Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Lonnie Johnson Doing "Blackbird Blues."
CD REVIEWS
Ballads and Blues, Lonnie Johnson and Elmer Snowden, Vanguard Records, 1960
Okay, okay those of you who have been keeping tabs know that I have spend much of the last year, when not doing political commentary or book or movie reviews, reviewing many of the old time blues artists that were the passion of my youth (and still are). So this writer, who thought he had heard virtually all the key blues men and women of the old days, got his comeuppance recently when the name of Lonnie Johnson and his version of the classic double-entendre "Jelly Roll Baker" came up. To name drop just a little, the occasion was a local reunion of Geoff Muldaur and Jim Kweskin of the old Jim Kweskin Jug Band from the 1960’s (that also included Geoff’s ex-wife and great performer in her own right, Maria Muldaur). They did a stirring rendition of the song and attributed it to the performer under review here. After scratching my head I ran out to get some more of Brother Lonnie’s work and I am here to tell you- get this CD because if you have any interest at all in the blues you will not be disappointed.
Why this particular album to start out with? Well, it features Lonnie Johnson and long time friend Elmer Snowden together for the first time although early on (back in the 1920’s) they had worked together on some blues and jazz albums. That is, perhaps, why this work is interesting as an example of that closeness between the jazz and blues idioms before those musical forms parted ways sometime in the late 1940’s. As others have mentioned Johnson, the father of single-note six-string soloing, is in a strangely haunting voice on this selection of blues, ballads, and jazz, crooning the double-entendre "Jelly Roll Baker" and the heartache-laden "Back Water Blues". I cannot add much to that description except you cannot go wrong by giving Haunted House, the first cut, a listen. That sets the mood. Finally, let me say WOW!
"Why Should I Grieve After You're Gone (1927)"
After you're gone, I'm left all alone.
Just feeling blue, all depending on you.
Not even the telephone, it don't ring anymore.
Not even the sun that shines, don't shine in my door anymore.
Since youâ've been gone away, many a million miles away.
I will give you a million smiles a day, to keep your blues away.
As the sun go down, and the wrong news, no play.
As the time goes lower and lower and lower, there's only you.
While I'm feeling blue, just feeling blue.
I would be happy today, but it all depends on you.
As the sun go down, and sinks behind the trees.
And just before it falls, I will answer to your calls.
When you're a million, million miles away, I will give you a million smiles a day.
That's because I love you, and wants to keep your blues away.
"Big Leg Woman"
Yes, I've got me a big legged woman, that solid rocks my soul
Yes, I've got me a big legged woman, that solid rocks my soul
And every time she turns the lights down low, Jack that's when I give up all my gold
She's so fine, she's so mellow, the rest I can't explain
Yes, she's so fine, she's so mellow, rest I can't explain
Way my baby stacked up, it's enough to drive the average cat insane
Yes, she's got great big legs, so pleasin' on the eye
Yes, she's got those great big legs, so pleasin' on the eye
And the preacher walked by, turned around and looked, Jack and hollered "My, my, my!"
She's got those big brown eyes, yes and she's somethin' really fine
Yes, she's got those big brown eyes, Jack she's somethin' really fine
And the best part about it, Jack she's mine, all mine!
"Cat You Been Messin' Around"
Now look here woman, you done lost your mind,
this is not my child, you bring me a better line
'Cause there's something wrong, woman don't start that lies there's something wrong
I never had such mix-ups in my family, since I was born
First it's loop-footin', and its head is long
And it's been half nuts ever since you brought it back home
So there's something wrong, I mean there's something wrong
Oh, take it back where you got it, woman 'cause depression is on
Now his eyes is blue, and his hair's brown
You know darn well you've been messin' around
So take that lie off of me, I mean take that lie off of me
Woman you had a twelve-month vacation, so don't put that lie on me
Now his head is nappy, and his feets is long, his eyes is crossed, and his sight is gone
You know there's something wrong, yes, woman there's something wrong
I never had nothing like that in my family, woman since I was born
Now I said it wasn't my child and you argued me down,
now my eyes ain't blue and my hair ain't brown
Woman you've been messin' around, yes,woman you've been messin' around
So woman get out of my face, or I take my fist and knock you down
"Low Down St. Louis Blues"
I love my St. Louis women, but their ways I really can't stand
I love my St. Louis women, but their ways I really can't stand
They always bettin' some woman, how she can take her man
My woman dips snuff
, and she drinks a good old homemade corn
My woman dips her snuff, and she drinks a good old homemade corn
She get as drunk as she can be, then she fight for the whole night long
And I got another gal, live down on Deep Morgan Street
And I got another gal, she lives down on Deep Morgan Street
If she don't kill a man every day, all I can do is to keep 'r off of me
She drinks her homemade corn whiskey, blackjack and a razor's her friend
She drinks her homemade corn whiskey, a blackjack and a razor's her friend
And she loves to kill a man, just like the devil loves sin
Boys I got another gal, she lives down on Walnut Street
Boys I got another gal, she lives down on Walnut Street
My other gal is so bad, the cops is scared to walk the beat
She can make a blackjack talk and a razor fairly moan
She can make a blackjack talk and a razor fairly moan
From the way that gal kill up men, the graveyard ain't got much more room
"Dont Drive Me From Your Door"
Just look how it's rainin', my feet's on the ground
Just look how it's rainin', and my poor feet's on the ground
For the woman I've made happy, well she's after every man in town
Friends please open your door, and don't drive me away
Please open your door, and don't drive me away
The rent man has put me outdoors, and I've got no place to stay
Let me stay here tonight, it's ice all on the ground
Let me stay here tonight, it's ice all over the ground
Cause I'm motherless and I'm fatherless, and please don't turn me down
When I had plenty money, I had friends all over town
When I had plenty of money, I had friends all over town
But just as soon as I got outdoors, none of my friends could be found
After mother and father's gone, a dollar's your right-hand friend
After mother and father's gone, dollar's your right-hand friend
Then after your last dollar's gone, you're like a road that has no end
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, lord where will I go
I'm beggin' you my friend, don't drive me from your door
I cannot sleep on the ground, there's nothing but ice and snow
Jelly Roll Baker
She said, 'Mr. Jellyroll Baker
Let me be your slave
When Gabriel blows his trumpet
Then I'll rise from my grave
For some-a your jellyro-oll
Yes, I love a good jellyroll'
It is good for the sick
Yes, and it's good for the old'
I was sentenced for murder
In the 1st degree
*The judge's wife called up and says
'Let that man go free'
He's a jellyroll baker
He's got the best jellyroll in town
He's the only man can bake jellyroll
With his damper down
Once in a hospital
Shot all full-a holes
The nurse left the man dyin'
An says he's got to get her jellyroll
His good old jell-e-e-y
She says, 'I love my good jellyroll'
She says, 'I ruther let him lose his life
Than to miss my good jellyroll'
Lady asked me who learnt me
How to bake good jellyroll?
I says, 'It's nobody, Miss
'It's just a gift from my soul'
To bake good jellyro-oll
Mmm-mmm, that good ol' jellyroll
She says, 'I love your jellyroll
It do's me good deep down in my soul
She says, 'Can I put in a order
For two weeks ahead?
I'd ruther have your jelly-roll
Than my home-cooked bread'
I love your jell-e-e-y
I love your good jellyroll
It's just like Maxwell House Coffee
It's good, deep down in my soul.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
The "Jelly Roll Baker" Is In The House- The Blues Of Lonnie Johnson
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Lonnie Johnson Doing "Got The Blues For Murder Only".
CD REVIEW
Steppin’ The Blues, Lonnie Johnson, Columbia Records, 1990.
Parts of the following have been used in a review of Lonnie Johnson Blues and Ballads CD (hereafter B&B).
Okay, Okay those of you who have been keeping tabs know that I have spend much of the last year, when not doing political commentary or book or movie reviews, reviewing many of the old time blues artists that were the passion of my youth (and still are). So this writer, who thought he had heard virtually all the key blues men and women of the old days, got his comeuppance a while back when the name of Lonnie Johnson and his version of the classic double-entendre song “Jelly Roll Baker” came up. To name drop just a little, the occasion was a local reunion of Geoff Muldaur and Jim Kweskin of the old Jim Kweskin Jug Band from the 1960’s (that also included Geoff’s ex-wife and great performer in her own right, Maria Muldaur). They did a stirring rendition of the song and attributed it to the performer under review here. After scratching my head I ran out to get some more of Brother Lonnie’s work and as noted above I have fulsomely praised his B&B CD in this space.
Although this CD has merit musically and certainly has historical worth as a comparison of young Lonnie Johnson in the 1920’s to the later B&B Lonnie this is one time when aging seems to have created a better body of work. A comparison of “I’m Nuts About That Gal” (really an early version of his classic “Jelly Roll Baker”) and the “Jelly Roll Baker” of the B&B make my point succinctly. That said, the noted Johnson guitar work is highlighted on “Guitar Blues”, the novelty sassy song in two parts “Toothache Blues” and “Deep Blue Sea Blues”. That is why you want this album.
CD REVIEW
Steppin’ The Blues, Lonnie Johnson, Columbia Records, 1990.
Parts of the following have been used in a review of Lonnie Johnson Blues and Ballads CD (hereafter B&B).
Okay, Okay those of you who have been keeping tabs know that I have spend much of the last year, when not doing political commentary or book or movie reviews, reviewing many of the old time blues artists that were the passion of my youth (and still are). So this writer, who thought he had heard virtually all the key blues men and women of the old days, got his comeuppance a while back when the name of Lonnie Johnson and his version of the classic double-entendre song “Jelly Roll Baker” came up. To name drop just a little, the occasion was a local reunion of Geoff Muldaur and Jim Kweskin of the old Jim Kweskin Jug Band from the 1960’s (that also included Geoff’s ex-wife and great performer in her own right, Maria Muldaur). They did a stirring rendition of the song and attributed it to the performer under review here. After scratching my head I ran out to get some more of Brother Lonnie’s work and as noted above I have fulsomely praised his B&B CD in this space.
Although this CD has merit musically and certainly has historical worth as a comparison of young Lonnie Johnson in the 1920’s to the later B&B Lonnie this is one time when aging seems to have created a better body of work. A comparison of “I’m Nuts About That Gal” (really an early version of his classic “Jelly Roll Baker”) and the “Jelly Roll Baker” of the B&B make my point succinctly. That said, the noted Johnson guitar work is highlighted on “Guitar Blues”, the novelty sassy song in two parts “Toothache Blues” and “Deep Blue Sea Blues”. That is why you want this album.
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The School Dance -Last Chance For Romance- A Final Nod To Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Angels performing Till.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘60s: Last Dance, Time-Life, 1991
As I have noted in reviewing The ‘50s: Last Dance of this Time-Life Roll ‘n’ Roll Era series I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also equally inevitable trauma of the last dance. That event, the last dance that is, was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. The last chance to rise (or fall) in the torrid and relentless pecking order of the social scene at school. And moreover to prove to that certain she that you were made of some sort of heroic stuff, the stuff of dreams, of her dreams, thank you very much. Moreover, to make use of that social capital you invested in by learning to dance, or the “shadow” of learning to dance at some Miss Somebody‘s Saturday morning dance studio. Egad.
Fair, enough, true enough, if only a rather short sketch of the preparations, the seemingly endless preparations for the ‘big night.’ A night that entailed getting into some serious grooming workouts, including procedures not usually a part of the daily toilet. Plenty of deodorant, hair oil, and breathe fresheners, no question. Moreover, endless energy used getting worked up about wardrobe, mode of transportation, and other factors that I have addressed elsewhere, and, additionally, factors contingent upon whether you were dated up or stag. All that need not be repeated here. What does stand some further inspection is something that has received scant notice in all this welter of detail, with the exception of that overblown coverage of the last dance. Nothing on the inner workings of the dance itself.
Actually, and I will only speak to the late fifties and early sixties but I am sure this observation will hold up for other times as well, there are two school dance sequels, that first tremulous middle school dance series, and the later even more significant high school dances. Age, more convoluted socials relationships, physical and sexual growth, changes in musical taste, attitudes toward life and toward the opposite sex (or nowadays, perhaps, same sex) all made them two distinct affairs, except the ubiquitous teacher chaperones to guard against all manner of murder and mayhem, or, more likely, someone sneaking out for butts, booze or off-hand nuzzling (or, have mercy, all three). I will keep strictly to the high school dance scene here since the compilation under review includes musical selections that were current in the time of my high school time.
These musical selections "spoke" to that gnawing feeling in the back of your mind, half hidden by massive teenage psychic overlay, of the need to take a constant survey of what is going on in your little so-called world. A moment's glazed stare as you wait to get into the dance venue allows you to think through the litany of problems to be addressed as soon as you get a breather. Shall I give examples?
For example; being stood up for a date; or when that certain he or she did not call; or that certain he or she had another date; or that certain "unto death" friend of yours took that certain he or she away from you; or when that certain he or she said no, no for any number of things but you know the real “no,” right?; or, finally, that mournful, pitiful midnight crying time when sometime he or she, did or did not do, or did or did not say, or he or she forget to remember, and so on. But those issues will wait for another day because right now the doors are opening and you have more pressing issues in your heated little mind. Hope drives your every move from here on in.
I don’t have to spend much time on the physical and technical details of the dance, hell, you can describe them in your sleep. And if you can’t do so watch a film like 1973’s American Graffiti, the segment on the local high school dance, as I have noted previously, once you get indoors could have been 1962 anyplace U.S.A. (and I am willing to bet anytime U.S.A., as well. For this baby-boomer, that particular high school dance, could have taken place at my high school when I was a student in the early 1960s). From the throwaway crepe paper decorations that festooned the place placed around the gym by the ever helpful Girls Club or Tri-Hi-Y up to the ever-present foldaway gym bleachers to those evil-eyed chaperones to the platform the local band (a band that if it did not hit it big would go on to greater glory at our future weddings, birthday parties, and other important occasions) covering the top hits of the day performed on it was a perfect replica of my own experience.
Also perfect replica in that film were the classic boys’ attire for a casual dance, plaid or white sports shirt, chinos, stolid shoes, and short-trimmed hair (no beards, beads, bell-bottoms, it’s much too early in the decade for that) and for the girls blouses (or maybe sweaters, cashmere, if I recall being in fashion at the time, at least in the colder East), full swirling dresses, and, I think beehive hair-dos. Wow! Of course, perfect replica were the infinite variety of dances (frug, watusi, twist, stroll, etc) that blessed, no, twice blessed, rock and roll let us do in order to not to have to dance too waltz close. We all owe Chubby Checker and Gary U.S. Bonds a debt that can never be repaid. Mercy.
Damn, my going on and on about the physical descriptions is just so much eye wash. The thing could have been held in an airplane hangar for all we really cared. And everyone could have been dressed in paper bags. What mattered, and maybe will always matter, are the hes looking at those certain shes, and visa-versa. The endless small meaningful looks (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell). Except for those wallflowers that are permanently looking down at the ground, and pleased to be doing it. And that, my friends, is the real struggle that went on in those events, for the stags. The struggle against wallflower-dom. The struggle for at least some room in the social standing, even if near the bottom, rather than outcaste-dom.
That struggle was as fierce as any class struggle old Karl Marx might have projected. The straight, upfront calculation (and not infrequently miscalculation)of those evil eyes, the maneuvering, the averting of eyes, the not averting of eyes, the reading of silence signals, the uncomprehended "no", the gratuitous "yes." Need I go on? I don’t think so, except, if you had the energy, or even if you didn’t, then you dragged yourself to that last dance. And hoped, hoped to high heaven that it was a slow one. Ah, to be young was very heaven as old man Wordsworth had it in another context. Enough memory said.
