Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a “The Rag Blog” post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matter here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
*****************
Gary Tyler's Quest for Justice
by Dave Zirin
The Nation
The history of the American legal system is scarred with instances of injustice: the Haymarket martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Add to this list the case of Gary Tyler, convicted of murder at the age of 16. Tyler's case was remarkable because at the time of his 1975 conviction, he was the nation's youngest death-row inmate. The spotlight dimmed when his sentence was commuted to life without the possibility of parole in 1977, a year after the US Supreme Court declared Louisiana's death penalty unconstitutional.
Tyler, now 48, is living out his days in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison. A former slave plantation, Angola is home to 5,000 prisoners, 75 percent of whom are black. He has now spent years of his life behind bars because he was the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.
National interest in Tyler's case was revived by a recent series of articles by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. In 1974 Tyler was on a school bus filled with African-American students who attended the formerly all-white Destrehan High School in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. A white mob attacked the school bus. As Gary's brother Terry recalled years later to journalist Adam Nossiter in a piece published in The Nation, "They were on the attack, man. It was panic."
Witnesses at the time said someone on the bus pointed out the window and yelled, "Look at that white boy with that gun." After several pops, a 13-year-old white student, Timothy Weber, lay wounded on the ground. Weber's cousin, Deputy Sheriff V.J. St. Pierre, rushed the boy to the hospital, where he later died from a gunshot wound. Later, white supremacist David Duke came to Destrehan to fan the flames of racial hatred.
Herbert wrote, "That single shot in this rural town about 25 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans set in motion a tale of appalling injustice that has lasted to the present day." The police came onto the bus and Tyler was dragged off. Then came the beatings. As Juanita Tyler, Gary's mother, told Herbert, "One of the deputies had a strap and they whipped him with that. It was terrible. Finally, when they let me go in there, Gary was just trembling. He was frightened to death. He was trembling and rocking back and forth. They had kicked him all in his privates. He said, 'Mama, they kicked me. One kicked me in the front and one kicked in the back.'
He said that over and over. I couldn't believe what they had done to my baby." An all-white jury found Tyler guilty of first-degree murder. Since his conviction, the four witnesses against him have recanted their testimony.
The murder weapon, as Herbert reported, had been "stolen from a firing range used by the sheriff's deputies." It appeared out of nowhere as the murder weapon. The gun has since magically disappeared from the evidence room.
A federal appeals court ultimately ruled that Tyler did not receive a fair trial, but justice was again denied. In an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!, Herbert explained that the court ruled that "the charge to the jury was flawed, and they said that it was flawed so badly that it clearly could have had an impact on how the jurors ruled. But they were so insistent on not having this case overturned and not having Gary Tyler freed or have a new trial that they ruled on a technicality that he did not deserve a new trial. So it's on the record that a federal appeals court has said that his trial was fundamentally unfair."
In 1989, Louisiana Board of Pardons (LBP) voted 3 to 2 to commute Tyler's sentence from life to sixty years, making Tyler eligible for a speedy release from prison. But Louisiana Governor Charles "Buddy" Roemer, a Democrat facing an electoral challenge from David Duke, refused to issue a pardon. A crucial element in Roemer's decision was the racially charged political climate: Eighteen years later, that climate has changed. And now the fight to free Gary Tyler has been reignited by a new advocacy effort, led by Tyler's family, lawyers and activists.
Joe Allen, a member of the Free Gary Tyler steering committee, credited Bob Herbert's columns for reviving the effort to free him. "Gary's case is one of the great miscarriages of justice in the modern history of the US but had largely been forgotten until the recent work by Bob Herbert," he told me. "I think think there is momentum now that makes it possible for the first time in decades to build a national campaign for his freedom."
In addition to the Free Gary Tyler campaign, Amnesty International's relaunched advocacy has given the Tyler case new visibility. Building on this momentum, I contacted people I know from the world of sports to ask if they would to stand with Tyler at this critical time. And they have responded.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos were part of the most dynamic moment in the history of sports and struggle when they raised their black-gloved fists at the 1968 Olympics. Lee Evans was also a gold medal winner at those Olympics and a leader of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a top-ranked boxer who spent almost twenty years in prison for a triple homicide before being exonerated after an international campaign to win his freedom. Jim "Bulldog" Bouton and Bill "Spaceman" Lee were all-star pitchers for the Yankees and Red Sox who told uncomfortable truths about both society and the game that they love. Etan Thomas plays for the NBA's Washington Wizards and stands in the tradition of the previous generation of political athletes. Together, they and other sports figures are are asking Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco for the release of Gary Tyler. Read the statement to see how Tyler's quest for justice has brought these and other extraordinary figures from the world of sports together.
JOCKS 4 JUSTICE
To: Gov. Kathleen Blanco
We, the undersigned members of the sports community, call upon you, in the name of justice and racial reconciliation, to pardon Gary Tyler and free him from Angola prison. Gary is an innocent man who has spent 32 of his 48 years on earth behind bars for a crime he did not commit. Gary's life has been destroyed because of racial hysteria and that peculiar brand of police work known internationally as "Southern Justice."
As you are undoubtedly aware, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has spent the last month exposing the terrifying truth behind Gary's conviction. In 1975, Gary Tyler, an African-American teenager, was convicted by an all-white jury for the murder of Timothy Weber, a thirteen-year-old white youth. Weber was shot and killed during a busing riot where 200 whites attacked Gary's school bus. Weber's death quite understandably sent shock waves across the state. The police needed a killer.
They chose Gary and his nightmare officially began. Gary's mother detailed to Herbert the sounds of listening to deputies at the police station savagely whipping her son, while they blocked her from entering the room. "They beat Gary so bad," she said. "My poor child. I couldn't do nothing." Every witness who identified Gary as the shooter has since recanted and alleged police intimidation. The gun supposedly used on that day has disappeared.
In the mid-1970s, Gary's case mobilized thousands across the country for his freedom and led Amnesty International to declare him a "political prisoner." Denied a fair trial 32 years ago, imprisoned for life for a crime he did not commit--we call upon you to free Gary Tyler now.
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
boxer and author of The 16th Round
Tommie Smith
1968 Olympic gold medalist
John Carlos
1968 Olympic bronze medalist
Lee Evans
Olympic gold medalist
Etan Thomas
Washington Wizards center and author of More Than an Athlete
Jim Bouton
former New York Yankee pitcher and author of Ball Four
Bill "Spaceman" Lee
former Boston Red Sox pitcher and author of The Wrong Stuff
Eddie Mustafa Muhammad
former Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion and head of Joint Action for Boxers (J.A.B.)
David Meggyesy
former NFL linebacker and retired Western Regional Director, NFL Players Association (NFLPA)
Jeff "Snowman" Monson
Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter
Toni Smith
former member of Manhattanville College Women's Basketball team
Dr. Phil Shinnick
member of the 1964 US Olympic team
Bobbito Garcia
co-editor of Bounce Magazine and NYC DJ
Dennis Brutus
former director of the South African Non Racialist Olympic Committee and professor emeritus of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh
Doug Harris
executive director, Athletes United for Peace
Lester Rodney
sports editor, the Daily Worker, 1936-58
Rus Bradburd
former assistant basketball coach at the University of Texas El Paso and author of Paddy on the Hardwood: Journey Through Irish Hoops
Julio Pabón
president and CEO of Latino Sports Ventures
William Gerena-Rochet
editor of LatinoSports.com
Dave Zirin
columnist for The Nation online and author of What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/zirin
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
From The Pages Of "Workers Hammer (GB)"-Craven trade union leaders offer Labour cuts as "alternative" to Tory cuts
Workers Hammer No. 214
Spring 2011
Craven trade union leaders offer Labour cuts as "alternative" to Tory cuts
For class struggle to defend public sector jobs!
On 26 March, a massive turnout of up to half a million trade unionists demonstrated in London against the savage budget cuts announced by David Cameron’s government. The demonstration consisted of a sea of trade union banners, representing local council workers, teachers and lecturers, health workers and firefighters — in a show of anger against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s assault on healthcare, social services, pensions and much more. The public sector jobs massacre saw 132,000 jobs lost in 2010, while the overall unemployment figure stands officially at 2.5 million, the highest for 20 years.
Low-paid public sector workers, a high proportion of whom are women and minorities, are the core of the trade union movement today. But rather than a strategy to mobilise that social power for a class-struggle fight to defend jobs, the TUC’s “March for the Alternative” was intended to channel this anger into supporting another Labour government. For the first time in over a dozen years, a trade union demonstration in Britain was addressed by the Labour Party leader. Ed Miliband, who was elected leader last September with the support of the trade unions, intoned on the platform that “there is an alternative”, adding that “there is a need for difficult choices, and some cuts” to reduce the budget deficit, but this government “is going too far and too fast”. For a clue as to what Miliband’s “alternative” might be, one only has to recall that before the last election Labour promised cuts deeper and tougher than under Thatcher.
Deep cuts, fast or slow cuts: these are the “choices” being offered to the working class by the servile trade union bureaucracy. Throughout Europe — from Greece to Ireland and Spain — every capitalist government is trying to force the working class to pay for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — a crisis that was caused by the capitalist system itself. An effective defence of jobs today requires hard class struggle — strike action across the public sector. But the trade union leadership is an obstacle to the kind of fight that is necessary because they too share the political framework expressed by Miliband, that the alternative to “Tory cuts” are Labour government cuts.
The ground for the present devastating public sector cuts was prepared by 13 years of Labour governments that relentlessly attacked jobs, pensions, health and education services; froze pay below inflation and slashed tens of thousands of civil service jobs. And all the while, the union leaderships stood by and refused to lead battles against the Labour government. Recall then FBU leader Andy Gilchrist calling off the firefighters strike in 2002 when it threatened to “hinder” the armed forces preparing to invade Iraq.
Visit any of the public sector unions’ websites and find “alternatives”, not for a fight to beat back the rapacious bourgeoisie but for solving British capitalism’s budget deficit. Unison’s recipe calls for “a 50 per cent tax on bankers’ bonuses” and a “Robin Hood Tax” on bank transactions. The Public and Commercial Services union, which organises civil servants, offers similar counsel to the bourgeois rulers including “We could free up billions of pounds by not renewing Trident.”
The “socialist” outfits who ride Labour’s coattails look to none other than the bold class warriors of the TUC to call a general strike, while cravenly rebuilding illusions in the election of a Labour government. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) runs the National Right to Work coalition, whose slogan is “Break the Con-Dem Coalition!” (read: and replace it with a Labour government). When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership contest last year, they enthused that his win was “another avenue to bring pressure to bear on Labour to fight” (Socialist Worker, 25 September 2010). In the meantime a poster on their website lists their own recommendations to the capitalist rulers, “Why There’s No Need to Slash Spending”. Cuts can be avoided by taxing the rich, clamping down on tax evaders, and cutting defence spending — the tired, hopeless call of reformists everywhere to reorder the priorities of the capitalists in favour of the working class.
The Socialist Party, after calling for a one-day public sector strike and a 24-hour general strike, go on to showcase their abiding faith in the capitalist state, and Labour, approvingly quoting an article from Labourlist.org: “A cascade of ‘no cuts’ budget decisions by local authorities could be the most effective resistance to the cuts so far”. The Socialist Party continues, “By using their reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts, councils can gain time to build a mass movement in their support”, and “Ed Miliband could promise that an incoming Labour government would write off all local authority debts incurred from avoiding cuts” (Socialism Today, March 2011).
What is necessary to fight against the massacre of public sector jobs and social services is to mobilise the multiethnic working class in a fight for jobs for all, through a shorter work week with no loss in pay, and to undertake union organising to draw into their ranks all of the working class, including its minority and immigrant components. In the course of class struggle, workers must replace the Labourite cringers atop the unions with workers’ leaders who aim to win battles on the picket lines. Striving to forge such a class-struggle leadership of the unions is an integral part of the fight for a multiethnic revolutionary workers party whose aim is no less than doing away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery through socialist revolution.
Spring 2011
Craven trade union leaders offer Labour cuts as "alternative" to Tory cuts
For class struggle to defend public sector jobs!
On 26 March, a massive turnout of up to half a million trade unionists demonstrated in London against the savage budget cuts announced by David Cameron’s government. The demonstration consisted of a sea of trade union banners, representing local council workers, teachers and lecturers, health workers and firefighters — in a show of anger against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s assault on healthcare, social services, pensions and much more. The public sector jobs massacre saw 132,000 jobs lost in 2010, while the overall unemployment figure stands officially at 2.5 million, the highest for 20 years.
Low-paid public sector workers, a high proportion of whom are women and minorities, are the core of the trade union movement today. But rather than a strategy to mobilise that social power for a class-struggle fight to defend jobs, the TUC’s “March for the Alternative” was intended to channel this anger into supporting another Labour government. For the first time in over a dozen years, a trade union demonstration in Britain was addressed by the Labour Party leader. Ed Miliband, who was elected leader last September with the support of the trade unions, intoned on the platform that “there is an alternative”, adding that “there is a need for difficult choices, and some cuts” to reduce the budget deficit, but this government “is going too far and too fast”. For a clue as to what Miliband’s “alternative” might be, one only has to recall that before the last election Labour promised cuts deeper and tougher than under Thatcher.
Deep cuts, fast or slow cuts: these are the “choices” being offered to the working class by the servile trade union bureaucracy. Throughout Europe — from Greece to Ireland and Spain — every capitalist government is trying to force the working class to pay for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — a crisis that was caused by the capitalist system itself. An effective defence of jobs today requires hard class struggle — strike action across the public sector. But the trade union leadership is an obstacle to the kind of fight that is necessary because they too share the political framework expressed by Miliband, that the alternative to “Tory cuts” are Labour government cuts.
The ground for the present devastating public sector cuts was prepared by 13 years of Labour governments that relentlessly attacked jobs, pensions, health and education services; froze pay below inflation and slashed tens of thousands of civil service jobs. And all the while, the union leaderships stood by and refused to lead battles against the Labour government. Recall then FBU leader Andy Gilchrist calling off the firefighters strike in 2002 when it threatened to “hinder” the armed forces preparing to invade Iraq.
Visit any of the public sector unions’ websites and find “alternatives”, not for a fight to beat back the rapacious bourgeoisie but for solving British capitalism’s budget deficit. Unison’s recipe calls for “a 50 per cent tax on bankers’ bonuses” and a “Robin Hood Tax” on bank transactions. The Public and Commercial Services union, which organises civil servants, offers similar counsel to the bourgeois rulers including “We could free up billions of pounds by not renewing Trident.”
