***The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-The Program Of The American Labor Party (1936)- A Link

Click on the headline to link to the Program Of The American Labor Party (1936)

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
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“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Documents of the 1923 opposition-"Trotsky opens the attack"

Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.

Markin comment (repost from September 2010):

Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
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Markin comment on this document:

Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then. Who were revolutionaries to appeal to at that time? The kulaks? We saw where that led a couple of years later when Stalin/Bukharin made their right turn.

Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-ENGELS TO THE COMMUNIST CORRESPONDENCE COMMITTEE in Brussels (1846)

Markin comment:

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
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Letters of Marx and ENgels 1846

ENGELS TO THE COMMUNIST CORRESPONDENCE COMMITTEE in Brussels (1846)


Written: [Paris,] Wednesday, 16 September 1846
First Published: abridged in abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929
Translation: Peter and Betty Ross
Transcribed: zodiac@interlog.com
HTML Markup: S. Ryan


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Committee No. 2

[Paris,] Wednesday, 16 September 1846

Dear Friends,

Your news about Belgium, London and Breslau [1] was of great interest to me. [2] I told Ewerbeck and Bernays what was of interest to them. Keep me au fait [3] as well with the success of our enterprise and plus ou moins [4] the enthusiasm with which the various localities are taking part, so that I can expatiate on that to the workers here in so far as it is politic. What are the Cologne people [5] doing?

There's all manner of news from here.

I've had several meetings with the local workers, i.e. with the leaders of the cabinet-makers from the Faubourg St. Antoine. These people are curiously organised. Apart from the business of their league [6] having been thrown into the utmost confusion -- as a result of a serious dispute with the Weitlingian tailors -- these lads, i.e. 12-20 of them, foregather once a week; they used to hold discussions but, after they ran out of matter, as indeed they were bound to do, Ewerbeck was compelled to give them lectures on German history -- starting from scratch -- and on an extremely muddled political economy, a popular rendering of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. [7] Meanwhile I appeared. In order to establish contact with them, I twice discussed conditions in Germany since the French Revolution, my point of departure being the economic relations. What they glean from these weekly meetings is thrashed out on Sundays at Barriere meetings [8] attended by Cherethites and Pelethites, wife and children. [9] Here -- abstraction faite de toute espace de politique [10] -- such things as 'social questions' are discussed. It is a good way of attracting new people, for it's entirely public; a fortnight ago the police arrived and wanted to impose a veto but allowed themselves to be placated and did nothing further. Often more than 200 people foregather.

Things cannot possibly remain as they are now. A degree of lethargy has set in amongst the fellows which comes from their being bored with themselves. For they have nothing to set against the tailors' communism but popularisations a la Grun and green-tinted [11] Proudhon, [12] all this having been laboriously dinned into them, partly by no less a person than Mr Grun himself, partly by an old, bombastic master cabinet-maker and minion of Grun's, Papa Eisermann, but partly, too, by amicus [13] Ewerbeck. Naturally they soon ran dry, endless repetition ensued and, to prevent them going to sleep (literally, this was getting worse and worse at the sessions), Ewerbeck torments them with hair-splitting disquisitions on 'true value' (this last being somewhat on my conscience) and bores them with the primeval forests of the Teutons, Hermann the Cheruscan, and the most ghastly old German etymology according to Adelung, all of it quite wrong. By the way, the real leader of these people isn't Ewerbeck but Junge, who was in Brussels [14]; the fellow realises very well what ought to be changed, and might do a great deal since he has them all in his pocket and is ten times more intelligent than the whole clique, but he vacillates too much and always has some new bee in his bonnet. I haven't seen him for nearly 3 weeks -- he never turned up and isn't to be found -- which is why so little has as yet been achieved. Without him most of them are spineless and irresolute. But one must be patient with the fellows; in the first place we must rid ourselves of Grun, whose enervating influence, both direct and indirect, has been truly dreadful. And then, when we've got these platitudes out of their heads, I hope to be able to achieve something with the fellows, for they all have a strong desire for instruction in economics. This should not take long, as Ewerbeck who, despite his notorious muddle-headedness, now at its fullest flowering, has the best intentions in the world, is completely in my pocket, and Junge, too, is wholly on my side. I have discussed the correspondence [15] with six others; the plan was much acclaimed, specially by Junge, and will be implemented from here. But unless Grun's personal influence is destroyed and his platitudes eradicated, thus reinvigorating the chaps, nothing can be done in view of the considerable material obstacles to be faced (particularly engagements almost every evening). I have offered to confront Grun in their presence and to tax him with his personal rascalities, and Bernays also wishes to be there -- Ewerbeck too has a bone to pick with him. This will happen as soon as they have settled their own affairs with Grun, i.e. obtained a guarantee for the money advanced for the printing of Grun's Landtag shit. [17] But since Junge didn't turn up and the rest behaved towards Grun-like children, that matter, too, is still not in order, although with a little effort it could have been settled in 5 minutes. The unfortunate thing about it is that most of these fellows are Swabians.

Now for something to amuse you. In his new, as yet unprinted book, which Grun is translating, [18] Proudhon has a great scheme for making money out of thin air and bringing the kingdom of heaven closer to all workers. No one knew what it was. Grun, while keeping it very dark, was always bragging about his philosopher's stone. General suspense. At length, last week, Papa Eisermann was at the cabinet-makers' and so was I; gradually the old coxcomb came out with it, in a naively secretive manner. Mr Grun had confided the whole plan to him. Hearken, now, to the grandeur of this plan for world redemption: ni plus ni moins [19] than the already long extant in England, and ten times bankrupt LABOUR-BAZARS or LABOUR-MARKETS, associations of all artisans of all trades, a big warehouse, all work delivered by the associes valued strictly in accordance with the cost of the raw product plus labour, and paid for in other association products, similarly valued. [20] Anything delivered in excess of the association's needs is to be sold on the world market, the proceeds being paid out to the producers. In this way the crafty Proudhon calculates that he and his fellow associes will circumvent the profit of the middleman. That this would also mean circumventing the profit on his association's capital, that this capital and this profit must be just as great as the capital and profit of the circumvented middlemen, that he therefore throws away with his right hand what the left has received, has none of it entered his clever head. That his workers can never raise the necessary capital, since otherwise they could just as well set themselves up separately, that any savings in cost resulting from the association would be more than outweighed by the enormous risk, that the whole thing would amount to spiriting away profit from this world, while leaving the producers of the profit to cool their heels, that it is a truly Straubingerian idyll, [21] excluding from the very outset all large-scale industry, building, agriculture, etc., that they would have to bear only the losses of the bourgeoisie without sharing in its gains, all these and a hundred other self-evident objections he overlooks, so delighted is he with his plausible illusion. It's all too utterly preposterous. Paterfamilias Grun, of course, believes in the new redemption and already in his mind's eye sees himself at the head of an association of 20,000 ouvriers [22] (they want it big from the start), his family, of course, to receive free clothing, board and lodging. But if Proudhon comes out with this, he will be making a fool of himself and all French socialists and communists in the eyes of bourgeois economists. Hence those tears, that polemicising against revolution [23] because he had a peaceable nostrum up his sleeve. Proudhon is just like John Watts. In spite of his disreputable atheism and socialism, the latter regards it as his vocation to acquire respectability in the eyes of the bourgeoisie; Proudhon, despite his polemic against the economists, does his utmost to gain recognition as a great economist. Such are the sectarians. Besides, it's such an old story! [24]

Now for another highly curious affair. -- The Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung of 21 July, Paris, 16 July. Article on the Russian Embassy [25] ...

"That is the official Embassy -- but quite extraneous to it, or rather above it, there is a certain Mr Tolstoy who bears no title, is described, however, as 'confidant of the Court.' Formerly, with the Ministry of Education, he came to Paris charged with a Literary mission; there he wrote a few memoirs for his Ministry, sent them a few reports on the French daily press, then wrote no more but did all the more. He maintains a splendid establishment, is invited everywhere, receives everyone, busies himself with everything, knows everything and arranges much. He seems to me to he the actual Russian Ambassador in Paris.... His intervention works wonders" ( -- all Poles seeking a pardon addressed themselves to him -- ) "-- at the Embassy all bow down before him and in Petersburg he is held in great regard."

This Tolstoy is none other than our Tolstoy, that noble fellow who told us untruthfully that he wanted to sell his estates in Russia. [26] Besides the apartment to which he took us, the man has a magnificent hotel [27] in the rue Mathurin where he receives the diplomats. This has long been known to the Poles and to many of the French, but not to the German radicals amongst whom he thought it better to insinuate himself as a radical. The above article was written by a Pole known to Bernays, and was immediately taken up by the Corsaire-Satan and the National. On reading the article, all Tolstoy did was laugh heartily and crack jokes about having been found out at last. He is now in London, where he will try his luck, being played out here. It's a pity he is not coming back, otherwise I'd have had a joke or two to try out on him, eventually leaving my card in the rue Mathurin. After this, c'est clair [28] that Annenkov, whom he recommended, is also a Russian informer. Even Bakunin, who must have known the whole story since the other Russians knew it, is very suspect. I shall, of course, give him no hint of this, but wreak vengeance on the Russians. Even though these spies may not constitute any particular threat to us, we can't let them get away with it. They're good subjects for conspiratorial experiments in corpore vili. [29] For that they are not really too bad.