Stick outs on this CD compilation include: the late legendary blue artist Etta James’ Something’s Got A Hold On Me (fast); The Angels’ Till (slow, ouch! on feet); Bo Diddley’s Road Runner (fast); and Donnie Brooks’ classic (the one you prayed they would play) Mission Bell. How is that for dee-jay even-handedness?
********
'Till lyrics
Till the moon deserts the sky
Till the all the seas run dry
Till then I'll worship you
Till the tropic sun turns cold
Till this young world grows old
My darling, I'll adore you
You are my reason to live
All I own I would give
Just to have you adore me, oh, oh, oh
Till the rivers flow upstream
Till lovers cease to dream
Till then I'm yours, be mine
instrumental interlude
You are my reason to live
All I own I would give
Just to have you adore me
Till the rivers flow upstream
Till lovers cease to dream
Till then I'm yours, be mine
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘60s: Last Dance, Time-Life, 1991
As I have noted in reviewing The ‘50s: Last Dance of this Time-Life Roll ‘n’ Roll Era series I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also equally inevitable trauma of the last dance. That event, the last dance that is, was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. The last chance to rise (or fall) in the torrid and relentless pecking order of the social scene at school. And moreover to prove to that certain she that you were made of some sort of heroic stuff, the stuff of dreams, of her dreams, thank you very much. Moreover, to make use of that social capital you invested in by learning to dance, or the “shadow” of learning to dance at some Miss Somebody‘s Saturday morning dance studio. Egad.
Fair, enough, true enough, if only a rather short sketch of the preparations, the seemingly endless preparations for the ‘big night.’ A night that entailed getting into some serious grooming workouts, including procedures not usually a part of the daily toilet. Plenty of deodorant, hair oil, and breathe fresheners, no question. Moreover, endless energy used getting worked up about wardrobe, mode of transportation, and other factors that I have addressed elsewhere, and, additionally, factors contingent upon whether you were dated up or stag. All that need not be repeated here. What does stand some further inspection is something that has received scant notice in all this welter of detail, with the exception of that overblown coverage of the last dance. Nothing on the inner workings of the dance itself.
Actually, and I will only speak to the late fifties and early sixties but I am sure this observation will hold up for other times as well, there are two school dance sequels, that first tremulous middle school dance series, and the later even more significant high school dances. Age, more convoluted socials relationships, physical and sexual growth, changes in musical taste, attitudes toward life and toward the opposite sex (or nowadays, perhaps, same sex) all made them two distinct affairs, except the ubiquitous teacher chaperones to guard against all manner of murder and mayhem, or, more likely, someone sneaking out for butts, booze or off-hand nuzzling (or, have mercy, all three). I will keep strictly to the high school dance scene here since the compilation under review includes musical selections that were current in the time of my high school time.
These musical selections "spoke" to that gnawing feeling in the back of your mind, half hidden by massive teenage psychic overlay, of the need to take a constant survey of what is going on in your little so-called world. A moment's glazed stare as you wait to get into the dance venue allows you to think through the litany of problems to be addressed as soon as you get a breather. Shall I give examples?
For example; being stood up for a date; or when that certain he or she did not call; or that certain he or she had another date; or that certain "unto death" friend of yours took that certain he or she away from you; or when that certain he or she said no, no for any number of things but you know the real “no,” right?; or, finally, that mournful, pitiful midnight crying time when sometime he or she, did or did not do, or did or did not say, or he or she forget to remember, and so on. But those issues will wait for another day because right now the doors are opening and you have more pressing issues in your heated little mind. Hope drives your every move from here on in.
I don’t have to spend much time on the physical and technical details of the dance, hell, you can describe them in your sleep. And if you can’t do so watch a film like 1973’s American Graffiti, the segment on the local high school dance, as I have noted previously, once you get indoors could have been 1962 anyplace U.S.A. (and I am willing to bet anytime U.S.A., as well. For this baby-boomer, that particular high school dance, could have taken place at my high school when I was a student in the early 1960s). From the throwaway crepe paper decorations that festooned the place placed around the gym by the ever helpful Girls Club or Tri-Hi-Y up to the ever-present foldaway gym bleachers to those evil-eyed chaperones to the platform the local band (a band that if it did not hit it big would go on to greater glory at our future weddings, birthday parties, and other important occasions) covering the top hits of the day performed on it was a perfect replica of my own experience.
Also perfect replica in that film were the classic boys’ attire for a casual dance, plaid or white sports shirt, chinos, stolid shoes, and short-trimmed hair (no beards, beads, bell-bottoms, it’s much too early in the decade for that) and for the girls blouses (or maybe sweaters, cashmere, if I recall being in fashion at the time, at least in the colder East), full swirling dresses, and, I think beehive hair-dos. Wow! Of course, perfect replica were the infinite variety of dances (frug, watusi, twist, stroll, etc) that blessed, no, twice blessed, rock and roll let us do in order to not to have to dance too waltz close. We all owe Chubby Checker and Gary U.S. Bonds a debt that can never be repaid. Mercy.
Damn, my going on and on about the physical descriptions is just so much eye wash. The thing could have been held in an airplane hangar for all we really cared. And everyone could have been dressed in paper bags. What mattered, and maybe will always matter, are the hes looking at those certain shes, and visa-versa. The endless small meaningful looks (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell). Except for those wallflowers that are permanently looking down at the ground, and pleased to be doing it. And that, my friends, is the real struggle that went on in those events, for the stags. The struggle against wallflower-dom. The struggle for at least some room in the social standing, even if near the bottom, rather than outcaste-dom.
That struggle was as fierce as any class struggle old Karl Marx might have projected. The straight, upfront calculation (and not infrequently miscalculation)of those evil eyes, the maneuvering, the averting of eyes, the not averting of eyes, the reading of silence signals, the uncomprehended "no", the gratuitous "yes." Need I go on? I don’t think so, except, if you had the energy, or even if you didn’t, then you dragged yourself to that last dance. And hoped, hoped to high heaven that it was a slow one. Ah, to be young was very heaven as old man Wordsworth had it in another context. Enough memory said.
Stick outs on this CD compilation include: the late legendary blue artist Etta James’ Something’s Got A Hold On Me (fast); The Angels’ Till (slow, ouch! on feet); Bo Diddley’s Road Runner (fast); and Donnie Brooks’ classic (the one you prayed they would play) Mission Bell. How is that for dee-jay even-handedness?
********
'Till lyrics
Till the moon deserts the sky
Till the all the seas run dry
Till then I'll worship you
Till the tropic sun turns cold
Till this young world grows old
My darling, I'll adore you
You are my reason to live
All I own I would give
Just to have you adore me, oh, oh, oh
Till the rivers flow upstream
Till lovers cease to dream
Till then I'm yours, be mine
instrumental interlude
You are my reason to live
All I own I would give
Just to have you adore me
Till the rivers flow upstream
Till lovers cease to dream
Till then I'm yours, be mine
Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee And The Battle Of The Sexes-Round 236
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Patsy Cline performing "She’s Got You."
Patsy Cline: Greatest Hits, Patsy Cline, MCA Records, 1991
Sometimes one cannot win in this wicked old world. A few years ago, after some serious prodding bordering on violations of the Genera Conventions against torture which certainly, now in retrospect, warrant further investigation, further criminal investigation, I was asked by the chairperson of my North Adamsville High School Class 1964 (ouch!) Reunion Committee to answer certain questions about my likes and dislikes back in the day. The alleged purpose of this exercise (other than to see if we were still youthfully sharp) was to compile a survey /sketch of class life in the long ago misty 1960s. There was, moreover, a certain method to her madness that I did not catch onto as quickly as I should have if I had had my proper "forget high school days" guard up, as she probed by stages.
If you know something about interrogation techniques this may sound familiar. She started off with easy stuff. You know like favorite sports (easy, as a participant, running, maybe running scared, if that is a sport, but, more importantly, as a spectator our beloved raider red and black-bled football team which held even me in thrall as they ground it out on the gridiron on those granite grey autumn Saturday afternoons yelling myself, and not just me, hoarse), favorite teachers (the usual suspects, a bevy of hard-bitten, hard-nosed, grindstone-touting English and history bugs), favorite school lunch (none of the above but I should have become more suspicious with that question because I, and I know others from the class who even now refuse, refuse on principle, to have anything to do with pizza in the sixty-six guises that passed for lunch five days a week, sometimes as American chop suey even). She then worked her way into more intimate stuff like personal tastes in music. Obviously after she reeled us in, such a profound question required answers, especially for those of us who considered ourselves nothing but unabashed children of rock and roll.
But she devised even more malignant tricks as she unfolded her CIA-like probes. She posed the questions very specifically and asked what she probably thought we would think was an innocuous question: in your youth did you prefer The Rolling Stones or the Beatles? Innocent, right? Pick one or the other. I did and went on and on about how the Stones lit my flamed-out youth on fire, how I came to the blues via their cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s (really Willie Dixon’s) Little Red Rooster (banned in Boston, moreover, that made it just that much more appealing) etc. ,etc.
Are you with me so far? Then, out of nowhere, or at least nowhere for a child of rock and roll, she asked about this combination- the Brenda Lee versus Patsy Cline shoot-out. What, are you kidding? I cavalierly dismissed the notion of either singer having the slightest influence on my budding manly rock persona and refused, purposefully refused, to answer (okay, okay I put N/A). No big deal this is America after all and N/A is part of the democratic tradition if frowned upon by partisans. End of story.
Not though when my "significant other" (known in the old days, in polite society, as my paramour and in impolite society as...oh, well you can fill in the blank) finished reading my response (I had off-handedly shown it to her for some laughs). The gist of her indignant argument centered on my alleged testosterone-driven choices of male Rock 'n' Roll bands like the Stones to the exclusion of kinder, gentler music-in short, choices that women might prefer. Okay, I took the point and then made my female singer selection. Naturally, I need to make a little comment to motivate my choice.
Frankly, like I said, I really do not remember being a fan of either Brenda Lee or Patsy Cline in my youth. Both names are associated in those high school memories with dreamy school dances or other types of romantic endeavor. It was not until several years ago that I came to appreciate Patsy Cline's work. I have always been a sucker for female torch- singers like Billie Holiday and the young Peggy Lee in her Benny Goodman period but Patsy only recently became part of my musical interests as a country "torch" singer.
Frankly, on the face of it Patsy Cline would not have fallen under my idea of a torch singer back in the day. That is, until you heard that voice coming out of the past to chill you to the marrow with her heart-rending renditions of some very classic country and crossover ballads. For those of us who came of age in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s this was the music at the high school dance where you got to ask that guy or girl that you had your eye on for that slow dance that gave you time to talk and feel out the situation. A retrospective thanks, Patsy. This two CD set contains so many classics it is hard to know where to begin but I counted at least 20 that you need to listen to. That, my friends, rather says it all. Classic Hank William tunes like Your Cheating Heart, Willie Nelson’s Crazy, others like He’s Not You and She’s Got Him. Wow. A few non-ballad novelty type songs could have been leave out and done no damage but when you look at the overall package. Again, WOW.
One last word. My last word. Let me get back to that controversy with my "significant other" (I prefer "soul-mate" but I will let that pass here). I mentioned in that hard-nosed class reunion questionnaire that in the summer of 2005 I attended a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park. Now who do you think was standing beside me shaking, as the kids say, her "booty" for all she was worth? So much for that testosterone theory. Moreover, who imprisoned me in Fenway Park practically at gunpoint, until I bought her a sassy little Stones T-shirt as a memento of the occasion? Enough said.
***********
Here Are Some Lyrics For Brenda and Patsy So You Can Make An Informed Decision On These Burning Questions Of The Day.
Brenda Lee - I'm Sorry lyrics
Lyrics to I'm Sorry :
I'm sorry, so sorry
That I was such a fool
I didn't know
Love could be so cruel
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Spoken:
(I'm sorry) I'm sorry
(So sorry) So sorry
Please accept my apology
But love is blind
And I was to blind to see
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
I'm sorry, so sorry
Please accept my apology
But love was blind
And I was too blind to see
(Sorry)
She's Got You Lyrics
Artist: Patsy Cline
I've got your picture that you gave to me
And it's signed with love just like it used to be
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got your picture, she's got you
I've got the records that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got the records, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's-got-you
Patsy Cline: Greatest Hits, Patsy Cline, MCA Records, 1991
Sometimes one cannot win in this wicked old world. A few years ago, after some serious prodding bordering on violations of the Genera Conventions against torture which certainly, now in retrospect, warrant further investigation, further criminal investigation, I was asked by the chairperson of my North Adamsville High School Class 1964 (ouch!) Reunion Committee to answer certain questions about my likes and dislikes back in the day. The alleged purpose of this exercise (other than to see if we were still youthfully sharp) was to compile a survey /sketch of class life in the long ago misty 1960s. There was, moreover, a certain method to her madness that I did not catch onto as quickly as I should have if I had had my proper "forget high school days" guard up, as she probed by stages.
If you know something about interrogation techniques this may sound familiar. She started off with easy stuff. You know like favorite sports (easy, as a participant, running, maybe running scared, if that is a sport, but, more importantly, as a spectator our beloved raider red and black-bled football team which held even me in thrall as they ground it out on the gridiron on those granite grey autumn Saturday afternoons yelling myself, and not just me, hoarse), favorite teachers (the usual suspects, a bevy of hard-bitten, hard-nosed, grindstone-touting English and history bugs), favorite school lunch (none of the above but I should have become more suspicious with that question because I, and I know others from the class who even now refuse, refuse on principle, to have anything to do with pizza in the sixty-six guises that passed for lunch five days a week, sometimes as American chop suey even). She then worked her way into more intimate stuff like personal tastes in music. Obviously after she reeled us in, such a profound question required answers, especially for those of us who considered ourselves nothing but unabashed children of rock and roll.
But she devised even more malignant tricks as she unfolded her CIA-like probes. She posed the questions very specifically and asked what she probably thought we would think was an innocuous question: in your youth did you prefer The Rolling Stones or the Beatles? Innocent, right? Pick one or the other. I did and went on and on about how the Stones lit my flamed-out youth on fire, how I came to the blues via their cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s (really Willie Dixon’s) Little Red Rooster (banned in Boston, moreover, that made it just that much more appealing) etc. ,etc.
Are you with me so far? Then, out of nowhere, or at least nowhere for a child of rock and roll, she asked about this combination- the Brenda Lee versus Patsy Cline shoot-out. What, are you kidding? I cavalierly dismissed the notion of either singer having the slightest influence on my budding manly rock persona and refused, purposefully refused, to answer (okay, okay I put N/A). No big deal this is America after all and N/A is part of the democratic tradition if frowned upon by partisans. End of story.
Not though when my "significant other" (known in the old days, in polite society, as my paramour and in impolite society as...oh, well you can fill in the blank) finished reading my response (I had off-handedly shown it to her for some laughs). The gist of her indignant argument centered on my alleged testosterone-driven choices of male Rock 'n' Roll bands like the Stones to the exclusion of kinder, gentler music-in short, choices that women might prefer. Okay, I took the point and then made my female singer selection. Naturally, I need to make a little comment to motivate my choice.
Frankly, like I said, I really do not remember being a fan of either Brenda Lee or Patsy Cline in my youth. Both names are associated in those high school memories with dreamy school dances or other types of romantic endeavor. It was not until several years ago that I came to appreciate Patsy Cline's work. I have always been a sucker for female torch- singers like Billie Holiday and the young Peggy Lee in her Benny Goodman period but Patsy only recently became part of my musical interests as a country "torch" singer.
