Palestinian civilian toll climbs in Gaza

Loading... Share No Thanks Must Read?Thank YouYes 433

Email Story Print

By IBRAHIM BARZAK and KARIN LAUB, AP
2 hours ago

A member of the Abdel Aal family is rescued after his family house collapsed...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli aircraft struck crowded areas in the Gaza Strip on Monday, driving up the civilian death toll and in one case devastating several homes belonging to one clan — the fallout from a new tactic in Israel's six-day-old offensive meant to quell Hamas rocket fire on Israel.

Escalating its bombing campaign, Israel on Sunday began attacking homes of activists in Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza. These attacks have led to a sharp spike in civilian casualties, killing 24 civilians in less than 24 hours, a Gaza health official said. Overall, the offensive that began Wednesday killed 91 Palestinians, including 50 civilians.

The rising civilian toll was likely to intensify pressure on Israel to end the fighting. Hundreds of civilian casualties in an Israeli offensive in Gaza four years ago led to fierce international condemnation of Israel.

Hamas fighters, meanwhile, have fired hundreds of rockets into Israel in the current round of fighting, including 12 on Monday, among them one that hit an empty school.

The new airstrikes came as Egypt was trying to broker a cease-fire, with the help of Turkey and Qatar. The Turkish foreign minister and a delegation of Arab foreign ministers were expected in Gaza on Tuesday. However, Israel and Hamas appeared far apart in their demands, and a quick end to the fighting seemed unlikely.

In Monday's violence, a missile struck a three-story home in the Gaza City's Zeitoun area, flattening the building and badly damaging several nearby homes. Shell-shocked residents searching for belongings climbed over debris of twisted metal and cement blocks in the street.

The strike killed two children and two adults, and injured 42 people, said Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra.

Residents said Israel first sent a warning strike at around 2 a.m. Monday, prompting many residents in the area to flee their homes. A few minutes later, heavy bombardment followed.

Ahed Kitati, 38, had rushed out after the warning missile to try to hustle people to safety. But he was fatally struck by a falling cinderblock, leaving behind a pregnant wife, five young daughters and a son, the residents said.

Sitting in mourning with her mother and siblings just hours after her father's death, 11-year-old Aya Kitati clutched a black jacket, saying she was freezing, even though the weather was mild. "We were sleeping, and then we heard the sound of the bombs," she said, then broke down sobbing.

Ahed's brother, Jawad Kitati, said he plucked the lifeless body of a 2-year-old relative from the street and carried him to an ambulance. Blood stains smeared his jacket sleeve.

Another clan member, Haitham Abu Zour, 24, woke up to the sound of the warning strike and hid in a stairwell. He emerged to find his wife dead and his two infant children buried under the debris, but safe.

Clan elder Mohammed Azzam, 61, denied that anyone in his family had any connections to Hamas.

"The Jews are liars," he said. "No matter how much they pressure our people, we will not withdraw our support for Hamas."

Late Sunday, an Israeli missile killed a father and his eight-year-old son on the roof of their Gaza City home. The father, a Hamas policeman, was on the roof to repair a leaking water tank, his relatives said.

In another area of Gaza City, the patriarch of the Daloo family, Jamal, sat in mourning for 11 members of his family killed in a missile strike on his home Sunday. Among the dead were his wife, his son, daughter-in-law, his sister and four grandchildren. His face swollen from crying, he embraced relatives and neighbors paying their condolences.

The mourners sat in plastic chairs just meters away from bulldozers clearing the ruins of Daloo's home. His 16-year-old daughter Yara was still missing and believed under the rubble, family members said.

Daloo, who is left with two sons, tried to take comfort in the belief that the loss of his family was God's will and that the dead are now in paradise. He vehemently disputed Israel's initial claim that a senior operative of Islamic Jihad, a smaller sister group of Hamas, was hiding in his house. He said his son Mohammed, one of those killed, was a policeman in the Gaza police, but not an activist.

"The international public opinion witnessed the facts," he said of the tragedy that befell him. "This does not require my words."

Also Monday, Israel bombarded the remains of the former national security compound in Gaza City. Flying shrapnel killed one child and wounded others living nearby, al-Kidra said. Five farmers were killed in two separate strikes, al-Kidra said, including three who he said had been mistakenly identified earlier by Hamas security officials as Islamic Jihad fighters.

Other strikes killed two fighters on a motorcycle in southern Gaza and two passengers in a taxi that had put a press signs in the windshield, al-Kidra said.

In addition to 91 Palestinians killed over the past six days, some 720 were wounded, al-Kidra said.

On the Israeli side, three civilians have died from Palestinian rocket fire and dozens have been wounded. An Israeli rocket-defense system has intercepted hundreds of rockets bound for populated areas.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 12 rockets had struck Israel by late Monday morning, including one that hit a school. Schools in southern Israel have been closed since the offensive started.