Father Hess. After I had happily consigned his spouse, [30] cursing and swearing about same, to oblivion, i.e. to the furthest end of the Faubourg St. Antoine where there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth (Grun and Gsell), I received not long since, through the agency of one Reinhardt, another letter in which the communist papa sought to re-establish relations. It's enough to make one split one's sides. As if nothing had happened of course, altogether in dulci jubilo, [31] and moreover altogether the same old Hess. After the remark that he was to some extent reconciled with 'the party' (the 'Yiddish' Circle appears to have become insolvent) -- and 'also anxious to resume work' (which event ought to be rung in with a peal of bells), comes the following historical note (dated 19 August):

'A few weeks ago we were within a hair's breadth of a bloody riot here in Cologne, Large numbers being already armed' (among them certainly not Moses). 'The affair did not come to a head because the military did not put in an appearance' (tremendous triumph for Cologne's pint-sized philistine), etc., etc...'

Then he tells of the civic assemblies [32] where 'we', i.e. 'the party' and Mr Moses, 'qua communists, won so complete a victory that we', etc.

'We drove, first the moneyed aristocrats ... and then the petty bourgeois, with glory' (none of them possessing any talent) 'from the field. Eventually we could have (!) carried everything in the assemblies' (e.g. made Moses Chief Burgomaster); 'a programme was adopted to which the assembly pledged its candidates, and which' (hear, hear) 'could not have been more radical even if drawn up by English and French communists' (!!!) (and by no one understood more foolishly than by Moses).... 'Keep an occasional eye' (sic) 'on my [wife]' (both parties would like me to take over the distaff side at my own expense and risk, j'en ai les preuves [33]).... 'and pass this onto Ewerbeck as a heartener.'

May God bless this 'heartener', this manna from the desert. I, of course, completely ignore the beast -- he has now written to Ewerbeck too (and this simply in order that a letter may be conveyed to his distaff side at the former's expense), and is threatening to come here in two months' time. If he visits me, I think I too shall be able to tell him something by way of a 'heartener'.

Now that I'm in full swing, I might as well conclude by telling you that Heine is here again and that the day before yesterday Ewerbeck and I went to see him. The poor devil is dreadfully low. He has grown as thin as a rake. The softening of the brain is spreading, and so is the facial paralysis. Ewerbeck says he might very easily die of pulmonary paralysis or of a sudden cerebral stroke, but could also drag on, sometimes better, sometimes worse, for another three or four years yet. He is, of course, somewhat depressed, melancholy and -- most significant of all -- extremely benign (and, indeed, seriously so) in his judgments -- Maurer is the only person about whom he constantly cracks jokes. For the rest his intellectual vigour is unimpaired, but his appearance, made stranger still by a greying beard (he can no longer be shaved round the mouth), is enough to plunge anyone who sees him into the depths of depression. The impression made by the sight of so splendid a fellow gradually wasting away is exceedingly painful.

I have also seen the great Maurer. "Manikin, manikin, how little you weigh!" The man's really a sight worth seeing, and I was atrociously rude to him, in return for which the jackass evinces a particular affection for me, and tells me I have a kindly face. He resembles Karl Moor six weeks dead. Reply soon.

Yours

E.

Write soon, as I shall in a fortnight's time [...] from here; such a business a letter [...] easily remain lying or be refused at the old place.

At the Fraternite there has been a tremendous dispute between materialists [34] and spiritualists.[35] The materialists, outvoted by 23 to 22, walked out. But that has not stopped the Fraternite from publishing a very nice article on the various stages of civilisation and their ability to continue developing in the direction of communism. [36]

You'll be amused by the following: Journal des economistes, August of this year, contains, in an article on Biedermann's article on communism, [37] the following: First, all Hess' nonsense, comically Gallicised; next, we read, comes M. Marx.

'M. Marx est un cordonnier, comme un autre Communiste allemand, Weitling, est un tailleur. Le premier (Mx) n'a pas une grande estime pour le communisme francais (!) qu'il a ete assez heureux d'etudier sur les lieux. M. ne sort (du) reste point non plus' (do you not recognise Mr Fix in this Alsatian expression?) 'des formules abstraites et ie se garde bien d'aborder aucune question veritablement pratique. Selon lui' (note the nonsense) 'l'emancipation du peuple allemand sera le signal de l'emancipation du genre humain; la tete de cette emancipation serait la philosophie et son coeur le proletariat. Lorsque tout sera prepare, le coq gaulois sonnera la resurrection germanique... Marx dit qu'il faut creer en Allemagne un proletariat universel (!!) afin de realiser la pensee philosophique do Cornmunisme'. [38] Signed T. F. (mort depuis).[39]

That was his last work. The previous issue carried an equally comical review of my book. [40] The September number contains an article on Julius which I have not yet read. [41]

[On the back of the letter]

Monsieur Charles Marx au Bois Sauvage, Plaine Ste Gudule, Bruxelles


NOTES
From MECW
[1] Polish name: Wroclaw.
[2] The letter of Marx and other members of the Brussels Communist Correspondence Committee to Engels mentioned here has not been found.

[3] "acquainted"

[4] "more or less"

[5] Roland Daniels, Heinrich Burgers, Karl d'Ester

[6] A reference to the Paris communities of the League of the Just.

[7] Reference is probably to Engels' 'Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy'.

[8] Barriere meetings were Sunday assemblies of members of the League of the Just held at the Paris city gates (barrieres). As a police agent reported on 1 February 1845, 30 to 200 German emigrants gathered in premises rented for this purpose from a wine-merchant in avenue de Vincennes near the city gate.

[9] 2 Samuel 8:18; 15:18; 20:7, 23

[10] "all politics apart"

[11] A play on Grun (green)

[12] By 'tailors' communism' Engels means the utopian communism of W. Weitling and his followers.

Karl Grun, who visited Paris in 1846-47, preached 'true socialism' and Proudhon's petty-bourgeois reformist ideas among the German workers.

[13] "friend"

[14] Adolph Junge, a cabinet-maker from Dusseldorf, was a notable figure in the Paris communities of the League of the Just in the early 1840s. At the end of June 1846, after a short visit to Cologne, he returned to Paris via Brussels where he met Marx and Engels. In Paris he vigorously opposed Grun and other advocates of 'true socialism' and became an associate of Engels when the latter was in Paris. At the end of March 1847, the French police expelled Junge from the country.

[15] 5 May 1856

[17] [K. Grun,] Die preussischen Landtags-Abschiede.

[18] Grun's German translation of Proudhon's book was published in Darmstadt in February (Volume I) and in May (Volume II) 1847 under the title Philosophie der Staatsökonomie oder Notwendigkeit des Elends.

[19] "neither more nor less"

[20] By labour-bazars or labour markets Engels means equitable-labour exchange bazars which were organised by the Owenites and Ricardian socialists (John Gray, William Thompson, John Bray) in various towns of England in the 1830s for fair exchange without a capitalist intermediary. The products were exchanged for labour notes, or labour money, certificates showing the cost of the products delivered, calculated on the basis of the amount of labour necessary for their production. The organisers considered these bazars as a means for publicising the advantages of a non-capitalist form of exchange and a peaceful way -- together with cooperatives -- of transition to socialism. The subsequent and invariable bankruptcy of such enterprises proved their utopian character.

[21] Straubingers -- travelling journeymen in Germany. Marx and Engels used this term for German artisans, including some participants in the working-class movement of that time, who were still largely swayed by guild prejudices and cherished the petty-bourgeois illusion that it was possible to return from capitalist large-scale industry to petty handicraft production.

[22] "workers"

[23] Engels refers to Proudhon's letter to Marx of 17 May 1846, in which he turned down a proposal to work in the correspondence committees.

[24] H. Heine, 'Ein Jungling liebt cm Maedchen' from Lyrisches Intermezzo.

[25] Engels quotes from the article 'Die russische Allianz und die russisehe Gesandtschaft'.

[26] Engels had been misled by Karl Bernays and Heinrich Bornstein as he later pointed out in his letter to Marx of 15 January 1847. The item in the Allgemeine Zeitung dealt with the tsarist spy V. N. Tolstoy and not with the Russian liberal landowner G. M. Tolstoy whose acquaintance Marx and Engels had made in Paris.

[27] "mansion"

[28] "it's clear"

[29] "on the vile body"

[30] Sibylle Hess

[31] "sweetness and joy"

[32] During the campaign for the elections to the local councils in Cologne which started at the end of June 1846, it was obvious at the very first meetings that the Cologne communists had a considerable influence on the petty-bourgeois electors (the Prussian workers were virtually deprived of suffrage). In the course of the election campaign, disorders took place in Cologne on 3 and 4 August, and were suppressed by the army. The people indignantly demanded that the troops should be withdrawn to their barracks and a civic militia organised. Karl d'Ester, a Cologne communist, described these disturbances in an unsigned pamphlet Bericht iber die Ereignine za KoIn vow 3. und 4. Augstst und den folgenden Tagen, published in Mannheim in 1846.