The “socialist” outfits who ride Labour’s coattails look to none other than the bold class warriors of the TUC to call a general strike, while cravenly rebuilding illusions in the election of a Labour government. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) runs the National Right to Work coalition, whose slogan is “Break the Con-Dem Coalition!” (read: and replace it with a Labour government). When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership contest last year, they enthused that his win was “another avenue to bring pressure to bear on Labour to fight” (Socialist Worker, 25 September 2010). In the meantime a poster on their website lists their own recommendations to the capitalist rulers, “Why There’s No Need to Slash Spending”. Cuts can be avoided by taxing the rich, clamping down on tax evaders, and cutting defence spending — the tired, hopeless call of reformists everywhere to reorder the priorities of the capitalists in favour of the working class.
The Socialist Party, after calling for a one-day public sector strike and a 24-hour general strike, go on to showcase their abiding faith in the capitalist state, and Labour, approvingly quoting an article from Labourlist.org: “A cascade of ‘no cuts’ budget decisions by local authorities could be the most effective resistance to the cuts so far”. The Socialist Party continues, “By using their reserves and borrowing powers to avoid making cuts, councils can gain time to build a mass movement in their support”, and “Ed Miliband could promise that an incoming Labour government would write off all local authority debts incurred from avoiding cuts” (Socialism Today, March 2011).
What is necessary to fight against the massacre of public sector jobs and social services is to mobilise the multiethnic working class in a fight for jobs for all, through a shorter work week with no loss in pay, and to undertake union organising to draw into their ranks all of the working class, including its minority and immigrant components. In the course of class struggle, workers must replace the Labourite cringers atop the unions with workers’ leaders who aim to win battles on the picket lines. Striving to forge such a class-struggle leadership of the unions is an integral part of the fight for a multiethnic revolutionary workers party whose aim is no less than doing away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery through socialist revolution.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
War And Remembrance- A Boston Veterans For Peace Memorial Day-May 30, 2011
Memorial Day for Peace
When: Monday, May 30, 2011, 1:00 pm
Where: Christopher Columbus Park • Atlantic Ave. at Long Wharf • Aquarium T • Boston
Start: 2011 May 30 - 1:00pm
Please join Veterans For Peace, Military Families Speak Out, United for Justice with Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee for a ceremony for Peace on Memorial Day.
Speakers to include:
John Schuchardt – House of Peace, Ipswich, MA
Ross Caputi – Marine veteran of the Iraq War (2003 – 2006)
President of Boston University Anti-War Coalition
Kevin & Joyce Lucey, parents of Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, U.S. M.C.
Melida & Carlos Arredondo, Gold Star Families for Peace, parents of Marine Lance Corporal Alex Arredondo U.S,M.C.
Oday Mahmood & Ayfer AbedAljibar– Iraqi Refugees – Will speak on behalf of the new Iraqi community here in Massachusetts.
James Vanloy – Poet
John Olivere – Singer Songwriter
*******
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
And Fritz had to laugh, and the nature of that laugh need not be repeated here, about how big bad Barrack Obama, whom almost every non-veteran of any battle, except maybe the battle for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, or of the bar stool in some ill-lit barroom but those don’t count in real battle scars world, has been touting as some kind of Gandhian pacifist while constantly upping the ante in Afghanistan since about day one of his administration, the troop commitment ante, the one that really counts. And making that ill-conceived policy the lynch-pin for his whole world-wide war strategy, with no serious end date in sight (and no congressional oversight to stop him, according to a recent vote on the question of war budget authorizations-the real deal when it comes to war policy).
Fritz’s thoughts just then as well dwelled on the more recent, the more off-hand stuff, the several hundred drones attacks in Pakistan, the few thousand, give or take, cruise missiles (oops, that’s a NATO operation, he forgot, sorry) in Libya and the general policeman of the world carrying a big stick, a very big stick indeed, in the rest of the world. So he felt compelled to murmur under his breathe, no really curse under his breathe, Mr. President, Fritz still being the soul of politeness these days, these got anti-war “religion,” drug- free, alcohol-free, stable home under his feet days, get the hell out of Afghanistan and stay out. And while you are at it, Mr. Obama, keep American hands off, way off the rest of the world, as he then saw the first of several white dove on black background Veterans for Peace (VFP) flags flying in the wind down near the ferry docks adjacent to this Columbus honor park.
And while a moment ago he raged with grievous anger at the American imperial state and its two-bit sheriff (oops, sorry again, President) he felt calmer, as he always felt calmer, when he spied the white-doved, black-background flags because that meant kindred, mainly Vietnam-era kindred but sprinkles of others as well. Guys, mostly, and a few women as well, now graying guys, seriously graying guys, now walking a little more haltingly due to life’s toll, now maybe not in that tip-top shape that made them prime Grade A cannon fodder back in the days, who had been through battles, real battles and post-war battles, some of them anyway just like him, whom he always argued had more than enough “cred” when anti-war talk time came around. And others, other anti-warriors, who only credentials were some well-written papers, some well-spoken speech, or a safely-protected street march in some big or middle-sized American city or town who knew, knew deep in their hearts that Fritz’s point was true. And they were deferential, sometimes just a little too paternally or maternally deferential, when the big brassy white flag-draped veterans came marching their way.
Oh sure, this third (or was it fourth) commemoration was not well-attended, maybe a hundred, not the thousands standing on those big and mid-sized city and town street corners, or walking past those benighted American flag-bedecked blessed sweet good night grave sites with their complements of still-grieving kin, but this place, this momentarily hallowed anti-war place is not measured by numbers this day but by remembrance, hard-earned remembrance, hard-earned rage against the night cannon fodder-used and folly remembrance. And, oh sure, the speeches, the speeches by those graying activists, with just the barest sprinkle of newer Iraq and Afghanistan era veterans, were directed at that hundred angel choir of kindred. And Fritz, having heard every anti-war argument before, having heard every political prisoner Private Bradley Manning story before, having heard about the collateral damage, foreign division, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine, civilian horror story before; and every collateral damage, domestic division, devastated military families story before still drank in the words. And said his fair share of old-time protest “right on,” brother, or sister. And yelled loudly and proudly, “Free Bradley Manning.” Yes, these days Bradley Manning’s fight is us, our younger fighting spirit us. The torch has now been passed to the new guys, and the couple of hours as well. Fritz Taylor just for that moment felt ten feet tall for having made this day’s journey. He was charged-up again.
On the way home, or rather on the way to meet, over near the Adamsville River, his better other, Lillian, his “sweet pea” he had named her for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too he passed, as thinking about it later he should have expected, a very different Memorial Day celebration sponsored by the Adamsville Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW). Before he got “religion” he had spent many a cheap drinks drinking hour at that same VFW hall, or the American Legion hall farther up the street, and had thought nothing of retelling many bar stool battle stories to anyone who would listen. And listen they did because Fritz had another kind of “cred” in those days, battle-tested credentials, as against the state-side duty and or rear area supply sergeants that populate these VFW and American Legion barrooms.
But right now he was chagrined at this tactless “celebration” going on before his eyes, complete with family-friendly barbecue, pony rides and merry-go-round for the kids, and more thoughtless, neglected and discarded American flags than one could shake a stick at. Those quickly passed scenes momentarily brought back to Fritz’s mind ancient unhealed, unheal-able, wounds, and ancient, also unheal-able, angers as well. What was not ancient, although also unheal-able, was when, as he quietly passed by, some long-in-the-tooth ex- supply sergeant VFW honcho noticed Fritz’s still shirt-pinned buttons calling for Obamian troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom for Private Bradley Manning and called him a “commie”. Fritz thought, jesus, where has this guy been but he also reflected, especially seeing the kids unconsciously drink in the warrior atmospherics that went with this celebration, that charged-up or not, he still had a hell of a lot of work to do. A hell of a lot.
When: Monday, May 30, 2011, 1:00 pm
Where: Christopher Columbus Park • Atlantic Ave. at Long Wharf • Aquarium T • Boston
Start: 2011 May 30 - 1:00pm
Please join Veterans For Peace, Military Families Speak Out, United for Justice with Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee for a ceremony for Peace on Memorial Day.
Speakers to include:
John Schuchardt – House of Peace, Ipswich, MA
Ross Caputi – Marine veteran of the Iraq War (2003 – 2006)
President of Boston University Anti-War Coalition
Kevin & Joyce Lucey, parents of Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, U.S. M.C.
Melida & Carlos Arredondo, Gold Star Families for Peace, parents of Marine Lance Corporal Alex Arredondo U.S,M.C.
Oday Mahmood & Ayfer AbedAljibar– Iraqi Refugees – Will speak on behalf of the new Iraqi community here in Massachusetts.
James Vanloy – Poet
John Olivere – Singer Songwriter
*******
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
And Fritz had to laugh, and the nature of that laugh need not be repeated here, about how big bad Barrack Obama, whom almost every non-veteran of any battle, except maybe the battle for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, or of the bar stool in some ill-lit barroom but those don’t count in real battle scars world, has been touting as some kind of Gandhian pacifist while constantly upping the ante in Afghanistan since about day one of his administration, the troop commitment ante, the one that really counts. And making that ill-conceived policy the lynch-pin for his whole world-wide war strategy, with no serious end date in sight (and no congressional oversight to stop him, according to a recent vote on the question of war budget authorizations-the real deal when it comes to war policy).
Fritz’s thoughts just then as well dwelled on the more recent, the more off-hand stuff, the several hundred drones attacks in Pakistan, the few thousand, give or take, cruise missiles (oops, that’s a NATO operation, he forgot, sorry) in Libya and the general policeman of the world carrying a big stick, a very big stick indeed, in the rest of the world. So he felt compelled to murmur under his breathe, no really curse under his breathe, Mr. President, Fritz still being the soul of politeness these days, these got anti-war “religion,” drug- free, alcohol-free, stable home under his feet days, get the hell out of Afghanistan and stay out. And while you are at it, Mr. Obama, keep American hands off, way off the rest of the world, as he then saw the first of several white dove on black background Veterans for Peace (VFP) flags flying in the wind down near the ferry docks adjacent to this Columbus honor park.
And while a moment ago he raged with grievous anger at the American imperial state and its two-bit sheriff (oops, sorry again, President) he felt calmer, as he always felt calmer, when he spied the white-doved, black-background flags because that meant kindred, mainly Vietnam-era kindred but sprinkles of others as well. Guys, mostly, and a few women as well, now graying guys, seriously graying guys, now walking a little more haltingly due to life’s toll, now maybe not in that tip-top shape that made them prime Grade A cannon fodder back in the days, who had been through battles, real battles and post-war battles, some of them anyway just like him, whom he always argued had more than enough “cred” when anti-war talk time came around. And others, other anti-warriors, who only credentials were some well-written papers, some well-spoken speech, or a safely-protected street march in some big or middle-sized American city or town who knew, knew deep in their hearts that Fritz’s point was true. And they were deferential, sometimes just a little too paternally or maternally deferential, when the big brassy white flag-draped veterans came marching their way.
Oh sure, this third (or was it fourth) commemoration was not well-attended, maybe a hundred, not the thousands standing on those big and mid-sized city and town street corners, or walking past those benighted American flag-bedecked blessed sweet good night grave sites with their complements of still-grieving kin, but this place, this momentarily hallowed anti-war place is not measured by numbers this day but by remembrance, hard-earned remembrance, hard-earned rage against the night cannon fodder-used and folly remembrance. And, oh sure, the speeches, the speeches by those graying activists, with just the barest sprinkle of newer Iraq and Afghanistan era veterans, were directed at that hundred angel choir of kindred. And Fritz, having heard every anti-war argument before, having heard every political prisoner Private Bradley Manning story before, having heard about the collateral damage, foreign division, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine, civilian horror story before; and every collateral damage, domestic division, devastated military families story before still drank in the words. And said his fair share of old-time protest “right on,” brother, or sister. And yelled loudly and proudly, “Free Bradley Manning.” Yes, these days Bradley Manning’s fight is us, our younger fighting spirit us. The torch has now been passed to the new guys, and the couple of hours as well. Fritz Taylor just for that moment felt ten feet tall for having made this day’s journey. He was charged-up again.
On the way home, or rather on the way to meet, over near the Adamsville River, his better other, Lillian, his “sweet pea” he had named her for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too he passed, as thinking about it later he should have expected, a very different Memorial Day celebration sponsored by the Adamsville Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW). Before he got “religion” he had spent many a cheap drinks drinking hour at that same VFW hall, or the American Legion hall farther up the street, and had thought nothing of retelling many bar stool battle stories to anyone who would listen. And listen they did because Fritz had another kind of “cred” in those days, battle-tested credentials, as against the state-side duty and or rear area supply sergeants that populate these VFW and American Legion barrooms.
But right now he was chagrined at this tactless “celebration” going on before his eyes, complete with family-friendly barbecue, pony rides and merry-go-round for the kids, and more thoughtless, neglected and discarded American flags than one could shake a stick at. Those quickly passed scenes momentarily brought back to Fritz’s mind ancient unhealed, unheal-able, wounds, and ancient, also unheal-able, angers as well. What was not ancient, although also unheal-able, was when, as he quietly passed by, some long-in-the-tooth ex- supply sergeant VFW honcho noticed Fritz’s still shirt-pinned buttons calling for Obamian troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom for Private Bradley Manning and called him a “commie”. Fritz thought, jesus, where has this guy been but he also reflected, especially seeing the kids unconsciously drink in the warrior atmospherics that went with this celebration, that charged-up or not, he still had a hell of a lot of work to do. A hell of a lot.
War And Remembrance- A Boston Veterans For Peace Memorial Day-May 30, 2011
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indymedia entry, dated May 31, 2011, detaling the Boston Veterans For Peace Memorial Day Observance.
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
And Fritz had to laugh, and the nature of that laugh need not be repeated here, about how big bad Barrack Obama, whom almost every non-veteran of any battle, except maybe the battle for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, or of the bar stool in some ill-lit barroom but those don’t count in real battle scars world, has been touting as some kind of Gandhian pacifist while constantly upping the ante in Afghanistan since about day one of his administration, the troop commitment ante, the one that really counts. And making that ill-conceived policy the lynch-pin for his whole world-wide war strategy, with no serious end date in sight (and no congressional oversight to stop him, according to a recent vote on the question of war budget authorizations-the real deal when it comes to war policy).
Fritz’s thoughts just then as well dwelled on the more recent, the more off-hand stuff, the several hundred drones attacks in Pakistan, the few thousand, give or take, cruise missiles (oops, that’s a NATO operation, he forgot, sorry) in Libya and the general policeman of the world carrying a big stick, a very big stick indeed, in the rest of the world. So he felt compelled to murmur under his breathe, no really curse under his breathe, Mr. President, Fritz still being the soul of politeness these days, these got anti-war “religion,” drug- free, alcohol-free, stable home under his feet days, get the hell out of Afghanistan and stay out. And while you are at it, Mr. Obama, keep American hands off, way off the rest of the world, as he then saw the first of several white dove on black background Veterans for Peace (VFP) flags flying in the wind down near the ferry docks adjacent to this Columbus honor park.
