had not taken up their opposition to these accords so much as pro-working class opponents like a lot of national and international labor organizations who saw, correctly saw good jobs going out of their countries of origin, to lower wage areas without benefit to those new employees and the lowering of the standard of living of those left behind-the now much vaunted and talked about increasing international standard of living gaps between rich and poor. Although not much done about that situation, much done about smashing the gap by a radical redistribution of wealth, for all the talk, plenty of parlor talk.            

But let’s get back to Josh and Lenny’s and that statement that he made about not being a Luddite, not being a “back to primeval nature guy,” not being a material objects-collector which raised a few eyes in the room since they had all, all the men had met in San Francisco in the late 1960s when they were all interested in turning the world upside down. Breaking for the lust for a ton of dough and all that brought with it. Still were but with a more measured if less passionate thrust. (Josh had met Melinda after his second painful and costly divorce in the late 1980s and he ever after wished that he had met her back in the 1960s when it would have changed lots of things for the better-if nothing else saving costly alimonies, child support and college tuitions).         

Jimmy, who had been the last to go west to California and the last to meet Josh, to be introduced to him by Jimmy’s hometown friend along with Frank and Zack from Carver High School the late, long lamented Pete Markin got the ball rolling he let out, “Hey Josh weren’t you the guy who after a couple of years on Captain Crunch’s yellow-brick road bus wanted to settle down in New Mexico or one of those square states and set up a communal farm, did so for a couple of months before scurrying back to San Francisco. Didn’t you also say another time that living on that primitive yellow-brick road bus was too “bourgeois” and that you were talking off with Butterfly Swirl to live in a cave in Todo el Mundo just south of Big Sur and abandon the decadent world to commune with nature (and commune with foxy Butterfly Swirl who knew how to “play the flute” for you which is a whole other story for another day). And weren’t you the guy who said that the down-pressed of the world had the right idea about keeping things simple, and that you “renounced” all worldly possessions, except what you could carry in your rucksack-and that damn typewriter of yours.

Everybody chuckled at Jimmy’s remarks, Jimmy whose sharp wit kept the Carver guys laughing in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor all through high school had hit the nail on the head. (Melinda didn’t chuckle not having heard the story before but who would get filled in later that night by Josh, except about Butterfly Swirl and her charms, leaving her wishing that she had known him back then as well.) Everybody expected that Josh would say something back but he just kept what he called (according to Melinda) his own counsel and let it pass. Let Frank go back to that time and tell one and all that they all had, under Markin’s cryto-mysto- Catholic-etched “from hunger” influence, been willing to break with their youthful dreams, become one with the fellahin as Markin called them before finding out the world-historic reality that every farm boy, maybe every farm girl, their stuck-on-the-land mothers and fathers too, wanted to get the fuck off the land at just the time that a big portion of 1960s youth nation was ready to go “live off the land.”

Frank continued in that same vein, “Hell even those of us from the “from hunger” Atlantic neighborhood, the neighborhood where most of the “boggers,” the guys who worked in the cranberry bogs which employed half the town were ready to forsake our “bourgeois” dreams, our mothers’ dreams that we get nice civil service jobs and move up the ladder one step above them to live more simply, to live in some intentional communes where all would be shared out among all those who put in their fair share to make the thing work.”

With that remark Josh said he had agreed with Markin back then since he had grown up in the same kind of town, except the big deal was textiles which had when he was a kid left first to head south in America and then overseas leaving guys like his unskilled labor father with not much left to dignify his life except hustling for every job he could land to keep four hungry growing boys, him and his three brothers, from the county farm. That in the end, after the fall, after he, they and their kindred had been defeated by the greed-heads in the early 1970s was why he had opposed all those unequal trade pacts, why he to belatedly honor his father and his desperate attempts to gain dignified employment, fought tooth and nail against their ratifications.      

That was the serious part of the evening, the righteous political part but when Melinda left the table to go to the Women’s Room Josh signaled to the assembled men, now a bit “in their cups” after a night of wines and seafood to come closer and admit that he had left Todo el Mundo when Butterfly Swirl decided to go back to “civilization” down in Carlsbad where she haled from, decided to go back to be a surfer boy’s girl he made a swift shift in his plans. Josh flushed when he wistfully murmured to the assembled that Butterfly Swirl sure knew how to “play the flute.” Some things never change about guys, even serious guys.