Markin comment:
This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.
**********
Mike Clark's 1980s Notes on "Women's Coal Mining Songs"
Current mood: thoughtful
Category: Music
In his liner notes to the 1984 Rounder Records album "They'll Never Keep Us Down: Women's Coal Mining Songs," Mike Clark wrote the following:
"Three generations of Appalachian coal mining people are represented by the songs on this album, songs which grow directly out of the experiences of trying to build a union, improve a community, establish equality for women at the work place, or save a valley from the ravages of modern strip mining. Despite the time span of some 50 years from the period when "Which Side Are You On?" was written until 1981 when the most recent of these songs were finished, there is a remarkable consistency to the themes and ideas which are reflected here: a concern for the safety and future of loved ones; an appreciation for the value of family; a hope that a labor union can provide safe working conditions, decent wages and a dignified retirement; a sense of outrage that coal miners must fight so hard for the rights which many other citizens take for granted; and a belief that people working together can make a difference.
"It may be hard for people who live outside the coalfields to comprehend when such a region and such a people should produce a body of music which is, at the same time, so full of anger and exuberance, of determination and love, or sadness and joy. These songs were hewn out of the attempts of people who tried to improve their lives and found themselves facing the naked political and economic might of a vast and complex industrial system. The songs also come from a region where music has traditionally been used to express the hopes and concerns of daily life...
"...There is a key difference between talking in vague, general terms about the enormous power of large corporations and talking in very concrete terms about the abuse of power in a local community. Many of these songs came out of a local situation, a local problem. The songwriter responded to what was happening and it is this clear, personal statement which gives emotional power to the songs and which also helps us to understand and to identify with the people who are trying to change things."
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=6#ixzz0zMLTrNJb
Monday, September 13, 2010
*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"
Markin comment:
This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.
From Ralph Rinzler's 1980 Notes to "Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People"
Current mood: thoughtful
Category: Music
In his May 1980 liner notes to Hazel Dickens' Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People vinyl album, which Rounder Records distributed, Folk Music Historian Ralph Rinzler of the Smithsonian Institution wrote the following:
"All working musicians are faced with choices continually, and some choose to shape their musical styles and their messages to the tastes of the market--or at least to what they or their agents may perceive to be those tastes. Other artists, like Hazel, have their eyes fixed on other goals. Hazel has been successful in matching her musical styles to her ideas while creating a varied repertoire. She sings many songs which she did not write herself. Some come out of the oldest cut of Anglo-American folksong traditions to have been found in Southern Appalachia. Others are from the more recent country music traditions of the past half-century. She sings these in her own style which combines elements of Southern church singing, country and bluegrass styles of the past 40 years and occasionally she will sing a ballad or song without any instrumental accompaniment drawing on the most archaic of Appalachian vocal traditions. All of these styles she comes by naturally having grown up in a religious and musical mountain family.
"What is unmistakeable, whether she is singing on a picket line, in a concert hall, or at a national convention of the United Mine Workers, is that Hazel has chosen to put herself and her music to work for the benefit of people faced with struggle--for wages, for rights, for their very survival...The people know it...And generations who follow us and who have forgotten the top ten tunes on today's pop and country music charts will know and respect it because hers is art of timeless and enduring values."
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=6#ixzz0zML1M9Il
This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.
From Ralph Rinzler's 1980 Notes to "Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People"
Current mood: thoughtful
Category: Music
In his May 1980 liner notes to Hazel Dickens' Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People vinyl album, which Rounder Records distributed, Folk Music Historian Ralph Rinzler of the Smithsonian Institution wrote the following:
"All working musicians are faced with choices continually, and some choose to shape their musical styles and their messages to the tastes of the market--or at least to what they or their agents may perceive to be those tastes. Other artists, like Hazel, have their eyes fixed on other goals. Hazel has been successful in matching her musical styles to her ideas while creating a varied repertoire. She sings many songs which she did not write herself. Some come out of the oldest cut of Anglo-American folksong traditions to have been found in Southern Appalachia. Others are from the more recent country music traditions of the past half-century. She sings these in her own style which combines elements of Southern church singing, country and bluegrass styles of the past 40 years and occasionally she will sing a ballad or song without any instrumental accompaniment drawing on the most archaic of Appalachian vocal traditions. All of these styles she comes by naturally having grown up in a religious and musical mountain family.
"What is unmistakeable, whether she is singing on a picket line, in a concert hall, or at a national convention of the United Mine Workers, is that Hazel has chosen to put herself and her music to work for the benefit of people faced with struggle--for wages, for rights, for their very survival...The people know it...And generations who follow us and who have forgotten the top ten tunes on today's pop and country music charts will know and respect it because hers is art of timeless and enduring values."
