Saturday, July 20, 2019

In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-From The Archives-From The Pages Of The Socialist Alternative Press-Jail the banksters! Nationalize the banks under popular democratic control

Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.

Jail the banksters! Nationalize the banks under popular democratic control
Jul 11, 2012
By SocialistAlternative.org

Below we republish an editorial from the current issue of The Socialist, the newspaper of the Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales).

In 2008 the Socialist warned that: "the calls for regulation are like asking the bank robbers’ gangs to keep a check on the bank robbers. What is urgently needed is popular control of the major banks and finance houses, not ’oversight’ by unelected quangos and elected capitalist politicians, whose allegiance is to big business." Now the bank robbery has been exposed yet again.


Then, when Britain’s banking system went into meltdown, the government spent £109 billion bailing it out. Since then, in one of the greatest con tricks in history, we’ve been told that it was excessive spending by the public sector and by working class people that was responsible for the crisis.


The only solution, we were told, was for us to accept horrendous cuts in our pay, living standards, and public services. So far, only 15% of the cuts have been carried out.


But this has already resulted in 350,000 public sector workers losing their jobs, huge attacks on public sector pensions, and tens of thousands of the most vulnerable in society being threatened with losing the pittance of benefits they were previously entitled to. As a result suicide is on the increase. Last weekend one desperate man in Birmingham tragically set himself on fire after his benefits were stopped.


Meanwhile, the bankers are still laughing all the way to the bank. The speculators’ and banksters’ bonuses have gone back to pre-crisis levels, not that they slipped so low. From day one the Con-Dem government has set out to give every assistance to its friends in the City of London. The toothless Vickers’ commission, set up to investigate the banks, made only the most minimal proposals, with even these not being introduced until 2019.


Bankers’ party


Cameron’s ’veto’ on the Euro treaty last December was in part an attempt to protect the City of London from even minimal regulation. No wonder. Hedge funds, financiers, and private equity provided 27% of Tory party funding in 2011. Overall the ’Square Mile’ now provides a majority, 51%, of Tory party funding. The Tory party is one of the oldest and historically one of the most successful capitalist parties in the world. That it is now funded by the spivs in the City reflects the reality of British capitalism in the 21st century: where the shots are called not by manufacturing industry - so-called ’productive capitalism’ - but by the short-term gamblers of the financial markets.


Since the banks were bailed out they have singularly failed to carry out the tasks that we were told made them so indispensable. Mortgage lending is down 40% from pre-crisis levels, with banks demanding a 25% deposit. As a result a generation is condemned to short-term, insecure and expensive private lets.


Banks are currently refusing credit to over 40% of small and medium-sized businesses. And, as has been revealed, many of those who were given loans were also mis-sold expensive and risky financial instruments as a condition of the loan. Even the most basic task of managing individuals’ bank accounts has proved beyond NatWest/RBS. Customers of its subsidiary Ulster Bank are still unable to access their bank accounts two weeks after the recent ’computer glitch’ began.


And now this latest scandal lays bare how the banks have been fiddling to maximise their profits. The Libor rate (London interbank lending interest rate) is set by 16 banks daily submitting numbers for the cost of their borrowing. The middle eight figures are then used to set the rate. Barclays lied about their numbers for their own advantage.


There are vast sums of money involved in gambling on interest rates. The Bank of International Settlements estimates that total interest rate derivatives contracts totalled $554 trillion (£357 trillion) in the first half of 2011, many times larger than the world’s entire output!


The fraud had a direct effect on the lives of millions of people. For example, the Libor rate is used to calculate the pricing of mortgages, credit card interest rates, savings accounts and more. Such is the scale of the scandal that Bob Diamond, CEO of Barclays, has finally been forced to resign on 3 July. But there is life after death! The chairman of Barclays, Marcus Aegis who resigned the day before, has now come back!


This farcical reshuffling of the chairs on Barclays’ decks solves nothing. The bankers responsible for this fraud should be jailed. Every one of the financial spivs and speculators should be sacked - with not a penny in pay-offs. However this is not just a question of individuals.


Over the coming days it is likely to be revealed that many more banks were involved in fiddling the Libor rate. It seems clear that the Bank of England knew that this was taking place. Diamond’s resignation is an attempt to prevent the full dirty mess being revealed.


Labour leader Ed Miliband has rightly attacked the government for failing to set up a public inquiry, instead appointing a few MPs to carry out what will undoubtedly be a whitewash.


We demand a public inquiry in the real sense of the word. That is an inquiry where all of the banks’ books are opened to an investigation team made up of trade union representatives, representatives of ordinary mortgage holders, pensioners, and young people.


However, New Labour has no solution to this crisis and is, along with the Con-Dems, culpable for it. In government New Labour continued the ’light touch’ - ie non-existent - regulation of the financial system that had begun under Thatcher. In 2008 New Labour bailed out the banks while leaving the same banksters in charge. Since then they have colluded in the lie that it is public services and public sector workers that are responsible for the economic crisis.


Rotten system


The Socialist is clear - the banking system should be nationalised under democratic popular control. Only on this basis would it be possible to get rid of the spivs and speculators that are holding working class people to ransom. A genuinely nationalised banking sector would be run for the benefit of the majority, rather than for the super-rich.


Those struggling to pay their mortgage would have it converted to an affordable rent; small businesses could get cheap loans, and public works such as a massive house-building programme could be cheaply financed.


The need to build a mass party of working people which stands for this demand as part of a broader socialist programme has never been clearer. As the rotten heart of Britain’s banking system is revealed to millions many will be drawing this conclusion.


We demand:


• A democratic workers’ inquiry into the banking scandals, involving representatives of the trade unions, mortgage holders, pensioners and young people


• Jail the bankers responsible for this fraud. Kick out all the banksters, spivs, and speculators. No compensation or ’ golden handshakes’ for those who caused this crisis


• No more big-business loan sharks! Millions of people have been forced to get into debt just to survive. These debts to be written off


• Cheap mortgages and loans to be provided to individuals on a secure basis, with guaranteed low interest rates


• Nationalise all the banks on the basis of democratic public ownership - run by representatives of banking workers and trade unions, the wider working class, as well as the government. Take them completely out of the hands of the fat cats who made the mess! Compensation should be paid only on the basis of proven need


________________________________________


How would socialism be different?


The banking crisis is a crisis of the capitalist system. Capitalism means private ownership of the big corporations and banks that dominate the economy and the rich getting richer off of our hard work. And it is a system in crisis. In one year, in 2008, $50 trillion of wealth was destroyed worldwide through economic crisis.


Nationalisation of the banking and finance sector, and the big corporations, could allow an elected and accountable socialist government to begin planning production for need and not for profit. Everyone could have a decent job with a living wage, high quality housing and free education.

From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day They Laid Boomer Cadger Low


From The World Cross-Country Championship Archives- The Day They Laid Boomer Cadger Low 

By Bart Webber

Excuse me if I once again mention the sacred name of Boomer Cadger (real name William although I only got that information later for when I ran against him in high school Boomer was the only name I knew him by. I never found out the reason for the Boomer nickname although he did lower the boom on his opponents then until he met his match with the big boys to be discussed below). For a guy who I didn’t really know except in competition the reader is probably wondering why the now three archival captions on one person. Part of it is that through the “magic” of the Internet I have been able to find out what happened to him, at least indirectly.

I am in contact with his best high school and apparently for some time after friend, John Franklin who as something of the class historian for Boomer’s class of 1964 at North Quincy High School has kept tabs through the years on all members, all members who want to stay in contact. Boomer had a tough life after high school and after the glow of the world championships had worn off. John didn’t know a lot of the details but the important one is that the formerly slender splinter (see photo below), the terror of the roads and golf courses around Boston and Barcelona contacted some social disease and as a result of medication for most of the rest of his life since then he has been big as a blimp, a basketball, huge and of late probably could not run five yards and certainly could not beat a six year old at the effort. (I am tempted to say here that the now football player-sized Boomer has a name more appropriate to his statue but that would be unkind).  