[33] "have proof of it"

[34] By materialists Engels meant associates of Theodore Dezamy and other revolutionary representatives of French utopian communism who drew the socialist conclusions from the teaching of the eighteenth-century Frencls materialist philosophers. In the 1840s there existed in France a society of materialist communists which consisted of workers; in July 1847 eleven of its members were brought to trial by the French authorities.

[35] By spiritualists Engels must have meant the editors of the Fraternite who were influenced by the religious-socialist ideas of Pierre Leroux, and by the "Christian socialism" of Philippe Buchez and Felicite Lamennais.

[36] Engels seems to be writing about a series of articles 'La civilisation' published in the Fraternite in 1845 and 1846. The first article was entitled 'La civilisation est l'acheminement de l'esprit humain vers la communaute".

[37] The reference is to a review of K. Biedermann, 'Unsrc Gegenwart und Zukunft' written by Th. Fix and published in the Journal des Economistes, Vol. 15, No.57, August 1846.

***The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-The Socialist Party's Attempt At A Labor Party-The American Labor Party (1936)

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the American Labor Party

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
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Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- Be-Bop-My Baby Loves The Western Movies

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Olympics performing their classic My Baby Loves The Western Movies.

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Volume 11, various artists, Ace Records, 2007

Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which grace each CD in this The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series. This time the golden age of the automobile meets the golden age of al fresco movie watching meets teenage ingenuity. Here Fred Jackson, riding low in his father’s borrowed Plymouth is taking Betty Sue, his best friend, Zack Smith and his girl, Penny Parker, to the movies. Ya, right. In teen world this is just another name for “parking,” parking with a cardboard hamburger, stale popcorn, and ice-diluted soda intermission. But here is where the teen ingenuity part comes in. Not shown in this picture are Bud, Cindy, Lenny, and Laura who are just this minute uncomfortably lying low in the trunk of car as Freddie prepares to pay for the car-full five dollar price. Neat, right?
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“Hey, Zack come on over a little early and help me clean out the trunk of my father’s car, will you so we can fit everybody in there tonight,” Freddie yelled the into telephone on a sunny June 1960 Saturday afternoon over the blare of Lavern Baker’s be-bop Jim Dandy playing on the local rock station, the only station that matter in 1960 teen Clintondale. And as Carl Mann’s Pretend started up Zack yelled back just as loudly that he would be there, and Penny would be too. Now is this ritualistic telephone conversation the beginning of some big-time illegal criminal enterprise like using dad’s car, dad Jackson’s “boss” Plymouth to kidnap some kids for ransom and be on easy street. Well, not a bad idea but no not this night. This night is dedicated to a little party down at the Clintondale Drive-In outdoor theater. And the reason that the boss Plymouth needs to be cleaned out is that not only are Freddie and his best girl, Betty Sue, well, best girl this night, Zack and Penny going but so are Bud, Cindy, Lenny and Laura. Going courtesy of the Plymouth trunk.

As for Freddie and Betty Sue, they have been going through what Freddie calls a “rough patch” and Betty Sue only agreed to come because Freddie, promised, promised, promised on his word of honor not to try any stuff, you know boy grappling with girl stuff AND permit her when she came to his house to hear his copy of smooth Sammy Turner’s Lavender Blue which she is crazy for ever since she heard it last week on WJDA. He almost had to promise her a million listen peek at Jivin’ Gene’s Breaking Up Is Hard To Do but Freddie negotiated his way out of that one by reference to that rough patch and “let’s not stir that up again, okay?”

Now this four-in-a-trunk gag has been around since, well since teens have had access to cars, there have been outside drive-in theaters to go parking in, and most drive-ins have had a policy of charging admission by the car-full. Forever maybe, but if you ask anybody how they coped to the idea they probably could go back no farther than some older brother or sister getting them “hip.” And what of the morality, the corruption of morality, and the corruption of youth’s morality done irreparable harm to by gypping the theater owner of his due? Well, the argument back is that he makes plenty on the cardboard steamed hamburgers, the desiccated hot dogs, the stale, barely-buttered pop corn and the heavily-diluted soda (known in Clintondale as tonic, why is anybody’s guess).

But we will move alone right now because Freddie and Zack trunk cleared out, Penny and Betty Sue clipping their fingernails or something, watching, are ready to pick up the others down at Big Ben’s Pizza Parlor where they will have some real pizza and soda (tonic) to tide them over until movie time intermission. So as they drive off to Big Ben’s we see Betty Sue fidgeting with father Jackson’s radio dials trying to get that awful news hour stuff off and some real gone music, rock music on. Finally, although ready to punch the radio for not cooperating, Betty Sue finally gets ‘JDA as dreamy Matilda by Cookie and His Cupcakes comes on. Free, at last.

The details of the arrangements of the various stow-way couples need not detain us here, in any case that information is not for the prying eyes of the public, the parent public, the authorities public. Let them find there own way into the drive-in, hell they will probably pay full price. We will pick up Freddie, et. al as they are waiting in line to pay their admission, acting cool and listening to ‘JDA tunes. Just then Penny and Betty Sue, as if in some secret girl pact of their own design, beyond boy comprehension, start singing along with Mickey& Sylvia on their Love Is Strange coming over the airwaves. Freddie and Zack look at each other as if to say, this night was not made in heaven.

What was made in heaven though was the ease with which after paying the five bucks admission Freddie guided his car to the back of the drive-in, the unofficially designated “teen night area” (no parent, especially not parent with minor children would go within fifty yards of that place), unloaded his refugees, and made conversation with drivers unloading other trunks in the be-bop Clintondale teen night. Easy stuff, very easy. And the rating of the movies? What movies?

Note: For those who are barely unable to contain themselves about the fate of Freddie and Betty Sue. Well that Mickey& Sylvia sing-along must have had some therapeutic effect because at intermission, or just after consuming one of those desiccated hot dogs Betty Sue hearing Collay and the Satellites sing Last Chance on the car radio turned around to Zack and Penny in the back seats and said, defiantly, “let’s switch.” And that night the solemnly imposed and sworn to "no boy grappling girl" rule went out the window.

***On “Now” Photos For The AARP Generation- For Robert Flatley, North Adamsville Class Of 1964

Click on the title to link to a YouTube film clip of Iris Dement performing Our Town. Sorry no After You're Gone by her that I could find on that site.

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:

“’Cause I’ve memorized each line in your face, and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me”-a line from the folksinger/songwriter Iris DeMent’s hauntingly beautiful song, After You’re Gone. (You can Google for the rest of the lyrics. Some of her music is on YouTube but I could not find this one.)

Well, of course, those hard-wire lyrics only apply to our male classmates. After all Iris is singing about her gone man. He long gone but not forgotten man. I do not, this age of sexual equality notwithstanding, want to extend their application to our sister classmates because I do not need to have every cyber-stone in the universe thrown at me. But those same lyrics do bring me to the purpose for today’s comment. As part of getting a 'feel' for writing about our days at old North Adamsville High I have perused some of the class profiles this infernal 1964 class committee that keeps badgering me for ever more information has provided me. Apparently once you answer a couple of off-hand questions about your doings (or not-doings) over the past half century you are fair game for every possible form of interrogation. Interrogations that would shame even the most hardened CIA or NSA bureaucrat. I don’t know about you but I am thinking of hiring a lawyer and putting a stop to this maddening harassment, and possible constitutional violation. But that is a subject for another day. For now, forward.

A number of you have placed your current photos on the profile pages thoughtfully provided by said committee, although a number of people, including myself, are apparently camera-shy. I admit to not being particularly camera-shy but rather to being something of a technological luddite (look that word up on Wikipedia if you do not know it) in that I do not own the digital camera required to upload a snappy photo, have no immediate intention of owning one, and would, moreover be helpless to do such a tortuous task as uploading a photo. Truth. Some, however, like the Chase brothers are not. Not camera shy or apparently luddites that is. (By the way, Jim and John, and others as well, what is up with wearing hats these days? We are Kennedy-era boys and hats most definitely were not part of our uniform.) Or like born again "muscle man" (read: huge) Bill Bailey, the star cross country runner and track man our class, whom I have has previously written about in this space as slender-strided and gracefully-gaited. That photo-readiness on the part of some classmates forms the basis for my comment. Those who are photo-less can breathe a sigh of relief-for now.

I have to admit that I have been startled by some of the photos. Many of them seem to have been taken by your grandchildren just before their naps. Or maybe by you just before your naps, or some combinations of the two especially for those who are performing grandparental (is their such a word?) duty as “babysitters” in a world where both parents are forced by hard-time circumstances to work to make ends meet these days. Isn’t the digital age supposed to have made the camera instantly user-friendly? Why all the out-of-focus, soft-focus, looking through a fish tank or a looking- glass kind of shots. And why does everyone seem to be have been photographed down the far end of some dark corridor or by someone about six miles away? Nobody expects Bachrach-quality photos but something is amiss here [ Bachrach’s was the photograph studio that took our individual class pictures for those who don’t remember or didn’t otherwise know-Markin]

In contrast, a new arrival on this class committee profile page interrogation wall (sorry), Robert Flatley, has found just the right approach. Initially, Robert placed a recent shot of himself on his profile page. Frankly, the old codger looked like he was wanted in about six states for “kiting” checks, or maybe had done a little “time” in some far-off county farm or state prison for armed robbery. More recently, however, his page has been graced with a stock photo provided by the site, a tastefully-shot, resplendent wide old oak tree. Automatically I now associate Robert with the tree of life, with oneness with the universe, with solidity, with the root of matter in him, and with bending but not breaking. Wise choice, Brother Flatley. Now, moreover, I do not have to suppress a need to dial 911, but rather can think of Robert as one who walks with kings, as a sage for the ages. And nothing can ever erase the story that tells to me.