Frankly, on the face of it Patsy Cline would not have fallen under my idea of a torch singer back in the day. That is, until you heard that voice coming out of the past to chill you to the marrow with her heart-rending renditions of some very classic country and crossover ballads. For those of us who came of age in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s this was the music at the high school dance where you got to ask that guy or girl that you had your eye on for that slow dance that gave you time to talk and feel out the situation. A retrospective thanks, Patsy. This two CD set contains so many classics it is hard to know where to begin but I counted at least 20 that you need to listen to. That, my friends, rather says it all. Classic Hank William tunes like Your Cheating Heart, Willie Nelson’s Crazy, others like He’s Not You and She’s Got Him. Wow. A few non-ballad novelty type songs could have been leave out and done no damage but when you look at the overall package. Again, WOW.
One last word. My last word. Let me get back to that controversy with my "significant other" (I prefer "soul-mate" but I will let that pass here). I mentioned in that hard-nosed class reunion questionnaire that in the summer of 2005 I attended a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park. Now who do you think was standing beside me shaking, as the kids say, her "booty" for all she was worth? So much for that testosterone theory. Moreover, who imprisoned me in Fenway Park practically at gunpoint, until I bought her a sassy little Stones T-shirt as a memento of the occasion? Enough said.
***********
Here Are Some Lyrics For Brenda and Patsy So You Can Make An Informed Decision On These Burning Questions Of The Day.
Brenda Lee - I'm Sorry lyrics
Lyrics to I'm Sorry :
I'm sorry, so sorry
That I was such a fool
I didn't know
Love could be so cruel
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Spoken:
(I'm sorry) I'm sorry
(So sorry) So sorry
Please accept my apology
But love is blind
And I was to blind to see
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
You tell me mistakes
Are part of being young
But that don't right
The wrong that's been done
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Uh, oh
Oh, yes
I'm sorry, so sorry
Please accept my apology
But love was blind
And I was too blind to see
(Sorry)
She's Got You Lyrics
Artist: Patsy Cline
I've got your picture that you gave to me
And it's signed with love just like it used to be
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got your picture, she's got you
I've got the records that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got the records, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's got you
I've got your memory, or, has it got me?
I really don't know but I know it won't let me be
I've got your class ring that proved you cared
And it still looks the same as when you gave it, dear
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got these little things, she's-got-you
Out In The Two-Timing Femme Fatale 1950s Crime Noir Night- “Armored Car Robbery”- A Review
Out In The Two-Timing Femme Fatale 1950s Crime Noir Night- “Armored Car Robbery”- A Review
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_Car_Robbery
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film Armored Car Robbery.
DVD Review
Armored Car Robbery, starring Charles McGraw, William Talman, Adele Jurgens, RKO Radio Pictures, 1950
Forget what I ever said about the classic two-timing femme fatales. And who knows maybe three-timing, or more. Once you go down that road what is to stop a dame, any dame , and why, at any small number when you are looking, forever looking, to step up in class, to latch onto the big dough guys who will take you out of the dime-a-dance scene you are mired in. So forget frails like Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon who was ready to make any guy, any two guys for that matter, take the fall as long as she got her damn bird, and the stuff of dreams. With dough enough to keep her in style, and the small-time grifters off her back. Forget Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shang-hai who had half the male world, the smart guys too, lining up to take the fall, and just ask where to take it until in the end even the smart guys cried “uncle.” Forget Jane Greer in Out Of The Past twisting up every guy in California, some smart guys too, and guys who supposedly knew what was what wound up hiding out until the coast was clear, maybe for about a century hiding out nursing their wounds , once she got done with them. And forget one more, just one more, that no femme list is complete without, Ava Garner trying to get some guy, her everlovin’ husband no less, some supposedly badass guy, to take the fall for her on his deathbed in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers. Ya, forget them all as just slightly nervous misunderstood frills that had a couple of bad breaks along the way. Sweet little Yvonne (played by Adele Jurgens. Ya, I know, the name doesn’t exactly ring bells in the fatale world, good or bad)in this sleeper of a crime noir under review, Armored Car Robbery (Ya, I know as well, they seemed to have run out of interesting titles on this one) puts them all to shame. I might be over- touting the thing but hear me out.
Naturally no femme fatale worth her salt is driven by anything but the desire, the very strong desire, to get out from under whatever menial labor she is stuck doing, from serving them off the arm in some hash house to beating drunks for drinks and donuts in some two bit-bar fly scene. Yvonne here is strictly an independent operator working her fanny off (no pun intended) as a stripper ( maybe today the more politically correct term would be a sex worker, or some other more exotic description, although I am willing to stand corrected on that) in a low-rent Chicago burlesque house. Naturally such places, as Damon Runyon, Studs Terkel, and a few other guys have informed us, do not draw serious high-rollers or serious smart guys. So, through this and that, Yvonne winds up married, unhappily married as it turns out, to Benny who is nothing but a small-time grafter down on his uppers as the film opens. Strictly from Jump Street and strictly a guy who takes orders, not gives them.
And that is where this film gets interesting because while Bennie is nothing a but small-time hood he knows a certain smart guy, Dave Purvis (played by William Talman, probably better known as the ever-losing District Attorney in the 1950s Perry Mason television series and not a classic ladies’ man by any means which means he too has to keep grabbing dough), who has a plan, a big heist plan, which the reader can figure out from the title of the film, involves robbing, well, an armored car. Why? As the late old time yegg Willie Sutton has often been quoted as saying in all kinds of contexts –“that’s where the money is.” Big half a million dollar dough (big 1950s dough, now just tip money for the big guys). Bennie (and a couple of his confederates) are in, in to get under from under in the Yvonne department, to keep her in style, some style anyway. But here is the beauty of the thing, and what puts Yvonne right up there with the more well-known fatales, she is running around, married to Benny or not, running around no questions asked, with one Dave Purvis. See Yvonne knows what every true-blue two-timing femme fatale knows-go with the brains of the operation. And so her fate is set.
Of course even a kid wet behind the ears knows that the magic mantra behind every crime noir is that crime, well, crime doesn’t pay. The only difference usually is in what manner it doesn’t pay (and how bad the femme fatale makes some guy, or guys, fall). Here the heist gets blown by a simple call to the police by a witness. The stick-up (at a ball park during baseball season which is probably a separate chargeable crime itself ) is blown but not before a fatal shoot-out of a police officer in pursuit. Benny also gets shot-up in the melee. And that is where Lieutenant Cordell (played by ruggedly handsome, jut-jawed, and straight-as-an-arrow Charles McGraw with the perfect police officer’s face) comes in to see some rough-hewn justice is served. See the officer killed was his longtime partner and as we already know from detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon a guy has to do something about the murder of his partner, private or public cop. From there it is only time before Dave and Yvonne, once Benny expires from his wounds, are cornered in a dramatic airfield shoot-out. But here is the clincher- when Dave earlier , dough in hand, told Yvonne that Benny had gone to his just rewards she showed all the emotion of one who heard that a fly had been swatted dead. Didn’t I tell you she was poison? Ya, I did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_Car_Robbery
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film Armored Car Robbery.
DVD Review
Armored Car Robbery, starring Charles McGraw, William Talman, Adele Jurgens, RKO Radio Pictures, 1950
Forget what I ever said about the classic two-timing femme fatales. And who knows maybe three-timing, or more. Once you go down that road what is to stop a dame, any dame , and why, at any small number when you are looking, forever looking, to step up in class, to latch onto the big dough guys who will take you out of the dime-a-dance scene you are mired in. So forget frails like Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon who was ready to make any guy, any two guys for that matter, take the fall as long as she got her damn bird, and the stuff of dreams. With dough enough to keep her in style, and the small-time grifters off her back. Forget Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shang-hai who had half the male world, the smart guys too, lining up to take the fall, and just ask where to take it until in the end even the smart guys cried “uncle.” Forget Jane Greer in Out Of The Past twisting up every guy in California, some smart guys too, and guys who supposedly knew what was what wound up hiding out until the coast was clear, maybe for about a century hiding out nursing their wounds , once she got done with them. And forget one more, just one more, that no femme list is complete without, Ava Garner trying to get some guy, her everlovin’ husband no less, some supposedly badass guy, to take the fall for her on his deathbed in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers. Ya, forget them all as just slightly nervous misunderstood frills that had a couple of bad breaks along the way. Sweet little Yvonne (played by Adele Jurgens. Ya, I know, the name doesn’t exactly ring bells in the fatale world, good or bad)in this sleeper of a crime noir under review, Armored Car Robbery (Ya, I know as well, they seemed to have run out of interesting titles on this one) puts them all to shame. I might be over- touting the thing but hear me out.
Naturally no femme fatale worth her salt is driven by anything but the desire, the very strong desire, to get out from under whatever menial labor she is stuck doing, from serving them off the arm in some hash house to beating drunks for drinks and donuts in some two bit-bar fly scene. Yvonne here is strictly an independent operator working her fanny off (no pun intended) as a stripper ( maybe today the more politically correct term would be a sex worker, or some other more exotic description, although I am willing to stand corrected on that) in a low-rent Chicago burlesque house. Naturally such places, as Damon Runyon, Studs Terkel, and a few other guys have informed us, do not draw serious high-rollers or serious smart guys. So, through this and that, Yvonne winds up married, unhappily married as it turns out, to Benny who is nothing but a small-time grafter down on his uppers as the film opens. Strictly from Jump Street and strictly a guy who takes orders, not gives them.
And that is where this film gets interesting because while Bennie is nothing a but small-time hood he knows a certain smart guy, Dave Purvis (played by William Talman, probably better known as the ever-losing District Attorney in the 1950s Perry Mason television series and not a classic ladies’ man by any means which means he too has to keep grabbing dough), who has a plan, a big heist plan, which the reader can figure out from the title of the film, involves robbing, well, an armored car. Why? As the late old time yegg Willie Sutton has often been quoted as saying in all kinds of contexts –“that’s where the money is.” Big half a million dollar dough (big 1950s dough, now just tip money for the big guys). Bennie (and a couple of his confederates) are in, in to get under from under in the Yvonne department, to keep her in style, some style anyway. But here is the beauty of the thing, and what puts Yvonne right up there with the more well-known fatales, she is running around, married to Benny or not, running around no questions asked, with one Dave Purvis. See Yvonne knows what every true-blue two-timing femme fatale knows-go with the brains of the operation. And so her fate is set.
Of course even a kid wet behind the ears knows that the magic mantra behind every crime noir is that crime, well, crime doesn’t pay. The only difference usually is in what manner it doesn’t pay (and how bad the femme fatale makes some guy, or guys, fall). Here the heist gets blown by a simple call to the police by a witness. The stick-up (at a ball park during baseball season which is probably a separate chargeable crime itself ) is blown but not before a fatal shoot-out of a police officer in pursuit. Benny also gets shot-up in the melee. And that is where Lieutenant Cordell (played by ruggedly handsome, jut-jawed, and straight-as-an-arrow Charles McGraw with the perfect police officer’s face) comes in to see some rough-hewn justice is served. See the officer killed was his longtime partner and as we already know from detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon a guy has to do something about the murder of his partner, private or public cop. From there it is only time before Dave and Yvonne, once Benny expires from his wounds, are cornered in a dramatic airfield shoot-out. But here is the clincher- when Dave earlier , dough in hand, told Yvonne that Benny had gone to his just rewards she showed all the emotion of one who heard that a fly had been swatted dead. Didn’t I tell you she was poison? Ya, I did.
From The "Occupy Wall Street" Website-May Day Directory: Occupy General Strike In Over 115 Cities
Click on headline to link to the latest on May Day 2012.
In Honor Of The 142nd Anniversary Of Vladimir Lenin's Birthday-The April Theses (1917)
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the great Russian revolutionary and leader of the Bolshevik Party, Vladimir Lenin, for some quick background information. As always with this source, especially on political questions and personalities use with care and as a start, then move on for more in-depth analysis.
Markin comment:
In honor of the 142nd birthday anniversary of the great Russian revolutionary and leader of the Bolshevik Party, Vladimir Lenin. And the leader, along with Leon Trotsky, come hell or high water, of the only successful workers' revolution in history, thus far. Forward
********
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution
[a.k.a. The April Theses]
Published: April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 24, pp. 19-26.
Translated: Isaacs Bernard
Transcription: Zodiac
HTML Markup: B. Baggins
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005), marx.org (1997), marxists.org (1999). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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This article contains Lenin’s famous April Theses read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, on April 4, 1917.
[Introduction]
I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.
The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself—and for honest opponents—was to prepare the theses in writing. I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tsereteli. I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
I publish these personal theses of mine with only the briefest explanatory notes, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.
THESES
1) In our attitude towards the war, which under the new [provisional] government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.
The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.
In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.
The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.
Fraternisation.
2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.
This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.
This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.
3) No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding “demand” that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.
4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee (Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.
The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.
As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.
5) Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.
Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.[1]
The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.
6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.
Confiscation of all landed estates.
Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and for the public account.
7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
8) It is not our immediate task to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
9) Party tasks:
(a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;
(b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly:
(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war,
(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a “commune state”[2];
(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme;
(c) Change of the Party’s name.[3]
10. A new International.
We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the “Centre”.[4]
In order that the reader may understand why I had especially to emphasise as a rare exception the “case” of honest opponents, I invite him to compare the above theses with the following objection by Mr. Goldenberg: Lenin, he said, “has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy” (quoted in No. 5 of Mr. Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo).
Isn’t it a gem?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism ... in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them....”
Yet the bourgeois gentlemen who call themselves Social-Democrats, who do not belong either to the broad sections or to the mass believers in defencism, with serene brow present my views thus: “The banner[!] of civil war” (of which there is not a word in the theses and not a word in my speech!) has been planted(!) “in the midst [!!] of revolutionary democracy...”.
What does this mean? In what way does this differ from riot-inciting agitation, from Russkaya Volya?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and therefore our task is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.”
Yet opponents of a certain brand present my views as a call to “civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy”!
I attacked the Provisional Government for not having appointed an early date or any date at all, for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and for confining itself to promises. I argued that without the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible.
And the view is attributed to me that I am opposed to the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly!
I would call this “raving”, had not decades of political struggle taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.
Mr. Plekhanov in his paper called my speech “raving”. Very good, Mr. Plekhanov! But look how awkward, uncouth and slow-witted you are in your polemics. If I delivered a raving speech for two hours, how is it that an audience of hundreds tolerated this “raving”? Further, why does your paper devote a whole column to an account of the “raving”? Inconsistent, highly inconsistent!
It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain, to recall what Marx and Engels said in 1871, 1872 and 1875 about the experience of the Paris Commune and about the kind of state the proletariat needs. [See: The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme]
Ex-Marxist Mr. Plekhanov evidently does not care to recall Marxism.
I quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg, who on August 4, 1914, called German Social-Democracy a “stinking corpse”. And the Plekhanovs, Goldenbergs and Co. feel “offended”. On whose behalf? On behalf of the German chauvinists, because they were called chauvinists!
They have got themselves in a mess, these poor Russian social-chauvinists—socialists in word and chauvinists in deed.
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Notes
[1] i.e. the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.—Lenin
[2] i.e., a state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype.—Lenin
[3] Instead of “Social-Democracy”, whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the “defencists” and the vacillating “Kautskyites”), we must call ourselves the Communist Party.—Lenin
[4] The “Centre” in the international Social-Democratic movement is the trend which vacillates between the chauvinists (=“defencists”) and internationalists, i.e., Kautsky and Co. in Germany, Longuet and Co. in France, Chkheidze and Co. in Russia, Turati and Co. in Italy, MacDonald and Co. in Britain, etc.—Lenin
Markin comment:
In honor of the 142nd birthday anniversary of the great Russian revolutionary and leader of the Bolshevik Party, Vladimir Lenin. And the leader, along with Leon Trotsky, come hell or high water, of the only successful workers' revolution in history, thus far. Forward
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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution
[a.k.a. The April Theses]
Published: April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the newspaper text.
