Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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As part of my comment here, dated October 20, 2011, I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the “new world” we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work checks and balances form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one. In that sense previous historical models come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
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Recently (see October 22, 2011 comment above) I noted the following while arguing for the General Assembly concept as a form of alternate government using historic examples like the Paris Commune (1871), the early soviets in Russia (1905 and 1917), and the early days of the antifascist militias in the Spanish Civil War (1936-37):
“However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.”
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lesson Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Ernest Belfort Bax
Gracchus Babeuf
III. Vicissitudes of Fortune and Ripening of Ideas
As already stated, shortly after the fall of Robespierre, Babeuf reappeared in Paris and founded the Journal de la liberté de la presse, in which he played the part of political free lance, attacking in turn the Robespierrists and the Thermidoreans. At first, however, the whole of his energies seem to have been directed against the party of Robespierre and the old revolutionary government. He was indeed at this time on terms of intimacy with several of the Thermidorean leaders, notably Tallien and Fouché, who subsequently became his bitter enemies. Before long, however, his general journalistic attitude caused the absurd suspicion to fall upon him of being a royalist agent in disguise. This was enhanced by his public speaking, at which he now became very assiduous, more particularly in the club of his quarter, where he nightly attacked the authority of the Convention, and especially the leading Thermidoreans. In this way Babeuf made himself the enemy alike of the Jacobins and of the parties now dominant in the Convention. The former were incensed by a pamphlet issued by him at this time, Du système de depopulation ou la vie et Les crimes de Carrier, in which the methods of Carrier, his noyades, republican marriages, etc., were denounced in the most violent language.
The journal itself was consecrated to the cause implied by its name, and, as already stated, although first directed mainly against the “tail of Robespierre”, as the partisans of the fallen dictator were now termed, soon took to criticising with equal severity the successful faction in the recent struggle. The tenth number merits notice, inasmuch as Babeuf reproduced therein the address of the popular society of Arras to the National Convention, containing a kind of manifesto on the liberty of the press, coupled with a denunciation of Barère, the notorious ex-member of the Committee of Public Safety. As is well known, it was drawn up by Babeuf himself. It concluded with the words: “Men of the 9th of Thermidor, we declare before you, on behalf of our fellow-citizens, that they, deadened by a long lethargy, demand their freedom, claiming that the fall of tyrants shall render to us our eternal rights, that liberty shall step forth in the full glory of its power from the tomb of the dictator. Representatives, the men of the north, who have muzzled that devouring ogre, whose furies have desolated our country during five months, will prove themselves raised to your level, in denouncing to you the revolutionary phantom behind which Joseph Lebon has sheltered himself, in order to battle victoriously against the victims who struggle to escape his fury. We denounce to you Barère, that vile slave of Robespierre.” The document proceeds to stigmatise, in a few phrases, the horrors of “the Terror” as exercised at Arras.
The above, in the oratorical manner of the time, is a good specimen of Babeuf’s writing, in what we may term the “grand” style of manifesto. The journal from the first excited the adverse attention of the authorities, and it had been published little more than two months before the violence of its language caused action to be taken by the “Committee of General Security”, and on the 13th of October 1794 an attempt was made to stop the paper and seize the person of Babeuf. Warned in time, however, he succeeded in hiding himself, and what is more, from a secret retreat, in publishing his paper under a new title. It now appeared as the Tribun du Peuple. Otherwise it remained unchanged, either in shape or character, being avowedly the continuation of the original enterprise.
It is to be remarked that a notable change began about this time to take place in the opinions of Babeuf in regard to the old revolutionary leaders and their policy. He no longer attacked them indiscriminately. We give Babeuf’s opinion of Robespierre at this turning-point of his career. “This Robespierre,” he says, “whose memory to-day is unjustly abhorred, this Robespierre is one in whom we must distinguish two persons – Robespierre the sincere patriot, a friend of just principles down to 1793, and Robespierre the ambitious tyrant, and the worst of criminals since that epoch. This Robespierre, I say, so long as he was a citizen, is perhaps the best source in which to seek great truths and powerful arguments for the rights of the press.” He goes on to point out that the declaration of the Rights of Man the nation really owes to Robespierre. “We cannot fail to esteem the work,” he continues, “though we forget the workman,” or rather, as he had already said, “let us distinguish between Robespierre the apostle of liberty, and Robespierre the most infamous of tyrants!”
During this time the paper seems to have appeared mostly without the printer’s name, though the deputy Guffroy was undoubtedly the printer of several numbers. Number 33 never appeared, the manuscript having been seized by the authorities. It contained a violent attack of the most convincing character on the Thermidorean reaction. All this time the police were unable to lay hands upon Babeuf himself, but, in revenge, they were zealous in arresting the distributors of the journal. Amongst these was one Anne Treillard, who played a leading part in the distribution. This woman was subjected to a close interrogation as to the whereabouts of Babeuf. She denied all knowledge of his domicile, and stated that he himself brought her the packages containing the numbers to a place in the Jardin de l’Égalité. Asked if she would know Babeuf if she saw him, she replied that she had never observed him closely, but that he was of medium stature, with a long, thin, serious-looking face. Asked, still further, where the first numbers were sold, she replied that they were fetched from somewhere near the Place des Piques, and that it was from thence that the Journal de la liberté de la presse had been sent out.
By an irony of fate, it was his recent friend Tallien who had now become the sworn enemy of the late revolutionary government and of Jacobin principles generally, and whom Babeuf had also attacked in his journal, who was the instrument of obtaining Babeuf’s arrest. In a speech in the Convention on this occasion, Tallien denounced Babeuf as the tool of Fouché, whose enemy Tallien had now become. It was the 10th of Pluviose, year III (29th January 1795), that Tallien brought forward his motion for Babeuf’s arrest, on the ground of his having outraged the national representation in his articles. The Convention giving its consent, the arrest was effected by the executive authorities a few days later.
Owing to the hints obtained from the woman Anne Treillard, the committee, acting presumably on the motion carried by Tallien before the Convention a fortnight before, succeeded by means of its police in discovering and seizing Babeuf on the 12th of February 1795. While in prison, their victim, however, was successful in smuggling out and getting distributed a manifesto entitled Babeuf, the Tribune of the People, to his Fellow Citizens. It consisted in a vigorous defence of his public and private conduct, not forgetting the affair at Montdidier. But it was without effect, for, together with other members of his staff, a few days later he was conveyed from Paris to Arras, where the imprisonment was continued. It should be noted, as regards this, that Babeuf and his colleagues were imprisoned in a purely arbitrary manner, as no definite charge had been formulated against them, and no idea of a trial at any definite time seems to have been even entertained, as it certainly never took place.
Babeuf’s companions in the prison at Arras were Lebois, the editor of Le Journal de l’égalité; Taffoureau, a friend of Babeuf’s, probably from the days of the Correspondant Picard, who had been arrested as a partisan of the Terror in his native town of St Omer; and Cochet, also a native of St Omer, who was doubtless in gaol for the same reason. There were other partisans of the fallen party of the Mountain, who subsequently joined Babeuf’s movement, and who were detained in another prison at Arras. Already, in 1787, in a letter to his old correspondent Dubois de Fosseux, Babeuf indicates that his mind was occupied with the question of the communisation of the land and the products of industry, but at that time it was in the form of a problem only. It was in the prison of Arras, singularly enough, the town where his old correspondent resided, that the root ideas of the communism subsequently embodied in the programme of the Equals of the year V were first definitely formulated. The first impulse, or at all events the first definite notion of communism as the economic ideal of human society, seems to have been derived by Babeuf from a study of Morelly’s work, Le Code de la nature et le véritable esprit de ses lois de tout temps négligé ou inconnu.
This work of Morelly, an obscure author of whom little is known, was written about 1755, and seems to have had a certain vogue for a time, probably in part owing to the fact that it was for long attributed to Diderot. The work of Morelly was undoubtedly, both intrinsically and in effect, the most important of the precursors, not only of Babouvism, but of the Utopian Socialism of the early nineteenth century; its influence, either direct or indirect, on Fourier and Cabet being specially noticeable. In accordance with eighteenth-century anthropology, Morelly starts with the classical notion of the “golden age”, which he deduces from the theory that the primitive instincts of all men are good. The present state of inequality and its accompanying human misery is due, not to any intrinsic defect in human nature, but to the institution of private property. It was the inroads of the latter upon the communism originally reigning among the children of men that was the source and fountain of all evil. So soon as individuals began to use more than their share of the common goods, then began all the miseries that had afflicted mankind.
Morelly accepted the principle of Helvetius, that the root of all conduct was self-love, but argued that, since no man can be happy by himself alone without the aid of his fellow-men, recognition of the claims of others – in other words, moral rectitude – is the only certain means of promoting one’s own happiness. As a direct consequence of this principle, Morelly insisted upon the common ownership of all wealth, and the equal enjoyment of the good things of life by all alike. It is curious that this old eighteenth-century writer seems to have been the first to put forward the subsequently well-known maxim “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. He undoubtedly made this the basis of his social construction. For his scheme is plainly built throughout upon this principle. The only advantage accruing to talent is, according to Morelly’s system, to be the honour of directing the industry and the affairs of the community in general. The natural products of different districts are the paths from one to the other, by a natural system of exchange, founded upon mutual accommodation.
Notwithstanding Morelly’s conviction of the intrinsic goodness of human nature, coercion is assumed as necessary, to prevent the backsliding of individual members of the new society. Strong fortresses are spoken of in deserted places where criminal or recalcitrant persons are to be confined for a time, or, in extreme cases, for life. As regards marriage, Morelly insists that every citizen who has attained to man’s estate shall be compelled to marry. Celibacy is only to be allowed after the fortieth year has been attained. At the beginning of every year the festival of marriage is to be celebrated for all those who have attained the requisite age. “The young persons of both sexes will be gathered together, and, in presence of the senate of the city, every youth will choose the maiden that pleases him, and as soon as he has received her consent, will take her to wife.” The first marriage is to be indissoluble during ten years. Afterwards divorce is to be allowed, by consent of both, or even on the demand of one only, of the parties concerned. The divorced persons are not to be allowed to marry again before the expiration of one year, and they will not be permitted to be reunited to each other under any circumstances. They cannot marry younger persons than themselves, or than the divorced partner of the original marriage. Only widows and widowers are to have this liberty.
As might be expected, there are traces of the influence of the first, and, for a long time, sole exponent of Utopianism – Thomas More. As already stated, many of Fourier’s specific doctrines are anticipated by Morelly, e.g. that the moral world is governed by civil laws, as the physical is by natural laws. In the physical world, argues Morelly, power of attraction, i.e. gravitation, is dominant; in the moral world, the place of gravitation is supplied by that of self-love. There is also a strong analogy between the “city” of Morelly and the phalanstère of Fourier. The division of the various elements of society on a fixed mechanical and arithmetical scheme, founded on a decimal basis, so characteristic of Fourier, is also note-worthy in Morelly. Even Fourier’s description of the arrangement of his ideal phalanstère bears unmistakable traces of Morelly’s work. According to the latter, in the centre of the city is to be a great open space, surrounded by storehouses and public buildings; surrounding these, again, are to be the dwellings of the citizens; farther away, the buildings in which industrial operations are carried on; still further away are the dwelling-places of the peasantry, together with the farm buildings. But these details, interesting as they are in view of the later developments of Utopian Socialism, have no special significance or importance for the movement inaugurated by Babeuf. The chief thing in this connection is the importance of the influence of Morelly’s book in furnishing the groundwork for the definite communistic principles of the Society of the Equals. These ideas ripened in Babeuf’s mind undoubtedly, and, through him, in those of his associates, during their imprisonment at Arras, early in the year 1795. Outside, the party of the Mountain and the Jacobins were throughout France at this time a defeated and a persecuted faction.
Communistic ideas, properly so called, though undoubtedly present in a loose and vague way in the minds of individual members of the old revolutionary party, were never formally recognised by the party as such, which always, in the main, was a party of the small middle-class, and the small independent master-workman, who economically at this time formed part of that class. Hence it represented, as such, economically, the interests of the small property-holder as against the feudal landlord, and all that appertained to him, in the first place; and in the second place, as against the new wealthy manufacturer, contractor, and man of finance. But the proletariat, as we understand it to-day, was too young and immature to have, strictly speaking, a definite class-consciousness of its own, still less determinate principles of political action. Nevertheless, so far as it was possible, Babeuf’s new movement constituted for the moment the rallying point, as for a last effort, of all the revolutionary sections of the French people.
The formation of a new class of wealthy bourgeois to step into the place economically and politically of the displaced feudal aristocracy had already begun. It was already evident that the aim of the Thermidorean leaders, i.e. of those who had been instrumental in the overthrow of Robespierre and of the old revolutionary regime, was to place themselves at the head of such a new aristocracy of wealth. The process of the formation and consolidation of this new monied class was, as we all know, completed under the regime of the first Empire, but, as already said, it began unmistakably immediately after the overthrow of the system of the Terror. It dates, indeed, really from long before, in fact from the end of 1789, when the first sale of the nationalised ecclesiastical lands took place.
Syndicates were formed to compete with private individuals in the scramble for the landed property of the Church. As only a small percentage of the purchase-money had to be paid at once, the way of the astute speculator was smoothed for him. In the not unfounded hopes of evading the payment of the second instalment, many of these adventurers favoured the Revolution, and were specially eager in urging on the Austrian war. After the overthrow of the monarchy on the 10th of August 1792 it was decided that the lands of the emigrant nobles should be sold only in small lots, and not in huge sections, as had been the case with the ecclesiastical lands.
