Tuesday, April 02, 2019

In Honor Of The Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (1920)-

In Honor Of The Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (1920)-

Honor The 92nd Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (The 21 Conditions Congress) Of The CI (July-August 1920) 
Markin comment:

Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.

No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.

The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Markin comment on this post:

As noted in my commentary on the Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920), reposted below since it also applies to these theses, such documents give the political movement it is addressed to its marching order. In a general sense, at least. These theses codify those general propositions outlined in the manifesto. Note here that this Second Congress took place as the international working class movement was going through a regroupment process right after World War I between the reformist socialists, the emerging communist vanguard, and the bewildered anarchists. Note also the difference in approaches to the more hardened reformist-led socialist parties, and to the ill-formed but more revolutionary-spirited anarchist formations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) here in America in their good days.


A manifesto, particularly a political manifesto, and especially a revolutionary communist manifesto like the one that issued out of the historic Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 should give a cogent analysis of the world political situation. It should also describe the nature of the period (revolutionary, non-revolutionary, heading toward or away from either, an estimation of the enemy’s capacities, and the obstacles in the way both inside and outside the workers movement (out side the treachery of the liberals and inside the perfidy of the labor bureaucracy resting on the labor bureaucracy). In short, give the international proletariat its marching orders. The Manifesto of the Second World Congress does just those things at a time when the fledgling Communist International was trying to consolidate its vanguard position in the world working class movement. The Communist International then, and for some time after, did yeoman’s work in that regard, not always perfectly but from a revolutionary perspective. Even as it degenerated politically toward the middle and late 1920s there were, as the Leon Trotsky-led International Left Opposition held, reasons, good reasons to adhere to its tenets. Only with the debacle around Hitler’s coming to power in Germany did Trotsky throw in the towel. That seemed right then, and now. I would argue that the Seventh (and last) World Congress in 1935 unquestionably put paid to that notion. We did not need a vanguard national party, or a vanguard revolutionary international party for that matter, to give the lead in the political struggle to the liberal bourgeoisie as the popular frontist politics of the CI proclaimed from that time onward (with a few “left” turns). There was an international for that “strategy”, or rather a mail-drop address, it was (is) called the Second International.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International

Tenth Session
August 4
Zinoviev: The session is open. Comrade Balabanova has the floor to make an announcement.

Balabanova: Comrades, unfortunately we are in the sad position of having to make an announcement that is as distressing for you as it is for us. The day before yesterday, when one of our best and most active comrades, Comrade Augusta Aasen, who comes from Norway, and who has been active in the movement for twenty years, visited the aerodrome to see our Red Air Force, an accident occurred to which she fell victim. We do not need to tell you how terribly and how deeply we feel this great loss. We ask you to rise to honour this comrade’s memory. [The assembly rises from its seats.] I thank you. We ask all comrades to take home with them the assurance that the Russian proletariat will not forget the comrade who has died, and even if her death was due to an accident, then it is still true that she came here and died in the struggle for the proletariat and out of love for the Communist International.

Zinoviev: The Bureau proposes, on behalf of the Congress, to express our deepest sympathy for our sister party in Norway. We will now proceed with the agenda. The agrarian question will be dealt with. The reporter, Comrade Meyer, has the floor.

Meyer: Comrades, since the real reporter on this question, Comrade Marchlewski, is prevented from speaking here in connection with the gratifying advances of the Red Army, I must make a substitute report in his place, bringing together briefly Comrade Lenin’s Theses and the work of the Commission.

The agrarian question has been placed on the agenda by the revolution in Eastern and Central Europe, and demands not only theoretical but also practical solution. The preparatory work for this has up until now been very slight, and the Second International has done as good as nothing in this area. In general one was satisfied with sketching beautiful pictures of the agricultural production of the future after the introduction of socialism. But how the rural population can be won for the proletarian revolution, and what struggles must be carried out to achieve this ideal goal – on that the Second International said very little, nor did it do anything to prepare something in practice.

The best elements of the Second International were satisfied with polemicising against the opportunist wing, which, on the basis of an incorrect reading of the statistical data, claimed in general that there was no question of the socialisation of landed property, and over and above that, that the social revolution could not take root in the countryside. On the basis of German statistics, the revisionists tried to prove that Marxist theories did not apply to the countryside, and on the basis of these theories they rejected the social struggle and rejected the social revolution. Those who did oppose these reformists did so like Kautsky – essentially for the purpose simply of proving that Marxist theory did apply after all in this field. Further practical conclusions were not however drawn from this.

The attitude of the Communist International to this question is a different one. For us it is a question of really revolutionising the countryside. For there can be no doubt about this, that without the active participation of broad layers of the rural population, it is impossible to secure and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. For us, for the Communist International, the securing of the revolution comes first, and all the questions connected with the agrarian question can only be considered and answered from this angle.

The task of the Communist International with relation to the agrarian question can be briefly summarised in the question: ‘How do we take the class struggle, the revolutionary struggle, out into the countryside?’ The revolutionising of the rural population, whose needs can only be satisfied by the revolution, stands on the agenda of history. Even the few experiences that it was possible to make here in Russia, the experiences that were made with agrarian reforms in Central Europe, confirm the thesis that forms the guiding star of the discussions of the whole Congress: bourgeois democracy is incapable of solving this question, and a satisfactory solution can only be achieved by the revolution and by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The parties that allegedly represent the interests of the rural population, like for example the Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia and the peasant-bourgeois parties in Europe, betrayed their own programmes when they had power in their hands and were able to turn their programme into deeds. Bourgeois democracy is incapable of solving this question.

It is not only the practical activity of the Socialist Revolutionaries in the Russian border states that proves this. In the other countries too all attempts at agrarian reform amount to destroying and dividing up a portion of large landed property, in order thus to create a new proletarian or semi-proletarian element that is to provide a cheap object of exploitation for existing large landed property. Whatever smallholding laws have been passed in Germany have remained on paper, or consist of creating elements of exploitation for large landed property. The single exception of a somewhat more serious looking agrarian reform has perhaps been created in Bohemia; but that too is only because the national differences between the Czech, Jewish and German elements have been emphasised, so that the Czech peasants have in part been satisfied by the expropriation of the other elements.

The Communist International must go beyond what bourgeois democracy has done and must especially strive to cancel the opposition between town and country, to forge together the urban and rural proletarian population for the common struggle, for the proletarian revolution. That happens, among other things, by making sure that the rural workers share all the advantages that are available to the urban workers, and further by raising the urban workers’ consciousness of the necessity of rural work.

The question of how the proletarian revolution can be taken out into the countryside, into the village, can only be solved if a detailed and precise analysis of the various layers of the rural population is drawn up. The Theses before you make the attempt to classify the rural population into various layers: first the agricultural proletarians, the wage-workers, secondly the semi-proletarians and small-holders, thirdly the small-peasants, fourthly the middle peasants, fifthly the large peasants, and sixthly the large landowners. Of course, this way of formulating the Theses only gives a general scheme. Given the variegated character of the composition of the rural population in the various countries, the conditions in every country must be studied accurately in order to be able to determine in detail where the revolutionising of the rural population can start. Here at the Congress only general outlines for judging the situation of the rural population and for working over by the Communist Parties can be given.

The group that comes into question for the proletarian revolution in the first place and completely is the rural workers, the forestry workers, and further the workers who are active in industrial enterprises that are connected with agriculture, such as dairies, distilleries, etc. The big market-gardening concerns, which employ a large number of wage-labourers, also come into question. The social position of this layer of the rural population is very difficult and bad, but also so wen known that we do not need to talk about it in greater detail. Their bad economic position, low wages and bad housing conditions, are connected with the political and social pressure exerted by the Junkers, so that this proletarian element will join the revolution without any further ado. This layer is among the most active elements within the proletarian revolution and, despite all the bad experiences of the past, its organisational ability is at the moment very great.

I only need to remind you that the agricultural workers union in Germany is today one of the biggest free trades unions and counts 500,000 members. In so small a country as Italy the agricultural workers’ union has over 800,000 members. That proves what importance this layer has for the social revolution and at the same time how relatively easy it will be to incorporate these layers in our ranks. This organisation must not be limited to the trade union field, but equally and even more these layers must be embraced by our political organs, by the Communist Parties. Over and above that, everything must be done in every other respect to win these layers, through educational work, etc.

I should like to add here something about activity among women in the countryside. That applies not only to women servants but also to the wives of small peasants who are forced to go to work by the war and by today’s social conditions. The fact that they do these jobs promises us success and can by no means be neglected. The questions that have already been settled by the Congress, work in the trades unions and in parliament, take on a special importance seen from this angle. When it is said by the opponents of activity in the trades unions that one has opportunity enough to organise the proletariat and carry out agitation, then this objection could perhaps apply to the industrial proletariat.

Getting a grip on the rural proletariat, on the other hand, can be done most easily through the work of communists in the agricultural workers’ unions and through participation in election campaigns. Big layers of the rural population can be brought into the sphere of revolutionary activity comparatively easily in both ways. The success of systematic agitation is very great.

Take the experiences in Russia and in Germany. In the March action, in replying to the Kapp putsch, Germany’s rural population behaved well and boldly. The landowners were chased out or locked up, agricultural concerns were maintained. The agricultural workers delivered the surplus of food to the towns without any further ado. Over and above that the rural workers got together and provided revolutionary fighting cadres for the proletariat in the towns. Not only during this struggle before the seizure of power, but also after the seizure of power the rural proletariat will be one of the strongest supports of soviet power. The question is to give an organisational form to this mainly, or provisionally, elemental movement of the rural proletariat. The formation of estate councils is the best way to bring the turbulent, elemental forces together.

The second layer of the rural population, the semi-proletarians and small-holders,, can also be won for the proletarian revolution in a similar way, if not so easily as the agricultural workers. This layer too is dependent upon the big landowners. They suffer the same difficulties as the agricultural workers. Indeed, their position is perhaps even more difficult, for the small-holders have in addition their own personal worries about their little piece of land. In most countries it would be to the point to enrol these semi-proletarian elements in the organisations of the actual agricultural labourers. The question is more difficult in the case of the small peasants and tenant farmers who are able to earn their keep by working their land, but do not employ any outside labour. Among them are also the small fruit and vegetable farmers and market gardeners. They are not revolutionary-minded, but nevertheless they come partially under consideration for our fighting ranks. The question is to educate them about the necessity of the social revolution and about their own interests.

