***Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s-In The Heart Of The Late Dance Night

Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which graced an “oldies but goodies” CD in a retro-classic (ouch!) rock and roll series. The photo, all black and white as befits a 1950s Kodak moment from Mother’s family photo album before color splashed photos, film, society after the red scare cold war cultural freeze, as might be expected, shows a he, let’s call him Jimmy Callahan all suited up, tie and white shirt, shirt collar maybe a little tight for a guy who usually wears open collar shirts (or jerseys when he is busting through the opposition’s line in his hungry search for gridiron glory and a ticket to State after highs school and a big chance to leave the dust of old North Adamsville behind, way behind) and a she, let’s call her Kathy Kelly all in fancy dress and she too maybe just a little uncomfortable in such attire since her daily wear runs to blouses and skirts), so both in formal attire dancing, dancing that last sweet teenage high school, maybe the senior prom, dance. Or it had better be, better be the last dance and had better some special occasion since one or the other, or both, have some things to say to each other, else this scene will turn to ashes.

*******
“I don’t understand why it took you so long to ask me out, Mr. James Callahan,” murmured Kathy Kelly as they clasped hands in anticipation of the last dance. Jimmy mumbled, or it seemed like mumbling to Kathy, that he was shy, that he was busy, that he wasn’t sure that she even noticed him, or if she did notice him, liked him. Kids’ stuff, typical guy kids’ stuff, thought Kathy. But just now, unbelievably, the last dance, the last sweet time high school dance before facing the red scare Cold War world and whatever it held out in that 1957 night, was to begin. But that world stuff was for tomorrow tonight Kathy has finally, finally, snagged the boy she has been mooning over for, well, let’s leave it as a long time, long before rock ‘n’ roll made it easier for a guy like Jimmy Callahan to ask a girl like Kathy Kelly out on to the dance floor without having to get all balled up in following the leader close dancing, sweaty palms and all. Now though was the time for slow dancing, slow last dance dancing and two-left feet, two left-shoeless feet, heck, two left-snow-shoed feet or not, Jimmy, as Kathy beamed to herself, was snagged.

Kathy looking resplendent in her Filene’s finest formal dress, complete with lacy see-though shawl, and topped off with a Jimmy corsage, a corsage that spoke more powerfully to her victory than ten million dances, and that finally felt that it all was worth it feeling like another ten million. Worth the every trick in the book that she had to pull out of the hat in order that he would “ask” her to their senior prom, the last chance Kathy would get to claim her Jimmy before he left for State later in the summer. Just that hand-clasped moment she hoped, hoped to the stars above, that they played her “they” song, a song that she had been listening to with Jimmy last dance dancing in mind since, well, you already know, a long time.

That right choice might also be the last chance to put her mark on him, although earlier in the evening she sensed something, something unsaid, when they played 16 Candles by the Crests and Jimmy mumbled something about how he was sorry that he couldn’t make it to her 16th birthday party, although Kathy had gone through six levels of hell to try and get him there. Then he kind of backed off when they played Patsy Cline’s cover of Crazy and right after that he said he didn’t understand how someone could keep on “carrying the torch” when the love affair was over. And he was definitely moody when they played I’m Sorry by Brenda Lee, calling it drippy. He lightened up a little when they played in In The Still Of The Night by the Five Satins and said he loved doo wop, proving it by knowing all the words and doing some fine harmony in his deep bass voice.

Suddenly some awfully familiar music started up and the last dance began, the last dance ending with Only You by The Platters. And just as the Platters got into the heart of the song, the heart-felt “only you”part, Jimmy, red-faced, shy, two left-feet Jimmy, asked Miss Kathy Kelly if she would come up and visit him at State in the fall. Ah, very heaven.

On Lenin’s Birthday- THE HANDBOOK FOR REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE IN THE AGE OF IMPERIALISM

BOOK REVIEW

 

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK, 1962

 

 An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russian in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-mined section of the Bolshevik leadership. Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willfully, that had arisen in the European left and attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.

 

 

The Russian Revolution and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party. Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their current leaderships, and so on.   Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet  with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

 

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, unfortunately. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American Party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations like a rope supports a hanging man.  However, as part of my political experiences in America  around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned  Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.   

 

***When Beat Was Neat - An Angel Elegy In A Dust-Filled World- For Allen Ginsberg   

 

DVD Review

Allen Ginsberg: An Elegy, Allen Ginsberg and assorted “beat” and non-“beat” modern poets and admirers, 2004

If a rough dictionary definition of an elegy is a poem of lament and praises for the dead then this little documentary tribute to the seemingly very inelegant (life-style, unkempt beard, rumpled clothes at least until later in life, the professorial life) Allen Ginsberg is the correct term here in celebration of his life that ended in 1997. I have discussed elsewhere the central role that Ginsberg played in both the “beat” literary movement of the 1950s and the godfather of the “hippie” counterculture “expressive” movement of the 1960s. I have also mentioned the influence that he had (and they over him as more material from this period, especially from his “Journals” have come to publication) on his fellow literary figures from the earlier period, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady and too many others to list here properly.

I have also spoken about the influence and affect such classic Ginsberg poems as Howl and Kaddish had on me when I first read and then heard them. No, not at the time they were written and read, especially that famous (or infamous) reading of Howl in that ‘garage’ gallery filled to the brim with wines and wind songs in San Francisco in 1956. What could a ten year old boy from the 1950s housing projects make of  a Whitmanesque-driven  plea to rethink the contours of modern American industrial society, especially of a then pious Catholic boy in regard to a Jewish writer who swore and talked about homosexuality in a positive sense, to boot? Moreover, Brother Ginsberg did not “speak” to me even during the height of the “hippie” movement but rather a little latter when I actually heard his work read both by himself and others. The essential blues rhythm beat that I believe influenced and drove his work finally meshed with the blues beat in my own head.   