Here we see the effects of the new revolutionary regime, in which the influence of the small middle and working class was dominant. The speculators and financiers were for the moment cowed. But this did not prevent these same speculators and jobbers, during the ensuing winter, from evading the law and making money, by means of sham sales and other arts of trickery, out of the costly furniture and movable effects of the fugitive nobles. But although arranged for on paper, the actual partition of the lands remain unaffected long as the “moderate” party of the Girondins continued to be the official repositories of political power. After their fall, the sale of the lands was definitely ordered on the conditions already described. But the decree of the Convention was again hampered in its execution owing to the intervention of the second great campaign against the coalition of Europe of the autumn of 1793. France became for the nonce a “gigantic armed camp”, and the one thought was the national defence. But though few transfers, in the sense intended, were made, this did not prevent individual agents of the government from improving the situation to their own advantage by sales which evaded the conditions imposed. Two-thirds of the houses in Paris had now become national property.
Finally, the Committee of Public Safety, early in 1794, while ordering the sale of the confiscated lands to be continued with greater despatch than heretofore, and while advising the principle of partition on a small scale should be adhered to as far as possible, did not make the latter an absolute sine qua non, the result being that the victuallers of the army and the contractors for war material generally, who had become suddenly rich by the malpractices usual with their tribe, had succeeded in annexing considerable tracts of French territory for nominal sums in cash. Other means were now adopted for enabling the new privileged classes to raise themselves economically at the expense of the bas people, foremost among which was the hocussing of the currency by the issuing of a limitless mass of a practically worthless paper.
These and other forms of robbery on the part of the new financial middle-class flourished still more exceedingly during the heyday of this class – the period of the Consulate and Empire. It was, then, this new middle-class which from the Revolution of Thermidor onwards gave intellectual, moral, and political tone to French life. The active opposition to their sway was constituted by the remains of the old revolutionary party, which were momentarily gathered together in the movement of which our François Noel, or Gracchus, Babeuf, as he now called himself, was the life and soul.
Babeuf himself alludes in his famous 43rd number of the Tribun to the object-lesson as to the turn things were taking, such as “he that runs could read”, to be found in the comparison between the present and former fortunes of many of the old revolutionary leaders, now termed “Thermidoreans”.
Barras had acquired five estates. Merlin de Thionville possessed two chateaux and immense landed property, and could afford to give 300,000 francs a month to his mistress. Tallien had made an alliance with a Spanish woman of wealth and title. Legendre, the ci-devant butcher, the former friend of Danton, had come into possession of a large estate, which he kept up at vast expense. During the five revolutionary years before the 9th of Thermidor the issue of paper money (assignats), although disastrous enough in its economic effects, was nevertheless kept within bounds, and, it has been computed, amounted to not more than seven milliards. A certain relative proportion between the guarantee security and the paper money was never quite lost sight of during all the issues dating from before the fall of Robespierre. It was only under the reaction which set in shortly after the last event that all idea of proportion was cast to the winds in favour of absolutely reckless swindling. While, as above said, during the first five years of the Revolution, it has been estimated that at most seven milliards of paper was issued within two years following July 1794, the amount of paper poured into circulation has been reckoned to have been not less than thirty-eight milliards; of which thirty milliards belong to the first six months of the Constitution of the year III, that is, to the Government of the Directory.
It was indeed evident that all these “nouveaux riches”, thieves on a great scale, constituted the real and sole effective power in the country. The five directors were their mandatories.
The Directory and all the prominent politicians of the time were hand in glove with a clique of speculative financiers, whose sole aim was to enrich themselves. Their nefarious influence may be seen in most of the laws passed, and is indeed traceable right up to the year 1814. The bulk of the governing classes – under Barras, Bonaparte, the Bourbons – were dominated by, or were in league with, this band of robbers, who systematically exploited the national wealth for their own benefit. These financial jackals seized upon everything they could lay their hands on, it mattered not what – church revenues, fiscal monies, feudal estates. The result naturally was the sudden and rapid growth of a propertyless proletariat. Such was the state of things which confronted Babeuf when his political career began, and such was the population to whom the gospel of Babeuf appeared as a godsend. Thousands of persons in Paris and in other towns of France were on the brink of starvation. The economic situation in Paris under the Directory and the subsequent years was as desperate as any that has been known in the world’s history.
Babeuf had and made many friends and sympathisers in Arras; amongst them was the family of the ex-proconsul there during the Terror, Joseph Lebon, who seem to have become enthusiastic adherents, which is significant, considering Lebon’s association with the party of Robespierre, and Babeuf’s severe attacks on the Robespierrists and even on Lebon personally, in the earlier numbers of the Tribun. This is more noteworthy, seeing that Lebon was undoubtedly one of the most ferocious agents of the Terror, and that Babeuf, however much he may have modified his view of the character of Robespierre in general, had never as yet withdrawn his strictures of the system of the Terror itself, which was entirely opposed to the humanitarian principles he had hitherto professed. However this may be, his acquaintance with the Lebons had an important result for the movement, for it was in their house Babeuf first met Darthé, his subsequent colleague and right hand in the Society of the Pantheon, and in the conspiracy of the Equals, which was its sequel.
Augustin Alexandre Darthé was a native of St Pol, in the department of the Pas-de-Calais. Darthé had played a certain public role during the Revolution, had taken part in the affair of the Bastille, and had been afterwards a member of the directing body of his department. In consequence of his services in this capacity he had been decreed to have “merited well of the country” He subsequently became public prosecutor to the revolutionary tribunals of Arras and Cambrai, where his incorruptibility and frugality were recognised by all. He was a supporter of Robespierre, and is described as of severe morals and of a compassionate heart!
During the time of Babeuf’s detention at Arras the town was rent by the feud between the Thermidoreans, including the old aristocratic party, now reconciled to the wealthier middle-class in their abhorrence of the Terror, and the Sansculottes. The younger and more ardent members of the reactionary coalition, under the name of the Jeunesse dorée, had adopted an extravagant costume and long tresses. The partisans of the revolutionary regime were now indiscriminately termed Jacobins. At the Theatre disturbances took place between the two sides. One such disturbance, in which the son of the guillotined émigré, the Comte de Bethune, with some of his associates, took part, led to the arrest of the latter, and their detention as prisoners, in company with Babeuf and his friends. Babeuf describes the young aristocrat as a smooth-faced young man, with an attractive but deceptive manner. He continued the centre of the reactionary movement in Arras, where he held a kind of court, distributing the current paper money (assignats) lavishly amongst his fellows.
On the 24th of Fructidor, ann. IV (16th September 1795), Babeuf, and his friend Charles Germain, with whom an intimacy had been established in the prison of Arras, and who was subsequently to become Babeuf’s ardent and strenuous colleague in the conspiracy of the Equals, were transferred by the authorities to Paris, where shortly after they were released by an amnesty proclaimed by the National Convention at its closing sitting. It is now that the great period of Gracchus Babeuf’s political activity, terminating only with his death, begins.
Monday, February 06, 2012
From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-The Embryo Of An Alternate Government-Learn The Lessons Of History- From The Pages Of The French Revolution- Ernest Belfort Bax-The Last Episode of the French Revolution Being a History of Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals (1911)-III. Vicissitudes of Fortune and Ripening of Ideas
Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Honor American Communist Leader James P. Cannon- How We Overcame Ultraleftism in Defense Work-On The Early Days Of Communist Defense Work
Markin comment:
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
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How We Overcame Ultraleftism in Defense Work
The following interview with James P. Cannon, the founder of the American Trotskyist movement, was granted to Syd Stapleton October 29, 1973.
The interview begins with a reference to the Political Rights Defense Fund. This is a committee seeking public support for a $27-million suit for damages filed last July 18 by the Socialist Workers party and the Young Socialist Alliance against Nixon and other government officials. The suit charges that government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, carried out illegal wiretapping, mail tampering, job discrimination, and harassment of SWP and YSA members and supporters. It also cites incidents of SWP campaign headquarters being fire-bombed, bombed, and burglarized.
Question. What is your opinion of the Political Rights Defense Fund?
Answer. It's a proper and correct procedure to exploit every possibility to utilize what cracks there are in the bourgeois-democratic system to advance our ideas. It's
participating in part in their elections. It’s wise to utilize a situation like this to explain our ideas to a wider audience. This wasn't known to the old radical movement. The old radical movement tended toward the ultraleft view that courts are crooked instruments of the capitalist class, so why bother? Ignore them. Including the elections. That was the prevailing opinion of the syndicalists and red-socialist wing in which I was.
But I don't blame myself for being an ultraleftist in those days. I didn't know any better and there was nobody to teach us better. The only ones who spoke the other way were the right-wing socialists who thought you could accomplish everything through the ballot box. We were pretty sure that was false.
It was not until after the Russian revolution and Lenin wrote his pamphlet on the infantile sickness, explaining how revolutionists could utilize parliamentary action effectively, that we got straightened out on that. It was so damned simple and so convincing that I don't have any patience with people who still repeat the old arguments of the ultraleft before the Russian revolution.
I can recall instances in the early days where Lenin's approach could have been effective. One was the Lawrence. Massachusetts, textile strike of 1912. That was sixty-one years ago. It was a famous IWW strike. Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, Joe Ettor, Arturo Giovannitti were involved in it.
Retrospectively, I recall one incidence that has a bearing on this question of whether you should utilize bourgeois-democratic institutions. At that time Victor Berger was a Socialist congressman from Milwaukee. He was the first Socialist congressman in the United States. But he was a right-winger. He was the leader you might call the ultra-right wing of the Socialist party. Notwithstanding that, the strike leaders were able to use his position to gain tremendous publicity for the strike. They cooked up a wonderful idea for publicity —to take the children of the strikers on the train to socialist sympathizers in various places to be kept during the strike. It caused a great sensation. The Lawrence authorities interfered and tried to put a stop to it. The use of the police created a furor.
Then Victor Berger introduced a resolution in Congress to investigate the Lawrence strike. He got an official committee set up, and Haywood and the leaders brought the kids and women to the congressional hearings to testify about conditions. It was a wonderful publicity job that helped win the strike.
But it was not a normal procedure. Retrospectively I see it as a good example of how to use a bourgeois parliamentary institution.
Another example I recall was in 1917 when the Socialist party came out against the war. Morris Hillquit, in the New York municipal elections that year, ran for mayor and made the war question his main issue. It got tremendous publicity across the country.
I didn't realize it then because I was still a hidebound syndicalist, but I look back on it as a wonderful illustration of how even a municipal campaign can be utilized for a national political purpose.
I really rejoice over the way our party goes into these elections, national, state, and local —any place they can get an edge in and get up some kind of an audience, newspaper space, some TV or radio time, and do it without giving away anything. That's all for free.
I see all these ultrawise, ultraleft groups. What do they do? They stand around with their mouths open while we exploit the cracks and crevices in the bourgeois-democratic system without paying the slightest respect to it. You know, they can't run a bourgeois-democratic system without giving a little opening here and there. So, we take advantage of it; and we're 100 percent right!
Q. In the history of the radical movement has there ever been a crisis in government with the kind of impact that the Nixon-Watergate crisis has had? Why do you think this Nixon thing has developed to the degree it has?
A. That's what Nixon would like to know. There have been some attempts to compare it to the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. But that was a pure-and-simple graft scandal involving cabinet members and some oil companies. Public sentiment was rather "So what? Don't they all steal?"
The Communist party ran its first presidential candidates in 1924. Foster and Gitlow were the candidates. It was only a token campaign; but one of the slogans we started out with was "Down with the Capitalist Teapot Dome!
Vote for Communist candidates for president."
Our comrades were somewhat taken aback by the reception to that. People would say, "You mean to tell us that if your guy got in there he wouldn't steal? All politicians steal." There was absolute cynicism, more or less indifference. "What the hell; so they stole a few million dollars."
I think that would have been the attitude now if Watergate had been limited to graft. What's involved in this case is the extent of the bugging, espionage, and intimidation. A large section of the population, including a large section of the middle and upper classes, got apprehensive about it.
It's not the same as the Teapot Dome scandal. There is a genuine public reaction to this scandal. You might say multiple scandals. Every day, you expect something new to be revealed.
A columnist named Kraft. Do you know him?
Q. Joseph Kraft. He's the fellow who went to Paris and was followed by the CIA, I believe.
A. He's a prominent national columnist. He wrote an article summarizing the whole thing in one of the liberal magazines. His opinion was that this Nixon outfit and the hatchetmen he had around him were actually moving in the direction of a police state. The ruling powers in this country don't think they need that yet. The opposition comes, you know, not only from the workers. It comes from practically all circles of society. The New York Times and the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are all hostile to this administration. They represent real money in this country. If there is a conflict in the upper circles, the difference between the old money and the new may be involved, I think. The new tycoons don't know where to stop; they haven't learned moderation, or the need for concessions. The older ones think it's better to give a little in order to keep a lot.
Q. When the International Labor Defense had to fight, cases like Sacco-Vanzetti and Mooney-Billings, was it able to take advantage of any divisions like that in the ruling class over how to react to the labor movement? Was it able to build up support for its cases through both mass propaganda work and things like endorsements?
A. Yes, there were many endorsements and they were utilized. Even lawyers were outraged at the violations of the rules of law. The Sacco and Vanzetti case was a frame-up. Everybody knew it was a damned frame-up from beginning to end.
The witch-hunt began in the early 1920s. There was a tremendous red scare and they arrested thousands of people overnight in the Palmer raids. They deported whole shiploads of immigrants who were suspected of subversion or of being connected in any way with the radical, movement. They just hit on Sacco and Vanzetti in the course of a general investigation. They had no case against them at all. They framed it.
The judge was outspokenly prejudicial in all his rulings and so on. They went through with it. It was delayed by one appeal after another and by public protest for seven years. It was not till 1927 that they finally executed them. And there were deep feelings in the movement of protest.
A couple of years ago a book was published that tried to justify the killing of Sacco and Vanzetti. The author tried to prove that Carlo Tresca had stated in one instance that while one of them was innocent the other was guilty. And since Carlo Tresca was a prominent anarchist, he thought that this was big news. He said also that I knew about it —that I thought they were guilty despite the fact that I was organizing the campaign of the International Labor Defense. He made these statements in The New Republic.