In reality these small peasants are suffering greatly under present conditions. They too, even if usually indirectly, are dependent on the big landowners and on capital. They too perform unpaid labour in the way that they meet the interest payments on mortgages, pay inflated prices for agricultural machinery, and so on. The living standard of this layer is often purely proletarian. The pressure of taxes, deposit money and so forth, the general price increase under which this layer suffers, these are all questions that we must bring home to them through systematic agitation. It is not excluded that a professional organisation can be created within this layer also. Only last year an association of rural labourers and small peasants was set up in this way in Germany. It then emerged that there was no purpose in forming such an association outside the trades unions, and the association was dissolved. Nevertheless the small peasants in South Germany asked us to maintain it and to continue to publish our paper for it, saying that they had especial interest in our ideas. And so we have reached the point in Germany of forming an organisation for the peasants which, however loose, nevertheless has its importance.

In just the same way we encourage the small peasants in Germany to form themselves together in councils of small peasants in order not only to pursue economic interests, but also to take up the political and social struggle. I must add that this work has not as yet had any success. We have had estate councils in very many villages. The participation of small peasants has not yet been obtained. Nevertheless we are not backing down in this agitation. We have partially succeeded in convincing small peasants that a division of the land would bring no special advantages to them, and that it would be more to the point to form themselves together in councils of small peasants and co-operatives to run in common the large landed estates that are to be expropriated.

Admittedly, it must be emphasised that in many countries, particularly in the small western democracies, the small peasants are very reactionary, and in general therefore it must be assumed that during the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat a vacillation will make itself manifest in this layer, now to the side of private property, now to the side of communism. These small proprietors are demoralised by views of a private capitalist kind. In order to remove these vacillations and win support for ourselves we must bring them to an understanding that they too are suffering under the present system, and tell them what advantages they will enjoy in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat and after the establishment of the proletarian state power.

We must assure them that they will be able to keep their little landed property, as there would be no sense in expropriating this little landed property, since at the time of the struggle neither the political nor the technical possibility would exist of farming this little property in common against the will of its proprietor. We must not only assure them that they will be able to keep their property, but we must also do everything to remove the usury under which these small peasants suffer. Liberation from the pressure of taxes, from rents, from the mortgage burden and from deposit money are advantages that must be granted to the small peasants by the proletariat without any further ado. Furthermore their rights to common grazing land and woods must be freed from dependence upon the big landowners. What is more, they must be promised help through being given buildings, machines, equipment and seeds which will be taken from the big landowners.

Finally they must be told that the co-operatives, which today in almost every country stand at the disposal of the rich peasants, must be transformed into organisations that exclusively serve the interests of the small peasants. In countries where there are certain limitations to free trade, and the obligation to make deliveries in kind, they must also be told that these forced deliveries of food must be maintained, but that the organisational apparatus necessary to carry them out will be taken from the bureaucracy and placed in the hands of the small peasants themselves. The small peasants must be made aware that they will obtain advantages from the socialisation of big firms and the cheapening of agricultural machinery. For that reason, systematic educational work must be carried out among the small peasants. They must be enlightened about their social position. If agitation is carried out in this way it is to be expected that the peasants will in part go with the proletariat, or at least will not become opponents of the proletarian dictatorship. Taken together, the groups of agricultural workers, semi-proletarians and small-holders form a splendid field for Communist Party work, and after the conquest of power by the proletariat all three layers will become clear that affiliation to the proletarian state is the best means to satisfy their own interests.

The question is even more difficult in the case of the middle peasants than it is in that of the small peasants. In part they use outside labour power and have large enough holdings to be able to produce a surplus of food. This layer is by no means small. It is pointed out in the Theses that this middle layer, with holdings of from 5 to 10 hectares, includes over half a million people in Germany. It is clear that it is impossible to drive this layer from its landholdings, as that would mean a cut in food production. What comes into question therefore is treating this layer differently. The attempt must be made to neutralise them. Kautsky pointed out that it is necessary to treat the peasantry in such a way that they do not give the bourgeoisie any active help. With these middle peasants too there is no question of the immediate abolition of private property. It will even be possible to give the middle peasants even more land, insofar as it is a question of land already rented by them, and in the process the middle peasants will also have the further advantage that for them too rents will be abolished.

Of course, all these advantages can only be granted to the middle peasants on condition they recognise soviet power, make food deliveries and offer no resistance. Here too experience in Russia shows that with such treatment it is possible to bring the middle peasants to a loyal attitude towards soviet power. This treatment of the middle peasants, maintaining private property, is necessary for the attitude of this layer of peasants amounts more or less to what one of the Russian peasants expressed in the bad joke: ‘We are for soviet power but against communism.’ The Russian example shows that these peasants will adapt and come to terms with proletarian state power if they are treated properly. In the Red Army a great-number of middle peasants are doing their duty against external enemies.

The peasants on the other hand, who as a rule employ outside labour power, are among the most numerous and determined opponents of soviet power, and it is to be expected that not only now, but also later, after the setting up of soviet power, they will carry out all sorts of sabotage and even offer military resistance. This danger must be clearly faced, and all preparations must be made to thwart this resistance and beat it down wherever it shows itself. The disarming of the large peasants must be carried out. But even with these large peasants there is no question of expropriation as an immediate task of the revolution. The rented land that is needed for small and middle peasants must be taken from them, and they will be completely expropriated without any further ado if they offer obstinate resistance. But should this condition not be present we will let the big peasants keep their land. It is important to eliminate the political and military resistance of this layer. And here too, experience in Russia shows that it is possible to call forth such a half-way loyal attitude in this layer. As soon as the victory of the proletarian revolution has been assured, it will emerge that the large peasants too will come to terms with the new conditions.

The big landowners, who in part even during the war undertook big land purchases, must immediately be expropriated without exception and without compensation. There can be no question of their being paid compensation for the expropriation, as Kautsky and other Independents propose. What happens with the land that has been expropriated? The simplest and most appropriate thing to do is to hand it over in common to the agricultural workers who previously worked on it. Soviet farms must be set up which run these estates on behalf of and as organs of proletarian state power, maintain themselves, and deliver the surplus to the soviet power. Under certain circumstances it will be possible to create collective enterprises that work the land co-operatively.

These two solutions are the best not only for the agricultural workers and the semi-proletarians, but also for the urban population, which will thus become partially independent of the peasantry in the question of supplies. It is a precondition for this solution that the rural proletariat has collected a certain wealth of technical experience. Since this precondition is not everywhere present, one must reckon with the fact that in special cases exceptions must be made. Such exceptions have been made in Russia, where big landed properties have in part been divided up. This exception is not the infringement of the principles of Communism that Kautsky tried to make out; for the main task of proletarian power consists in securing itself and the proletarian revolution, creating the foundations for Communism. All other questions must take second place to this main historical consideration. Even cuts in production, which can indeed have a painful effect even today, must take second place to this question.

When is it permissible to divide up big landed property? A division can only come into question when it is leased to small peasants, that is to say when this big landed property is not farmed as a unit. In this case the division does not at all mean relinquishing large-scale operation. Further, this division is possible when the big property is scattered in small peasant settlements. Here land hunger is so great that under certain conditions it has to be satisfied for the security of the revolution. In Southern Germany it is conceivable that the few big estates that exist will be divided up. And finally a division among the experienced peasants comes into question where the rural proletariat is too backward. The most important thing in any case is that the landowners should not be left on their estates, that they must be driven out, and if large-scale enterprise cannot be maintained without them, then the peasants must be won to working this land. After the establishment of proletarian power it will become possible to win bourgeois experts for this work under the control of soviet power.

The precondition for the winning of the rural proletariat is a determined struggle by the urban proletariat for the social revolution, without flinching at sacrifice, and in this the Communist Parties must be in the forefront as a vanguard. In order to win the layers that are still vacillating or are accessible to communist ideas, they must be granted economic advantages immediately after the victory of the proletarian revolution. The semi-proletarians; and the small and middle peasants must feel that they themselves gain advantages in the new order, and moreover these advantages must be granted at the expense of the exploiters.

In order to encourage the movement in the countryside it is necessary to establish relations with the economic struggle on the land, in the first place with the strike movement. Big strike movements have started on the land in almost every country, and these must be utilised by the Communist Parties in order to convince the rural proletariat that a real improvement of its position cannot be achieved by the granting of higher wages, but only by the victory of the proletarian revolution. In connection with these economic struggles the Communist Parties must also win the rural proletariat for themselves, and must create their own organisations. The rural proletariat must be convinced that they themselves must organise for the liberation struggle in the form of estates’ councils. A particular role falls to the industrial workers in the countryside, who mainly originate from the urban proletariat, in strengthening this movement. The Communist Parties must turn to them to carry the movement out into the countryside and strengthen it with their help. Special agitation among the small peasants is also necessary. It must be carried out by every available means. In the Theses further suggestions are made about how, through agitation, meetings, through the collaboration of the trades unions and the treatment of the agrarian question in parliament, the countryside can be revolutionised.

These, then, are briefly the tasks put before the Congress by the Theses. The Commission occupied itself, in several sessions, with the Theses, and undertook a large number of amendments, particularly a large number of stylistic amendments in the German edition. These Theses are intended only as a general framework for the activity of the Communist Parties in the countryside. It would be appropriate for the communists of every country to create their own agrarian programme, containing particular proposals. I should like to point out that in Germany for example such an agrarian programme of the KPD already exists.

As far as material amendments are concerned, in paragraph 2, on page 33, add: ‘The industrial rural workers, the forestry workers.’ after ‘wage labour in the capitalist. ...'

On page 34 add: ‘that a common organisation of agricultural workers ...’.

