A bridge too far, an un-arched, un-steeled (or is it un-ironed), unsparing (no question on that one), unnerved bridge too far. A divided heart metaphor, perhaps, an overused metaphor, maybe, but sometimes that dividing line, dividing lines really, represented by a childhood bridge’s span is the only way to describe what is what. And more importantly is the only way to describe physically, hero of this saga, although hero is maybe just too large a word evoking greek gods, hubris and serious testing of fates, the bicycle boy’s dilemma.
One speed bicycle boy, handed-down Schwinn diamond blue red bicycle boy with pedal foot-slammed brakes to guide against crashes, stray dogs, swerving autos making diagonal rather than right hand- cornered turns and absent-minded pedestrians carelessly crossing in designated crosswalks just when he gathered speed, one speed, pushed on toward that divided bridge and the latest version of his the point of no return test.
Wearing a Fruit of The Loom tee-shirt, white, with a trace outline of wetness showing for all the world, all the looking world, to see up under arms. Hell it is summer and humid already, maybe a dog day July or probably August, they, the days and months, all rolling together and he has made this trip before in such weathers, in fact all weathers except hard northern winter gale snow squalls. And dungarees, faded from hundred times washed hand-me-down whirlpool washing machine use of older brothers in hardscrabble no work for father, or not much work, and mother wish working her stale life away in some franchise donut shop, serving coffee and off the arm to working class customers going to and fro working spots and leaving, leaving working class-sized tips, meaning not much, not much at all. Except wish dreams, and work damns.
Dungarees, faded or not, rolled up against dog bites, no question anymore since last summer, he Schwinn bicycle boy, had actually been bitten once by a stray alert dog who came out of some foggy mist seaside house without warning and without provocation, and rolled up guarded against geared meshes of cloth and metal, but you knew that, or you knew that your mother warned you against such a fate if you left the world unrolled, oh well, ya ma dismissal, at least one hundred times.
Yak, now bicycle boy, we no longer need to identify him as Schwinn, or wearing white tee-shirts or faded dungarees bicycle boy, is up to speed, safely past dog house and moving along friendlier shore roads this riding across seaside town day to get that eternally thankful breeze blowing off Adamsville Bay. Now churning through endless tar pit heated, sweated, beads of sweat coming off the manhole cover to match, did I say match, no to trump, his own heat and underarm circle wetness, no handkerchief, damn of all days to forget a handkerchief, streets. No railroad man’s soiled sweated, stink handkerchief, red, solid red, found in some forgotten railroad track siding when he made another leap to break out of the hard-edged 1950s be-bop night and day dream of freedom, and track smoke.
Street names passing, all the parts of ships, taffrails, captains walks, quarterdecks, sextant-blasted wheelhouses, galleys, even the planks, a special place where treasure , and betrayal, fight it out for tribal loyalties or some stick, stick signifying simply youth, not stick-in-the-mudness, not yet anyway, maiden’s blushed kiss, stolen treasure worthy of more than railroad handkerchief, red, solid red, wipe. Bicycle boy laughed to himself as he rode, thinking of backlogged thoughts in sunnier (and less humid) times. And some stray blushed kiss that would not let him be, would disturb his sleep on more than one night.
Street names, all the seven seas, atlantic, pacific, indian, artic, coral, china, ah he forgot the order, not a good sign, must be the humid-numbing weather, for a boy who could make a joke, and make stick (remember stick signifying youth only) maidens unashamed of blushed kisses laugh at the thought, of knowing enough geography and knowing exactly where to find the place on the map to call himself the Prince of Lvov once. And know too that he wished to “discover” all those seas, and their names not just from maps, if only, if only he could get out of the stinking projects. The stinking born in projects from which he at one time, although not now course did believe could ever be escaped from (and he later realized that maybe, just maybe he couldn’t). And funny he had gotten out or better had moved out, or his family had with him in tow, and still he was wishing about those seas even if he had forgotten the order of the names, and half-forgotten prince lvov kisses that had turned to ashes. And he still wished about getting out of that stinking project, ya, getting the stink blown off his back from that low-rent scene.
Street names, all the fishes of the seas, tetra, halibut, cod, of course, grown and harvested just some miles, not bicycle miles but automobile miles, a few miles down the road, mackerel, holy or not, he laughed to himself at that, scrod, pickled herring, jesus, who could eat that, oil-soaked sardines, ditto, red scrupper, macko some shark, infinite sea oceans names to go with seven seas and adventures, hardly wait to get out of town adventures but just now needing, desperately needing to get back to back born places, to get some familiar ground under his feet, to take the curse off that stink that has clouded his mind, the one to match the low-tide mephitic stinks down by the shore that he was then passing. And fetid swollen river swamps and reedy mud-caked straw wind marshes breezing that life-saving sea breeze too.
Street names, all the fauna of the sea, seaweed, algae, sea salad, sea cucumbers, see sea, all mixed up, all washed rumble tumble to shore in rushing torrid, churned-up waves crashing aimlessly but relentlessly to shore. But not today, today no crashing waves to help along the slight lip sweat-forming wheels churning boy, a displaced boy(no need to speak of bicycles anymore either) except for that tepid splashed flat pancake of a wave that also heads aimlessly to the waiting shore million year stones waiting to turn to sand , to wash them clean a while. He laughed at that too, washed clean alright. Not him, never him.
Names.
Twelve-years old, almost thirteen, hard-churned boy numberless miles to go before sleep, after the bridge battle, which way home or the sea. Which way, find the hidden quest route to Chinese splendor or buried treasure beneath those stones, at least in his mind, and go back to old time haunts, and small age memories of, okay, stick maidens, blushed kisses (this time his) and “going to the plank.” Ah, memory, memory-etched memory be good (and do not disturb goodnight sleeps, for once).
Searching, ever searching for the wombic home, is there such a word, and should he say it, should he write it, or should he even think it in his sin-heavy world. Searching for the certainties (silly childhood certainties he knew, but could do nothing about except search), for the old haunts (secret mirror caves, seaside rest graveyards before those sea breeze marsh grasses , and dank cellars filled with stolen kisses, and small wave booty trinkets, but don’t tell), for the plank, for the seaside graveyards with the dusted, rotting bones of ancient mariners, tars all, who filled the seven seas with their desires, their venom, and their hubris. He knew there was such a word as that, that hubris, because he had looked it up, and had actually, personally seen it in action more than once, although the acts seen had nothing, nothing in this wicked old world, to do with greek godly things. With titanic struggles to roll rocks up hills, to right wrongs against the powerful misbegotten night, to challenge god things, and fates. He didn’t laugh at that word though, but turned red first with anger, anger that he would duck things rather churn up waves, and offend no gods. No sir.
Searching, once again for other Schwinn travel friends (de riguer Schwinn, logo-conscious), for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifter petty larceny friends, the heist boys, the “clip” artist boys snatching penny candy, valentine may day boxes of candy, onyx rings with diamonds in the center, five and dime trinkets, anything that fit into speak of love (not lvov), faded dungaree pockets, and didn’t bulge too much , that’s all it was, petty and maybe larceny, but it had cemented them together for “eternity,” boyhood projects eternity broken when he wrong-crossed that bridge span, and didn’t turn back.