And that last point from the last sentence is exactly the point the producers of this effect have tried to reach for by bringing many of the poets from Ginsberg’s time, most importantly Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder,  and some of those who were influenced by him to read from his work and share their recollections. Additionally, as seems to be just right for a poet who whatever his vast literary abilities was very aware of the need to play the troubadour to get his work before the public, there are plenty of segments of his reading himself, especially the lyrical Father Death Blues poem which ends the presentation. Kudos to all kinds of people here from the poem readers to those like Anne Charters who have spent their whole academic careers trying to get the word out about the importance of the “beats” to the modern American literary tradition. Yes, beat and blues that is the essential Ginsberg language. It might be underappreciated now, but we need it more than ever as we face the “monster’ of today’s version of the American post-industrial society that kind of snuck up on us after Brother Ginsberg warned us away from that fate. 

 

Honor Vladimir Lenin On His Birthday

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT

Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. I made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space earlier (see review in April 2006 archives). I made some special points here last year about the life of Rosa Luxemburg (see review in January 2006 archives). This year it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, to define himself politically. Probably the best way to do that is to look at Lenin’s experiences through the prism of his fellow revolutionary, early political opponent and eventual co-leader of the Bolshevik Revolution Leon Trotsky.

A Look At The Young Lenin By A Fellow Revolutionary

The Young Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1972

The now slightly receding figure of the 20^th century Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin founder and leader of the Bolshevik Party and guiding light of the October 1917 Russian Revolution and the first attempt at creating a socialist society has been the subject to many biographies. Some of those efforts undertaken during the time of the former Soviet government dismantled in 1991-92, especially under the Stalin regime, bordered on or were merely the hagiographic. Others, reflecting the ups and downs of the post World War II Cold War, painted an obscene diabolical picture, excluding Lenin’s horns, and in some cases not even attempting to exclude those. In virtually all cases these effort centered on Lenin’s life from the period of the rise of the Bolshevik Social Democratic faction in 1903 until his early death in 1924. In short, the early formative period of his life in the backwaters of provincial Russia rate a gloss over. Lenin’s fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky, although some ten years younger than him, tries to trace that early stage of his life in order to draw certain lessons. It is in that context that Trotsky’s work contains some important insights about the development of revolutionary figures and their beginnings.

Although Trotsky’s little work, originally intended to be part of a full biography of Lenin, never served its purpose of educating the youth during his lifetime and the story of it discovery is rather interesting one should note that this is neither a scholarly work in the traditional sense nor is it completely free from certain fawning over Lenin by Trotsky. Part of this was determined by the vicissitudes of the furious Trotsky-Stalin fights for the soul of the Russian Revolution as Trotsky tried to uncover the layers of misinformation about Lenin’s early life. Part of it resulted from Trotsky’s status of junior partner to Lenin and also to his late coming over to Bolshevism. And part of it is, frankly, to indirectly contrast Lenin’s and his own road to Marxism. That said, this partial biography stands up very well as an analysis of the times that the young Lenin lived in, the events that affected his development and the idiosyncrasies of his own personality that drove him toward revolutionary conclusions. In short, Trotsky’s work is a case study in the proposition that revolutionaries are made not born.

To a greater extent than would be true today in a celebrity-conscious world many parts of Lenin’s early life are just not verifiable. Partially that is due to the nature of record keeping in the Russia of the 19^th century. Partially it is because of the necessity to rely on not always reliable police records. Another part is that the average youth, and here Lenin was in some ways no exception, really have a limited noteworthy record to present for public inspection. That despite the best efforts of Soviet hagiography to make it other wise. Nevertheless Trotsky does an admirable job of detailing the high and low lights of agrarian Russian society and the vagaries of the land question in the second half of the 19^thcentury. One should note that Trotsky grew up on a Ukrainian farm and therefore is no stranger to many of the same kind of problems that Lenin had to work through concerning the solution to the agrarian crisis, the peasant question. Most notably, is that the fight for the Russian revolution that every one knew was coming could only be worked out through the fight for influence over the small industrial working class and socialism.

I would note that for the modern young reader that two things Trotsky analyzes are relevant. The first is the relationship between Lenin and his older brother Alexander who, when he became politicized, joined a remnant of the populist People’s Will terrorist organization and attempted to asassinate the Tsar. For his efforts he and his co-conspirators were hanged. I have always been intrigued by the effect that this event had on Lenin’s development. On the one hand, as a budding young intellectual, would Lenin have attempted to avenge his brother’s fate with his same revolutionary intellectual political program? Or would Lenin go another way to intersect the coming revolutionary either through its agrarian component or the budding Marxist Social Democratic element? We know the answer but Trotsky provides a nicely reasoned analysis of the various influences that were at work in the young Lenin. That alone is worth the price of admission here.

The other point I have already alluded to above. Revolutionaries are made not born, although particular life circumstances may create certain more favorable conditions. Soviet historians in their voluntarist hay day tried to make of Lenin a superhuman phenomenon- a fully formed Marxist intellectual from his early youth. Trotsky once again distills the essence of Lenin’s struggle to make sense of the world, the Russian world in the first instance, as he tries to find a way out the Russian political impasse. Trotsky’s work only goes up to 1892-93, the Samara period, the period before Lenin took off for Petersburg and greener pastures. He left Samara a fully committed Marxist but it would be many years, with many polemics and by using many political techniques before he himself became a Bolshevik, as we know it. And that, young friends, is a cautionary tale that can be taken into the 21^st century. Read on.

THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, Part 3

BOOK REVIEW

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1928-29), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1981

If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space under this byline for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.

Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.