And while a moment ago he raged with grievous anger at the American imperial state and its two-bit sheriff (oops, sorry again, President) he felt calmer, as he always felt calmer, when he spied the white-doved, black-background flags because that meant kindred, mainly Vietnam-era kindred but sprinkles of others as well. Guys, mostly, and a few women as well, now graying guys, seriously graying guys, now walking a little more haltingly due to life’s toll, now maybe not in that tip-top shape that made them prime Grade A cannon fodder back in the days, who had been through battles, real battles and post-war battles, some of them anyway just like him, whom he always argued had more than enough “cred” when anti-war talk time came around. And others, other anti-warriors, who only credentials were some well-written papers, some well-spoken speech, or a safely-protected street march in some big or middle-sized American city or town who knew, knew deep in their hearts that Fritz’s point was true. And they were deferential, sometimes just a little too paternally or maternally deferential, when the big brassy white flag-draped veterans came marching their way.
Oh sure, this third (or was it fourth) commemoration was not well-attended, maybe a hundred, not the thousands standing on those big and mid-sized city and town street corners, or walking past those benighted American flag-bedecked blessed sweet good night grave sites with their complements of still-grieving kin, but this place, this momentarily hallowed anti-war place is not measured by numbers this day but by remembrance, hard-earned remembrance, hard-earned rage against the night cannon fodder-used and folly remembrance. And, oh sure, the speeches, the speeches by those graying activists, with just the barest sprinkle of newer Iraq and Afghanistan era veterans, were directed at that hundred angel choir of kindred. And Fritz, having heard every anti-war argument before, having heard every political prisoner Private Bradley Manning story before, having heard about the collateral damage, foreign division, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine, civilian horror story before; and every collateral damage, domestic division, devastated military families story before still drank in the words. And said his fair share of old-time protest “right on,” brother, or sister. And yelled loudly and proudly, “Free Bradley Manning.” Yes, these days Bradley Manning’s fight is us, our younger fighting spirit us. The torch has now been passed to the new guys, and the couple of hours as well. Fritz Taylor just for that moment felt ten feet tall for having made this day’s journey. He was charged-up again.
On the way home, or rather on the way to meet, over near the Adamsville River, his better other, Lillian, his “sweet pea” he had named her for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too he passed, as thinking about it later he should have expected, a very different Memorial Day celebration sponsored by the Adamsville Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW). Before he got “religion” he had spent many a cheap drinks drinking hour at that same VFW hall, or the American Legion hall farther up the street, and had thought nothing of retelling many bar stool battle stories to anyone who would listen. And listen they did because Fritz had another kind of “cred” in those days, battle-tested credentials, as against the state-side duty and or rear area supply sergeants that populate these VFW and American Legion barrooms.
But right now he was chagrined at this tactless “celebration” going on before his eyes, complete with family-friendly barbecue, pony rides and merry-go-round for the kids, and more thoughtless, neglected and discarded American flags than one could shake a stick at. Those quickly passed scenes momentarily brought back to Fritz’s mind ancient unhealed, unheal-able, wounds, and ancient, also unheal-able, angers as well. What was not ancient, although also unheal-able, was when, as he quietly passed by, some long-in-the-tooth ex- supply sergeant VFW honcho noticed Fritz’s still shirt-pinned buttons calling for Obamian troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom for Private Bradley Manning and called him a “commie”. Fritz thought, jesus, where has this guy been but he also reflected, especially seeing the kids unconsciously drink in the warrior atmospherics that went with this celebration, that charged-up or not, he still had a hell of a lot of work to do. A hell of a lot.
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
And Fritz had to laugh, and the nature of that laugh need not be repeated here, about how big bad Barrack Obama, whom almost every non-veteran of any battle, except maybe the battle for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, or of the bar stool in some ill-lit barroom but those don’t count in real battle scars world, has been touting as some kind of Gandhian pacifist while constantly upping the ante in Afghanistan since about day one of his administration, the troop commitment ante, the one that really counts. And making that ill-conceived policy the lynch-pin for his whole world-wide war strategy, with no serious end date in sight (and no congressional oversight to stop him, according to a recent vote on the question of war budget authorizations-the real deal when it comes to war policy).
Fritz’s thoughts just then as well dwelled on the more recent, the more off-hand stuff, the several hundred drones attacks in Pakistan, the few thousand, give or take, cruise missiles (oops, that’s a NATO operation, he forgot, sorry) in Libya and the general policeman of the world carrying a big stick, a very big stick indeed, in the rest of the world. So he felt compelled to murmur under his breathe, no really curse under his breathe, Mr. President, Fritz still being the soul of politeness these days, these got anti-war “religion,” drug- free, alcohol-free, stable home under his feet days, get the hell out of Afghanistan and stay out. And while you are at it, Mr. Obama, keep American hands off, way off the rest of the world, as he then saw the first of several white dove on black background Veterans for Peace (VFP) flags flying in the wind down near the ferry docks adjacent to this Columbus honor park.
And while a moment ago he raged with grievous anger at the American imperial state and its two-bit sheriff (oops, sorry again, President) he felt calmer, as he always felt calmer, when he spied the white-doved, black-background flags because that meant kindred, mainly Vietnam-era kindred but sprinkles of others as well. Guys, mostly, and a few women as well, now graying guys, seriously graying guys, now walking a little more haltingly due to life’s toll, now maybe not in that tip-top shape that made them prime Grade A cannon fodder back in the days, who had been through battles, real battles and post-war battles, some of them anyway just like him, whom he always argued had more than enough “cred” when anti-war talk time came around. And others, other anti-warriors, who only credentials were some well-written papers, some well-spoken speech, or a safely-protected street march in some big or middle-sized American city or town who knew, knew deep in their hearts that Fritz’s point was true. And they were deferential, sometimes just a little too paternally or maternally deferential, when the big brassy white flag-draped veterans came marching their way.
Oh sure, this third (or was it fourth) commemoration was not well-attended, maybe a hundred, not the thousands standing on those big and mid-sized city and town street corners, or walking past those benighted American flag-bedecked blessed sweet good night grave sites with their complements of still-grieving kin, but this place, this momentarily hallowed anti-war place is not measured by numbers this day but by remembrance, hard-earned remembrance, hard-earned rage against the night cannon fodder-used and folly remembrance. And, oh sure, the speeches, the speeches by those graying activists, with just the barest sprinkle of newer Iraq and Afghanistan era veterans, were directed at that hundred angel choir of kindred. And Fritz, having heard every anti-war argument before, having heard every political prisoner Private Bradley Manning story before, having heard about the collateral damage, foreign division, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine, civilian horror story before; and every collateral damage, domestic division, devastated military families story before still drank in the words. And said his fair share of old-time protest “right on,” brother, or sister. And yelled loudly and proudly, “Free Bradley Manning.” Yes, these days Bradley Manning’s fight is us, our younger fighting spirit us. The torch has now been passed to the new guys, and the couple of hours as well. Fritz Taylor just for that moment felt ten feet tall for having made this day’s journey. He was charged-up again.
On the way home, or rather on the way to meet, over near the Adamsville River, his better other, Lillian, his “sweet pea” he had named her for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too he passed, as thinking about it later he should have expected, a very different Memorial Day celebration sponsored by the Adamsville Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW). Before he got “religion” he had spent many a cheap drinks drinking hour at that same VFW hall, or the American Legion hall farther up the street, and had thought nothing of retelling many bar stool battle stories to anyone who would listen. And listen they did because Fritz had another kind of “cred” in those days, battle-tested credentials, as against the state-side duty and or rear area supply sergeants that populate these VFW and American Legion barrooms.
But right now he was chagrined at this tactless “celebration” going on before his eyes, complete with family-friendly barbecue, pony rides and merry-go-round for the kids, and more thoughtless, neglected and discarded American flags than one could shake a stick at. Those quickly passed scenes momentarily brought back to Fritz’s mind ancient unhealed, unheal-able, wounds, and ancient, also unheal-able, angers as well. What was not ancient, although also unheal-able, was when, as he quietly passed by, some long-in-the-tooth ex- supply sergeant VFW honcho noticed Fritz’s still shirt-pinned buttons calling for Obamian troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom for Private Bradley Manning and called him a “commie”. Fritz thought, jesus, where has this guy been but he also reflected, especially seeing the kids unconsciously drink in the warrior atmospherics that went with this celebration, that charged-up or not, he still had a hell of a lot of work to do. A hell of a lot.
Mission: seemingly impossible-The "Endgame" In Iraq
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Globe article, dated May 30, 2011, concerning the drawdown in Iraq.
Fritz John Taylor's comment:
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
Fritz John Taylor's comment:
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
Winding Down An Almost Forgotten War-Iraq
Click on the headline to link to a Sunday Boston Globe article, dated May 29, 2011, concerning the drawdown in Iraq.
Fritz John Taylor's comment:
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
Fritz John Taylor's comment:
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).
Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.
But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.
What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spent soldiers’ lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.
Monday, May 30, 2011
From The Archives Of The International Communist League- The Development of the Spartacist League by the Spartacist League of New Zealand, August 1972
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement than in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
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Markin comment on this entry:
This document is well worth reading, despite its age and the demise of some of the organizations and personalities mentioned, because in the report are distilled most of the great questions that confront small groups of revolutionaries (our status today) even at a time when there were somewhat greater possibilities for developing into a solid propaganda group during the late 1960s-early 1970s. That, unfortunately, whether we like it or not and whether political people act on that understanding or not, is where we are today-struggling to create stable revolutionary communist propaganda operations. There is no way around it. Those who deny that reality and assume the appearance of a "mass" organizational front are not in tune with current tasks. And we need to do this all without succumbing to an inward-looking "circle spirit" in these tough times or a notion of the "remnant" (the small, virtuous us against the ignorant mass "them")to justify passive political action. Communist propaganda is what we must produce, distribute, organize and recruit others to join us in creating before we "step-up" to crush the monster of American and world imperialism.
********
The Development of the Spartacist League
by the Spartacist League of New Zealand, August 1972
Introductory Note
The New Zealand Spartacist League broke in March from a state of complete disorganisation, but until recently largely confined its activity to serious internal discussion. This document, "The Development of the Spartacist League", is a summary of the conclusions of this discussion completed in early June. In it the Spartacist League looks at its own development in the light of the experience of international Bolshevism and thereby reaches a qualitatively higher level of revolutionary politics. The Spartacist League does not worship orthodoxy, but it does seek to benefit from the experience of the revolutionary past (hence the extensive use of the words of past revolutionaries here). Only in this way can the revolutionary party be built.
Since the completion of the document Owen Gager (who has a significant place in the history of the Spartacist League) seems to have moved towards organised international Pabloism. Some recent developments in his position are looked at in an article in New Zealand Spartacist, number 7.
15 August 1972
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1. Development of the Fourth International
The Fourth International, led by Leon Trotsky and carrying on the struggle of Marx, Engels and Lenin for international socialist revolution, was founded in 1938. The loss of political leadership with Trotsky’s death in 1940, the organisational disruption of the Fourth International as a result of World War II, the failure of the war to lead directly into world proletarian revolution, and the expansion of the bloc of deformed workers’ states following the war brought about the profound disorientation of the Fourth International.
In this period the Socialist Workers Party of the United States of America (SWP), which was the strongest section and Trotsky’s closest political collaborator, abdicated its responsibility to play an international leadership role. This followed the advance of Pabloism, a revisionist current which renounces the need for a revolutionary party and adapts to reformist and Stalinist misleaderships. Pabloism denies that the proletariat is the only force capable of destroying capitalism internationally and the only force capable of laying the basis for socialism. A basic unhealthiness in the SWP is shown by the fact that only when its organisational autonomy was threatened in 1953 did it lead a fight against the growth of Pabloist leadership internationally.
Revisionism in the SWP came to a head in the early 1960s. In 1961 it publicly called Castro’s Cuba a healthy workers’ state and denied there was any need for a political revolution. And in 1963 it reunited with the mainstream Pabloites to form the "United Secretariat of the Fourth International".
The Spartacist grouping developed in the United States out of the fight against revisionism in the SWP. Although differences were clear from the first, Spartacist strongly orientated towards Gerry Healy’s "International Committee" as an instrument for the rebuilding of the Fourth International until being kicked out on a manufactured pretext. This was done to prevent Spartacist criticisms in the International Committee directed at its leaders for their Pabloist method (shown in their positions on such matters as the Cuban revolution). Although the International Committee’s defence of its Pabloism was at this stage fought by anti-political diversionary means, its subsequent further degeneration proves beyond all doubt that it is basically Pabloist. For example it gave political support to the "Arab revolution" and to the Mao wing of the Chinese bureaucracy in the "Cultural Revolution". This softness is "balanced" by an extreme sectarianism, use of physical violence against opponent groups inside the movement, threats to take opponent radical groups to the bourgeois courts, etc.
So, by its founding conference in late 1966, the Spartacist League of the United States (SLUS), having sharpened its position in struggle first within the SWP and then the International Committee, was internationally in isolation. The conference issued a brief and definitive "Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League", which has become the basic document of our tendency internationally. This statement aroused great international interest in the months after the recent split in the International Committee.
2. Trotskyism in New Zealand
The Socialist Labour Movement, a small loose organisation of Pabloists and others influenced by Trotskyism, existed in New Zealand at the time of the founding conference of the SLUS and the "Declaration of Principles" had immediate and considerable impact on this grouping. Owen Gager, the editor of the left-wing journal Dispute and a member of the Socialist Labour Movement, wrote to the SLUS describing the "Declaration of Principles" as "a statement of Trotskyist principle which I myself have always believed in but despaired of ever seeing clearly and unadulteratedly stated by the revisionist Pabloite ‘Fourth International’."1 Gager tried to lead the Socialist Labour Movement to acceptance of the "Declaration of Principles" but was fought by Keith Locke, a member studying in Canada and under the influence of the League for Socialist Action (which is closely aligned to the SWP in the United States). The Gager-Locke polemic was associated with a de facto split in the Socialist Labour Movement and the emergence of the New Zealand Spartacist League in 1967, and the Pabloist Socialist Action League in late 1968. (The NZSL had close fraternal ties, though no organisational links, with the SLUS.)
Except for a few months at the end of 1970 and the beginning of 1971, the NZSL has never had any organisational definition, but has been a very small "diffuse group of co-thinkers".2 Discussion within the group was that of friends and without the dimension of political struggle or Bolshevik theoretical training. The NZSL was defined by its political basis, the "Declaration of Principles", on which it was founded, and which it republished in New Zealand in December 1970 as one of its basic documents.