What this trip down memory lane deals with beside the tough way that Boomer was treated in his last world championship cross-country race by the dirty Europeans is yet another tear-etched longing sigh about lost youth and the vagaries of time. Boomer’s time and mine although today I know I could still beat a six-year old over five yards. Boomer Cadger wherever you are you were like the wind in the old days remember that from a guy who ate your dust. B.W.    

**********
  
It will never cease to amaze me now say it-Boomer Cadger was a piece of work. Although I only knew of him, had been run ragged by him when he was just coming up as a high school star in cross country back in the day, back in the 1960s. Maybe I shouldn’t even be touting this guy since back in those days everybody, and believe me everybody, saw guys running around in their “underwear” as some kind of perverts sneaking behind bushes ready to pounce on the innocent, maybe the guilty too from some inner craving, from some inner evil. No “share the road with a runner” and mean it noise then since a runner was as likely to be sideswiped by some passing motorist for fun usually some young girl impatient to see her football player boyfriend or just to harass some nerd although we were not called that then. Menaces on the roads for sure in case of cross- country runners who needed to run long distances off the tracks to keep in shape and who were subjected to honks, near side swipes and angry snarls from irate motorists.

Girls, yes, the all important girls to even running dweebs, would titter and point at runners, us, with nothing but distain. Maybe I am just being sensitive to that scorn from girls since it blocked much social interaction but it really did seem like they were more vicious than any other cohort who tried to run us down and flee the scene. More than one time trying to “talk up” some girl in school I would mention that I was on the cross-country team would tell me they did not know the school had a team. Even my own mother wondered what she had raised to young adulthood when I would mention the sport of kings. Would go on and on about what was a good Catholic boy running around naked with all those young impressionable girls around and about getting tired and sweaty so she had to do extra laundry. I guess it was better to be fully-clothed, an armed robber and dope fiend junkie like my older brother Lenny since she never said word one against him.        

But enough of the bad days social milieu, enough of my humiliations for this is about legendary Boomer Cadger who was so lithe he could do cross-country and so fast that the football coach at his school, North Quincy High School some twenty miles from North Adamsville and historic rivals since we were the same size schools wanted him as a wide receiver. Boomer though had such a wretched home life, his father a drunk, a hobo really and not the kind like Utah Phillips who gets touted in these pages but the nasty dust of the earth that will kill you for your not giving them wine money and maybe even if you did, and his mother filled with morphine dreams, dreams since childbirth drug infests and who knows what else that running was what kept him alive during high school. He would from what I understand flee his home the minute the drunken fireworks started and go out and run say five miles to “cleanse his soul” (my term but I am ready to bet six, two and even he would know what I mean) if he treated the run as I did when I had my own slight home troubles.

Like I said North Quincy High and North Adamsville High were rivals in most sports and so I would run against Boomer and get my ass whipped by him starting in ninth grade. It seemed each year that I improved he leaped ahead even more. I would find out from an interview Boomer did with the now defunct, I think, Cross-Country Runner that in summertime he would travel all the way over to Adamsville Beach, the closest beach to North Quincy and spent the morning running the sand dunes down at the Squaw Rock end of the beach. I knew automatically that he had been influenced by an Australian coach who trained the legendary miler Herb Elliott on the sand dunes down under. (In a later interview, this courtesy of John Franklin, Boomer mentioned that he would do what is now a regular routine for long-distance runners, interval work which is short distance repeated speed word-that the training regimen of the legendary Olympic champion Emil Zatopek-no wonder he left me kicking sawdust from my shoes, a term we used when we lost).

As I have mentioned before in a previous caption about this mad monk bastard, I guess after all this time I would have to call it a tribute to Boomer, what I want to finish up with is what happened to Boomer at the World Championships, still junior championships I think in Barcelona, this again courtesy of John Franklin. I have already mentioned he qualified his senior year in high school for the World Junior Cross-Country championships held in New York City and the story behind it about what the new pair freaking new pair of white socks. His injury during the race may have cost him the championship although he did finish a mighty fifth to qualify him for Barcelona the next year.   

The last I had heard of Boomer Cadger before John Franklin filled me in, remember those were the days when running was not like today a big- time sport and so no colleges sought his services, he had joined the Navy out of high school to get away from that hellish homelife. The next year as luck would have it he was assigned to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and he was able to compete via his qualifying finish the year before (the commander of his ship thought he was crazy and a pervert too from what John thought but anything that might bring honor to the ship got him shore leave).

Here is where things get dicey-the winner from the previous year, the defending champion, Lars Larsen out of Sweden “knew” that Boomer if fully able would have whipped his ass (would have had him “dusting sawdust off his shoes) and was freaked out when he heard Boomer had somehow made it to Barcelona. Lars, and maybe this reflected the crazed times and crazed atmosphere surrounding cross-country runners, especially in Europe they were treated like living gods just below soccer players. He was so frenzied to win, something about a shoe contract with some firm in Europe if he did although that never got resolved, that he corralled a couple of teammates to impede Boomer’s travel at the beginning of the race. Trip him up in short so he would either get far behind at the beginning or not run. In the event he would not run after being manhandled by these punks and would-be teenage junkie ninjas. Boomer reported the situation but the officials brushed him off as another annoying American looking for some unwarranted advantage after a good European like Lars won the race. More than that Boomer in the Navy had started drinking, had taken to smoking weed and not keeping as fit as necessary so the funny thing is that Lars would have had not worry from him that day.        

I might have been kinder to Boomer’s memory, certainly during high school, if I had had my ass whipped by a world champion. To see him in memory’s eye running like the wind will have to do. 



On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- *Jumpin’ And Jivin’, Indeed- All Out In The Age Of The Big Bands

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Cab Calloway performing "Minnie The Moocher".

DVD Review

Jumping& Jivin’: The Jazz Classics From The Big Band Era, Volume One, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Fats Waller and various other bandleaders and sidemen, Acorn Media, 2007.


I recently reviewed the work, in his prime in the 1960s, of jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. There I noted that my interest in jazz, as such, was at the many places where jazz and the blues intersect. This volume of jazz- centered music from the big band era of the 1940s is a prime example of that statement. Not all of the twenty plus “soundies” (the old time version of MTV-type music videos for the benefit of the younger reader) from the 1940s and early 1950s here derives from the blues but a good number do. The compilers of this DVD have put, in one place at one time, many of the best big bands from that era, including Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine and Count Basie. The production values on some of the material is not great but you are getting this for its look at cultural history, warts and all.

Moreover, there are two performers who perked my interest from the blues perspective. One was the incredible performances of Mr. Cab Calloway in his classic “Minnie The Moocher” and the, well, bluesy “Blues In The Night”. I last recall seeing old Cab in the original John Belushi “Blues Brothers” film from the 1980s. That was nothing compared to these performances in his prime. Watch this. The other outstanding performance here is from Lena Horne. Yes, I know, I am supposed to be true-blue to Ms. Billie Holiday. And I am. Except last year I heard Lena doing “Stormy Weather” on a 1940s CD compilation and was blown away. Here on her “soundie” “Unlucky Woman” she does so again. So call me perfidious, okay.

"Minnie the Moocher" -Cab Calloway

folk's here's the story 'bout Minnie the Moocher
she was a red hot hoochie coocher
she was the roughest, toughest frail
but Minnie had a heart a big as a whale

(hidey-hi's!)

she messed around with a bloke named Smokey
she loved him, though he was coke-y
he took her down to Chinatown
and he showed her how to kick the gong around

(hidey-hi's!)

she had a dream about the King of Sweden
he gave her things that she was needin'
gave her a home built of gold and steel
a diamond car, with the platinum wheels

(fast hidey-hi's!)

he gave her a townhouse and his racing horses
each meal she ate was a dozen courses
she had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes
she sat around and counted them a million times

(hidey-hi's, one mo' 'gain!)

poor min, poor min, poor min!