Ya, bicycle boy this day is searching, searching hard against the named ships, hard against the named seas, hard against the named fishes, hard against the named fauna, searching see.
And searching hard too against the unnamed angst, hard against those unnamed, maybe unnamable, changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once like some mack the knife smack devilish thing and no bridge can stop that, not on this hot humid day, and maybe not ever but he would have to see about that, see about that it as it came along.
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Thursday, May 03, 2012
The “Heroic” Age of the Democratic Party-Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party
Book Review
Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party, Robert V. Remini, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, 1951
For those political propagandists, including this writer, interested in an independent working-class political realignment in American politics an important point to understand is the way that political realignments are created- and taken advantage of. Thus a little look at history, in this case the history of American parliamentary politics, is called for. For openers a study will show that such dramatic shifts do not occur often so that we had better be prepared when and if it happens. Elsewhere in this space I have commented on the creation of the Republican Party from the remnants of the Whigs, Free Soilers and other forces just prior to the Civil War. (See Review of Free Soil, Free Labor by Eric Foner in an entry entitled The Heroic Age of the Republican Party). The book under review here is a detailed look at the creation of the Democratic Party in the mid 1820’s that was solidified by the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. And what better place to look at how that occurred that at the career of the master-mind of that creation, Martin Van Buren, who would ultimately benefit by that realignment himself both as Vice President in Jackson’s second term and as his immediate successor as president in 1836.
This book is narrowly focused on the creation of the Democratic Party and Van Buren’s role in it. Thus the time frame for the work is essentially the elections of 1824 and 1828. The story as it unfolds here shows that Van Buren did not come to prominence out of thin air but has done yeoman’s work in creating the embryo of the Democratic Party in New York State with the famous Albany Regency that controlled, or attempted to control, New York politics during this period. The strength of the Regency lay in its control of patronage, its adhesion to a policy of only rewarding its friends and devotees, its adherence to a uniform political line and of fighting for organization, organization and again organization. Those are not bad lessons to learn even today. Strangely in reading about this organization and its rules and regulations I was reminded of a proto-Leninist vanguard organization-without its revolutionary aims.
Of course strong organization only helps if you have some access, or potential access, to power and in American politics the coin of the realm is control of the American presidency. And for that purpose the election of 1824 gives a text book lesson in all the strengths and weakness of the presidential electoral process. Many changes had occurred in the first fifty years of the American Republic as it moved away from the bucolic agrarian/mercantile society of the 1780’s. These included the relentless driving of the frontier westward, the increased role of capitalist production and technology in linking communications and transportation systems and the cry of the masses for more political participation in the electoral process. Those factors were the social basis for Jackson’s ultimate victory.
But not in 1824. At that point the Monroe presidency and its so-called “Era of Good Feeling” had theoretically blunted the political party concept at a time when, as now, the class divide was growing. One of the strange things about the 1824 election is that the several candidates all professed to be of the same ‘party’ from the closet monarchist John Quincy Adams to the plebeian hero Jackson. Something had to give. What gave immediately, to Jackson’s detriment, was the popular outcry against the Congressional caucus system where that body essentially provided the official candidate. Van Buren was the master of that system and it died hard with him. In any case no candidate got a majority of the Electoral College votes and thus the election was thrown into the House of Representatives for settlement. In the end Henry Clay’s electoral votes and whatever promises he received from Adams determined Adams’s victory. 1828 would be a different story
Van Buren learned the lesson of that defeat well. He went through out the country trying to build a coalition of forces that would create a national party based on a set of principles, essentially taken from Jefferson’s philosophy of government and a strict constructionist school of interpretation of the Constitution. In the process Van Buren basically formed the modern political party by uniting forces from the West, the South and New York to give the New England-centered Adams a thumping. Having a popular candidate like Jackson obviously did not hurt. One can argue with the author about the weight of Van Buren’s role in the Jackson victory however one cannot argue that Van Buren knew which way the wind was blowing and created a powerful plebeian party that fought for power up until the Civil War with some success. For good or evil Van Buren also became the proto-type for the professional politician that we have today come to know and loathe. But that is a separate story. All “honor” to the old Red Fox of Kinderhook.
Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party, Robert V. Remini, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, 1951
For those political propagandists, including this writer, interested in an independent working-class political realignment in American politics an important point to understand is the way that political realignments are created- and taken advantage of. Thus a little look at history, in this case the history of American parliamentary politics, is called for. For openers a study will show that such dramatic shifts do not occur often so that we had better be prepared when and if it happens. Elsewhere in this space I have commented on the creation of the Republican Party from the remnants of the Whigs, Free Soilers and other forces just prior to the Civil War. (See Review of Free Soil, Free Labor by Eric Foner in an entry entitled The Heroic Age of the Republican Party). The book under review here is a detailed look at the creation of the Democratic Party in the mid 1820’s that was solidified by the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. And what better place to look at how that occurred that at the career of the master-mind of that creation, Martin Van Buren, who would ultimately benefit by that realignment himself both as Vice President in Jackson’s second term and as his immediate successor as president in 1836.
This book is narrowly focused on the creation of the Democratic Party and Van Buren’s role in it. Thus the time frame for the work is essentially the elections of 1824 and 1828. The story as it unfolds here shows that Van Buren did not come to prominence out of thin air but has done yeoman’s work in creating the embryo of the Democratic Party in New York State with the famous Albany Regency that controlled, or attempted to control, New York politics during this period. The strength of the Regency lay in its control of patronage, its adhesion to a policy of only rewarding its friends and devotees, its adherence to a uniform political line and of fighting for organization, organization and again organization. Those are not bad lessons to learn even today. Strangely in reading about this organization and its rules and regulations I was reminded of a proto-Leninist vanguard organization-without its revolutionary aims.
Of course strong organization only helps if you have some access, or potential access, to power and in American politics the coin of the realm is control of the American presidency. And for that purpose the election of 1824 gives a text book lesson in all the strengths and weakness of the presidential electoral process. Many changes had occurred in the first fifty years of the American Republic as it moved away from the bucolic agrarian/mercantile society of the 1780’s. These included the relentless driving of the frontier westward, the increased role of capitalist production and technology in linking communications and transportation systems and the cry of the masses for more political participation in the electoral process. Those factors were the social basis for Jackson’s ultimate victory.