Israel launched the current offensive after months of intensifying rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which continued despite the strikes.

In the night from Sunday to Monday, aircraft targeted about 80 militant sites, including underground rocket-launching sites, smuggling tunnels and training bases, as well as Palestinian command posts and weapons storage facilities located in buildings owned by militant commanders, the Israeli military said in a release. Aircraft and gunboats joined forces to attack Hamas police headquarters, and Palestinian rocket squads were struck as they prepared to fire, the release said.

In all, 1,350 targets in the Gaza Strip have been struck since the Israeli operation began. However, military activity over the past two nights has dropped off as targets change and international efforts to wrest a cease-fire plod ahead.

Israel and Hamas have put forth widely divergent conditions for a truce. But failure to end the fighting threatens to touch off an Israeli ground invasion, for which thousands of soldiers, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, have already been mobilized and dispatched to Gaza's border.

President Barack Obama said he was in touch with players across the region in hopes of halting the fighting. While defending Israel's right to defend itself against the rocket fire, he also warned of the risks the Jewish state would take if it were to expand its air assault into a ground war.

"If we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza, the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two-state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future," Obama said.

___

Associated Press writer Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed reporting.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Late Caleb Marcus Jackson’s Hills and Hollows Of Appalachia , Take Two

The late Caleb Marcus Jackson, Jr. (always called Calvin Marcus to distinguish him from his father, Caleb Marcus Jackson, Sr. by Mother Jackson and anyone else who was unsure of themselves when calling out for a Jackson, father or son) knew how to tell a story, knew the rhythm, knew how to get emotionally involved with whatever subject he was going on about, and best of all he knew how to wrap it up with a snappy punch line or some ponderous moral. Yah, Caleb Marcus, could tell a story, tell them in that southeast Kentucky mountain hills and hollows drawl that was not as harsh as deep south planation two hundred years at the bourbon barrel, handkerchief in hand mopping off the midday (hell midnight too) sweat in high season summer, rousting n----rs out of their pre-dawn cabins to go to the fields and cut that damn white ball boll cotton in order to keep that bourbon barrel well-filled. Nor was that Caleb Marcus drawl so pale, so say Maryland tidewaters pale, that those from further south thought the speaker was trying to pass, pass for a yankee. So put the drawl, the two hundred years secluded drawl perfected by those who did not go further west than Kentuck when the soil finally ran out back east or decided to go west but wound up in the hills and hollows and for lack of anything better to do settled in, poor boy settled in, put in a thousand years of grit, put in some detail and you had a classic storyteller, a plebeian master at work.

Except Caleb Marcus had one problem, or maybe two problems but they kind of went together. A problem for me anyway when I decided that I would try to get some of his stuff printed after I had tracked him down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky where I had first run into him about twenty-five years ago when I was doing a series of articles entitled Brothers Under The Bridge for the now long defunct East Bay Eye (California) on the fate (and/or plight) of various Vietnam veterans I had run into out under the bridges, in the ravines, along the railroads tracks and other “jungle’ spots dotted in the Southern California landscape a couple who told me about Caleb. First, he couldn’t read, read so good anyway, and what he could read was done in such a painfully halting fashion that it was better not to put him, or me, in that quandary. Second, Calvin Mark could not write, write much more than his name. When I asked him why he never learned those two skills he said, “there weren’t no call for learning them,” and so he didn’t.

Me, well, I just kept up with his stories as best I could, writing down little notes, or keeping them in my head for sunnier times when they could be expanded into something bigger, but now, now that he is gone, a sketch will have to do-a sketch from Caleb Marcus about what it was like on Saturday night, or at least one late 1960s Saturday night after he had gotten back to the “real” world (from Vietnam) down in the hills and hollows, down where the mountain winds blow through and create a song of their own. A night when fearing some Sunday morning preacher man retribution, but willing to risk it, the god-fearing brethren let loose, let the liquor (corn of course where would one get city Johnny Walker some color down in the rutted ravens, or have cash money for such city goods) flow, got out the fiddles, banjos, guitars, mandolins, bells, washboards and whatever else would make noise and headed for Farmer Johnson’s old unused broke down red barn (unused except for Saturday night dances and drinking bouts, liquor courtesy of Moonshine Prescott whose moniker speaks for itself and also acted as dance sponsor, as long as anybody around the hollows could remember, and they are a long-memoried people).

This one night, the night Caleb Marcus spoke of, the Prestonsburg Sheiks (some of whom would later go on to form the mountain music-famous Kentucky Sheiks and receive a record contract from Decal Records, after they had been heard over in Hazard by one of their agents who had been sent out to scour the countryside, sour those damn hills and hollows, looking for talent for their mountain music division in the wake of the success of the Carter Family revival) were brought in to play since the banjo player was engaged to Miss Catherine Prescott, one of Moonshine Prescott’s daughters.