The leadership of the comrades working together in solidarity with these politics was in the hands of Owen Gager. But unfortunately, his statements of political solidarity notwithstanding, Gager’s acceptance of the "Declaration of Principles" was never more than superficial. Weakness of method (specifically an inability to appreciate the contradictory nature of social phenomena) laid him open under conditions of virtual isolation to programmatic errors: at some times capitulation to right-wing pressure; at other times a tendency towards sectarianism.
3. Deformed Workers States
The "Declaration of Principles" holds that Russia, Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, North Vietnam and Cuba are deformed workers’ states which on the one hand have made advances based on the "nationalisation of the means of production, establishment of economic planning, and the state monopoly of foreign trade", and on the other hand have seen the "formation of bureaucratic ruling castes which exclude the working class from political power."3 A deformed workers’ state is a form of dictatorship of the proletariat parallel to a bonapartist military dictatorship as a form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In Russia it was formed by the degeneration of a state which had formerly been under the political control of the working class, whereas in the other countries political control was in the hands of a bureaucratic ruling caste from the very beginning.
"The Spartacist League stands for the unconditional defence of these countries against all attempts of imperialism to re-establish its control.
"At the same time we assert the necessity for the working class to take direct control and defence of these states into their own hands through political revolution and thus sweep away the internal barrier to the advance towards socialism. Only the spread of revolution internally and internationally can successfully maintain these partial conquests of the workers."4
This has always been the position of the Fourth International. To quote from the documents of the 1936 conference preparing for the Fourth International:
"The Soviet Union can be called a workers’ state in approximately the same sense—despite the vast difference in scale—in which a trade union, led and betrayed by opportunists, that is, agents of capital, can be called a workers’ organisation. Just as revolutionists defend every trade union, even the most thoroughly reformist, from the class enemy, combating intransigently the treacherous leaders at the same time, so the parties of the Fourth International defend the USSR against the blows of imperialism without for a single moment giving up the struggle against the reactionary Stalinist apparatus."5
And for the manifesto adopted by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International in 1940:
"While waging tireless struggle against the Moscow oligarchy, the Fourth International decisively rejects any policy which would aid imperialism against the USSR."6
Gager departed from this principle when, under the pressures of the Ban-The-Bomb milieu in which he was working, he developed a position which would deprive the deformed workers’ states of nuclear weapons. Prior to the "Declaration of Principles" the November-December 1964 and March-April 1966 issues of Dispute editorialised against the testing or possession of nuclear weapons, specifically including the deformed workers’ states. After his "acceptance" of the "Declaration of Principles" these editorial statements were defended by Gager in his polemic with Keith Locke. His argument involves the view that "socialism" (!) cannot "be defended by the same means as capitalism"7 and that the only defence of the deformed workers’ states is to "organise political struggle against capitalism, organising for revolution."8 By so narrowly circumscribing the defence of the deformed workers states, by emphasising indeed, only the importance of the necessary struggle for world revolution, Gager manages to escape responsibility for any real measures in defending the existing gains of the working class against imperialism prior to world socialist revolution. As the Bolsheviks knew when they set Trotsky to organising the Red Army, and as is implicit in the "Declaration of Principles", brute military power is sometimes the only immediately available weapon to use in defence against imperialism. The Fourth Internationalist defence of the deformed workers’ states is unconditional, and while the working class internationally is led by various counter-revolutionaries the military power of the vacillating and anti-working class Stalinist bureaucracies is the only immediate available—if poor, unreliable, and ultimately wholly inadequate—defence. Those "Trotskyist" groupings internationally with positions similar to Gager’s justify them on the basis of un-Marxist theories which in the end all turn out to deny that the countries in question are any form of the dictatorship of the proletariat at all—theories such as Tony Cliff’s "state capitalism" and Max Shachtman’s "bureaucratic collectivism" which comrade Trotsky refuted in In Defence of Marxism. Gager denies his kinship with such theories. "There is no validity in your claim that we are drifting to a state-capitalist position on China etc—my view is that the dictatorship of the proletariat has never been achieved" but that it is "only half developed"9. A dictatorship of the proletariat grossly deformed by bourgeois pressures (that is, a deformed workers’ state) is quite clearly not perfectly developed—but this is secondary. The Chinese state protects nationalised property as the dominant form of ownership of the means of production and is thus, without qualification, a dictatorship of the proletariat. Gager’s undialectical Theory of Half a Workers’ State is clearly incompatible with the Trotskyist analysis of deformed workers’ states. The most charitable interpretation of Gager’s muddled discussion of his clearly un-Marxist position is that it is still incompletely formed.
4. The Labour Party
Another example of Gager’s deviation from the general line of the "Declaration of Principles" involves his sectarian attitude towards the Labour Party. He finds it impossible to understand that the Labour Party embodies a profound contradiction between a petty-bourgeois programme and leadership, and a working class following. The "Declaration" is fully aware of such contradictions:
"The ideas of the bourgeoisie penetrate into the very movements and organisation of the workers through the agency of the petty-bourgeois labour lieutenants—particularly the parasitic trade-union, social-democratic, and Stalinist bureaucracies which are based on the "aristocratic" upper strata of the working class. Enjoying privileges not accorded to the vast majority of workers, these misleaders betray the masses of working people through class-collaboration, social-patriotism, and chauvinist-racist policies which sabotage proletarian understanding and solidarity. If not replaced by revolutionary leaderships, they will allow the organisation of the workers to become impotent in the fight for the economic needs of the workers under conditions of bourgeois democracy or will allow these organisations to be destroyed by victorious fascism."10
The first issue of Dispute promised "a very definite commitment to work for a Labour Party victory in the 1966 election"11 and Gager was active in the Labour Party until 1968, but some time in that year he apparently changed his mind, adopting the position that revolutionaries should abstain entirely from struggle directed at the Labour Party. As Trotsky said of one sectarian group:
"From the initial thesis that the proletarian party must be independent at all costs our English comrades concluded that it would be impossible to go into the ILP12. Alas! They only forgot that they were far from being a party, but were only a propaganda circle, that a party does not fall from heaven, that a propaganda circle must pass through a period of embryonic existence before it can become a party."13
Gager believes that the NZLP is petty-bourgeois through and through. He recently wrote:
"Social democracy offers nothing political to the working class and excludes workers increasingly from party membership and counters working-class politics by bureaucratic, police and military repression; it meets as few of the economic trade-union demands of a portion, though a large portion, of the working class as almost direct bribery; faced with the growth of productive resources it makes every effort to hold back their development for ‘human’ and ‘social’ reasons; it gives economic gains to white workers only by denying them to two thirds of the world. It is a petty-bourgeois party in composition and programme with reactionary and utopian policies."14
But what Gager fails to recognise is that the NZLP at one time led the working class in struggles which brought real material gain to the class, despite the reformist limitations of these struggles within the structure of the bourgeois state. Despite its subsequent degeneration, recognition of the Labour Party as it political leadership remains one of the most ingrained and central aspects of working-class culture. The Labour Party thus is a major problem for a revolutionary grouping aspiring to lead the working class. Although the masses of the working class have been profoundly disillusioned (substantially as a result of the degeneration of social democracy) and although few workers are active in any political organisation, in a hopeless position they still retain a sort of religious faith in the party which their parents supported on the basis of their real (if reformist) interests. Peter Frazer and Michael Joseph Savage15 get far more votes for today’s Labour Party than Norman Kirk. Using its historically developed relationship with the working class the NZLP is an extremely effective propagator of counter-revolutionary ideology in the working class.
Gager’s sectarianism is linked to a misunderstanding of Marx and Engels’ Address to the Communist League (1850) on the experience of the revolutionary activity of 1848 and 1849. However, the Labour Party is not the same as the petty-bourgeois/democratic parties dealt with by Marx. The difference lies in the relationship of the party to the working class. In Marx’s time the various petty-bourgeois parties sought the support of the workers, and received it in some measure, but were not seen as the leadership of the working class by the working class.
"The chief obstacle in the path of transforming the prerevolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of the proletarian leadership: its petty-bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its own death agony."16
Thus the revolutionary nucleus must, if it is to become the vanguard of the working class, have a strategy of political struggle with the bureaucracy for the leadership of its working-class followers. It is a fundamental strategic necessity that the Labour Party be broken asunder. The New Zealand revolution cannot go around the New Zealand Labour Party. We must "set the base against the top".
One tactic which may at some time be demanded by the historic situation to this end is shallow entrism—always a dangerous tactic, but successfully practised by the early Third International, and by the Fourth Internationalists of the 1930s. The tactic requires first a tightly organised grouping of revolutionary cadres solidly based in the working class, who join for a limited period of time a non-revolutionary party to build an alternative and revolutionary leadership by fighting for principled politics within the arena looked to by the working class for leadership. When these cadres are the recognised leadership of the working-class base of the Labour Party, it will wrench itself apart from the reactionary leadership. This is not Socialist Action League’s policy of trying to pressure the Labour Party to the left, but a strategy for tearing it apart.
"But isn’t it a fact that a Marxist faction would not succeed in changing the structure and policy of the Labour Party? With this we are entirely in accord: the bureaucracy will not surrender. But the revolutionists functioning outside and inside can and must succeed in winning over tens and hundreds of thousands of workers."17
In Gager’s sectarian mind such a policy would not only suggest an understanding of the (for him non-existent) working-class side of the NZLP, but would also be proof of Pabloism, economism and all kinds of dire disease. To Trotsky "entry in itself proves nothing, the decisive thing is programme and action taken in the spirit of this programme after the entry."18
In the meantime we adopt a stance of critical support towards the Labour Party - intransigent criticism of its bureaucracy, and revolutionary support for its base, which will smash the bureaucracy. This has nothing in common with the Socialist Action League’s policy of "critical" support, which is in fact merely an attempt to "pressure" the Labour bureaucrats to the "left". We will fight for working-class control of the Labour Party, and while having no confidence in its programme or leadership, will campaign for its electoral victory as the party of the working class on the slogan: FOR LABOUR TO POWER - SMASH KIRK AND THE LABOUR BUREAUCRATS.
5. Organisational Primitiveness
Despite his weakness (which had ultimately to be resolved in either the direction of bourgeois ideology or in the acceptance of Marxism) Gager remained in the vicinity of revolutionary Trotskyism, maintaining a fairly uncompromising working class line. By the end of 1969 he had managed to attract only one other person who would have identified himself politically as a member of the NZSL (although a small number of supporters, mostly more interested in armchair discussion than political struggle, gave the NZSL a slightly greater impact than this would suggest). In 1970 the SL increased its publishing activities, made a concerted intervention in the Wellington Progressive Youth Movement and played a leading role in the campaign against a New Zealand rugby team going to play South African whites.
By the end of August Menshevik organisational principles had allowed the small old armchair periphery to see themselves as members, and we had recruited a number of new activists. We had a small but in respect of the activists fairly disciplined group in Wellington. There was also a group in Auckland of less satisfactory quality, who had only intermittent contact with the centre. The SL had become an organised group of revolutionaries struggling to build a vanguard party of the proletariat. The general thrust of activity and publications, despite errors, was good, and the development was generally in a favourable direction.
However, the later degeneration of the NZSL derived from its inability to train cadre capable of successfully resisting counter-revolutionary ideology (for example, Gager’s growing revisionist impulse). In the chapter of What Is To Be Done? entitled "The Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organisation of the Revolutionaries," Lenin characterises as "primitiveness" organisational practices similar to those of the NZSL in this period19. The newer recruits, who came from a background of "mindless activism", were kept in frantic public activity by the leadership, without any significant attempt to raise their level of political consciousness. The older members, interested in armchair discussion among themselves (though not in the theoretical arming of the newer membership, in organisational meetings, or in propagandistic activities) were benignly tolerated in their atrocious indiscipline and lazy inactivity. Thus, yielding to spontaneity in the field of organisation, the NZSL was left quite incapable of turning itself into a highly trained body of professional revolutionaries—a Bolshevik organisation. As Lenin remarked of the Russian movement at this stage:
"One cannot help comparing this kind of warfare with that conducted by a mass of peasants, armed with clubs, against modern troops. And one can only wonder at the vitality of the movement which expanded, grew, and scored victories despite the total lack of training on the part of the fighters ... but as soon as serious war operations began ... the defects of our fighting organisations made themselves felt to an ever-increasing degree."20
6. The need for a propaganda orientation
No particular area of work (the unions, the Labour Party, the universities) in itself constitutes capitulation to economism or the bourgeoisie. No particular area of work is in itself revolutionary. The question is: what is the political programme directing the work. True, we must make a revolutionary party able to lead the working class, but before we can get far with the problem of leading the working class, we must get together the nucleus of an organisation of revolutionaries. Quoting an opponent in What is To Be Done? Lenin says "A committee of students is no good, it is not stable." And then he replies to it: "Quite true. But the conclusion that should be reached is that we must have a committee of professional revolutionaries, and it does not matter whether a student or a worker is capable of qualifying himself as a professional revolutionary."21 And we must move towards the implantation of revolutionaries in the working class, and intervening in its day-to-day struggles.
As Lenin and Trotsky said repeatedly, every revolutionary party must pass through a period of cadre-training and recruitment, and of theoretical struggle - at first predominantly within the organisation but with growing emphasis on testing its programme in propaganda struggle against revisionist organisations. The development of a tough cadre organisation is a necessary embryonic stage in becoming the party of the proletariat.
"We must not only tell the Russian, but also the foreign comrades that the most important thing in the ensuing period is study. We are studying in the general sense. They, however, must study in the special sense in order that they may really understand the organisation, structure, method and content of revolutionary work. If they do that I am sure the prospects of the world revolution will not only be good but excellent."22
A propaganda group orientation implies recognition of the fact that a group’s capabilities for leadership of masses is roughly proportional to its hold over the most politically conscious, so:
"As long as the question was (and in so far as it still is) one of winning over the vanguard of the proletariat to communism, so long and to that extent, propaganda was at the forefront."23
The press of the Spartacist League must be geared to this task. The importance Gager places in the immediate production of a newspaper for mass distribution is entirely misplaced. Trotsky’s words to French comrades in his 1935-36 writings are sound. The task of building a mass newspaper is of great importance.
"This task cannot be effectively solved except as a function of the growth of the organisation and its cadres who must pave the way to the masses for the newspaper - since it is not enough, it is understood, to call a publication a ‘mass paper’ to have the masses accept it in reality."24
In the meantime ours must be a propaganda paper geared to building the nucleus of the cadre grouping.
7. The disorganisation of the Spartacist League
The NZSL’s premature indulgence in mass agitation as its main activity constituted a major deviation which, in keeping the group to a low theoretical level caused its degeneration and disintegration. In the absence of a hardness and homogeneity of politics, the organisation was unified by a leadership structure depending on close collaboration between Gager, who gave leadership in matters of theory, and Bill Logan whose work was mostly organisational. This leadership broke down with comrade Logan’s departure overseas in December 1970, and tensions developed between Gager (supposedly supported by some theoretical members who had ceased coming to meetings) and the newly recruited members. The newer members fought particularly against Gager’s tendency to sectarian abstention from political struggle against other ostensible revolutionary groupings. The ideological roots of sectarianism lie in an inability to understand the theory of revolutionary leadership. The sectarian sees leadership merely as a matter of having the correct theory—he who has the correct theory is thought thereby to be the leadership—but in fact leadership must be won by struggle in the working class movement for the correct politics.