But not in 1824. At that point the Monroe presidency and its so-called “Era of Good Feeling” had theoretically blunted the political party concept at a time when, as now, the class divide was growing. One of the strange things about the 1824 election is that the several candidates all professed to be of the same ‘party’ from the closet monarchist John Quincy Adams to the plebeian hero Jackson. Something had to give. What gave immediately, to Jackson’s detriment, was the popular outcry against the Congressional caucus system where that body essentially provided the official candidate. Van Buren was the master of that system and it died hard with him. In any case no candidate got a majority of the Electoral College votes and thus the election was thrown into the House of Representatives for settlement. In the end Henry Clay’s electoral votes and whatever promises he received from Adams determined Adams’s victory. 1828 would be a different story
Van Buren learned the lesson of that defeat well. He went through out the country trying to build a coalition of forces that would create a national party based on a set of principles, essentially taken from Jefferson’s philosophy of government and a strict constructionist school of interpretation of the Constitution. In the process Van Buren basically formed the modern political party by uniting forces from the West, the South and New York to give the New England-centered Adams a thumping. Having a popular candidate like Jackson obviously did not hurt. One can argue with the author about the weight of Van Buren’s role in the Jackson victory however one cannot argue that Van Buren knew which way the wind was blowing and created a powerful plebeian party that fought for power up until the Civil War with some success. For good or evil Van Buren also became the proto-type for the professional politician that we have today come to know and loathe. But that is a separate story. All “honor” to the old Red Fox of Kinderhook.
Voodoo Blues From The Bayou- The "Voodoo Daddy" Lonnie Brooks Is On Stage -When Lonnie Brooks Rocked The Blues House-‘Lonnie Brooks”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Lonnie Brooks performing Too Little, Too Late.
CD Review
Lonnie Brooks: The Voodoo Daddy, Lonnie Brooks (and son Ronnie Baker), Alligator records, 1997
When reviewing various blues artist over the past year in this space I have spilled much ink on places like the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, Memphis and Texas. I have spent very little time talking about Cajun country, the bayous of Louisiana or the Mississippi port town of News Orleans as sources of the blues tradition. When one thinks of the bayous one tends to think of the Cajun-centered accordion or Zydeco music. New Orleans brings to mind jazz more than the blues, except maybe some barrelhouse influence. That omission seems now to have been flat out wrong as the artist under review, ‘The Voodoo Daddy” Lonnie Brooks, amply demonstrates.
Sure, Lonnie (and on this album his son Ronnie Baker as well) has mastered basic blues lines as any successful electric blues guitarist must but his music has that little extra “funky” edge that one gets when listening to better New Orleans jazz and Zydeco music, especially that big old sax blaring out to beat the band. That is what the Voodoo Daddy brings to the table. Here it starts right out with the first track “Jealous Man” carries through to “Hoodoo She Do” the aptly named “Zydeco” and finishes up nicely with “Rolling Of The Tumbling Dice.” More on this kind of bayou-derived music, especially under the influence of Clifton Chenier who was instrumental in jump starting Lonnie’s career later. For now listen here- you can heard those swamp sounds from those Lake Charles and environs boys now, can’t you?
Watch out, watch out like crazy or those boys will take you for everything you have. And laugh about it.
"Got Lucky Last Night"
Pretend you're mean as a lion
Wild like a tiger cat
Been lovin' mem so good last night
I almost had a heart attack
chorus:
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
Played your little game and I got lucky last night
Pretend you're mean and evil
Stubborn like a Georgia mule
Been lovin' me so good last night
You had me on private school
(chorus)
Pretend you can be sweet
Pretend you can be kind
But when it come to lovin' girl
You don't draw the line
(chorus)
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
Played a little game and I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night, tryin' to get lucky tonight
"Wife For Tonight"
Is is that string bikini?
Or the sun that's makin' me hot?
Whatever thing to cool me with baby
They gonna take a hell of a lot
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
Yeah
I'll build us a playhouse
Into my bedroom
So you can play the bride baby
While I play the groom
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
All right...
You can come on over
There'll be no strings attached
If you like what I'm doin' to you baby
You can always come back
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
CD Review
Lonnie Brooks: The Voodoo Daddy, Lonnie Brooks (and son Ronnie Baker), Alligator records, 1997
When reviewing various blues artist over the past year in this space I have spilled much ink on places like the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, Memphis and Texas. I have spent very little time talking about Cajun country, the bayous of Louisiana or the Mississippi port town of News Orleans as sources of the blues tradition. When one thinks of the bayous one tends to think of the Cajun-centered accordion or Zydeco music. New Orleans brings to mind jazz more than the blues, except maybe some barrelhouse influence. That omission seems now to have been flat out wrong as the artist under review, ‘The Voodoo Daddy” Lonnie Brooks, amply demonstrates.
Sure, Lonnie (and on this album his son Ronnie Baker as well) has mastered basic blues lines as any successful electric blues guitarist must but his music has that little extra “funky” edge that one gets when listening to better New Orleans jazz and Zydeco music, especially that big old sax blaring out to beat the band. That is what the Voodoo Daddy brings to the table. Here it starts right out with the first track “Jealous Man” carries through to “Hoodoo She Do” the aptly named “Zydeco” and finishes up nicely with “Rolling Of The Tumbling Dice.” More on this kind of bayou-derived music, especially under the influence of Clifton Chenier who was instrumental in jump starting Lonnie’s career later. For now listen here- you can heard those swamp sounds from those Lake Charles and environs boys now, can’t you?
Watch out, watch out like crazy or those boys will take you for everything you have. And laugh about it.
"Got Lucky Last Night"
Pretend you're mean as a lion
Wild like a tiger cat
Been lovin' mem so good last night
I almost had a heart attack
chorus:
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
Played your little game and I got lucky last night
Pretend you're mean and evil
Stubborn like a Georgia mule
Been lovin' me so good last night
You had me on private school
(chorus)
Pretend you can be sweet
Pretend you can be kind
But when it come to lovin' girl
You don't draw the line
(chorus)
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
Played a little game and I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night, tryin' to get lucky tonight
"Wife For Tonight"
Is is that string bikini?
Or the sun that's makin' me hot?
Whatever thing to cool me with baby
They gonna take a hell of a lot
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
Yeah
I'll build us a playhouse
Into my bedroom
So you can play the bride baby
While I play the groom
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
All right...
You can come on over
There'll be no strings attached
If you like what I'm doin' to you baby
You can always come back
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
Out In The Mist Of Time Of The American Blues Night-“Before The Blues-Volume 3”-A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Furry Lewis performing his old-time Harry Smith American Folk Anthology-worthy blues classic, Kassie Jones.
CD Review (The basic points made in this review have been used to review the other two volumes in this three volume set)
Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 3, Yazoo Records, 1996
Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.
Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.
The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues compilation reflects all of those trends from Furry Lewis’s Kassie Jones to Memphis Minnie’s Frisco Town to Texas Alexander’s Levee Camp Moan Blues. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.
CD Review (The basic points made in this review have been used to review the other two volumes in this three volume set)
Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 3, Yazoo Records, 1996
Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.
Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.
The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues compilation reflects all of those trends from Furry Lewis’s Kassie Jones to Memphis Minnie’s Frisco Town to Texas Alexander’s Levee Camp Moan Blues. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.
Out In The Mist Of Time Of The American Blues Night-“Before The Blues-Volume 2”-A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Memphis Jug Band performing their old-time blues classic Harry Smith Anthology-worthy, K.C. Moan.