In any case bringing in this locally famous talent in the music-starved hills and hollows assured a great turn-out. And plenty of business for Moonshine Prescott (plenty of corn liquor business if you are clueless), plenty of loose talk, plenty of flirting (and more) and plenty of heaven- sent music.

Listen to the details (spruced up a little by me in the language department but pure Caleb Marcus in the telling) of this one, about a guy, a yankee guy, a guy named Frank (I think that was the name Caleb mentioned although my notes have a couple of names, but the important thing was this guy was strictly a yankee), who found himself at that dance that night with a gal, a flat-lands Indiana gal named Angelica, who had kin in area and who had come through Prestonsburg just in time to learn about the magic of the mountains down Caleb Marcus’s way. Caleb had picked this Frank up hitchhiking outside of Lexington (Kentucky, okay) while he was transporting whatever he transported on his job for Giant Trucking and was heading back to home base Prestonsburg. This is maybe four or five years after the incidents described in the story. They got to talking Frank, mainly, talking about why he wanted to get back to southeastern Kentucky and so to while away the time Frank told him why he was heading that way.

It seems that Frank and Angelica had started out in Steubenville up the Ohio River in the summer of 1969 where Angelica had been serving them off the arm at some backwater truck-stop diner when Frank drifted in after being let off by a truck driver who had picked him up on the hitchhike road in Boston. This was just supposed to be a way-station stop for Frank who was heading west to California, in search of whatever guys were searching for in the late 1960s. They hit it off right away, and in 1960s fashion, Angelica ditched her job and joined Frank on the road west. This story is really about a detour as will be explained because they headed south first before moving west. Calvin Mark said some other stuff I forgot before this part but I have lost the notes so let’s pick it up where Caleb has this Frank explaining how they wound up at that red barn:

“In the few weeks that Angelica had been working long hours at the diner trying to help make a stake to head west (I was washing dishes in the diner and doing odd jobs as a gas jockey as well) she served many of the truckers whose rigs were idling in the truck stop rest area we were cruising for rides [on the first day they finally started heading west]. So, naturally, she tried to find out where some of those that she knew were heading. This day, they were heading mainly east, or anyway not west. Finally, she ran into one burly teamster, Eddie, who was heading down Route 7 along the Ohio River to catch Interstate 64 further down river and then across through to Lexington, Kentucky. Angelica was thrilled because, as it turned out, she had kin [her term, okay], a cousin or something, down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky whom she hadn’t seen in a while and where we could stay for a few days and take in the mountain air (her idea of rest, mine was strictly ocean breezes, thank you).

I tried, tried desperately, without being obnoxious about it, to tell her that heading south was not going to get us to the west very easily. She would have none of it, and she rightly said, that we were in no rush and what was wrong with a little side trip to Kentucky anyway. Well, I suppose in the college human nature course, Spat-ology 101, if there was such a course, and they taught it, I should have had enough sense to throw in the towel. After all this was Angelica’s first, now seriously, whimsical venture out on the road. And I did, in the end, throw in the towel, except not for the reason that you think.

What Angelica didn’t know until later was that I was deathly afraid of going to Kentucky. See, I had set myself up to the world as, and was in fact in my head, a Yankee, an Oceanside Yankee, if you like. I was born in Massachusetts and have the papers to prove it, but on those papers there is an important fact included. My father’s place of birth was Hazard, Kentucky probably not more than fifty to one hundred miles away from Prestonsburg. He was born down in the hills and hollows of mining country, coal mining country, made famous in song and legend. And also made infamous (to me) by Michael Harrington’s Other America which described in detail the plight of Appalachian whites, my father’s people. And also, as a result of the publicity about the situation down there, the subject in my early 1960s high school of a clothing drive to help them out. My father had left the mines when World War II started, enlisted in the Marines, saw his fair share of battles in the Pacific, got stationed before discharge at a Naval Depot in Massachusetts and never looked back. And see I never wanted him to look back. Like I said I threw in the towel, but I was not happy about it. Not happy at all.

Actually the ride down Route 7 was pretty uneventful and, for somebody who did not feel comfortable looking at trees and mountains, some of the scenery was pretty breath-taking. That is until we started getting maybe twenty miles from Prestonsburg and the air changed, the scenery changed, and the feel of the social milieu changed. See we were getting in the edges of coal country, not the serious “Bloody Harlan” stuff of legend but the older, scrap heap part that had been worked over, and “worked out” long along. The coal bosses had taken the earth’s assets and left the remnants behind to foul the air and foul the place.