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 24, pp. 19-26.
Translated: Isaacs Bernard
Transcription: Zodiac
HTML Markup: B. Baggins
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005), marx.org (1997), marxists.org (1999). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
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This article contains Lenin’s famous April Theses read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, on April 4, 1917.
[Introduction]
I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.
The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself—and for honest opponents—was to prepare the theses in writing. I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tsereteli. I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
I publish these personal theses of mine with only the briefest explanatory notes, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.
THESES
1) In our attitude towards the war, which under the new [provisional] government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.
The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.
In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.
The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.
Fraternisation.
2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.
This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.
This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.
3) No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding “demand” that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.
4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee (Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.
The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.
As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.
5) Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.
Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.[1]
The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.
6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.
Confiscation of all landed estates.
Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and for the public account.
7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
8) It is not our immediate task to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
9) Party tasks:
(a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;
(b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly:
(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war,
(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a “commune state”[2];
(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme;
(c) Change of the Party’s name.[3]
10. A new International.
We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the “Centre”.[4]
In order that the reader may understand why I had especially to emphasise as a rare exception the “case” of honest opponents, I invite him to compare the above theses with the following objection by Mr. Goldenberg: Lenin, he said, “has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy” (quoted in No. 5 of Mr. Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo).
Isn’t it a gem?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism ... in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them....”
Yet the bourgeois gentlemen who call themselves Social-Democrats, who do not belong either to the broad sections or to the mass believers in defencism, with serene brow present my views thus: “The banner[!] of civil war” (of which there is not a word in the theses and not a word in my speech!) has been planted(!) “in the midst [!!] of revolutionary democracy...”.
What does this mean? In what way does this differ from riot-inciting agitation, from Russkaya Volya?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and therefore our task is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.”
Yet opponents of a certain brand present my views as a call to “civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy”!
I attacked the Provisional Government for not having appointed an early date or any date at all, for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and for confining itself to promises. I argued that without the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible.
And the view is attributed to me that I am opposed to the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly!
I would call this “raving”, had not decades of political struggle taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.
Mr. Plekhanov in his paper called my speech “raving”. Very good, Mr. Plekhanov! But look how awkward, uncouth and slow-witted you are in your polemics. If I delivered a raving speech for two hours, how is it that an audience of hundreds tolerated this “raving”? Further, why does your paper devote a whole column to an account of the “raving”? Inconsistent, highly inconsistent!
It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain, to recall what Marx and Engels said in 1871, 1872 and 1875 about the experience of the Paris Commune and about the kind of state the proletariat needs. [See: The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme]
Ex-Marxist Mr. Plekhanov evidently does not care to recall Marxism.
I quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg, who on August 4, 1914, called German Social-Democracy a “stinking corpse”. And the Plekhanovs, Goldenbergs and Co. feel “offended”. On whose behalf? On behalf of the German chauvinists, because they were called chauvinists!
They have got themselves in a mess, these poor Russian social-chauvinists—socialists in word and chauvinists in deed.
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Notes
[1] i.e. the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.—Lenin
[2] i.e., a state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype.—Lenin
[3] Instead of “Social-Democracy”, whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the “defencists” and the vacillating “Kautskyites”), we must call ourselves the Communist Party.—Lenin
[4] The “Centre” in the international Social-Democratic movement is the trend which vacillates between the chauvinists (=“defencists”) and internationalists, i.e., Kautsky and Co. in Germany, Longuet and Co. in France, Chkheidze and Co. in Russia, Turati and Co. in Italy, MacDonald and Co. in Britain, etc.—Lenin
On His Birthday Anniversary -From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin-May Day Action by the Revolutionary Proletariat (1913)
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
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V. I. Lenin
May Day Action by the Revolutionary Proletariat
Published:Sotsial-Demokrat No. 31, June 15 (28), 1913. Published according to the Sotsial-Demokrat text.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 19, pages 218-227.
Translated: The Late George Hanna
Transcription: R. Cymbala
HTML Markup: B. Baggins and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (1996). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
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A year has passed since the Lena events and the first, decisive upsurgence in the revolutionary working-class movement since the June Third coup. The tsar’s Black Hundreds and the landowners, the mob of officials and the bourgeoisie have celebrated the 300th anniversary of plunder, Tatar incursions, and the disgracing of Russia by the Romanovs. The Fourth Duma has convened and begun its “work”, though it has no faith in that work and has quite lost its former counter-revolutionary vigour. Confusion and tedium have beset liberal society, which is listlessly making appeals for reforms while admitting the impracticability of anything even approximating reform.
And now comes a May Day action by Russia’s working class, who first held a rehearsal in Riga, then went into resolute action in St. Petersburg on May 1. (0.S.); this action has rent the dun and dreary atmosphere like a thunderbolt. The tasks of the approaching revolution have come to the fore again in all their grandeur, and the forces of the advanced class leading it stand out in bold relief before hundreds of old revolutionaries, whom persecution by hang men and desertion by friends have not defeated or broken, and before millions of people of the new generation of democrats and socialists.
Weeks before May Day, the government appeared to have lost its wits, while the gentlemen who own factories behaved as if they had never had any wits at all. The arrests and searches seemed to have turned all the workers’ districts in the capital upside down. The provinces did not lag behind the centre. The harassed factory owners called conferences and adopted contradictory slogans, now threatening the workers with punishment and lock-outs, now making concessions in advance and consenting to stop work, now inciting the government to commit atrocities, now reproaching the government and calling on it to include May Day in the number of official holidays.
But even though the gendarmes showed the utmost zeal, even though they “purged” the industrial suburbs, even though they made arrests right and left according to their latest “lists of suspects”, it was no use. The workers laughed at the impotent rage of the tsar’s gang and the capitalist class and derided the governor’s menacing and pitiful “announcements”; they wrote satirical verses and circulated them by hand or passed them on by word of mouth; they produced, as if from nowhere fresh batches of small, poorly printed “leaflets”, short and plain, but very instructive, calling for strikes and demonstrations, and reminding the people of the old, uncurtailed, revolutionary slogans of the Social-Democrats, who in 1905 led the first onslaught of the masses against the autocracy and against monarchy.
A hundred thousand on strike on May Day, said the government press the next day. Bourgeois newspapers, using the first telegraphed information, reported a hundred and twenty-five thousand (Kievskaya Mysl). A correspondent of the central organ of the German Social-Democrats wired from St. Petersburg that it was a hundred and fifty thousand. And the day after the whole bourgeois press quoted a figure of 200,000–220,000. Actually the number of strikers reached 250,000!
But, apart from the number of May Day strikers, much more impressive—and much more significant—were the revolutionary street demonstrations held by the workers. Everywhere in and around the capital crowds of workers singing revolutionary songs, calling loudly for revolution and carrying red flags fought for several hours against police and security forces frantically mobilised by the government. And those workers made the keenest of the tsar s henchmen feel that the struggle was in earnest, that the police were not faced with a handful of individuals engaged in a trivial Slavophil affair,[2] that it was actually the masses of the capital’s working class who had risen.
This was a really brilliant, open demonstration of the proletariat’s revolutionary aspirations, of its revolutionary forces steeled and reinforced by new generations, of revolutionary appeals to the people and the peoples of Russia. Last year the government and the manufacturers were able to take comfort from the fact that the Lena explosion could not have been foreseen, that they could not have made immediate preparations to combat its consequences; this time, however, the monarchy had displayed acute foresight, there had been ample time for preparation and the “measures” taken were most “vigorous”; the result was that the tsarist monarchy revealed its complete impotence when faced with a revolutionary awakening of the proletarian masses.
Indeed, one year of strike struggle since Lena has shown, despite the pitiful outcries of the liberals and their yes-men against the “craze for striking”, against “syndicalist” strikes, against combining economic with political strikes and vice versa—this year has shown what a great and irreplaceable weapon for agitation among the masses, for rousing them, for drawing them into the struggle the Social-Democratic proletariat had forged for itself in the revolutionary epoch. The revolutionary mass-scale strike allowed the enemy neither rest nor respite. It also hit the enemy’s purse, and in full view of the whole world it trampled into the mud the political prestige of the allegedly “strong” tsarist government. It enabled more and more sections of the workers to regain at least a small part of what had been achieved in 1905 and drew fresh sections of the working people, even the most backward, into the struggle. It did not exhaust the capacity of the workers, it was frequently demonstrative action of short duration, and at the same time it paved the way for further, still more impressive and more revolutionary open action by the masses in the shape of street demonstrations.
During the last year, no country in the world has seen so many people on strike for political ends as Russia, or such perseverance, such variety, such vigour in strikes. This circumstance alone shows to the full the pettiness, the contemptible stupidity of those liberal and liquidationist sages who tried to “adjust” the tactics of the Russian workers in 1912–13, using the yardstick of “European” constitutional periods, periods that were mainly devoted to the preparatory work of bringing socialist education and enlightenment, to the masses.
The colossal superiority of the Russian strikes over those in the European countries, the most advanced countries, demonstrates, not the special qualities or special abilities of Russia’s workers, but the special conditions in present-day Russia, the existence of a revolutionary situation, the growth of a directly revolutionary crisis. When the moment of a similar growth of revolution approaches in Europe (there it will be a socialist and not a bourgeois-democratic revolution, as in our country), the proletariat of the most developed capitalist countries will launch far more vigorous revolutionary strikes, demonstrations, and armed struggle against the defenders of wage-slavery.
This year’s May Day strike, like the series of strikes in Russia during the last eighteen months, was revolutionary in character as distinguished not only from the usual economic strikes but from demonstration strikes and from political strikes demanding constitutional reforms, like, for instance, the last Belgian strike.[3] Those who are in bond age to a liberal world outlook and no longer able to consider things from the revolutionary standpoint, cannot possibly understand this distinctive character of the Russian strikes, a character that is due entirely to the revolutionary state of Russia. The epoch of counter-revolution and of free play for renegade sentiment has left behind it too many people of this kind even among those who would like to be called Social-Democrats.
Russia is experiencing a revolutionary situation because the oppression of the vast majority of the population—not only of the proletariat but of nine-tenths of the small producers, particularly the peasants—has intensified to the maximum, and this intensified oppression, starvation, poverty, lack of rights, humiliation of the people is, further more, glaringly inconsistent with the state of Russia’s productive forces, inconsistent with the level of the class consciousness and the demands of the masses roused by the year 1905, and inconsistent with the state of affairs in all neighbouring not only European but Asian—countries.
But that is not all. Oppression alone, no matter how great, does not always give rise to a revolutionary situation in a country. In most cases it is not enough for revolution that the lower classes should not want to live in the old way. It is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to rule and govern in the old way. This is what we see in Russia today. A political crisis is maturing before our very eyes. The bourgeoisie has done everything in its power to back counter-revolution and ensure “peaceful development” on this counter-revolutionary basis. The bourgeoisie gave hangmen and feudal lords as much money as they wanted, the bourgeoisie reviled the revolution and renounced it, the bourgeoisie licked the boots of Purishkevich and the knout of Markov the Second and became their lackey, the bourgeoisie evolved theories based on “European” arguments, theories that revile the Revolution of 1905 as an “intellectualist” revolution and describe it as wicked, criminal, treasonous, and so on and so forth.
And yet, despite all this sacrificing of its purse, its honour and its conscience, the bourgeoisie—from the Cadets to the Octobrists—itself admits that the autocracy and land owners were unable to ensure “peaceful development”, were unable to provide the basic conditions for “law” and “order”, without which a capitalist country cannot, in the twentieth century, live side by side with Germany and the new China.
A nation-wide political crisis is in evidence in Russia, a crisis which affects the very foundation of the state system and not just parts of it, which affects the foundation of the edifice and not an outbuilding, not merely one of its storeys. No matter how many glib phrases our liberals and liquidators trot out to the effect that “we have, thank God, a constitution” and that political reforms are on the order of the day (only very limited people do not see the close connection between these two propositions), no matter how much of this reformist verbiage is poured out, the fact remains that not a single liquidator or liberal can point to any reformist way out of the situation.
The condition of the mass of the population in Russia, the aggravation of their position owing to the new agrarian policy (to which the feudal landowners had to snatch at as their last means of salvation), the international situation, and the nature of the general political crisis that has taken shape in our country—such is the sum-total of the objective conditions making Russia’s situation a revolutionary one because of the impossibility of carrying out the tasks of a bourgeois revolution by following the present course and by the means available to the government and the exploiting classes.
Such is the social, economic, and political situation, such is the class relationship in Russia that has given rise to a specific type of strike impossible in modern Europe, from which all sorts of renegades would like to borrow the example, not of yesterday’s bourgeois revolutions (through which shine gleams of tomorrow’s proletarian revolution), but of today’s “constitutional” situation. Neither the oppression of the lower classes nor a crisis among the upper classes can cause a revolution; they can only cause the decay of a country, unless that country has a revolutionary class capable of transforming the passive state of oppression into an active state of revolt and insurrection.
The role of a truly advanced class, a class really able to rouse the masses to revolution, really capable of saving Russia from decay, is played by the industrial proletariat. This is the task it fulfils by means of its revolutionary strikes. These strikes, which the liberals hate and the liquidators cannot understand, are (as the February resolution of the R.S.D.L.P. puts it) “one of the most effective means of overcoming the apathy, despair, and disunion of the agricultural proletariat and the peasantry, ... and drawing them into the most concerted, simultaneous, and extensive revolutionary actions”.[1]
The working class draws into revolutionary action the masses of the working and exploited people, who are deprived of basic rights and driven to despair. The working class teaches them revolutionary struggle, trains them for revolutionary action, and explains to them where to find the way out and how to attain salvation. The working class teaches them, not merely by words, but by deeds, by example, and the example is provided not by the adventures of solitary heroes but by mass revolutionary action combining political and economic demands.
How plain, how clear, how close these thoughts are to every honest worker who grasps even the rudiments of the theory of socialism and democracy! And how alien they are to those traitors to socialism and betrayers of democracy from among the intelligentsia, who revile or deride the “underground” in liquidationist newspapers, assuring naive simpletons that they are “also Social-Democrats”.
The May Day action of the proletariat of St. Petersburg, supported by that of the proletariat of all Russia, clearly showed once again to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear the great historic importance of the revolutionary underground in present-day Russia. The only R.S.D.L.P. Party organisation in St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg Committee, compelled even the bourgeois press, before the May Day action as well as on the eve of January 9, and on the eve of the Tercentenary of the Romanovs as well as on April 4,[4] to note that St. Petersburg Committee leaflets had appeared again and again in the factories.
Those leaflets cost colossal sacrifices. Sometimes they are quite unattractive in appearance. Some of them, the appeals for demonstration on April 4, for instance, merely announce the hour and place of the demonstration, in six lines evidently set in secret and with extreme haste in different printing shops and in different types. We have people (“also Social-Democrats”) who, when alluding to these conditions of “underground” work, snigger maliciously or curl a contemptuous lip and ask: “If the entire Party were limited to the underground, how many members would it have? Two or three hundred?” [See No. 95 (181) of Luch, a renegade organ, in its editorial defence of Mr. Sedov, who has the sad courage to be an outspoken liquidator. This issue of Luch appeared five days before the May Day action, i.e., at the very time the underground was preparing the leaflets!]
Messrs. Dan, Potresov and Co., who make these disgraceful statements, must know that there were thousands of proletarians in the Party ranks as early as 1903, and 150 thousand in 1907, that even now thousands and tens of thousands of workers print and circulate underground leaflets, as members of underground R.S.D.L.P. cells. But the liquidationist gentlemen know that they are protected by Stolypin “legality” from a legal refutation of their foul lies and their “grimaces”, which are fouler still, at the expense of the underground.