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=6#ixzz0zML1M9Il
*From The 1960s Folk Revival- Forklorist and Ardent Stalinist Irwin Silber Passes Away
Click on the headline to link to a New York Times obituary for Irwin Silber, folklorist and ardent Stalinist (under various political figure and organizations).
Markin comment:
If you do not believe that Irwin Silber was an ardent Stalinist then Google and read some of his anti-Trotskyist diatribes in the old Guardian that he helped edit. To every person their due.
Markin comment:
If you do not believe that Irwin Silber was an ardent Stalinist then Google and read some of his anti-Trotskyist diatribes in the old Guardian that he helped edit. To every person their due.
*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"- From Richard Farina's 1965 Notes to "Singer Songwriter Project
Markin comment:
This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.
*********
From Richard Farina's 1965 Notes to "Singer Songwriter Project" Album
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Music
In his Summer 1965 liner notes to the Singer Songwriter Project vinyl album, Richard Farina wrote the following:
"While you're looking around for the wherefores and antecedents of the new folk-songwriting revival, you might ought to remember that there was still another Dylan and his last name was Thomas. He went down in 1953, part of his wordy nightmare inflection torn loose from an alcoholically liberated brain. And despite the polite picnic of typographically correct little academics at his collossal bedside, he hit the metaphoric ground with a thunder of trumpets...
"...Some of us saw him wolfing ale in mugs with the truckers at The White Horse and belching back a phrase as lilting as the tide he so invoked in Wales. Some saw him in the English Professor's living room...And the rest heard the ranting echo of his wild words, words which no matter how gentle or structured the shape of the poem that contained them, bellowed out at us with the overwhelming implication that art was life, enthusiasm, rage, and freedom. At a time when verse seemed channelled into the sour evening game of the universities, that implication was a breath of potent hope in the faint mouths of those babes who were about ready to capitulate, to offer an apology to parents and institutions before ever daring to use the forbidden word Writer in application to themselves. You could do no better, came his hoarse and beautiful whisper, than speak your own true name.
"...We'd been born into the arbitrary confines of a United States...And each year, came the silent chorus of bored asides, millions of tons of Grade-A bullshit pours forth from our country's collectively twisted head...
"Around the same time a good many of us were getting into folk music. And folk music, through no active fault of its own, fooled us into certain sympathies and nostalgic alliances with the so-called traditional past...But the paradox was implicit...How long would people with contemporary poetic sensibilities be content to sing archaic material for an immediate purpose?...
"The underground reaction, the reaction in the cellars of what you might call Everybody's Own MacDougal Street, was topical and quick. A number of people began adding their own songs to otherwise derivative repertoires and finding astonishing response from their listeners. That the songs were intensely personal in their grievance or celebration was inevitable, but in nearly every case the audience was not only ready for the new compositions but anxious to have its own sensibilities strengthened through such an unaffected medium. The love songs, if they were good, were love songs of the times, implying a recognition of station wagons, thruways, and television sets instead of sketching a cop-out, idealized, pastoral picture. The protest songs lost their earlier occasional subject matter and were ambitious enough to take on concerns like the military-industrial complex which made its money by preparing for a war of blistering absurdity. The satire was quick and to the uneasy point, having gained the best from the psychiatrist's and musician's private vocabularies. And in keeping with the anxiety of societal surroundings, the overall production was prolific, frenetic, uneven, often brilliant, and at times appalling.
"But at least it was being heard, and not buried in literary journals...In the very beginning, of course, there was the usual begging and borrowing, maybe some stealing, and those many times you couldn't tell the Leadbelly from the Guthrie from the Dylan from the Clayton from the Seeger from the Paxton from the Spoelstra from the Ochs from the Andersen from the Murdoch from the Sky from the La Farge from the St. Marie from the Hester from the Wheeler from the Lightfoot from the Cohen from the Camp from the MacColl from the Clancy from the maybe even me and Eric von Schmidt..."
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=5#ixzz0zMHrRoaH
This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.
*********
From Richard Farina's 1965 Notes to "Singer Songwriter Project" Album
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Music
In his Summer 1965 liner notes to the Singer Songwriter Project vinyl album, Richard Farina wrote the following:
"While you're looking around for the wherefores and antecedents of the new folk-songwriting revival, you might ought to remember that there was still another Dylan and his last name was Thomas. He went down in 1953, part of his wordy nightmare inflection torn loose from an alcoholically liberated brain. And despite the polite picnic of typographically correct little academics at his collossal bedside, he hit the metaphoric ground with a thunder of trumpets...