I immediately wrote a reply which they published under the heading "What Cannon Didn't Think."
Judge Musmano, who had been connected with the Sacco-Vanzetti Committee, and later became a prominent judge in Pennsylvania, wrote me a very, very warm letter congratulating me on my protest in The New Republic. Which is an indication he still had strong convictions about the case although he was by no means sympathetic to anarchism or any other radical idea.
Q. As a result of the tapes controversy and the whole development of this struggle around Nixon's role in Watergate, there's quite a bit of sentiment in various circles, from George Meany to radical students, to impeach Nixon. As far as I know, that's a totally new phenomenon. Do you have any opinion about how revolutionists should relate to demands for impeachment?
A. The only other case involved was that of President Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln. That was in 1866, over a hundred years ago. No, there has been nothing like the exposure of the Nixon administration.
He's committed to something that's unforgivable in the eyes of the moneyed rulers of this country. He's gone too far; he's stirred up too much trouble. They want to rule the country rather calmly. They're getting plenty of benefits the way it's working. They're not ready to use police-state methods to the extent Nixon has used them.
And then there's been some bad luck. One thing leads to another. A witness incidentally mentions to the Ervin Committee that they kept tape recordings of all the conversations. My god, is that so? Accidental things like that led from one revelation to the next.
I think our press is doing all right in covering Watergate and should keep hammering away on it from our own special viewpoint that this is just an unusually flagrant example of what capitalist rule and politics are really like.
We should watch out for oversimplification. Some issues of The Militant may have given the impression that it was being treated like another Teapot Dome scandal, "Well, they all do it; don't they?"
But Watergate goes beyond anything previous. Even Supreme Court Justice Douglas says he suspects they tapped the Supreme Court, and Johnson suspected that his phone was tapped.
If the ruling class thought all this was necessary, they would be for it, but at present they're not for such extensive use of police-state methods. So I think we should recognize this, and without making any concessions in principle, deal more fully with the way Nixon has embarrassed the real rulers of America.
But, as I say, that's marginal. It's not a fundamental criticism of our handling of the case. I think The Militant is doing very well, harping on it all they can, speaking about it all they can.
This morning I received a copy of the Workers Vanguard.
Q. That's Robertson's paper.
A. Do you know what they say on the headline? "Impeachment is not enough!" (Laughs.)
Q. He has to be hanged by the thumbs, or something?
A. (Laughs.) Returning to what the attitude of the radical movement used to be toward utilizing the judicial and parliamentary system for revolutionary purposes. Our actions used to be purely defensive. Even in the Sacco-Vanzetti case we took a defensive position. The same was (rue of the Mooney case and going all the way back to the Haymarket martyrs. They were all defensive actions.
The tendency was to say the courts are crooked, influenced by the capitalist class, and so keep away from them. For instance, the idea of utilizing the courts was not known to me. I recall distinctly in the terrible persecution of the IWW during the First World War. They arrested active Wobblies wherever they could find them. They had so many they put whole groups on trial. Around eighty to one hundred were tried in Chicago. There was another big group in Sacramento, California, and another in Kansas City, Kansas, the Witchita Case, they called it.
This gives you an idea of the decentralization of the IWW and the ultraleft approach to the question of utilizing the courts. In the Chicago and Kansas cases they put up a legal defense with lawyers. But in Sacramento they adopted the policy of a "silent defense." Did you ever hear of that?
Q. Where they refused to speak?
A. A silent defense. They didn't have any lawyers; they used no witnesses; they didn't use cross-examination. They ignored the court. They just sat there. Just to show their contempt.
They got stiff sentences like the others, but all they accomplished by their silent defense and their refusal to employ any lawyers was to lose the possibility of appealing, getting some of their people out on bail while the appeals were pending, and organizing an effective campaign. It was a negative action. It represented the prevailing attitude of the left-wing movement that you couldn't get anything out of the courts.
Now, our policy today is different. We base ourselves on the fact that it's not a police state, it's a bourgeois-democratic state, which a lot of people think is really democratic. In order to maintain that illusion the ruling class has to give you a little leeway here and there.
The intelligent thing, as Lenin explained in his pamphlet on the infantile sickness, is that we utilize these crevices for our own purposes. The suit filed by our party in the Watergate case is a very correct tactic, a serious move to exploit the bourgeois-democratic system in an offensive action in the courts. It's correctness is self-evident when you look at it.
I noticed the New York papers carried reports of the press conference about the filing of the suit. You're going around the country speaking to audiences who wouldn't be there this issue didn't appeal to them the way it does.
And what are ultralefts doing? Doing nothing except occasionally yapping at us.
Of course we should explain in our general propaganda that we don't expect to get much justice from the capitalist courts. The whole thing is rigged against us. But in order to maintain some illusion of democracy they've got to show some respect for law and order, so we'll take advantage of that and we'll test it out.
The Kutcher case is a wonderful example of how sometimes such a course can be successful.
Q. Why do you think there was such a big difference between the outcome of the Kutcher case and the outcome of the Smith Act trials of the leaders of the Communist party during the same period?
A. Well, the Smith Act trials began with our being tried in Minneapolis. All of these trials were, from the point of view of the letter of the law, illegal and unconstitutional. We were convicted of expressing certain opinions. We were not accused of any actions. The same held true for the Communist party defendants. The political climate —the war, and later the cold war —made it possible for them to get away with it. And they did. But there aren't any Smith Act cases today, are there?
Q. No.
A. We appealed to the Supreme Court. We kept out of jail for two years after our conviction with one appeal after another and the final decision was no decision at all. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Did you know that? So it left undecided whether the law was unconstitutional. Later they finally agreed to hear another case and threw out a large section of it. You don't hear a lot about the Smith Act trials any more.
Q. Well, the question that I was raising, the reason 1 posed it in relation to the Communist party, is that it seems to me that because of the SWP's position of political opposition to the war, there was a clear, nearly unanimous sentiment on the part of the capitalist class that the SWF should be prevented from expressing that point of view. But later, during the witch-hunt, Jimmy Kutcher, a member of the SWP, gained enough support to win, while members of the CP like the Rosenbergs and the Smith Act defendants were virtually isolated. Obviously the question of their relationship to the Soviet Union during the cold-war period of "containing Communism" had something to do with it, but I wondered if there were other questions involved.
A. I don't give the ruling class credit for unanimity of opinion in everything they do. Different judges act in different ways, and the Communist party was particularly unpopular during the cold war because of their connection with the Soviet Union. The witch-hunters thought they could get away with it because of the political climate, and they did.
We're not fighting this case, I hope, with the idea that we're going to get justice. We're fighting to see if we can get a little something out of the pretense of a democratic society. If they make things absolutely airtight, and there's no chance to win any kind of a legal process and so on, then they can't make a pretense of having a democratic order. There's a great distinction between a police state and a bourgeois-democratic system. One has loopholes in it and the other is airtight, until it's overthrown.
Q. Some ultralefts have argued that it's ridiculous for socialists to try to defend legal rights that they have formally under a bourgeois government. We touched on some of those questions before in terms of the Sacramento trial of the IWW. But there are a lot of parallels between this argument and the kind of argument that it seems to me Grandizo Munis was presenting in his criticisms of your conduct in the Smith Act trial and so I wonder if you hare any comment on whether or not his criticism and your answer would have any relevance to legal actions like the SWP suit today. You were making the point that there is some necessity for the ruling class to grant some democratic rights.
A They had to grant us a trial which they wouldn't have had to do under a police state. And taking advantage of that, we used the courtroom for a forum. To do that effectively, we conducted a very prudent, dignified defense. We had our own lawyer, Albert Goldman, who was a member of the movement and on trial himself. We worked out together the questions he would ask and answers we would give. And in general we exploited the trial to the full for propaganda purposes.
I thought the Communist party made a mess of their big case in New York by engaging in so many squabbles with the judge on technicalities. The public became impatient and that hurt the defendants.
In contrast to that, our idea was just to get all the propaganda advantage possible out of the case. I don't know how long I was on the stand. Enough to make a small book. All those questions that Goldman put tome —these had all been worked out in advance. And, as far as I can remember, we didn't concede a damned thing to them. We just denied that what we were doing was illegal.
We used defensive formulas. We didn't go in there and shout for the right to use violence or anything like that. We just said the workers have a right to defend themselves and do such things as form a workers defense guard in the Minneapolis strikes.
When the prosecutor kept prodding me on it, and I kept answering defensively, I finally ended, "I think the workers have a right to defend themselves. And if that's treason, you can make the most of it!" I stood up and shouted that at them.
And the whole goddamn courtroom was stunned and he just said, "That's well spoken," and stopped.
When he questioned me about the Russian revolution, he was flabbergasted by my contention that it was a legal act. "What the devil are you talking about?" He didn't say that, but put it in lawyer's language.
I gave some more calculated arguments about revolutions and their legality, and finally said, "I don't think you'll find a more legal revolution than that!"
He said, "That's all." He just threw up his hands. "That's all."
The pamphlet we made of that testimony has been the most circulated of all our publications. I've been told many times that it's most effective in talking with new contacts: Socialism on Trial.
Q. I think it's being reissued along with the debate with Munis.
A. Yes, I've heard that.
Q. I have one other question. We've had a lot of experience with defense committees like the one we've set up in this case, the Political Rights Defense Fund. I'd like to know more about the ILD. How did that idea develop? Did it come from some earlier experience in the radical movement in the United States, or was it from international experience?
A. You might say it came about by accident. There was a tradition in America of solidarity in defense cases. The IWW had a defense committee called the General Defense Committee. It was strictly an IWW committee.
Going back to the Haywood case, where I first became involved in the movement as a 16-year-old kid in 1906. The Socialist party in those days was pretty strong and growing, and The Appeal to Reason, the socialist paper, with half a million circulation, made the Haywood trial the weekly front-page event.
Then—I don't know where it originated but it proliferated all over the country — Moyer-Haywood conferences were held of delegated bodies of the Socialist party, sympathetic trade unions, Workmen Circles, and so on. Meetings and demonstrations were organized for the defense of Haywood.
He was made candidate for the governor of Colorado while he was on trial. That was a very good stunt.
They employed the best lawyers. Clarence Darrow headed the defense. He was big news himself, he was so famous. The central national defense was controlled by the union because they had to collect a lot of money.
The general procedure was that when someone was arrested, his own organization would set up a defense committee. They'd ask for the support of others, but they didn't broaden out the defense committee. The Sacco-Vanzetti defense committee, in fact, was a little group of Boston anarchists, who kept tight control of everything. The campaign didn't get under way until the International Labor Defense came in on the propaganda side. We didn't participate on the legal and financial side.
In the early twenties, after the uprisings that followed the Russian revolution, the Russian party first set up an organization of their own in Russia to collect funds and so on for the victims of the white terror in Eastern Europe.
In early 1925, when we were there to attend a plenum, a proposal was made to organize international support for the victims of the white terror. The organization was to be called the International Red Aid. It's primary function would be to collect funds and to protest on behalf of the victims of the white terror. We talked about this in our delegation. We had the custom of congregating in Bill Haywood's room in the Hotel Lux. Bill Haywood and I were talking about it one day, and we came up with, "By God, we ought to do something about the American prisoners." There were a lot of them. There were over a hundred men still in jail from the old prosecution, and new criminal-syndicalist prosecutions were under way in various states. "We ought to do something about the Americans. We ought to broaden this thing out and make the committee take responsibility for the American prisoners — really Americanize the American section."
The more we talked about it, the more the idea took hold. I was then a member of the Political Committee of the Communist party and all I had in mind was just to promote the idea. Get it accepted in Moscow and then, when we came back, have the PC endorse it, take the initiative, get hold of somebody, and do it.
Well, when we got back, I went before the Political Committee for the first meeting, explained what had developed in Moscow, what the proposal was. The fact is that while we were in Moscow, they had sent delegates to the different countries to promote the International Red Aid idea. Their representative here had presented a formal motion that the PC support it. International Red Aid membership cards had already been printed. A very quiet, inoffensive operation—they were going to organize a few committees, get a few dollars for the victims, and let it go at that.
Well, my idea was to expand the operation and make something out of it. The committee immediately adopted my plan. "My idea," I said, "is not only just to have party members. Let's go out and get some prominent people to support it."
There was a defense committee in Pittsburgh on a special case there. There was a defense committee in Chicago on some still pending case of the Communist party. Some old Wobblies might become interested because they had friends still in prison.
I got Ralph Chaplin interested. He wasn't active in the IWW but he was sympathetic. And so were two or three other prominent ex-Wobblies. An ex-Wobbly was not somebody who had repudiated the movement, but somebody who had simply dropped out for personal reasons. They were well-known people.
We made them members of the Executive Committee. And in fact in the Executive Committee, as we laid it out in our plans, the majority would consist of nonmembers of the Communist party, people who were sympathetic to the general idea.
The more we talked about it, the more enthusiasm grew. We finally decided that we wouldn't just proclaim this committee; we would organize a national conference to launch the International Labor Defense. We projected publishing a magazine. As I say, the thing simply got out of hand. I recall one meeting just before the conference was called. We were laying out the plans and came to a point about the secretary of the Chicago Defense Committee possibly being named national secretary. Some Wobbly said, "Uh, uh; you got it all wrong."
"What do you mean?"
"You're going to be secretary. You want us to hustle? Well, we're not going to hustle for some fellow we don't know. We know you and we'll support you."
Then it became evident to everybody that I had gotten so deeply involved in the thing and I was so much better known than ^any of the other potential candidates that I would have to take over. I had never planned on that at all.
Then Rose Karsner said she would like to come in and run the office. She was the head of another organization called the International Workers Aid, which had originally been called the Friends of Soviet Russia. It was organized during the famine of 1921 and had continued as a fund-raising organization for different countries and different movements in need of financial help, where there were famines and persecution, etc.