On page 38, point 4, several sentences have been deleted in which the interests of the middle peasants are opposed to those of the wage labourers. Where it says: ‘for the world outlook...’, to: ‘the victorious proletariat’, on page 39, add: ‘that there is no question of an immediate abolition of private property in the case of the middle peasants, on the contrary...'

The biggest amendments have been undertaken in paragraph 6. In the original version there is too much emphasis on the exception to the rule that the land cannot be divided up. The Commission deleted the sentence in the paragraph which says that it would be a mistake not to undertake the division of the land, and inserted a new sentence’... the principle that large-scale production must be maintained.’ The amendments are so numerous that I shall not read out the whole of the new version. The amendment corresponds almost word for word with a proposal from Comrade Marchlewski. In the German version on page 43, everything is deleted from the place where the section starts: ‘It would however be a great mistake...’, to the section on page 45: ‘the inventory of the large-scale concerns,’ and replaced by a new version. From then on the old text has been retained with few amendments. And then on page 46, a polemic against the Second International, against the German and English Independents, and against the French Longuetists has been deleted because the same thought has been expressed in another place.

Those are the essential amendments. In concluding I should like to point out how important it is for the Communist Parties to take the social revolution out into the countryside. It is impossible to secure the victory of the revolution, particularly in Central and Western Europe, without lining the rural proletariat up in the ranks of the urban proletariat. The particularly favourable conditions that existed in Russia through the fact that the peasantry has an interest in proletarian power through the question of ‘peace and land’, are in part missing in Central and Western Europe. That makes it all the more necessary for the Communist Parties to base themselves in the countryside on those parts of the rural proletariat that suffer in the same way as the urban proletariat, and in part even worse under present conditions. And the Commission hopes that the initiatives taken here will also bear fruit in the practice of the various Communist Parties in the various countries.

Graziadei: Comrades, I shall speak for myself, personally. First of all I should like to state that in general I accept the Theses that have been proposed to us by Comrade Lenin, particularly after the very interesting amendments that the Commission introduced especially in Thesis 6.

There exists a very striking similarity between Comrade Lenin’s Theses on the national and colonial question and the Theses on the agrarian question, even if the subject is a very different one. It is the same method, which is applied in different questions, and which consists in assessing the opponents and making concessions according to the requirements of the moment, or to what the people to whom one is making the concessions demand.

That is a method that one can define as the method of the minimum of effort, a method that aims at structuring the conquest of power more easily and quickly and creating conditions for the maintenance of power after its conquest.

I shall content myself with pointing out that this tendency reveals a danger that one could characterise as the danger of an opportunism from the left.

But the fact that these Theses and their application are entrusted to such comrades as Comrade Lenin and other Russian comrades can give us the certainty that this danger remains theoretical. However, I assure you that there are other countries and other situations where I would not be able to evince such confidence.

In order to facilitate the conquest of political power by the proletariat, Comrade Lenin’s Theses have a look at the peasant masses, divide them – analysing them all quite correctly – into various groups, and say: ‘We can take part of them with us, another part can be neutralised. But there is a further section among them that will always remain hostile to us, and we must fight indefatigably against it.'

The second part of Comrade Lenin’s Theses deals with the question of what is to be done after the conquest o f power. With the corrections proposed these Theses can be adopted. I must however make some practical comments.

In the Thesis on the petty and middle proprietors, Comrade Lenin shows himself to be very original. He tries to avoid two opposite errors which socialists have up till now made.

Many socialists believed that they could get round the great question of the petty and middle proprietors by saying: ‘In reality their fate is to disappear in bourgeois society, consequently we do not need to interest ourselves in them.’ That is a completely erroneous conception, since above all it is by no means true that the law of the concentration of capital is everywhere carried out as Marx described it. In any case, the form in which the attempt was made to apply the law of the concentration of capital to the petty proprietors, was simply nonsensical. Furthermore we recognise that, if we declare that the small peasants are condemned to disappear, we open ourselves to two dangers: our attention is directed away from the small peasants and they are driven into the arms of our opponents. Then it is obvious that, if we tell the small peasants that they have to disappear and that we want to abolish them artificially, we will turn millions of people into our opponents through such policies.

The other mistake – the opposite of the first – which our socialists committed was their belief that, since the small peasants were not fated to disappear, they would have to be organised, and that the revolution could not be carried out until this was done. That would mean a postponement of the revolution until the Greek Calends. That is not possible.

Between these two errors, which are diametrically opposed, Comrade Lenin proposes an attitude which I find pretty exact and acceptable. He says that we must show the small peasants that if they go with us they have everything to gain. That is good. But I have some reservations about the part that deals with the forms of organisation and struggle that have to be applied during the period preceding the conquest of political power.

In the Thesis before last, i.e. Thesis 8, there is talk about the strike of agricultural workers in which, in certain cases, the small peasants could also join. I am far from denying the importance of the revolutionary factor in these rural strikes. In Italy we had considerable rural strikes, and these broad movements had deep effects. But I must nevertheless make two objections. I do not understand why it is said that in certain cases the small peasants could participate in the strikes. I do not believe that they can. On the other hand it is also an error to think that the strike is the main weapon in every country, for there are countries where the organisations of the agricultural wage-labourers have achieved such strength that they can prepare the revolution and even start a policy of realising the proletarian dictatorship in bourgeois society itself.

In Italy we have workers’ organisations that directly take on public works. Similarly there are co-operatives which buy or rent land in order to cultivate it in common. Here lies a force of struggle and construction that has great significance and which we cannot ignore. That is why I wanted to propose to add the following at the end of Thesis 8:

‘Only at an advanced level of organisation, under certain conditions and in certain countries can the exploited rural masses organise themselves in co-operatives (to carry out public works, to cultivate bought or rented land in a completely or partially collective way, etc.). The Communists must take an interest in these organisations and try to lead them – with the goal, among others, that these organisations should not become involved in political compromises.'

I shall also turn to the question of the small peasants. In many countries the petty proprietors are already organised in co-operatives for purchasing and marketing and for the processing of their products (co-operative societies). It also often happens that they are organised by our opponents. The main aim of the socialists is not to organise the small peasants, but if they have a tendency to organise themselves we must intervene in these organisations, for one must go into every organisation where there are workers. I therefore propose to add the following at the end of Thesis 8:

‘As far as the small peasants are concerned, the Communists must enter their co-operative organisations for purchasing and marketing (co-operative societies) with the aim of awakening opposed tendencies here and giving them a character as little as possible limited to private property.'

I must make a further remark. I accept the conception, with the Commission’s amendments, on what the proletarian government must do as soon as it is in a position to deal with the agrarian question. But to fill it out I would make a small insertion in the 6th Thesis at the end of the second paragraph.

It is very correct not to permit compensation to be paid to the former big landowners. I think it is very good to remind socialists and communists that that would be an anti-socialist and anti-communist action. And I think it is strange that the proposal to give compensation was supported by the comrades from Italy, Austria and Germany.

That would mean burdening the rural masses with an enormous weight. But since one should always facilitate the revolution within the bounds of possibility, one should try after the first period of the struggle, to make use of the abilities of certain proprietors. This situation must be taken into account. I therefore propose the following insertion at the end of the second paragraph of Thesis 6:

‘If the question of compensation money absolutely must be touched on, then it must be pointed out in this question that the former big landowners must be granted a personal pension if their age no longer permits them to work and to get used to the new conditions of life quickly.

‘Of course this will depend on their personal attitude, for it would be ridiculous to grant anything to counter-revolutionaries. But if they submit to the new order, one must bring about some alleviation of their fate.'

Finally, I am of the opinion that in the 3rd Thesis, line 2, one should not say ‘in every capitalist country’, but that one should say ‘in almost every capitalist country’, for it is not quite right to say: ‘In every capitalist country the rural masses form the majority of the population’. In Britain, for example, the rural masses form the minority.

Shablin: Comrades, in the towns of Bulgaria there are important industries. In the villages the predominant form of ownership is that of petty landed property. The workers are concentrated in the towns, and it is from there that the Communist Party draws its main forces. But thanks to the fact that the process of the proletarianisation of the small peasants is proceeding very quickly, and that the position of the small peasants who are able to hang on to a bit of land has become very poor because of the consequences of the war, the influence of the Communist Party is beginning to spread to the countryside too.

The predominant form of ownership in the countryside in Bulgaria is petty landed property. In Bulgaria there are 495,000 landowners and the average area of each property is 0.9 hectares. But these holdings are shared out in the following way:

1. less than 5 hectares 225,000
2. less than 10 hectares 175,000
3. less than 100 hectares 95,000
4. more than 100 hectares 936

The first category, which is also the most numerous, consists of semi-proletarians, whose land is not even enough to satisfy their own needs. For a good part of the year they are obliged to work for the rich peasants or in mines, factories and towns. This category forms the largest part of our cadre in the countryside. The second category is the petty proprietors, whose land is scarcely sufficient to satisfy their family’s needs. They do not exploit the labour of others, and cultivate their land themselves. The Communist Party works among this layer, where it has marked up some remarkable results. As a consequence of the significant reduction of the productivity of agriculture, which was a result of the destruction of the stock of farm animals during the war, the economic position of this category has in fact become very insecure. These two semi-proletarian and small peasant categories embrace approximately four fifths of the whole peasant population of Bulgaria. All they can expect from the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state is an increase in their financial burdens in order to cover the cost of the war and as a result an increase of their poverty.

The Communist Party is carrying out strong agitation and intensive propaganda among them. Our Party does not hide its maximum programme, that is to say the nationalisation of the land, from the semi-proletarians and small peasants. The profitability of small landholdings is so small in our country, the poverty of the semi-proletarians and the small landowners is so great, that the idea of increasing agricultural productivity through the common ownership of the land is gaining ground every day. But at the same time we explain to them that when the proletariat takes power it will carry out the expropriation of the big landowners, and not that of the small peasants and semi-proletarians, and that even the middle peasants will be left the right of free possession of their land. The semi-proletarians and the small landowners will come to the idea of the collective possession and cultivation of the land by themselves if by its actions the proletarian state shows them the advantages of the new socialist government; they themselves will come to the idea that the use of advanced agricultural machinery, the electrical cultivation of the land and the development of agricultural knowledge will make the collective possession and the collective cultivation of the land economically possible.