But, mostly, and here is where I finally understood why my father took his chances in World War II and also why he never looked back, shacks. Nothing but haphazardly placed unpainted shacks, hard-scrabble patched roofs just barely covering them. With out-houses, out-houses can you believe that in America. And plenty of kids hanging out in the decidedly non-manicured front yards waiting… well, just waiting. All that I can say about my feelings at the time was that I would be more than willing to crawl on all fours to get back to my crummy old growing up homestead rather than fight the dread of this place.

Fortunately Angelica’s kin (second cousin), Annadeene, husband, both about twenty, and two kids , lived further down the road, out of town, in a trailer camp which the husband, Fred, had expanded so that it had the feel of a small country house. Most importantly it had indoor plumbing and a spare room where Angelica and I could sleep and put our stuff. Fred, as I recall, was something of a skilled mechanic (coal equipment mechanic) who worked for a firm that was indirectly connected to the Eastern Kentucky coal mines.

This Prestonsburg was nothing but one of a thousand such towns that I have passed through. A main street with a few essential stores, some boarded up retail space and then you are out of town. Moreover, Route 7 as it turned into Route 23 heading into Prestonsburg and then further down turned into nothing but an old country, pass at your own risk, country road about where Angelica’s cousin lived. What I am trying to get at though is that although these people were in the 20th century they were somewhat behind the curve. This is, as it probably was in my father’s time, patriotic country, country where you did your military service came home, worked, if you could find it, got married and raised a family. Just in tougher circumstances than elsewhere. [Caleb Marcus chuckled over that one, especially since this Frank was clueless that he had been born and raised right in the middle of this coal slag heap.]

I understood that part. What I did not understand then, and am still somewhat confused about, is the insularity of the place. The wariness, serious wariness, of strangers even of strangers brought to the hills and hollows by kin. I was not well received at least first, and I still am not quite sure if I ever was, by Angelica’s kin and I suppose if I thought about it while they had heard of “hippies” (every male with beard, long hair, and jeans was suspected of belonging to that category) Prestonsburg was more like something from Merle Haggard’s Okie From Muskogee lyrics than Haight-Ashbury. [Another Caleb chuckle, this yankee kid really had his say and some stuff to get off his chest that day.] Angelica kept saying that I would grow on them (like I did on her) but I knew, knew down deep that we had best get out of there. I kept pressing the issue but she refused to listen to any thoughts of our leaving until after Saturday night’s barn dance. After all Fred and Annadeene had “‘specially invited us to go with them, ” she said. We could leave Sunday morning but not before. Christ, a hillbilly hoe-down.

I would have felt no compulsion to go into anything but superficial detail about this barn dance but something happened requiring more detail. Otherwise this scene lacks completeness. I will say that I have a very clear picture of Angelica being fetching for this dance. All her feminine wiles got a workout that night. What I can’t remember is what she wore or how she wore her hair (up, I think) but the effect on me (and the other guys) was calculated to make me glad, glad as hell, that we stayed for this thing. What I can remember vividly though is that this barn dance actually took place in a barn, just a plain old ordinary barn that had been used in this area for years (according to the oldsters since back in the 1920s) [Caleb-1905] for the periodic dances that filled up the year and broke the monotony of the mountain existence. The old faded red-painted barn, sturdily build to withstand the mountain winds and containing a stage for such occasions was something out of a movie, some movie that you have seen, so you have some idea of what it was like even if you have never been within a hundred miles of a barn.

Moreover the locals had gone to some effort to decorate the place, provide plenty of refreshments and use some lighting to good effect. What was missing was any booze. This was a “dry” county then (and maybe still is) but not to worry wink, wink there was plenty of “white lightning” around out in the makeshift dirt parking lot where clusters of good old boys hovered around certain cars whose owners had all you needed (and who all worked for Moonshine Prescott, the guy who was sponsoring the dance and the king pin of the local corn liquor industry). Just bring your own fixings. After we had checked out the arrangements in the barn and Annadeene had introduced us to her neighbors Fred tapped me on the shoulder and “hipped” me to the liquor scene. We went outside. Fred talked quietly to one of the busy car owners and then produced a small jar for my inspection. “Hey, wait,” he said “you have to cut that stuff a little with some water if you are not used to it.” I took my jar, added some water, and took a swig. Jesus Christ, I almost fell down the stuff was so powerful. [Caleb: damn right.]

Look, I was used to drinking whiskey straight up, or I thought I drank whiskey straight up but after one swig, one swig, my friends, I confess I was a mere teetotaler. Several minutes later we went back inside and I nursed, literally nursed, that jar for the rest of the night. But you know I got “high”off it and was in good spirits. So good that I started dancing with Angelica once the coterie of banjo players, fiddlers, guitarists and mandolin players got finished warming up, a group calling itself the Prestonsburg Sheiks. I am not much of a dancer under the best of circumstances but, according to her, I did okay that night.