"...Some of us saw him wolfing ale in mugs with the truckers at The White Horse and belching back a phrase as lilting as the tide he so invoked in Wales. Some saw him in the English Professor's living room...And the rest heard the ranting echo of his wild words, words which no matter how gentle or structured the shape of the poem that contained them, bellowed out at us with the overwhelming implication that art was life, enthusiasm, rage, and freedom. At a time when verse seemed channelled into the sour evening game of the universities, that implication was a breath of potent hope in the faint mouths of those babes who were about ready to capitulate, to offer an apology to parents and institutions before ever daring to use the forbidden word Writer in application to themselves. You could do no better, came his hoarse and beautiful whisper, than speak your own true name.
"...We'd been born into the arbitrary confines of a United States...And each year, came the silent chorus of bored asides, millions of tons of Grade-A bullshit pours forth from our country's collectively twisted head...
"Around the same time a good many of us were getting into folk music. And folk music, through no active fault of its own, fooled us into certain sympathies and nostalgic alliances with the so-called traditional past...But the paradox was implicit...How long would people with contemporary poetic sensibilities be content to sing archaic material for an immediate purpose?...
"The underground reaction, the reaction in the cellars of what you might call Everybody's Own MacDougal Street, was topical and quick. A number of people began adding their own songs to otherwise derivative repertoires and finding astonishing response from their listeners. That the songs were intensely personal in their grievance or celebration was inevitable, but in nearly every case the audience was not only ready for the new compositions but anxious to have its own sensibilities strengthened through such an unaffected medium. The love songs, if they were good, were love songs of the times, implying a recognition of station wagons, thruways, and television sets instead of sketching a cop-out, idealized, pastoral picture. The protest songs lost their earlier occasional subject matter and were ambitious enough to take on concerns like the military-industrial complex which made its money by preparing for a war of blistering absurdity. The satire was quick and to the uneasy point, having gained the best from the psychiatrist's and musician's private vocabularies. And in keeping with the anxiety of societal surroundings, the overall production was prolific, frenetic, uneven, often brilliant, and at times appalling.
"But at least it was being heard, and not buried in literary journals...In the very beginning, of course, there was the usual begging and borrowing, maybe some stealing, and those many times you couldn't tell the Leadbelly from the Guthrie from the Dylan from the Clayton from the Seeger from the Paxton from the Spoelstra from the Ochs from the Andersen from the Murdoch from the Sky from the La Farge from the St. Marie from the Hester from the Wheeler from the Lightfoot from the Cohen from the Camp from the MacColl from the Clancy from the maybe even me and Eric von Schmidt..."
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=5#ixzz0zMHrRoaH
Sunday, September 12, 2010
* “Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed below.
Founding Conference of the
Fourth International
1938
Thesis On the World Role of
American Imperialism
Markin comment:
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
Founding Conference of the
Fourth International
1938
Thesis On the World Role of
American Imperialism
Markin comment:
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*Labor's Untold Story- The Memorial In Honor Of The Haymarket Martyrs
Click on title to link to a Youtube film clip of the Haymarket Martyrs Memorial.
Every Month Is Labor History Month
This commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.
Every Month Is Labor History Month
This commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Some Stages of the Revolution in the South of Vietnam
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Theses adopted by the Provisional Central Committee of the International Communist League
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-A ‘Moscow Trial’ in Ho Chi Minh’s Guerilla Movement
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-My First Steps Towards the Permanent Revolution
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Ta Thu Thau: Vietnamese Trotskyist Leader
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-On Vietnam
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-La Lutte and the Vietnamese Trotskyists
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The Fourth International in Vietnam
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
In honor of the 36th Anniversary of the taking of Saigon
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
In honor of the 36th Anniversary of the taking of Saigon
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
From The Blogosphere- Fidel Castro On The State Of Communism In Cuba
Click on the headline to link to Guardian entry for Fidel Castro holding forth on his view on the situation in Cuba.
Markin comment:
Apparently Comrade Castro will remain a hardened Stalinist to the end believing that socialism, much less communism, at least the Marxist conception of those systems, could have been (or can) be achieved on one island, one small tropical island to boot. But get this, whatever political disagreements I have with the Castro brothers I believe that we share the same perspective on the key question-defense of gains of the Cuban revolution against insidious Yankee imperialism and internal counter-revolution. That fact of life has been true for over fifty years now. Forward to a socialist federation of the Caribbean and Latin America! That's the beginning of wisdom to break Cuba out of its isolation.