"Unlucky Woman"

I was born on Friday, married on Friday too
Yes I was born on Friday, married on Friday too
But I didn't believe in jinxes till the day that I met you

I don't want no more lovin', I'd rather be all alone
No i don't want no more lovin', I'd rather be all alone
So when payday comes around, I can call my money my own

Now love is just a gamble, it's just like shootin' dice
But it's my bad luck that I got snake eyes twice
I'm an unlucky woman, guess I was born that way
And if anyone can change me, they can move right in today

I don't want no more excuses, I don't want no jive
I wouldn't want you daddy if you was the last man alive
I've learned my lesson, and I've learned it just in time
Good luck will never find me, till I cross you off my mind

On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of Her Death-Lady Day-Billie Holiday- She Took Our Pain Away Despite Her Own Pains- Out In The 1950s Be-Bop Night- Billie Holiday Cries A River- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Billie Holiday performing the riveting Strange Fruit.

Billie’s Best, Billie Holiday, Verve, 1972

In my book, and I am hardly alone on this, Billie Holiday is the torch singer’s torch singer. Maybe it is the phrasing on her best songs. That well-placed hush. Maybe it is the unbreakable link between her voice when she is on a roll and the arrangements. Hell, maybe in the end it was the dope but, by Jesus, she could sing a modern ballad of love, lost or both like no other. And if it was the dope, let me say this- a ‘normal’ nice singer could sing for a hundred years and never get it right, the way Billie could get it right when she was at her best. Dope, or no dope. Was she always at her best? Hell no, as the current compilation makes clear. These recordings done between 1945 and her death in 1959 for Verve show the highs but also the lows as the voice faltered a little and the dope put the nerves on edge toward the end.

Many of the songs on the current compilation are technically sound, a few not, as is to be expected on such re-mastering. You will like Come Rain or Come Shine, Stars Fell On Alabama and Stormy Blues. A tear will come to your eye with Some Other Spring and East of the Sun. The surprise of the package is Speak Low, a sultry song with tropical background beat. That one is very good, indeed. One last word- I have occasionally mentioned my love of Billie Holiday’s music to younger acquaintances. Some of their responses reflecting, I think, the influence of the movies or some black history looks on her life have written her off as an addled doper. Here is my rejoinder- If when I am blue and need a pick-me-up and put on a Billie platter and feel better then, my friends, someone who can do that for me I will buy them, metaphorically of course, all the dope they ever need. Enough said.

Oh, Down In The Big Easy, Oh-The Best Of The Neville Brothers (2004)

Oh, Down In The Big Easy, Oh-The Best Of The Neville Brothers (2004) 






CD Review

By Zack James

The Best Of The Neville Brothers: The Millennium Collection, the Neville Brothers, 2004

Sure, sure everybody who has been down in the mouth of the Delta, Mississippi Delta in case your geography is a little suspect knows that the silt and sand just didn’t sit there and fester but accumulated, accumulated and gave us, at least in pre-Katrina days the “Big Easy”. And that designation, that Big Easy for New Orleans is just about right for a town where among others things a hell of a lot of music came into being, came in and gave popular music a shot in the arm. Think jazz, think jazz big time in the Big Easy where it wasn’t born just to entertain the vagrant tourists on Bourbon Street who needed to nurse their miseries with expensive beers and be-bop expressions but to express sorrows and joys that got people through their tiny lives. Think jazz’s half- brother (half-sister if you like but some kind of sibling) the blues as it came out of the Gulf ports as sweating away in Mister’s cotton planation crop played on old time National steel guitars (or maybe even some Sears & Roebuck’s catalogue offering). Think about those cousins from down in Lake Charles and Lafayette. White cousins originally from France via long lost Arcadia up in frigid Nova Scotia once some king’s redcoat Johnnies pulled them south on their “trail of sorrow.” (Check old Brahmin Brattle Street three name Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his Evangeline saga poem of loves lost if you want the sad side to that story). Black cousins escaped from all the West Indies slave quarters with the tinny washboard mix and match instruments.             


Put all that together, jazz, blues, Cajun, zydeco and then add the elixir of the sweated New Orleans nights, those Big Easy cabarets and you have just the right background to appreciate the various tunes, songs on this CD which features the vocals of probably the most known of the Neville Brothers, Aaron. Certainly if you want to spend a pleasant evening thinking about that last trip down to that part of the Delta when you are fighting some raging snow storm check this nice little mix.    

From The Archives Of Edward Hopper's Art World Before He Was Edward Hopper


From The Archives Of Edward Hopper's Art World Before He Was Edward Hopper -Once Again In Defense Of Art Critic Laura Perkins

By Eric Saint James

This will not be an expose of one Clarence Dewar, art critic, oops make that professional art critic for Art Today as I have had to do on two previous occasions when he slung mud at a fellow art critic, an amateur art critic as Laura Perkins proudly calls herself.  I will be defending Ms. Perkins against Dewar’s latest tirade but at least this time despite his contemptuous attitude toward Ms. Perkins and so-called amateur art critics in general it is a matter of legitimate controversy around the nature of the artwork of one Edward Hopper one of the most beloved and saleable artists of the 20th century.          

For those who need the slightest background to all of what well-known art critic, also professional, Sam Lowell has on many occasions and under many circumstances called the art world’s tempests in teapots here is a short summary.

Recently I had to go down in the mud twice with one Clarence Dewar, art critic, I love to say this, professional art critic for Art Today to “save the honor” of amateur art critic Laura Perkins when he cut her with the remark that she should take up crocheting or some such silly sport and leave the heavy lifting criticism to the big boys and girls, basically him. I made a few pithy remarks about knowing him and his ilk back in the day and that I knew where the bodies were buried. If some snooty snide words from me are all Clarence has had to endure in his seedy baggy pants little life he has gotten off pretty easy.      

In those commentaries I challenged Clarence to come at me with his two-bit noise and back off from Laura Perkins. Well, as expected he has yet to said peep one about my slashings but he nevertheless decided to take on a “soft” target first by pointing out a very common mistake about the modern artist Franz Golder placing his exquisite work back to the time of his Dutch and Flemish forebears. I had to ruffle his feathers on that one with my knowledge that he had claimed somebody from the 16th century Van Brick school had painted from nature when that was impossible given that the flowers painted bloomed at different times of the year (and I subsequently learned that half the flowers were not   survivable in Netherland’s weather).

Despite my warning that I would expose his little two-bit shady back alley Dewar went back on the case with Laura over her commentary about the late 19th century German artist Frieda Kane (the sister of Gustav Klimt, or maybe step-sister). Ms. Perkins made what seemed to me the unremarkable but astute comment that Ms. Kane in her attempts to connect with common culture, peasant culture at least as it existed in Germany tended to spend too much effort on rural landscapes and fauna and flora. She seemed kind of repetitive and imitative despite the welcome uncovering of her work. Clarence had a fit, went crazy saying that Ms. Kane was breathe of fresh air in the overstuffed urban-oriented and urban critical German (and Austrian) art world.          

What Clarence probably did not count on and Ms. Perkins I assume was unaware of was the real motivation for Mr. Dewar’s brittle if fervent defense of Ms. Kane’s output. That brings use directly to the nub of the problem. The role, the perfidious role of the art gallery owners. The wormy art gallery owners are strictly in the business of moving artworks and making kale, nothing else really. They have unbelievable influence on art buyers by their hungry huntings for new works to “discover.” That was the case with Larry Larsen at the Nova Galleries in New York City. Along the way Larry “discovered” Freida Kane and grabbed a bunch of her paintings at a decent price in order to make a killing. Whether art good or bad should be treated as a commodity like steel or rubber balls I won’t go into right now.      