Hey, you’d expect that the music was something out of the Grand Ole Opry, some Hee-Haw hoe-down stuff, some Arkansas Jamboree hokum, right? Forget that. See back in the mountains they did not have access to much television or sheet music or other such refinements. What they played they learned from mama and papa, or some uncle who got it from god knows where. It’s all passed down from something like time immemorial and then traced back to the old county, the British Isles mainly. Oh sure there was a “square” hoe-down thing or two but what I heard that night was something out of the mountain night high-powered eerie winds as they rolled down the hills and hollows (hollas, if you are from there). Something that spoke of hard traveling first from the old country when your luck ran out there, then from the east coast of America when that got too crowded and you just sat down when you hit those grey-blue mountains, or maybe, although I never asked (and under the circumstances would not have dared to ask) formed their version of the great American West night, and this was as far as they got, or cared to go.

Some of this music I knew from my folk experiences in Boston and Cambridge when everybody, including me, was looking for the roots of folk music. Certainly I knew Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies when the band played it instrumentally. That was one of the first songs, done by gravelly-voiced Dave Van Ronk, I heard on the folk radio station that I listened to. But, see, back in those early days that stuff, for the most part, was too, well you know, too my father’s music for me to take seriously. Bob Dylan was easier to listen to for a message that “spoke” to me. But this night I thrilled to hear real pros going one-on-one to out-fiddle, out-banjo, out-mandolin, out, out-any instrument each other in some mad dash to appease the mountain nymphs, or whatever or whoever was being evoked to keep civilization away from the purity of the music. That night was as close as I got to my roots, and feeling good about those roots, and also as close as I got to Angelica.

About 12:30 or one o’clock the dance broke up, although as we headed down the rutted, jagged street we could still hear banjos and fiddles flailing away to see who really was “king of the hill.”Angelica said she was glad that we stayed, and I agreed. She also said that, yes, I was right; it was time to head west. She said it in such a way that I felt that she could have been some old time pioneer woman who once she recognized that the land was exhausted knew that the family had to pull up stakes and push on. It was just a matter of putting the bundles together and saying goodbye to the neighbors left behind. Needless to say old resourceful road companion Angelica, sweet, fetching Angelica put that fetchiness to good use and had us lined up for a ride from another Eddie truck driver who, if he was sober enough, was heading out with a load at 6:00 AM to Winchester just outside Lexington from where we could make better connections west. 6:00 AM, are you kidding? I was still wearing about eight pound of that white lightning, or whatever it was. Angelica merely pointed out in her winsome, fetching way that nobody forced me to drink that rotgut (her word) liquor when softer refreshments had been available inside. Touché, 6:00 AM it is.

Dog tired, smelling of a distillery, or some old-time hardware store (where the white lightning ingredients probably came from) Angelica and I laid our heads down to get a few hours sleep. Gently she nuzzled up to my side (how she did it through the alcoholic haze I do not know) and gave every indication that she wanted to make love. Now we are right next door to the two unnamed sleeping children, sleeping the sleep of the just, and as she got more aggressive we have to be, or we think we have to be, more quiet. No making the earth under the Steubenville truck stop motel cabin shake [a reference to the first night they made love] shake that night. And, as we talked about it on the road later, that was not what was in her mind. She just wanted to show, in a very simple way, that she appreciated that I had stayed, that I had been wise enough to figure out how long we should stay, and that, drunk or sober, I would take her feelings into account. Not a bad night’s work. And so amid some low giggles we did our exploration. Oh, here is the part that will tell you more than a little about Angelica. She also wanted to please me this night because she did not know, given the vagaries of the road, when we would be able to do it again. Practical girl.

In the groggy, misty, dark before dawn, half awake, no quarter awake night Angelica tapped me to get up. We quickly packed, she ate a little food (I could barely stand never mind do something as complicated as eat food), and we made our goodbyes, genuine this morning by all parties. As we went out the front trailer door and headed up the road to the place where Eddie had said to meet him I swear, I swear on all the dreams of whatever color that I have ever had, that the background mountains that were starting to take form out of the dark started to play, and to play like that music I heard last night from those demon fiddlers and banjo players. I asked, when we met Eddie, who was only a few minutes late, and who looked and felt (as he told me) worst that I did (except that he proudly stated that he was used to it, okay Eddie) if those musicians were still at it over at that old devil of a red barn. “No,” he said. “Where is that music coming from then?” I said. Old Eddie (backed by Angelica) said “What music?” That angel music I said. Eddie just looked bemused as he revved that old truck engine up and we hit the road west.

Sometime later I was half-listening to some music, some background eerily haunting mountain music coming from a folk radio station when I had the strangest feeling that I had heard the tune before. I puzzled over it sporadically for a few days and then went to the local library to see if they had some mountain music available. They did and I began on that date a feverish re-acquaintance with this form of music, especially the various Carter Family combinations. I, however, never did find out the name of that song.