That is the direction that our agitation essentially follows, which takes into account the true position of the semi-proletarians and the petty landowners. We also make efforts to tear the toiling mass of the peasant population free from the influence of the bourgeoisie in the towns and in the countryside, from the influence of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, and to win them for the cause of the proletarian revolution.

I must particularly stress here that in this respect we have already marked up significant successes. The Communist Party has established a communist newspaper for the peasants; it has in the countryside almost a thousand communist organisations and groups which embrace 25,000 agricultural workers, semi-proletarians and small landowners whom it is preparing for the revolution. The slogan of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Councils is greeted with enthusiasm by these masses, who have lost their confidence in the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois state and the bourgeois parliament. We are working to have the majority of these masses with us at the moment of the revolution and with their help to paralyse the attempts of the bourgeoisie through the peasantry to drown the revolutionary proletariat in the towns in blood, the proletariat which – I must note here – is already completely won over to communist ideas.

The middle peasants, that is to say those who sell their agricultural products on the market, have piled up not a few banknotes during the war, and many among them have become rich. They represent the reactionary class in the countryside, but in our country they form a numerically weak and unimportant layer. Even fewer in number are the big landowners who, together with the middle peasants, form the peasant reaction on which the power of the bourgeoisie rests today. In our country – just as in the other capitalist states – the peasant bourgeoisie (the middle and big landowners has quite a large influence and, because of its overwhelming role in the market for agricultural products, whose prices have undergone an enormous increase, plays a significant political role. This peasant bourgeoisie stands in the camp of reaction and of counter-revolution. Today they are in league with the bourgeoisie in the towns for the purpose of speculation and for the exploitation of the masses, not only through the banks and the limited liability companies, but also through their bloodthirsty policy of stifling the proletarian revolution through the cruellest means that the bourgeois dictatorship uses.

But it must be repeated: in our country the peasant bourgeoisie only forms a very weak layer of the rural population, and if we succeed in winning the majority of the semi-proletarians and small peasants to us, we will be able to break the resistance of the peasant bourgeoisie at the moment of the revolution. For that reason we are making the greatest efforts as far as the organisation of agricultural workers (who are united in a trade union) is concerned: but what we want above all is to attract to us the semi-proletarians and small peasants in the countryside, who form the overwhelming majority of the rural population, and win them for communism.

We also recognise clearly the necessity of working towards neutralising the middle peasants for the revolution. We do not terrify them with the idea of expropriating their land, for in fact, with the technical means at our disposal at the moment, we cannot immediately organise collective agricultural production in the place of private agricultural production. Our aim is the expropriation of the big landowners. If we succeed in neutralising the middle peasants, then we shall have split the force of the reactionary block into two parts, and then it will be much easier to defeat it.

As far as the question of the creation of peasants’ councils is concerned, we think that it is closely connected with the creation of workers’ councils in the towns. When the revolutionary struggle has reached its climax and the working class and the class of the poor decides during the growth of the movement to proceed to the creation of soviets and the armed uprising – for in order for the workers’ and peasants’ councils to exist as revolutionary organs for the conquest and exercise of proletarian power, they must be defended by the workers and peasants with arms in hand – only then will it be possible and permissible to proceed to the creation of peasants’ councils which will be formed by the poor, the proletarians and semi-proletarians in the countryside.

Therefore the Bulgarian delegation accepts the Theses presented by the Executive Committee with the Commission’s amendments and submitted to the Congress by the reporter, Comrade Meyer, and supports them.

Serrati: I have asked for the floor in order to do Comrade Wijnkoop a favour and not be forced to make a statement in the last second before the vote. In my opinion this question does not interest the Congress. This is a Congress of comrades who come from industrial countries and do not know how interesting this question is. As far as I am concerned, I am merely making a statement. I think that it will not be possible to discuss this question thoroughly until the next Congress, when more experience will have been collected.

I shall abstain from voting. Personally I am against the Theses, which do not seem to correspond sufficiently to the necessities of the revolution in the Western countries. Our Party has not yet finally decided on this very serious question, and I do not think that I have the right to place my own personal will in the place of that of the comrades who delegated me to the Congress.

In general it seems to me that the necessities of the postrevolutionary period, during which the proletarian state will necessarily have to adapt to certain necessities, are being confused with the pre-revolutionary period, during which the Communists must adopt an exact and definite attitude towards all bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties.

These Theses, just like the Theses on the colonial and national question, take no account of the fact that the concessions made to various social layers in order to influence them in our favour or to neutralise them can be very dangerous for the proletarian layers in the moment of the revolutionary fray, and can lead them into a more and more opportunist path of concessions. In general the small peasants of Western Europe are very greedy for profit, and know very well what their political attitude must be to defend their interests. It is not sufficient to make them declarations of sympathy; they want something practical. They are in favour of protective tariffs, against the industrialisation of the land, for autonomy in the administration. And the parties in which they are organised have promised them that. Will they believe us? Furthermore it is necessary to remember that in the advanced countries the peasants – small and medium proprietors already have their parties, and they are reactionary parties. The small and medium proprietors and the tenant farmers in those countries are in struggle against the agricultural workers, who already want to expropriate them. In Italy this struggle has already been going on for twenty years, and from time to time it has had bloody consequences. Can we go to them and say: ‘We were mistaken?'

Petty proprietorship is an economic form whose existence is justified in certain places, particularly in the mountains. The Communists must not do any harm to the small peasants. During and after the revolution they must find certain inevitable solutions. They must understand and make understood the fact that, after the overthrow of the bourgeois regime, agreement must be possible even with the middle peasants; but before the revolution the Communists have the particular duty of not making concessions to the rural petty bourgeoisie, in order not to harm the interests of the proletarian masses.

For these reasons, and because I am not sufficiently acquainted with the views of my Party on this subject, I shall abstain from voting.

Sokolnikov: Comrade Graziadei tells us that he considers Marxist theory in its application to the agrarian question to be a piece of childishness.

Graziadei: I did not say that. I said that the law of the concentration of capital has not worked out in practice everywhere in the way Marx dealt with it in Capital. I said that it is childishness on the part of some comrades to start from the law of the concentration of capital and to try to reach the conclusion that all petty proprietors would have to disappear in the bourgeois world.

Sokolnikov: The word is not of great importance. Comrade Graziadei says that Marxist theories are erroneous as far as the concentration of capital in the area of agriculture is concerned.

Comrade Graziadei is, if I am not mistaken, an excellent professor of political economy. But in the present case, which touches on Marxist theory, I really think that it is he that is wrong, and that he is following the example of the professors of political economy who have often declared that Marxist theory in general is of no value when it is applied to a specific point. If it really were true that Marxist theory does not work out in practice, in the field of agriculture, then one would have to draw the necessary conclusions, one would then have to admit that the whole of socialist and communist construction would have to collapse, if one admits that Marxist theory cannot stand up in the field of agriculture.

If it is impossible to organise socialist production in agriculture on the basis given by capitalist development, that obviously means the collapse of the socialist regime in industry. Moreover, I believe that Comrade Graziadei has spoken against the application of Marxist theories in agriculture without establishing that the centres of agricultural production have shifted. Central Europe has ceased to be the granary of Europe. Large-scale agricultural production is now sited on the other side of the Atlantic. It is North America, and in recent years South America, which feed European industry and make possible the provisioning of the masses of European workers.

That forces us to talk about the changes that have taken place in Europe and America in the course of the war and of the last few years. I should also like to comment about Comrade Serrati’s remark that the war did not proletarianise, but on the contrary enriched the peasant. He quoted the example of the Italian peasants, who have their woollen sock full of gold. I believe that there is an error here.

Certainly part of the peasants, those who were able to sell their corn, the products of their little holdings, enriched themselves, but in a completely conventional way. I shall return to this point, but I should like to remark straight away that on the contrary a large part of the peasants were ruined by the war. The war tore hundreds of thousands from the mass of the peasants, and that means a terrible blow, a death-blow for all small proprietors. They are condemned to black poverty. Countless peasants want to emigrate or work in factories. There is no doubt that the war delivered a terrible blow to the small proprietors and peasants by ruining them.

If one now considers the mass of those who were able to sell their agricultural products, one can be sure that they put a lot of money by in woollen socks. But I doubt very much whether it is gold. It is banknotes, paper. And that is a form of the expropriation of peasant property by the imperialist war. In reality they became propertyless, and their holdings were expropriated. For their real commodities they received paper, which is only worth a little, and whose devaluation is increasing.

You quoted the example of Switzerland, which did not take part in the war, and is a little country. It is undeniable that in France, Germany and Russia the war was a form of the expropriation of the small peasants. If Comrade Serrati tells us that he does not believe in the true worth of the general change. in our tactics in relation to the small peasants, then I must establish that there is nevertheless a change in our tactics. There is no change in the policy of the Communist Party, but there is a change in the position of the small peasant. You cannot compare the position of a small peasant in Europe at the time of Napoleon’s coup d'état in 1801 with the present position of a small peasant in Europe. A great task has been achieved during the development of capitalism. The small peasant has been proletarianised in quite specific forms, and has fallen into great dependency upon capitalism.

The big banks, the export companies, the capitalist organisations, have in different ways brought the small peasant, the petty proprietor, into a position which is not far removed from that of a proletarian. And on the basis of this change in the position of the small peasant the latter has become the slave and enemy of capitalism. For these reasons the Communist Party turns today to these petty proprietors, these small peasants, with great prospects of success.

The position of the small peasant has been changed by the development of capitalism in the last few years. The war transformed it yet more profoundly. Hence the proletarianisation of the peasants that we are now establishing. The war was the cause of the expropriation of the small peasant. Therefore the Communist Party can today count on the fact that the small peasants, the semi-proletarians, will enter its ranks and , together with the workers in the towns, will fight against capitalism for the social revolution.