At about this time Gager had to be prevented from holding a separate "revolutionary" anti-war demonstration at the same time (but on a different route) as the official one. For reasons associated with his fundamental methodological weakness he is incapable of appreciating the possibilities for political development in some subjective revolutionaries in and around the ostensible revolutionary groupings, and he seldom sees any reason to be fighting for revolutionary politics at meetings and demonstrations organised by revisionists. (Of course, at times he can be forced to fight for his views politically.)
The tensions between the membership of the Spartacist League and Gager culminated with his holding of a rock concert, against the decision of two Spartacist League meetings, in the name of the Spartacist League, at a time conflicting with a Committee on Vietnam atrocity film-showing. Besides displaying once again Gager’s sectarianism, the holding of this rock concert was a blatant disregard on the part of the leadership for the operation of democratic centralism, and this on merely a tactical question. This led to the final collapse of the rank and file’s trust in the leadership.
Gager did not like the decisions reached by meetings of the Spartacist League in this period and he says "...more basic decisions were being made by people who ... couldn’t attend meetings."25 The Spartacist League had ceased to be an organisation, as meetings are a necessary condition for revolutionary organisation. The only alternative is autocracy. The people he agreed with and in Menshevik fashion wished to call members were unorganisable. As Lenin says in One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, "the Party should admit to its ranks only such elements as allow of at least a minimum of organisation."26 Gager’s principle that those who work for the organisation but cannot attend meetings should make decisions, smells very much like the Menshevik principle which allows people who do not belong to any of the organisations of the Party, but only "help it in one way or another", to call themselves Party members. This, "is in reality an anarchist principle. To refute this, one would have to show that control, direction and discipline are possible outside an organisation" - or a meeting.
After the rock concert episode, the organisation disintegrated. Members were "expelled" or "resigned". According to Gager, it was "as it was in early 1970"27.
8. Gager’s "theoretical advances" and final betrayal
In a lengthy exchange of letters with comrades Logan and Hannah, Gager claimed great theoretical advances as compensation for this organisational catastrophe. But these "advances" were nothing more than a complete swing away from revolutionary Marxism, though not completely inconsistent with his past which is one of theoretical muddlement over the deformed workers’ states, and of an undialectical view of the Labour Party (constituting an unrounded form of inverted Pabloism similar to the Healyite position on Cuba that it is not a deformed workers’ state but a capitalist state). In this period he became more clearly Pabloist, going completely soft on Stalinism and forming an uncritical alliance with the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ). Softness towards Stalinism has always been a characteristic of Pabloists. Jim Cannon was talking of Pabloism when he said:
"The simple truth, which we must now recognise and deal with, is that we have nothing less than a pronounced tendency towards Stalinist conciliationism in the Party."28
For Pabloists: "The working class is transformed into a pressure grouping, and the Trotskyists into a pressure grouping along with it ...."29 "The Pabloites tend to replace the role of the working class and its organised vanguard—that is, the world Trotskyist movement—with other forces which seem to offer greater chances of success.30" Thus the foundation of Pabloism is the denial of the proletariat as the world historic revolutionary force. The theoretical advance claimed by Gager at this time involved the view that action by revolutionaries in any milieu in which the working class was in any way organised was necessarily "economist" and therefore bad. Gager’s "anti-economism" is no more than an unsuccessful attempt to dress his denial of the proletariat’s role in orthodox clothing.
With the publication of the first issue of a newspaper entitled Red Gager showed that the final resolution of the contradiction between the subjective revolutionism and the un-Marxist method of his thinking is in a complete break from revolutionary working-class politics. In its statement of principle, "Where we Stand" he says:
"The Trad Left believes that the bigger and better the unions, the closer the people are to socialism. Red believes that unions exist to make agreements with bosses, not to make workers their own bosses. The unions in every big confrontation with the state in New Zealand have always been defeated. For victory what is needed is a political party standing for Power to People. Agreements between employers and unions end up as conspiracies to defraud the consumer. What is needed is an alliance of workers and consumers against employers. Red stands for voluntary unionism.
"... Red stands for full military training for the people."31
"Power to People"? Which people? Which class? What sort of power? Not state power of course? The state is nothing more than a class organised to oppress other classes. It is clearly impossible for the "people" to hold state power, for them to be organised as oppressors—who would they oppress? As Engels says of the revolutionary state (and this is repeated by Lenin in State and Revolution): "the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s [class] adversaries by force ... so long as the proletariat still needs the state it does not need it in the interests of freedom [or of the ‘people’] but in order to hold down its adversaries"32. When things develop to the stage when there are no longer distinctions between classes, when all the people have the same interests, there will be no state, no power.
When pressured on this question Gager retreats, saying he means to call for a "people’s revolution". Trotsky answers this quite clearly:
"Thanks for the quotation about the ‘people’s’ revolution from Thaelmann’s speech, which I glanced through. A more ridiculous and maliciously confused manner of putting the question cannot be imagined! ‘The people’s revolution’ - as a slogan and even with a reference to Lenin .... It is understood that every great revolution is a people’s or national revolution, in the sense that it unites around the revolutionary class all the virile and creative forces of the nation around a new core. But this is not a slogan; it is a sociological description of the revolution, which requires, moreover, precise and concrete definition. As a slogan, it is inane and charlatanism, market competition with the fascists, paid for at the price of injecting confusion into the minds of the workers.
"... In order that the nation should indeed be able to reconstruct itself around a new class core, it must be reconstructed ideologically and this can be achieved only if the proletariat does not dissolve itself into the ‘people’, into the ‘nation’, but on the contrary develops a programme of its proletarian revolution and compels the petty bourgeoisie to choose between two regimes. The slogan of the people’s revolution lulls the petty-bourgeoisie as well as the broad masses of the workers, reconciles them to the bourgeois-hierarchial structure of the ‘people’ and retards their liberation."33
But it is clear from the passage quoted from "Where we stand" that Gager does not want merely to lull the "people". Remember: "Red believes that unions exist to make agreements with bosses .... Agreements between employers and unions end up as conspiracies to defraud the consumer. What is needed is an alliance of workers and consumers against employers. Red stands for voluntary unionism." Even without the last sentence it would be clear that Red wants to smash the unions. But the call for voluntary unionism in New Zealand is clearly a call to end the system under which all unions have won from the employers union membership as a condition of employment. Thus "voluntary unionism" would in itself smash all but the strongest unions. Gager without doubt wants to mobilise his "people" to smash the organisations of the working class. A more pernicious manifestation of bourgeois politics has seldom been presented in left-wing disguise. It is true that the bureaucratic leaders of the unions confine them to inadequate attempts to keep wages rising as fast as prices. It is true that they are at present merely instruments to keep the workers quiet. It is true that trade unions, without the leadership of a revolutionary party, will never rise above the level of tomorrow’s bread and butter. The point is not merely to understand this but to change it.
"The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination an disciplining of the workers, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat."34
We will build a revolutionary party, we will organise revolutionary caucuses among the union rank and file, we will lead the struggles of the workers from the partial and economist, from the level of bread and butter, to the level of revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary struggle. We will work around a transitional programme "stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat."35 We will lead "the base against the top", smash the union bureaucrats, and turn the unions into instruments of the revolutionary working class. The unions have within them that potentiality, but Gager’s inability to see and exploit the contradiction between the bourgeois interests served by the union leaderships and their working-class membership have resulted in a sectarianism so extreme that it amounts to an attack on the working class.
Red was the dividing line. It marked Gager’s final break from revolutionary politics. In a situation of political isolation he used the disintegration of the NZSL in order to purport to make completely fundamental changes in its line. Without any proper decision-making process he presented some sort of new-left populism or worse, specifically counterposed to the working-class movement.
Gager had previously counterposed the propaganda orientation advocated by comrades Hannah and Logan with a plan for a popular paper. In style, content and programme Red, number 1, shows itself to be a truly "popular paper" - for the petty bourgeoisie. On the front page greatest prominence was given to an article on ecology signed by one Brian Longrigg - a man obviously more sympathetic to the ideology of the National Party lawyers in the Save the Manapouri Campaign than to any even ostensibly revolutionary group. On the back page in uncritical support of the bourgeois puppet Awami League, Red calls for "us" to "cease hiding behind legalisms and recognise the Provisional Government of Bangladesh." Inside the paper was a mish-mash of notes in gentle criticism of the Labour Party bureaucracy, left-liberal support for Vietnamese Stalinism, and rock-record reviews. Despite the paper’s great interest in international affairs, its statement of principle fails to call for an international revolutionary leadership. The paper makes it quite clear that Gager has completely deserted the struggle to rebuild the Fourth International.
"... the question of the International, as well as the question of national parties, cannot be deferred for a single hour: we have here in essence two sides of one and the same question. Without a Marxist International, national organisations, even the most advanced, are doomed to narrowness, vacillation and helplessness; the advanced workers are forced to feed upon surrogates for internationalism."36
But though Red marks Gager’s final break from the politics of the Spartacist League some organisational unclarity remained, and he participated in some of the meetings of members of the Spartacist League which rebuilt in March. He was too arrogant and unorganisable to subject himself to the discipline of any group, and despite the fact that he continues to respond to criticisms with smokescreens of faked orthodoxy he is too far from Marxism to stand by seeing it used to test his views. His walk-out was merely the organisational expression of his earlier desertion of Marxism-Leninism. He was finally formally expelled.
The Spartacist League’s immediate task is to sharpen itself into a fighting propaganda group, a nucleus of trained Marxists capable of intervening in every radical movement and in the trade unions with revolutionary politics. One of our first steps towards this has been the establishment of a regular propaganda press.
The Spartacist League, as a national section fighting for the rebuilding of the Fourth International, is in the vanguard of the struggle for a socialist revolution, which will prepare for the freeing of the energies of all mankind and the creation of a truly liberated society.
"Our day-to-day preparation of the working class and our intervention and leadership in the decisive moments of the class struggle will propel the struggle forward to the final victory."37
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Endnotes
8 January 1967
Letter from Gager to Logan, 3 January 1971.
"Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League", Marxist Bulletin, n 9, p 10. The Marxist Bulletin series is published by the Spartacist League US. The "Declaration of Principles" was also published in Spartacist, n 8, November-December 1966 - PRG, January 1991.
"Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League", p 10
"The Fourth International and the Soviet Union", Documents of the Fourth International, Pathfinder, New York, 1973, p 107
"Imperialist War and World Revolution", Documents of the Fourth International, p 327
Dispute, November-December 1964
Letter from Gager to Locke, undated, about September 1968
Letter from Gager to Logan, 28 November 1971
"Declaration of Principles", p 10
Dispute, September 1964
The Independent Labour Party of England was a left-social democratic, sometimes centrist, organisation. Originally formed in 1893, it helped found the Labour Party, left it in 1932, and then returned to it in 1939 - PRG, January 1991
"The League Faced with a Decisive Turn" (June 1934), Writings of Leon Trotsky [1934-35], Pathfinder, New York, 1974, p 42
"Reformism Now", an internal discussion document by Owen Gager, 26 September 1971
Peter Frazer: Labour Prime Minister 1940-49; Michael Joseph Savage: Labour Prime Minister 1935-40 - PRG footnote, January 1991
The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (The Transitional Programme) [1938], New Park, London, 1980, p 13
"The ILP and the Fourth International" (18 September 1935), Writings of Leon Trotsky [1935-36], Pathfinder, New York, 1977, p 142
"Centrist Combination and Marxist Tactics" (28 February 1935), Writings of Leon Trotsky [1934-35], p 203-4. (The original citation given by the NZSL was from an earlier edition of Trotsky's Writings which gave this article's title as "Centrist Combination and Marxist Faction" - PRG, January 1991.)
V I Lenin, What Is to Be Done? [1902], Collected Works, Progress, Moscow, 1961, v 5, p 440
As above, p 442-3
As above, p 462
V I Lenin, "Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of World Revolution" (Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 13 November 1922). (A slightly different translation can be found in: Collected Works, 1965, v 33, p 431-2 - PRG, January 1991.)
V I Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism - An Infantile Disorder (1920). (A slightly different translation can be found in: Collected Works, 1966, v 31, p 93-4 - PRG, January 1991.)
Leon Trotsky, "What Is a 'Mass Paper'?" (30 November 1935). (A slightly different translation can be found in: The Crisis of the French Section [1935-36], Pathfinder, New York, 1977, p 97 -PRG, January 1991.)
Letter from Gager to Logan, 28 November 1971
V I Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back [1904], Collected Works, 1965, v 7, p 256
Letter from Gager to Logan, 21 August 1971
James P Cannon, Letter to Dobbs (6 April 1953), Speeches to the Party, Pathfinder, New York, 1973
Socialist Workers Party, "Against Pabloist Revisionism" (1953), International Committee Documents 1951-54, Towards a History of the Fourth International, Part 4, Education for Socialists series, New York, 1974, p 152.
Revolutionary Tendency of the SWP, "In Defence of a Revol-utionary Perspective" (1962), Marxist Bulletin, n 1, p 3
Red, n 1, November 1972
V I Lenin, The State and Revolution [1917], Collected Works, 1964, v 25, p 445. (The additions in square brackets are those of the NZSL in 1972 - PRG, January 1991.)
Leon Trotsky, "Thaelmann and the 'Peoples Revolution'" (14 April 1931), The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, Pathfinder, New York, 1971, p 75-6
Leon Trotsky, "Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay" (1940), Leon Trotsky on the Trade Unions, New York, Pathfinder, 1975, p 71.
The Transitional Programme, p 14-5
Leon Trotsky, "The ILP and the Fourth International", p 147
"Declaration of Principles", p 11
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement than in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
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Markin comment on this entry:
This document is well worth reading, despite its age and the demise of some of the organizations and personalities mentioned, because in the report are distilled most of the great questions that confront small groups of revolutionaries (our status today) even at a time when there were somewhat greater possibilities for developing into a solid propaganda group during the late 1960s-early 1970s. That, unfortunately, whether we like it or not and whether political people act on that understanding or not, is where we are today-struggling to create stable revolutionary communist propaganda operations. There is no way around it. Those who deny that reality and assume the appearance of a "mass" organizational front are not in tune with current tasks. And we need to do this all without succumbing to an inward-looking "circle spirit" in these tough times or a notion of the "remnant" (the small, virtuous us against the ignorant mass "them")to justify passive political action. Communist propaganda is what we must produce, distribute, organize and recruit others to join us in creating before we "step-up" to crush the monster of American and world imperialism.