And in a sense it has not name. It was the music from that old mountain wind as it trailed down the hills and hollows that I heard that last night in Prestonsburg. See here is what you didn’t know as you listened to all this stuff, and I only half knew it back then. I had been in Kentucky before that trip down from Steubenville, Ohio with sweet Angelica. No, not the way you think. My parents, shortly after they were married and after my father got out of the service, took a trip back to his home in Hazard so his family could meet his bride, or maybe just so he could show her off. They stayed for some period of time, I am not sure exactly how long, but the long and short of it was, that I was conceived and was fussing around in my mother’s womb while they were there. So see, it was that old mountain wind calling me home, calling me to my father’s roots, calling me to my roots as I was aimlessly searching for that great American West night. And here I am again, looking again. Double thanks, Angelica.

[Caleb: “You had a hell of a story to tell Frank and welcome home, brother,” as he left Frank off at Millie’s Café in downtown Prestonsburg late in that same afternoon.]

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- His Rock And Roll Ruby Moment

 

 

Rock and Roll Ruby Lyrics-Johnny Cash

 

Well I took my ruby jumpin on a dance in the town

 

She took her high heels off and let her stockings down

           A

She put a quarter in the jukebox to get a little beat

      E

Everybody started dancin` on the rhythm of her feet

A

She’s my rock and roll ruby

E

rock and roll ruby

       B7                                    E

When ruby starts a rocking it satisfies my soul 

 

Well ruby started rocking bout one O`clock

And when she started rocking she just couldn’t stop

She rocked on the tables and she rocked on the floor

When everybody yelling ruby rock some more

 

Chorus

 

It was round about 4 and I thought she would stop

She looked at me and then she looked at the clock

She said wait a minute daddy now don’t you get soul all I wanna do I rock a little bit more

 

Chorus

 

One night my ruby left me all alone

I tried to contact her on the telephone

I finally found her bout 12 O`clock

She said leave me alone daddy cause your ruby wants to rock

 

Chorus

************

He remembered the first time he saw her, spotted her really, when he entered
Johnny Jake’s Bar, Johnny Jake’s up in Olde Saco, Maine, the old time textile town then having seen better days , that late 1956 night, that night he learned about hunger, hell, maybe desire was a better word but he didn’t want to get caught up with words not once he got a look at her. All he had  wanted that night, that cold Friday night, was a few drinks with his corner boys (corner boys whom he had known from hunger high school day at Olde Saco High when they all hung out in front of Mama’s Pizza Parlor over off Atlantic Avenue near the Acre just like his father, and his father before him, had done, waiting, waiting for something, some fresh breeze in that no air town, in that no air state, and, although he wasn’t complaining, no way, this no air red scare cold war country), listen to this mad max daddy rockabilly music that was getting so much play on the local rock station, WMEX, and was drawing big crowds into Jimmy Jack’s on the weekends, and go home after a hard week’s work at the mills.             

He remembered that guys, and maybe a few girls too, were calling out to her, calling out rock, Ruby, rock in honor of  the new wave Sun Records rockabilly hit by Warren Smith, Rock and Roll Ruby, that had everybody, every guy, in a lather about their dream Ruby, and maybe every girl dreaming her Ruby dream too. It wasn’t until later, much later, that he found out her name was actually Iris, Iris Genet then living in Biddeford (but really almost fresh from French-Canadian homeland up near the Gaspe heading south to catch some of the fresh breeze). But that was later, much later, and until that time Ruby fit her just fine. Yah, just fine.

It wasn’t like Ruby was some great beauty, although she had that wholesome prettiness that almost all French-Canadians girls of interest had whether from the Gaspe or from greater Olde Saco. Naturally she was slender; some would say thin and get no argument, with the genetic small breasts and long legs of F-C girls of interest, topped off by blue eyes and brownish blonde hair. She was wearing capri pants that night and a form- fitting white blouse. But all of this was so much hot air because what Ruby had, had in spades, had in diamonds, had in hearts, had in clubs, had in any part of the deck was, well, energy, sexual energy, enough sexual energy to float battleships if there was some way to transport the one to the other. And all of that energy was on display on the dance floor of Jimmy Jake’s that night as she danced to Good Rockin’ Tonight, the song the rockabilly cover band, the Rockin’ Ramrods, was playing as he came in, spotted her, and learned what hunger, was all about.  

Funny there was nothing choreographed about her moves, not at all, her play was based on, one, that slender (okay, thin) athletic body moving in about six direction at once in almost perfect harmony with the beat coming from the band, and two, that she was doing it all by herself, solo, alone, on the floor, on a couple of tables and in a flash  on top of Johnny Jake’s beaten up, beaten down, whiskey/beer/rum- stained brown mahogany bar. And guys and girls were egging her on although he distinctly saw some cat-like daggers in the eyes of some of the girls when their guys got, well, a little too carried away. And thus he took up Ruby dreams.