The period under review is the time after Trotsky and the leading elements of the United Opposition were expelled from the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International by the Stalinist/Bukharinist bloc who controlled the party and the International. The Zinovievist section of the Opposition capitulated almost immediately. However, the bulk of the Opposition led by Trotsky remained in opposition. In 1928 after the political defeat of the United Opposition Trotsky was sent into internal exile at Alma Ata in the far reaches of Russia. Other leading elements of the Opposition were sent elsewhere. Thus, adding to the political defeat was the attempt to physically disburse and breakup the opposition by Stalin and his henchmen. Nevertheless under very trying circumstances the Left Opposition retained some organizational and literary existence. In 1929 even the idea of this disbursed internal opposition became too much for Stalin and Trotsky was sent to external exile in Turkey, never to return to the Soviet Union.

During this period Stalin was also attempting, as a result of previous erroneous domestic and international policies, to shake off his alliance with the Bukharinite Right Opposition and take sole control of the Russian party and the International. His success in doing that allowed him to pursue a ‘left’ course in relationship to the rich peasants which culminated later in the forced collectivization of agriculture and intensified industrialization under his concept of top down central planning. The confusion over this change in policy led many in the Left Opposition to capitulate and was the source of much debate and rancor as demonstrated in several of the writings in this volume. This is also the period of the ‘third period’ in Comintern policy which declared that the final impending crisis of international capitalism was at hand and that revolutionary upheavals were on the order of the day everywhere. This policy was to have catastrophic effects, particularly in Germany, as the Communist isolated themselves from the base of the Social Democratic workers at a time of the rising tie of fascism. We all know the results and it was not pretty.

Unlike the previous two volumes reviewed under this byline no individual piece of writing sticks out here. However, Communists have always prided themselves on their internationalism and so Who is Leading the Comintern Today? is the article that seems to best demonstrate the problems of the Stalinist international policy during this period. Previously the mistakes in revolutionary strategy had been a result of mistaken evaluations of the political situation or the immaturity of the various, mainly European, parties. However, particularly with the false policies on the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee and toward the Chinese Revolution a conscious anti-revolutionary policy set in. That change from international revolution as the ultimate defense of the Soviet Union to turning foreign Communist parties into border guards for the whims of Soviet foreign policy was to continue until the liquidation of the Comintern in 1943.

Trotsky in this article, with his usual insight and rapier pen, looks not only at the implications of these policies but the change of personal which affected the way the policies would be implemented. Stalin, apparently, put every broken leader, failed revolutionary, careerist and Menshevik skater he could get his hands on to staff the International. Revolutions can not be made by such elements but, as Trotsky points out, they can surely be destroyed by them. He highlights the case of Martynov, a long time right-wing Menshevik leader, who came over to the Bolsheviks in 1923. He had stood opposed to everything the Bolsheviks in their prime stood for. Now he was a leading light theoretician of the Chinese defeat. Nothing more needs to be said. Needless to say we have paid dearly for the victory of such Themidorians. Read on.       

 

ON REVOLUTIONARIES AND MORTALITY

THE DUTY OF A REVOLUTIONARY IS TO MAKE THE REVOLUTION-OR FALL TRYING

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I was recently asked by a young militant leftist of vague socialist sympathies why an old militant like myself was still trying to put up what apparently appears to be a forlorn task in my life time- the ‘good fight’ for socialism. My short answer to her was that I was doing it for her. It is true that each political generation will come to terms with the socialist tasks of its era in its own way. However, it would be a serious mistake on the part of young socialist militants to ignore the lessons of the past. Such things as the lessons of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Paris Commune, the early history of the American Communist Party and later the Socialist Workers Party now seemingly in the historic mist of time to today’s young militants need examination. Old militants may not be able to immediately bring about the socialist vision that animated their youth but we sure as hell can pass on the touch to the next generation. Moreover, the links to that past by death, attrition and abandonment of politics by earlier cadre have become extremely attenuated, particularly here in the heartland of world imperialism, and the relatively few of us who still remember that past and who are still fighting that ‘good fight’ are duty bound to pass on what we know.

Now for a little longer answer to that young militant’s question. I came of political age in the 1960’s, a time of much political ferment and many political mistakes on the part of the young leftists of my generation, what I have euphemistically called elsewhere the generation of ’68. Personally, I came, kicking and screaming, relatively late to the Marxist worldview after abandoning left liberal and then soft socialist political positions. I can, however, state with some pride that the lateness of my conversion probably helped to keep my convictions that much more solid. Certainly nothing politically over the past 30 plus years has changed my basis view of the necessity of socialism and the probability that a knock down, drag out fight against the imperialists will be necessary to achieve it. If nothing else that is the example I wish to set by my writings and political actions.

Truth to tell, nobody ever said that individual revolutionaries would live to see the socialist society in their life time. If any thought so they bought the wrong ticket. While it is certainly true that individual activists make their own judgments about the extend of their commitment to their political goals, especially something as seemingly esoteric as the hard fight for socialism, this wicked world holds too many surprises to base one’s political calculations on the dream of actually being a commissar in a soviet society. Our models, however, should be Marx who after 1848 never came close to see the society he predicted but still fought savagely for his world view until his death. And Lenin, who only saw a partial and much distorted completion of his world view before his untimely death. And Trotsky who fought to save the Russian Revolution and later in exile fought to create a new revolutionary international died at his post with his work still uncompleted. Can we do less?

Finally, let me give a specific example that has sustained me throughout the years. As part of my early Marxist political activity I did a massive amount of political reading, especially about the American socialist movement. In that reading I was drawn to the struggle of the American Trotskyists in the 1930’s who as followers of Trotsky’s Left International were trying to create a new revolutionary communist party in opposition to the Stalinized American Communist Party. As part of that process they tried to regroup with other active left wing anti-Stalinist organizations. One such successful regroupment was with the Workers Party that had led the famous Toledo Auto-Lite strike in 1934 and which along with other later regroupments formed the Socialist Workers Party.