Markin comment:
Apparently Comrade Castro will remain a hardened Stalinist to the end believing that socialism, much less communism, at least the Marxist conception of those systems, could have been (or can) be achieved on one island, one small tropical island to boot. But get this, whatever political disagreements I have with the Castro brothers I believe that we share the same perspective on the key question-defense of gains of the Cuban revolution against insidious Yankee imperialism and internal counter-revolution. That fact of life has been true for over fifty years now. Forward to a socialist federation of the Caribbean and Latin America! That's the beginning of wisdom to break Cuba out of its isolation.
*From "The Black Is Back" Blog-Black is Back Response to the Drawing Down of US Troops in Iraq
Click on the headline to link to a Black Is Back blog entry (via Boston Indy Media) on the U.S. troop draw down in Iraq
Saturday, September 11, 2010
* “Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed below.
Founding Conference of the
Fourth International
1938
The War In the Far East and The Revolutionary Perspectives
Markin comment:
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
Founding Conference of the
Fourth International
1938
The War In the Far East and The Revolutionary Perspectives
Markin comment:
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*I Feel Those Appalachian Mountain Breezes Once Again- I Hear Those Lonesome Banjos And Fiddles Calling- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of one of the fiddlers on the CD under review, J.P. Fraley.
CD Review
The Art Of Old-Time Mountain Music, Various Artists, Rounder Records, 2002
Over the past couple of years my interest in mountain music, the music that formed part of my parental heritage, has increased as a quick search of such entries in this space attest to. Those reviews have run the gamut from the famous, and important, work of the various Carter Family combinations (and generations) to the "discovery" by the folk revivalists of the 1960s of the likes of banjo player Roscoe Holcomb to the interest by urban folk artists of that period like the Greenbriar Boys and The New Lost City Ramblers. One of the driving forces of that simple, plain music is the banjo. Another is the fiddle. On this CD we get various combinations of both. To our benefit.
Previously, in reviewing another Rounder traditional music series CD (featuring fiddles) , in this space, I noted that I was also reviewing a tribute album celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Appleseed Records (2007), now a fixture in preserving folk and protest music. I mentioned there that certain record labels have gained a niche for themselves in music history by establishing, driving, or preserving certain traditions. That is the case here with Rounder Records who for over forty years has put together off-beat, but extremely valuable, compilations of traditional music from the shores of Cape Breton to Appalachia to Western America. This CD holds to that fine and honorably tradition.
For this CD there is also a very informative booklet (as is usual with Rounder products), also including plenty of discology-type information about each track. That leaves the final question of what is good here. This compilation, like the tradition fiddle CD is driven more by mood than anything else. The mood here, as described in the headline- mountain breezes, lonesome fiddles and slam jam banjos (and other back-up instruments, of course). And you should think of this compilation that way as well, especially as some of the pieces are very short. Here are few to feast on: Roscoe Holcombe’s Rocky Mountain, Protecting the Innocent, The House Carpenter,, Kicked up a Devil of a Row, and Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.
******************
This version of the lyrics date back to the early 1800s.
O bury me not on the lone prairie-culled from Wikipedia
"O bury me not on the lone prairie."
These words came low and mournfully
From the pallid lips of the youth who lay
On his dying bed at the close of day.
He had wasted and pined 'til o'er his brow
Death's shades were slowly gathering now
He thought of home and loved ones nigh,
As the cowboys gathered to see him die.
"O bury me not on the lone prairie
Where coyotes howl and the wind blows free
In a narrow grave just six by three—
O bury me not on the lone prairie"
"It matters not, I've been told,
Where the body lies when the heart grows cold
Yet grant, o grant, this wish to me
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"I've always wished to be laid when I died
In a little churchyard on the green hillside
By my father's grave, there let me be,
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"I wish to lie where a mother's prayer
And a sister's tear will mingle there.
Where friends can come and weep o'er me.
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"For there's another whose tears will shed.
For the one who lies in a prairie bed.
It breaks me heart to think of her now,
She has curled these locks, she has kissed this brow."
"O bury me not..." And his voice failed there.
But they took no heed to his dying prayer.
In a narrow grave, just six by three
They buried him there on the lone prairie.