And just Ruby dreams because that night he sensed, and maybe correctly, that, one, every guy, every warm-blooded guy, in the place probably wanted to take a run at her too and from what he saw did (even some of those cat-like dagger- eyed girl attached guys) and, two, he noticed that while she was on everybody’s mind never once did she dance with a guy, fast or slow, and while the drinks piled up in front of her spot at the bar (rum and coke seemed to be her drink) no walking daddy was around that spot and no guy got a chance to sit near her for more than a quick minute, and then was dismissed. No this Ruby dream was not going to be conquered, if conquered at all, in any one evening and so that night he had his corner boy drinks, left with them, and  spent a restless toss and turn night.   

He went back to Johnny Jake’s the next few, maybe four Friday nights in a row, sometimes with his corner  boys, sometime solo depending  of his feel for the night (and the amount of tossing and turning that he had done that week), his lucky rabbit’s foot Frenchman luck feel for the night. No soap, Ruby, dancing with the saints of rock and roll or something, making more moves as she turned into a whirling dervish, looking foxier by the week, drinks piled up in front of her spot, no walking daddy around, no guys spending more than a few minutes at her station, dancing on the tables, and that hard-bitten bar counter, now mainly with her shoes off and in a dress rather than capris to fire guy dreams even more. And with the inevitable calls of rock, Ruby, roll (although the dated girls were noticeably more silent and their dates, probably having been rebuffed a little too often for eyeing Ruby just a little too often, had noticeably less lust in their eyes, Ruby lust anyway).

He figured, one, sweet Ruby was a “lessie,” some hellhole bitch just out to rile the plebes, cause riffs among the heteros and move on, two, she was some kind of hooker who was just letting off steam after a hard week at the pillows (although Johnny Jake, Johnny Jake in person as the manager of the place, was very, very careful about letting whores, obvious whores anyway, work his room) and, three, she was just some tease, some damn F-C tease just like the F-C (and Irish girls) from Olde Saco with a novena book in one hand and eat your heart out boys in the other.                 

Then one Wednesday night, an off day in the blues department, he dropped in to Johnny Jake’s for a couple of shots, whisky shots (hold the water chaser came with it on the first order  which told Tim the friendly bartender he was in for some serious drinking), and sat at the bar. Then Ruby came out of the Ladies’ Room all Ruby-like, dress, blouse, no shoes on, and sat down at her “spot” a few stools from his. She worked on a rum and coke for a few minutes then went to the jukebox  and dropped some change in the machine, change that sounded like quarters , made a bunch of selections, and soon Sonny Burgess’ Red-Headed Woman was blaring over the speakers and Ruby was working the table tops (mainly empty that night). He decided this was his time, he was ready to move, but something, maybe something in the determinedly provocative  way she danced, something in her abandon like nobody  else was in the room(and if there was it was of no import), and sometime  in her face that spoke of sorrows, maybe not deep sorrows but sorrows, held him back. He finished his drink and left.        

He had another toss and turn night although this time more over reevaluating his “take” on Ruby, he sorrowed-up version of Ruby, the thing  he sensed in her that held him back earlier in the evening . Gone were the “lessie,”whore, tease theories of her reason for existence replaced by a story line of displacement and loss that drove her from Quebec. One line went along an axis of her being too much of a free spirit, too “advanced” for some sleepy fishing village along the Saint Lawrence or the bay, maybe she had been the subject some “shunning” campaign from the shrill villagers jealous (and fisherman desirous of that energy, and fisherman wife responding with those same cat-like Olde Saco dagger eyes) and so she packed up and left. Left but did not leave, first time from home, her old country ways against the fast-paced new country ways. The second line, the obviously second line, was that she had been unlucky in love, some stupid guy had abandoned her, some local guy and so she had to flee to get a fresh start. He liked that second one better, better because it provided some kind of hope against the restless nights.          

That next Friday night he and his corner boys showed up once again at Johnny Jake’s, and he expectantly looked for his Ruby. She was not there. He asked Tim if he knew why she wasn’t. Tim filled him in, including informing of her real name and a few other sketchy details. His Ruby had flown the coop, or rather gone back to the Gaspe, because her man, her bad- ass man, Jeanbon Bleu, had just been released from prison. He said to himself, jesus, turning pale, pale inside anyway, was that who she was hooked up with. Jeanbon was well-known to every hard-ass (and soft-ass) corner boy from the Gaspe to Nashua for half the armed robberies and crazy madness in that part of Canada. He thanked his Wednesday night lucky stars he had stayed put. He had had his rock and roll Ruby moment. No, his rock and roll Iris moment. And that was enough.        

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- When The Corner Boys Grow Up- Ben Affleck’s–“The Town”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Ben Affleck’s The Town.