Artist: Dement Iris
Song: After You're Gone
Album: Infamous Angel Iris Dement Sheet Music

There'll be laughter even after you're gone.
I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn.
'Cause I've memorised each line in your face,
And not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me.

I'll miss you.
Oh, how I'll miss you.
I'll dream of you,
And I'll cry a million tears.
But the sorrow will pass.
And the one thing that will last,
Is the love that you've given to me.

There'll be laughter even after you're gone.
I'll find reasons and I'll face that empty dawn.
'Cause I've memorized each line in your face,
And not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me.
************

*Labor's Untold Story-The Class War In The Kentucky Coal Fields- Bloody Harlan In Song

Click on title to link to a YouTube film clip of the song You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive. There will be much more on this subject later in September. The Kentucky coal country and its history are personal in these quarters.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Documents of the 1923 opposition-Foreword

Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.

Markin comment (repost from September 2010):

Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and pragmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
******
Markin comment on this document:

It is rather appropriate that this site placed materials here from the original struggle for the preservation of the communist program by the formation of the Left Opposition within the Russian Communist Party in 1923. The operative words are "opposition within party." That was the first place to fight for revolutionary continuity. Not outside the party, or against the party, before the internal struggle to correct the course was exhausted. Later, after the decisive events of the early 1930s, serious revolutionaries had to be outside the Communist International and ready to create a new international but in the 1920s the place to be, at all costs, was inside. That is the cautionary tale to be heeded by revolutionaries today who are sometimes prone to move on before the previous fight is completed.

Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Engels To The Communist Correspondence Committee In Brussels (1846)

Markin comment:

Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
******
Letters of Marx and Engels, 1846

Engels To The Communist Correspondence Committee [74]
In Brussels

Source: MECW Volume 38 p. 56
Written: 19 August 1846;
First published: in abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in MEGA, 1929.

Paris, 19 August 1846
11, rue de l'arbre sec
Committee
Carissimi [Dear Friends],

Our affair will prosper greatly here. Ewerbeck is quite taken up with it and only asks that a committee should not be officially organised in too great haste, because there’s a split in the offing. What remains here of the Weitlingians, a small clique of tailors,[75] is now in process of being thrown out, and Ewerbeck thinks it better that this should be accomplished first. However, Ewerbeck doesn’t believe that more than four or five of the people here will be available for the correspondence, which number is, indeed, fully adequate. In my next letter I hope to let you know who they are.

These tailors are really astounding chaps. Recently they were discussing quite seriously the question of knives and forks, and whether these had not best be chained. [probably in canteens which the utopian socialists planned to set up by way of experiment] But there are not many of them.

Weitling himself has not replied to the Parisians’ last, very rude letter, procured for him by us. He had demanded 300 fr. for practical experiments in connection with his invention,[76] but remarked at the same time that the money had probably been thrown down the drain. You can imagine what sort of answer they gave him.

The cabinet-makers and tanners, on the other hand, are said to be capital fellows. I have not yet seen them. Ewerbeck manages all that with his usual circumspection.

I shall now give you some gleanings from French periodicals, those, of course, which are not to be had in Brussels.

P. Leroux’s monthly is almost entirely taken up with articles on St.-Simon and Fourier by P. Leroux himself. [P. Leroux, ‘Saint-Simon et Fourier’ August 1846] In these he exalts St.-Simon to the skies, and does all he can to detract from Fourier and present him as an imitator who has debased and falsified St.-Simon. Thus he is at great pains to prove that the Quatre Mouvements [Ch. Fourier, Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinies générales] are no more than a materialistically conceived plagiarism of Lettres d'un habitant de Genève. The fellow’s quite mad. Because at one point the latter work maintains that a system which is an encyclopaedic compendium of all the sciences could best be realised by the reduction of all phenomena, etc., to pesanteur universelle [universal gravity] it must be from this, we are told, that Fourier derived his whole theory of attraction. Needless to say, none of the evidence, quotations, etc., provide adequate proof that Fourier had even read the Lettres when he wrote the 4 Mouvements. On the other hand the whole Enfantin trend is described as Fourierism surreptitiously introduced into the school. The paper is called Revue Sociale, ou solution pacifique du problème du prolétariat.

Of the reformist newspaper congress,[77] the Atelier relates after the event [reference to the article ‘Du manifesto de la presse liberals’ in L'Atelier, No. 11, August 1846] that, not having attended, it was very surprised to find itself on the list of papers represented there. Le peuple de la presse had been kept out until the bases of the reform had been decided upon, and when the doors were then thrown open to the ouvrier papers so that they might vote their assent, it had thought it beneath its dignity to go there. The Atelier further relates that 150 ouvriers, probably Buchezists — which party, the French assure us, is about 1,000 strong — held a banquet, without police permission on 29 July to celebrate the July Days. [Engels relates the article ‘Un Banquet interrompu’, L'Atelier, No. 11, August 1846. July Days — revolution of 27-30 July 1830] The police intervened and, because they refused to undertake not to make political speeches or sing any of Béranger’s songs, they were dispersed.

Mr Wigand’s Die Epigonen are here. A dreadful din is heard as Mr Wigand vents his indignation. ‘An A. Ruge.’ He reproaches the latter with the common misfortunes both have endured during the past four years. Ruge, he says, was unable — in Paris — ‘to go hand-in-hand with fanatical communism’. Communism is a condition

‘hatched out in its own, ignorant brain, a narrow-minded and ignorant piece of barbarism which is to be forcibly imposed on mankind’.

Finally he brags about the great things he will do ‘so long as enough lead remains in the world to make type’. The candidat de la potence [candidate for the gallows], you see, has not yet given up hope of becoming the candidat de la lanterne. [candidate for the lamppost — allusion to the ambiguous position of bourgeois radicals, threatened with government repressions (gallows) for opposition, and in case of revolution — with reprisals by the people — lamppost]

I would draw your attention to the article in today’s National (mercredi 19) on the fall in the number of Parisian voters since 1844 from over 20,000 to 17,000.

Yours
E.

Paris has sunk low. Danton is selling wood in the Boulevard Bourdon. Barbaroux keeps a calico shop in the rue St. Honoré, the Réforme no longer has the strength to demand the Rhine, the opposition is searching for talent and cannot find it, the bourgeois gentry go to bed so early that everything has to be closed by 12 o'clock, and la jeune France accepts it without turning a hair. The police would certainly not have been able to enforce this had it not been for the early business hours kept by principals, whose motto is: ‘Morgenstunde hat usw’. [i.e., early to bed, early to rise etc.]

Mr Grün’s pamphlet, printed at the workers’ expense, is the one I once saw at Seiler’s: Die Preussischen Landtags-Abschiede. Ein Wort zur Zeit (anonymous); it consists mainly of plagiarisms from Marx’s essays (Deutsch-Französische-Jahrbücher) [Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’ and ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction'] and monumental nonsense. To him, questions of ‘political economy’ and of ‘socialism’ are identical. Absolute monarchy developed as follows:

‘The Prince created for himself an abstract domain, and this intellectual domain was called — the State. The State became the domain of domains; as the ideal of the domain it abolishes the individual domain, just as it lets it subsist, and always abolishes it when it seeks to become absolute, independent, etc.'

This ‘intellectual’ domain, Prussia, ‘almost immediately becomes transformed into a domain in which prayers are said, a clerical domain [geistige — intellectual, and geistliche — clerical]!! The consequence of all this is: Liberalism in Prussia has already been overcome in theory, hence the Imperial Estates will no longer concern themselves with bourgeois questions but directement with the social question.

‘The slaughtering and milling tax is what really betrays the nature of taxes, to wit it betrays the fact that every tax is a poll tax. But whoever raises a poll tax is saying: “Your heads and bodies are my own, you are bound to me head and body. ... The slaughtering and milling tax matches absolutism too well etc.'

For two years the jackass has been paying octroi [city tolls on imported consumer goods existing since the Middle Ages] without realising it, believing that such a thing exists only in Prussia. Finally, apart from a few plagiarisms and stock phrases, this little pamphlet is liberal through and through, and German-liberal to boot.

It is generally held by the workers here that the Garantien [W. Weitling, Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit] was not written by Weitling alone. Besides S. Schmidt, Becker, etc., several Frenchmen are said to have provided him with material and in particular he had manuscripts of one Ahrens, of Riga, a worker in Paris, now in America, who also wrote the main part of Die Menschheit wie sie ist und sein soll. The people here once wrote to him in London and told him as much, whereat he became exceedingly angry and simply replied that this was slanderous.