CD Review (The basic points made in this review have been used to review the other two volumes in this three volume set)
Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 2, Yazoo Records, 1996
Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.
Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.
The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues volume 2 compilation reflects all of those trends from the Memphis Jug Band’s K.C. Moan to Blue Lemon Jefferson’s Jack O’Diamond Blues To Golden Harris’ I Lead A Christian Life. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.
CD Review (The basic points made in this review have been used to review the other two volumes in this three volume set)
Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 2, Yazoo Records, 1996
Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.
Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.
The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues volume 2 compilation reflects all of those trends from the Memphis Jug Band’s K.C. Moan to Blue Lemon Jefferson’s Jack O’Diamond Blues To Golden Harris’ I Lead A Christian Life. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.
Who Will Fill The 2000s Blues Night Air? - “Give In Kind” –A Guy Davis CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Guy Davis performing Can’t Be Satisfied.
Give In Kind, Guy Davis, Red House Records, 2002
A couple of years ago I spent no little cyberspace “ink” on the question of who would carry on the folk tradition that the folk revival artists of my generation, the generation of ’68, “discovered” back in the day. You know artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Eric Von Schmidt and Dave Van Ronk and others digging into the American song book provided by Harry Smith, the Lomaxes and the Seegers to preserve Woody Guthrie and stuff even further back down to the hills and hollows of Appalachia (I know I am supposed to write hollas but there you have it), down to the southern delta plantation moans, down to backwater Mississippi juke joint groans after a hard Saturday night of love, fights and headaches, and out west, out west where as Thomas Wolfe stated, the states are square to gather in the cowboy and farm traditions found in the great migrations to the coast, west coast of course. I came up with a few candidates like Keb Mo’ and Carol Hemmings then just to make my point.
I am now trying to take that basic point and pose the question here of who will carry out the great American blues night tradition started back in the early part of the 20th century (as least the part we know about from recordings and radio) and which produced great music from Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and the like on through to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf , Ike Turner, and Taj Majal. That last name mentioned not by accident as the artist under review, Guy Davis, consciously or not, and I think consciously, owns at least a debt of gratitude to Taj for breaking some ground for him in the blues milieu.
Needless to say Brother Davis (Guy, not the late great Reverend Gary, okay) plays a mean guitar as on Good Liquor and Loneliest Road That I Know, can use his vocal abilities to belt out such songs as Six Cold Feet Of Ground and Watch Over Me and get down to that gospel church, Jehovah we are coming root of the blues on God's Unchanging Hand with the best of them. Eric Clapton, Mick and Keith and the rest of the British invasion guys mad to the high heavens for American blues move over a little. Guy Davis is in the house.
Give In Kind, Guy Davis, Red House Records, 2002
A couple of years ago I spent no little cyberspace “ink” on the question of who would carry on the folk tradition that the folk revival artists of my generation, the generation of ’68, “discovered” back in the day. You know artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Eric Von Schmidt and Dave Van Ronk and others digging into the American song book provided by Harry Smith, the Lomaxes and the Seegers to preserve Woody Guthrie and stuff even further back down to the hills and hollows of Appalachia (I know I am supposed to write hollas but there you have it), down to the southern delta plantation moans, down to backwater Mississippi juke joint groans after a hard Saturday night of love, fights and headaches, and out west, out west where as Thomas Wolfe stated, the states are square to gather in the cowboy and farm traditions found in the great migrations to the coast, west coast of course. I came up with a few candidates like Keb Mo’ and Carol Hemmings then just to make my point.
I am now trying to take that basic point and pose the question here of who will carry out the great American blues night tradition started back in the early part of the 20th century (as least the part we know about from recordings and radio) and which produced great music from Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and the like on through to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf , Ike Turner, and Taj Majal. That last name mentioned not by accident as the artist under review, Guy Davis, consciously or not, and I think consciously, owns at least a debt of gratitude to Taj for breaking some ground for him in the blues milieu.
Needless to say Brother Davis (Guy, not the late great Reverend Gary, okay) plays a mean guitar as on Good Liquor and Loneliest Road That I Know, can use his vocal abilities to belt out such songs as Six Cold Feet Of Ground and Watch Over Me and get down to that gospel church, Jehovah we are coming root of the blues on God's Unchanging Hand with the best of them. Eric Clapton, Mick and Keith and the rest of the British invasion guys mad to the high heavens for American blues move over a little. Guy Davis is in the house.
Out In The Mist Of Time Of The American Blues Night-“Before The Blues-Volume 1”-A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Henry Thomas performing his old-time blues holla classic, Run, Mollie, Run.
CD Review
Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 1, Yazoo Records, 1996
Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.
Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.
The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues compilation reflects all of those trends from Rube Lacy’s Mississippi Jail House Groan to Mississippi John Hurt’s Stack O’Lee Blues to the Seventh Day Adventist Choir’s On Jordan’s Stormy Banks We Stand. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.
CD Review
Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 1, Yazoo Records, 1996
Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.
Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.
The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues compilation reflects all of those trends from Rube Lacy’s Mississippi Jail House Groan to Mississippi John Hurt’s Stack O’Lee Blues to the Seventh Day Adventist Choir’s On Jordan’s Stormy Banks We Stand. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.
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-“The Phalanstery”
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)
“The Phalanstery”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 edifice occupied by the Phalanx bears no resemblance to our urban or rural buildings; and in the establishment of a full Harmony of 1600 people none of our buildings could be put to use, not even a great palace like Versailles nor a great monastery like Escorial. If an experiment is made in minimal Harmony, with two or three hundred members, or on a limited scale with four hundred members, it would be possible, although difficult, to use a monastery or palace (like Meudon) for the central edifice.
The lodgings, gardens and stables of a society run by series of groups must be vastly different from those of our villages and towns, which are perversely organised and meant for families having no societary relations. Instead of the chaos of little houses which rival each other in filth and ugliness in our towns, a Phalanx constructs for itself a building as perfect as the terrain permits. Here is a brief account of the measures to be taken on a favourable site... .
The center of the palace or Phalanstery should be a place for quiet activity; it should include the dining rooms, the exchange, meeting rooms, library, studies, etc. This central section includes the temple, the tower, the telegraph, the coops for carrier pigeons, the ceremonial chimes, the observatory, and a winter courtyard adorned with resinous plants. The parade grounds are located just behind the central section.
One of the wings of the Phalanstery should include all the noisy workshops like the carpenter shop and the forge and the other workshops where hammering is done. It should also be the place for all the industrial gatherings involving children, who are generally very noisy at work and even at music. The grouping of these activities will avoid an annoying drawback of our civilised cities where every street has its own hammerer or iron merchant or beginning clarinet player to shatter the ear drums of fifty families in the vicinity.
The other wing should contain the caravansary with its ballrooms and its halls for meetings with outsiders, who should not be allowed to encumber the center of the palace and to disturb the domestic relations of the Phalanx. This precaution of isolating outsiders and concentrating their meetings in one of the wings will be most important in the trial Phalanx. For the Phalanx will attract thousands of curiosity-seekers whose entry fees will provide a profit that I cannot estimate at less than twenty million... .