See to what extent these despicable people have lost touch with the mass working-class movement and with revolutionary work in general! Use even their own yardstick, deliberately falsified to suit the liberals. You may assume for a moment that “two or three hundred” workers in St. Petersburg took part in printing and distributing those underground leaflets.
What is the result? “Two or three hundred” workers, the flower of the St. Petersburg proletariat, people who not only call themselves Social-Democrats but work as Social-Democrats, people who are esteemed and appreciated for it by the entire working class of Russia, people who do not prate about a “broad party” but make up in actual fact the only underground Social-Democratic Party existing in Russia, these people print and circulate underground leaflets. The Luch liquidators (protected by Stolypin censors) laugh contemptuously at the “two or three hundred”, the “underground” and its “exaggerated” importance, etc.
And suddenly, a miracle occurs! In accordance with a decision drawn up by half a dozen members of the Executive Commission of the St. Petersburg Committee—a leaflet printed and circulated by “two or three hundred”—two hundred and fifty thousand people rise as one man in St. Petersburg.
The leaflets and the revolutionary speeches by workers at meetings and demonstrations do not speak of an “open working-class party”, “freedom of association” or reforms of that kind, with the phantoms of which the liberals are fooling the people. They speak of revolution as the only way out. They speak of the republic as the only slogan which, in contrast to liberal lies about reforms, indicates the change needed to ensure freedom, indicates the forces capable of rising consciously to defend it.
The two million inhabitants of St. Petersburg see and hear these appeals for revolution which go to the hearts of all toiling and oppressed sections of the people. All St. Petersburg sees from a real, mass-scale example what is the real way out and what is lying liberal talk about reforms. Thousands of workers’ contacts—and hundreds of bourgeois news papers, which are compelled to report the St. Petersburg mass action at least in snatches—spread throughout Russia the news of the stubborn strike campaign of the capital’s proletariat. Both the mass of the peasantry and the peasants serving in the army hear this news of strikes, of the revolutionary demands of the workers, of their struggle for a republic and for the confiscation of the landed estates for the benefit of the peasants. Slowly but surely, the revolutionary strikes are stirring, rousing, enlightening, and organising the masses of the people for revolution.
The “two or three hundred” “underground people” express the interests and needs of millions and tens of millions, they tell them the truth about their hopeless position, open their eyes to the necessity of revolutionary struggle, imbue them with faith in it, provide them with the correct slogans, and win these masses away from the influence of the high-sounding and thoroughly spurious, reformist slogans of the bourgeoisie. And “two or three” dozen liquidators from among the intelligentsia, using money collected abroad and among liberal merchants to fool unenlightened workers, are carrying the slogans of that bourgeoisie into the workers’ midst.
The May Day strike, like all the revolutionary strikes of 1912–13, has made clear the three political camps into which present-day Russia is divided. The camp of hangmen and feudal lords, of monarchy and the secret police. It has done its utmost in the way of atrocities and is already impotent against the masses of the workers. The camp of the bourgeoisie, all of whom, from the Cadets to the Octobrists, are shouting and moaning, calling for reforms and making fools of themselves by thinking that reforms are possible in Russia. The camp of the revolution, the only camp expressing the interests of the oppressed masses.
All the ideological work, all the political work in this camp is carried out by underground Social-Democrats alone, by those who know how to use every legal opportunity in the spirit of Social-Democracy and who are inseparably hound up with the advanced class, the proletariat. No one can tell beforehand whether this advanced class will succeed in leading the masses all the way to a victorious revolution. But this class is fulfilling its duty—leading the masses to that solution—despite all the vacillations and betrayals on the part of the liberals and those who are “also Social-Democrats”. All the living and vital elements of Russian socialism and Russian democracy are being educated solely by the example of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, and under its guidance.
This year’s May Day action has shown to the whole world that the Russian proletariat is steadfastly following its revolutionary course, apart from which there is no salvation for a Russia that is suffocating and decaying alive.
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Notes
[1]See present edition, Vol. 18, p. 457.—Ed.
[2]This refers to the Slavophil demonstrations organised by reactionary nationalist elements in St. Petersburg on March 17, 18 and 24 (March 30 and 31 and April 6), 1913 on the occasion of the Serbo Bulgarian victories over the Turks during the first Balkan War. The reactionaries tried to use the national liberation struggle of the Balkan peoples in the interests of the expansionist, Great-Power politics of Russian tsarism in the Near East.
[3]The strike referred to here took place in Belgium from April 14 to April 24 (N. S.), 1913. It was a general strike of the Belgian proletariat demanding a constitutional reform—the introduction of universal suffrage. Of the more than one million Belgian workers, between 400,000 and 500,000 took part in the strike. The development of the strike was regularly reported in Pravda, and lists of Russian workers’ contributions in aid of the strike were also printed.
[4] April 4, 1913 was the first anniversary of the shooting of workers in the Lena Goldfields; it was marked by a one–day strike of St. Petersburg workers in which over 85,000 people participated.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
************
V. I. Lenin
May Day Action by the Revolutionary Proletariat
Published:Sotsial-Demokrat No. 31, June 15 (28), 1913. Published according to the Sotsial-Demokrat text.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1977, Moscow, Volume 19, pages 218-227.
Translated: The Late George Hanna
Transcription: R. Cymbala
HTML Markup: B. Baggins and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (1996). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
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A year has passed since the Lena events and the first, decisive upsurgence in the revolutionary working-class movement since the June Third coup. The tsar’s Black Hundreds and the landowners, the mob of officials and the bourgeoisie have celebrated the 300th anniversary of plunder, Tatar incursions, and the disgracing of Russia by the Romanovs. The Fourth Duma has convened and begun its “work”, though it has no faith in that work and has quite lost its former counter-revolutionary vigour. Confusion and tedium have beset liberal society, which is listlessly making appeals for reforms while admitting the impracticability of anything even approximating reform.
And now comes a May Day action by Russia’s working class, who first held a rehearsal in Riga, then went into resolute action in St. Petersburg on May 1. (0.S.); this action has rent the dun and dreary atmosphere like a thunderbolt. The tasks of the approaching revolution have come to the fore again in all their grandeur, and the forces of the advanced class leading it stand out in bold relief before hundreds of old revolutionaries, whom persecution by hang men and desertion by friends have not defeated or broken, and before millions of people of the new generation of democrats and socialists.
Weeks before May Day, the government appeared to have lost its wits, while the gentlemen who own factories behaved as if they had never had any wits at all. The arrests and searches seemed to have turned all the workers’ districts in the capital upside down. The provinces did not lag behind the centre. The harassed factory owners called conferences and adopted contradictory slogans, now threatening the workers with punishment and lock-outs, now making concessions in advance and consenting to stop work, now inciting the government to commit atrocities, now reproaching the government and calling on it to include May Day in the number of official holidays.
But even though the gendarmes showed the utmost zeal, even though they “purged” the industrial suburbs, even though they made arrests right and left according to their latest “lists of suspects”, it was no use. The workers laughed at the impotent rage of the tsar’s gang and the capitalist class and derided the governor’s menacing and pitiful “announcements”; they wrote satirical verses and circulated them by hand or passed them on by word of mouth; they produced, as if from nowhere fresh batches of small, poorly printed “leaflets”, short and plain, but very instructive, calling for strikes and demonstrations, and reminding the people of the old, uncurtailed, revolutionary slogans of the Social-Democrats, who in 1905 led the first onslaught of the masses against the autocracy and against monarchy.
A hundred thousand on strike on May Day, said the government press the next day. Bourgeois newspapers, using the first telegraphed information, reported a hundred and twenty-five thousand (Kievskaya Mysl). A correspondent of the central organ of the German Social-Democrats wired from St. Petersburg that it was a hundred and fifty thousand. And the day after the whole bourgeois press quoted a figure of 200,000–220,000. Actually the number of strikers reached 250,000!
But, apart from the number of May Day strikers, much more impressive—and much more significant—were the revolutionary street demonstrations held by the workers. Everywhere in and around the capital crowds of workers singing revolutionary songs, calling loudly for revolution and carrying red flags fought for several hours against police and security forces frantically mobilised by the government. And those workers made the keenest of the tsar s henchmen feel that the struggle was in earnest, that the police were not faced with a handful of individuals engaged in a trivial Slavophil affair,[2] that it was actually the masses of the capital’s working class who had risen.
This was a really brilliant, open demonstration of the proletariat’s revolutionary aspirations, of its revolutionary forces steeled and reinforced by new generations, of revolutionary appeals to the people and the peoples of Russia. Last year the government and the manufacturers were able to take comfort from the fact that the Lena explosion could not have been foreseen, that they could not have made immediate preparations to combat its consequences; this time, however, the monarchy had displayed acute foresight, there had been ample time for preparation and the “measures” taken were most “vigorous”; the result was that the tsarist monarchy revealed its complete impotence when faced with a revolutionary awakening of the proletarian masses.
Indeed, one year of strike struggle since Lena has shown, despite the pitiful outcries of the liberals and their yes-men against the “craze for striking”, against “syndicalist” strikes, against combining economic with political strikes and vice versa—this year has shown what a great and irreplaceable weapon for agitation among the masses, for rousing them, for drawing them into the struggle the Social-Democratic proletariat had forged for itself in the revolutionary epoch. The revolutionary mass-scale strike allowed the enemy neither rest nor respite. It also hit the enemy’s purse, and in full view of the whole world it trampled into the mud the political prestige of the allegedly “strong” tsarist government. It enabled more and more sections of the workers to regain at least a small part of what had been achieved in 1905 and drew fresh sections of the working people, even the most backward, into the struggle. It did not exhaust the capacity of the workers, it was frequently demonstrative action of short duration, and at the same time it paved the way for further, still more impressive and more revolutionary open action by the masses in the shape of street demonstrations.
During the last year, no country in the world has seen so many people on strike for political ends as Russia, or such perseverance, such variety, such vigour in strikes. This circumstance alone shows to the full the pettiness, the contemptible stupidity of those liberal and liquidationist sages who tried to “adjust” the tactics of the Russian workers in 1912–13, using the yardstick of “European” constitutional periods, periods that were mainly devoted to the preparatory work of bringing socialist education and enlightenment, to the masses.
The colossal superiority of the Russian strikes over those in the European countries, the most advanced countries, demonstrates, not the special qualities or special abilities of Russia’s workers, but the special conditions in present-day Russia, the existence of a revolutionary situation, the growth of a directly revolutionary crisis. When the moment of a similar growth of revolution approaches in Europe (there it will be a socialist and not a bourgeois-democratic revolution, as in our country), the proletariat of the most developed capitalist countries will launch far more vigorous revolutionary strikes, demonstrations, and armed struggle against the defenders of wage-slavery.
This year’s May Day strike, like the series of strikes in Russia during the last eighteen months, was revolutionary in character as distinguished not only from the usual economic strikes but from demonstration strikes and from political strikes demanding constitutional reforms, like, for instance, the last Belgian strike.[3] Those who are in bond age to a liberal world outlook and no longer able to consider things from the revolutionary standpoint, cannot possibly understand this distinctive character of the Russian strikes, a character that is due entirely to the revolutionary state of Russia. The epoch of counter-revolution and of free play for renegade sentiment has left behind it too many people of this kind even among those who would like to be called Social-Democrats.
Russia is experiencing a revolutionary situation because the oppression of the vast majority of the population—not only of the proletariat but of nine-tenths of the small producers, particularly the peasants—has intensified to the maximum, and this intensified oppression, starvation, poverty, lack of rights, humiliation of the people is, further more, glaringly inconsistent with the state of Russia’s productive forces, inconsistent with the level of the class consciousness and the demands of the masses roused by the year 1905, and inconsistent with the state of affairs in all neighbouring not only European but Asian—countries.
But that is not all. Oppression alone, no matter how great, does not always give rise to a revolutionary situation in a country. In most cases it is not enough for revolution that the lower classes should not want to live in the old way. It is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to rule and govern in the old way. This is what we see in Russia today. A political crisis is maturing before our very eyes. The bourgeoisie has done everything in its power to back counter-revolution and ensure “peaceful development” on this counter-revolutionary basis. The bourgeoisie gave hangmen and feudal lords as much money as they wanted, the bourgeoisie reviled the revolution and renounced it, the bourgeoisie licked the boots of Purishkevich and the knout of Markov the Second and became their lackey, the bourgeoisie evolved theories based on “European” arguments, theories that revile the Revolution of 1905 as an “intellectualist” revolution and describe it as wicked, criminal, treasonous, and so on and so forth.
And yet, despite all this sacrificing of its purse, its honour and its conscience, the bourgeoisie—from the Cadets to the Octobrists—itself admits that the autocracy and land owners were unable to ensure “peaceful development”, were unable to provide the basic conditions for “law” and “order”, without which a capitalist country cannot, in the twentieth century, live side by side with Germany and the new China.
A nation-wide political crisis is in evidence in Russia, a crisis which affects the very foundation of the state system and not just parts of it, which affects the foundation of the edifice and not an outbuilding, not merely one of its storeys. No matter how many glib phrases our liberals and liquidators trot out to the effect that “we have, thank God, a constitution” and that political reforms are on the order of the day (only very limited people do not see the close connection between these two propositions), no matter how much of this reformist verbiage is poured out, the fact remains that not a single liquidator or liberal can point to any reformist way out of the situation.
The condition of the mass of the population in Russia, the aggravation of their position owing to the new agrarian policy (to which the feudal landowners had to snatch at as their last means of salvation), the international situation, and the nature of the general political crisis that has taken shape in our country—such is the sum-total of the objective conditions making Russia’s situation a revolutionary one because of the impossibility of carrying out the tasks of a bourgeois revolution by following the present course and by the means available to the government and the exploiting classes.
Such is the social, economic, and political situation, such is the class relationship in Russia that has given rise to a specific type of strike impossible in modern Europe, from which all sorts of renegades would like to borrow the example, not of yesterday’s bourgeois revolutions (through which shine gleams of tomorrow’s proletarian revolution), but of today’s “constitutional” situation. Neither the oppression of the lower classes nor a crisis among the upper classes can cause a revolution; they can only cause the decay of a country, unless that country has a revolutionary class capable of transforming the passive state of oppression into an active state of revolt and insurrection.
The role of a truly advanced class, a class really able to rouse the masses to revolution, really capable of saving Russia from decay, is played by the industrial proletariat. This is the task it fulfils by means of its revolutionary strikes. These strikes, which the liberals hate and the liquidators cannot understand, are (as the February resolution of the R.S.D.L.P. puts it) “one of the most effective means of overcoming the apathy, despair, and disunion of the agricultural proletariat and the peasantry, ... and drawing them into the most concerted, simultaneous, and extensive revolutionary actions”.[1]
The working class draws into revolutionary action the masses of the working and exploited people, who are deprived of basic rights and driven to despair. The working class teaches them revolutionary struggle, trains them for revolutionary action, and explains to them where to find the way out and how to attain salvation. The working class teaches them, not merely by words, but by deeds, by example, and the example is provided not by the adventures of solitary heroes but by mass revolutionary action combining political and economic demands.
How plain, how clear, how close these thoughts are to every honest worker who grasps even the rudiments of the theory of socialism and democracy! And how alien they are to those traitors to socialism and betrayers of democracy from among the intelligentsia, who revile or deride the “underground” in liquidationist newspapers, assuring naive simpletons that they are “also Social-Democrats”.
The May Day action of the proletariat of St. Petersburg, supported by that of the proletariat of all Russia, clearly showed once again to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear the great historic importance of the revolutionary underground in present-day Russia. The only R.S.D.L.P. Party organisation in St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg Committee, compelled even the bourgeois press, before the May Day action as well as on the eve of January 9, and on the eve of the Tercentenary of the Romanovs as well as on April 4,[4] to note that St. Petersburg Committee leaflets had appeared again and again in the factories.