Q. So it had a separate office with its own staff?
A. Yes. We were going to set up a national office with a secretary and an office manager. We planned it as a big operation. She would come in and run the office so that I'd be free to travel and organize locals and one thing or another.
So it culminated in a good-sized first national conference of the International Labor Defense. We had the endorsement of a lot of prominent people, including Upton Sinclair. We announced that we were defending all prisoners — what we called class-war prisoners — in connection with labor. And there were quite a bunch of them. There was a large number of IWWs in different cases. Mooney and Billings were in prison. The Centralia fight had resulted in a dozen Wobblies being imprisoned. Then we discovered that in Texas, Cline and Rangel, who had been helping Mexican revolutionists, had been framed up and were serving long sentences. In San Quentin were a lot of people who had been sent up under state criminal-syndicalist laws. Up in Maine there was a case. It added up to about 140 people. We said we will help all of them; we'll raise money to send a monthly stipend of $5 a month to every prisoner for commissary.
A commissary is a place in prison where you can buy a little extra stuff. It's very important. You get the routine meal. But if you have a little money you can buy candy bars, cigarettes, cookies, apples, oranges, and things like that. It makes a big difference.
We would send $5 a month to each prisoner and we would send $25 a month to their families, if they had a family. Then we would plan — without promising definitely — we would plan to raise a Christmas fund to give a bonus of $25 or $50 to every prisoner for Christmas. We would publicize all their cases through our magazine and other media. It was a very enthusiastic national conference.
The plan outlined in the constitution made it a membership organization. Anybody sympathetic to the cause could join. Ten cents a month dues and donate whatever you could and if you had a little extra money, send it in to the national office.
We organized locals all over the country and not only that, we put in full-time district organizers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and places like that—Cleveland. Full-time organizers! They coordinated local branches and stirred up activity. The thing took hold and was quite well received.
In 1925 we started the Labor Defender. It was an illustrated monthly magazine. In the magazine, on which Max Shachtman was the editor and worked full time, we decided to revive all the old cases. We told the story of the Haymarket martyrs, and Mooney and Billings. We put out a special edition on the lynching of Frank Little in Butte, Montana. We publicized the Sacco-Vanzetti case and campaigned on other cases. It was the most popular magazine in the radical movement. Sold wider than the party press.
The second national conference was in 1926. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was brought in. She had been very prominent in the IWW. She became national chairwoman and was sent on a national tour. The third national conference in 1927 was held under the slogan: "Third National Conference of the International Labor Defense, Fortieth Anniversary of the Haymarket Martyrs." Lucy Parsons, the widow of the martyr, was the guest of honor. These things were very effective in stimulating a sense of solidarity in the radical movement.
And throughout all that period we kept up our obligation. We sent $5 a month to every one of the one hundred prisoners regardless of what organization they belonged to; but we didn't send it over the head of their own committee. For example, for members of the IWW, we sent it in a lump sum to their general defense committee to distribute; so that we were not interfering with the work of any of the other committees.
Our work was propaganda and agitation, and legal defense only if it was needed. Quite a few cases were brought to us and we had quite a number of those. Our Christmas fund was very popular.
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
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How We Overcame Ultraleftism in Defense Work
The following interview with James P. Cannon, the founder of the American Trotskyist movement, was granted to Syd Stapleton October 29, 1973.
The interview begins with a reference to the Political Rights Defense Fund. This is a committee seeking public support for a $27-million suit for damages filed last July 18 by the Socialist Workers party and the Young Socialist Alliance against Nixon and other government officials. The suit charges that government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, carried out illegal wiretapping, mail tampering, job discrimination, and harassment of SWP and YSA members and supporters. It also cites incidents of SWP campaign headquarters being fire-bombed, bombed, and burglarized.
Question. What is your opinion of the Political Rights Defense Fund?
Answer. It's a proper and correct procedure to exploit every possibility to utilize what cracks there are in the bourgeois-democratic system to advance our ideas. It's
participating in part in their elections. It’s wise to utilize a situation like this to explain our ideas to a wider audience. This wasn't known to the old radical movement. The old radical movement tended toward the ultraleft view that courts are crooked instruments of the capitalist class, so why bother? Ignore them. Including the elections. That was the prevailing opinion of the syndicalists and red-socialist wing in which I was.
But I don't blame myself for being an ultraleftist in those days. I didn't know any better and there was nobody to teach us better. The only ones who spoke the other way were the right-wing socialists who thought you could accomplish everything through the ballot box. We were pretty sure that was false.
It was not until after the Russian revolution and Lenin wrote his pamphlet on the infantile sickness, explaining how revolutionists could utilize parliamentary action effectively, that we got straightened out on that. It was so damned simple and so convincing that I don't have any patience with people who still repeat the old arguments of the ultraleft before the Russian revolution.
I can recall instances in the early days where Lenin's approach could have been effective. One was the Lawrence. Massachusetts, textile strike of 1912. That was sixty-one years ago. It was a famous IWW strike. Bill Haywood, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, Joe Ettor, Arturo Giovannitti were involved in it.
Retrospectively, I recall one incidence that has a bearing on this question of whether you should utilize bourgeois-democratic institutions. At that time Victor Berger was a Socialist congressman from Milwaukee. He was the first Socialist congressman in the United States. But he was a right-winger. He was the leader you might call the ultra-right wing of the Socialist party. Notwithstanding that, the strike leaders were able to use his position to gain tremendous publicity for the strike. They cooked up a wonderful idea for publicity —to take the children of the strikers on the train to socialist sympathizers in various places to be kept during the strike. It caused a great sensation. The Lawrence authorities interfered and tried to put a stop to it. The use of the police created a furor.
Then Victor Berger introduced a resolution in Congress to investigate the Lawrence strike. He got an official committee set up, and Haywood and the leaders brought the kids and women to the congressional hearings to testify about conditions. It was a wonderful publicity job that helped win the strike.
But it was not a normal procedure. Retrospectively I see it as a good example of how to use a bourgeois parliamentary institution.
Another example I recall was in 1917 when the Socialist party came out against the war. Morris Hillquit, in the New York municipal elections that year, ran for mayor and made the war question his main issue. It got tremendous publicity across the country.
I didn't realize it then because I was still a hidebound syndicalist, but I look back on it as a wonderful illustration of how even a municipal campaign can be utilized for a national political purpose.
I really rejoice over the way our party goes into these elections, national, state, and local —any place they can get an edge in and get up some kind of an audience, newspaper space, some TV or radio time, and do it without giving away anything. That's all for free.
I see all these ultrawise, ultraleft groups. What do they do? They stand around with their mouths open while we exploit the cracks and crevices in the bourgeois-democratic system without paying the slightest respect to it. You know, they can't run a bourgeois-democratic system without giving a little opening here and there. So, we take advantage of it; and we're 100 percent right!
Q. In the history of the radical movement has there ever been a crisis in government with the kind of impact that the Nixon-Watergate crisis has had? Why do you think this Nixon thing has developed to the degree it has?
A. That's what Nixon would like to know. There have been some attempts to compare it to the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. But that was a pure-and-simple graft scandal involving cabinet members and some oil companies. Public sentiment was rather "So what? Don't they all steal?"
The Communist party ran its first presidential candidates in 1924. Foster and Gitlow were the candidates. It was only a token campaign; but one of the slogans we started out with was "Down with the Capitalist Teapot Dome!
Vote for Communist candidates for president."
Our comrades were somewhat taken aback by the reception to that. People would say, "You mean to tell us that if your guy got in there he wouldn't steal? All politicians steal." There was absolute cynicism, more or less indifference. "What the hell; so they stole a few million dollars."
I think that would have been the attitude now if Watergate had been limited to graft. What's involved in this case is the extent of the bugging, espionage, and intimidation. A large section of the population, including a large section of the middle and upper classes, got apprehensive about it.
It's not the same as the Teapot Dome scandal. There is a genuine public reaction to this scandal. You might say multiple scandals. Every day, you expect something new to be revealed.
A columnist named Kraft. Do you know him?
Q. Joseph Kraft. He's the fellow who went to Paris and was followed by the CIA, I believe.
A. He's a prominent national columnist. He wrote an article summarizing the whole thing in one of the liberal magazines. His opinion was that this Nixon outfit and the hatchetmen he had around him were actually moving in the direction of a police state. The ruling powers in this country don't think they need that yet. The opposition comes, you know, not only from the workers. It comes from practically all circles of society. The New York Times and the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are all hostile to this administration. They represent real money in this country. If there is a conflict in the upper circles, the difference between the old money and the new may be involved, I think. The new tycoons don't know where to stop; they haven't learned moderation, or the need for concessions. The older ones think it's better to give a little in order to keep a lot.
Q. When the International Labor Defense had to fight, cases like Sacco-Vanzetti and Mooney-Billings, was it able to take advantage of any divisions like that in the ruling class over how to react to the labor movement? Was it able to build up support for its cases through both mass propaganda work and things like endorsements?
A. Yes, there were many endorsements and they were utilized. Even lawyers were outraged at the violations of the rules of law. The Sacco and Vanzetti case was a frame-up. Everybody knew it was a damned frame-up from beginning to end.
The witch-hunt began in the early 1920s. There was a tremendous red scare and they arrested thousands of people overnight in the Palmer raids. They deported whole shiploads of immigrants who were suspected of subversion or of being connected in any way with the radical, movement. They just hit on Sacco and Vanzetti in the course of a general investigation. They had no case against them at all. They framed it.
The judge was outspokenly prejudicial in all his rulings and so on. They went through with it. It was delayed by one appeal after another and by public protest for seven years. It was not till 1927 that they finally executed them. And there were deep feelings in the movement of protest.
A couple of years ago a book was published that tried to justify the killing of Sacco and Vanzetti. The author tried to prove that Carlo Tresca had stated in one instance that while one of them was innocent the other was guilty. And since Carlo Tresca was a prominent anarchist, he thought that this was big news. He said also that I knew about it —that I thought they were guilty despite the fact that I was organizing the campaign of the International Labor Defense. He made these statements in The New Republic.
I immediately wrote a reply which they published under the heading "What Cannon Didn't Think."
Judge Musmano, who had been connected with the Sacco-Vanzetti Committee, and later became a prominent judge in Pennsylvania, wrote me a very, very warm letter congratulating me on my protest in The New Republic. Which is an indication he still had strong convictions about the case although he was by no means sympathetic to anarchism or any other radical idea.
Q. As a result of the tapes controversy and the whole development of this struggle around Nixon's role in Watergate, there's quite a bit of sentiment in various circles, from George Meany to radical students, to impeach Nixon. As far as I know, that's a totally new phenomenon. Do you have any opinion about how revolutionists should relate to demands for impeachment?
A. The only other case involved was that of President Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln. That was in 1866, over a hundred years ago. No, there has been nothing like the exposure of the Nixon administration.
He's committed to something that's unforgivable in the eyes of the moneyed rulers of this country. He's gone too far; he's stirred up too much trouble. They want to rule the country rather calmly. They're getting plenty of benefits the way it's working. They're not ready to use police-state methods to the extent Nixon has used them.
And then there's been some bad luck. One thing leads to another. A witness incidentally mentions to the Ervin Committee that they kept tape recordings of all the conversations. My god, is that so? Accidental things like that led from one revelation to the next.
I think our press is doing all right in covering Watergate and should keep hammering away on it from our own special viewpoint that this is just an unusually flagrant example of what capitalist rule and politics are really like.
We should watch out for oversimplification. Some issues of The Militant may have given the impression that it was being treated like another Teapot Dome scandal, "Well, they all do it; don't they?"
But Watergate goes beyond anything previous. Even Supreme Court Justice Douglas says he suspects they tapped the Supreme Court, and Johnson suspected that his phone was tapped.
If the ruling class thought all this was necessary, they would be for it, but at present they're not for such extensive use of police-state methods. So I think we should recognize this, and without making any concessions in principle, deal more fully with the way Nixon has embarrassed the real rulers of America.
But, as I say, that's marginal. It's not a fundamental criticism of our handling of the case. I think The Militant is doing very well, harping on it all they can, speaking about it all they can.
This morning I received a copy of the Workers Vanguard.
Q. That's Robertson's paper.
A. Do you know what they say on the headline? "Impeachment is not enough!" (Laughs.)
Q. He has to be hanged by the thumbs, or something?
A. (Laughs.) Returning to what the attitude of the radical movement used to be toward utilizing the judicial and parliamentary system for revolutionary purposes. Our actions used to be purely defensive. Even in the Sacco-Vanzetti case we took a defensive position. The same was (rue of the Mooney case and going all the way back to the Haymarket martyrs. They were all defensive actions.
The tendency was to say the courts are crooked, influenced by the capitalist class, and so keep away from them. For instance, the idea of utilizing the courts was not known to me. I recall distinctly in the terrible persecution of the IWW during the First World War. They arrested active Wobblies wherever they could find them. They had so many they put whole groups on trial. Around eighty to one hundred were tried in Chicago. There was another big group in Sacramento, California, and another in Kansas City, Kansas, the Witchita Case, they called it.
This gives you an idea of the decentralization of the IWW and the ultraleft approach to the question of utilizing the courts. In the Chicago and Kansas cases they put up a legal defense with lawyers. But in Sacramento they adopted the policy of a "silent defense." Did you ever hear of that?
Q. Where they refused to speak?
A. A silent defense. They didn't have any lawyers; they used no witnesses; they didn't use cross-examination. They ignored the court. They just sat there. Just to show their contempt.
They got stiff sentences like the others, but all they accomplished by their silent defense and their refusal to employ any lawyers was to lose the possibility of appealing, getting some of their people out on bail while the appeals were pending, and organizing an effective campaign. It was a negative action. It represented the prevailing attitude of the left-wing movement that you couldn't get anything out of the courts.