One of the leaders of the Workers Party was New York University Professor James Burnham. Burnham was a high-powered intellectual who could write very persuasively and wrote many articles and pamphlets that militants today can still profitably read. In 1940 he led a major split from the SWP over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. He in turn split from Marxism and later would end up a die-hard anti-Communist in league with conservative William Buckley’s National Review. Such are vagaries of politics, but that is not the main point here. In his heyday in the Socialist Workers Party Burnham was asked by fellow leader James P. Cannon to take a desperately necessary more central role in the leadership of the organization. In response Burnham stated that he personally could, or would not, do so as he was uncertain whether the socialist goals of the organization were attainable in his life-time. That, fellow militants, is exactly the bad example that I have been fighting against most of my political life. I remain at my post.

ON REVOLUTIONARIES AND MORTALITY

THE DUTY OF A REVOLUTIONARY IS TO MAKE THE REVOLUTION-OR FALL TRYING

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

I was recently asked by a young militant leftist of vague socialist sympathies why an old militant like myself was still trying to put up what apparently appears to be a forlorn task in my life time- the ‘good fight’ for socialism. My short answer to her was that I was doing it for her. It is true that each political generation will come to terms with the socialist tasks of its era in its own way. However, it would be a serious mistake on the part of young socialist militants to ignore the lessons of the past. Such things as the lessons of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Paris Commune, the early history of the American Communist Party and later the Socialist Workers Party now seemingly in the historic mist of time to today’s young militants need examination. Old militants may not be able to immediately bring about the socialist vision that animated their youth but we sure as hell can pass on the touch to the next generation. Moreover, the links to that past by death, attrition and abandonment of politics by earlier cadre have become extremely attenuated, particularly here in the heartland of world imperialism, and the relatively few of us who still remember that past and who are still fighting that ‘good fight’ are duty bound to pass on what we know.

Now for a little longer answer to that young militant’s question. I came of political age in the 1960’s, a time of much political ferment and many political mistakes on the part of the young leftists of my generation, what I have euphemistically called elsewhere the generation of ’68. Personally, I came, kicking and screaming, relatively late to the Marxist worldview after abandoning left liberal and then soft socialist political positions. I can, however, state with some pride that the lateness of my conversion probably helped to keep my convictions that much more solid. Certainly nothing politically over the past 30 plus years has changed my basis view of the necessity of socialism and the probability that a knock down, drag out fight against the imperialists will be necessary to achieve it.  If nothing else that is the example I wish to set by my writings and political actions.

Truth to tell, nobody ever said that individual revolutionaries would live to see the socialist society in their life time. If any thought so they bought the wrong ticket. While it is certainly true that individual activists make their own judgments about the extend of their commitment to their political goals, especially something as seemingly esoteric as the hard fight for socialism, this wicked world holds too many surprises to base one’s political calculations on the dream of actually being a commissar in a soviet society. Our models, however, should be Marx who after 1848 never came close to see the society he predicted but still fought savagely for his worldview until his death. And Lenin, who only saw a partial and much distorted completion of his world view before his untimely death. And Trotsky who fought to save the Russian Revolution and later in exile fought to create a new revolutionary international died at his post with his work still uncompleted. Can we do less?

Finally, let me give a specific example that has sustained me throughout the years. As part of my early Marxist political activity I did a massive amount of political reading, especially about the American socialist movement. In that reading I was drawn to the struggle of the American Trotskyists in the 1930’s who as followers of Trotsky’s Left International were trying to create a new revolutionary communist party in opposition to the Stalinized American Communist Party. As part of that process they tried to regroup with other active left wing anti-Stalinist organizations. One such successful regroupment was with the Workers Party that had led the famous Toledo Auto-Lite strike in 1934 and which along with other later regroupments formed the Socialist Workers Party.

 

One of the leaders of the Workers Party was New York University Professor James Burnham. Burnham was a high-powered intellectual who could write very persuasively and wrote many articles and pamphlets that militants today can still profitably read. In 1940 he led a major split from the SWP over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. He in turn split from Marxism and later would end up a die-hard anti-Communist in league with conservative William Buckley’s National Review. Such are vagaries of politics, but that is not the main point here. In his heyday in the Socialist Workers Party Burnham was asked by fellow leader James P. Cannon to take a desperately necessary more central role in the leadership of the organization. In response Burnham stated that he personally could or would not do so as he was uncertain whether the socialist goals of the organization were attainable in his life time. That, fellow militants, is exactly the bad example that I have been fighting against most of my political life. I remain at my post.

***HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION

COMMENTARY

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT

Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Lenin needs no special commendation. I made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space earlier so I would like to make some points here about the life of Rosa Luxemburg. These comments came at a time when the question of a woman President was the buzz in the political atmosphere in the United States in the lead up to the upcoming 2008 elections. Rosa, who died almost a century ago, puts all such pretenders to so-called ‘progressive’ political leadership in the shade.

The early Marxist movement, like virtually all progressive political movements in the past, was heavily dominated by men. I say this as a statement of fact and not as something that was necessarily intentional or good. It is only fairly late in the 20^thcentury that the political emancipation of women, mainly through the granting of the vote earlier in the century, led to mass participation of women in politics as voters or politicians. Although, socialists, particularly revolutionary socialists, have placed the social, political and economic emancipation of women at the center of their various programs from the early days that fact was honored more in the breech than the observance.