Enter Clarence Dewar, oh yeah, profession art critic and general shill for whoever had enough dough to whet his degenerate appetite for cocaine I believe it is these days. Clarence started in the old days working his ass off, pedaling it really, for professional art critic Clement Greenberg when he was touting, successfully touting for a while abstract expressionism. I will admit Clement really did make the market for that genre, pushed more now dissolving or discarded high-priced works, including everything Jackson Pollack ever produced, than anybody. This is how it works though for professional art critics for glossy art publications who get paid starvation money to grind out their pablum.

Enter art gallery owners and in Clarence’s case Larry Larsen. To make some money and get invited to various gala events almost every art critic “sells” him or herself to some gallery owner to act as a press agent, a flak-catcher if necessary. To push the merchandise really, especially the overstocked stuff like most of Freida Kane’s which despite a big gala and fanfare including the inevitable glowing article by Dewar did not, has not sold well. Hence Clarence’s tirade and insults against Ms. Perkins who is only stating the obvious and commenting on what the least discerning collectors know- Kane’s stuff is boring.   

The latest from Dewar, who still carries water among New York art gallery owners and their circles although I don’t know why but which means something in the art world is a five thousand word “essay” in Art Today about how wrong Ms. Perkins was in her estimation of angst and alienation in Mr. Hopper’s work. What got Clarence’s hackles up was the statement she made that no matter how desolate his flower and building non-human work was that seemed positively giddy (my word not hers) compared to the monotone faces of those who graced his people-centered works. Clarence totally flipped out when Laura provided documentation from Hopper’s own mentor, William Merritt Chase, that he had flunked the “faces” class and probably never would do more than less than average on human faces.        

Like I said this question is legitimately the subject of debate in the art world, and beyond and so no expose of Dewar’s handling of some Hopper works for the New Dawn Gallery (since gone under) is necessary to cut off his legs. That despite his cruel and abusive language about Ms. Perkins lacking any insight in Hopper’s extraordinary sense of the modern world, of that angst and alienation that he learned by rote at the feet of one Clement Greenberg when that gentleman was riding high in the art world. Enough said except for the new obligatory “hands off” Clarence or you will find that one Sam Lowell knows something about you that should make you a piranha in the New York art world.  






From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk-Part IV-THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk-Part IV-THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS

Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.

Leon Trotsky
History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk
Part IV
THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS
At an historical night sitting, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted the historical Peace Decree. At that time the power of the Soviets was still only consolidating in the most important centres of the country, while the number of people abroad who had confidence in it was quite insignificant. We carried the decrees unanimously, but to many it appeared to be merely a political demonstration. The Compromise-mongers kept repeating at every street corner that our resolution could not lead to any practical results, since, on the one hand, the German Imperialists would not recognize and would not even condescend to talk with us, and, on the other hand, our allies would declare war on us for entering into separate peace negotiations. It was under the shadow of these gloomy predictions that we were making our first steps towards a universal democratic peace. The Decree was accepted on November 8th, when Kerensky and Krasnoff were at the very gates of Petrograd, and on November 20th we communicated over the wireless our proposals for the conclusion of a general peace both to our allies and enemies. By way of reply the Allied Governments addressed, through their military agents, remonstrances to General Dukhonin, the Commander-in-Chief, stating that all further steps on our part towards separate peace negotiations would lead to most serious results. We, on our part, replied on November 24th to this protest by a manifesto to all workers, soldiers, and peasants, declaring that under no circumstances should we allow our army to shed its blood by order of any foreign bourgeoisie. We brushed aside the threats of the Western Imperialists and assumed full responsibility for our peace policy before the international working class. First of all, by way of discharging our previous pledges, we published the secret treaties and declared that we repudiated all that was opposed in them to the interests of the popular masses everywhere. The capitalist Governments tried to play off our disclosures against one another, but the popular masses everywhere understood us and appreciated our action. Not a single Socialist patriotic paper, as far as we know, dared protest against this radical change effected by the Government of workers and peasants in all traditional methods of diplomacy, against our repudiation of its evil and unscrupulous intrigues. We made it the aim and purpose of our diplomacy to enlighten the popular masses, to open their eyes as to the nature of the policy of their respective Governments, and to fuse them in one common struggle against, and hatred of, the bourgeois-capitalist regime. The German bourgeois Press accused us of protracting the negotiations, but the peoples themselves eagerly listened everywhere to the dialogues at Brest, and thereby, in the course of the two and a half months during which the peace negotiations proceeded, a service was rendered to the cause of peace which has been acknowledged even by honest enemies. For the first time the question of peace was raised in such a way that it could no longer be distorted by any machinations behind the scenes.

On December 5th we signed the agreement for the suspension of hostilities along the whole front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. We again appealed to the Allies to join us and to conduct the peace negotiations together with us. We received no answer, although this time our allies did not try to intimidate us by threats. The peace negotiations began on December 22nd, six weeks after the adoption of the Peace Decree. This shows that the accusations levelled at us by the hireling and Socialist traitor Press, that we had not tried to come to an understanding with the Allies, were nothing but lies. For six weeks we kept on informing them of every step we made, and constantly appealed to them to join us in the peace negotiations. We can face the people of France, Italy, and Great Britain with a clear conscience. We did all we could to prevail upon the belligerent nations to join us in the peace negotiations. The responsibility for our separate peace negotiations rests not upon us, but upon the Imperialists of the West, as well as those Russian parties which all along had been predicting an early death to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government and urging the Allies not to take seriously our peace Initiative.

Anyhow, on December 22nd the peace negotiations were opened. Our delegates made a declaration of principles defining the basis of a general democratic peace in the precise terms of the Decree of November 8th. The other side demanded an adjournment of the sittings; but their resumption was put off, on Kühlmann’s motion, from day to day. It was obvious that the delegates of the Quadruple Alliance had considerable difficulty in drawing up their reply to our declaration. At last, on December 25th, the reply came. The diplomats of the Quadruple Alliance adhered to the democratic formulæ of a peace without annexations and contributions on the principle of self-determination of nations. We could see clearly that this was merely a piece of make-believe. But we did not expect even that, for is not hypocrisy the tribute paid by vice to virtue? The fact that the German Imperialists considered it necessary to pay this tribute to our democratic principles was, in our eyes, evidence of the rather serious internal condition of Germany. But although, on the whole, we had no illusions as to the democratic leanings of Kühlmann and Czernin – we were only too well acquainted with the nature of the German and Austrian ruling classes – it must, nevertheless, be candidly admitted that we did not at the time anticipate that the actual proposals of the German Imperialists would be separated by such a wide gulf from the formulæ presented to us by Kühlmann on December 25th as a sort of plagiarism of the Russian Revolution. We, indeed, did not expect such an acme of impudence.

The masses of the working classes in Russia were deeply impressed by Kühlmann’s reply. They read in it the fear of the ruling classes of the Central Empires in face of the discontent and growing impatience of the masses in Germany. On December 28th, a gigantic workers’ and soldiers’ demonstration took place in Petrograd in favour of a democratic peace. But the next morning our delegates returned from Brest-Litovsk and brought those predatory demands which Kühlmann had presented on behalf of the Central Empires by way of interpretation of his so-called democratic formulæ.