Now, our policy today is different. We base ourselves on the fact that it's not a police state, it's a bourgeois-democratic state, which a lot of people think is really democratic. In order to maintain that illusion the ruling class has to give you a little leeway here and there.
The intelligent thing, as Lenin explained in his pamphlet on the infantile sickness, is that we utilize these crevices for our own purposes. The suit filed by our party in the Watergate case is a very correct tactic, a serious move to exploit the bourgeois-democratic system in an offensive action in the courts. It's correctness is self-evident when you look at it.
I noticed the New York papers carried reports of the press conference about the filing of the suit. You're going around the country speaking to audiences who wouldn't be there this issue didn't appeal to them the way it does.
And what are ultralefts doing? Doing nothing except occasionally yapping at us.
Of course we should explain in our general propaganda that we don't expect to get much justice from the capitalist courts. The whole thing is rigged against us. But in order to maintain some illusion of democracy they've got to show some respect for law and order, so we'll take advantage of that and we'll test it out.
The Kutcher case is a wonderful example of how sometimes such a course can be successful.
Q. Why do you think there was such a big difference between the outcome of the Kutcher case and the outcome of the Smith Act trials of the leaders of the Communist party during the same period?
A. Well, the Smith Act trials began with our being tried in Minneapolis. All of these trials were, from the point of view of the letter of the law, illegal and unconstitutional. We were convicted of expressing certain opinions. We were not accused of any actions. The same held true for the Communist party defendants. The political climate —the war, and later the cold war —made it possible for them to get away with it. And they did. But there aren't any Smith Act cases today, are there?
Q. No.
A. We appealed to the Supreme Court. We kept out of jail for two years after our conviction with one appeal after another and the final decision was no decision at all. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Did you know that? So it left undecided whether the law was unconstitutional. Later they finally agreed to hear another case and threw out a large section of it. You don't hear a lot about the Smith Act trials any more.
Q. Well, the question that I was raising, the reason 1 posed it in relation to the Communist party, is that it seems to me that because of the SWP's position of political opposition to the war, there was a clear, nearly unanimous sentiment on the part of the capitalist class that the SWF should be prevented from expressing that point of view. But later, during the witch-hunt, Jimmy Kutcher, a member of the SWP, gained enough support to win, while members of the CP like the Rosenbergs and the Smith Act defendants were virtually isolated. Obviously the question of their relationship to the Soviet Union during the cold-war period of "containing Communism" had something to do with it, but I wondered if there were other questions involved.
A. I don't give the ruling class credit for unanimity of opinion in everything they do. Different judges act in different ways, and the Communist party was particularly unpopular during the cold war because of their connection with the Soviet Union. The witch-hunters thought they could get away with it because of the political climate, and they did.
We're not fighting this case, I hope, with the idea that we're going to get justice. We're fighting to see if we can get a little something out of the pretense of a democratic society. If they make things absolutely airtight, and there's no chance to win any kind of a legal process and so on, then they can't make a pretense of having a democratic order. There's a great distinction between a police state and a bourgeois-democratic system. One has loopholes in it and the other is airtight, until it's overthrown.
Q. Some ultralefts have argued that it's ridiculous for socialists to try to defend legal rights that they have formally under a bourgeois government. We touched on some of those questions before in terms of the Sacramento trial of the IWW. But there are a lot of parallels between this argument and the kind of argument that it seems to me Grandizo Munis was presenting in his criticisms of your conduct in the Smith Act trial and so I wonder if you hare any comment on whether or not his criticism and your answer would have any relevance to legal actions like the SWP suit today. You were making the point that there is some necessity for the ruling class to grant some democratic rights.
A They had to grant us a trial which they wouldn't have had to do under a police state. And taking advantage of that, we used the courtroom for a forum. To do that effectively, we conducted a very prudent, dignified defense. We had our own lawyer, Albert Goldman, who was a member of the movement and on trial himself. We worked out together the questions he would ask and answers we would give. And in general we exploited the trial to the full for propaganda purposes.
I thought the Communist party made a mess of their big case in New York by engaging in so many squabbles with the judge on technicalities. The public became impatient and that hurt the defendants.
In contrast to that, our idea was just to get all the propaganda advantage possible out of the case. I don't know how long I was on the stand. Enough to make a small book. All those questions that Goldman put tome —these had all been worked out in advance. And, as far as I can remember, we didn't concede a damned thing to them. We just denied that what we were doing was illegal.
We used defensive formulas. We didn't go in there and shout for the right to use violence or anything like that. We just said the workers have a right to defend themselves and do such things as form a workers defense guard in the Minneapolis strikes.
When the prosecutor kept prodding me on it, and I kept answering defensively, I finally ended, "I think the workers have a right to defend themselves. And if that's treason, you can make the most of it!" I stood up and shouted that at them.
And the whole goddamn courtroom was stunned and he just said, "That's well spoken," and stopped.
When he questioned me about the Russian revolution, he was flabbergasted by my contention that it was a legal act. "What the devil are you talking about?" He didn't say that, but put it in lawyer's language.
I gave some more calculated arguments about revolutions and their legality, and finally said, "I don't think you'll find a more legal revolution than that!"
He said, "That's all." He just threw up his hands. "That's all."
The pamphlet we made of that testimony has been the most circulated of all our publications. I've been told many times that it's most effective in talking with new contacts: Socialism on Trial.
Q. I think it's being reissued along with the debate with Munis.
A. Yes, I've heard that.
Q. I have one other question. We've had a lot of experience with defense committees like the one we've set up in this case, the Political Rights Defense Fund. I'd like to know more about the ILD. How did that idea develop? Did it come from some earlier experience in the radical movement in the United States, or was it from international experience?
A. You might say it came about by accident. There was a tradition in America of solidarity in defense cases. The IWW had a defense committee called the General Defense Committee. It was strictly an IWW committee.
Going back to the Haywood case, where I first became involved in the movement as a 16-year-old kid in 1906. The Socialist party in those days was pretty strong and growing, and The Appeal to Reason, the socialist paper, with half a million circulation, made the Haywood trial the weekly front-page event.
Then—I don't know where it originated but it proliferated all over the country — Moyer-Haywood conferences were held of delegated bodies of the Socialist party, sympathetic trade unions, Workmen Circles, and so on. Meetings and demonstrations were organized for the defense of Haywood.
He was made candidate for the governor of Colorado while he was on trial. That was a very good stunt.
They employed the best lawyers. Clarence Darrow headed the defense. He was big news himself, he was so famous. The central national defense was controlled by the union because they had to collect a lot of money.
The general procedure was that when someone was arrested, his own organization would set up a defense committee. They'd ask for the support of others, but they didn't broaden out the defense committee. The Sacco-Vanzetti defense committee, in fact, was a little group of Boston anarchists, who kept tight control of everything. The campaign didn't get under way until the International Labor Defense came in on the propaganda side. We didn't participate on the legal and financial side.
In the early twenties, after the uprisings that followed the Russian revolution, the Russian party first set up an organization of their own in Russia to collect funds and so on for the victims of the white terror in Eastern Europe.
In early 1925, when we were there to attend a plenum, a proposal was made to organize international support for the victims of the white terror. The organization was to be called the International Red Aid. It's primary function would be to collect funds and to protest on behalf of the victims of the white terror. We talked about this in our delegation. We had the custom of congregating in Bill Haywood's room in the Hotel Lux. Bill Haywood and I were talking about it one day, and we came up with, "By God, we ought to do something about the American prisoners." There were a lot of them. There were over a hundred men still in jail from the old prosecution, and new criminal-syndicalist prosecutions were under way in various states. "We ought to do something about the Americans. We ought to broaden this thing out and make the committee take responsibility for the American prisoners — really Americanize the American section."
The more we talked about it, the more the idea took hold. I was then a member of the Political Committee of the Communist party and all I had in mind was just to promote the idea. Get it accepted in Moscow and then, when we came back, have the PC endorse it, take the initiative, get hold of somebody, and do it.
Well, when we got back, I went before the Political Committee for the first meeting, explained what had developed in Moscow, what the proposal was. The fact is that while we were in Moscow, they had sent delegates to the different countries to promote the International Red Aid idea. Their representative here had presented a formal motion that the PC support it. International Red Aid membership cards had already been printed. A very quiet, inoffensive operation—they were going to organize a few committees, get a few dollars for the victims, and let it go at that.
Well, my idea was to expand the operation and make something out of it. The committee immediately adopted my plan. "My idea," I said, "is not only just to have party members. Let's go out and get some prominent people to support it."
There was a defense committee in Pittsburgh on a special case there. There was a defense committee in Chicago on some still pending case of the Communist party. Some old Wobblies might become interested because they had friends still in prison.
I got Ralph Chaplin interested. He wasn't active in the IWW but he was sympathetic. And so were two or three other prominent ex-Wobblies. An ex-Wobbly was not somebody who had repudiated the movement, but somebody who had simply dropped out for personal reasons. They were well-known people.
We made them members of the Executive Committee. And in fact in the Executive Committee, as we laid it out in our plans, the majority would consist of nonmembers of the Communist party, people who were sympathetic to the general idea.
The more we talked about it, the more enthusiasm grew. We finally decided that we wouldn't just proclaim this committee; we would organize a national conference to launch the International Labor Defense. We projected publishing a magazine. As I say, the thing simply got out of hand. I recall one meeting just before the conference was called. We were laying out the plans and came to a point about the secretary of the Chicago Defense Committee possibly being named national secretary. Some Wobbly said, "Uh, uh; you got it all wrong."
"What do you mean?"
"You're going to be secretary. You want us to hustle? Well, we're not going to hustle for some fellow we don't know. We know you and we'll support you."
Then it became evident to everybody that I had gotten so deeply involved in the thing and I was so much better known than ^any of the other potential candidates that I would have to take over. I had never planned on that at all.
Then Rose Karsner said she would like to come in and run the office. She was the head of another organization called the International Workers Aid, which had originally been called the Friends of Soviet Russia. It was organized during the famine of 1921 and had continued as a fund-raising organization for different countries and different movements in need of financial help, where there were famines and persecution, etc.
Q. So it had a separate office with its own staff?
A. Yes. We were going to set up a national office with a secretary and an office manager. We planned it as a big operation. She would come in and run the office so that I'd be free to travel and organize locals and one thing or another.
So it culminated in a good-sized first national conference of the International Labor Defense. We had the endorsement of a lot of prominent people, including Upton Sinclair. We announced that we were defending all prisoners — what we called class-war prisoners — in connection with labor. And there were quite a bunch of them. There was a large number of IWWs in different cases. Mooney and Billings were in prison. The Centralia fight had resulted in a dozen Wobblies being imprisoned. Then we discovered that in Texas, Cline and Rangel, who had been helping Mexican revolutionists, had been framed up and were serving long sentences. In San Quentin were a lot of people who had been sent up under state criminal-syndicalist laws. Up in Maine there was a case. It added up to about 140 people. We said we will help all of them; we'll raise money to send a monthly stipend of $5 a month to every prisoner for commissary.
A commissary is a place in prison where you can buy a little extra stuff. It's very important. You get the routine meal. But if you have a little money you can buy candy bars, cigarettes, cookies, apples, oranges, and things like that. It makes a big difference.
We would send $5 a month to each prisoner and we would send $25 a month to their families, if they had a family. Then we would plan — without promising definitely — we would plan to raise a Christmas fund to give a bonus of $25 or $50 to every prisoner for Christmas. We would publicize all their cases through our magazine and other media. It was a very enthusiastic national conference.
The plan outlined in the constitution made it a membership organization. Anybody sympathetic to the cause could join. Ten cents a month dues and donate whatever you could and if you had a little extra money, send it in to the national office.
We organized locals all over the country and not only that, we put in full-time district organizers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and places like that—Cleveland. Full-time organizers! They coordinated local branches and stirred up activity. The thing took hold and was quite well received.
In 1925 we started the Labor Defender. It was an illustrated monthly magazine. In the magazine, on which Max Shachtman was the editor and worked full time, we decided to revive all the old cases. We told the story of the Haymarket martyrs, and Mooney and Billings. We put out a special edition on the lynching of Frank Little in Butte, Montana. We publicized the Sacco-Vanzetti case and campaigned on other cases. It was the most popular magazine in the radical movement. Sold wider than the party press.
The second national conference was in 1926. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was brought in. She had been very prominent in the IWW. She became national chairwoman and was sent on a national tour. The third national conference in 1927 was held under the slogan: "Third National Conference of the International Labor Defense, Fortieth Anniversary of the Haymarket Martyrs." Lucy Parsons, the widow of the martyr, was the guest of honor. These things were very effective in stimulating a sense of solidarity in the radical movement.
And throughout all that period we kept up our obligation. We sent $5 a month to every one of the one hundred prisoners regardless of what organization they belonged to; but we didn't send it over the head of their own committee. For example, for members of the IWW, we sent it in a lump sum to their general defense committee to distribute; so that we were not interfering with the work of any of the other committees.
Our work was propaganda and agitation, and legal defense only if it was needed. Quite a few cases were brought to us and we had quite a number of those. Our Christmas fund was very popular.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Photo Report Via Boston Indy Media On The February 4th Hands Off Iran March And Rally-Hands Off Iran!
Click on the headline to line to a Boston IndyMedia entry for the February 4, 2012 March and Rally for Hands Off Iran!
Markin comment:
A good, if small, start toward mass opposition to the next step in the American (and its allies) imperialist state's march to war. Enough! Hand Off Iran!
Markin comment:
A good, if small, start toward mass opposition to the next step in the American (and its allies) imperialist state's march to war. Enough! Hand Off Iran!
In The Centenary Year Of His Birth-A Populist Folk Singer For The Ages- The Dust Bowl Refugee- Woody Guthrie
Click On The Title To Link To A YouTube Film Clip Of Woody Guthrie Performing This Land Is Your Land.