The phalanstery or manor-house of the Phalanx should contain, in addition to the private apartments, a large number of halls for social relations. These halls will be called Seristeries or places for the meeting and interaction of the passional series.
These halls have nothing in common with our public rooms where ungraduated social relations prevail. A series cannot tolerate this confusion: it always has its three, four or five divisions which occupy three, four or five adjacent locations. This means that analogous arrangements are necessary for the officers and members of each division. Thus each Seristery ordinarily consists of three principal halls, one for the center and two for the wings of the series.
In addition, the three halls of the Seristery should have adjoining rooms for the groups and committees of the series. In the banquet Seristery or dining room, for example, six halls of unequal size are necessary:
1 first class hall in the Ascending Wing, about 150 people.
2 second class halls in the Center ... ... . 400
3 third class halls In the Descending Wing ... ... . 900
Near these six halls of unequal size there should be a number of smaller rooms for the diverse groups which wish to isolate themselves from the common dining rooms of their class. It happens every day that some groups wish to eat separately; they should have rooms near the Seristery where meals are served to the members of their class.
In all social relations it is necessary to have small rooms adjoining the Seristery in order to encourage small group meetings. Accordingly, a Seristery, or the meeting place of a series, is arranged in a compound manner with halls for large collective gatherings and for smaller cabalistic meetings. This system is very different from that employed in our large assemblies where, even in the palaces of kings, everyone is thrown together pell-mell according to the holy philosophical principle of equality. This principle is completely intolerable in Harmony.
The stables, granaries and warehouses should be located, if possible, opposite the main edifice. The space between the palace and the stables will serve as a main courtyard or parade-ground and it should be very large. To give some idea of the proper dimensions I estimate that the front of the Phalanstery should have a length of about 600 toises de Paris. The center and the parade grounds will run to about 300 toises and each of the two wings to about 150 ... The gardens should be placed, insofar as possible, behind the palace and not behind the stables, since large-scale farming should be done in the area near the stables. These plans will of course vary according to local circumstances; we are only talking here about an ideal location... .
All the children, both rich and poor, are lodged together on the mezzanine of the Phalanstery. For they should be kept separate from the adolescents, and in general from all those who are capable of making love, at most times and particularly during the late evening and the early morning hours. The reasons for this will be explained later. For the time being let us assume that those who are capable of forming amorous relations will be concentrated on the second floor, while the very young and the very old (the first and sixteenth choirs, the Tots and the Patriarchs) should have meeting-halls on the ground floor and the mezzanine. They should also be isolated from the street-gallery, which is the most important feature of a Phalanstery and which cannot be conceived of in civilisation. For this reason it should be briefly described in a separate chapter.
****
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)
“The Phalanstery”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 edifice occupied by the Phalanx bears no resemblance to our urban or rural buildings; and in the establishment of a full Harmony of 1600 people none of our buildings could be put to use, not even a great palace like Versailles nor a great monastery like Escorial. If an experiment is made in minimal Harmony, with two or three hundred members, or on a limited scale with four hundred members, it would be possible, although difficult, to use a monastery or palace (like Meudon) for the central edifice.
The lodgings, gardens and stables of a society run by series of groups must be vastly different from those of our villages and towns, which are perversely organised and meant for families having no societary relations. Instead of the chaos of little houses which rival each other in filth and ugliness in our towns, a Phalanx constructs for itself a building as perfect as the terrain permits. Here is a brief account of the measures to be taken on a favourable site... .
The center of the palace or Phalanstery should be a place for quiet activity; it should include the dining rooms, the exchange, meeting rooms, library, studies, etc. This central section includes the temple, the tower, the telegraph, the coops for carrier pigeons, the ceremonial chimes, the observatory, and a winter courtyard adorned with resinous plants. The parade grounds are located just behind the central section.
One of the wings of the Phalanstery should include all the noisy workshops like the carpenter shop and the forge and the other workshops where hammering is done. It should also be the place for all the industrial gatherings involving children, who are generally very noisy at work and even at music. The grouping of these activities will avoid an annoying drawback of our civilised cities where every street has its own hammerer or iron merchant or beginning clarinet player to shatter the ear drums of fifty families in the vicinity.
The other wing should contain the caravansary with its ballrooms and its halls for meetings with outsiders, who should not be allowed to encumber the center of the palace and to disturb the domestic relations of the Phalanx. This precaution of isolating outsiders and concentrating their meetings in one of the wings will be most important in the trial Phalanx. For the Phalanx will attract thousands of curiosity-seekers whose entry fees will provide a profit that I cannot estimate at less than twenty million... .
The phalanstery or manor-house of the Phalanx should contain, in addition to the private apartments, a large number of halls for social relations. These halls will be called Seristeries or places for the meeting and interaction of the passional series.
These halls have nothing in common with our public rooms where ungraduated social relations prevail. A series cannot tolerate this confusion: it always has its three, four or five divisions which occupy three, four or five adjacent locations. This means that analogous arrangements are necessary for the officers and members of each division. Thus each Seristery ordinarily consists of three principal halls, one for the center and two for the wings of the series.
In addition, the three halls of the Seristery should have adjoining rooms for the groups and committees of the series. In the banquet Seristery or dining room, for example, six halls of unequal size are necessary:
1 first class hall in the Ascending Wing, about 150 people.
2 second class halls in the Center ... ... . 400
3 third class halls In the Descending Wing ... ... . 900
Near these six halls of unequal size there should be a number of smaller rooms for the diverse groups which wish to isolate themselves from the common dining rooms of their class. It happens every day that some groups wish to eat separately; they should have rooms near the Seristery where meals are served to the members of their class.
In all social relations it is necessary to have small rooms adjoining the Seristery in order to encourage small group meetings. Accordingly, a Seristery, or the meeting place of a series, is arranged in a compound manner with halls for large collective gatherings and for smaller cabalistic meetings. This system is very different from that employed in our large assemblies where, even in the palaces of kings, everyone is thrown together pell-mell according to the holy philosophical principle of equality. This principle is completely intolerable in Harmony.
The stables, granaries and warehouses should be located, if possible, opposite the main edifice. The space between the palace and the stables will serve as a main courtyard or parade-ground and it should be very large. To give some idea of the proper dimensions I estimate that the front of the Phalanstery should have a length of about 600 toises de Paris. The center and the parade grounds will run to about 300 toises and each of the two wings to about 150 ... The gardens should be placed, insofar as possible, behind the palace and not behind the stables, since large-scale farming should be done in the area near the stables. These plans will of course vary according to local circumstances; we are only talking here about an ideal location... .