At first it may appear difficult to understand what exactly were the expectations of the German diplomacy when they presented their democratic formulæ in order, two or three days later, to reveal their brutal appetites. The theoretical debates, too, about those democratic formulæfor the most part initiated by Kühlmann himself – may seem to have been rather a risky affair. It ought to have been clear to them from the beginning that on this battlefield the diplomacy of the Central Empires could scarcely gain any laurels. But the secret of Kühlmann’s conduct of diplomacy lay in that he was profoundly convinced that we would be ready to play duets with him. The trend of his thought was approximately as follows: Russia must have peace. The Bolsheviks had obtained power thanks to their fight for peace. The Bolsheviks wanted to remain in power. This was only possible on one condition, namely, the conclusion of peace. True, they had committed themselves to a definite democratic peace programme. But what were the diplomats for, if not for disguising black as white? They, the Germans, would make the position easier for the Bolsheviks by hiding their spoil and plunder beneath a democratic formula. Bolshevik diplomacy would have sufficient grounds for not desiring to probe too deeply for the political essence of their enticing formulae, or, rather, for not revealing it to the eyes of the world. In other words, Kühlmann hoped to come to a tacit understanding with us. He would pay us back in our fine formula, and we should give him an opportunity of obtaining provinces and whole nationalities for the benefit of the Central Empires without any protest on our side. In the eyes of the German working classes, therefore, this violent annexation would receive the sanction of the Russian Revolution. When, during the negotiations, we made it clear that we were not discussing mere empty formulæ and decorative screens hiding a secret bargain, but the democratic foundations of the cohabitation of nations, Kühlmann took it as a malevolent breach of a tacit agreement. He would not for anything in the world budge even an inch from his formula of December 25th. Relying on his refined bureaucratic and legal logic, he tried his best to prove to the world that there was no difference whatever between black and white, and that it was only due to our malicious will that we were insisting on it.

Count Czernin, the representative of Austria-Hungary, played at these negotiations a part which no one would call impressive or dignified. He clumsily seconded and undertook at air critical moments, on behalf of Kühlmann, to make the most violent and cynical declarations. As against this, General Hoffman would often introduce a most refreshing note into the negotiations. Without shamming any great sympathy with the diplomatic niceties of Kühlmann, General Hoffman many times banged his soldier’s boot on the table, at which the most intricate legal debates were carried on. For our part, we had not a moment’s doubt that at these negotiations General Hoffman’s boot was the only serious reality.

The presence of the representatives of the Kieff Rada at the negotiations was a great trump card in Kühlmann’s hands. To the Ukrainian lower middle class, who were then in power, their “recognition” by the capitalist Governments of Europe seemed the most important thing in the world. At first, the Rada had offered its services to the Allied Imperialists and got from them some pocket-money. It then sent delegates to Brest-Litovsk in order to obtain from the Austro-German Governments, behind the backs of the peoples of Russia, the recognition of their legitimate birth. Scarcely had the Kieff diplomats entered on the road of “international” relations than they manifested the same out look and the same moral level which had hitherto been a characteristic feature of the petty Balkan politicians. Messrs. Kühlmann and Czernin, of course, did not indulge in any illusions as to the solvency of the new partner at the negotiations. But they realized quite correctly that by the attendance of the Kieff delegates the game was fated to become more complicated, but also more promising to them. At their first appearance at Brest-Litovsk the Kieff delegation defined the Ukraine as a component part of the nascent Federal Republic of Russia. That was an obvious embarrassment to the diplomats of the Central Powers, whose chief concern was to turn the Russian Republic into a new Balkan Peninsula. At their second appearance, the diplomats of the Rada declared, under the dictation of Austro-German diplomacy, that from that moment the Ukraine no longer desired to form part of the Russian Federation and would constitute henceforth an independent Republic.

In order to give the readers a clear idea of the situation in which the Soviet Government was placed at the last stage of the peace negotiations, I think it useful to reproduce here the main passages of the speech which the author of these lines delivered, as the People’s Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, at the sitting of the Central Executive Committee on February 27, 1918.



THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSIONER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
“Comrades, – Russia of the Soviets has not only to build the new, but also to sum up the results of the past and, to a certain extent – a very large extent indeed – to settle old accounts, above all, the accounts of the present war which has now lasted three and a half years. The war has been a test of the economic resources of the belligerent nations. The fate of Russia, a poor, backward country, was, a war of attrition, pre-determined from the beginning. In the mighty conflict of the military machines the decisive r6le belonged, in the last resort, to the ability of the respective nations to adapt their industry in the shortest possible time, and thus to turn out again and again, with constantly increasing rapidity and in ever-increasing quantities, the engines of destruction which have been wearing out in no time in this terrible slaughter of nations. At the beginning of the war every, or almost every, country, even the most backward, could be in possession of powerful engines of destruction, since those machines could be obtained from abroad. All backward countries did possess them, including Russia. But the war soon wears out its dead capital, unless it is constantly replenished. The military power of every individual country drawn into the whirlwind of the worldwide war was measured by the ability to make guns, shells, and other engines of destruction by its own means during the war itself. If the war had decided the question of the balance of power in a very short time, Russia, speaking theoretically, might have come out on the victorious side. But the war dragged on, and did so by no means accidentally. The mere fact that during the preceding half-century all international politics had been reduced to the establishment of the so-called balance of power, that IS, to the greatest possible equalization of the military forces of the adversaries, was bound, m view of the strength and Wealth of the modern capitalist nations, to make the war a protracted business. The result has been, first and foremost, the exhaustion of the poorer, less economically developed countries.

Germany proved to be the most powerfull country in the military sense, owing to the mighty development of her industry and the new, rational, up-to-date structure of that industry side by side with the archaic structure of her State. France, with her economic system largely based on small production, proved to be very much behind Germany, while even such a powerful Colonial Empire as England showed herself weaker than Germany, owing to the more conservative, routine-like character of her industries. When the will of History summoned revolutionary Russia to initiate peace negotiations, we had no doubt whatever that, failing the intervention of the decisive power of the world’s revolutionary proletariat, we should have to pay in full for over three and a half years of war. We knew perfectly well that German Imperialism was an enemy imbued with the consciousness of its own colossal strength, as manifested so glaringly in the present war.

All the arguments of the bourgeois cliques which keep telling us that we should have been incomparably stronger had we conducted our peace negotiations in conjunction with our Allies are fundamentally wrong. If we were to carry on, at some distant future, the peace negotiations in conjunction with the Allies, we should, in the first place, have had to go on with the war; but seeing how our country was exhausted and weakened, its continuation, not its cessation, would have led to further exhaustion and ruin. We should thus have had to foot the bill of the war in conditions still more unfavourable to us. Even if the camp which Russia had joined on account of the international intrigues of Tsardom and the bourgeoisie – the camp, that is, at the head of which stands Great Britain – should come out of the war completely victorious (granting for the moment this rather improbable eventuality), it does not follow, comrades, that our country would also have come Out victorious, since Russia, inside this victorious camp, would have been still more exhausted and ruined by the long-drawn-out war than it is now. The masters of that camp, who would have gathered all the fruits of victory – that is, England and America – would, in their treatment of our country, have displayed the same methods which were employed by Germany at the peace negotiations. It would be absurd and childish, in appraising the policy of the Imperialist Countries, to start from other premises than their naked self-interest and material strength. Hence, if we, as a nation, are now weakened in the face of the Imperialist world, we are so. not because we broke away from the fiery circle of the war after previously shaking off the chains of international military obligations – no, we are weakened by the same policy of Tsardom and the bourgeois classes against which we fought, as a revolutionary party, both before and during the war.

You remember, comrades, the conditions in which our delegates went to Brest-Litovsk last time, direct from one of the sittings of the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets. We had informed you then of the state of negotiations and of the demands of the enemy. These demands, as you no doubt remember, amounted to disguised, or rather semi-disguised, annexationist claims to Lithuania, Courland, part of Livonia, the Moon Sound Islands, and a semi-masked indemnity which we then computed at six to eight or even ten thousand million roubles. In the interval, which lasted ten days, serious disturbances broke out in Austria and strikes took place among the labouring masses there – the first act of recognition of our methods of conducting the peace negotiations on the part of the proletariat of the Central Powers in face of the annexationist demands of German Imperialism. How miserable are the allegations of the bourgeois Press, that it took us two months’ talk with Kühlmann before we discovered that the German Imperialists would demand robbers’ terms. No, we knew that beforehand. But we tried to turn our “conversations” with the representatives of German Imperialism into a means of strengthening those forces which were struggling against it. We did not promise in this connection any miracles, but we asserted that our way was the only way still left at the disposal of revolutionary democracy for securing the chances of its further development.