Lefebvre: Comrades, I have asked for the floor to speak about some statements by Serrati, who has supplied proof of his irreconcilable position on opportunist considerations and has claimed that the tactics of the communists are based purely and simply on an alliance with the agricultural workers against the small peasants, since, if the communists immediately after the seizure of power tell the peasants: I you will retain your privileges and even gain new ones’, they will not believe us.

It seems to me (please excuse me for the expression) to be careless demagogy only to defend and support a thing in so far as we hope that it is of momentary propaganda value. We did not, however, only come here to prepare momentary propaganda for the purpose of seizing power, but also in order to clarify under what conditions we can organise communist society back home. Moreover, Serrati spoke in the name of Western Europe. He seemed to be saying that the situation in Western Europe was such that the tactics proposed in the Theses were not sufficient for the requirements of propaganda there.

I do not share this view. I believe on the contrary that they meet the situation in France in a satisfactory way (I can only speak of France, as I know France relatively well). On the one hand it seems almost impossible to start anything if we have the whole mass of French peasants against us. On the other hand, without going so far as Sokolnikov, and without sharing his optimism, I believe that nonetheless something can soon be done in France. What I mean by that is that, even if the war did not proletarianise the petty proprietors in France, it nevertheless did have a great effect.

Apparently, the small French peasants were enriched by the war. But in a society that is victim to decay, fortunes disappear as quickly as they have arisen, and we can already say in advance for what reasons and as the result of what process of development petty proprietorship has suffered since the war.

The bourgeoisie in France, for electoral reasons, appeared to support the interests of the small peasants. Now however, since this law was debated about a month and a half ago, the big bourgeoisie has dropped the interests of the small peasants in the corn question in such a way that the position of the small peasants in our country will in a short time be extremely serious.

Sokolnikov is right when he claims that the wealth of the peasants is only paper wealth. We must add that the petty bourgeoisie benefited previously from the war in the sense that they freed themselves from their mortgage debts by means of this paper. The settlement of mortgages has been completed in our country, and the paper is in the land banks. The French peasants know now exactly how much this paper is worth, for they cannot get rid of it.

Our peasants (and I believe it is the same all over the world) despise all those who get into debt. Thus the peasant is led to despise the capitalist state, since the only policies in France are the policies of continual indebtedness. For this reason communist propaganda too is failing on fruitful ground in our country. Where previously it encountered no sympathy it is met nowadays in a completely different way. Policies on the other hand that would lead to making this class into one’s enemy can only bring disaster. Moreover, it would be impossible to organise agricultural production after the conquest of power without the co-operation of the small peasants.

I am not protesting against the standpoint of Comrade Graziadei, who wants to insert an addendum favouring big landowners in the Theses. It goes without saying that those who submit to the soviet government must be involved in common work. But it us not necessary to insert an addendum referring to it in the Theses, since that could easily be interpreted as something they receive by right.

Meyer: Comrades, I can be brief. I am glad that the Italian comrades have taken part in the discussion and have told us something about the agrarian question in Italy. Unfortunately they were not represented in the Commission for factional reasons. I hope that they will make further information available to the Agrarian Commission. I propose to refer Comrade Graziadei’s proposals to the Commission for consideration. I take the same point of view as Comrade Lefebvre that the compensation of the former big landowners does not need to be mentioned. The Agrarian Commission will be glad to adopt the other additions on the co-operatives in some form or another, since the Commission itself has already discussed this question.

Now, as far as the role of the small peasants is concerned, I agree with what Comrade Sokolnikov has said. It is correct that during the war, not only in the belligerent states, but also in the neutral ones, a section of the small peasants not only covered their own needs out of their production, but also converted a surplus into capital. That happened, and is continuing to happen partially even today. Meanwhile, however, the prices for all articles of consumption, particularly for clothing and agricultural equipment, have risen so sharply, and furthermore the burden of taxation has become so much heavier for the less prosperous layers, that the previous advantages have been wiped out for the small peasants too. If that has not shown itself in every country, it will and must emerge to a much sharper degree in the coming period. I am of the same opinion as Comrade Sokolnikov that we must make the small peasants aware now of the sharpening of their own living conditions that must be expected.

There is no breach with the socialist programme in the Theses. Comrade Serrati is against the Theses because he thinks that the Communist International has given up the idea that the big enterprises are to be nationalised. That is by no means correct. It has merely been pointed out that at this time it is practically impossible to socialise small landed property. That is because the rural proletariat in general is not sufficiently prepared for common enterprise and the technical resources are also lacking. That is why we are making the concession that for the time being private property will be retained for the small and middle peasants and a section of the big peasants.

Provision is made for meeting all the preparations to overcome this transitional stage, to influence the small and middle peasants mentally in the sense of co-operative enterprise, and to show them the advantages of collective enterprise. Secondly the technical preparations for the extension of large-scale enterprise must take place, even if that involves concessions to individual layers of the rural population. The proletarian state power must establish itself so firmly that it dominates large-scale industry entirely, so that it is in a position to produce more agricultural machinery. As soon as these technical prerequisites are present it will be possible to weld together the small and middle peasants.

There is therefore no breach with our earlier programme, but we are being shown in detail the ways in which we will attain the socialisation of agriculture. That is the sense of the Theses. In this way I think I have answered the questions that have been raised here in the discussion. I propose the adoption in principle of the Theses and the reference of the proposals Comrade Graziadei has made to the Commission. No further essential changes will then be made.

Zinoviev: We come now to the vote on the Theses. [The Theses are adopted with one abstention. The session is closed at 4 o'clock.]

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From The Jazz Age-Fitzgerald Is In The House-"The Great Gatsby" -A Book Review

From The Jazz Age-Fitzgerald Is In The House-"The Great Gatsby" -A Book Review 









Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the "Jazz Age" writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.

BOOK REVIEW

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Random House, New York, 2002


One would have to be rather pedantic not recognize that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an important, if not the most important, novelistic voice of the Jazz Age in post World War I America. Nobody, with the possible occasional exception of Ernest Hemingway, has chronicled the end of the age of American innocence signaled by the Jazz Age better than Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald certainly was not the only voice of that age, think Hemingway again, but the voice that best exemplified the tensions between the mores of `old wealth' and the emerging sources of `new wealth' that were produced by the huge amount of money available, mainly through government contracts, as result of the war or riches gained through the illegal liquor trade. That is the sociological underpinning that drives Fitzgerald's work.

There is no better example of those tensions than the hero (or is it anti-hero?) of this book, Jay Gatsby. If nothing else it is a dramatic enactment of the strivings of the new money to `make it' in the world of high society, one way or another. And what better way to do that than in the age old tradition of buying one's way into that society through marriage. This is the modern American version of that old story.

And the story itself? One Jay Gatsby, the former Jimmy Ganz, freshly reinventing himself after indeterminate service in the American military in World War I and loaded with cash from questionable financial resources, attempts to win, or rather re-win the affections of one Daisy Buchanan his vision of the perfect life companion and exemplar of the `old money' crowd that he wishes to crash. One little complication, however, gets in the way. She has found herself married to a brutish but very wealthy member of that `old money' crowd. Gatsby's lavish but fumbling attempts to lure her away from the high society of Long Island, then the summer watering hole of the `old money', forms the core of the story.

Gatsby's trial and tribulations on the way as narrated by Nick Carroway (and Gatsby's somewhat unwitting accomplice in the Daisy matter) keeps the story line going until the final deadly ending. The morale- the very rich are indeed very different from you or I. Moreover, someone else will always have to pick up the messes they have made for themselves. They merely move on. This may serve as a cautionary tale for that time and, possibly, today.

A word on literary merits. According to the inevitable changes in literary fashion as well as literary politics Fitzgerald, for long a leading figure in the canon of American literature, has been somewhat eclipsed by other more post-modernist trends. While I firmly believe that the Western canon is in dire need of expansion to include `third world', woman and minority voices Fitzgerald's literary merits stand on their own. His tightly- crafted story line, his sense of language and the flat-out fact that that he knew the subject matter that formed the basis of his expositions merit renewed consideration by today's reader.

Simply put, if you want to understand part of what was going on in America in the 1920's before the Great Crash of 1929 then you have to read the man. If nothing else read the last few pages of Gatsby. If there is a better literary expression of the promise of America as seem by the early Dutch settlers of New York (and the New World) as the last best hope of civilization and the failure of that promise at the hands of the later "robber barons" and their descendants I have not read it.

From The "Communist International" Journal -America-The Foundation of a Communist Party- A Report (1919)

From The "Communist International" Journal -America-The Foundation of a Communist Party- A Report (1919)

Markin comment:
In the introduction to a recent posting that started a series entitled From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.) I noted the following that applies to this series on the early days of the American Communist Party as well:

“In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.

After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive…..”

I am continuing today in that vane in what I also anticipate will be an on-going series on the early days of the American Communist party from which we who are students of Leon Trotsky trace our roots. Those roots extend from the 1919 until 1929 when those who would go on after being expelled, led by James P. Cannon, to form the Socialist Workers Party which also is part of our heritage. That is not the end of the matter though as the American Communist Party also represented a trend in the 1930s, the Popular front strategic policy, that has bedeviled revolutionaries ever since in one form or another. Those 1930s issues need to be addressed as well.
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“Y”
America
The Foundation of a Communist Party

Source: The Communist International, No. 5, 1919, p. 83-84
Transcription: Tim Davenport for Early American Marxism
HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.


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The Socialist Party of America, led by the notorious traitors to Socialism, Algernon Lee and Maurice Hillquit, has long been ripe for a split. On April 9th [1918], 7 of the party representatives voted for the 4th Liberty Loan. The action aroused a storm of indignation in the Left Wing, which demanded that the satellites of the government should be expelled from the party. Shortly afterwards, a number of Left Wing members of the New York branch led by Larkin, Mac-Alpine, Fraina, and Reed, published the Manifesto-Program of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party. The most noteworthy passage in this document runs as follows:

In the beginning of August 1914, the world had the aspect of a volcano about to erupt. The periodic succession of violent explosions heralded a catastrophe; but the diplomatists and statesmen did their best to localize the disturbances; while the masses in every case, after some slight stirring, relapsed into lethargic slumber, troubled only by vague apprehensions and gloomy forebodings, what time the subterranean fires were growing ever fiercer.