[On the back of the letter]

Monsieur Charles Marx, 19, Plaine Ste Gudule, Bruxelles

The Latest From The British Leftist Blog-"Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism"

The Latest From The British Leftist Blog-"Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism"

http://histomatist.blogspot.com/

Click on the headline to link to the latest from the British Leftist blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

Markin comment:
While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items it is not clear to me that this blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public may be these days.

From The Free The San Francisco Eight Committee-Cisco cleared! Last of the charges dismissed

Click on the headline to link to the Free The SF 8 blog

Markin comment:

Once in a while, once in a great while, we see a little belated kicking and screaming justice under bourgeois democracy. We will take what we can get every time with not stopping holding our noses. Good luck Brother Torres.

Time to get serious about full employment: We need a jobs program that doesn't tinker around the edges-By Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog / August 24, 2011- Okay -30 For 40 (Markin)

Time to get serious about full employment: We need a jobs program that
doesn't tinker around the edges-By Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog / August 24, 2011- Okay -30 For 40 (Markin)

The Rag Blog will present noted writer and political activist Carl Davidson with a multi-media presentation on "The Mondragon Corporation and the Workers Cooperative Movement," on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011, 7-10 p.m., at 5604 Manor Community Center, 5604 Manor Road, Austin, Texas. For more information, go here. Carl will also be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, Sept. 9, from 2-3 p.m. (CST), on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live here.

My regional daily newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to its credit, came out with an editorial Monday, Aug. 22, 2011, urging President Obama to push for a substantial jobs program over Republican opposition.
Action on jobs: Obama must push hard to get people back to work" is the headline, and a key point stresses "Mr. Obama now needs to offer proposals equal to the size of the problem. That means bold strokes, not half-measures. If his Republican antagonists in Congress are determined to stand in the way of getting Americans back to work, the president must say so publicly -- and then go over their heads to enlist the nation in his effort.
Terrific, a good framing of the question. Unfortunately, however, once you get into the substance of the piece, it turns into a muddle. The Post-Gazette offers up a hodgepodge of proposals that tinker around the edges of the problem -- more tax cuts and credits for jobs created, more unemployment benefits, and oddly, more trade deals, even though these deals mostly result in net job losses.

Here's the heart of the matter. In a down economy, jobs are created by increasing demand, by more customers with bigger orders coming to a firm's doors. The problem is that consumer demand has taken a nose dive since the credit bubble burst.

People don't have money to spend. They're cutting back on everything, and trying to unload their debt. This means business-to-business orders shrink as well. Companies may be cash-rich and have high profits, but with no increase in orders or customers at their door, they aren't likely to hire people to do nothing just to get a tax credit.

This is where government has to become the key customer. It has to make huge productive purchases for local work and local materials to build productive infrastructure -- county-owned green energy plants, new and improved schools, modernized locks and dams, Medicare for all, investment in young students and veterans like we did with the GI Bill, investment in research in new industries, and so on.

Most important, to work well, it can't be nickel-and-dimed to death. It has to be on the scale of the expenditures for World War II. That's when the "multiplier effect" can kick in, and related growth in manufacturing can take off in turn. And it has to be paid for by going to where the most appropriate money is, imposing a financial transaction tax on unproductive and destabilizing speculation by Wall Street.

The best the Post-Gazette does on this matter is to support Obama's proposal for an "Infrastructure Bank," while urging him to find a way to bypass a GOP roadblock in Congress.

But even that is too passive. It says, in effect, here's a small pot of money. If you want to repair some roads, come and get some.

What we really need is something like the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority and Works Progress Administration, but on steroids, a TVA-WPA-CCC 2.0. We need to pass John Conyers' HR 870 Full employment Bill. We need the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor to go to every county in the country with a fully-funded proposal to build new green energy wind farms and solar power arrays as public energy utilities, hiring local workers at union scale, with no obstacles to a union election. And that's just for starters.

Yes, we need a serious jobs program. But it's time for everyone who utters that phrase to get serious themselves. Why? Because it's going to take a massive upsurge in class struggle to get it -- by removing those standing in the way.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, and a local Beaver County, PA member of Steelworkers Associates. In the 1960s, he was a national leader of SDS and a writer and editor for the Guardian newsweekly. He is also the co-author, with Jerry Harris, of CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age. He serves as webmaster for SolidarityEconomy.net and Beaver County Blue. This article was first published on Carl's blog, Keep On Keepin' On. Read more articles by Carl Davidson on The Rag Blog.]

I'm Not Down With Jesus Anymore -Mariann G. Wizard- The Rag Blog

I'm Not Down With Jesus Anymore

a response to "The Response"


O I'm Not Down With Jesus Anymore –
They say He votes Republican and leads us into war,
and He will not heal anyone if they've been sick before –
No, I'm Not Down With Jesus Anymore!

I thought that I knew Jesus as a child –
He said he was a friend to all, so gentle and so mild,
and He held out His hand to me when I got kind of wild,
but that was before Jesus got so riled!

Now Jesus just seems angry all the time –
He hangs out with the big shots and overlooks their crimes,
and for the old and helpless, He hasn't got a dime –
it's their own fault if they're not in their prime!

Yeah, Jesus changed on his way to the top –
some say because his Daddy thought He was a flop,
He started acting less laid back and way more like a cop,
and now He's grown up, He's just like his Pop!

Jesus Christ no longer loves his brother –
can you imagine how that hurts His Mother?
And forget that Golden Rule of treating others
as you would like to be – that's just for losers, you schmuck!

I remember all the good times that we had –
like back when wearin' sandals was considered really rad,
or turnin' water into wine, man, that was super-bad!
But I'm not gonna let it make me sad.

We'll still be here if Jesus's new friends
decide that they don't need Him when they win –
when He sees them fill their bank accounts and commit their mortal sins –
He can join us at the barricades we tend!

But I'm Not Down With Jesus Anymore –
not if He votes Republican and still supports the war,
not if He won't heal anyone who has been sick before –
No, I'm Not Down With Jesus Anymore!

© mgw 8/25/11

Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog


[Mariann G. Wizard, a Sixties radical activist and contributor to The Rag, Austin's underground newspaper from the 60s and 70s, is a poet, a professional science writer specializing in natural health therapies, and a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. Read more poetry and articles by Mariann G. Wizard on The Rag Blog.]

ROTC resurgent -Part II: ROTC's history and return to campus By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2011

ROTC resurgent -Part II: ROTC's history and return to campus By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2011


When the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy was dropped in 2010, some institutions began to consider reestablishing their relationship with ROTC.
By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2011

[This is the second of a two-part series on ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) -- dealing with the militant opposition to ROTC during the Vietnam War era, and with the program's recent resurgence on college campuses. In Part I , Jurie described an escalating series of demonstrations against ROTC in 1969-1970 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was a student. Part II covers the history of the ROTC program, the issue of discrimination against gays, and the recent return of ROTC to a number of U.S. campuses.]

While the concerted and militant campaign against ROTC in Boulder may have been unique, it was far from the only protest against ROTC during the anti-Vietnam war era, and, in fact, there had been substantial opposition to the program prior to the War in Vietnam. Since its inception, ROTC has proven controversial.

Part of the original purpose of ROTC was found in the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which gave states federal land that included a stipulation for military coursework. In 1898 the War Department attempted to clarify this by proposing military instruction be provided by officers assigned as faculty, that students in those courses be required to wear uniforms, and that this instruction be made mandatory. Enactment of the National Defense Act of 1916 formally established ROTC and extended it to private as well as public colleges.

Some have argued ROTC played an essential role in keeping the military grounded in civil society. According to Michael S. Neiberg, unlike officers trained in elite military academies,
civilian educated officers would bring to military service a wider and more rounded background. They would also bring to the military a value system more consistent with American society by virtue of having lived in a civilian environment.
On the other hand,others have argued that ROTC desensitizes the civilian population to the militarization of society and the inimical purposes that may be served by the military. According to Neiberg, the University of Washington SDS in 1969 contended that,
If the university's role in cooperating with ROTC is the production of officers, our universities have become, in part, mere extension schools of our government's military establishment... The university continues to produce the tools to make possible policies such as those which led the U.S. into war in Asia.
ROTC had become so well-established by the 1920s that John Dewey and others became sufficiently alarmed to create a Committee on Militarism and Education. Concerns over its growing presence by the 1930s caused a few educational institutions to either drop the program or change its status from mandatory to voluntary.

However, most schools that had the program retained it, usually with the requirement that two years of participation in the program were obligatory for all male students.

ROTC received a boost during World War II, but after the war the controversy returned. Motivated by the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, ROTC sparked protest. In May 1960, protestors at Boston University picketed, leafleted, petitioned, and placed a table with a protest sign in a ROTC parade route.

As the Vietnam war heated up in the mid- and late-1960s, so did protests against ROTC. In addition to demonstrations, ROTC facilities were set on fire at Stanford, Michigan, Kent State, and the University of Colorado. There was a perception held by a number in the anti-war movement that this violence paled in comparison with, and was justified by, the widespread use of napalm and the tonnage of bombs dropped in Vietnam.