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The Development of the Spartacist League
by the Spartacist League of New Zealand, August 1972
Introductory Note
The New Zealand Spartacist League broke in March from a state of complete disorganisation, but until recently largely confined its activity to serious internal discussion. This document, "The Development of the Spartacist League", is a summary of the conclusions of this discussion completed in early June. In it the Spartacist League looks at its own development in the light of the experience of international Bolshevism and thereby reaches a qualitatively higher level of revolutionary politics. The Spartacist League does not worship orthodoxy, but it does seek to benefit from the experience of the revolutionary past (hence the extensive use of the words of past revolutionaries here). Only in this way can the revolutionary party be built.
Since the completion of the document Owen Gager (who has a significant place in the history of the Spartacist League) seems to have moved towards organised international Pabloism. Some recent developments in his position are looked at in an article in New Zealand Spartacist, number 7.
15 August 1972
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1. Development of the Fourth International
The Fourth International, led by Leon Trotsky and carrying on the struggle of Marx, Engels and Lenin for international socialist revolution, was founded in 1938. The loss of political leadership with Trotsky’s death in 1940, the organisational disruption of the Fourth International as a result of World War II, the failure of the war to lead directly into world proletarian revolution, and the expansion of the bloc of deformed workers’ states following the war brought about the profound disorientation of the Fourth International.
In this period the Socialist Workers Party of the United States of America (SWP), which was the strongest section and Trotsky’s closest political collaborator, abdicated its responsibility to play an international leadership role. This followed the advance of Pabloism, a revisionist current which renounces the need for a revolutionary party and adapts to reformist and Stalinist misleaderships. Pabloism denies that the proletariat is the only force capable of destroying capitalism internationally and the only force capable of laying the basis for socialism. A basic unhealthiness in the SWP is shown by the fact that only when its organisational autonomy was threatened in 1953 did it lead a fight against the growth of Pabloist leadership internationally.
Revisionism in the SWP came to a head in the early 1960s. In 1961 it publicly called Castro’s Cuba a healthy workers’ state and denied there was any need for a political revolution. And in 1963 it reunited with the mainstream Pabloites to form the "United Secretariat of the Fourth International".
The Spartacist grouping developed in the United States out of the fight against revisionism in the SWP. Although differences were clear from the first, Spartacist strongly orientated towards Gerry Healy’s "International Committee" as an instrument for the rebuilding of the Fourth International until being kicked out on a manufactured pretext. This was done to prevent Spartacist criticisms in the International Committee directed at its leaders for their Pabloist method (shown in their positions on such matters as the Cuban revolution). Although the International Committee’s defence of its Pabloism was at this stage fought by anti-political diversionary means, its subsequent further degeneration proves beyond all doubt that it is basically Pabloist. For example it gave political support to the "Arab revolution" and to the Mao wing of the Chinese bureaucracy in the "Cultural Revolution". This softness is "balanced" by an extreme sectarianism, use of physical violence against opponent groups inside the movement, threats to take opponent radical groups to the bourgeois courts, etc.
So, by its founding conference in late 1966, the Spartacist League of the United States (SLUS), having sharpened its position in struggle first within the SWP and then the International Committee, was internationally in isolation. The conference issued a brief and definitive "Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League", which has become the basic document of our tendency internationally. This statement aroused great international interest in the months after the recent split in the International Committee.
2. Trotskyism in New Zealand
The Socialist Labour Movement, a small loose organisation of Pabloists and others influenced by Trotskyism, existed in New Zealand at the time of the founding conference of the SLUS and the "Declaration of Principles" had immediate and considerable impact on this grouping. Owen Gager, the editor of the left-wing journal Dispute and a member of the Socialist Labour Movement, wrote to the SLUS describing the "Declaration of Principles" as "a statement of Trotskyist principle which I myself have always believed in but despaired of ever seeing clearly and unadulteratedly stated by the revisionist Pabloite ‘Fourth International’."1 Gager tried to lead the Socialist Labour Movement to acceptance of the "Declaration of Principles" but was fought by Keith Locke, a member studying in Canada and under the influence of the League for Socialist Action (which is closely aligned to the SWP in the United States). The Gager-Locke polemic was associated with a de facto split in the Socialist Labour Movement and the emergence of the New Zealand Spartacist League in 1967, and the Pabloist Socialist Action League in late 1968. (The NZSL had close fraternal ties, though no organisational links, with the SLUS.)
Except for a few months at the end of 1970 and the beginning of 1971, the NZSL has never had any organisational definition, but has been a very small "diffuse group of co-thinkers".2 Discussion within the group was that of friends and without the dimension of political struggle or Bolshevik theoretical training. The NZSL was defined by its political basis, the "Declaration of Principles", on which it was founded, and which it republished in New Zealand in December 1970 as one of its basic documents.
The leadership of the comrades working together in solidarity with these politics was in the hands of Owen Gager. But unfortunately, his statements of political solidarity notwithstanding, Gager’s acceptance of the "Declaration of Principles" was never more than superficial. Weakness of method (specifically an inability to appreciate the contradictory nature of social phenomena) laid him open under conditions of virtual isolation to programmatic errors: at some times capitulation to right-wing pressure; at other times a tendency towards sectarianism.
3. Deformed Workers States
The "Declaration of Principles" holds that Russia, Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, North Vietnam and Cuba are deformed workers’ states which on the one hand have made advances based on the "nationalisation of the means of production, establishment of economic planning, and the state monopoly of foreign trade", and on the other hand have seen the "formation of bureaucratic ruling castes which exclude the working class from political power."3 A deformed workers’ state is a form of dictatorship of the proletariat parallel to a bonapartist military dictatorship as a form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In Russia it was formed by the degeneration of a state which had formerly been under the political control of the working class, whereas in the other countries political control was in the hands of a bureaucratic ruling caste from the very beginning.
"The Spartacist League stands for the unconditional defence of these countries against all attempts of imperialism to re-establish its control.
"At the same time we assert the necessity for the working class to take direct control and defence of these states into their own hands through political revolution and thus sweep away the internal barrier to the advance towards socialism. Only the spread of revolution internally and internationally can successfully maintain these partial conquests of the workers."4
This has always been the position of the Fourth International. To quote from the documents of the 1936 conference preparing for the Fourth International:
"The Soviet Union can be called a workers’ state in approximately the same sense—despite the vast difference in scale—in which a trade union, led and betrayed by opportunists, that is, agents of capital, can be called a workers’ organisation. Just as revolutionists defend every trade union, even the most thoroughly reformist, from the class enemy, combating intransigently the treacherous leaders at the same time, so the parties of the Fourth International defend the USSR against the blows of imperialism without for a single moment giving up the struggle against the reactionary Stalinist apparatus."5
And for the manifesto adopted by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International in 1940:
"While waging tireless struggle against the Moscow oligarchy, the Fourth International decisively rejects any policy which would aid imperialism against the USSR."6
Gager departed from this principle when, under the pressures of the Ban-The-Bomb milieu in which he was working, he developed a position which would deprive the deformed workers’ states of nuclear weapons. Prior to the "Declaration of Principles" the November-December 1964 and March-April 1966 issues of Dispute editorialised against the testing or possession of nuclear weapons, specifically including the deformed workers’ states. After his "acceptance" of the "Declaration of Principles" these editorial statements were defended by Gager in his polemic with Keith Locke. His argument involves the view that "socialism" (!) cannot "be defended by the same means as capitalism"7 and that the only defence of the deformed workers’ states is to "organise political struggle against capitalism, organising for revolution."8 By so narrowly circumscribing the defence of the deformed workers states, by emphasising indeed, only the importance of the necessary struggle for world revolution, Gager manages to escape responsibility for any real measures in defending the existing gains of the working class against imperialism prior to world socialist revolution. As the Bolsheviks knew when they set Trotsky to organising the Red Army, and as is implicit in the "Declaration of Principles", brute military power is sometimes the only immediately available weapon to use in defence against imperialism. The Fourth Internationalist defence of the deformed workers’ states is unconditional, and while the working class internationally is led by various counter-revolutionaries the military power of the vacillating and anti-working class Stalinist bureaucracies is the only immediate available—if poor, unreliable, and ultimately wholly inadequate—defence. Those "Trotskyist" groupings internationally with positions similar to Gager’s justify them on the basis of un-Marxist theories which in the end all turn out to deny that the countries in question are any form of the dictatorship of the proletariat at all—theories such as Tony Cliff’s "state capitalism" and Max Shachtman’s "bureaucratic collectivism" which comrade Trotsky refuted in In Defence of Marxism. Gager denies his kinship with such theories. "There is no validity in your claim that we are drifting to a state-capitalist position on China etc—my view is that the dictatorship of the proletariat has never been achieved" but that it is "only half developed"9. A dictatorship of the proletariat grossly deformed by bourgeois pressures (that is, a deformed workers’ state) is quite clearly not perfectly developed—but this is secondary. The Chinese state protects nationalised property as the dominant form of ownership of the means of production and is thus, without qualification, a dictatorship of the proletariat. Gager’s undialectical Theory of Half a Workers’ State is clearly incompatible with the Trotskyist analysis of deformed workers’ states. The most charitable interpretation of Gager’s muddled discussion of his clearly un-Marxist position is that it is still incompletely formed.
4. The Labour Party
Another example of Gager’s deviation from the general line of the "Declaration of Principles" involves his sectarian attitude towards the Labour Party. He finds it impossible to understand that the Labour Party embodies a profound contradiction between a petty-bourgeois programme and leadership, and a working class following. The "Declaration" is fully aware of such contradictions:
"The ideas of the bourgeoisie penetrate into the very movements and organisation of the workers through the agency of the petty-bourgeois labour lieutenants—particularly the parasitic trade-union, social-democratic, and Stalinist bureaucracies which are based on the "aristocratic" upper strata of the working class. Enjoying privileges not accorded to the vast majority of workers, these misleaders betray the masses of working people through class-collaboration, social-patriotism, and chauvinist-racist policies which sabotage proletarian understanding and solidarity. If not replaced by revolutionary leaderships, they will allow the organisation of the workers to become impotent in the fight for the economic needs of the workers under conditions of bourgeois democracy or will allow these organisations to be destroyed by victorious fascism."10
The first issue of Dispute promised "a very definite commitment to work for a Labour Party victory in the 1966 election"11 and Gager was active in the Labour Party until 1968, but some time in that year he apparently changed his mind, adopting the position that revolutionaries should abstain entirely from struggle directed at the Labour Party. As Trotsky said of one sectarian group:
"From the initial thesis that the proletarian party must be independent at all costs our English comrades concluded that it would be impossible to go into the ILP12. Alas! They only forgot that they were far from being a party, but were only a propaganda circle, that a party does not fall from heaven, that a propaganda circle must pass through a period of embryonic existence before it can become a party."13
Gager believes that the NZLP is petty-bourgeois through and through. He recently wrote:
"Social democracy offers nothing political to the working class and excludes workers increasingly from party membership and counters working-class politics by bureaucratic, police and military repression; it meets as few of the economic trade-union demands of a portion, though a large portion, of the working class as almost direct bribery; faced with the growth of productive resources it makes every effort to hold back their development for ‘human’ and ‘social’ reasons; it gives economic gains to white workers only by denying them to two thirds of the world. It is a petty-bourgeois party in composition and programme with reactionary and utopian policies."14
But what Gager fails to recognise is that the NZLP at one time led the working class in struggles which brought real material gain to the class, despite the reformist limitations of these struggles within the structure of the bourgeois state. Despite its subsequent degeneration, recognition of the Labour Party as it political leadership remains one of the most ingrained and central aspects of working-class culture. The Labour Party thus is a major problem for a revolutionary grouping aspiring to lead the working class. Although the masses of the working class have been profoundly disillusioned (substantially as a result of the degeneration of social democracy) and although few workers are active in any political organisation, in a hopeless position they still retain a sort of religious faith in the party which their parents supported on the basis of their real (if reformist) interests. Peter Frazer and Michael Joseph Savage15 get far more votes for today’s Labour Party than Norman Kirk. Using its historically developed relationship with the working class the NZLP is an extremely effective propagator of counter-revolutionary ideology in the working class.
Gager’s sectarianism is linked to a misunderstanding of Marx and Engels’ Address to the Communist League (1850) on the experience of the revolutionary activity of 1848 and 1849. However, the Labour Party is not the same as the petty-bourgeois/democratic parties dealt with by Marx. The difference lies in the relationship of the party to the working class. In Marx’s time the various petty-bourgeois parties sought the support of the workers, and received it in some measure, but were not seen as the leadership of the working class by the working class.
"The chief obstacle in the path of transforming the prerevolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of the proletarian leadership: its petty-bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its own death agony."16
Thus the revolutionary nucleus must, if it is to become the vanguard of the working class, have a strategy of political struggle with the bureaucracy for the leadership of its working-class followers. It is a fundamental strategic necessity that the Labour Party be broken asunder. The New Zealand revolution cannot go around the New Zealand Labour Party. We must "set the base against the top".
One tactic which may at some time be demanded by the historic situation to this end is shallow entrism—always a dangerous tactic, but successfully practised by the early Third International, and by the Fourth Internationalists of the 1930s. The tactic requires first a tightly organised grouping of revolutionary cadres solidly based in the working class, who join for a limited period of time a non-revolutionary party to build an alternative and revolutionary leadership by fighting for principled politics within the arena looked to by the working class for leadership. When these cadres are the recognised leadership of the working-class base of the Labour Party, it will wrench itself apart from the reactionary leadership. This is not Socialist Action League’s policy of trying to pressure the Labour Party to the left, but a strategy for tearing it apart.
"But isn’t it a fact that a Marxist faction would not succeed in changing the structure and policy of the Labour Party? With this we are entirely in accord: the bureaucracy will not surrender. But the revolutionists functioning outside and inside can and must succeed in winning over tens and hundreds of thousands of workers."17
In Gager’s sectarian mind such a policy would not only suggest an understanding of the (for him non-existent) working-class side of the NZLP, but would also be proof of Pabloism, economism and all kinds of dire disease. To Trotsky "entry in itself proves nothing, the decisive thing is programme and action taken in the spirit of this programme after the entry."18
In the meantime we adopt a stance of critical support towards the Labour Party - intransigent criticism of its bureaucracy, and revolutionary support for its base, which will smash the bureaucracy. This has nothing in common with the Socialist Action League’s policy of "critical" support, which is in fact merely an attempt to "pressure" the Labour bureaucrats to the "left". We will fight for working-class control of the Labour Party, and while having no confidence in its programme or leadership, will campaign for its electoral victory as the party of the working class on the slogan: FOR LABOUR TO POWER - SMASH KIRK AND THE LABOUR BUREAUCRATS.