All the children, both rich and poor, are lodged together on the mezzanine of the Phalanstery. For they should be kept separate from the adolescents, and in general from all those who are capable of making love, at most times and particularly during the late evening and the early morning hours. The reasons for this will be explained later. For the time being let us assume that those who are capable of forming amorous relations will be concentrated on the second floor, while the very young and the very old (the first and sixteenth choirs, the Tots and the Patriarchs) should have meeting-halls on the ground floor and the mezzanine. They should also be isolated from the street-gallery, which is the most important feature of a Phalanstery and which cannot be conceived of in civilisation. For this reason it should be briefly described in a separate chapter.
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Via Boston IndyMedia-From Brookline To Auburn Prison: U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert Remembers-Free David Gilbert Now! Free All The Class-War Prisoners!
From Brookline To Auburn Prison: U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert Remembers
by bob feldman
(No verified email address)
29 Apr 2012
A review of "LOVE AND STRUGGLE: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond"
LOVE AND STRUGGLE:
My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond
by David Gilbert
Oakland : PM Press 2012
“Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground and Beyond” is a well-written, intellectually and politically exciting, and emotionally moving autobiography. Published by the alternative non-commercial collective PM Press, it presents a more balanced picture of Gilbert than has been portrayed in the U.S. mass media since his arrest in 1981. Most people have previously had the chance to hear Gilbert speak for himself only in Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s 2003 Academy Award-nominated documentary film, “The Weather Underground.”
“Love and Struggle” provides its readers with a sweeping history of the growth and development of the Movement of the 1960s that reflects the historical perspective of politically radical anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist/organizers of the 1960s. Gilbert explains how he—the son of a toy company production manager and scoutmaster who grew up in upper middle-class Brookline, Massachusetts in the 1950s, “went on to become an Eagle Scout and also to win the highest religious medal for Jewish scouts” and graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1966—ended up, at the age of 37, “handcuffed and getting worked over in the back of a police car” on the night of October 20, 1981; before being, subsequently, indicted, tried and convicted of felony murder and sentenced to 75 years-to-life in prison. Like Dave Dellinger’s autobiography, “From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter,” Gilbert’s “Love and Struggle” documents the sweeping life changes experienced by many radicals of the time.
He recalls how the impact of Martin Luther King and the late 1950s/early 1960s Civil Rights Movement led him to approach religious leaders in Greater Boston’s white community about allowing the local NAACP chapter to set up anti-racist education programs for white people. A friend’s acquaintance with a Vietnamese exchange student inspired him to write an article in his school’s student newspaper in 1961 “saying America was in danger of getting drawn into a major civil war in South Vietnam, and on the wrong side at that,” while still a liberal anti-communist high school senior.
“Love and Struggle” then revisits Gilbert’s political, academic and personal life and the history of the New Left Movement of the Sixties after his arrival on Columbia University’s campus in the Morningside Heights/West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan . In one section, “The 1960s and The Making Of A Revolutionary,” Gilbert explains why he and other New Left anti-war and anti-racist activists, along with Black Liberation Movement activists, became more politically radicalized, anti-imperialist and militant in their political thinking and street actions during the decade; and he also describes how he went about organizing students into SDS chapters at Columbia, Barnard and the New School for Social Research prior to the historic Columbia Student Revolt that shut-down Columbia University in 1968. He recalls, for example, how, in the spring of 1965, anti-war student activists at Columbia “set-up literature tables on the main plaza on campus, and we’d be there all day discussing and debating with those who stopped by.” He incisively observes:
“…I don’t want to give the wrong impression that our great arguments immediately turned people around. It is rare indeed that someone will give up on presuppositions in the course of a discussion. Ideas don’t change that quickly, and ego makes it hard for most of us to readily admit we are wrong. Organizers who expect instant conversions will become overbearing. Instead, our educational work, planted seeds and helped people see there were alternative interpretations and sources of information, so that once events developed to create more stress—the war intensified and the military draft expanded—people had a way to see that something was wrong, instead of just becoming more fervent about escalations to `win.’”
Given the decisions of university administrations at Columbia, Harvard and Stanford in 2011 to bring ROTC back to U.S. elite university campuses that had terminated their campus programs in response to late 1960s anti-ROTC campaigns of campus SDS chapters, Gilbert’s timely reference to his participation in a May 1965 anti-ROTC protest on Columbia’s campus may also be of special interest to 21st-century anti-war student activists:
“…We carried out a valuable early example of civil disobedience against university complicity with the war machine. This action was initiated by the civil rights group CORE, which planned to repeat an action done the preceding year, when a few of them sat-in to disrupt a Naval ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) ceremony…The administration moved the ceremony inside and when we marched to the door we were locked out, so people jammed up in the doorway and refused to disperse. The university called in the police, who started to pull people away, one by one…The cops twisted the tie around my neck, choking me, until, fortunately, it broke. They dragged me away and threw me down, ripping my jacket almost in half…
“Afterward, Columbia threatened to suspend the `ringleaders,’ but we were able to rally a lot of support…Some liberals wanted to reduce all organizing to defense of the right to dissent; but we maintained a balance, building a coalition on those terms while continuing to speak out against having the military on campus. And there was a tendency for students to get pumped up about how they had been subject to `police brutality.’…But I knew from my civil rights work that our bruises were minor compared to what was done routinely in Harlem…”
In the following section, “The Most Sane/Insane of Times,” Gilbert looks back in a self-critical way at the 1969/1970 period of New Left Movement history. During this period, the Weatherman faction attempted to mobilize anti-war youth to “bring the war home” to Chicago in the October 1969 “Days of Rage” protests; the Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial began; Black Panther Party organizers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated; and Gilbert’s best friend, former Columbia SDS Vice-Chairman Ted Gold, and two other members of the Weatherman faction were accidentally killed in a West Village townhouse explosion, while building bombs to target a military base, possibly including civilians. Living in a Weatherman collective in Denver at the time, Gilbert provides readers with an interesting sense of how members and leaders of the Weatherman faction reacted on a political and emotional level to the shock of hearing the news about the deaths of their three comrades.
“Love and Struggle”’s next section, “Underground,” provides an exciting and vivid recollection by Gilbert of what it was like to be a member of the Weather Underground Organization [WUO] whose members were being hunted by the FBI. He also discusses the internal political differences and divisive debates that contributed to the demise of the WUO by the late 1970s.
The last four sections of Gilbert’s autobiography tell of his life in the nearly 35 years since the collapse of the WUO. He recalls his aboveground life as a furniture mover and Men Against Sexism activist in Denver in the late 1970s; some of the political, emotional and psychological reasons that he chose to resume his underground lifestyle in 1979; his return East and involvement in underground activity in support of the Black Liberation Army [BLA]. Stating that “I deeply regret the loss of lives and the pain for those families caused by our actions on October 20, 1981,” Gilbert also engages in self-criticism and self-analysis about the political appropriateness of his decision in 1979 to begin working in a clandestine way as an ally of a BLA unit “on such a high-risk tactical level with so little knowledge of the political context.” He cites “my corruption of ego” as possibly influencing the political choices he made after the collapse of the WUO, when he “was anxious to reestablish myself as a `revolutionary on the highest level,’ and `as the most anti-racist white activist.’”