“One may complain that the proletariat of other countries, especially of the Central Empires, is passing to an open revolutionary struggle too slowly. Yes, the tempo of its advance is much too slow. But in Austria-Hungary we saw a movement which assumed the proportions of a national event and which was a direct and immediate result of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.

Before we departed from here we discussed the matter together, and we said that we had no reason to believe that that wave would sweep away the Austro-Hungarian militarism. Had we been convinced to the contrary, we should have certainly given the pledge so eagerly demanded from us by certain persons, namely, that we should never sign a separate treaty with Germany. I said at the time that it was impossible for us to make such a pledge, as it would have been tantamount to pledging ourselves to defeat German Imperialism. We held the secret of no such victory in our hands, and in so far as we could not pledge ourselves to Change the balance and correlation of the world’s powers in a very short period of time, we openly and honestly declared that the revolutionary Government might, under certain circumstances, be compelled to accept an annexationist peace. For not the acceptance of a peace forced upon us by the course of events, but an attempt to hide its predatory character from our own people would have been the beginning of the end of the revolutionary Government.

At the same time we pointed out that we were departing for Brest in order to continue the negotiations in circumstances which were apparently becoming more favourable to us and less advantageous to our adversaries. We were watching the events in Austria-Hungary, and various circumstances made us think that, as hinted at by Socialist spokesmen in the Reichstag, Germany was on the eve of similar events. Such were our hopes, and then in the course of the first days of our new stay at Brest the wireless brought us via Vilna the first news that a tremendous strike movement had broken out in Berlin, which, like the movement in Austria-Hungary, was the direct result of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. But, as it often happens, in consequence of the “dialectical,” double-edged, character of the class struggle, it was just this powerful swing of the proletarian movement, such as Germany had never seen before, that aroused the propertied classes and caused them to close their ranks and to take up a more irreconcilable attitude. The German ruling classes are only too well imbued with the instinct of self-preservation, and they understood that any, even partial concession, under such circumstances, when they were being pressed by the masses of their own people, would have been tantamount to a capitulation before the idea of revolution. That is “why, after the first period of conferences, when Kühlmann had been deliberately delaying the negotiations by either postponing the sittings or wasting them on minor questions of form, he, as soon as the strike had been suppressed and his masters, he felt, were for the time being out of danger, reverted to his old accents of complete self-confidence, and redoubled his aggressiveness. Our negotiations became complicated owing to the participation of the Kieff Rada. We reported the facts of the case last time. The Rada delegates made their appearance at a time when the Rada still represented a fairly strong organization in the Ukraine and when the issue of the struggle had not yet been decided. Just at that moment we made the Rada an official offer to conclude with us a definite agreement, the principal term of which was our demand that the Rada should proclaim Kaledin and Korniloff enemies of the Revolution and refrain from interfering in our fight against them. The Kieff delegates arrived at the moment when we were cherishing hopes of coming to an agreement with it on both heads. We had already made clear to the Rada that so long as it was recognized by the Ukrainian people we should admit it to the negotiations as an independent member of the Conference. But in proportion as things in Russia and the Ukraine developed, and the antagonism between the democratic masses and the Rada was becoming deeper and deeper, the readiness of the Rada also increased to conclude any sort of peace with the Central Powers, and, if necessary, to invite German Imperialism to intervene in the internal affairs of the Ukrainian Republic in order to support the Rada against the Russian Revolution.

On February 9th we learned that the peace negotiations between the Rada and the Central Powers had been successfully completed behind our backs. February 9th was the birthday of Prince Leopold of Bavaria, and, as is the custom in monarchical countries, the solemn, historical act of signing the treaty was fixed for this festal day – whether with the Rada’s agreement or not we do not know. General Hoffman caused the artillery to fire a salute in honour of Leopold of Bavaria, having previously asked the Ukrainians’ permission to do so, as, according to that treaty, Brest-Litovsk had been incorporated with the Ukraine.

However, at the very moment when General Hoffman was asking the Kieff Rada for permission to fire a salute in honour of Prince Leopold, events had advanced so far that, with the exception of Brest-Litovsk, but little territory was left under the Rada’s authority. On the strength of telegrams which we had received from Petrograd we officially informed the delegates of the Central Powers that the Kieff Rada was no longer in existence – a fact which was by no means immaterial for the course of the peace negotiations. We proposed to Count Czernin to send representatives, accompanied by our officers, to the territory of the Ukraine in order to see on the spot whether his co-partner, the Kieff Rada, was still in existence or not. Czernin at first seemed to jump at the idea, but when we raised the question whether the treaty with the Kieff delegation would only be signed after the return of his messengers or not, he began to hesitate and promised to consult K4llhmann, and having done so, sent us a reply in the negative. This was on February 8th, and on the following day they were obliged to sign the treaty. That brooked no delay, not only because of Prince Leopold’s birthday, but also because of a more serious circumstance, which, of course, Kühlmann had explained to Czernin: “If we send our representatives to the Ukraine now, they may find that the Rada is no longer in existence, and then we should have to face the Russian delegates only; which of course would greatly thwart our chances at the negotiations.” We were told by the Austro-Hungarian delegates: “Leave alone the question of principles, place the problem on a practical footing – then the German delegates will try to meet you. It is impossible that the Germans should desire to continue the war for the sake, for instance, of the Moon Sound Islands, if you formulate your demands more concretely ...” We answered: “ Very well, we are ready to test the conciliatory attitude of your colleagues, the German delegates. So far we have been discussing the question of the right of self-determination of Lithuanians, Poles, Letts, Esthonians, etc., and have elucidated the fact that there is no chance for the self-determination of these small nations. Let us now see what kind of self-determination you intend to allot to the Russian people, and what are the military strategical plans and devices behind your seizure of the Moon Islands. The Moon Islands, as part of the Esthonian Republic, as a possession of the Russian Federal Republic, have a defensive value, while in the hands of Germany they are means of offence and constitute a menace to the most vital centres of our country, particularly to Petrograd.” But, of course, Hoffman had not the slightest intention of making any concessions. Then the decisive moment came. We could not declare war – we were too weak. The army was in a state of complete internal dissolution. In order to save our country from ruin it was necessary to re-establish the internal organization of the labouring masses. This moral union could be established only by constructive work in the villages, in the workshop and the factory. The masses, who had passed through the colossal suffering and the catastrophic experiences of the war, had to be brought back to the fields and factories, where they could be rejuvenated morally and physically by work and thus be enabled to create the necessary internal discipline. There was no other way of salvation for our country, which had to pay the penalty for the sins committed by Tsardom and the bourgeoisie. We were forced to get out of the war and lead our army out of the slaughter. At the same time we declared to German Imperialism, straight in the face: “The peace terms which you force us to accept are those of violence and plunder. We cannot allow you, diplomats, to tell the German workers: ‘You branded our demands as annexationist; look here, those demands have been signed by the Russian Revolution!’ Yes, we are weak, ‘we cannot fight at present, but we have enough of revolutionary courage to tell you that we will never of our own free will sign the terms which you are writing with your sword across the bodies of the living peoples’.” We refused to give our signatures, and I believe, comrades, that we acted as we ought to have acted.

Comrades, I do not want to say that a further advance of the Germans against us is out of the question. Such a statement would be too risky, considering the power of the German Imperialist Party. But I think that by the position we have taken up on the question we have made any advance a very embarrassing affair for the German militarists. What would happen if they should nevertheless advance? There is only one answer to this question. If it is still possible to raise the spirit in the most revolutionary and healthy elements in our exhausted country, reduced as it is to desperate straits, if it is still possible for Russia to rise for the defence of our Revolution and the territories of the Revolution, it is possible only as a result of the present situation, as a result of our coming out of the war and of our refusal to sign the peace treaty.