All of this is by way of saying that the political career of the physically frail but intellectually robust Rosa Luxemburg was all the more remarkable because she had the capacity to hold her own politically and theoretically with the male leadership of the international social democratic movement in the pre-World War I period. While the writings of the likes of then leading German Social Democratic theoretician Karl Kautsky are safely left in the basket Rosa’s writings today still retain a freshness, insightfulness and vigor that anti-imperialist militants can benefit from by reading. Her book Accumulation of Capital alone would place her in the select company of important Marxist thinkers.

But Rosa Luxemburg was more than a Marxist thinker. She was also deeply involved in the daily political struggles pushing for left-wing solutions. Yes, the more bureaucratic types, comfortable in their party and trade union niches, hated her for it (and she, in turn, hated them) but she fought hard for her positions on an anti-class collaborationist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist left-wing of the international of the social democratic movement throughout this period. And she did this not merely as an adjunct leader of a women’s section of a social democratic party but as a fully established leader of left-wing men and women, as a fully socialist leader. One of the interesting facts about her life is how little she wrote on the women question as a separate issue from the broader socialist question of the emancipation of women. Militant women today take note.

One of the easy ways for leftists, particularly later leftists influenced by Stalinist ideology, to denigrate the importance of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought and theoretical contributions to Marxism was to write her off as too soft on the question of the necessity of a hard vanguard revolutionary organization to lead the socialist revolution. Underpinning that theme was the accusation that she relied too much on the spontaneous upsurge of the masses as a corrective to the lack of hard organization or the impediments that reformist socialist elements threw up to derail the revolutionary process. A close examination of her own organization, The Socialist Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, shows that this was not the case; this was a small replica of a Bolshevik-type organization. That organization, moreover, made several important political blocs with the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the defeat of the Russian revolution of 1905. Yes, there were political differences between the organizations, particularly over the critical question for both the Polish and Russian parties of the correct approach to the right of national self-determination, but the need for a hard organization does not appear to be one of them.

Furthermore, no less a stalwart Bolshevik revolutionary than Leon Trotsky, writing in her defense in the 1930’s, dismissed charges of Rosa’s supposed ‘spontaneous uprising’ fetish as so much hot air. Her tragic fate, murdered with the complicity of her former Social Democratic comrades, after the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919 (at the same time as her comrade, Karl Liebknecht), had causes related to the smallness of the group, its political immaturity and indecisiveness than in its spontaneousness. If one is to accuse Rosa Luxemburg of any political mistake it is in not pulling the Spartacist group out of Kautsky’s Independent Social Democrats (itself a split from the main Social Democratic party during the war, over the war issue ) sooner than late 1918. However, as the future history of the communist movement would painfully demonstrate revolutionaries have to take advantage of the revolutionary opportunities that come their way, even if not the most opportune or of their own making.

All of the above controversies aside, let me be clear, Rosa Luxemburg did not then need nor does she now need a certificate of revolutionary good conduct from today’s leftists, the reader of this space or this writer. For her revolutionary opposition to World War I when it counted, at a time when many supposed socialists had capitulated to their respective ruling classes including her comrades in the German Social Democratic Party, she holds a place of honor. Today, as we face the fourth year of the war in Iraq we could use a few more Rosas, and a few less tepid, timid parliamentary opponents. For this revolutionary opposition she went to jail like her comrade Karl Liebknecht. For revolutionaries it goes with the territory. And in jail she wrote, she always wrote, about the fight against the ongoing imperialist war (especially in the Junius pamphlets about the need for a Third International). Yes, Rosa was at her post then. And she died at her post later in the Spartacist fight doing her internationalist duty trying to lead the German socialist revolution the success of which would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution. This is a woman leader I could follow who, moreover, places today’s bourgeois women parliamentary politicians in the shade. As the political atmosphere gets heated up over the next couple years, remember what a real fighting revolutionary woman politician looked like. Remember Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the Revolution.

***THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

THE AGE OF REVOLUTION, 1789-1848, E.J. HOBSBAWN, THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY, NEW YORK, 1962

The eminent British Marxist historian E.J. Hobsbawn has written, over an extended period, several books highlighting the key trends in the modern history since the English Revolution, particularly modern revolutionary history. The book under review is to this writer the best of the series. Why? The period from the French Revolution to the Revolutions of 1848 is the decisive period of the age of democratic revolution, the necessary precursor to all later socialist and communist movements. This is the period when, not without setbacks and dashed hopes for the laboring masses, those masses began their first definitive appearance on the world- historic stage, even if at that time only in the wake of the victorious bourgeoisie. Re-reading the book in 2013, however, makes one realize that the fight started in the‘golden age of the democratic revolution’ has suffered some regression and many of the issues like religious toleration, meaningful political representation, the elimination of economic inequality, the right to national self-determination, the fight against imperialism, etc. that one would have thought had been decisively settled then are still in need of further struggle.

Professor Hobsbawn’s central theme is the intertwining of the spreading of political revolution unleashed by the great revolution in France in 1789 and the establishment of the rudiments of industrial society by the developments, primarily in England at that time, of the Industrial Revolution. The implications inherent in this form of thematic presentation cannot be underestimated in the development of modern society as we know it. It is, perhaps, hard to understand today the tremendous effect that the changing of individuals from subjects to an arbitrary sovereign to citizens of a messy democracy had on unleashing the energies of society. It is not unfair to state that that process is what changed people, at least in the European/ North American land masses, into individuals from a previously largely undifferentiated mass. Moreover, the rise and definitive victory of industrialization held out the promise, if only the promise, of taking the struggle against scarcity-the struggle for daily existence- off the agenda as the motive force of history to be replaced by more communal and cultural pursuits. Ah, but, unfortunately, that is still the music of the future.