Many had blind faith in the wisdom of the governments, and in the powerful influence of Christianity uniting in fraternal ties the peoples of the civilized world. Others put their trust in the growing strength of the international Socialist movement. The German Social Democrats and the French Socialists exchanged telegrams solemnly pledging themselves not to participate in the war should war be declared by their respective governments. If instead of sending telegrams the Socialists of these countries had organized a general strike, they would doubtless have been able to make the governments hear reason....

The Social Democrats failed to do their duty, and the war broke out. “Revolutionary Socialism,” the manifesto goes on to say, “was not for long content to remain passive. In Germany, Karl Liebknecht, Franz Mehring, Rosa Luxemburg, and Otto Ruhle founded the Spartacus Group. But their voices were downed by the roar of the cannon and by the groans of the mutilated and dying.”

Subsequently the authors of the manifesto express their emphatic disagreement with the Socialists of the Right upon the matter of party tactics. The Socialists of the Right are doing everything in their power to counteract the revolution which is ripening among the masses. But the manifesto declares that the universal support of this same revolution is “the essential problem before the party.”

The manifesto subjects the League of Nations to a pitiless criticism, showing that the League is merely a new form of “Imperialist capitalism.” It warns the workers against putting their trust in “bourgeois reforms,” which are instituted for the sold purpose of quenching revolutionary fires. The American capitalists wish to make use of the labor organizations for their own imperialist aims. “We are convinced that in the near future our capitalists will begin to talk, like Bismarck, of the absolute necessity of instituting labor legislation, with state insurance for old age and unemployment. They will institute various other bourgeois reforms whose purpose it is to fit the workers as instruments for supplying the capitalists with the maximum of profit in the shortest possible time.”

The manifesto insists that the center of gravity of Socialist work is not to be found in the parliamentary activities of representatives of the working class, but in the direct action of the masses. The Socialist Party, therefore, must deliberately guide the class struggle of the workers, and must formulate a clearcut program to be realized by the coming proletarian revolution. The following is such a program:

1. The organization of workers’ councils; propaganda on behalf of the Soviet idea; the extending of a helping hand to all such working class mass organizations as are really of the Soviet type, to all such organizations as are well suited for the direct carrying on of the class struggle, for the seizure of the power of the state, and for the foundation of a new proletarian state which shall organize all the workers and be the instrument of proletarian dictatorship.

2. Self-government in industry realized through the industrial organizations of the workers (industrial unions or industrial councils), this being the antithesis of nationalization and the state control of industry.

3. Repudiation of national and municipal debts, with compensation for the holders of small parcels of stock.

4. Expropriation of the banks as a first step towards the complete expropriation of capital.

5. Expropriation of the railways and of all the trusts, without compensation—for compensation would enable the capitalists to continue the exploitation of the workers. But the owners of small-scale undertakings must be furnished with the means of livelihood during the transition period.

6. Socialization of foreign commerce.

The Left Wing Socialists did not let matters rest with the publication of this manifesto. In addition they instituted energetic revolutionary propaganda. During April [1919] they founded in New York a journal to voice their views, The Communist. This is edited by John Reed; MacAlpine, Gurvich [Nicholas Hourwich], and B. Gitlow are on the editorial staff. Two other organs represent the same trend: The Revolutionary Age, edited by Louis Fraina; and The Liberator, edited by Max Eastman.

These revolutionary activities on the part of the US Communists have aroused the fierce hostility of the Right Wing leaders, who accuse the Communists of infringing party discipline, of founding secret organizations in the party, and so on. In the end, the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America decided to expel a number of foreign groups and Left Wing organizations. This reduced the membership of the party by more than half.

The Left Wing organizations then summoned their own congress, which opened in New York on June 22nd [1919]. It was decided to found a new party, to be known as the Communist Party. A program was adopted substantially identical with that detailed above. As far as parliamentarism is concerned, we may quote the following passage of the program: “We do not repudiate the parliamentary struggle; we shall participate in electoral campaigns, shall run candidates for Congress, and for various other positions in social life. But we participate in the parliamentary struggle only in so far as our representatives in Congress can be considered agitators, preaching the ideas of the social revolution.”

Unfortunately we have no information as to the decision adopted concerning adhesion to the Third International. All we know is that the question was on the agenda.

Nor have we any information as to the numerical strength of the party. It is quite possible that the party has not yet assumed the character of an organization of the masses. But in the epoch of universal history upon which we have now entered, every great movement of the toiling masses and the oppressed invariably assumes a Communist form and inevitably culminates in a struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. At this juncture, America may be described as an erupting volcano. Strikes follow one another ceaselessly. In many of the states there have been armed revolts among the negroes, who demand equal rights. More than 100,000 fully armed Afro-Americans took part in what amounted to actual battles in the streets of Chicago. The revolt was led by colored ex-soldiers back from the front.

We have to remember that the colored population of the US is estimated at 12 million, and that two of the revolutionary watchwords: “Equality before the Law,” and “Humane Treatment,” are greatly appreciated by these oppressed millions.

We are confident that our American comrades will unite into a single stream the scattered torrents of the mass movement, that they will free it from foreign bodies, and will break the lava crust which has formed upon the surface. Then, from the rumbling volcano of the capitalist order there will escape a brilliant and mighty jet of flame which will consume all the obstacles in its path, and will crystallize, as it cools, to form a new society of labor.

The Folk Historian Struts His Stuff- The Music Of Folksinger (Oops) Jazz Vocalist Dave Van Ronk

The Folk Historian Struts His Stuff- The Music Of Folksinger (Oops) Jazz Vocalist Dave Van Ronk




CD REVIEW

…and the tin pan bended, and the story ended- Dave Van Ronk, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Washington, D.C., 2004




Although this space is mainly dedicated to reviewing political books and commenting on past and current political issues literary output is hardly the only form of political creation. Occasionally in the history of the American and international left musicians, artists and playwrights have given voice or provided visual reminders to the face of political struggle. With that thought in mind, every once in a while I will use this space to review those kinds of political expression.

My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by ‘Rock and Roll’ music exemplified by the Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part that music need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.

That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.

When I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about the Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artists such as Howling Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk singing ‘Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies’ and that was it. That old-time gravelly voice (even though I found out later that he was relatively young at that time) still commands my attention in the same way.

The last time I saw Dave Van Ronk perform after not seeing him for a fairly long period of time was not a particularly good night as he was pretty sick by that time. Moreover, his politics seemed to have crumbled over time from that of the hardened Trotskyist of his youth going out slay the benighted Stalinists for the soul of the working class. His dedication to leftist politics, as testified to by those who knew him like Tom Paxton, was well known and passionate. Although no one asks a musical performer to wear politics on his or her sleeves as a litmus test, given Dave Van Ronk’s status as a prime historian/activist of the folk revival of the 1960’s, this was disconcerting.

That folk scene, of which Dave was a central and guiding figure not fully recognized outside a small circle to this day, was not only defined by the search for root music and relevancy but by large political concerns such as civil rights, the struggle against war, and the need for social justice. Some of it obviously was motivated as well as simply a flat out need to make our own 'mark' on the world. Dave was hardly the first person from this period to lose his political compass in the struggle against injustice. I say this with sadness in his case but I will always carry that memory of that late night radio experience in my head. That said, please listen to this man reach under a song. You will not forget it either.

Déjà vu, Redux-Howard Hughes Presents “The Front Page” (1931)-A Film Review

Déjà vu, Redux-Howard Hughes Presents “The Front Page” (1931)-A Film Review




DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon 

The Front Page, starring Adolphe Menjou, Pat O’Brian, produced by Howard Hughes (yeah, that Howard Hughes, the airplane guy who had his fingers in film back in the day), based on the play of the same name by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, 1931   

Hey, am I having a senior moment didn’t I review this film already. I know the plot of the film under review 1931s The Front Page seems very, very familiar. And I don’t mean that I have reviewed the play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, weren’t they Algonquin Roundtable guys with Dorothy Parker, on which this film is based. I am not that senior moment bound or that old to have reviewed a 1920s Broadway play.

Let me give a rundown and maybe I can refresh my memory about where I have seen this story line before. A bunch of old time police beat reporters, print reporters if you remember that dying profession in the age of 24/7 cable niche and blog citizen reporting, are doing “death watch” duty in the press room of the local law enforcement building in Chicago, Chi town so watch out. The death watch is for the execution of Walter Mitty-type cop-killer Earl Williams who is set to fry, set to be hung out to dry for the dastardly deed come midnight unless the governor grants a pardon based on him being a cuckoo who had delusions of grandeur. A run of the mill story for the cynical boys who man the crime beat desk (in those days really mostly men so “man.” Except a funny thing happens to upset that very applecart. Earl, while being examined by a shrink to see if he really was cuckoo, escaped the clutches of the law.

Now that is big news, front page news I would say even in a jaded age like today. In those days, like today as well, the reporter and newspaper of whatever ilk who can get a an angle, get the scoop on the magical realistic escape of a cop-killer, an anarchist cop-killer when the word anarchist had even more sinister implications than it does today to boot, would certainly get a boost in circulation. Enter one Hildy Johnson, played by Pat O’Brian, who had supposedly given up the racket to go find Elysian fields in an easier more regular hours line of work with a “civilian” sweetheart. Well almost given up the racket except he was there in the press room when Earl sprung himself loose. And guess where baffled cuckoo bird Earl landed in his escape. Yeah, that very press room. So Hildy, once a newspaper man always a newspaper man, cajoled by his tyrannical boss Walter Burns, played by Adolphe Menjou, “postponed” his wedding plans for just a minute to grab one last glory by-line headline.           