CD REVIEW
Woody Guthrie; Dust Bowl Ballads, Woody Guthrie, Buddha Records, 2000
Although this space is mainly dedicated to reviewing political books and commenting on past and current political issues literary output is hardly the only form of political creation. Occasionally in the history of the American and international left musicians, artists and playwrights have given voice or provided visual reminders to the face of political struggle. With that thought in mind, every once in a while I have used this space to review those kinds of political expression.
This review was originally used to take an end around look at some previously unknown, if not hidden, Woody Guthrie work from the 1940 and 1950s that were not songs, but poems, reflections, and “speak-outs” that came to mind when Woody he had his lucid moments, an album entitled Note Of Hope. Best of all for those, like me, who worry about the future of folk music as the generation of ’68 dwindles these works were recreated and put to music (including producer Rob Wasserman’s fatalistic bass, yes, bass work) by some younger artists who will carry the torch forward. And that album brought me back to a Woody hunger and hence a refreshed look at his Okie dust bowl ballads.
My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by Rock & Roll music exemplified by The Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part, that music need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.
That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That some of these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.
As I have noted elsewhere in a review of Dave Van Ronk’s work when I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about The Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk singing Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies and that was it. From that time to the present folk music has been a staple of my musical tastes. From there I expanded my play list of folk artists with a political message.
Although I had probably heard Woody’s This Land is Your Land at some earlier point I actually learned about his music second-hand from early Bob Dylan covers of his work. While his influence has had its ebbs and flows since that time each succeeding generation of folk singers still seems to be drawn to his simple, honest tunes about the outlaws, outcasts and the forgotten people that made this country, for good or evil, what it is today. Since Woody did not have a particularly good voice nor was he an exceptional guitar player the message delivered by his songs is his real legacy.
And now we have a second legacy look for the ages from the hard-edged American populist. Stick outs here include Tom Goad I and II (basically John Steinbeck’s Grape of Wrath in lyric form), California dreamin’ Do Re Mi, the outlaw love song Pretty Boy Floyd and I Ain’t Got No Home. A tip of the hat to Woody.
This Land Is Your Land-Woody Guthrie
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
CD REVIEW
Woody Guthrie; Dust Bowl Ballads, Woody Guthrie, Buddha Records, 2000
Although this space is mainly dedicated to reviewing political books and commenting on past and current political issues literary output is hardly the only form of political creation. Occasionally in the history of the American and international left musicians, artists and playwrights have given voice or provided visual reminders to the face of political struggle. With that thought in mind, every once in a while I have used this space to review those kinds of political expression.
This review was originally used to take an end around look at some previously unknown, if not hidden, Woody Guthrie work from the 1940 and 1950s that were not songs, but poems, reflections, and “speak-outs” that came to mind when Woody he had his lucid moments, an album entitled Note Of Hope. Best of all for those, like me, who worry about the future of folk music as the generation of ’68 dwindles these works were recreated and put to music (including producer Rob Wasserman’s fatalistic bass, yes, bass work) by some younger artists who will carry the torch forward. And that album brought me back to a Woody hunger and hence a refreshed look at his Okie dust bowl ballads.
My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by Rock & Roll music exemplified by The Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part, that music need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.
That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That some of these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.
As I have noted elsewhere in a review of Dave Van Ronk’s work when I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about The Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk singing Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies and that was it. From that time to the present folk music has been a staple of my musical tastes. From there I expanded my play list of folk artists with a political message.
Although I had probably heard Woody’s This Land is Your Land at some earlier point I actually learned about his music second-hand from early Bob Dylan covers of his work. While his influence has had its ebbs and flows since that time each succeeding generation of folk singers still seems to be drawn to his simple, honest tunes about the outlaws, outcasts and the forgotten people that made this country, for good or evil, what it is today. Since Woody did not have a particularly good voice nor was he an exceptional guitar player the message delivered by his songs is his real legacy.
And now we have a second legacy look for the ages from the hard-edged American populist. Stick outs here include Tom Goad I and II (basically John Steinbeck’s Grape of Wrath in lyric form), California dreamin’ Do Re Mi, the outlaw love song Pretty Boy Floyd and I Ain’t Got No Home. A tip of the hat to Woody.
This Land Is Your Land-Woody Guthrie
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
Hoagy Carmichael’s Playing My Blues-Magical Realism 101
A couple of years ago, I guess it was the winter of 2010 after Josh Breslin got back from covering that year’s Democratic election debacle, I came across a half-moth-eaten, mildewy, old dust jacket cover of a Hoagy Carmichael Bluebird label, hence a rag-timey, jazzy, swingy, pre-be-bop, non-be-boppy album that I found in the back hall closet of my old compadre’s hide-away damp and cold log cabin up in wintry snowbound interior Maine on one of my visits. Although Josh, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, for those who have followed his quirky byline in half the radical chic and public vision alternative newsprints like the early pre-gloss, pre-sellout Rolling Stone, The Bard, the old Barb, the early Phoenix, Mother Planet , that kind of thing, around this country over the past forty years, articles mainly found in trendy progressive homes, unread, turning mildewy in their own back hall closets, does not figure in this story the effects of his take-no-prisoners- kind of left-handed writing certainly do and should be quickly and quietly acknowledged here. Done.
The picture on the album cover, or the essence of the picture since some parts were, candidly, not viewable, was classic, maybe late 1930s, early 1940s, Hoagy Carmichael at piano, manically at piano, naturally. On his head, tilted back, back just short of falling off on some whiskey-stained, or maybe better, depending on the night, the place he was holding forth in, and whether and how bad he needed the dough, beer-stained floor was his trademark Stetson-like hat, or in any case a soft hat as they used to call them back when my grandfather worn one. And on his face, his craggy, not beautiful but useful face, a smoldering cigarette, unfiltered of course in those manly days, hanging off, a lip, and like the hat, always almost ready to fall until he breathed some life into it and seemingly like magic placed it upright between those browned tobacco lips. The piano, nondescript from the look of it, but descript in any gin mill in the world, descript that it is no Steinway or any shock harm-able such instrument but rather just good enough to play sudsy, heart-rendering, or jazzed-up show tunes for the hoi polloi as they sink deeper in that glazed haze good night and thoughts of the next day’s hard manual labor.
And Hoagy, sphinx-like, wry-like, sly-like, world-weary, world-wary, and just that nano-second before yellow-jaded. Trying to live down some Tin Pan Alley tune, a cover probably, that every fool kept insisting that he play for the umpteenth time and if he had a gun he would know how to use it and how much to use it. And looking, looking intently out at the crooked door, or what passed for a door, at Café Joey’s. You know Café Joey’s, right? Hoagy’s old winter time tropical paradise, tropical paradise for the swells and other assorted Carib fauna and flora, nightclub down in the lesser Antilles, Port-of-France to be precise. Everybody though he was just the piano player but no he owned the joint, owned it outright or close to it, maybe only a few wise-guy silent partners. In those days Café Joey’s always had a rogue’s gallery clientele of runaway brides-to-be looking for a last fling, decayed debutantes, rundown dentists with failed practices trying to “get well” at the roulette wheel, and half the snub-nosed guys from such winter spots as Cicero, Joliet, and the big town, you name the big town. Plus assorted local drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters just to keep things interesting. In short hold on very tightly to your wallets. From the look on Hoagy’s face the door at that moment looked to produce more of the same.
Then she came in.
All thoughts of Hoagy, his humdrum musical problems, his nefarious business arrangements, and even his existence kind of fled to some darkened forgotten corner recesses once she hit the door. Every man in the room, every red-blooded man if you get my drift, although the other kind found a cozy, no questions asked, just don’t flaunt it, refuge at the cafe and maybe they looked too just to see what they were missing, sharpened his eyes in her direction. So you can say, just like with old Josh Breslin, our boy Hoagy does not figure much from here on in but the story makes no sense without a bow for him. Or without me either.
See I was standing at the bar when she came in. As usual, just drowning my maddened sorrows, listening to Hoagy fighting off the demons in front of him, and within him, with his usual eight or twelve rum sours, or colas, or whatever he used to take some of the bite out of that high-proof island rum. I was sitting at my “reserved” seat, about the fifth guy down the line, give or take a couple of bar-girls in between the guys, when she walked in and drew a bee-line to Hoagy, or what I thought at first was a bee-line to Hoagy anyway. Slim, hell let’s just call her Slim and get it over with although her real name was Marie, or Anne-Marie, something like that. So already you can see, and don’t smirk, that I got nowhere with her, nada, no time, so I will join the line of guys who this story is not about, okay. But I am telling the story so I figure in the mix somewhere.
Ya, She came in. She came in like some tropical breeze, some Jamaica trade-wind breeze, light and airy on the outside, the only side she showed in public you could tell but some smolder underneath if you every got that far, and a few guys had, had got part way anyway, and she had just kind of landed here. Story unknown, parts unknown, islands past unknown, former companions unknown except there was just enough run-down about her, mainly around the eyes, to know that while she was not fugitive, she had had a handle on some pretty unsavory characters. But as she walked down the aisle she blew that past off, that hard past part, like so much lint off her sleeve. Came in like a breeze, like the world wasn’t just a wicked old place after all if it took time to create her or even the possibilities of her. A Jamaica trade-wind breeze just the same.
Like I say she was slim, slender, whatever you want to call a gal who fills out a dress or suit in a subtle way that makes a guy’s temperature rise even if she is not all buxom and twenty-seven curves like most guys like them. Not any Lana Turner, all sultry and no substance, no way, no way in hell, but nothing but pure femme fatale just the same. If you could learn to handle her just right you could, well, let’s just keep describing her and leave that part for later. She had that long brown, brunette I guess you call it, hair, hair that fell over one part of her forehead like the gals wore it just then, and maybe still do, although I don’t keep up with the girlish, or womanish, fashion trends. And those eyes, well, those eyes, and we can leave it at that for a minute too.
Just an ordinary good-looking girl, you say. A dime a dozen, you say. Well, maybe I am not the best guy to describe her, her physical looks, but that’s not what I am getting at. It was the walk, the way she walked not all strutting butterfly swirling stuff, but gracefully, angelically, and with a purposefulness that said loud and clean no inferior guy, no run-of-the mill-guy sitting seersucker suit sweaty in some hothouse rum joint better even look in her direction or maybe be in the same place, palace or joint, as her. And that golden stride was accompanied by this look, this look that I saw her give him, give him many times and made me call for another double-whiskey straight up, no chaser, or maybe just water, every time I saw her do it later. Give it to him only. That way she arched her right eyebrow, with that little glean look in her eye that meant you had it made brother and you had better do something about it, or else. Ya, that’s the look.
That look, and that walk, as it went by me, me with my half-flicked match ready to light that cigarette, that unknown, unfiltered cigarette, which she was now fusing through her pocketbook for as she headed to the depths of this wicked old joint. That look, that walk, and that unfiltered, unlit cigarette as she passed several feet away from me was, moreover, accompanied by some vagrant fragrance I still can’t figure out except it was like I was just swished or splashed by some Eden nectar. And that look, that walk, that smell was accompanied by the sound of silk, some silk slip under her dress that hid those slender thighs, and maddened, middle of the night dream maddened, half the guys in the joint.
But see that look, and the rest of the package, was dead-aimed at this old bent-over sea captain, some guy just off some uncle Neptune voyages who was swilling down whatever was put in front of him just then, looked like some sweet rum, straight up, to me. He still looked pretty sober though although I swear he could not have seen her coming because his head was half-cocked in the other direction when she walked up to him and asked him point blank for a match, and an off-hand drink. Whatever he was drinking, if I heard right. And cool, cool as a cucumber like they say, he flicked a match toward the cigarette, unfiltered in case you forgot, on the edge of her ruby red lips and said “Andy, bring the lady a drink, and be quick about it, ” like he said it everyday, and twice on Sunday. And I am sunk, me and my poor heart.
That grizzled old sea captain, Captain Bogie I found out later was his name, later after all the shooting and commotion was over and they, yes, he and Slim, were long gone to some island safe-haven further up the island chain with their precious human cargo safely tucked below deck, was some kind of hell-bent for leather sea captain of big ships a few years back except he let one get away from him in a storm, a huge perfect wave of a storm from what legend said, and he got blacklisted or whatever they call it when they don’t want you to steer ships, big ships anyway, anymore. And he had settled down to safe seas and rums running a low-rent scene fishing boat out of Port-of-Spain. Dusty, dirty, damp, soggy Port-of-Spain where I had just come from myself a few week before.
Here’s the funny part. I wasn’t so smart about things after all because that whole scene when she walked in and drew a bee-line to Captain Bogie had some history behind it. Ya, Hoagy (and Andy the waiter too) filled me in one night when I, and maybe we, although you could never be too sure about Hoagy because he dismissed dames, good-looking, willing dames too, once the rum ran through their veins, left and right for no good reason, were in our cups and in a mood to talk about the now legendary Captain Bogie, his exploits and his rare find Slim. Slim and Bogie had actually met, although that might be too strong a term, earlier in the day, that afternoon, down at the dock where the Captain has his fishing boat, the Laura or Lauren, something like that, I think it was called. She, as I could sense when she walked into Café Joey’s, was down on her luck. Down enough to start asking guys, stranger guys, but guys still with eyes, for some favors. Her request. She needed to get to Porto del Cortes, or somewhere not Port-of-France, quick.
And the way Hoagy told this part of the story to us Slim was in such a hurry she was willing to return favor for favor in the way any man, any red-blooded man, would appreciate, no questions asked. Our Captain though turned her down flat just for the sake of turning her down right then. Just to see what she was up to. And to see what she would do next. See the other thing I could sense watching old Captain as she had approached his table was maybe he had been water-logged once too many times and maybe had been in one too many sea wrecks but he had been around the block more than once with dames, although maybe not quite so often with one like this slightly soiled but rare dame.