Professor Hobsbawn is, however, not merely an ideologue for these two above-mentioned trends of history as they played out at the time but further does a masterful job of connecting all the conflicting tendencies of the period. If at the end of the day some attenuated form of democracy (or rather liberalism, which is not the same thing) triumphed and capitalism, very ugly warts and all, also was victorious those were not necessarily the only outcomes possible in this period. To that end, Hobsbawn analyzes the land question and the related question of the displacement of populations which created the urban proletariat and gave rise to great cities; the tensions between the liberalism of the middle- classes and the rough democratic spirit of the laboring masses; the critical role of science, particularly the applied sciences in giving a boost to industrial organization; the fight against religious obscurantism and the counter-attack by religious reaction; the unusually prominent role of the arts and artists as spokesmen for democratic causes during this period; and, the beginnings of the attempts by the laboring masses to exercise their own political program culminating in the revolutions of 1848. All these trends bring us to the age of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. If you want a thoughtful, incisive overview of an important period of the history of humankind this is your stop.

***The Cold War Dream- With My Week With Marilyn In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

She, Marilyn she, all curves, slopes and harmless teeter, enflamed the red scare cold war 1950s night, the night of the long knives, the night of the snitch and the stabber- in- the- back, the night of the man in the gray-flannel suit, the night of go along or else, the night of the freeze- frame cultural stop. She, Marilyn she, enflamed fathers’ flickered hearts, fathers worn out from endless struggles against the haphazard, uneven economic circumstances of the great depression whirlwind dust bowl which drove them to despair and more recently some shallow water Pacific atolls, some damn coral reef , or some desolate Norman beach, slogging east and west to break the back of some evil men. And thinking, thinking that father’s wit thinking while blanked out in some father’s newspaper night chair, or better, in some restless sultry rumpled sheets night bed, the little woman harmlessly next to him sleeping the sleep of the just, mind you just thinking- hey why couldn’t I get next to that, why couldn’t I who sacrificed this and that get next to that blonde goddess. Hell, they say she likes men, likes them by the score (before spitting them out posthaste but how were they to know that if they didn’t get their chance next to that). Maybe she just needed a solid guy, a guy who worked as a welder down at the shipyard (or fill in the blank for the work-a-day world job) to straighten her out.

Oh yes, then snapping back to reality there was the question, always the question, of that little woman harmlessly sleeping next to him, about her fate without him in a mated world (and she a Catholic and so really up against it in the marriage lottery), about those two young boys sleeping another sleep of the just in the next room (already neck-deep in ideas od college pushed by that little woman so they can get ahead of mother and father), about that fresh mortgage hanging over their heads and the dog needing some work at the vet’s. Yes, that mix would stop a better man than him, stop him cold in his red scare cold war tracks. And so he would have to forgo that blonde goddess experience, have to shoulder on in the red scare cold war night and try to do the best he could. But in the far reaches of his mind every time he saw her in some film down at the Strand (and he saw them all), every time some newsreel photo showed up on the screen, every time he picked up a copy of Playboy or some girlie magazine (making sure that with those two growing, exploring always asking questions boys the damn thing was well hidden behind the shelves in the garage), every time he went to take a leak in the men’s room down at work and spied her figure gracing the calendar on the toilet wall he would think how he could have gotten next to that, gotten next to that easy.

That little woman, the mother of his children, those two sleeping boys in the next room, well, she sensed, sensed every time they went to the Strand, just the two of them with his mother doing the baby-sitting chores to give them a night out, bless her, and she, Marilyn she, was in the film (or hogging all the air in some damn newsreel chronicling her doings, or not doings ), or when they passed some newsstand and her picture was plastered all over Look or Life or some movie magazine detailing her latest infatuation or infidelity, or worst when he went out to the garage late at night (she knew all about that damn smut magazine stuff he hid behind the shelves- who did he think he was fooling ) his heart would beat a little more quickly. His hand in hers previously held tight would go a little bit limp. And she could sense a faraway look in his eye, a look that she knew, she was a woman after all, said he was thinking, thinking-“ well hell I could have gotten next to that, gotten next to that easy.” And she laughed, laughed at such a preposterous idea, laughed at the vanity of men and their dream-encrusted ideas.

She furthermore knew, knew when she stopped laughing that it was just a “phase,”that such dreams in any case were harmless, mostly harmless, and that if he had gotten within fifty yards of her, Marilyn, he would have swooned and gotten all tongue-tied just like that first night he had asked her for a date, asked to see her again after that USO dance down at the Starlight Ballroom when he was in the service and was stationed at the same Naval Depot where she worked in the civilian section. She had been good enough for him then, and he said, made a point of saying, she was good enough for him now especially after they had come out of one of her, Marilyn’s, movies. She of the good earth high collar house dress and sensible shoes. She of the making do when he first got out of the service and jobs were scarce and the first boy was coming soon. She of the making a good home for him and the boys. She, well, she of his real day- time dreams. Then she thought, going back to girlish times, the times before she was married, and was looking around for a mate that all the guys were always swarming around her always ready to ask her out at the slightest hope. And she, in her way, has played her little coquettish games, and had done her little ass-shakings if it came to that.

While in that frame of mind, and after taking a quick glance in the mirror, she frankly confessed that maybe she had lost a step, had not kept up her appearances, had grown into some matronly housewife what with raising kids, doing the household chores, including that damn laundry and so she resolved to take a step back and promote herself as a woman, as his woman. And promoting oneself as a woman in 1950s Marilyn America meant only one thing, for starters. Color thy hair. Whether you were a perky red-head, a feisty brunette (like her), a raven-haired devil woman or just slightly legally blonde that was step one. Lighten the damn thing as far as you could without becoming freakish. Reddish blonde, brunette blonde, black blonde, and blonde blonde a la Mae West but blonde.