Gilbert also describes, in an emotionally open way, how he reunited underground with fellow WUO member Kathy Boudin and their decision to become parents while underground. His account of how they prepared for the birth of their son in August 1980, how he felt at the time of his son’s birth and during the first year of his life and the sadness of his separation from both after his and Boudin’s arrests (she was released in 2003 after serving 22 years) are some of his most moving passages.
Some readers who were politically active in the Movement of the 1960s and 1970s may have a different political view of U.S. white working-class people’s historical revolutionary potential or the primacy of internal national liberation struggles within the US than what Gilbert presents in “Love and Struggle.” But there’s so much great political and psychological analysis of both U.S. society and the inter-personal dynamics within the U.S. left movement in this fascinating book—which also resembles an exciting mystery novel in some parts—that “Love and Struggle” should be required reading for everyone interested in 1960s and 1970s U.S. Movement history and how this history relates to current struggles.
Since David Gilbert has already been a political prisoner for more than 30 years he (as well as over 60 other U.S. political prisoners) should finally be released by U.S. state and federal government officials in 2012. In the North of Ireland, Italy and Germany, most of the political activists of the 1970s and 1980s who were involved in armed actions similar in nature to the one Gilbert was involved in were generally released from prison by the early 21st century. So why shouldn’t “Love and Struggle” author Gilbert and the BLA members who are also still imprisoned now also be released by the government authorities in the United States? For as Gilbert concludes in “Love and Struggle”’s “Afterward” section: “The book ends here; the struggle of course continues…with love and for the unity of humankind.”
by bob feldman
(No verified email address)
29 Apr 2012
A review of "LOVE AND STRUGGLE: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond"
LOVE AND STRUGGLE:
My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond
by David Gilbert
Oakland : PM Press 2012
“Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground and Beyond” is a well-written, intellectually and politically exciting, and emotionally moving autobiography. Published by the alternative non-commercial collective PM Press, it presents a more balanced picture of Gilbert than has been portrayed in the U.S. mass media since his arrest in 1981. Most people have previously had the chance to hear Gilbert speak for himself only in Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s 2003 Academy Award-nominated documentary film, “The Weather Underground.”
“Love and Struggle” provides its readers with a sweeping history of the growth and development of the Movement of the 1960s that reflects the historical perspective of politically radical anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist/organizers of the 1960s. Gilbert explains how he—the son of a toy company production manager and scoutmaster who grew up in upper middle-class Brookline, Massachusetts in the 1950s, “went on to become an Eagle Scout and also to win the highest religious medal for Jewish scouts” and graduated with a B.A. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1966—ended up, at the age of 37, “handcuffed and getting worked over in the back of a police car” on the night of October 20, 1981; before being, subsequently, indicted, tried and convicted of felony murder and sentenced to 75 years-to-life in prison. Like Dave Dellinger’s autobiography, “From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter,” Gilbert’s “Love and Struggle” documents the sweeping life changes experienced by many radicals of the time.
He recalls how the impact of Martin Luther King and the late 1950s/early 1960s Civil Rights Movement led him to approach religious leaders in Greater Boston’s white community about allowing the local NAACP chapter to set up anti-racist education programs for white people. A friend’s acquaintance with a Vietnamese exchange student inspired him to write an article in his school’s student newspaper in 1961 “saying America was in danger of getting drawn into a major civil war in South Vietnam, and on the wrong side at that,” while still a liberal anti-communist high school senior.
“Love and Struggle” then revisits Gilbert’s political, academic and personal life and the history of the New Left Movement of the Sixties after his arrival on Columbia University’s campus in the Morningside Heights/West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan . In one section, “The 1960s and The Making Of A Revolutionary,” Gilbert explains why he and other New Left anti-war and anti-racist activists, along with Black Liberation Movement activists, became more politically radicalized, anti-imperialist and militant in their political thinking and street actions during the decade; and he also describes how he went about organizing students into SDS chapters at Columbia, Barnard and the New School for Social Research prior to the historic Columbia Student Revolt that shut-down Columbia University in 1968. He recalls, for example, how, in the spring of 1965, anti-war student activists at Columbia “set-up literature tables on the main plaza on campus, and we’d be there all day discussing and debating with those who stopped by.” He incisively observes:
“…I don’t want to give the wrong impression that our great arguments immediately turned people around. It is rare indeed that someone will give up on presuppositions in the course of a discussion. Ideas don’t change that quickly, and ego makes it hard for most of us to readily admit we are wrong. Organizers who expect instant conversions will become overbearing. Instead, our educational work, planted seeds and helped people see there were alternative interpretations and sources of information, so that once events developed to create more stress—the war intensified and the military draft expanded—people had a way to see that something was wrong, instead of just becoming more fervent about escalations to `win.’”
Given the decisions of university administrations at Columbia, Harvard and Stanford in 2011 to bring ROTC back to U.S. elite university campuses that had terminated their campus programs in response to late 1960s anti-ROTC campaigns of campus SDS chapters, Gilbert’s timely reference to his participation in a May 1965 anti-ROTC protest on Columbia’s campus may also be of special interest to 21st-century anti-war student activists:
“…We carried out a valuable early example of civil disobedience against university complicity with the war machine. This action was initiated by the civil rights group CORE, which planned to repeat an action done the preceding year, when a few of them sat-in to disrupt a Naval ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) ceremony…The administration moved the ceremony inside and when we marched to the door we were locked out, so people jammed up in the doorway and refused to disperse. The university called in the police, who started to pull people away, one by one…The cops twisted the tie around my neck, choking me, until, fortunately, it broke. They dragged me away and threw me down, ripping my jacket almost in half…
“Afterward, Columbia threatened to suspend the `ringleaders,’ but we were able to rally a lot of support…Some liberals wanted to reduce all organizing to defense of the right to dissent; but we maintained a balance, building a coalition on those terms while continuing to speak out against having the military on campus. And there was a tendency for students to get pumped up about how they had been subject to `police brutality.’…But I knew from my civil rights work that our bruises were minor compared to what was done routinely in Harlem…”
In the following section, “The Most Sane/Insane of Times,” Gilbert looks back in a self-critical way at the 1969/1970 period of New Left Movement history. During this period, the Weatherman faction attempted to mobilize anti-war youth to “bring the war home” to Chicago in the October 1969 “Days of Rage” protests; the Chicago 8 Conspiracy Trial began; Black Panther Party organizers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated; and Gilbert’s best friend, former Columbia SDS Vice-Chairman Ted Gold, and two other members of the Weatherman faction were accidentally killed in a West Village townhouse explosion, while building bombs to target a military base, possibly including civilians. Living in a Weatherman collective in Denver at the time, Gilbert provides readers with an interesting sense of how members and leaders of the Weatherman faction reacted on a political and emotional level to the shock of hearing the news about the deaths of their three comrades.