THE SECOND WAR AND THE SIGNING OF PEACE.
The German Government, during the first days after the breaking off of the negotiations, hesitated, uncertain as to which course to. choose. The politicians and diplomats thought apparently that the chief thing bad been accomplished, and that there was no need to run after our signatures. The military, however, were in all circumstances prepared to break through the framework outlined by the German Government in the Brest-Litovsk treaty. Professor Kriege, adviser to the German delegation, told one of our delegates that in the present conditions there could be no question of a new German offensive against Russia. Count Mirbach, then at the head of the German mission in Russia, left for Berlin assuring us that a satisfactory agreement on the exchange of prisoners had been reached. But all this did not prevent General Hoffman from announcing, on the fifth day after the breaking off of the negotiations, the end of the armistice, the seven days’ notice being antedated by him from the day of the last sitting at Brest. It would be truly out of place to waste time here, in righteous indignation at this dishonourable act, for it is but in keeping with the general diplomatic and military morality of all the governing classes.

The new German offensive developed under conditions which were deadly to Russia. Instead of the agreed seven days’ warning, we only had two days’. This spread a panic in the ranks of the army, already in a state of chronic dissolution. There could scarcely be any question of resistance. The soldiers would not believe that the Germans would advance, after we had declared the state of war at an end. The panic-stricken retreat paralysed even the will of those individual regiments which were ready to take up fighting positions. In the working-class quarters of Petrograd and Moscow the indignation at the treacherous and truly buccaneering German attack knew no bounds. The workers were ready, in those tragic days and nights, to enlist in the army in their tens of thousands. But the necessary organization was lagging far behind. Individual guerrilla detachments, full of enthusiasm, perceived their helplessness at the first serious encounter with the German regular troops, and this was, of course, followed by a further depression of spirits. The old army, long ago mortally wounded, was falling to pieces, and was only blocking up all ways and by-ways. The new army, on the other hand, was arising much too slowly amidst the general exhaustion and the terrible dislocation of industry and transport. The only real serious obstacle in the path of the German advance was the huge distances.

Austria-Hungary had her eyes chiefly on the Ukraine. Through its delegates the Rada had made a direct request to the Central Empires for military help against the Soviets, which by that time had obtained complete victory throughout Ukrainia. In this way the Ukrainian lower middle-class democracy, in its fight with the workers and the poorest peasantry, had voluntarily opened the gates to foreign invasion.

At the same time the Government of Svinhufvud was seeking the help of German bayonets against the Finnish proletariat. German militarism was assuming quite openly, in the face of the whole world, the rôle of executioner of the Russian workers’ and peasants’ revolution.

In the ranks of our party there arose a heated discussion as to whether we should, under such conditions, submit to the German ultimatum and sign a new treaty which – we were all quite convinced of that – would contain far more onerous conditions than those we had been offered at Brest-Litovsk. The representatives of one school of thought considered that at the present moment, when the Germans were effectively intervening in the internal struggles on the territory of the Russian Republic, it was unthinkable to make peace in one part of Russia and remain passive whilst in the north and south the German troops were establishing a regime of bourgeois dictatorship. Another school of thought, at the head of which stood Lenin, argued that every interval, every breathing space, however short, would be of the greatest value for the internal consolidation of Russia and for the restoration of her capacity for self-defence. After our absolute inability to defend ourselves at the present moment from the attacks of the enemy had been demonstrated so tragically before the whole country and the whole world, our conclusion of peace would be understood everywhere as an act forced on us by the cruel law of the correlation of forces. It would be mere Childishness to base our action on abstract revolutionary morals. The question at issue was not how to perish with honour, but how, in the end, we could live through to victory. The Russian revolution wants to live, must live, and must by all possible means refuse to be drawn into battle far beyond her strength she must win time in the expectation that the revolutionary movement in the West would come to her aid. German Imperialism was still at close and fierce grip with British and American militarism. Only for this reason was it possible to conclude peace between Germany and Russia. We must not let this opportunity slip by. The well-being of the Revolution was the supreme law I We must accept the peace which we dared not refuse we must gain some time for intensive work in the interior, including the reconstruction of our army.

At the Congress of the Communist Party, just as at the fourth Congress of the Soviets, those in favour of peace were in a majority. Many of those who in January had been opposed to signing the Brest peace treaty were now in favour of peace. “At that time,” said they, “our signature would have been understood by the British and French workers as a miserable capitulation without any attempt to avoid it; even the base insinuations of the Anglo-French chauvinists about a secret agreement between the Soviet Government and the Germans might have met with some acceptance in certain sections of the Western European workers, had we then signed the peace treaty. But after our refusal to sign, after the new German offensive against us, after our attempt at resistance, after our military weakness has been demonstrated to the whole world with such awful clearness, no one will dare reproach us with having capitulated without a struggle.” The Brest-Litovsk treaty, the second, more onerous edition, was duly signed and ratified.

In the meantime, in the Ukraine and in Finland the executioners were going on with their grim work, threatening more and more the most vital centres of Great Russia. Thus, the question of the very existence of Russia as an independent country became indissolubly bound up with the question of a European revolution.



CONCLUSION
When our party was assuming the reins of Government, we knew beforehand “what difficulties we should undoubtedly meet on our way. Economically the country had been exhausted by the war to the last degree. The Revolution had destroyed the old administrative machinery without having had the opportunity of creating a new one m its place. Millions of workers had been forcibly torn away from the economic life of the country, thrown out of their class, and morally and mentally shattered by three years of war. A colossal war industry on an insufficiently developed economic foundation had sucked up the very life-blood of the nation, and its demobilization presented the greatest difficulties. The phenomena inseparable from economic and political anarchy had spread widely throughout the country. The Russian peasantry had been for centuries welded together by the barbarous discipline of the land and bent down from above by the iron discipline of Tsardom. The state of our economic development had undermined the one discipline and the Revolution destroyed the other. Psychologically, the Revolution meant an awakening of human individuality in the peasant masses. The anarchical form in which this awakening found expression was but the inevitable result of the previous repression. It will only be possible to arrive at the establishment of a new order of things, based on the control of production by the producers themselves, by a general internal deliverance from the anarchical forms of the Revolution.

On the other hand, the propertied classes, although forcibly removed from power, refuse to give up their positions without a fight. The Revolution has raised in an acute form the question of private property in land and the means of production, that is, the question. of the life and death of the exploiting classes. Politically this means a constant – sometlmes covert, sometimes overt – bitter civil war. In its turn, civil war necessarily brings in its train anarchist tendencies in the movement of the labouring masses.

In view of the dislocation of finance, industry, transport, and the food supply, a protracted civil war, therefore, is bound to cause gigantic difficulties in the way of the constructive work of organization. Nevertheless, the Soviet regime has every right to look forward to the future with confidence. Only an exact inventory of the resources of the country; only a national universal plan of organization of production ; only a prudent and economical distribution of all products can save the country. And this is just Socialism. Either a descent to the state of a mere colony, or a Socialist transformation – such is the alternative which faces our country.

This war has undermined the foundations of the entire capitalist world, and in this lies our invincible strength. The Imperialist ring which is choking us will be broken by a proletarian revolution. We no more doubt this for one moment than we ever doubted the final downfall of Tsardorn during the long decades of our underground work.

To struggle, to close our ranks, to establish discipline of labour and a Socialist order, to increase the productivity of labour, and not to be balked by any obstacle – such is our watchword. History is working for us. A proletarian revolution in Europe and America will break out sooner or later, and it will free not only the Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and Finland, but the whole of suffering humanity.