A few days later she did just that, did a rinse job at home with some hydrogen peroxide, and he didn’t notice it when he came in for supper (nor did the kids but that was no surprise what would they know of love’s desperate trials and tribulations). A couple of days after that she tried some Clairol, still no takers (although one of the boys said something smelled funny after she had completed her task). Finally she resolved to take her pin money and take her case to the local beauty parlor. The results, kind of dark ash blonde which given her brunette roots was about as far as such things could reasonably go, she admitted were fabulous. That night he came home to supper and asked with a quizzical smile if she had done something to her hair. Well, yes (the kids still clueless kept to their cluelessness). He kind of kept looking at her all evening in some kind of stupor. That Saturday night though when they went to the movies, just the two of them, for a break (his mother doing the baby-sitting chores, bless her) and guys were kind of giving he the once –over she noticed that he held her hand very tightly throughout the whole movie. And that night, well, she would leave it to the imagination about what happened that night.

And of those two clueless boys, or at least one of them, Kenny, did not give a rat’s ass (his term, Kenny’s term, his neighborhood hang-out boys, age twelve bracket, exploring their own coded language to avoid scrutiny by those she, Marilyn she, smitten fathers and ashy blonde mothers) about Marilyn Monroe. He had thought her ugly with that little black beauty mark on her face, a funny shape unlike his mother’s and a funny whispery voice, when he had seen her with the parents at the Strand in Some Like It Hot or some name like that. See he had troubles closer to home, well, school trouble, well not exactly school troubles but a girl at school troubles. See Alison Crowell “liked” him (and how he knew that she liked him was through that ancient grapevine that defied all advances in communication technology when Alison had told Timmy Jones’ sister Beth and Beth conveyed that knowledge to Timmy, and Timmy, being one of those coded language rat’s ass hang-out guys, told Kenny. Simple). The problem, the trouble really was that he “liked” Alison too. Could anyone believe that. The previous year in fifth grade she was just kind of a stick, just kind of a giggling girl to be avoided at all costs in that boy hang-out world. But this year, this year she kind of got a certain little shape, a bump here and there, and , moreover, when he talked to her, or she to him, she seemed, well, she seemed kind of interesting (although she still giggled a little too much for his tastes). So no, no way, was he going to give a rat’s ass about some blonde, some movie actress (and how did anybody know if she was really a blonde, it looked fake, just like his mother’s although don’t tell her that, his mother, because he was supposed to be just a clueless kid when it came to girls’ things. He had seen Mom walking out of Lucille’s Beauty Parlor looking, well, looking different), when he, Kenny he, had to figure out how to get Alison Crowell up into the Strand balcony for the Saturday matinee. Jesus.

Many years later, the number does not matter, but many, Kenny was accompanying his wife (his third wife, Anita, so some things, well a lot of things, had got awry in his life’s love department since innocent Alison times) to a Sunday indoor flea market (invoking shades of the master flea marketer and prolific author Larry McMurtry and his doings since he was looking for old books and she, Anita, was looking for old western jewelry) on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. While there he passed (and re-passed) a life-sized (and life-shaped) cardboard poster of a woman, a blonde woman, nude, and wondered who she was because the face certainly looked familiar. Upon inquiry of the dealer selling the item (and if he had had his wits about him instead of drooling, wondering how maybe he could get next to someone like that, something like that under the sheets, he would have noticed that the dealer was exclusively selling movie-related items) he found out that she was a young Marilyn Monroe, a Marilyn at a time when she might have been from hunger, but also before she was all dolled up with every form of surgery and uplift imaginable. At that moment he finally knew why his father had that girlie magazine hidden behind the shelves that he (and his brother) found one night when they, his parents, were out and they had gone exploring. And knew too now why his mother had started to lighten her hair that time when his father would come home after work and have those far away looks sitting in his nighttime newspaper chair (and continued to lighten it until she was very blonde before she conceded to age and let it go back to its natural color and then to grey).

But that is not the end of Kenny’s story, and would not be complete without this last tidbit. That flea market moment got him to thinking, as was his wont when he was in a film mood, about Marilyn’s films, films that he had not seen for a long time, since those days at the Strand. So when he and Anita got home to Los Angeles he scurried to the local library that was choke full of DVDs to rent. He made a number of selections and over a few weeks viewed most of her films. Frankly he still didn’t see what the big deal was, what made his father and other fathers have wandering thoughts although he thought better of that Some Like It Hot than his dragged- to- the-movies as a kid opinion. What did change his view somewhat was when he viewed her in her last film, The Misfits, something her husband (or ex-husband, such things are confusing in the modern world), playwright Arthur Miller, put together for her.

There she just dominated the screen and he found himself thinking that if they had let her loose more and not faked her up maybe she would be remembered as more than some Andy Warhol icon, some American icon. But with that movie he now finally understood why Norman Mailer wrote a big- ass book about her, why that same Andy Warhol silk-screened her to eternity, why Joe DiMaggio would let his batting average slip for her, why Arthur Miller spent many sleepless nights fretting over some words that would do her justice, why some guy over in England spent a week with her being enchanted, and why his father would always make a point of saying to anyone who would listen that he had seen every film that she had ever made. Thanks Marilyn.

***Poet's Corner- William Butler Yeats' "Easter, 1916"

Guest Commentary

This is the 97th Anniversary of the Irish Easter Uprising-

BELOW ARE TWO FAMOUS POEMS BY THE ANGLO-IRISH POET WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS-CHOCKY AR LA

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. 80

September 25, 1916


Sixteen Dead Men

O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is there logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony thumb?