“Love and Struggle”’s next section, “Underground,” provides an exciting and vivid recollection by Gilbert of what it was like to be a member of the Weather Underground Organization [WUO] whose members were being hunted by the FBI. He also discusses the internal political differences and divisive debates that contributed to the demise of the WUO by the late 1970s.
The last four sections of Gilbert’s autobiography tell of his life in the nearly 35 years since the collapse of the WUO. He recalls his aboveground life as a furniture mover and Men Against Sexism activist in Denver in the late 1970s; some of the political, emotional and psychological reasons that he chose to resume his underground lifestyle in 1979; his return East and involvement in underground activity in support of the Black Liberation Army [BLA]. Stating that “I deeply regret the loss of lives and the pain for those families caused by our actions on October 20, 1981,” Gilbert also engages in self-criticism and self-analysis about the political appropriateness of his decision in 1979 to begin working in a clandestine way as an ally of a BLA unit “on such a high-risk tactical level with so little knowledge of the political context.” He cites “my corruption of ego” as possibly influencing the political choices he made after the collapse of the WUO, when he “was anxious to reestablish myself as a `revolutionary on the highest level,’ and `as the most anti-racist white activist.’”
Gilbert also describes, in an emotionally open way, how he reunited underground with fellow WUO member Kathy Boudin and their decision to become parents while underground. His account of how they prepared for the birth of their son in August 1980, how he felt at the time of his son’s birth and during the first year of his life and the sadness of his separation from both after his and Boudin’s arrests (she was released in 2003 after serving 22 years) are some of his most moving passages.
Some readers who were politically active in the Movement of the 1960s and 1970s may have a different political view of U.S. white working-class people’s historical revolutionary potential or the primacy of internal national liberation struggles within the US than what Gilbert presents in “Love and Struggle.” But there’s so much great political and psychological analysis of both U.S. society and the inter-personal dynamics within the U.S. left movement in this fascinating book—which also resembles an exciting mystery novel in some parts—that “Love and Struggle” should be required reading for everyone interested in 1960s and 1970s U.S. Movement history and how this history relates to current struggles.
Since David Gilbert has already been a political prisoner for more than 30 years he (as well as over 60 other U.S. political prisoners) should finally be released by U.S. state and federal government officials in 2012. In the North of Ireland, Italy and Germany, most of the political activists of the 1970s and 1980s who were involved in armed actions similar in nature to the one Gilbert was involved in were generally released from prison by the early 21st century. So why shouldn’t “Love and Struggle” author Gilbert and the BLA members who are also still imprisoned now also be released by the government authorities in the United States? For as Gilbert concludes in “Love and Struggle”’s “Afterward” section: “The book ends here; the struggle of course continues…with love and for the unity of humankind.”
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-Via Boston Indy Media-FromThe Boston City Hall Plaza May Day Rally
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Boston 2012.
********
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!
********
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!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-Via Boston IndyMedia-MAY DAY 2012: Hundreds Take to Boston-area Streets in the Fight for Workers’ Rights
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Boston 2012.
********
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!
********
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!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-From UJP-The Boston City Hall Plaza Rally
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Boston 2012.
********
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!
********
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!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-From WBUR
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Boston 2012.
********
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!
********
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!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-The Anti-Capitalist Rally And March From Copley Square
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Boston 2012.
********
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!
********
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!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-The Class War In Oakland-Defend The Oakland Commune!
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day 2012.
********
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!
********
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!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-The Struggle In New York
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day.
********
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!
********
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!
The Latest From The “Occupy Oakland” Website-This Is Class War-We Say No More- Take The Offensive- Defend The Oakland Commune!- A Five Point Program For Discussion
Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the Bay Area vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Labor Movement And Its Allies! Defend All Those Who Defend The Labor Movement! Defend All May Day Protesters Everywhere!
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists back on December 12, 2011and the subsequent defense of the longshoremen’s union at Longview, Washington beating back the anti-union drives by the bosses there. As I have pointed out in remarks previously made as part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown on December 12th this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a very different, more equitable society.
Not everything has gone as well, or as well-attended, as expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on that afternoon of December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the struggle against the bosses, including plenty of illusions or misunderstandings by many newly radicalized militants about who our friends, and our enemies, are. Some of that will get sorted out in the future as we get a better grip of the importance of the labor movement to winning victories in our overall social struggles. May Day can be the start of that new offensive in order to gain our demands
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work. Work that would be divided through local representative workers’ councils which would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work. Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as implement “30 for 40” so that it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.
Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy.
Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.
Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 labor, organized labor, spent around 450 million dollars trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The results speak for themselves. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea then was (and is, as we come up to another presidential election cycle) that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.
The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. The most egregious recent example- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks last summer when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments period for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.
This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go.
*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reaches it final stages, the draw down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we must recognize that we anti-warriors failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006). As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya) continue we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan!
U.S. Hands Off Iran!- American (and world) imperialists are ratcheting up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in our own way in our own time.
U.S. Hands Off The World!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.
Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now winding up Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs.
Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!
This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle class as well.
Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.
Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while services have not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!
Stop housing foreclosures now! Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to immiserate the mass of society for the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.
Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.
Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Labor Movement And Its Allies! Defend All Those Who Defend The Labor Movement! Defend All May Day Protesters Everywhere!
Markin comment:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists back on December 12, 2011and the subsequent defense of the longshoremen’s union at Longview, Washington beating back the anti-union drives by the bosses there. As I have pointed out in remarks previously made as part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown on December 12th this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a very different, more equitable society.
Not everything has gone as well, or as well-attended, as expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on that afternoon of December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the struggle against the bosses, including plenty of illusions or misunderstandings by many newly radicalized militants about who our friends, and our enemies, are. Some of that will get sorted out in the future as we get a better grip of the importance of the labor movement to winning victories in our overall social struggles. May Day can be the start of that new offensive in order to gain our demands
*******
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work. Work that would be divided through local representative workers’ councils which would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work. Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as implement “30 for 40” so that it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.
Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy.
Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.
Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 labor, organized labor, spent around 450 million dollars trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The results speak for themselves. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea then was (and is, as we come up to another presidential election cycle) that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.
The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. The most egregious recent example- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks last summer when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments period for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.
This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go.
*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reaches it final stages, the draw down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we must recognize that we anti-warriors failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006). As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya) continue we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan!
U.S. Hands Off Iran!- American (and world) imperialists are ratcheting up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in our own way in our own time.
U.S. Hands Off The World!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.
Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now winding up Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs.
Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!
This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle class as well.
Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.
Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while services have not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!
Stop housing foreclosures now! Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to immiserate the mass of society for the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.
Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.
Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml
Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)
Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-FromThe Struggle (Literally) In Portland, Oregon (Of Course)
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Portland 2012.
********
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!
********
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-From The Struggle (Literally) In Seattle
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Boston 2012.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
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!
Reflections on May Day 2012 In Boston- Forward To May Day 2013-The May Day Struggle (Literally) In New York City-Defend All Protestors!
Click on the headline to link to Occupy May Day for reports and information on May Day in Boston 2012.
********
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!
********
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!
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