Grease Monkey’s Sonata-Mickey Rooney’s “Quicksand” (1950)-A Film Review

Grease Monkey’s Sonata-Mickey Rooney’s “Quicksand” (1950)-A Film Review





DVD Review 

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

[This is a DVD that I found of all places in a “for sale” bin of discontinued material at the Cambridge Public Library several weeks ago. This while my transition to emeritus and the ending of the grind of film reviewing under deadlines and Sandy Salmon my replacement on the day to day work was in progress. I had offered the film for Sandy to review knowing (and hoping) from long friendship and competition (mostly friendly as is the case among most film reviewers outside of New York City) that he didn’t give what we called in the old neighborhood where I grew up a “rat’s ass” about reviewing a 1950s film noir. So here I am again in the saddle for a minute.) 


Quicksand, starring Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Peter Lorre, Barbara Bates, directed by Irving Pichel yet another Hollywood figure blacklisted in the red scare Cold War night when the powers- to-be in Tinsel-town and their cowardly hangers-on took a dive on funny little things like constitutional rights-and peoples’ livelihoods, yeah I am on my soapbox again, 1950  

Forgot the film noir aspect of the film under review, Mickey Rooney’s Quicksand, although only now is this minor classic noir and probably Mickey’s best performance against type (he spent his early career as the “ah, shucks” cinematic version of Andy Hardy of that classic series of young adult books) being recognized as such. This plotline is strictly from Sister Cecelia’s, maybe Sister Mary Rose’s, or maybe Sister Delores’, hell, maybe all of them, lessons from Sunday school at old Saint Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in my old home town. The lesson: once you go down the slippery slope of sin (and probably crime as they were probably the same thing in their imaginations) then there is a serious rollover effect, serious consequences. Yeah, and obviously Mickey’s character Danny, the lowly grease monkey, you know, auto mechanic either didn’t pay attention or was absent those Sundays when whoever was running the Sunday school operation where he worshipped was holding forth about that very prospect. No question, he uncorked every possible evil as he went down the road to perdition.        

Funny from a first look at Danny he didn’t look like a guy who would wind up doing from one to ten in some California penal colony once the dust settled. But then you didn’t know then what steered him down the garden path. Of course then we didn’t know that he would run smack daub into a low rent femme fatale, Vera, played by Jeanne Cagney, who was serving them off the arm at a hash house where the local grease monkeys filled their lunch buckets and he made the fatal mistake of dating her up (a mistake as well since she was too tall for him, maybe too blond as well). Once you know all he was doing was trying to move might and main to get her down among the downy billows then all his fevered actions made a kind of off-hand sense as every guy, including this reviewer, has had first-hand experience with if he goes for the femmes. (Frankly this Vera didn’t have the look of steam-infested career waitress, looked more like a bar girl or a roper on a scam but you never know what has a gal serving them off the arm when she is down on her luck, on her uppers).

Okay here is what the slippery slope looked like if you follow along (and suspend disbelief as well). It seemed after making that hot date for that very night Danny was cash-shy, needed some dough to carry some weight with Vera. Everybody was tapped out so, and remember, this is where he falls down, gets ready to take the big step-off if he doesn’t catch a break, he grabbed a measly twenty buck from the skinflint larcenous auto shop boss’s till. Just an overnight loan. No problem because some guy who owned him more than twenty would cover him the next day and that hot date would be worth it he could tell. Problem: the boss’s accountant showed up early the next day for some other reason so he would need to cover the twenty bucks fast. He can’t get the dough to cover so naturally he gets the fever-driven bright idea that if he goes and buys an expensive watch on credit for a hundred bucks (remember this is before cash-back credit cards could have saved his butt even if they were charging usurious rates) and then hocked it for thirty bucks.

That idea worked well enough for Danny in the short term, got him a reprieve from the boss’s accountant although just barely and with a very jaundiced eye but then the next hurdle showed up at the garage-the dreaded “repo” man. Seems that in California in those days you didn’t actually own, couldn’t own, an item on credit until it was fully paid for, now too if I am not mistaken. The repo man gave him twenty four hours to ante up the C-note or he was going to stir for grand larceny. What to do, desperately what to do since a hundred bucks was way out of his league on such short notice. Simple, our Danny boy bops a drunk carrying plenty of dough on the head in darkened parking lot (let’s call that one assault and battery in the night time and armed robbery, okay and you get an idea that Danny’s wheels have gotten well off the track). He is in the clear now, his miseries are over as he handed the repo man his blood piece.

Of course Danny is just a misbegotten grease monkey and not some kind of career criminal so when he flashes fifty dollar bills Vera’s way she knows he is the guy who bopped the well-known drunk. Worse, the guy she used to work for at the local penny arcade who seemingly still has a thing for her, Nick, a seedy guy no question, played by the lovely Peter Lorre, knows he grabbed the dough. Has the handkerchief he used as a mask doing the robbery. Nick’s price for keeping quiet-a new car from the auto shop. Or else.                
  
There’s more, believe there is more in this Dante-like descend into hell. Danny grabs the car alright and thinks he is back on easy street and can now enjoy his new honey in quiet, maybe get under the sheets with her finally. Nope, that larcenous auto shop boss has his own scam. He accused Danny of stealing the car (he also accused others in the shop of the same crime in order to blackmail them). His price for keeping quiet three thou for a two thousand blue book car. Jesus. That is where the quick-thinking hustling Vera comes in to save his bacon, maybe. Seems that Nick besides running that seaside arcade does some business in cashing checks for guys-a low rent operation that is still with us unfortunately. She knows where Nick keeps the dough and it is not in a bank. So Danny goes and grabs the dough, hey who would have thought, thirty-six hundred. Now he is on easy street and can get back to the serious business of running around with that femme Vera.

Forget it. Vera, who was a drifter from hunger just like Danny, had her big eyes on a mink coat and while Danny was off doing something she bought the coat for the cash she was holding for him. Eighteen hundred bucks, her half of the heist according to her thinking, and not a bad price when you think about in the days when women craved mink and it wasn’t politically incorrect, very politically incorrect to wear fur. Danny went crazy and finally saw she was little more than a bent whore. But that left Danny short with his boss. He went to the boss with his eighteen hundred-take it or leave it. The boss took it naturally since he was a larcenous character. Except that was a stall-he was holding out for three thou and was calling the coppers when Danny freaked out and strangled him. Murder, one, the big step off at the Q no doubt. Grabbed his gun too on the way out knowing he was nothing but a desperado now, an outlaw. All for a twenty buck deal to go around with a floozy.            

Things looked grim, very grim as he was going on the lam to Mexico, or someplace very far away from California. This is where we get a little sneak redemption. See Danny had thrown over a nice girl, Helen, played by Barbara Bates, who would have been right up his alley if he was Andy Hardy but he had been in throes to that damn femme. The thing was this Helen was still carrying the torch for him, carrying that flame despite knowing that he was in a heck of a lot of trouble. Yeah, true love which he finally realizes he could have, should have held onto for dear life. She would share his fate whatever happened. Some people are like that, thankfully, thankfully for Danny. He tried to talk her out of going with him but no use. As they try to blow town his damn automobile blows a gasket. So he is back in the bright idea business. He, they will, at gunpoint stop a car on the highway and force the driver to take them away to Mexico. So add on hijacking, kidnapping and who knows what else to the total. And who knows what Helen will get for being his sidekick on this part of the descent.

Then Danny, Helen draw a convenient little break. The guy they kidnapped was a non-plussed lawyer who asked for the whole story. Asked as well whether that auto shop boss was really dead which would have been a tough dollar to get around for what started out as a twenty dollar petty larceny case. As it turned out that auto shop boss was not dead but had just been unconscious. Free, free at last. Well not quite. There was too much of a mess to get him off scot-free so he would be doing that one to ten. Guess who will be waiting for him coming out stir? But wouldn’t Danny have been better off having listened to Sister Cecelia, Sister Mary Rose, Sister Delores, hell, maybe all three of them, about the slippery slope of sin. If you are a noir fan and can find this one take a look. A hidden gem of a film.