How could you dream they'd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

Songwriter's Corner- Spain 1936- The Irish Connection

Commentary

I have spilled no small amount of ink, and gladly, writing about the heroic military role of those Americans who fought in the American-led Abraham Lincoln Battalion of 15th International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The song "Viva La Quince Brigada" can apply to those of other nationalities who fought bravely for the Republican side in that conflict. Here's a take from the Irish perspective. Note the name Frank Ryan included here, a real hero of that operation.


Viva La Quince Brigada
(Christy Moore)

Ten years before I saw the light of morning
A comradeship of heroes was laid.
From every corner of the world came sailing
The Fifteenth International Brigade.

They came to stand beside the Spanish people.
To try and stem the rising Fascist tide
Franco's allies were the powerful and wealthy,
Frank Ryan's men came from the other side.

Even the olives were bleeding
As the battle for Madrid it thundered on.
Truth and love against the force af evil,
Brotherhood against the Fascist clan.

Vive La Quince Brigada!
"No Paseran" the pledge that made them fight.
"Adelante" was the cry around the hillside.
Let us all remember them tonight.

Bob Hillard was a Church of Ireland pastor;
From Killarney across the Pyrenees ho came.
From Derry came a brave young Christian Brother.
Side by side they fought and died in Spain.

Tommy Woods, aged seventeen, died in Cordoba.
With Na Fianna he learned to hold his gun.
From Dublin to the Villa del Rio
Where he fought and died beneath the Spanish sun.

Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco.
Joined Hitler and Mussolini too.
Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers
Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.

The word came from Maynooth: 'Support the Fascists.'
The men of cloth failed yet again
When the bishops blessed the blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain.

This song is a tribute to Frank Ryan.
Kit Conway and Dinny Coady too.
Peter Daly, Charlie Regan and Hugh Bonar.
Though many died I can but name a few.

Danny Doyle, Blaser-Brown and Charlie Donnelly.
Liam Tumilson and Jim Straney from the Falls.
Jack Nally, Tommy Patton and Frank Conroy,
Jim Foley, Tony Fox and Dick O'Neill.

Written in 1983
Copyright Christy Moore
apr97


Here are a couple more Yeats classics.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

ON A POLITICAL PRISONER

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

HE that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of the blind
Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride
Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
The beauty of her country-side
With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,
She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced in the air
When first it sprang out of the nest
Upon some lofty rock to stare
Upon the cloudy canopy,
While under its storm-beaten breast
Cried out the hollows of the sea.

"On a Political Prisoner" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

***Poet's Corner- William Butler Yeats' "Easter, 1916"

Guest Commentary

This is the 97th Anniversary of the Irish Easter Uprising-

BELOW ARE TWO FAMOUS POEMS BY THE ANGLO-IRISH POET WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS-CHOCKY AR LA

Easter, 1916

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.

This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. 80

September 25, 1916


Sixteen Dead Men

O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is there logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony thumb?

How could you dream they'd listen
That have an ear alone
For those new comrades they have found,
Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone,
Or meddle with our give and take
That converse bone to bone?

Songwriter's Corner- Spain 1936- The Irish Connection

Commentary

I have spilled no small amount of ink, and gladly, writing about the heroic military role of those Americans who fought in the American-led Abraham Lincoln Battalion of 15th International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The song "Viva La Quince Brigada" can apply to those of other nationalities who fought bravely for the Republican side in that conflict. Here's a take from the Irish perspective. Note the name Frank Ryan included here, a real hero of that operation.


Viva La Quince Brigada
(Christy Moore)

Ten years before I saw the light of morning
A comradeship of heroes was laid.
From every corner of the world came sailing
The Fifteenth International Brigade.

They came to stand beside the Spanish people.
To try and stem the rising Fascist tide
Franco's allies were the powerful and wealthy,
Frank Ryan's men came from the other side.

Even the olives were bleeding
As the battle for Madrid it thundered on.
Truth and love against the force af evil,
Brotherhood against the Fascist clan.

Vive La Quince Brigada!
"No Paseran" the pledge that made them fight.
"Adelante" was the cry around the hillside.
Let us all remember them tonight.

Bob Hillard was a Church of Ireland pastor;
From Killarney across the Pyrenees ho came.
From Derry came a brave young Christian Brother.
Side by side they fought and died in Spain.

Tommy Woods, aged seventeen, died in Cordoba.
With Na Fianna he learned to hold his gun.
From Dublin to the Villa del Rio
Where he fought and died beneath the Spanish sun.

Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco.
Joined Hitler and Mussolini too.
Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers
Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.

The word came from Maynooth: 'Support the Fascists.'
The men of cloth failed yet again
When the bishops blessed the blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain.

This song is a tribute to Frank Ryan.
Kit Conway and Dinny Coady too.
Peter Daly, Charlie Regan and Hugh Bonar.
Though many died I can but name a few.

Danny Doyle, Blaser-Brown and Charlie Donnelly.
Liam Tumilson and Jim Straney from the Falls.
Jack Nally, Tommy Patton and Frank Conroy,
Jim Foley, Tony Fox and Dick O'Neill.

Written in 1983
Copyright Christy Moore
apr97


Here are a couple more Yeats classics.

THE SECOND COMING

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

ON A POLITICAL PRISONER

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

HE that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of the blind
Drinking the foul ditch where they lie?

When long ago I saw her ride
Under Ben Bulben to the meet,
The beauty of her country-side
With all youth's lonely wildness stirred,
She seemed to have grown clean and sweet
Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird:

Sea-borne, or balanced in the air
When first it sprang out of the nest
Upon some lofty rock to stare
Upon the cloudy canopy,
While under its storm-beaten breast
Cried out the hollows of the sea.

"On a Political Prisoner" is reprinted from Michael Robartes and the Dancer. W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1921.