Some schools, in response to these protests, removed the mandatory requirement. Others, like the Colorado School of Mines, kept it in place into the 1970s.

Even where ROTC was no longer compulsory, such as the University of Colorado, the program became a focal point of the anti-war movement. During the late 1960s and into the early 1970s over 80 ROTC programs were dropped, mostly from the elite universities where ROTC had drawn the most opposition. While ROTC was dropped from some schools, it was established in less "controversial," mostly public university locations.


Women's ROTC in the Sixties. Photo from Fortune City / Broad Recognition (Yale).

It should be pointed out that ROTC programs were never formally banned by host institutions. In most cases, either academic credit was withdrawn, or regular faculty status was not accorded ROTC instructors. In these cases, ROTC decided to withdraw its own program. Responding to the changes that occurred during that decade, women's programs were created in ROTC beginning in 1969.

Nonetheless, a rough status quo was maintained for decades after the Vietnam war ended. During that time frame many colleges and universities enacted policies banning discrimination against gays. Because the military engaged in such discrimination, this effectively kept ROTC off campus at those schools.

Nearly two and half decades later, renewed support for ROTC grew with the passage of the Solomon Amendment. Named after Gerald Solomon (R-NY) who initially introduced the legislation in 1994, this legislation prohibited colleges and universities that received federal funding from prohibiting military recruitment on campus or dropping ROTC programs.

Several law schools combined to file a lawsuit against this prohibition. In the 2006 Rumsfeld v. FAIR decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an appeals court ruling and upheld the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment

When the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy was dropped in 2010, some institutions began to consider reestablishing their relationship with ROTC.

For at least two institutions of higher education, reinstatement was not seamless. At Stanford, a women's group objected that while discrimination in the military against gays had been lifted, it continued against transgender individuals. Nonetheless, on April 28, 2011, the Stanford Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly to invite ROTC back to campus.

At Yale, a representative of a women's group wrote that discrimination and harassment against women in the military was a problem of such significance that it ought to be addressed before welcoming a return of ROTC to that campus.

Another concern has cropped up even more recently. An August 9, 2011 CNN report revealed that Air Force ROTC training has included a slide show that violates the separation of church and state. According to reporter Jennifer Rizzo, "many of the slides in the 43 page production use a Christian justification for war."

Both the ROTC and military launch officer training were developed by the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command (AETC). After 31 Air Force missile launch officers objected to this training, Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Foundation is quoted as saying, "they're trying to teach that, under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing."

Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, are among those that have brought ROTC back, and Brown has been considering the matter. ROTC has regained a certain popularity among students. Not only have the draft and the memory of Vietnam faded, but military service is seen as patriotic in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and an employment option in a tough economy.


University of Florida ROTC cadets participate in leadership exercise April 25, 2010 at Camp Blanding, Fla. Photo by Cadet Scott Stallings / USAF / Fox News.

While the military may no longer be engaged in overt discrimination against gays, there are unresolved issues involving ROTC. Among these, the objections raised during the Vietnam eara largely remain in place. So long as the U.S. maintains an interventionist foreign policy based on resource exploitation and the containment of those at odds with elite interests, it is evident that ROTC will provide officers to serve that policy.

Sources: Allan Brick, "The Campus Protest Against ROTC," Southern Student Organizing Committee, no date; Chuck Colbert, Stanford Faculty OK ROTC Proposal, Bay Area Report, June 5, 2011; Editorial: "Reconsidering ROTC," The Brown Daily Herald; "Larry Gordon, Once a Campus Outcast, ROTC is Booming at Universities," Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2011; Tim Lange & Carol Lease, "ROTC: An Analysis," Boulder, CO: Student Peace Union, 1969; Diane H. Mazur, "The Myth of the ROTC Ban," The New York Times, October 24, 2010; Tara W. Merrigan & Zoe A.Y. Weinberg, "Harvard to Officially Recognize Naval ROTC," Harvard Crimson, March 3, 2011; Michael S. Neiberg, Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service, Cambridge: Harvard, 2000; Fahmida Y. Rashid, "The Return of ROTC to Columbia," The Village Voice, April 6, 2011; Emily Rappoport, "Should Yale Allow ROTC to Return to Campus?" Yale: Broad Recognition, May 3, 1011; Otis Reid, "Women's Coalition Rejects ROTC's Return to Campus," Stanford Review, March 14, 2011; Jennifer Rizzo, "Air Force's Use of Christian Messages Extends to ROTC," CNN.com, August 9, 2011.

[Jay D. Jurie was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of SDS, and one of the "Boulder 18" arrested as a result of the ROTC demonstrations. Jay now teaches public administration and urban planning and lives near Orlando, Florida. Read more articles by Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted by thorne dreyer at 10:39 PM

The power of a good example:The Arab Spring and the Libyan Fall-By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / September 1, 2011

The power of a good example:The Arab Spring and the Libyan Fall-By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / September 1, 2011

For many years those of us who followed United States/Cuban relations puzzled over the variety of explanations for why United States policy toward the small island was so hostile. Some spoke of the fear of “communism,” others the influence of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans, and still others how American politicians for 200 years believed Cuba really belonged to the United States.

An alternative explanation, some felt, was the power of a good example. This latter thesis suggested that since Cuban socialism was providing good health care and education for its people and since the quality of life and culture in Cuba had been thriving under socialism, others might choose the Cuban path to building their own political, economic, and cultural institutions. This development, that is an improving quality of life on the island, must be disrupted.

In January and February, 2011, masses of Tunisians and then Egyptians went into the streets to protest the dictatorial governments that ruled their lives for years. As it turned out, protests, at least in Egypt, were part of a long tradition of activism, fueled by enthusiastic organizing efforts of young people.

Massive mobilizations included youth, women as well as men, workers, religious and secular people, and Egyptians of all educational levels and occupations. While many protestors over the weeks were victimized by police and military, they committed themselves, in part out of necessity, to non-violent resistance.

In Egypt the immediate goal was the ouster of the 40-year dictator, Hosni Mubarak, but people interviewed in the streets indicated that in addition to democratization they wanted jobs, and improved living standards, and rights for all Egyptians irrespective of class, ethnicity, religion, and gender.

Some analysts claimed that protesters knew that their struggle for a better life was a long-term one that would extend well beyond the overthrow of the dictator. While they sought support from the powerful military, they had no illusions about the role the military would play in the long-term.

Their force was in their numbers, their determination, their articulated vision, and the inspiration they communicated to each other and to those in similar situations all around the world. Protestors in Madison, Wisconsin, began to refer to peoples movements “from Cairo to Madison,” suggesting that non-violent mass mobilizations representing progressive majorities could spread throughout the Middle East, Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.

The Arab Spring was another “power of a good example.”

But in early March, after a seeming upsurge in protest against the dictatorship in Libya and threats against those in rebellion, the United Nations voted to authorize NATO forces to be used in that country if human life was threatened.

As we know, NATO launched a massive air war, presumably against targets of the Muammar Gaddafi government. That set off a violent war between unidentified rebels and the Libyan government. Now it seems that the rebels backed by NATO bombing and arms are on the verge of toppling the Gaddafi government.

In this latter case, the rebels have engaged in violence, the Libyan government engaged in violence, and NATO forces have unleashed massive violence. Media coverage is of the bombing, the fighting, and the eccentric behavior of the Libyan dictator. But NATO has exceeded its UN mandate to engage in humanitarian intervention. And we know little about the rebels except that they employ violence.

And in the end, the Libyan experience returns us to the old narrative: a crazy dictator, brutal violence on all sides, and a virtual absence of declaration of any vision and purpose by those fighting on either side.

Contrary to the vision of the nonviolent youthful workers, men and women, who went out in the streets of Cairo, we have returned to the old Middle East narrative of guns, brutal dictatorships, massive bombings, death and destruction, and great powers to the rescue.

NATO countries can heave a sigh of relief: the Arab Spring is over.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted by thorne dreyer at 10:35 AM

The Latest On Jesse Winchester- Folksinger/Songwriter-A Voice From The 1960s Folk Minute Is Down- Singer-Songwriter Jesse Winchester Is Ill- Be Well “Yankee Lady” Writer.

Click on the headline to link to an earlier entry from the American Left History blog on the condition of 1960s folk revival singer Jesse Winchester.

***********

I'm sorry to announce that I'm cancelling my shows for the rest of this year. I have been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, and will have to undergo treatment for the next couple of months. I'm very sorry if any plans have been disrupted; I do hope to see you again soon, and we'll pick up where we left off.

Update: The other day my doctor asked how I was feeling. "Pretty rough, Doctor. But it's a funny thing - I have these strange moments of euphoria."

"Well, it's not from anything I've been doing." He has a very fine, wry sense of humor.

The truth is, it is what he and you have been doing. Your messages of love and support have been more touching than I can possibly tell you. You are causing my feelings of euphoria. Thank you - I love you so much.

I have cross-posted this message to the Caring Bridge web site.

Thanks for the visit,

Jesse Winchester

***Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- Out In The Teen Dance Night-Penny’s Sweet Sixteen Party

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Dubs performing their 1950s classic, Could This Be Magic?.