5. Organisational Primitiveness
Despite his weakness (which had ultimately to be resolved in either the direction of bourgeois ideology or in the acceptance of Marxism) Gager remained in the vicinity of revolutionary Trotskyism, maintaining a fairly uncompromising working class line. By the end of 1969 he had managed to attract only one other person who would have identified himself politically as a member of the NZSL (although a small number of supporters, mostly more interested in armchair discussion than political struggle, gave the NZSL a slightly greater impact than this would suggest). In 1970 the SL increased its publishing activities, made a concerted intervention in the Wellington Progressive Youth Movement and played a leading role in the campaign against a New Zealand rugby team going to play South African whites.
By the end of August Menshevik organisational principles had allowed the small old armchair periphery to see themselves as members, and we had recruited a number of new activists. We had a small but in respect of the activists fairly disciplined group in Wellington. There was also a group in Auckland of less satisfactory quality, who had only intermittent contact with the centre. The SL had become an organised group of revolutionaries struggling to build a vanguard party of the proletariat. The general thrust of activity and publications, despite errors, was good, and the development was generally in a favourable direction.
However, the later degeneration of the NZSL derived from its inability to train cadre capable of successfully resisting counter-revolutionary ideology (for example, Gager’s growing revisionist impulse). In the chapter of What Is To Be Done? entitled "The Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organisation of the Revolutionaries," Lenin characterises as "primitiveness" organisational practices similar to those of the NZSL in this period19. The newer recruits, who came from a background of "mindless activism", were kept in frantic public activity by the leadership, without any significant attempt to raise their level of political consciousness. The older members, interested in armchair discussion among themselves (though not in the theoretical arming of the newer membership, in organisational meetings, or in propagandistic activities) were benignly tolerated in their atrocious indiscipline and lazy inactivity. Thus, yielding to spontaneity in the field of organisation, the NZSL was left quite incapable of turning itself into a highly trained body of professional revolutionaries—a Bolshevik organisation. As Lenin remarked of the Russian movement at this stage:
"One cannot help comparing this kind of warfare with that conducted by a mass of peasants, armed with clubs, against modern troops. And one can only wonder at the vitality of the movement which expanded, grew, and scored victories despite the total lack of training on the part of the fighters ... but as soon as serious war operations began ... the defects of our fighting organisations made themselves felt to an ever-increasing degree."20
6. The need for a propaganda orientation
No particular area of work (the unions, the Labour Party, the universities) in itself constitutes capitulation to economism or the bourgeoisie. No particular area of work is in itself revolutionary. The question is: what is the political programme directing the work. True, we must make a revolutionary party able to lead the working class, but before we can get far with the problem of leading the working class, we must get together the nucleus of an organisation of revolutionaries. Quoting an opponent in What is To Be Done? Lenin says "A committee of students is no good, it is not stable." And then he replies to it: "Quite true. But the conclusion that should be reached is that we must have a committee of professional revolutionaries, and it does not matter whether a student or a worker is capable of qualifying himself as a professional revolutionary."21 And we must move towards the implantation of revolutionaries in the working class, and intervening in its day-to-day struggles.
As Lenin and Trotsky said repeatedly, every revolutionary party must pass through a period of cadre-training and recruitment, and of theoretical struggle - at first predominantly within the organisation but with growing emphasis on testing its programme in propaganda struggle against revisionist organisations. The development of a tough cadre organisation is a necessary embryonic stage in becoming the party of the proletariat.
"We must not only tell the Russian, but also the foreign comrades that the most important thing in the ensuing period is study. We are studying in the general sense. They, however, must study in the special sense in order that they may really understand the organisation, structure, method and content of revolutionary work. If they do that I am sure the prospects of the world revolution will not only be good but excellent."22
A propaganda group orientation implies recognition of the fact that a group’s capabilities for leadership of masses is roughly proportional to its hold over the most politically conscious, so:
"As long as the question was (and in so far as it still is) one of winning over the vanguard of the proletariat to communism, so long and to that extent, propaganda was at the forefront."23
The press of the Spartacist League must be geared to this task. The importance Gager places in the immediate production of a newspaper for mass distribution is entirely misplaced. Trotsky’s words to French comrades in his 1935-36 writings are sound. The task of building a mass newspaper is of great importance.
"This task cannot be effectively solved except as a function of the growth of the organisation and its cadres who must pave the way to the masses for the newspaper - since it is not enough, it is understood, to call a publication a ‘mass paper’ to have the masses accept it in reality."24
In the meantime ours must be a propaganda paper geared to building the nucleus of the cadre grouping.
7. The disorganisation of the Spartacist League
The NZSL’s premature indulgence in mass agitation as its main activity constituted a major deviation which, in keeping the group to a low theoretical level caused its degeneration and disintegration. In the absence of a hardness and homogeneity of politics, the organisation was unified by a leadership structure depending on close collaboration between Gager, who gave leadership in matters of theory, and Bill Logan whose work was mostly organisational. This leadership broke down with comrade Logan’s departure overseas in December 1970, and tensions developed between Gager (supposedly supported by some theoretical members who had ceased coming to meetings) and the newly recruited members. The newer members fought particularly against Gager’s tendency to sectarian abstention from political struggle against other ostensible revolutionary groupings. The ideological roots of sectarianism lie in an inability to understand the theory of revolutionary leadership. The sectarian sees leadership merely as a matter of having the correct theory—he who has the correct theory is thought thereby to be the leadership—but in fact leadership must be won by struggle in the working class movement for the correct politics.
At about this time Gager had to be prevented from holding a separate "revolutionary" anti-war demonstration at the same time (but on a different route) as the official one. For reasons associated with his fundamental methodological weakness he is incapable of appreciating the possibilities for political development in some subjective revolutionaries in and around the ostensible revolutionary groupings, and he seldom sees any reason to be fighting for revolutionary politics at meetings and demonstrations organised by revisionists. (Of course, at times he can be forced to fight for his views politically.)
The tensions between the membership of the Spartacist League and Gager culminated with his holding of a rock concert, against the decision of two Spartacist League meetings, in the name of the Spartacist League, at a time conflicting with a Committee on Vietnam atrocity film-showing. Besides displaying once again Gager’s sectarianism, the holding of this rock concert was a blatant disregard on the part of the leadership for the operation of democratic centralism, and this on merely a tactical question. This led to the final collapse of the rank and file’s trust in the leadership.
Gager did not like the decisions reached by meetings of the Spartacist League in this period and he says "...more basic decisions were being made by people who ... couldn’t attend meetings."25 The Spartacist League had ceased to be an organisation, as meetings are a necessary condition for revolutionary organisation. The only alternative is autocracy. The people he agreed with and in Menshevik fashion wished to call members were unorganisable. As Lenin says in One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, "the Party should admit to its ranks only such elements as allow of at least a minimum of organisation."26 Gager’s principle that those who work for the organisation but cannot attend meetings should make decisions, smells very much like the Menshevik principle which allows people who do not belong to any of the organisations of the Party, but only "help it in one way or another", to call themselves Party members. This, "is in reality an anarchist principle. To refute this, one would have to show that control, direction and discipline are possible outside an organisation" - or a meeting.
After the rock concert episode, the organisation disintegrated. Members were "expelled" or "resigned". According to Gager, it was "as it was in early 1970"27.
8. Gager’s "theoretical advances" and final betrayal
In a lengthy exchange of letters with comrades Logan and Hannah, Gager claimed great theoretical advances as compensation for this organisational catastrophe. But these "advances" were nothing more than a complete swing away from revolutionary Marxism, though not completely inconsistent with his past which is one of theoretical muddlement over the deformed workers’ states, and of an undialectical view of the Labour Party (constituting an unrounded form of inverted Pabloism similar to the Healyite position on Cuba that it is not a deformed workers’ state but a capitalist state). In this period he became more clearly Pabloist, going completely soft on Stalinism and forming an uncritical alliance with the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ). Softness towards Stalinism has always been a characteristic of Pabloists. Jim Cannon was talking of Pabloism when he said:
"The simple truth, which we must now recognise and deal with, is that we have nothing less than a pronounced tendency towards Stalinist conciliationism in the Party."28
For Pabloists: "The working class is transformed into a pressure grouping, and the Trotskyists into a pressure grouping along with it ...."29 "The Pabloites tend to replace the role of the working class and its organised vanguard—that is, the world Trotskyist movement—with other forces which seem to offer greater chances of success.30" Thus the foundation of Pabloism is the denial of the proletariat as the world historic revolutionary force. The theoretical advance claimed by Gager at this time involved the view that action by revolutionaries in any milieu in which the working class was in any way organised was necessarily "economist" and therefore bad. Gager’s "anti-economism" is no more than an unsuccessful attempt to dress his denial of the proletariat’s role in orthodox clothing.
With the publication of the first issue of a newspaper entitled Red Gager showed that the final resolution of the contradiction between the subjective revolutionism and the un-Marxist method of his thinking is in a complete break from revolutionary working-class politics. In its statement of principle, "Where we Stand" he says:
"The Trad Left believes that the bigger and better the unions, the closer the people are to socialism. Red believes that unions exist to make agreements with bosses, not to make workers their own bosses. The unions in every big confrontation with the state in New Zealand have always been defeated. For victory what is needed is a political party standing for Power to People. Agreements between employers and unions end up as conspiracies to defraud the consumer. What is needed is an alliance of workers and consumers against employers. Red stands for voluntary unionism.
"... Red stands for full military training for the people."31
"Power to People"? Which people? Which class? What sort of power? Not state power of course? The state is nothing more than a class organised to oppress other classes. It is clearly impossible for the "people" to hold state power, for them to be organised as oppressors—who would they oppress? As Engels says of the revolutionary state (and this is repeated by Lenin in State and Revolution): "the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s [class] adversaries by force ... so long as the proletariat still needs the state it does not need it in the interests of freedom [or of the ‘people’] but in order to hold down its adversaries"32. When things develop to the stage when there are no longer distinctions between classes, when all the people have the same interests, there will be no state, no power.
When pressured on this question Gager retreats, saying he means to call for a "people’s revolution". Trotsky answers this quite clearly:
"Thanks for the quotation about the ‘people’s’ revolution from Thaelmann’s speech, which I glanced through. A more ridiculous and maliciously confused manner of putting the question cannot be imagined! ‘The people’s revolution’ - as a slogan and even with a reference to Lenin .... It is understood that every great revolution is a people’s or national revolution, in the sense that it unites around the revolutionary class all the virile and creative forces of the nation around a new core. But this is not a slogan; it is a sociological description of the revolution, which requires, moreover, precise and concrete definition. As a slogan, it is inane and charlatanism, market competition with the fascists, paid for at the price of injecting confusion into the minds of the workers.
"... In order that the nation should indeed be able to reconstruct itself around a new class core, it must be reconstructed ideologically and this can be achieved only if the proletariat does not dissolve itself into the ‘people’, into the ‘nation’, but on the contrary develops a programme of its proletarian revolution and compels the petty bourgeoisie to choose between two regimes. The slogan of the people’s revolution lulls the petty-bourgeoisie as well as the broad masses of the workers, reconciles them to the bourgeois-hierarchial structure of the ‘people’ and retards their liberation."33
But it is clear from the passage quoted from "Where we stand" that Gager does not want merely to lull the "people". Remember: "Red believes that unions exist to make agreements with bosses .... Agreements between employers and unions end up as conspiracies to defraud the consumer. What is needed is an alliance of workers and consumers against employers. Red stands for voluntary unionism." Even without the last sentence it would be clear that Red wants to smash the unions. But the call for voluntary unionism in New Zealand is clearly a call to end the system under which all unions have won from the employers union membership as a condition of employment. Thus "voluntary unionism" would in itself smash all but the strongest unions. Gager without doubt wants to mobilise his "people" to smash the organisations of the working class. A more pernicious manifestation of bourgeois politics has seldom been presented in left-wing disguise. It is true that the bureaucratic leaders of the unions confine them to inadequate attempts to keep wages rising as fast as prices. It is true that they are at present merely instruments to keep the workers quiet. It is true that trade unions, without the leadership of a revolutionary party, will never rise above the level of tomorrow’s bread and butter. The point is not merely to understand this but to change it.
"The trade unions of our time can either serve as secondary instruments of imperialist capitalism for the subordination an disciplining of the workers, or, on the contrary, the trade unions can become the instruments of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat."34
We will build a revolutionary party, we will organise revolutionary caucuses among the union rank and file, we will lead the struggles of the workers from the partial and economist, from the level of bread and butter, to the level of revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary struggle. We will work around a transitional programme "stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat."35 We will lead "the base against the top", smash the union bureaucrats, and turn the unions into instruments of the revolutionary working class. The unions have within them that potentiality, but Gager’s inability to see and exploit the contradiction between the bourgeois interests served by the union leaderships and their working-class membership have resulted in a sectarianism so extreme that it amounts to an attack on the working class.
Red was the dividing line. It marked Gager’s final break from revolutionary politics. In a situation of political isolation he used the disintegration of the NZSL in order to purport to make completely fundamental changes in its line. Without any proper decision-making process he presented some sort of new-left populism or worse, specifically counterposed to the working-class movement.
Gager had previously counterposed the propaganda orientation advocated by comrades Hannah and Logan with a plan for a popular paper. In style, content and programme Red, number 1, shows itself to be a truly "popular paper" - for the petty bourgeoisie. On the front page greatest prominence was given to an article on ecology signed by one Brian Longrigg - a man obviously more sympathetic to the ideology of the National Party lawyers in the Save the Manapouri Campaign than to any even ostensibly revolutionary group. On the back page in uncritical support of the bourgeois puppet Awami League, Red calls for "us" to "cease hiding behind legalisms and recognise the Provisional Government of Bangladesh." Inside the paper was a mish-mash of notes in gentle criticism of the Labour Party bureaucracy, left-liberal support for Vietnamese Stalinism, and rock-record reviews. Despite the paper’s great interest in international affairs, its statement of principle fails to call for an international revolutionary leadership. The paper makes it quite clear that Gager has completely deserted the struggle to rebuild the Fourth International.
"... the question of the International, as well as the question of national parties, cannot be deferred for a single hour: we have here in essence two sides of one and the same question. Without a Marxist International, national organisations, even the most advanced, are doomed to narrowness, vacillation and helplessness; the advanced workers are forced to feed upon surrogates for internationalism."36
But though Red marks Gager’s final break from the politics of the Spartacist League some organisational unclarity remained, and he participated in some of the meetings of members of the Spartacist League which rebuilt in March. He was too arrogant and unorganisable to subject himself to the discipline of any group, and despite the fact that he continues to respond to criticisms with smokescreens of faked orthodoxy he is too far from Marxism to stand by seeing it used to test his views. His walk-out was merely the organisational expression of his earlier desertion of Marxism-Leninism. He was finally formally expelled.