Those leaflets cost colossal sacrifices. Sometimes they are quite unattractive in appearance. Some of them, the appeals for demonstration on April 4, for instance, merely announce the hour and place of the demonstration, in six lines evidently set in secret and with extreme haste in different printing shops and in different types. We have people (“also Social-Democrats”) who, when alluding to these conditions of “underground” work, snigger maliciously or curl a contemptuous lip and ask: “If the entire Party were limited to the underground, how many members would it have? Two or three hundred?” [See No. 95 (181) of Luch, a renegade organ, in its editorial defence of Mr. Sedov, who has the sad courage to be an outspoken liquidator. This issue of Luch appeared five days before the May Day action, i.e., at the very time the underground was preparing the leaflets!]
Messrs. Dan, Potresov and Co., who make these disgraceful statements, must know that there were thousands of proletarians in the Party ranks as early as 1903, and 150 thousand in 1907, that even now thousands and tens of thousands of workers print and circulate underground leaflets, as members of underground R.S.D.L.P. cells. But the liquidationist gentlemen know that they are protected by Stolypin “legality” from a legal refutation of their foul lies and their “grimaces”, which are fouler still, at the expense of the underground.
See to what extent these despicable people have lost touch with the mass working-class movement and with revolutionary work in general! Use even their own yardstick, deliberately falsified to suit the liberals. You may assume for a moment that “two or three hundred” workers in St. Petersburg took part in printing and distributing those underground leaflets.
What is the result? “Two or three hundred” workers, the flower of the St. Petersburg proletariat, people who not only call themselves Social-Democrats but work as Social-Democrats, people who are esteemed and appreciated for it by the entire working class of Russia, people who do not prate about a “broad party” but make up in actual fact the only underground Social-Democratic Party existing in Russia, these people print and circulate underground leaflets. The Luch liquidators (protected by Stolypin censors) laugh contemptuously at the “two or three hundred”, the “underground” and its “exaggerated” importance, etc.
And suddenly, a miracle occurs! In accordance with a decision drawn up by half a dozen members of the Executive Commission of the St. Petersburg Committee—a leaflet printed and circulated by “two or three hundred”—two hundred and fifty thousand people rise as one man in St. Petersburg.
The leaflets and the revolutionary speeches by workers at meetings and demonstrations do not speak of an “open working-class party”, “freedom of association” or reforms of that kind, with the phantoms of which the liberals are fooling the people. They speak of revolution as the only way out. They speak of the republic as the only slogan which, in contrast to liberal lies about reforms, indicates the change needed to ensure freedom, indicates the forces capable of rising consciously to defend it.
The two million inhabitants of St. Petersburg see and hear these appeals for revolution which go to the hearts of all toiling and oppressed sections of the people. All St. Petersburg sees from a real, mass-scale example what is the real way out and what is lying liberal talk about reforms. Thousands of workers’ contacts—and hundreds of bourgeois news papers, which are compelled to report the St. Petersburg mass action at least in snatches—spread throughout Russia the news of the stubborn strike campaign of the capital’s proletariat. Both the mass of the peasantry and the peasants serving in the army hear this news of strikes, of the revolutionary demands of the workers, of their struggle for a republic and for the confiscation of the landed estates for the benefit of the peasants. Slowly but surely, the revolutionary strikes are stirring, rousing, enlightening, and organising the masses of the people for revolution.
The “two or three hundred” “underground people” express the interests and needs of millions and tens of millions, they tell them the truth about their hopeless position, open their eyes to the necessity of revolutionary struggle, imbue them with faith in it, provide them with the correct slogans, and win these masses away from the influence of the high-sounding and thoroughly spurious, reformist slogans of the bourgeoisie. And “two or three” dozen liquidators from among the intelligentsia, using money collected abroad and among liberal merchants to fool unenlightened workers, are carrying the slogans of that bourgeoisie into the workers’ midst.
The May Day strike, like all the revolutionary strikes of 1912–13, has made clear the three political camps into which present-day Russia is divided. The camp of hangmen and feudal lords, of monarchy and the secret police. It has done its utmost in the way of atrocities and is already impotent against the masses of the workers. The camp of the bourgeoisie, all of whom, from the Cadets to the Octobrists, are shouting and moaning, calling for reforms and making fools of themselves by thinking that reforms are possible in Russia. The camp of the revolution, the only camp expressing the interests of the oppressed masses.
All the ideological work, all the political work in this camp is carried out by underground Social-Democrats alone, by those who know how to use every legal opportunity in the spirit of Social-Democracy and who are inseparably hound up with the advanced class, the proletariat. No one can tell beforehand whether this advanced class will succeed in leading the masses all the way to a victorious revolution. But this class is fulfilling its duty—leading the masses to that solution—despite all the vacillations and betrayals on the part of the liberals and those who are “also Social-Democrats”. All the living and vital elements of Russian socialism and Russian democracy are being educated solely by the example of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, and under its guidance.
This year’s May Day action has shown to the whole world that the Russian proletariat is steadfastly following its revolutionary course, apart from which there is no salvation for a Russia that is suffocating and decaying alive.
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Notes
[1]See present edition, Vol. 18, p. 457.—Ed.
[2]This refers to the Slavophil demonstrations organised by reactionary nationalist elements in St. Petersburg on March 17, 18 and 24 (March 30 and 31 and April 6), 1913 on the occasion of the Serbo Bulgarian victories over the Turks during the first Balkan War. The reactionaries tried to use the national liberation struggle of the Balkan peoples in the interests of the expansionist, Great-Power politics of Russian tsarism in the Near East.
[3]The strike referred to here took place in Belgium from April 14 to April 24 (N. S.), 1913. It was a general strike of the Belgian proletariat demanding a constitutional reform—the introduction of universal suffrage. Of the more than one million Belgian workers, between 400,000 and 500,000 took part in the strike. The development of the strike was regularly reported in Pravda, and lists of Russian workers’ contributions in aid of the strike were also printed.
[4] April 4, 1913 was the first anniversary of the shooting of workers in the Lena Goldfields; it was marked by a one–day strike of St. Petersburg workers in which over 85,000 people participated.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
From The "Common Struggle" Newspaper #7-EL ORIGEN DEL 1° DE MAYO:La huelga general de 1886
EL ORIGEN DEL 1° DE MAYO:La huelga general de 1886
Nosotros, los que laboran en los Estados Unidos, no siempre han tenido un di'a laboral de 8 horas. Esto, como la mayor parte del progreso, fue logrado por medio de una lucha popular. Durante la epoca de los anos mil ochocientos, los trabajadores, incluyendo ninos, podrian sufrir trabajando 16 horas o mas al dfa bajo condiciones peligrosas y sofocantes «sweatshops.» Ellos ganaban sueldos miserables y trabajaban en condiciones muy estrechos. Tal como hoy en dfa, los patrones y el gobierno mantenfan a la clase trabajadora en un estado debil y acentuando las divisiones de raza, genero, el estatus migratorio y otras diferencias artificiales. En 1886 sin embargo, los trabajadores arrasaron con estas divisiones y se unieron en una clase, comenzando la lucha que logro el dfa laboral de 8 horas.
En Chicago, un fuerte movimiento laboral presiono por esto y fue premiado con una legislacion de 8 horas en 1867. Esto se suponfa que deberfa haber sido el 1° de mayo de ese ano pero, cuando vino ese dfa, los patrones ignoraron la ley y el gobierno no se impuso a que esto se cumpliera. Aunque cuando los trabajadores militantes de Chicago se pusieron en huelga, el gobierno envio a la policfa para destruir brutalmente la resistencia del pueblo. Los trabajadores desanimados volvieron a los trabajos. Para ellos, nada habfa cambiado excepto su conflanza en que los cambios pueden ser logrados por medio de las legislatures
En 1886, otro movimiento mas radical de las 8 horas gano popularidad, siendo guiado en Chicago por trabajadores inmigrantes y otros trabajadores en la organization anarquista la Asociacion Internacional de Trabajadores ("IWPA"). Una coalition nacional de uniones llamo a una huelga general para el 1° de Mayo, dicha huelga consiste en la participation de todos los trabajadores, sin importar su profesion, dejan de trabajar. Los trabajadores demuestran su poder al paralizar la economfa puesto que la sociedad no puede continuar funcionando; por otro lado, los jefes y el resto de la clase dominante, son inservibles e incluso son perjudiciales para una sociedad sana.
El 1° de Mayo de 1886, una cantidad de 750,000 trabajadores hicieron una huelga a traves de todo el pais-400,000 en Chicago solamente. 11,000 marcharon en Detroit, 25,000 en la
ciudad de Nueva York y 80,000 marcharon por las calles de Chicago. Esas manifestaciones de unidad aterrorizaron a la clase del poder. Con la determination de no ceder ninguna cosa y con la idea de mantener su riqueza mezquinamente, anteriormente robada del pobre, el rico se prepara para aplastar el movimiento con violencia.
El impetu de los trabajadores continue con las huelgas y manifestaciones. El 3 de Mayo los de la union de «empujadores madereros» en huelga tuvieron una junta de 6,000 cerca de la planta McGormick, La policfa ataco a los asistentes de la junta con el uso de pistolas y bastones matando a un trabajador y hiriendo a otros. Indignados, los anarquistas anunciaron una llamada en su periodico de lengua aleman, el Arbeiter-Zeitung (El Periodico de los Trabajadores), para una protesta el 4° de Mayo en la Plaza Haymarket.
Esa noche, miles se reunieron en Haymarket para denunciar la violencia policial. La multitud escucharon calmamente los discursos por los trabajadores anarquistas migrantes tal como August Spies y Samuel Fielden. Incluso el alcalde de Chicago, quien asistio a la primera mitad de la demostracion dijo: "nada parecfa que iba a suceded como para requerir la intervention de la policfa,» y el le aconsejo al capitan de policfa Bonfleld, que enviara a sus fuerzas a sus casas. Bonfleld no lo hizo. Alrededor de las diez de la noche, despues de que el alcalde y muchos de los asistentes se fueron, mientras Fielden anunciaba que la reunion concluiria, las fuerzas de 200 oflciales de Bonfleld marcharon hacia la concertacion de personas, amenazando violencia y exigiendo su termino. Una bomba exploto en las fllas de policfa, matando a uno de ellos instantaneamente e hiriendo a otros. En el caos, la policfa disparo sin hacer ninguna distincion, matando a 7 de sus propios oflciales y a muchos de los que participaban en la demostracion, aunque ellos nunca contaron a cuantos trabajadores mataron.
Esto fue seguido por un reino de terror durante la noche mientras el fiscal estatal recomendo publicamente a la policfa que se fljaran en los anarquistas: "primero hagan las redadas y despues revisen las leyes." La policfa arresto a todos los anarquistas conocidos y allanaron las salas de reuniones, oflcinas de imprenta y casas. Gomo resultado, 8 anarquistas discursantes prominentes, editores de periodicos y sindicalistas—August Spies, Sam Fielden, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg y Oscar Heebe—fueron acusados por el bombardeo de HaymarKet. De los 8 hombres, 7 de ellos eran inmigrantes y solo 3 estaban en HaymarKet esa noche. El fiscal estatal escogio de manera individual a un jurado parcial y no presento ninguna evidencia conectandoles con las bombas.
Tal cual la flscalfa discutid en la corte: «E1 anarquismo esta en juicio. Estos hombres nan sido seleccionados, escogidos por el Gran Tribunal y ban sido arrestados porque eran Ifderes. Ellos no son mas culpables que los miles que los siguen. Senores del jurado, sentencien a estos hombres, hagan de ellos un ejemplo, cuelguenlos y ustedes salvaran nuestras instituciones, nuestra sociedad.» Y asf lo hicieron. Todos recibieron la pena de muerte excepto Neebe, al cual se le dieron 15 anos de carcel. Una campana masiva internacional forzo al estado a acortar las sentencias de Schawab y Fielden a cadena perpetua pero, en Noviembre 11,1887, los Sres. Parsons, Engel, Spies y Fischer fueron ahorcados. El feroz carpintero aleman, Louis Lingg, engano al carcelero al suicidarse antes de que lo ejecutaran. Hubo usa asistencia de 600,000 personas a los funerales.
Mientras el incidente de HaymarKet fue visto inicialmente como un retroceso para el movimiento de las 8 horas, el evento logro a radicalizar mas personas, incluyendo a ciertos anarquistas influyentes como Emma Goldman y Voltairine de Gleyre. La Federacion Americana del Trabajo y los anarquistas de IWPA se lanzaron a las calles nuevamente el 1° de Mayo de 1890 y el movimiento de las 8 horas continue. Teniendo como legado a los Martires de HaymarKet, los sindicatos comenzaron a progresar. El sindicato de mineros, Los Trabajadores Unidos de las Minas, lograron un dfa laboral de 8 horas en su contracto laboral en 1898, como tambien el sindicato El Gonsejo de Gonstructores de San Francisco en 1900, los sindicatos de imprenta a traves de los EE.UU. en 1905 y los trabajadores de la companfa automotriz Ford Motor en 1914. En 1916, con la amenaza nacional de una huelga general, los trabajadores de ferrocarriles forzo al gobierno a pasar el Ley de Adamson, el cual les otorgo el dfa laboral de 8 horas, con pago adicional despues de las 8 horas.
Finalmente, en 1938, un movimiento masivo de trabajadores y de cesantes forzaron al gobierno de Roosevelt a que pasara la Ley Estandar Justa Laboral, estableciendose para muchos el dfa laboral de 8 horas con pago de sobretiempo, como tambien un salario mi'nimo y la abolicion de «la labor infantil opresiva.»
Nosotros, los que laboran en los Estados Unidos, no siempre han tenido un di'a laboral de 8 horas. Esto, como la mayor parte del progreso, fue logrado por medio de una lucha popular. Durante la epoca de los anos mil ochocientos, los trabajadores, incluyendo ninos, podrian sufrir trabajando 16 horas o mas al dfa bajo condiciones peligrosas y sofocantes «sweatshops.» Ellos ganaban sueldos miserables y trabajaban en condiciones muy estrechos. Tal como hoy en dfa, los patrones y el gobierno mantenfan a la clase trabajadora en un estado debil y acentuando las divisiones de raza, genero, el estatus migratorio y otras diferencias artificiales. En 1886 sin embargo, los trabajadores arrasaron con estas divisiones y se unieron en una clase, comenzando la lucha que logro el dfa laboral de 8 horas.
En Chicago, un fuerte movimiento laboral presiono por esto y fue premiado con una legislacion de 8 horas en 1867. Esto se suponfa que deberfa haber sido el 1° de mayo de ese ano pero, cuando vino ese dfa, los patrones ignoraron la ley y el gobierno no se impuso a que esto se cumpliera. Aunque cuando los trabajadores militantes de Chicago se pusieron en huelga, el gobierno envio a la policfa para destruir brutalmente la resistencia del pueblo. Los trabajadores desanimados volvieron a los trabajos. Para ellos, nada habfa cambiado excepto su conflanza en que los cambios pueden ser logrados por medio de las legislatures
En 1886, otro movimiento mas radical de las 8 horas gano popularidad, siendo guiado en Chicago por trabajadores inmigrantes y otros trabajadores en la organization anarquista la Asociacion Internacional de Trabajadores ("IWPA"). Una coalition nacional de uniones llamo a una huelga general para el 1° de Mayo, dicha huelga consiste en la participation de todos los trabajadores, sin importar su profesion, dejan de trabajar. Los trabajadores demuestran su poder al paralizar la economfa puesto que la sociedad no puede continuar funcionando; por otro lado, los jefes y el resto de la clase dominante, son inservibles e incluso son perjudiciales para una sociedad sana.