The whole trick for Hildy and Walter is to keep those other newshounds cut out of the scoop, and to see what makes this Earl Williams tick. Along the way Hildy found out two important pieces of news, well three really. First Earl’s escape was aided by the incompetence of the sheriff and his minions who are part of that well-known and oiled Chicago political hack machine which Burn’s newspaper was interested in getting the goods on. Second the Governor has sent one of his minions to grant Earl a pardon which that corrupt machine is set on intercepting to avoid looking stupid and even more corrupt than normal. Third Earl didn’t do any dastardly deed he was “framed” for his political views. Naturally ace reporter Hildy solved all those mysteries and tied them with bows in this screwball comedy. Meanwhile his sweetheart was getting short shrift. Oh well it will all turn out for the best.      

Hey, wait a minute, I knew I knew that plotline from somewhere. Sure except it was from the distaff side, nice word right, from Howard Hawk’s His Girl Friday where Rosalind Russell was Hildy and Cary Grant the newspaper boss. That one was classic with the added twist of a little off-hand romance since Hildy and Walter in that one had been divorced and Hildy was supposed to get re-married to some safe insurance salesman. That’s the ticket.  


(I really am losing it. Of course a remake of the film was done in the 1970s with Jack Lemmon as Hildy and Walter Matthau as Burns going back to the guy thing. Enough of this plotline. No more reviews-deju vu redux is enough  

Monday, April 01, 2019

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In The 1960s North Adamsville Corner Boy Night-The Smells, Ah, The Smells Of Childhood- Ida's Bakery

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Out In The 1960s North Adamsville Corner Boy Night-The Smells, Ah, The Smells Of Childhood- Ida's Bakery



By Allan Jackson

[I mentioned in my last introduction that I would no longer use this precious space to scotch the many rumors that flew around my name after I was “purged” from the leadership of this site. And I won’t but use this reprieve on this series which I was instrumental in creating to make comment about the genesis of the idea in sketch where I feel I have something to add since these first appeared several years ago.  I mentioned in the last sketch dated dealing with Frankie Riley’s carnival experience back in the early 1960s that the totally false rumor of my trying to put together a drug deal with some notorious Mexican drug cartel to make some money to get out from under my debts that such a plan would have been stopped in its tracks by the memory of my, our fallen comrade the late Peter Paul Markin. The Scribe as we always called him went off the rails in the mid-1970s when after seeing all his dreams of a newer world evaporate with the evaporation of the 1960s energy and whatever troubles had had coming back to what we Vietnam veterans called the real world and developed a serious cocaine addiction when led him to a fatal decision to try to do some kind of major drug deal down in Sonora, Mexico. All he got for his efforts when the thing went bad was a couple of slugs to the head in some back and a potter’s field grave down there. That and plenty of unanswered questions about what exactly happened which we were warned off of by everybody from the American consulate to some nasty “representative” of some intermediate drug dealers connected with whatever went off down there.

If there was a spirit that animated this long seven hundred plus page series including some seventy some sketches it was the memory, the wild and wooly spirit and demeanor of the Scribe back in the 1950s and 1960s when we in the poorest of the poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville were coming of age in the great rock and roll night which formed us more that we would have ever believed. The Scribe, Peter Paul Markin, a name that I used for years on this site as my on-line moniker was the guru, the guy who guided us through a lot of it. I swear I have never found another guy, gal either for that matter, who combined a truly larcenous heart, some kind of dream newer world coming that he was the herald of around our way, and a sullen bookish guy who under other circumstances would been beaten up by Frankie Riley, hell maybe me too, the minute he tried to bust into our corner boy world with of our fistful of dreams about “boss” cars and willing girls. Frankie took him under his wing and the rest of us followed suit. Yeah, and each and every guy who is still standing all these years later misses the bastard, misses him and brings and unashamed tear to the most hardened heart.  

A lot of stuff that the Scribe talked about beyond that seeking the newer world he would drive us crazy about when all we cared about was whether we could get into some girl’s pants was what I now was literary stuff-stuff he learned in books and put his own spin on it, made it make some sense. As in the sketch below it could have been something as simple as the night, must have been a lonesome no money, no car, no date Friday night, when he started going on and on about childhood memory smells. The whole Ida’s Bakery question. And a few years ago as I describe below I could still remember past those freaking dope-etched days, those horrible Vietnam sweats, those lonely Friday nights to my own memories of those childhood smells. That was the Scribe’s influence to a tee. Allan Jackson]           
********
In memory of Peter Paul Markin, 1946-1976?, North Adamsville High School Class of 1964:

This is the way the late Peter Paul Markin, although he never stood on ceremony and everybody in the corner boy night at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys down near Adamsville Beach called him plain old ordinary vanilla Scribe, would have wanted to put his response to the question of what smell most distinctly came to his mind from the old neighborhoods if he were still around. Many a night, a late night around midnight usually, in the days and weeks after we got out of high school but before we went on to other stuff, maybe some of those nights having had trouble with some girl, either one of us, since we both came from all boy families and didn’t understand girls, or maybe were afraid of them, unlike guys who had sisters, who maybe didn’t understand them either but were around them enough to have figured a few things out about them we would stand holding up the wall in front of Jack Slack’s and talk our talk, talk truth as we saw it although we never really dignified the jive with the word truth. Or maybe dateless some nights like happened a lot more than either of us, hell, any of us if it came right down to it, would admit to (I won’t even discuss the shroud we placed over the truth when talking, big talking, about “making it” when we were lucky to get a freaking kiss on the cheek from a girl half the time) we would talk. Sometimes with several guys around but mainly Markin and me, since we were the closest of the half dozen or ten guys who considered themselves Frankie Riley-led Slack’s corner boys we would talk about lots of things.

Goofy stuff when you think about it but one night I don’t know if it was me or him that came up with the question about what smell did we remember from the old days, the old days being when we were in school, from around the neighborhood but I do remember we both automatically and with just a couple of minutes thought came up with our common choice- Ida’s Bakery. Ida’s over on Sagamore Street, just up the street from the old ball field and adjacent to the Parks and Recreations sheds where the stuff for the summer programs, you know, archery equipment, paints, sports equipment, craft-making stuff, how-to magazines and all were kept during the summer and after that, between seasons. Since both Markin and I when we went to Josiah Adams Elementary up the next block (named after some guy related to guys who ran the town way back when) would each summer participate in the program and as we grew older (and presumably more reliable) were put in charge of the daily storage of those materials during the summer and so got a preternatural whiff of whatever Ida was baking for sale for the next day. So yeah, we knew the smell of Ida’s place. And so too I can “speak” for old Markin just like if he was here today some fifty years later telling you his story himself.        

Unfortunately Markin laid down his head in a dusty back alley, arroyo, or cul-de-sac we never did really find out which with two slugs in his heart and nobody, not even his family, certainly not me and I loved the guy, wanted to go there to claim the body, worse, to start an investigation into what happened that day back in 1976 down Sonora way, that is in Mexico, for fear of being murdered in some back alley, arroyo, or cul-de-sac ourselves. 
See Markin had huge corner boy, “from hunger,” wanting habits back then, going back in the Jack Slack days. Hell I came up with him and had them too. But he also had a nose for drugs, had been among the first in our town as far as I know although I won’t swear to that now since some kids up the Point, some biker guys who always were on the cutting edge of some new kicks may have been doing smoke well before him to do, publicly do right out on Adamsville Common in broad daylight with some old beat cop sitting about two benches away, marijuana in the mid-1960s. That at a time, despite what we had heard was going on in the Boston Common and over in high Harvard Square,  when the rest of us were still getting our underage highs from illicit liquor (Southern Comfort, cheap gin, cheaper wine, Ripple, more than a few times, Thunderbird, when we were short on dough, nobody, including  our hobo knight in shining armor who “bought” for us as long as he got a bottle for his work, wanted to bother lugging cases of cheapjack beer, say Knickerbocker or Narragansett, out of a liquor store and pass it on to obviously under-aged kids  so we all developed a taste for some kind of hard liquor or wine).

Markin did too, liked his white wine. But he was always heading over to Harvard Square, early on sometimes with me but I didn’t really “get” the scene that he was so hopped up about and kind of dropped away when he wanted to go over, so later he would go alone late at night taking the all night Redline subway over, late at night after things had exploded around his house with his mother, or occasionally, his three brother (and very, very rarely his father since he had to work like seven bandits to make ends meet for the grim reaper bill collectors, which they, the ends never did as far as I could tell and from what I knew about such activity from my own house, so he was left out of it except to back up Ma).

One night, one night some guy, Markin said some folk singer, Eric somebody, who made a name for himself around the Square, made a name around his “headquarters,” the Hayes-Bickford just a jump up from the subway entrance where all the night owl wanna-be hipsters, dead ass junkies, stoned out winos, wizened con men and budding poets and songwriters hung out, turned him on to a joint, and he liked it, liked the feeling of how it settled him down he said (after that first hit, as he was trying to look cool, look like he had been doing joints since he was a baby, almost blew him away with the coughing that erupted from inhaling the harsh which he could never figure out (nor could I when my mary jane coughing spurt came) since he, like all of us, was a serious cigarette smoker, practically chain-smoking to while away the dead time and, oh yeah, to look cool to any passing chicks while we were hanging out in front of Jack Slack’s.

Of course that first few puffs stuff meant nothing really, was strictly for smooth-end kicks, and before long he had turned me, Frankie Riley, our corner boy leader, and Sam Lowell, another good guy, on and it was no big deal. And when the time came for us to do our “youth nation,” hippie, Jack Kerouac On The Road treks west the five of us, at one time or another, had grabbed all kinds of different dope, grabbed each new drug in turn like they were the flavor of the month, which they usually were. And nobody worried much about any consequences either since we all had studiously avoid acid in our drug cocktail mix.  Until Markin got stuck on cocaine, you know, snow, girl, cousin any of those names you might know that drug by where you live. No, that is not right, exactly right anyway. It wasn’t so much that Markin got stuck on cocaine as that his nose candy problem heightened his real needs, his huge wanting habits, needs that he had been grasping at since his ‘po boy childhood. And so to make some serious dough, and still have something left to “taste” the product as he used to call it when he offered some to me with the obligatory dollar bill as sniffing tool he began some low-level dealing,  to friends and acquaintances mainly and then to their friends and acquaintances and on and on.