CD Review

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; Volume 4, various artists, Ace Records, 1994

Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which grace each CD in this The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows a girl, a pony-tailed, starch-bloused, woolen-sweatered, wide, flouncy skirt-wearing, Penny Parker, all grown up almost, as the good teen D.J., a.k.a. hostess, that she is, doing her chore of spinning platters, okay, okay, putting records on her portable 45s record player for the guests at her sweet sixteen party, her very first house teen be-bop hop.

We all wish her well, right? And hope she plays a couple of Elvis, Chuck, and Jerry Lee things and not too many slow dances since some of the guys still have not got the hang of that yet. Oh yes, for the clueless, a record player was a machine to put records on in order to hear those guys just mentioned. And records, for the really clueless, were grooved, vinyl plate-like objects that kept the blues away in the 1950s teen night. Just like iPOD, texting, yahoo messaging, etc. keep the blues away from the hip-hop nation teen night.
******

“Don’t come back before one,” Penny Parker, now sweet sixteen party-crowned Penny Parker, as she shouted to her parents leaving out the breezeway door to the garage to take off to places unknown, maybe unknowable, until at least that one o‘clock hour. Peter Parker, Penny proud without showing it, muttered under his breath that he damn well would not be back before one, come hell or high water, while that rock and roll music was infesting, and that was the word that he used, his house. Or at least the downstairs part, rock and roll previously being limited to the Penny upstairs netherworld, and kept away from his ears, well, mainly away form his ears. “Now, Peter,” was all that Delores Parker at first could come up with, and that was usually enough. Tonight however she added, and told him so in no uncertain terms, that her husband was being an old fogy seeing that this was Penny’s sweet sixteen party, she had baby-sat to perdition in order to fund the party (with a little Parker parent help, Delores mainly), had done mostly what they had asked of her, as much as one could expect from a rock-addled post World War II teenager from what she had read in the women’s magazines that she was addicted to reading.

Most importantly tonight was, and here is where woman-girl- female whatever solidarity came in, Penny was going to “coax” Zack Smith into giving her his class ring, the universal teen sign of “going steady,” hands off, and a 180 degree turn in their sometimes stormy relationship since back in about junior high school. If he showed. At least, Delores, thought, she had given that Jimmy Kelly the air, although he was invited, invited tonight for old times sake since Jimmy had been there the night Penny played her first record, Could This Be Magic by the Dubs on her brand new, slave wages-bought record player. But enough of Parker parents, tonight is Penny's night.

Penny night or not, Miss Parker is already starting to fret that Zack will be a no-show. See they had had an argument last week about that “going steady” thing, that eternal love class ring- signifying thing, and Zack for the twenty-third, at least, time stormed off. And Penny for the twenty-second time made peace over the telephone, the midnight blues telephone. But you never knew with Zack. All Penny knew was she wanted him, wanted him bad, and wanted him here tonight to share her sweet sixteen-ness.

So as the couples, maybe a dozen or so of their close friends, started filling up the Parker living room Penny, knowing that she was not the only rock-addled teen in the room, played D.J. And revved up the old Sear& Roebuck recorder player with a stack of platters (records, 45 RPM records okay); Ray Sharpe ‘s Linda Lu; Nappy Brown’s Little by Little; Maybe by the Chantels although she always wondered how they could get their voices that high on that one; a tear-jerker but a slow one by request from Pammy and Sue who had boyfriend troubles of their own, Little Anthony and the Imperials’ Tears On My Pillow which got even hardened corner boys a little weepy as she found out once when Zack and she were “finished” and king corner boy Frankie Riley had asked her out, and she had accepted. Well, she thought that should last this crowd for a while, for a while until Zack gets here, hopefully.

Later, around ten, ten-thirty, just as she was about to give up the thought of Zack’s coming that night, and had resigned herself to playing D.J. putting Buddy Knox’s Party Doll on(although she wasn’t feeling like any party doll then) for this rock-addled crowd Zack came in kind of sneakily through the side door. And instead of coming over to say thanks to Penny for inviting him or any other kind of social graces recognition he began to get into an animated conversation with Jimmy Kelly. Nothing serious but as Penny found out later Zack was miffed at Jimmy, one of his best friends now that the Zack-Jimmy girl wars, or rather Penny wars were over in Zack’s favor, because Jimmy had not told Penny that he was going to be a little late. But that miffed-ness turned into nothing once Zack told the reason for his lateness. See, Penny performing, as it turned out, her last D.J duty for the evening putting on that much requested previously mentioned Could This Be Magic was finally called over by Zack and as the strains of the song echoed through the house he presented her with his class ring, just a while ago engraved with To P.P. Always 10/7/59. Magic.

The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- 1930s American Socialist Workers Party Leader Max Shachtman-Footnote for Historians(1938) (How Not To Build A Labor Party, Part I )

Click on the headline to link to a Max Shachtman Internet Archives online copy of Footnote for Historians

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*********
Markin comment on this article:

Max Shachtman knew how to "speak" Marxism back in the 1930s and believe it. Later he could speak that language only at Sunday picnics and the like as he drifted back into the warm embrace of American imperialism.

In Honor Of The “Old Man”- On The 71st Anniversary Of The Death Of Leon Trotsky- A Memoir On Leon Trotsky By James T. Farrell

Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.

Markin comment:

Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!

Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
******
James T Farrell
A Memoir on Leon Trotsky

I met Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1937. He seemed different from what might have been expected. He gave the impression of extraordinary simplicity. Alice Ruhl – wife of Otto Ruhl, one time left wing Socialist member of the German Reichstag and biographer of Karl Marx – said of Trotsky that he had changed from his younger days: he had, she said, become more simple, more like Lenin. Many who knew him earlier said that he was cold. He did not seem so in Mexico. He was easy to talk to and one felt less distance between him and oneself than is sometimes the case when one meets a man prominent in political life. But this comparison is perhaps not a good one. Trotsky was then a defeated leader, and a man in exile. He was seeking to rebuild a political movement and was engaged in the most dramatic fight of his life. Accused of betraying the revolution he helped to lead and the society he did so much in helping to found, he was defending his revolutionary honor. He lived behind guarded walls, and followers and secretaries of his carried guns inside his home. He was preparing to answer the charges Stalin launched against him in the Moscow trials.

Elsewhere I have described the Coyoacan Hearings held by the Commission of Inquiry of which Dr. John Dewey was chairman. [1] I shall not repeat this here, but shall merely offer a few personal impressions and anecdotes about him.

One could not separate Trotsky the man from Trotsky the historical figure. When you saw him and spoke with him, you were aware that he was the man who organized the practical details of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and also that he was the organizer of the Red Army. You were aware that you were speaking with one of the greatest revolutionaries in history. He himself had a deep sense of history and of his own historic role. The intense drama of his life was known to me. There he was in that home on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan, pitting his brain against an empire. It was because he was Trotsky that his simplicity was so striking when he was gray and living like a hunted man in Mexico. His followers spoke of him in worshipful tones. For them, he made life more important. He permitted them to believe that they, too, were entering history. They called him “the Old Man,” and they acted like disciples. Constantly, they would pose questions to ascertain what one thought of him, and when John Dewey remarked on Trotsky’s brilliance, they immediately began thinking and hoping that Trotsky would convert Dewey to Trotskyism.

There was an exactness about Trotsky. Even in English, his choice of words revealed this. He seemed to know how far he wanted to go with each person, and his choice of words conveyed or suggested this. There was not, however, much spontaneity in him – or, rather, his spontaneity was kept in check. He, himself, had given his life to an Idea. This Idea – the Revolution – and his personality were as though fused together. A brave man, he was always ready to make any sacrifice to the Idea, and he dealt with people in terms of their relationship to and their acceptance of the Idea. What use would they be to this Idea, this cause? He was working for and living for the cause.

Thus, while he was easy to talk. to, it yet remained that there was a distance between him and others. You did not come into contact with his full personality as you did with, say, John Dewey. This seemed most clear to me the last time I spoke with him. We sat by the long table on which he worked in the home of the painter, Diego Rivera, on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan. He asked me what I was going to do when I returned to America. “I’m going to write novels.” He said he knew that, but again asked me what I was going to do. The service to the cause was more important to him than your personality. Max Eastman, who knew him much better than I did, has often said that he was cold. This I believe is what Eastman means, this seeing individuals as servants to an aim and an idea rather than as personalities in their own right. And this was a trait in his character which marked him off as so different from John Dewey.

He was a witty, graceful, and gallant man. There was something deeply touching and inspiring in his relationship with his wife, Natalia. She was very small and elegant. One could see that she had once been a beautiful woman. The tragedies of her life, the loss of her children in particular, had saddened her. Hers was one of the saddest faces I have ever seen, and she is one of the bravest and noblest of women. Whenever you saw them together, you could not but sense how there was a current of tenderness between them. A gentleness and depth of feeling was apparent in the way he looked at her or touched her hand.

We went on a picnic with him after the ending of the Coyoacan Hearings. Waiting to leave and standing on the porch of the patio of the Rivera home, there was Trotsky bustling about, making sure that there was enough food for everyone, that there was beer for me, that nothing would be forgotten or overlooked. My wife said to me teasingly that Trotsky took an interest in his home and that if he could, why couldn’t I. He came up to me a moment later. I remarked: “L.D., you have ruined my life.”