And the cowboys now as they roam the plain,
For they marked the spot where his bones were lain,
Fling a handful o' roses o'er his grave
With a prayer to God his soul to save.[10]
CD Review
The Art Of Old-Time Mountain Music, Various Artists, Rounder Records, 2002
Over the past couple of years my interest in mountain music, the music that formed part of my parental heritage, has increased as a quick search of such entries in this space attest to. Those reviews have run the gamut from the famous, and important, work of the various Carter Family combinations (and generations) to the "discovery" by the folk revivalists of the 1960s of the likes of banjo player Roscoe Holcomb to the interest by urban folk artists of that period like the Greenbriar Boys and The New Lost City Ramblers. One of the driving forces of that simple, plain music is the banjo. Another is the fiddle. On this CD we get various combinations of both. To our benefit.
Previously, in reviewing another Rounder traditional music series CD (featuring fiddles) , in this space, I noted that I was also reviewing a tribute album celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Appleseed Records (2007), now a fixture in preserving folk and protest music. I mentioned there that certain record labels have gained a niche for themselves in music history by establishing, driving, or preserving certain traditions. That is the case here with Rounder Records who for over forty years has put together off-beat, but extremely valuable, compilations of traditional music from the shores of Cape Breton to Appalachia to Western America. This CD holds to that fine and honorably tradition.
For this CD there is also a very informative booklet (as is usual with Rounder products), also including plenty of discology-type information about each track. That leaves the final question of what is good here. This compilation, like the tradition fiddle CD is driven more by mood than anything else. The mood here, as described in the headline- mountain breezes, lonesome fiddles and slam jam banjos (and other back-up instruments, of course). And you should think of this compilation that way as well, especially as some of the pieces are very short. Here are few to feast on: Roscoe Holcombe’s Rocky Mountain, Protecting the Innocent, The House Carpenter,, Kicked up a Devil of a Row, and Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.
******************
This version of the lyrics date back to the early 1800s.
O bury me not on the lone prairie-culled from Wikipedia
"O bury me not on the lone prairie."
These words came low and mournfully
From the pallid lips of the youth who lay
On his dying bed at the close of day.
He had wasted and pined 'til o'er his brow
Death's shades were slowly gathering now
He thought of home and loved ones nigh,
As the cowboys gathered to see him die.
"O bury me not on the lone prairie
Where coyotes howl and the wind blows free
In a narrow grave just six by three—
O bury me not on the lone prairie"
"It matters not, I've been told,
Where the body lies when the heart grows cold
Yet grant, o grant, this wish to me
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"I've always wished to be laid when I died
In a little churchyard on the green hillside
By my father's grave, there let me be,
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"I wish to lie where a mother's prayer
And a sister's tear will mingle there.
Where friends can come and weep o'er me.
O bury me not on the lone prairie."
"For there's another whose tears will shed.
For the one who lies in a prairie bed.
It breaks me heart to think of her now,
She has curled these locks, she has kissed this brow."
"O bury me not..." And his voice failed there.
But they took no heed to his dying prayer.
In a narrow grave, just six by three
They buried him there on the lone prairie.
And the cowboys now as they roam the plain,
For they marked the spot where his bones were lain,
Fling a handful o' roses o'er his grave
With a prayer to God his soul to save.[10]
*Labor's Untold Story- From The Pen Of James P. Cannon- A Personal Look At Early American Communist Party Leader Earl Browder
Click on the title to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archive online copy of his evaluation of early American Communist Party leader Earl Browder.
Every Month Is Labor History Month
This commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.
Markin comment:
This analysis of Earl Browder like that of William Z. Foster by early American Trotskyist leader and Socialist Workers party founder, James P. Cannon, a fellow communist, factional partner and later opponent of his in the American communist movement takes on added significance because it is likely to stand as one of the few fairly honest evaluations of the man from a contemporary communist perspective. Hell, they came out of the plains of Kansas together, although in the end they went in very different directions.
Every Month Is Labor History Month
This commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.
Markin comment:
This analysis of Earl Browder like that of William Z. Foster by early American Trotskyist leader and Socialist Workers party founder, James P. Cannon, a fellow communist, factional partner and later opponent of his in the American communist movement takes on added significance because it is likely to stand as one of the few fairly honest evaluations of the man from a contemporary communist perspective. Hell, they came out of the plains of Kansas together, although in the end they went in very different directions.
Friday, September 10, 2010
* “Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed below.
The Death Agony of Capitalism
and the Tasks of the Fourth International
The Mobilization of the Masses around Transitional Demands
to Prepare the Conquest of Power
The Transitional Program
(1938)
Markin comment:
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
The Death Agony of Capitalism
and the Tasks of the Fourth International
The Mobilization of the Masses around Transitional Demands
to Prepare the Conquest of Power
The Transitional Program
(1938)
Markin comment:
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
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