Markin when he lived the West Coast, I think when he was in Oakland with Moon-Glow (don’t laugh we all had names, aliases, monikers like that back then to bury our crazy pasts, mine was Flash Dash for a while, and also don’t laugh because she had been my girlfriend before I headed back east to go to school after the high tide of the 1960s ebbed out around 1971 or so. And also don’t laugh because Moon-Glow liked to “curl my toes,” Markin’s too, and she did, did just fine), stepped up a notch, started “muling” product back and forth from Mexico for one of the early cartels. He didn’t say much about it, and I didn’t want to know much but for a while he was sending plane tickets for me to come visit him out there.

Quite a step up from our hitchhike in all weathers heading west days. And of course join him in imbibing some product testing. That went on for a while, a couple of years, the last year or so I didn’t see him, didn’t go west because I was starting a job. Then one day I got a letter in the mail from him all Markiny about his future plans, about how he was going to finally make a “big score,” with a case full of product that he had brought up norte (he always said Norte like he was some hermano or something rather than just paid labor, cheap paid labor probably, and was too much the gringo to ever get far in the cartel when the deal went down). Maybe he sensed that and that ate at him with so much dough to be made, so much easy dough. Yeah, easy dough with those two slugs that Spanish Johnny, a guy who knew Markin in the Oakland days, had heard about when he was muling and passed on the information to us. RIP-Markin          

No RIP though for the old days, the old smells that I started telling you about before I got waylaid in my head about the fate of my missed old corner boy comrade poor old Markin. Here’s how he, we, no he, let’s let him take a bow on this one, figured it out one night when the world was new, when our dreams were still fresh:

“There are many smells, sounds, tastes, sights and touches stirred up on the memory’s eye trail in search of the old days in North Adamsville. Tonight though I am in thrall to smells, if one can be in thrall to smells and when I get a chance I will ask one of the guys about whether that is possible. The why of this thralldom is simply put. I had, a short while before, passed a neighborhood bakery on the St. Brendan Street in a Boston neighborhood, a Boston Irish neighborhood to be clear, that reeked of the smell of sour-dough bread being baked on the premises. The bakery itself, designated as such by a plainly painted sign-Mrs. Kenney’s Bakery- was a simple extension of someone’s house like a lot of such operations by single old maid, widowed, divorced or abandoned women left for whatever reason to their own devises trying to make a living baking, sewing, tailoring, maybe running a beauty parlor, small change but enough to keep the wolves from the door, with living quarters above, and that brought me back to the hunger streets of the old home town and Ida’s holy-of-holies bakery over on Sagamore Street.

Of course one could not dismiss, or could dismiss at one’s peril just ask Frank, that invigorating smell of the salt-crusted air blowing in from North Adamsville Bay when the wind was up hitting us in front of Jack Slack’s bowling lanes and making us long to walk that few blocks to the beach with some honey who would help us pass the night. A wind too once you took girls out of the picture, although you did that at your peril as well, that spoke of high-seas adventures, of escape, of jail break-out from landlocked spiritual destitutes, of, well, on some days just having been blown in from somewhere else for those who sought that great eastern other shoreline. Or how could one forget the still nostril-filling pungent fragrant almost sickening smell emanating from the Proctor &Gamble soap factory across the channel down in the old Adamsville Housing Authority project that defined many a muggy childhood summer night air instead of sweet dreams and puffy clouds. Or that never to be forgotten slightly oily, sulfuric smell at low- tide down at the far end of North Adamsville Beach, near the fetid swamps and mephitic marshes in the time of the clam diggers and their accomplices trying to eke a living or a feeding out of that slimy mass. [Sorry I put those smelly adjectives in, Markin would have cringed.] Or evade the funky smell [A Markin word.] of marsh weeds steaming up from the disfavored Squaw Rock end of the beach, the adult haunts with their broods of children in tow.

Disfavored, disfavored when it counted in the high teenage dudgeon be-bop 1960s night, post-school dance or drive-in movie love slugfest, for those who took their “submarine races” dead of night viewing seriously and the space between the yacht clubs was the only “cool” place to hang with some honey. And I do not, or will not spell the significance of that teen lingo “submarine race” expression even for those who did their teenage “parking” in the throes of the wild high plains Kansas night. You can figure that out yourselves.

Or the smell sound of the ocean floor at twilight (or dawn, if you got lucky) on those days when the usually tepid waves aimlessly splashed against the shoreline stones, broken clam shells, and other fauna and flora or turned around and became a real roaring ocean, acting out Mother Nature’s high life and death drama, and in the process acted to calm a man’s (or a man-child’s) nerves in the frustrating struggle to understand a world not of one’s own making. Moreover, I know I do not have to stop very long to tell you guys, the crowd that will know what I am talking about, to speak about the smell taste of that then just locally famous HoJo’s ice cream back in the days. Jimmied up and frosted to take one’s breath away. Or those char-broiled hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on your back-yard barbecue pit or, better, from one of the public pits down at the beach. But the smell that I am ghost-smelling today is closer to home as a result of a fellow classmate’s bringing this to my attention awhile back (although, strangely, if the truth be known I was already on the verge of “exploring" this very subject). Today, after passing that home front bakery, as if a portent, I bow down in humble submission to the smells from Ida’s Bakery.

That’s good enough for the Markin part, the close up memory part. Here I am for the distant memory part: 

You, if you are of a certain age, at or close to AARP-eligible age, and neighborhood, Irish (or some other ethnic-clinging enclave) filled with those who maybe did not just get off the boat but maybe their parents did, remember Ida’s, right? Even if you have never set one foot in old North Adamsville, or even know where the place is. If you lived within a hair’s breathe of any Irish neighborhood and if you had grown up probably any time in the first half of the 20th century you “know” Ida’s. My Ida ran a bakery out of her living room, or maybe it was the downstairs and she lived upstairs, in the 1950s and early 1960s (before or beyond that period I do not know). An older grandmotherly woman when I knew her who had lost her husband, lost him to drink, or, as was rumored, persistently rumored although to a kid it was only so much adult air talk, to another woman. Probably it was the drink as was usual in our neighborhoods with the always full hang-out Dublin Grille just a couple of blocks up the street. She had, heroically in retrospect, raised a parcel of kids on the basis of her little bakery including some grandchildren that I played ball with over at Welcome Young Field also just up the street, and also adjacent to my grandparents’ house on Kendrick Street.

Now I do not remember all the particulars about her beyond the grandmotherly appearance I have just described, except that she still carried that hint of a brogue that told you she was from the “old sod” but that did not mean a thing in that neighborhood because at any given time when the brogues got wagging you could have been in Limerick just as easily as in North Adamsville. Also she always, veil of tears hiding maybe, had a smile for one and all coming through her door, and not just a commercial smile either. Nor do I know much about how she ran her operation, except that you could always tell when she was baking something in back because she had a door bell tinkle that alerted her to when someone came in and she would come out from behind a curtained entrance, shaking flour from her hands, maybe, or from her apron-ed dress ready to take your two- cent order-with a smile, and not a commercial smile either but I already told you that.

Nor, just now, do I remember all of what she made or how she made it but I do just now, rekindled by Markin’s reference to that sour-dough yeasty smell, remember the smells of fresh oatmeal bread that filtered up to the playing fields just up the street from her store on Fridays when she made that delicacy. Fridays meant oatmeal bread, and, as good practicing Catholics like my family going back to the “famine ships,” and probably before, were obliged to not eat red meat on that sacred day, but fish, really tuna fish had that on Ida’s oatmeal bread. But, and perhaps this is where I started my climb to quarrelsome heathen-dom I balked at such a tuna fish desecration of holy bread. See, grandma would spring for a fresh loaf, a fresh right from the oven loaf, cut by a machine that automatically sliced the bread (the first time I had seen such a useful gadget). And I would get to have slathered peanut butter (Skippy, of course) and jelly (Welch’s Grape, also of course) on oatmeal and a glass of milk. Ah, heaven.

And just now I memory smell those white-flour dough, deeply- browned Lenten hot-cross buns white frosting dashed that signified that hellish deprived high holy catholic Lent was over, almost. Beyond that I have drawn blanks. Know this those. All that sweet sainted goddess (or should be) Ida created from flour, eggs, yeast, milk and whatever other secret devil’s ingredients she used to create her other simple baked goods may be unnamed-able now but they put my mother, my grandmother, your mother, your grandmother in the shade. And that is at least half the point. You went over to Ida’s to get high on those calorie-loaded goodies. And in those days with youth at your back, and some gnawing hunger that never quite got satisfied, back then that was okay. Believe me it was okay. I swear I will never forget those glass-enclosed delights that stared out at me in my sugar hunger. I may not remember much about the woman, her life, where she was from, or any of that. This I do know- in this time of frenzied interest in all things culinary Ida's simple recipes and her kid-maddening bakery smells still hold a place of honor.

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song With That Expression Prominent In Mind And Maybe Visions Of Bob Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands To Ease The Pain-An Encore


Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song With That Expression Prominent In Mind And Maybe Visions Of Bob Dylan’s Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands To Ease The Pain-An Encore    



By Fritz Taylor 

Sam Lowell was a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper after she had confronted him, and not for the first time, that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group to describe his condition when they met later that week. Would almost shout out the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his was one troubled man.  

Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not organically capable of doing so, at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped hard.      

It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him that would not let him be, as he tried to put on the fire in his head. That laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected, had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of environmental degradation against Mother Nature. 

Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started, started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making” as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted respectively his younger and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile head.        

As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically incapable of having an over active brain, of going off to some dark places where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm that seemed to follow her around her world.         

Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could, but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace, a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.    

Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.

At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his quiet mind  passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response. Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual situation).          

Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.

We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though. Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire in his head long ago.       

[After a couple of years Sam and Laura did get back together whatever made then drift apart not stronger than what they held dearly in common. Sam is now Laura’s “ghost adviser” on her on-going art series Traipsing Through The Arts-Greg Green, site manager]