Well, you already know what she did next. And you might as well already know now too that she had her hooks into him bad, if not in that afternoon encounter then by the time he flicked that match to her ruby red lips to light that cigarette that night in dankest Café Joey’s. Yes, he would go through many hoops, maybe take a bullet or two, and gladly, before she was through with him just to be around that walk, that look, and that edenic smell.
What? You want to know about the shooting and commotion part? Hell, I thought you wanted me to skip that. No? Well, I will make it short and sweet because it is a story like a million others in this wicked old wartime world what with things, cruel Nazi things, jumping all over Europe and every place else. But to tell the story, or really the way Hoagy with an assist by Andy to fill in the details told the story, is to step back before that afternoon encounter between Slim and the Captain. And bring some politics into it, hold your nose local politics between, hey, let’s just call them the “ins” and “outs” and be done with it. You’ll get the drift without going into all those sordid details.
See, as I said before Slim was, like many frails femme fatales or not, down on her luck a little when she hit Port-of-France. When she checked in a few days before into the Hotel Falcon with a little light luggage the manager, a supporter of the “ins,” got suspicious and called in his dear friend, the police perfect to check out Slim’s status. Her dough situation. Not only did the police perfect order her out of town when he found she was light on dough but he roughed her up just enough for her to get the message. Now already you should hate the ins, and not just because they are ins but because they are blind and stupid. A woman like Slim is not going to, in this wicked old world, have any problem making her room rent at anytime or in anyplace. Not as long as guys have eyes, or a pulse, or the semblance of a pulse. No, her looks are like finding money on the ground, unless of course Slim decides otherwise. Oh did I say that Slim, beside that walk, look and smell thing liked to call her own shots. That is why, after she checked around, she headed for the Captain’s berth. And called her shots.
You already know about that afternoon and that night, or the public part of it. What you don’t know is that Captain, strictly for cash to keep the rum demons away and the banks from foreclosing on his life-line boat, had been running guns and other chores for the outs. And the ins had an idea that he was doing it. So that next morning Slim and the Captain found themselves front and center down at police headquarters. Not knowing Slim’s newfound relationship with our boy Bogie the dear police prefect starts to rough Slim up again in front of him. Ya, stupid, real stupid. Bogie tried to cut the blows but got blackjacked for his efforts. All this, however, was just a warning on the police perfect’s part and he let them go. But don’t kid yourself this cop is doomed, doomed big time. And soon too.
Bogie then contacted his outs friends with a proposition. He now would take some local bigwig agents that need to get to the United States fast for some dough and safe passage out for Slim. Deal. Everything was going fine until some stoolie, a stoolie who used to hang a couple of seats away from me at Café Joey’s, exposed the plans to our police perfect. So instead of a quick painless getaway the police perfect with his squad show up at the dock, some gunfire plays out, and Captain Bogie takes a bullet in the play. But the ins are now posting for a new police perfect. Hopefully a smarter one. And that was the last anyone saw of the Captain and Slim.
So here I am tonight, twelfth night in a row, still here, maybe the fourth seat in now moving up in seniority at Café Joey’s now that the stoolie is persona non grata, listening to Hoagy playing his signature song, Stardust, while he is sucking up another lip-edged cigarette and another rum cola, keeping the dames at bay, while I sit here thinking, temperature rising, thinking about Slim, and wishing to high heaven that I knew point one about boats instead of selling textiles to old gruff guys sweat-shop laboring the natives to make a few bucks off some cheapjack shirts and dresses. And wishing too I didn’t have that wife and three hungry kids back in the States. And wondering too about Captain Bogie and how a monkey of a guy with a fast fist, a little dead aim, and some fugitive getaway boat had all the luck. Don’t blame Hoagy for my troubles though. Okay.
The picture on the album cover, or the essence of the picture since some parts were, candidly, not viewable, was classic, maybe late 1930s, early 1940s, Hoagy Carmichael at piano, manically at piano, naturally. On his head, tilted back, back just short of falling off on some whiskey-stained, or maybe better, depending on the night, the place he was holding forth in, and whether and how bad he needed the dough, beer-stained floor was his trademark Stetson-like hat, or in any case a soft hat as they used to call them back when my grandfather worn one. And on his face, his craggy, not beautiful but useful face, a smoldering cigarette, unfiltered of course in those manly days, hanging off, a lip, and like the hat, always almost ready to fall until he breathed some life into it and seemingly like magic placed it upright between those browned tobacco lips. The piano, nondescript from the look of it, but descript in any gin mill in the world, descript that it is no Steinway or any shock harm-able such instrument but rather just good enough to play sudsy, heart-rendering, or jazzed-up show tunes for the hoi polloi as they sink deeper in that glazed haze good night and thoughts of the next day’s hard manual labor.
And Hoagy, sphinx-like, wry-like, sly-like, world-weary, world-wary, and just that nano-second before yellow-jaded. Trying to live down some Tin Pan Alley tune, a cover probably, that every fool kept insisting that he play for the umpteenth time and if he had a gun he would know how to use it and how much to use it. And looking, looking intently out at the crooked door, or what passed for a door, at Café Joey’s. You know Café Joey’s, right? Hoagy’s old winter time tropical paradise, tropical paradise for the swells and other assorted Carib fauna and flora, nightclub down in the lesser Antilles, Port-of-France to be precise. Everybody though he was just the piano player but no he owned the joint, owned it outright or close to it, maybe only a few wise-guy silent partners. In those days Café Joey’s always had a rogue’s gallery clientele of runaway brides-to-be looking for a last fling, decayed debutantes, rundown dentists with failed practices trying to “get well” at the roulette wheel, and half the snub-nosed guys from such winter spots as Cicero, Joliet, and the big town, you name the big town. Plus assorted local drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters just to keep things interesting. In short hold on very tightly to your wallets. From the look on Hoagy’s face the door at that moment looked to produce more of the same.
Then she came in.
All thoughts of Hoagy, his humdrum musical problems, his nefarious business arrangements, and even his existence kind of fled to some darkened forgotten corner recesses once she hit the door. Every man in the room, every red-blooded man if you get my drift, although the other kind found a cozy, no questions asked, just don’t flaunt it, refuge at the cafe and maybe they looked too just to see what they were missing, sharpened his eyes in her direction. So you can say, just like with old Josh Breslin, our boy Hoagy does not figure much from here on in but the story makes no sense without a bow for him. Or without me either.
See I was standing at the bar when she came in. As usual, just drowning my maddened sorrows, listening to Hoagy fighting off the demons in front of him, and within him, with his usual eight or twelve rum sours, or colas, or whatever he used to take some of the bite out of that high-proof island rum. I was sitting at my “reserved” seat, about the fifth guy down the line, give or take a couple of bar-girls in between the guys, when she walked in and drew a bee-line to Hoagy, or what I thought at first was a bee-line to Hoagy anyway. Slim, hell let’s just call her Slim and get it over with although her real name was Marie, or Anne-Marie, something like that. So already you can see, and don’t smirk, that I got nowhere with her, nada, no time, so I will join the line of guys who this story is not about, okay. But I am telling the story so I figure in the mix somewhere.
Ya, She came in. She came in like some tropical breeze, some Jamaica trade-wind breeze, light and airy on the outside, the only side she showed in public you could tell but some smolder underneath if you every got that far, and a few guys had, had got part way anyway, and she had just kind of landed here. Story unknown, parts unknown, islands past unknown, former companions unknown except there was just enough run-down about her, mainly around the eyes, to know that while she was not fugitive, she had had a handle on some pretty unsavory characters. But as she walked down the aisle she blew that past off, that hard past part, like so much lint off her sleeve. Came in like a breeze, like the world wasn’t just a wicked old place after all if it took time to create her or even the possibilities of her. A Jamaica trade-wind breeze just the same.
Like I say she was slim, slender, whatever you want to call a gal who fills out a dress or suit in a subtle way that makes a guy’s temperature rise even if she is not all buxom and twenty-seven curves like most guys like them. Not any Lana Turner, all sultry and no substance, no way, no way in hell, but nothing but pure femme fatale just the same. If you could learn to handle her just right you could, well, let’s just keep describing her and leave that part for later. She had that long brown, brunette I guess you call it, hair, hair that fell over one part of her forehead like the gals wore it just then, and maybe still do, although I don’t keep up with the girlish, or womanish, fashion trends. And those eyes, well, those eyes, and we can leave it at that for a minute too.
Just an ordinary good-looking girl, you say. A dime a dozen, you say. Well, maybe I am not the best guy to describe her, her physical looks, but that’s not what I am getting at. It was the walk, the way she walked not all strutting butterfly swirling stuff, but gracefully, angelically, and with a purposefulness that said loud and clean no inferior guy, no run-of-the mill-guy sitting seersucker suit sweaty in some hothouse rum joint better even look in her direction or maybe be in the same place, palace or joint, as her. And that golden stride was accompanied by this look, this look that I saw her give him, give him many times and made me call for another double-whiskey straight up, no chaser, or maybe just water, every time I saw her do it later. Give it to him only. That way she arched her right eyebrow, with that little glean look in her eye that meant you had it made brother and you had better do something about it, or else. Ya, that’s the look.
That look, and that walk, as it went by me, me with my half-flicked match ready to light that cigarette, that unknown, unfiltered cigarette, which she was now fusing through her pocketbook for as she headed to the depths of this wicked old joint. That look, that walk, and that unfiltered, unlit cigarette as she passed several feet away from me was, moreover, accompanied by some vagrant fragrance I still can’t figure out except it was like I was just swished or splashed by some Eden nectar. And that look, that walk, that smell was accompanied by the sound of silk, some silk slip under her dress that hid those slender thighs, and maddened, middle of the night dream maddened, half the guys in the joint.
But see that look, and the rest of the package, was dead-aimed at this old bent-over sea captain, some guy just off some uncle Neptune voyages who was swilling down whatever was put in front of him just then, looked like some sweet rum, straight up, to me. He still looked pretty sober though although I swear he could not have seen her coming because his head was half-cocked in the other direction when she walked up to him and asked him point blank for a match, and an off-hand drink. Whatever he was drinking, if I heard right. And cool, cool as a cucumber like they say, he flicked a match toward the cigarette, unfiltered in case you forgot, on the edge of her ruby red lips and said “Andy, bring the lady a drink, and be quick about it, ” like he said it everyday, and twice on Sunday. And I am sunk, me and my poor heart.
That grizzled old sea captain, Captain Bogie I found out later was his name, later after all the shooting and commotion was over and they, yes, he and Slim, were long gone to some island safe-haven further up the island chain with their precious human cargo safely tucked below deck, was some kind of hell-bent for leather sea captain of big ships a few years back except he let one get away from him in a storm, a huge perfect wave of a storm from what legend said, and he got blacklisted or whatever they call it when they don’t want you to steer ships, big ships anyway, anymore. And he had settled down to safe seas and rums running a low-rent scene fishing boat out of Port-of-Spain. Dusty, dirty, damp, soggy Port-of-Spain where I had just come from myself a few week before.
Here’s the funny part. I wasn’t so smart about things after all because that whole scene when she walked in and drew a bee-line to Captain Bogie had some history behind it. Ya, Hoagy (and Andy the waiter too) filled me in one night when I, and maybe we, although you could never be too sure about Hoagy because he dismissed dames, good-looking, willing dames too, once the rum ran through their veins, left and right for no good reason, were in our cups and in a mood to talk about the now legendary Captain Bogie, his exploits and his rare find Slim. Slim and Bogie had actually met, although that might be too strong a term, earlier in the day, that afternoon, down at the dock where the Captain has his fishing boat, the Laura or Lauren, something like that, I think it was called. She, as I could sense when she walked into Café Joey’s, was down on her luck. Down enough to start asking guys, stranger guys, but guys still with eyes, for some favors. Her request. She needed to get to Porto del Cortes, or somewhere not Port-of-France, quick.
And the way Hoagy told this part of the story to us Slim was in such a hurry she was willing to return favor for favor in the way any man, any red-blooded man, would appreciate, no questions asked. Our Captain though turned her down flat just for the sake of turning her down right then. Just to see what she was up to. And to see what she would do next. See the other thing I could sense watching old Captain as she had approached his table was maybe he had been water-logged once too many times and maybe had been in one too many sea wrecks but he had been around the block more than once with dames, although maybe not quite so often with one like this slightly soiled but rare dame.
Well, you already know what she did next. And you might as well already know now too that she had her hooks into him bad, if not in that afternoon encounter then by the time he flicked that match to her ruby red lips to light that cigarette that night in dankest Café Joey’s. Yes, he would go through many hoops, maybe take a bullet or two, and gladly, before she was through with him just to be around that walk, that look, and that edenic smell.
What? You want to know about the shooting and commotion part? Hell, I thought you wanted me to skip that. No? Well, I will make it short and sweet because it is a story like a million others in this wicked old wartime world what with things, cruel Nazi things, jumping all over Europe and every place else. But to tell the story, or really the way Hoagy with an assist by Andy to fill in the details told the story, is to step back before that afternoon encounter between Slim and the Captain. And bring some politics into it, hold your nose local politics between, hey, let’s just call them the “ins” and “outs” and be done with it. You’ll get the drift without going into all those sordid details.
See, as I said before Slim was, like many frails femme fatales or not, down on her luck a little when she hit Port-of-France. When she checked in a few days before into the Hotel Falcon with a little light luggage the manager, a supporter of the “ins,” got suspicious and called in his dear friend, the police perfect to check out Slim’s status. Her dough situation. Not only did the police perfect order her out of town when he found she was light on dough but he roughed her up just enough for her to get the message. Now already you should hate the ins, and not just because they are ins but because they are blind and stupid. A woman like Slim is not going to, in this wicked old world, have any problem making her room rent at anytime or in anyplace. Not as long as guys have eyes, or a pulse, or the semblance of a pulse. No, her looks are like finding money on the ground, unless of course Slim decides otherwise. Oh did I say that Slim, beside that walk, look and smell thing liked to call her own shots. That is why, after she checked around, she headed for the Captain’s berth. And called her shots.