The Spartacist League’s immediate task is to sharpen itself into a fighting propaganda group, a nucleus of trained Marxists capable of intervening in every radical movement and in the trade unions with revolutionary politics. One of our first steps towards this has been the establishment of a regular propaganda press.
The Spartacist League, as a national section fighting for the rebuilding of the Fourth International, is in the vanguard of the struggle for a socialist revolution, which will prepare for the freeing of the energies of all mankind and the creation of a truly liberated society.
"Our day-to-day preparation of the working class and our intervention and leadership in the decisive moments of the class struggle will propel the struggle forward to the final victory."37
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Endnotes
8 January 1967
Letter from Gager to Logan, 3 January 1971.
"Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League", Marxist Bulletin, n 9, p 10. The Marxist Bulletin series is published by the Spartacist League US. The "Declaration of Principles" was also published in Spartacist, n 8, November-December 1966 - PRG, January 1991.
"Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League", p 10
"The Fourth International and the Soviet Union", Documents of the Fourth International, Pathfinder, New York, 1973, p 107
"Imperialist War and World Revolution", Documents of the Fourth International, p 327
Dispute, November-December 1964
Letter from Gager to Locke, undated, about September 1968
Letter from Gager to Logan, 28 November 1971
"Declaration of Principles", p 10
Dispute, September 1964
The Independent Labour Party of England was a left-social democratic, sometimes centrist, organisation. Originally formed in 1893, it helped found the Labour Party, left it in 1932, and then returned to it in 1939 - PRG, January 1991
"The League Faced with a Decisive Turn" (June 1934), Writings of Leon Trotsky [1934-35], Pathfinder, New York, 1974, p 42
"Reformism Now", an internal discussion document by Owen Gager, 26 September 1971
Peter Frazer: Labour Prime Minister 1940-49; Michael Joseph Savage: Labour Prime Minister 1935-40 - PRG footnote, January 1991
The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (The Transitional Programme) [1938], New Park, London, 1980, p 13
"The ILP and the Fourth International" (18 September 1935), Writings of Leon Trotsky [1935-36], Pathfinder, New York, 1977, p 142
"Centrist Combination and Marxist Tactics" (28 February 1935), Writings of Leon Trotsky [1934-35], p 203-4. (The original citation given by the NZSL was from an earlier edition of Trotsky's Writings which gave this article's title as "Centrist Combination and Marxist Faction" - PRG, January 1991.)
V I Lenin, What Is to Be Done? [1902], Collected Works, Progress, Moscow, 1961, v 5, p 440
As above, p 442-3
As above, p 462
V I Lenin, "Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of World Revolution" (Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 13 November 1922). (A slightly different translation can be found in: Collected Works, 1965, v 33, p 431-2 - PRG, January 1991.)
V I Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism - An Infantile Disorder (1920). (A slightly different translation can be found in: Collected Works, 1966, v 31, p 93-4 - PRG, January 1991.)
Leon Trotsky, "What Is a 'Mass Paper'?" (30 November 1935). (A slightly different translation can be found in: The Crisis of the French Section [1935-36], Pathfinder, New York, 1977, p 97 -PRG, January 1991.)
Letter from Gager to Logan, 28 November 1971
V I Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back [1904], Collected Works, 1965, v 7, p 256
Letter from Gager to Logan, 21 August 1971
James P Cannon, Letter to Dobbs (6 April 1953), Speeches to the Party, Pathfinder, New York, 1973
Socialist Workers Party, "Against Pabloist Revisionism" (1953), International Committee Documents 1951-54, Towards a History of the Fourth International, Part 4, Education for Socialists series, New York, 1974, p 152.
Revolutionary Tendency of the SWP, "In Defence of a Revol-utionary Perspective" (1962), Marxist Bulletin, n 1, p 3
Red, n 1, November 1972
V I Lenin, The State and Revolution [1917], Collected Works, 1964, v 25, p 445. (The additions in square brackets are those of the NZSL in 1972 - PRG, January 1991.)
Leon Trotsky, "Thaelmann and the 'Peoples Revolution'" (14 April 1931), The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, Pathfinder, New York, 1971, p 75-6
Leon Trotsky, "Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay" (1940), Leon Trotsky on the Trade Unions, New York, Pathfinder, 1975, p 71.
The Transitional Programme, p 14-5
Leon Trotsky, "The ILP and the Fourth International", p 147
"Declaration of Principles", p 11
Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Billie’s Back- The Crests’ “Step By Step”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Crests performing Step by Step.
Markin comment:
This is the back story, the teen listener back story if you like, going back to the primordial youth time of the mid to late 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the schoolboy mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Ya, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own.
Billie and I spent many, many hours mainly up in his tiny bedroom, his rock heaven bedroom, walls plastered with posters of Elvis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, somewhat later Jerry Lee Lewis, and of every new teen heartthrob singer, heartthrob to the girls that is, around, on his night table every new record Billie could get his hands on, by hook or by crook, and neatly folded piles of clothing, also gathered by that same hook or by crook, appropriate to the king hell king of the schoolboy rock scene, the elementary school rock scene between about 1956 to 1960. Much of that time was spent discussing the “meaning” of various songs, especially their sexual implications, ah, their mystery of girls-finding-out-about worthiness.
Although in early 1959 my family had started the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe, I still would wander back there until mid-1960 just to hear his take on whatever music was interesting him at the time. These commentaries, these Billie commentaries, are my recollections of his and my conversations on the song lyrics in this series. But I am not relying on memory alone. During this period we would use my father’s tape recorder, by today’s standard his big old reel to reel monstrosity of a tape recorder, to record Billie’s covers of the then current hit songs (for those who have not read previously of Billie’s “heroics” he was a pretty good budding rock singer at the time) and our conversations of those song meanings that we fretted about for hours. I have, painstakingly, had those reels transcribed so that many of these commentaries will be the actual words spoken during those conversations (somewhat edited, of course). That said, Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.
******
The Crests
Step By Step lyrics
Step, step. Step, step. Step, step... Step, step
Step by step I fell in love with you
And step by step it wasn't hard to do
Kiss by kiss and hand in hand
That's the way it all began
Soon we found the perfect plan for love
Side by side we took a lovers walk
Word by word we had a lover's talk
One word led to another and then
Then in no time we're up to ten
My heart knew it was gonna end in love
1st step, a sweet hello
2nd step, my heart's aglow
3rd step, we had a date
4th step, we stayed up late
5th step, I walk you home
6th step, we're all alone
7th step, we took a chance
One kiss and true romance
Step by step we climbed to heaven's door
Step by step, each thrill invited more
Then you promised faithfully
All your love belonged to me
Now I know we'll always be in love
Step, step. Step, step. Step, step. Step step
*********
Billie, William James Bradley, comment:
What the hell’s going on? It is almost like I can’t even listen to my transistor radio these days without wanting to throw up. Yes, that’s right throw up. And Markin, Peter Paul Markin, my best friend over at Adamsville South Elementary a couple of years back will back me up on this if he even comes back around the old neighborhood to breathe some real air, some fresh sea air, and get the low-down on what is good in music these days. Except I won’t have much to tell him right now. Like I said I feel like throwing up most of the time when I listen to the radio. Nothing righteous. Nothing like Elvis when he was righteous, hungry and righteous, a few years back. Or Jerry Lee before he got into cousin-marrying trouble or Chuck Berry when he got into no-no white girl trouble. Fabian, Conway Twitty, Duane Eddy, Ricky Nelson, jesus, even Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers and on and on with twaddle, yes, twaddle about this and that oddball thing about teen life. And girls, girls with money to buy the records, who seem to just want dreamy stuff about sad movies, some sad-sack boy friends, johnny, jimmy, joey angels, following guys to the end of the earth, and all that. No more be-bop-a-loola. I tell you we are in the dumps and it ain’t getting better, if anything worst.
Here is what I am up to these days, and maybe you should be too. I am starting to listen and listen hard to doo wop stuff. The stuff that came out of the street corners of New York City and other big town places where you had guys (and chicks too) singing, no instruments, or maybe some low-down, low-key piano, just doing harmonies, and doo wop background responses. Cool. Ya, I know I got in trouble, musically anyway, trying to cover righteous Bo Diddley down here in the white projects playing off “colored” music that really, really I say, drove early rock. Just ask Elvis, if he is in a truthful mood.
But this stuff, this doo wop stuff, if it gets around more, can break the pretty boys and their dreamy girl thing up.
So here is what I am doing now that it is summer, school is out, it’s hot, and we haven’t got a damn thing to do, and no money to do it with if we had that damn thing to do. I have been listening to doo wop records like crazy, right now I am concentrating on the Crests and their great harmonies on Step by Step. Here is what I want to do just like we tried last summer when Markin was around more. A few guys, a few of my guys, my hanging-around-waiting-to-do-this-and-that-but-just-now-waiting-fire-guys, would get together around dusk in back of the old school around the playground area and start practicing harmonies. Markin scoffed at the idea at the time, as usual. But then, just as the sun started going down, a couple of girls would come by to listen and not “dogs” either, or sticks. Then a couple more, and a couple more, and there you have it.
Of course after that Markin wanted to do it every day, all day, even in the afternoon heat, and Markin hates the heat. So I figure that we can try it again this year and maybe we can break out of the Bobby Vee mold. But see here is where I am on the hook. If you can believe this I need Markin, need him bad. Last summer when he was around more I tried to keep him in the background as his voice was starting to change. Ya, I tried to ship him and his voice to Chicago if you want to know the truth, best friend and all. But lately I have been having trouble on the call and response side of Step by Step and now that Markin has a more bassy voice I sure could use him otherwise I will never break out into my proper place in the doo wop world. Got it, Markin.
Markin comment:
This is the back story, the teen listener back story if you like, going back to the primordial youth time of the mid to late 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the schoolboy mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Ya, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own.
Billie and I spent many, many hours mainly up in his tiny bedroom, his rock heaven bedroom, walls plastered with posters of Elvis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, somewhat later Jerry Lee Lewis, and of every new teen heartthrob singer, heartthrob to the girls that is, around, on his night table every new record Billie could get his hands on, by hook or by crook, and neatly folded piles of clothing, also gathered by that same hook or by crook, appropriate to the king hell king of the schoolboy rock scene, the elementary school rock scene between about 1956 to 1960. Much of that time was spent discussing the “meaning” of various songs, especially their sexual implications, ah, their mystery of girls-finding-out-about worthiness.
Although in early 1959 my family had started the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe, I still would wander back there until mid-1960 just to hear his take on whatever music was interesting him at the time. These commentaries, these Billie commentaries, are my recollections of his and my conversations on the song lyrics in this series. But I am not relying on memory alone. During this period we would use my father’s tape recorder, by today’s standard his big old reel to reel monstrosity of a tape recorder, to record Billie’s covers of the then current hit songs (for those who have not read previously of Billie’s “heroics” he was a pretty good budding rock singer at the time) and our conversations of those song meanings that we fretted about for hours. I have, painstakingly, had those reels transcribed so that many of these commentaries will be the actual words spoken during those conversations (somewhat edited, of course). That said, Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.
******
The Crests
Step By Step lyrics
Step, step. Step, step. Step, step... Step, step
Step by step I fell in love with you
And step by step it wasn't hard to do
Kiss by kiss and hand in hand
That's the way it all began
Soon we found the perfect plan for love
Side by side we took a lovers walk
Word by word we had a lover's talk
One word led to another and then
Then in no time we're up to ten
My heart knew it was gonna end in love
1st step, a sweet hello
2nd step, my heart's aglow
3rd step, we had a date
4th step, we stayed up late
5th step, I walk you home
6th step, we're all alone
7th step, we took a chance
One kiss and true romance
Step by step we climbed to heaven's door
Step by step, each thrill invited more
Then you promised faithfully
All your love belonged to me
Now I know we'll always be in love
Step, step. Step, step. Step, step. Step step
*********
Billie, William James Bradley, comment:
What the hell’s going on? It is almost like I can’t even listen to my transistor radio these days without wanting to throw up. Yes, that’s right throw up. And Markin, Peter Paul Markin, my best friend over at Adamsville South Elementary a couple of years back will back me up on this if he even comes back around the old neighborhood to breathe some real air, some fresh sea air, and get the low-down on what is good in music these days. Except I won’t have much to tell him right now. Like I said I feel like throwing up most of the time when I listen to the radio. Nothing righteous. Nothing like Elvis when he was righteous, hungry and righteous, a few years back. Or Jerry Lee before he got into cousin-marrying trouble or Chuck Berry when he got into no-no white girl trouble. Fabian, Conway Twitty, Duane Eddy, Ricky Nelson, jesus, even Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers and on and on with twaddle, yes, twaddle about this and that oddball thing about teen life. And girls, girls with money to buy the records, who seem to just want dreamy stuff about sad movies, some sad-sack boy friends, johnny, jimmy, joey angels, following guys to the end of the earth, and all that. No more be-bop-a-loola. I tell you we are in the dumps and it ain’t getting better, if anything worst.
Here is what I am up to these days, and maybe you should be too. I am starting to listen and listen hard to doo wop stuff. The stuff that came out of the street corners of New York City and other big town places where you had guys (and chicks too) singing, no instruments, or maybe some low-down, low-key piano, just doing harmonies, and doo wop background responses. Cool. Ya, I know I got in trouble, musically anyway, trying to cover righteous Bo Diddley down here in the white projects playing off “colored” music that really, really I say, drove early rock. Just ask Elvis, if he is in a truthful mood.
But this stuff, this doo wop stuff, if it gets around more, can break the pretty boys and their dreamy girl thing up.
So here is what I am doing now that it is summer, school is out, it’s hot, and we haven’t got a damn thing to do, and no money to do it with if we had that damn thing to do. I have been listening to doo wop records like crazy, right now I am concentrating on the Crests and their great harmonies on Step by Step. Here is what I want to do just like we tried last summer when Markin was around more. A few guys, a few of my guys, my hanging-around-waiting-to-do-this-and-that-but-just-now-waiting-fire-guys, would get together around dusk in back of the old school around the playground area and start practicing harmonies. Markin scoffed at the idea at the time, as usual. But then, just as the sun started going down, a couple of girls would come by to listen and not “dogs” either, or sticks. Then a couple more, and a couple more, and there you have it.
Of course after that Markin wanted to do it every day, all day, even in the afternoon heat, and Markin hates the heat. So I figure that we can try it again this year and maybe we can break out of the Bobby Vee mold. But see here is where I am on the hook. If you can believe this I need Markin, need him bad. Last summer when he was around more I tried to keep him in the background as his voice was starting to change. Ya, I tried to ship him and his voice to Chicago if you want to know the truth, best friend and all. But lately I have been having trouble on the call and response side of Step by Step and now that Markin has a more bassy voice I sure could use him otherwise I will never break out into my proper place in the doo wop world. Got it, Markin.
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