El 1° de Mayo de 1886, una cantidad de 750,000 trabajadores hicieron una huelga a traves de todo el pais-400,000 en Chicago solamente. 11,000 marcharon en Detroit, 25,000 en la
ciudad de Nueva York y 80,000 marcharon por las calles de Chicago. Esas manifestaciones de unidad aterrorizaron a la clase del poder. Con la determination de no ceder ninguna cosa y con la idea de mantener su riqueza mezquinamente, anteriormente robada del pobre, el rico se prepara para aplastar el movimiento con violencia.
El impetu de los trabajadores continue con las huelgas y manifestaciones. El 3 de Mayo los de la union de «empujadores madereros» en huelga tuvieron una junta de 6,000 cerca de la planta McGormick, La policfa ataco a los asistentes de la junta con el uso de pistolas y bastones matando a un trabajador y hiriendo a otros. Indignados, los anarquistas anunciaron una llamada en su periodico de lengua aleman, el Arbeiter-Zeitung (El Periodico de los Trabajadores), para una protesta el 4° de Mayo en la Plaza Haymarket.
Esa noche, miles se reunieron en Haymarket para denunciar la violencia policial. La multitud escucharon calmamente los discursos por los trabajadores anarquistas migrantes tal como August Spies y Samuel Fielden. Incluso el alcalde de Chicago, quien asistio a la primera mitad de la demostracion dijo: "nada parecfa que iba a suceded como para requerir la intervention de la policfa,» y el le aconsejo al capitan de policfa Bonfleld, que enviara a sus fuerzas a sus casas. Bonfleld no lo hizo. Alrededor de las diez de la noche, despues de que el alcalde y muchos de los asistentes se fueron, mientras Fielden anunciaba que la reunion concluiria, las fuerzas de 200 oflciales de Bonfleld marcharon hacia la concertacion de personas, amenazando violencia y exigiendo su termino. Una bomba exploto en las fllas de policfa, matando a uno de ellos instantaneamente e hiriendo a otros. En el caos, la policfa disparo sin hacer ninguna distincion, matando a 7 de sus propios oflciales y a muchos de los que participaban en la demostracion, aunque ellos nunca contaron a cuantos trabajadores mataron.
Esto fue seguido por un reino de terror durante la noche mientras el fiscal estatal recomendo publicamente a la policfa que se fljaran en los anarquistas: "primero hagan las redadas y despues revisen las leyes." La policfa arresto a todos los anarquistas conocidos y allanaron las salas de reuniones, oflcinas de imprenta y casas. Gomo resultado, 8 anarquistas discursantes prominentes, editores de periodicos y sindicalistas—August Spies, Sam Fielden, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg y Oscar Heebe—fueron acusados por el bombardeo de HaymarKet. De los 8 hombres, 7 de ellos eran inmigrantes y solo 3 estaban en HaymarKet esa noche. El fiscal estatal escogio de manera individual a un jurado parcial y no presento ninguna evidencia conectandoles con las bombas.
Tal cual la flscalfa discutid en la corte: «E1 anarquismo esta en juicio. Estos hombres nan sido seleccionados, escogidos por el Gran Tribunal y ban sido arrestados porque eran Ifderes. Ellos no son mas culpables que los miles que los siguen. Senores del jurado, sentencien a estos hombres, hagan de ellos un ejemplo, cuelguenlos y ustedes salvaran nuestras instituciones, nuestra sociedad.» Y asf lo hicieron. Todos recibieron la pena de muerte excepto Neebe, al cual se le dieron 15 anos de carcel. Una campana masiva internacional forzo al estado a acortar las sentencias de Schawab y Fielden a cadena perpetua pero, en Noviembre 11,1887, los Sres. Parsons, Engel, Spies y Fischer fueron ahorcados. El feroz carpintero aleman, Louis Lingg, engano al carcelero al suicidarse antes de que lo ejecutaran. Hubo usa asistencia de 600,000 personas a los funerales.
Mientras el incidente de HaymarKet fue visto inicialmente como un retroceso para el movimiento de las 8 horas, el evento logro a radicalizar mas personas, incluyendo a ciertos anarquistas influyentes como Emma Goldman y Voltairine de Gleyre. La Federacion Americana del Trabajo y los anarquistas de IWPA se lanzaron a las calles nuevamente el 1° de Mayo de 1890 y el movimiento de las 8 horas continue. Teniendo como legado a los Martires de HaymarKet, los sindicatos comenzaron a progresar. El sindicato de mineros, Los Trabajadores Unidos de las Minas, lograron un dfa laboral de 8 horas en su contracto laboral en 1898, como tambien el sindicato El Gonsejo de Gonstructores de San Francisco en 1900, los sindicatos de imprenta a traves de los EE.UU. en 1905 y los trabajadores de la companfa automotriz Ford Motor en 1914. En 1916, con la amenaza nacional de una huelga general, los trabajadores de ferrocarriles forzo al gobierno a pasar el Ley de Adamson, el cual les otorgo el dfa laboral de 8 horas, con pago adicional despues de las 8 horas.
Finalmente, en 1938, un movimiento masivo de trabajadores y de cesantes forzaron al gobierno de Roosevelt a que pasara la Ley Estandar Justa Laboral, estableciendose para muchos el dfa laboral de 8 horas con pago de sobretiempo, como tambien un salario mi'nimo y la abolicion de «la labor infantil opresiva.»
From The "Common Struggle" Newspaper #7- THE ORIGIN OF MAY DAY:The 1886 General Strike
THE ORIGIN OF MAY DAY:The 1886 General Strike
We workers in the United States have not always had the eight-hour day. This, like most progress, was won through popular struggle. In the late 1800s, workers, including children, could suffer 16 or more hours a day under dangerous, stifling sweatshop conditions. They earned starvation wages and lived in cramped quarters. Like today, the bosses and the government kept the working class weak by sharpening the divisions of race, gender, immigration status, and other artificial differences. In 1886, however, workers obliterated these divisions and stood together as a class, beginning the fight that won the eight-hour day.
In Chicago, a strong labor movement pressed for, and was rewarded with, 8-hour legislation in 1867. This was supposed to be enacted on May 1st. When that day came, however, the bosses ignored the law and the government wouldn't enforce it. But when Chicago's militant workers went on strike to protest, the government did send the police to brutally crush the peoples' resistance. The despondent workers returned to their jobs. Nothing had changed for Chicago's toilers except their confidence that change could be achieved through legislation.
In 1886 another more radical 8-hour movement gained momentum, led in Chicago by migrant and other workers of the anarchist International Working People's Association (IWPA). A national coalition of unions called for a general strike for May 1st. A general strike is when all workers, regardless of profession, stop working. By crippling the economy workers demonstrate their power - without the workers, society could not continue; the bosses and the rest of the ruling class, on the other hand, are completely useless and even detrimental to the health of human society.
On May 1st, 1886 750,000 workers went on strike across the country— 400,000 in Chicago alone. Eleven-thousand marched in Detroit, 25,000 in New York City, and 80,000 marched through Chicago's streets. Their demonstration of unity terrified the ruling class. Determined not to concede anything and to greedily hoard all of the wealth they had robbed from the poor, the rich set out to crush the movement with violence.
The workers' momentum continued with strikes and demonstrations. On May 3rd, the striking "lumber shovers" union held a public meeting of 6,000 near the McGormick plant. The police attacked the meeting with guns and batons, killing one worker and wounding more. Outraged, anarchists posted a call in their daily German-language paper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung ("Workers'
Newspaper") for a May 4th protest meeting at Haymarket Square.
That night, thousands gathered at Haymarket to denounce police violence. The crowd listened calmly to speeches by migrant anarchist workers, such as August Spies and Samuel Fielden. Even the mayor of Chicago, who attended the beginninghalfoftherally,said,"nothinglookedlikely to happen to require police interference," and he advised police captain Bonfield to send his forces home. Bonfield didn't. Around 10PM, after the mayor and many attendees left, and as Fielden was calling the meeting to a close, Bonfield's force of 200 officers marched on the rally, threatening violence and demanding it break up. A bomb exploded in the police ranks, killing one instantly and injuring many. In the chaos, police fired indiscriminately, killing seven of their own officers and numerous demonstrators, though they never counted how many workers they slaughtered.
A reign of terror followed while the state prosecutor publicly advised the police to target anarchists: "make the raids first and look up the law afterwards." Police arrested all known anarchists and raided meeting halls, printing offices, and homes. Eight prominent anarchist speakers, newspaper editors, and unionists-August Spies, Sam Fielden, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg, and Oscar Neebe—were charged with the Haymarket bombing. Of the 8 men, 7 were immigrants, and only 3 were at Haymarket that night. The state prosecutor handpicked a biased jury and presented no evidence connecting them to the bomb.
As the prosecution argued in court, "Anarchy is on trial. These men have been selected, picked out by the Grand Jury, and indicted because they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them. Gentlemen of the jury; convict these men, make examples of them, Jiang them and you saviour institutions, our society/'l3o they" did." All received death sentences except Neebe, who was given 15 years. A massive international campaign forced the state to commute the sentences of Schwab and Fielden to life imprisonment, but on November llth, 1887, Parsons, Engel, Spies, and Fischer were hanged. The fiery young German carpenter, Louis Lingg, cheated the hangman, committing suicide in his cell the day before his execution. Six-hundred thousand attended their funeral.
While the Haymarket incident was initially seen as a set-back for the 8-hour movement, the event radicalized many more, including influential anarchists Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Gleyre. The American Federation of Labor and the anarchist IWPA took the streets again on May Day, 1890, and the movement for the 8-hour day pressed on. Carrying the legacy of the Haymarket Martyrs, organized labor began to make headway. The United Mine Workers achieved the eight-hour day in 1898, as did the Building Trades Council of San Francisco in 1900, printing trades across the US in 1905, and Ford Motor workers in 1914. In 1916, threatening a nationwide general strike, US railroad workers forced the government to pass the Adamson Act, which won them an eight-hour day, with additional pay for overtime.
Finally in 1938, massive militant movements of workers and unemployed forced the Roosevelt government to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing for many the 8-hour day with extra overtime pay, as well as a national minimum wage and the abolition of "oppressive child labor."
We workers in the United States have not always had the eight-hour day. This, like most progress, was won through popular struggle. In the late 1800s, workers, including children, could suffer 16 or more hours a day under dangerous, stifling sweatshop conditions. They earned starvation wages and lived in cramped quarters. Like today, the bosses and the government kept the working class weak by sharpening the divisions of race, gender, immigration status, and other artificial differences. In 1886, however, workers obliterated these divisions and stood together as a class, beginning the fight that won the eight-hour day.
In Chicago, a strong labor movement pressed for, and was rewarded with, 8-hour legislation in 1867. This was supposed to be enacted on May 1st. When that day came, however, the bosses ignored the law and the government wouldn't enforce it. But when Chicago's militant workers went on strike to protest, the government did send the police to brutally crush the peoples' resistance. The despondent workers returned to their jobs. Nothing had changed for Chicago's toilers except their confidence that change could be achieved through legislation.
In 1886 another more radical 8-hour movement gained momentum, led in Chicago by migrant and other workers of the anarchist International Working People's Association (IWPA). A national coalition of unions called for a general strike for May 1st. A general strike is when all workers, regardless of profession, stop working. By crippling the economy workers demonstrate their power - without the workers, society could not continue; the bosses and the rest of the ruling class, on the other hand, are completely useless and even detrimental to the health of human society.
On May 1st, 1886 750,000 workers went on strike across the country— 400,000 in Chicago alone. Eleven-thousand marched in Detroit, 25,000 in New York City, and 80,000 marched through Chicago's streets. Their demonstration of unity terrified the ruling class. Determined not to concede anything and to greedily hoard all of the wealth they had robbed from the poor, the rich set out to crush the movement with violence.
The workers' momentum continued with strikes and demonstrations. On May 3rd, the striking "lumber shovers" union held a public meeting of 6,000 near the McGormick plant. The police attacked the meeting with guns and batons, killing one worker and wounding more. Outraged, anarchists posted a call in their daily German-language paper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung ("Workers'
Newspaper") for a May 4th protest meeting at Haymarket Square.
That night, thousands gathered at Haymarket to denounce police violence. The crowd listened calmly to speeches by migrant anarchist workers, such as August Spies and Samuel Fielden. Even the mayor of Chicago, who attended the beginninghalfoftherally,said,"nothinglookedlikely to happen to require police interference," and he advised police captain Bonfield to send his forces home. Bonfield didn't. Around 10PM, after the mayor and many attendees left, and as Fielden was calling the meeting to a close, Bonfield's force of 200 officers marched on the rally, threatening violence and demanding it break up. A bomb exploded in the police ranks, killing one instantly and injuring many. In the chaos, police fired indiscriminately, killing seven of their own officers and numerous demonstrators, though they never counted how many workers they slaughtered.
A reign of terror followed while the state prosecutor publicly advised the police to target anarchists: "make the raids first and look up the law afterwards." Police arrested all known anarchists and raided meeting halls, printing offices, and homes. Eight prominent anarchist speakers, newspaper editors, and unionists-August Spies, Sam Fielden, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg, and Oscar Neebe—were charged with the Haymarket bombing. Of the 8 men, 7 were immigrants, and only 3 were at Haymarket that night. The state prosecutor handpicked a biased jury and presented no evidence connecting them to the bomb.
As the prosecution argued in court, "Anarchy is on trial. These men have been selected, picked out by the Grand Jury, and indicted because they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them. Gentlemen of the jury; convict these men, make examples of them, Jiang them and you saviour institutions, our society/'l3o they" did." All received death sentences except Neebe, who was given 15 years. A massive international campaign forced the state to commute the sentences of Schwab and Fielden to life imprisonment, but on November llth, 1887, Parsons, Engel, Spies, and Fischer were hanged. The fiery young German carpenter, Louis Lingg, cheated the hangman, committing suicide in his cell the day before his execution. Six-hundred thousand attended their funeral.
While the Haymarket incident was initially seen as a set-back for the 8-hour movement, the event radicalized many more, including influential anarchists Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Gleyre. The American Federation of Labor and the anarchist IWPA took the streets again on May Day, 1890, and the movement for the 8-hour day pressed on. Carrying the legacy of the Haymarket Martyrs, organized labor began to make headway. The United Mine Workers achieved the eight-hour day in 1898, as did the Building Trades Council of San Francisco in 1900, printing trades across the US in 1905, and Ford Motor workers in 1914. In 1916, threatening a nationwide general strike, US railroad workers forced the government to pass the Adamson Act, which won them an eight-hour day, with additional pay for overtime.
Finally in 1938, massive militant movements of workers and unemployed forced the Roosevelt government to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing for many the 8-hour day with extra overtime pay, as well as a national minimum wage and the abolition of "oppressive child labor."
Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning In The Boston Area On Friday April 27th In Davis Square, Somerville And Saturday April 28th At Park Street Station In Boston
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network website for updates on his case and actiosn on his behalf.
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq War timetable but we can do much to save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
According to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network (see link above) there are a series of actions planned next week in Washington, D.C at the Justice Department on April 24th and at Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th and 26th in connection with the next round of legal proceedings in his case. I had originally intended to travel down from Boston to take part in those events that week but some other obligations now prevent me from doing so. Nevertheless there are two on-going activities in the Boston area where those of us who support freedom for Bradley Manning can show our solidarity during this week.
Every Friday from 1:00 -2:00 PM there is an on-going solidarity vigil for Brother Manning at the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop in Davis Square, Somerville.