I explained what I meant and told him what my wife had said.

“It is very simple,” he answered, speaking with a strong accent. “Once (pronouncing it like vunce) I had to feed five million men. It is a little more complicated than feeding five.” Often there was a point, a political reference, a moral in his wit.

We left for a nearby woods in two cars. My wife and I got into the back seat of a roadster. All was in readiness for our departure. Suddenly, Trotsky appeared at the side of the car and said: “Jim, I will (the w pronounced like a v) ride in the open car, and Hortense will ride in the closed car.”

There was gallantry here. For Trotsky to ride in an open car meant a possible risk to his life. Along with his gallantry, there was in his nature a deep respect for women. I have met many Europeans of the Left and of the Revolution, and I have read much of their lives and been told many anecdotes about them. Many of these men, without being quite aware of it, have given the best years of their lives to an effort to emancipate mankind. But with a good proportion of them, emancipation stops at the door of their own homes. Their wives are not completely included in this emancipation; they do all of the housework and serve their revolutionary husbands, sometimes slavishly. In one place in his recent biography The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, Isaac Deutscher mentions how Trotsky, busy as he was, would in a very un-European fashion, help Natalia with the housework and the care of the children. Trotsky’s gallantry was, I believe, real, and it was based on a sense of the dignity of women and of respect for them.

At the picnic, Trotsky and Natalia went off to walk in the woods in opposite directions. This was undoubtedly a solace to him. He lived a guarded life of confinement with little freedom of movement. His secretaries constantly guarded him, with guns on holsters at their side. A contingent of Mexican police stood outside the Rivera home to protect him. He fretted and balked in this confinement, and he was fatalistic about the danger of his being assassinated. He believed that when Stalin wanted really and finally to have him murdered, Stalin would undoubtedly succeed. And as is known, this happened.

After taking the walk, he returned to the group. One of the Americans present was building a fire. He was an ex-follower of Trotsky’s who had left the Trotsky movement, but who had come to Coyoacan to help the work of the Dewey hearings. Trotsky watched him for a moment and became impatient. He didn’t like the way the American friend was going about making the fire. He took over and made his own fire, accompanying it with raillery that was friendly but also sharp. And there was political point to this. Trotsky was teasing a one-time follower for having broken ideologically with the Trotskyite Movement. Trotsky always liked to tease Americans, especially about so-called American efficiency, and he also teased his American ex-follower in this vein.

We ate and talked and sang. One of Trotsky’s police guards was a tall, young, and good looking Mexican cop. Trotsky liked and trusted him. This policeman sang El Rancho Grande, and everyone liked it so much that he was asked to sing it again. After Trotsky was murdered, I was told that this policeman had been bought by enemies of Trotsky’s.

I had several talks with him. Having been an American in the twenties and having read my H.L. Mencken, I sometimes took a relish in telling stories which recounted stupidity. I told a story of this kind. The subject was a famous European writer with whom Trotsky had had controversies. This writer is not stupid, but he appeared this way because he had been evading questions concerning Stalin that would have pinned him down. Trotsky became quickly impatient and didn’t want to hear the end of the story. It bored him. He interrupted and said: “X should learn how to write better novels.”

He asked questions about American literature and spoke of having read Babbitt, but his admiration for Lewis’ book was qualified. The character of Babbitt seemed unintelligent to him. I spoke of Dreiser whom I praised as a great writer but whose philosophical and general ideas I thought sometimes banal. Trotsky asked how could a man be a great writer if his ideas were stupid. “What American writers need,” he said, “is a new perspective.”

He meant a Marxian perspective. He believed that America would one , day have a great Marxist renaissance. Actually he hadn’t read enough of American literature to know whether American writers did or did not need a new perspective. His statement was a consequence of the confidence of faith. Marxism was a science to him, and it permitted him to predict in faith.

Speaking of how Americans viewed him, I said that many saw him as a romantic figure, in fact as a romantic hero. He said that he knew this and disliked being so regarded. He wasn’t interested in my explanation of how it happened that he seemed to some Americans a romantic figure.

Just before the beginning of the first of the hearings of the Dewey Commission, Trotsky was standing on the porch outside his work room. The divorced wife of a famous American writer crashed the gate, and, inside the home, she went up to Trotsky. She told him that he didn’t know who she was and then identified herself by giving her former husband’s name.

“I am sure,” responded Trotsky, “that if I did know, I should be most impressed.”

Another time, I asked him if he thought that Stalin and Hitler would get together. This was in 1937, and some of us who had engaged in the bitter fight against the Moscow trials had come to believe that a Nazi-Soviet alliance was going to be made. Trotsky answered by remarking that if this happened, it would be a great catastrophe. Around that time, he predicted the Stalin-Hitler pact.

My publisher, James Henle, an old newspaper man, had worked on the New York World in 1917. He had been sent to interview Trotsky, then in New York, and they had met in a bakery on the East Side. Trotsky had struck Henle as an intelligent man. He had predicted the Russian Revolution. But as Henle tells the story, he heard endless predictions in those days. A month later, the February Revolution in Russia happened. Trotsky did not remember this interview.

The last time I saw him, I went to his home on the day before I left Mexico. When I arrived he was talking with Otto Ruhl in his office. Ruhl had stood with Karl Liebnecht during the first World War. When the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded, Ruhl had characterized it as a “pacifist putsch.” He and Trotsky had almost never agreed, it seemed. There they were, two old revolutionaries in exile in Mexico. They still disagreed, and speaking in German, their voices rose. I heard Trotsky talking loudly, in fact shouting. I couldn’t understand a word of German, but I could guess what they were arguing about. Ruhl was still, in Mexico, determined to press his disagreement, with the Bolsheviks of 1917. I was told that soon after this Otto Ruhl and Trotsky stopped seeing each other.

The lunch was simple, but less so than normal. Trotsky was a most gracious host. There was not much talk and then we said good-by. He went to take an afternoon siesta.

His was one of the fastest working minds I have ever encountered. And just to see and talk to him, one had a sense of a great will. His body, his habit were bent to that will. in many ways he was Spartan. There were times in fact during his days of power when he spoke like a man of a modern Sparta, and Isaac Deutscher uses the word Spartan in reference to Trotsky at one point in his biography.

This memoir is passing and random. It does not treat of Trotsky’s theories and ideas. This I shall try to discuss on another occasion. Here, I merely wished to set down passing impressions of Trotsky. His personality was not only strong but highly attractive. He was very gracious. There was a mocking look in his bright eyes, and I had the feeling that he looked out on life with a kind of mockery and irrepressible sense of irony. He had committed himself to an idea, and he had risen to heights of power that few men know. And then, there he was, back in exile. Most of his life was spent in exile. In Siberia, Turkey, England, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, he had been an exile – writing, talking, urging, serving a burning idea with total conviction.

He was strikingly different from many exiles. Revolutionary exiles frequently decay and disintegrate. Trotsky didn’t. No man could have known a defeat more total than he. It was amazing how little it damaged him. Writing, fighting the same battle, he didn’t seem like an embittered or unhappy man. I thought of this, and how different are the stories of Napoleon’s exile. Trotsky was a man who might be compared to Napoleon. But in exile, Napoleon bore the strains and the isolation less well than Trotsky. With Napoleon, power was all. To Trotsky, power was the means of making his ideas possible. It was the means whereby man achieved his historic destiny. Power was the arm of a faith. That faith served him in exile.


I was in the hospital, weak and worn, following an operation for a carbuncle. It was night. A radio was on at the head of my bed. I was not listening to it. There was a news broadcast. About half of the words penetrated my mind. Leon Trotsky ... assassin ... not expected to live.

I was shocked. I couldn’t sleep and was given a pill. The next morning, I woke up with a feeling of guilt. I had had some dream. Then the news vendor came, and there was the story of the murder. His life was like a Greek tragedy. He was a great hero and a great martyr. But the tragic character of Trotsky’s death only focuses on the great and terrible tragedy of our century. Such burning conviction, such brilliance, such Spartan sacrifice as his – and it went to create a state that evolved into the most terrible tyranny in history. Today, the state which he helped to create stands threatening the freedom of all of us. The values we cherish, the hopes of man for a more decent world, these are now threatened by that powerful state. Trotsky and Lenin were among the great men of this century. But has it ever been that the work, the life of two great men has ended in such brutal and inhuman tyranny? The ironies of their stories are written in blood and suffering. It is now almost thirty-seven years since they were the leaders of the October Revolution. And as we can look back, it, seems from this particular vantage point that we could be no worse off if their work and their achievement had never been. The horrors of Tsardom are as nothing to those which succeeded it.

Trotsky walked in his garden. The sun was shining. The afternoon was at the point of beginning to wane. He went into his work room and sat down with the manuscript his assassin had brought him. The Alpine stock was driven into his brain. His blood fell on a page of the manuscript of his biography of Stalin. The last words he had written were “the idea.” His own blood spilled on that page.

*****

Footnotes
[1] John Dewey in Mexico, in my book, Reflections At Fifty and Other Essays, New York 1954.