You already know about that afternoon and that night, or the public part of it. What you don’t know is that Captain, strictly for cash to keep the rum demons away and the banks from foreclosing on his life-line boat, had been running guns and other chores for the outs. And the ins had an idea that he was doing it. So that next morning Slim and the Captain found themselves front and center down at police headquarters. Not knowing Slim’s newfound relationship with our boy Bogie the dear police prefect starts to rough Slim up again in front of him. Ya, stupid, real stupid. Bogie tried to cut the blows but got blackjacked for his efforts. All this, however, was just a warning on the police perfect’s part and he let them go. But don’t kid yourself this cop is doomed, doomed big time. And soon too.
Bogie then contacted his outs friends with a proposition. He now would take some local bigwig agents that need to get to the United States fast for some dough and safe passage out for Slim. Deal. Everything was going fine until some stoolie, a stoolie who used to hang a couple of seats away from me at Café Joey’s, exposed the plans to our police perfect. So instead of a quick painless getaway the police perfect with his squad show up at the dock, some gunfire plays out, and Captain Bogie takes a bullet in the play. But the ins are now posting for a new police perfect. Hopefully a smarter one. And that was the last anyone saw of the Captain and Slim.
So here I am tonight, twelfth night in a row, still here, maybe the fourth seat in now moving up in seniority at Café Joey’s now that the stoolie is persona non grata, listening to Hoagy playing his signature song, Stardust, while he is sucking up another lip-edged cigarette and another rum cola, keeping the dames at bay, while I sit here thinking, temperature rising, thinking about Slim, and wishing to high heaven that I knew point one about boats instead of selling textiles to old gruff guys sweat-shop laboring the natives to make a few bucks off some cheapjack shirts and dresses. And wishing too I didn’t have that wife and three hungry kids back in the States. And wondering too about Captain Bogie and how a monkey of a guy with a fast fist, a little dead aim, and some fugitive getaway boat had all the luck. Don’t blame Hoagy for my troubles though. Okay.
On The 51st Anniversary Of The Freedom Riders- All Honor To Those Who Took To The Buses "Heading South"
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Freedom Riders, a group of civil rights workers who valiantly tried, by example, to integrate interstate transportation in the South. We are not so far removed from those events even today, North or South.
February Is Black History Month
Markin comment:
I was in high school at the time of the freedom rides and was part of a support group sponsored by the Americans For Democratic Action (ADA, then an anti-Soviet Cold War left-liberal organization but very pro-civil rights in the South) that was raising money in order to sent more civil rights workers "heading South." Heading toward the danger not away from it. Honor those black liberation fighters.
February Is Black History Month
Markin comment:
I was in high school at the time of the freedom rides and was part of a support group sponsored by the Americans For Democratic Action (ADA, then an anti-Soviet Cold War left-liberal organization but very pro-civil rights in the South) that was raising money in order to sent more civil rights workers "heading South." Heading toward the danger not away from it. Honor those black liberation fighters.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Out In The 1930s Social Film Noir Night- Humphrey Bogart’s “Call It Murder”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Call It Murder
DVD Review
Call It Murder, starring Humphrey Bogart, Warner Brothers, 1938
I have been on something of a Humphrey Bogart tear of late. And when I get on the occasional tear I tend to grab everything of an author, singer, artist, or actor in sight. And hence this review of very much lesser known Humphrey Bogart film, Call It Murder. If you are looking for the Humphrey Bogart of To Have or To Have Not, Casablanca, The Big Sleep or even The Petrified Forest then you will be disappointed. Bogart plays a relatively minor role as, well what else, a second- rate cheap hoodlum whose heading out of town fast, or so that is his plan. So no one should be offended if you pass this one by.
Pass by is what I originally intended to do as well except when I thought about it this film is actually a very good example of the kind of social film critique that was popular and produced during the turbulent and trying 1930s. The subject here is the death penalty, its application, and its basic appropriateness in an evolving progressive society (or that has pretensions to civilization). The plot line centers on a woman who has killed her abusive husband when he was going to run out on her leaving her high and dry. At trial the foreman of the jury, a self-righteous and upright citizen, persuades his fellow jurors that she is guilty of murder one, and hence headed for the electric chair. Since there was no “battered person” defense then she was convicted and sentenced to die.
The dramatic tension of the film comes when that self-righteous juror is bombarded with pleas from all kinds of sources to call for sparing her life. He maintains his stance and she is executed. And here is where Bogie comes in. He has been seeing the juror’s daughter, she has fallen in love with him, and as mentioned before, he is ready to fly to the coop. Naturally she is ready to move might and main to keep him in the coop. Well one thing leads to another as they do with thugs and he is shot to death. She thinks that she has done it in a rage at his leaving. She runs home to dear old dad and tells her story. Hey, she is up for murder one and the chair too, right? No way in the end of course but the old man has to confront, or rather we have to confront, that little moral dilemma when thing hit just a little to close to home.
Good thoughtful social critique on the death, agreed? Yes, although I should note that this film is one of those 1930s Theater Guild productions which tended, as this film, does to be rather heavy-handed and didactic in making its important point. Thus the dialogue, the staging, and the acting are rather stilted for today’s audiences. Still it mad that nice social commentary. Just don’t see for the Bogie part, okay.
DVD Review
Call It Murder, starring Humphrey Bogart, Warner Brothers, 1938
I have been on something of a Humphrey Bogart tear of late. And when I get on the occasional tear I tend to grab everything of an author, singer, artist, or actor in sight. And hence this review of very much lesser known Humphrey Bogart film, Call It Murder. If you are looking for the Humphrey Bogart of To Have or To Have Not, Casablanca, The Big Sleep or even The Petrified Forest then you will be disappointed. Bogart plays a relatively minor role as, well what else, a second- rate cheap hoodlum whose heading out of town fast, or so that is his plan. So no one should be offended if you pass this one by.
Pass by is what I originally intended to do as well except when I thought about it this film is actually a very good example of the kind of social film critique that was popular and produced during the turbulent and trying 1930s. The subject here is the death penalty, its application, and its basic appropriateness in an evolving progressive society (or that has pretensions to civilization). The plot line centers on a woman who has killed her abusive husband when he was going to run out on her leaving her high and dry. At trial the foreman of the jury, a self-righteous and upright citizen, persuades his fellow jurors that she is guilty of murder one, and hence headed for the electric chair. Since there was no “battered person” defense then she was convicted and sentenced to die.
The dramatic tension of the film comes when that self-righteous juror is bombarded with pleas from all kinds of sources to call for sparing her life. He maintains his stance and she is executed. And here is where Bogie comes in. He has been seeing the juror’s daughter, she has fallen in love with him, and as mentioned before, he is ready to fly to the coop. Naturally she is ready to move might and main to keep him in the coop. Well one thing leads to another as they do with thugs and he is shot to death. She thinks that she has done it in a rage at his leaving. She runs home to dear old dad and tells her story. Hey, she is up for murder one and the chair too, right? No way in the end of course but the old man has to confront, or rather we have to confront, that little moral dilemma when thing hit just a little to close to home.
Good thoughtful social critique on the death, agreed? Yes, although I should note that this film is one of those 1930s Theater Guild productions which tended, as this film, does to be rather heavy-handed and didactic in making its important point. Thus the dialogue, the staging, and the acting are rather stilted for today’s audiences. Still it mad that nice social commentary. Just don’t see for the Bogie part, okay.
The Latest From The “Occupy May 1st” Website- March Separately, Strike Together –International General Strike- Down Tools! Down Computers! Down Books!- All Out On May Day 2012- Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy May 1st website. Occupy May Day which has called for an international General Strike on May Day 2012. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
OB Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •
Passed Resolutions No comments The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.
*******
Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and
repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12th, Occupy Foreclosures, including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.
Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the
current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor
(paid and unpaid) of the 99%-, we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.
This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over us in order not to have to worry about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ours our best interests. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.
Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on their broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.
The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capitalist profit-driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces in order to to fight for our real interests. This must include a forthright rejection of the 1%’s attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly, a rejection of attempts by their electoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well, powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.
The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover they highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies, and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take and use the day as a wake up call by a risen people.
And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says –“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
All out in Boston on May Day 2012.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
OB Endorses Call for General Strike
January 8th, 2012 • mhacker •
Passed Resolutions No comments The following proposal was passed by the General Assembly on Jan 7, 2012:
Occupy Boston supports the call for an international General Strike on May 1, 2012, for immigrant rights, environmental sustainability, a moratorium on foreclosures, an end to the wars, and jobs for all. We recognize housing, education, health care, LGBT rights and racial equality as human rights; and thus call for the building of a broad coalition that will ensure and promote a democratic standard of living for all peoples.
*******
Why You, Your Union, Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!
Last fall there were waves of politically-motivated repressive police attacks on, and evictions of, various Occupy camp sites throughout the country including where the movement started in Zucotti (Liberty) Park. But even before the evictions and
repression escalated, questions were being asked: what is the way forward for the movement? And, from friend and foe alike, the ubiquitous what do we want. We have seen since then glimpses of organizing and action that are leading the way for the rest of us to follow: the Oakland General Strike on November 2nd, the West Coast Port Shutdown actions of December 12th, Occupy Foreclosures, including, most recently, renewed support for the struggles of the hard-pressed longshoremen in Longview, Washington. These actions show that, fundamentally, all of the strategic questions revolve around the question of power. The power, put simply, of the 99% vs. the power of the 1%.
Although the 99% holds enormous power -all wealth is generated, and the
current society is built and maintained through, the collective labor
(paid and unpaid) of the 99%-, we seldom exercise this vast collective power in our own interests. Too often, abetted and egged on by the 1%, we fruitlessly fight among ourselves driven by racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, occupational elitism, geographical prejudice, heterosexism, and other forms of division, oppression and prejudice.
This consciously debilitating strategy on its part is necessary, along with its control of politics, the courts, the prisons, the cops, and the military in order for the 1% to maintain control over us in order not to have to worry about their power and wealth. Their ill-gotten power is only assured by us, actively or passively, working against ours our best interests. Moreover many of us are not today fully aware of, nor organized to utilize, the vast collective power we have. The result is that many of us - people of color, women, GLBTQ, immigrants, those with less formal educational credentials, those in less socially respected occupations or unemployed, the homeless, and the just plain desperate- deal with double and triple forms of oppression and societal prejudice.
Currently the state of the economy has hit all of us hard, although as usual the less able to face the effects are hit the hardest like racial minorities, the elderly, the homeless and those down on their luck due to prolonged un and under- employment. In short, there are too many people out of work; wage rates have has barely kept up with rising costs or gone backwards to near historic post-World War II lows in real time terms; social services like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have continued to be cut; our influence on their broken, broken for us, government has eroded; and our civil liberties have been seemingly daily attacked en masse. These trends have has been going on while the elites of this country, and of the world, have captured an increasing share of wealth; have had in essence a tax holiday for the past few decades; have viciously attacked our organizations of popular defense such as our public and private unions and community organizations; and have increase their power over us through manipulating their political system even more in their favor than previously.
The way forward, as we can demonstrate by building for the May Day actions, must involve showing our popular power against that of the entrenched elite. But the form of our power, reflecting our different concepts of governing, must be different from the elite’s. Where they have created powerful capitalist profit-driven top down organizations in order to dominate, control, exploit and oppress we must build and exercise bottom-up power in order to cooperate, liberate and collectively empower each other. We need to organize ourselves collectively and apart from these top down power relationships in our communities, schools and workplaces in order to to fight for our real interests. This must include a forthright rejection of the 1%’s attempts, honed after long use, to divide and conquer in order to rule us. A rejection of racism, patriarchy, xenophobia, elitism and other forms of oppression, and, importantly, a rejection of attempts by their electoral parties, mainly the Democrats and Republicans but others as well, powerful special interest groups, and others to co-opt and control our movement.
The Occupy freedom of assembly-driven encampments initially built the mass movement and brought a global spotlight to the bedrock economic and social concerns of the 99%. They inspired many of us, including those most oppressed, provided a sense of hope and solidarity with our fellow citizens and the international 99%, and brought the question of economic justice and the problems of inequality and political voiceless-ness grudgingly back into mainstream political conversation. Moreover they highlighted the need for the creation of cultures, societies, and institutions of direct democracy based on "power with"- not "power over"- each other; served as convivial spaces for sharing ideas and planning action; and in some camps, they even provided a temporary space for those who needed a home. Last fall the camp occupations served a fundamental role in the movement, but it is now time to move beyond the camp mentality and use our energies to struggle to start an offensive against the power of the 1%. On our terms.
Show Power
We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Put the unemployed to work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars!
* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!
* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!
* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!
* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!
*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!
To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:
*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there is no union - a one-day general strike.
*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”
*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.
*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.
These actions, given the ravages of the capitalist economic system on individual lives, the continuing feelings of hopelessness felt by many, the newness of many of us to collective action, and the slender ties to past class and social struggles will, in many places, necessarily be a symbolic show of power. But let us take and use the day as a wake up call by a risen people.
And perhaps just as important as this year’s May Day itself , the massive organizing and outreach efforts in the months leading up to May 1st will allow us the opportunity to talk to our co-workers, families, neighbors, communities, and friends about the issues confronting us, the source of our power, the need for us to stand up to the attacks we are facing, the need to confront the various oppressions that keep most of us down in one way or another and keep all of us divided, and the need for us to stand in solidarity with each other in order to fight for our collective interests. In short, as one of the street slogans of movement says –“they say cut back, we say fight back.” We can build our collective consciousness, capacity, and confidence through this process; and come out stronger because of it.
Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.
All out in Boston on May Day 2012.
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