Every Saturday from 1:00-2:00 PM there is an on-going peace vigil/speak-out in our struggle against the war (or wars) of the moment being orchestrated by the American government and its allies at the Redline MBTA Park Street Station in Boston (Boston Common). Bradley Manning’s case is a natural extension of those struggles.
Here is a little comment that I have made previously whenever the call to defend Private Manning in the streets has been issued as motivation for standing in solidarity with him in his time of need:
Of course I will be standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning in Davis Square and at Park Street Station on April 27th and 28th respectively because I stand in solidarity with the alleged actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious war-like doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning may have exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justifications rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
I will also be standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
These are sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day. Please plan to attend either or both of these events on Friday April 28th (Davis Square) and/or Saturday April 29th (Park Street) to stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning.
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq War timetable but we can do much to save the one hero of that war, Bradley Manning.
According to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network (see link above) there are a series of actions planned next week in Washington, D.C at the Justice Department on April 24th and at Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th and 26th in connection with the next round of legal proceedings in his case. I had originally intended to travel down from Boston to take part in those events that week but some other obligations now prevent me from doing so. Nevertheless there are two on-going activities in the Boston area where those of us who support freedom for Bradley Manning can show our solidarity during this week.
Every Friday from 1:00 -2:00 PM there is an on-going solidarity vigil for Brother Manning at the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop in Davis Square, Somerville.
Every Saturday from 1:00-2:00 PM there is an on-going peace vigil/speak-out in our struggle against the war (or wars) of the moment being orchestrated by the American government and its allies at the Redline MBTA Park Street Station in Boston (Boston Common). Bradley Manning’s case is a natural extension of those struggles.
Here is a little comment that I have made previously whenever the call to defend Private Manning in the streets has been issued as motivation for standing in solidarity with him in his time of need:
Of course I will be standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning in Davis Square and at Park Street Station on April 27th and 28th respectively because I stand in solidarity with the alleged actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious war-like doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning may have exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justifications rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
I will also be standing in solidarity with Private Bradley Manning because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
These are sufficient reasons to stand in solidarity with Private Manning and will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Brother Manning until that great day. Please plan to attend either or both of these events on Friday April 28th (Davis Square) and/or Saturday April 29th (Park Street) to stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning.
All Out On May Day 2012: A Day Of International Working Class Solidarity Actions- An Open Letter To The Working People Of Boston From A Fellow Worker
Click on the headline to link to the Boston May Day Coalition website.
All Out For May 1st-International Workers Day 2012!
Why Working People Need To Show Their Power On May Day 2012
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. I will stop there although I could go on and on. Sounds familiar though, sounds like your situation or that of someone you know, right?
Words, or words like them, are taken daily from today’s global headlines.
But these were also similar to the conditions our forebears faced in America back in the 1880s when this same vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind, Jay Gould, stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the heroic Haymarket Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber barons of the 21st century.
No question over the past several years (really decades but now it is just more public and right in our face) American working people have taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Start off with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage, two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers like at General Electric or the auto plants). Move on to paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, in some cases literally paying nothing, we pay). And finish up with mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a life-time deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and many women and the grievances voiced long ago in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like hell, against the ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.
The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under. All Out On May Day 2012.
I have listed some of the problems we face now to some of our demand that should be raised every day, not just May Day. See if you agree and if you do take to the streets on May Day with us. We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! No More Wisconsins! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars- Troops And Mercenaries Out Of Afghanistan (and Iraq)!-U.S Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
* 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! For free quality 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 strike around some, or all, of the above-mentioned demands.
*We will be organizing at workplaces where a strike is not possible for workers to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”.
*We will be organizing students from kindergarten to graduate school and the off-hand left-wing think tank to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, and to rally at a central location.
*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.
All out on May Day 2012.
All Out For May 1st-International Workers Day 2012!
Why Working People Need To Show Their Power On May Day 2012
Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. I will stop there although I could go on and on. Sounds familiar though, sounds like your situation or that of someone you know, right?
Words, or words like them, are taken daily from today’s global headlines.
But these were also similar to the conditions our forebears faced in America back in the 1880s when this same vicious ruling class was called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind, Jay Gould, stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.
What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight connected with the heroic Haymarket Martyrs in 1886 for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the robber barons of the 21st century.
No question over the past several years (really decades but now it is just more public and right in our face) American working people have taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Start off with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back except as “race to the bottom” low wage, two-tier jobs dividing younger workers from older workers like at General Electric or the auto plants). Move on to paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “too big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, in some cases literally paying nothing, we pay). And finish up with mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a life-time deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”
Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and many women and the grievances voiced long ago in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or, for some of us, great-grandparents).
That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like hell, against the ruling class that seems to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the ruling class of that day by their front-man Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property.
The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out via the Occupy movement), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under. All Out On May Day 2012.
I have listed some of the problems we face now to some of our demand that should be raised every day, not just May Day. See if you agree and if you do take to the streets on May Day with us. We demand:
*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! No More Wisconsins! Hands Off All Our Unions!
* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!
*End the endless wars- Troops And Mercenaries Out Of Afghanistan (and Iraq)!-U.S Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
* 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! For free quality 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 strike around some, or all, of the above-mentioned demands.
*We will be organizing at workplaces where a strike is not possible for workers to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”.
*We will be organizing students from kindergarten to graduate school and the off-hand left-wing think tank to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, and to rally at a central location.
*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.
All out on May Day 2012.
From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-The Embryo Of An Alternate Government-Learn The Lessons Of History-Lessons From The Utopian Socialists- Charles Fourier and The Phalanx Movement-“Administrative Institutions and Practices”
Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
****
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!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
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.
*******
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.
**********
In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries 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 lately 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 of 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 of the "one percent" 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.
Previous historical models readily 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.
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 Lessons 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.
********
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 of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues 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!
*******
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Administrative Institutions and Practices”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: in 1822, Théorie de l'unité universelle.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The internal administration of the Phalanx will be directed at the outset by a regency or council to be composed of those shareholders who have made the greatest contribution in terms of capital and industrial or scientific knowledge. If there are women capable of exercising administrative functions, they should be included on the council along with the men; for in Harmony women are on a par with men in all affairs of interest, provided they have the necessary education.
Harmony cannot tolerate any general community of goods,[33] and there can be no collective recompenses to familial or conjugal groups. Harmony is obliged to deal with everyone individually, even with children who are at least four and a half years old, and dividends must be shared according to each individual’s contribution in terms of labour, capital and talent.
It is allowable for relatives, couples and friends to share what they possess, as is sometimes done in civilisation. But in the dealings of the Phalanx with its members, even with five-year-old children, individual accounts are kept. A child’s earnings are not given to his father; and once he reaches the age of four and a half, a child becomes the owner of the fruits of his own labour, as well as of the legacies, inheritances and interests which he may have acquired. These are kept from him by the Phalanx until he comes of age — that is until he is nineteen or twenty and able to advance from the sixth tribe, the lads and lasses, to the seventh, the adolescents.[34]
After having evaluated the land, machines, materials, furniture, supplies and liquid capital contributed by each member, the regency issues 1728 exchangeable shares. These shares are backed by the property of the Phalanx, its land, buildings, flocks, workshops, etc. The regency issues these shares, or portions thereof, to each member in accordance with his contribution to the Phalanx. It is possible to be a member without being a shareholder; it is also possible to be an outside shareholder without being an active member. In the second case a person has no right to the two portions of the revenue of the Phalanx which are assigned to labour and to talent.
The annual profits are divided into three unequal portions and distributed in the following manner:
5/12 to manual labour,
4/12 to invested capital,
3/12 to theoretical and practical knowledge.
According to his abilities, each member can belong to any or all of these three categories.[35]
In connection with its administrative responsibilities, the regency gives each poor member an advance of one’ year’s clothing, food and lodging.[36] This advance entails no risk, because it is certain that the work which the poor man will perform under the stimulus of attraction and pleasure will produce a yield in excess of the advances made to him. After the annual inventory the Phalanx will find itself in debt to all the poor members to whom it has advanced the minimum. This minimum includes: 1) Board of five meals a day in the third class dining room; 2) Decent clothing including work- and dress-uniforms, as well as all the tools and implements needed for farming and industrial work; 3) Lodging consisting of a private room with toilet, and also access to the public halls and festivities of the third class and to the stalls reserved for the third class at the theatre.
At the outset, before the Phalanx makes its first harvests, the regency is responsible for the purchase of provisions; but their use and management is to be entrusted to the gastronomic series.
If the Phalanx is composed of 1500 members, they will be roughly divided into the following gastronomic categories:
900 members of the third class,
300 members of the second class,
100 members of the first class,
50 members eating food prepared to order.[37]
In all there will be five series devoted to the preparation of food; in addition to the four categories mentioned above, there will also be separate cooking for the animals who will be plentiful and well-treated in Harmony.
Each of the categories noted above will be divided into subdivisions corresponding to the three sexes.[38] There will be separate types of cooking for men, women and children... . Each of the three sexes will have its own tables and dining rooms. They will sometimes eat together in groups of various sizes at lunch or supper. But ordinarily there will be no sexual mixing at dinner, which is a meal during which each of the sexes will engage in its own gastrosophic cabals... .
Children will not dine at the same table with their fathers. This civilised custom would put a crimp on the studies of the fathers and the pleasures of the children. It will be enough for them to eat together at the two small meals, the délité[39] and the afternoon snack. But the two middle-sized meals, breakfast and supper, as well as the pivotal meal or dinner, will be arranged more methodically and according to the wishes of attraction. These arrangements will be perfectly free; they will be in strict conformity with the wishes of the passions. We are unable to recognise these wishes in the present order which distorts the play of the passions. In reading this sketch a father may say: “But I enjoy dining with my wife and my children, and I will continue to do so, come what may.” Such an attitude is quite mistaken. Today, for want of anything better, a father may enjoy eating with his wife and his children. But when he has spent two days in Harmony and taken the bait of the intrigues and cabals of the series, the father will wish to dine with his own cabalistic groups. He will send off his wife and his children who, for their part, will ask nothing better than to be done with the lugubrious family dinner.
Since no coercive measures are tolerated in Harmony, the work to be done is indicated but not ordered by the Areopagus, which is the supreme industrial council. It is composed of the high-ranking officers of each series, and it serves as an advisory body with regard to passional affairs. Its opinions and decisions are subordinated to the wishes of attraction, and each series remains free to make decisions concerning its own industrial interests. Thus the Areopagus cannot order that the mowing or harvesting be done; it can only declare that a certain time is propitious according to the available meteorological or agronomic data; thereupon each series acts according to its wishes. But its wishes can scarcely differ from those of the Areopagus whose opinion is held in high esteem.
****
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!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
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.
*******
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.
**********
In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries 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 lately 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 of 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 of the "one percent" 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.
Previous historical models readily 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.
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 Lessons 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.
********
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 of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues 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!
*******
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Administrative Institutions and Practices”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: in 1822, Théorie de l'unité universelle.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The internal administration of the Phalanx will be directed at the outset by a regency or council to be composed of those shareholders who have made the greatest contribution in terms of capital and industrial or scientific knowledge. If there are women capable of exercising administrative functions, they should be included on the council along with the men; for in Harmony women are on a par with men in all affairs of interest, provided they have the necessary education.
Harmony cannot tolerate any general community of goods,[33] and there can be no collective recompenses to familial or conjugal groups. Harmony is obliged to deal with everyone individually, even with children who are at least four and a half years old, and dividends must be shared according to each individual’s contribution in terms of labour, capital and talent.
It is allowable for relatives, couples and friends to share what they possess, as is sometimes done in civilisation. But in the dealings of the Phalanx with its members, even with five-year-old children, individual accounts are kept. A child’s earnings are not given to his father; and once he reaches the age of four and a half, a child becomes the owner of the fruits of his own labour, as well as of the legacies, inheritances and interests which he may have acquired. These are kept from him by the Phalanx until he comes of age — that is until he is nineteen or twenty and able to advance from the sixth tribe, the lads and lasses, to the seventh, the adolescents.[34]
After having evaluated the land, machines, materials, furniture, supplies and liquid capital contributed by each member, the regency issues 1728 exchangeable shares. These shares are backed by the property of the Phalanx, its land, buildings, flocks, workshops, etc. The regency issues these shares, or portions thereof, to each member in accordance with his contribution to the Phalanx. It is possible to be a member without being a shareholder; it is also possible to be an outside shareholder without being an active member. In the second case a person has no right to the two portions of the revenue of the Phalanx which are assigned to labour and to talent.
The annual profits are divided into three unequal portions and distributed in the following manner:
5/12 to manual labour,
4/12 to invested capital,
3/12 to theoretical and practical knowledge.
According to his abilities, each member can belong to any or all of these three categories.[35]
In connection with its administrative responsibilities, the regency gives each poor member an advance of one’ year’s clothing, food and lodging.[36] This advance entails no risk, because it is certain that the work which the poor man will perform under the stimulus of attraction and pleasure will produce a yield in excess of the advances made to him. After the annual inventory the Phalanx will find itself in debt to all the poor members to whom it has advanced the minimum. This minimum includes: 1) Board of five meals a day in the third class dining room; 2) Decent clothing including work- and dress-uniforms, as well as all the tools and implements needed for farming and industrial work; 3) Lodging consisting of a private room with toilet, and also access to the public halls and festivities of the third class and to the stalls reserved for the third class at the theatre.
At the outset, before the Phalanx makes its first harvests, the regency is responsible for the purchase of provisions; but their use and management is to be entrusted to the gastronomic series.
If the Phalanx is composed of 1500 members, they will be roughly divided into the following gastronomic categories:
900 members of the third class,
300 members of the second class,
100 members of the first class,
50 members eating food prepared to order.[37]
In all there will be five series devoted to the preparation of food; in addition to the four categories mentioned above, there will also be separate cooking for the animals who will be plentiful and well-treated in Harmony.
Each of the categories noted above will be divided into subdivisions corresponding to the three sexes.[38] There will be separate types of cooking for men, women and children... . Each of the three sexes will have its own tables and dining rooms. They will sometimes eat together in groups of various sizes at lunch or supper. But ordinarily there will be no sexual mixing at dinner, which is a meal during which each of the sexes will engage in its own gastrosophic cabals... .
Children will not dine at the same table with their fathers. This civilised custom would put a crimp on the studies of the fathers and the pleasures of the children. It will be enough for them to eat together at the two small meals, the délité[39] and the afternoon snack. But the two middle-sized meals, breakfast and supper, as well as the pivotal meal or dinner, will be arranged more methodically and according to the wishes of attraction. These arrangements will be perfectly free; they will be in strict conformity with the wishes of the passions. We are unable to recognise these wishes in the present order which distorts the play of the passions. In reading this sketch a father may say: “But I enjoy dining with my wife and my children, and I will continue to do so, come what may.” Such an attitude is quite mistaken. Today, for want of anything better, a father may enjoy eating with his wife and his children. But when he has spent two days in Harmony and taken the bait of the intrigues and cabals of the series, the father will wish to dine with his own cabalistic groups. He will send off his wife and his children who, for their part, will ask nothing better than to be done with the lugubrious family dinner.
Since no coercive measures are tolerated in Harmony, the work to be done is indicated but not ordered by the Areopagus, which is the supreme industrial council. It is composed of the high-ranking officers of each series, and it serves as an advisory body with regard to passional affairs. Its opinions and decisions are subordinated to the wishes of attraction, and each series remains free to make decisions concerning its own industrial interests. Thus the Areopagus cannot order that the mowing or harvesting be done; it can only declare that a certain time is propitious according to the available meteorological or agronomic data; thereupon each series acts according to its wishes. But its wishes can scarcely differ from those of the Areopagus whose opinion is held in high esteem.
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