DVD Review

The Town, starring Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, from the novel by Chuck Hogan, Legendary Pictures, 2010

I have spilled much ink talking about the corner boy society that I grew up in 1950s Olde Saco (that’s up in Maine for those interested) where some hard-ass (and soft-ass too) corner boys ripped up the imaginations of wanna-bes like me and my corner boys who hung around, soft-ass hung around, Mama’s Pizza Parlor over on Atlantic Avenue, waiting, well, waiting for some breathe of fresh air, maybe coming in from the nearby ocean to wash over us and take out of that red scare cold war night. In the meantime we hung out, doing a little of this and a little of that, some stuff legal other stuff well, let’s just leave it as other stuff.

So on any given night, mostly weekends, from about junior high school on you could find us in those environs playing pinball on Mama’s back room machine, the Madame LaRue busty ladies pictured on the scoreboard begging you to play for their favors, play fiercely although empty-handedly (except those seventeen free games you racked up in your, ah, frenzy to please Madame). Or when rock and roll threw its fresh breathe over us we tossed many quarters in Mama’s jukebox to hear the latest songs like the Chiffon’s He’s So Fine about twelve times straight and hoped that certain shes came in to listen and maybe help make us those selections. Or, on some dark moonless night, maybe a little drunk, maybe a little dough hunger, or needing dough girl hungry, we might just be found doing our midnight creep around the neighborhood in order to make ends meet, that little of this and that stuff mentioned early.

As high school turned to work world, or maybe college world as things opened up even for working- class kids, the old corner boy society, or our generation’s chapter of it, went in several difference directions, some good some not so good, including those like the legendary Big Red Dubonnet who graduated to armed robberies of gas stations, liquor stores and Shawshank. Yah, Big Red was tough (I once saw him chain-whip, mercilessly chain-whip, a guy for the simple error of being on the wrong corner, Red’s, while breathing), was pretty smart, in a street smart way, knew a couple of things about the world and, and, be still my heart, let me have some free Madame LaRue games after he had racked up a ton and needed to take care of some ever present girl business. And I was the beneficiary of Big Red’s (not Red, Big Red, don’t ever make that mistake, remember what I said about that chain-whipping) largess on many occasions because Big Red attracted girls, and not just slutty girls like you’d expect, but girls who had their Saint Brigitte’s Church (Roman Catholic in that French-Canadian heavy old town) novena book recitals in one part of their brains and lust, bad boy lust, in the other, on more occasions that you would think.

And that is where memories of Big Red and the characters that inhabit The Town intersect in my mind. See Big Red, the late Big Red Dubonnet now, never could find anything better in this whole wide world than to be the king hell king of the corner boy night. But that, just like any kingship, takes dough, and so you either work the work-a-day world with the squares or go where the dough is- for Big Red in Podunk gas stations and liquors stores, maybe an off-hand truck heist, and the guys like Doug and Jem who lead their peoples, their Charlestown corner boy peoples, banks, and other high-stakes projects. They are driven by that same first glance, last chance, imperative though, and by the same need to hone their respective skills on a regular basis before a hostile and unforgiving world.

Thus this film held me, held me in the thought that for a minute back in the 1950s, hell, more than a minute, I could have been lured to the life, no sweat, no looking back. Jesus I was the “holder” on more than one occasion when the great (locally Olde Saco and Portland great) “clip artist” Ronny Bleu had the local merchants in a frenzy anytime he was in the down town area, or maybe even thought about being there. And later in gratitude to Big Red for his favors (no, jesus, no not that lame free pinball game stuff, but when he “gave” me one of his “reject” girls, a college girl he said he couldn’t understand and thought I might be able to) I did a couple of favors for him in return too. And while The Town gets wound up in a little bizarre love interest between Doug and one of the bank female victims and some serious literary license on what was what in that old time Boston Irish neighborhood, Charlestown (where the guys were so tough that even tough guys from Southie, South Boston, had second thoughts about tangling with them), these grown-up corner boys were very recognizable. I’ll never forget the thrill the first time we saw Big Red pull out his gun, some old .32 automatic I think, or when we heard that the Esso gas station over on Gorham Road in Scarborough was hit one dark night by a guy aiming a .32 at the gas jockey attendant. So you can see the pull was strong, real strong.

Oh yah, I don’t know how true the code of omerta (silence) still is in Charlestown (or Southie, or about seventeen other places where corner boys, some corner boys anyway, go on to the life) but I am willing to believe that it is honored more in the breech than the observance. At least it was in Podunk. How do you think they (and you know who the they is just like in film, the cops from the locals to the feds), got the lead that got Big Red after he knocked over the biggest liquor store in Portland that last time before they clipped his wings?

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Four-The Origins Of The Communist League ("Young Spartacus-July-August 1976)

Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.

Markin comment:

I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. 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!

***********
Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Four-The Origins Of The Communist League ("Young Spartacus-July-August 1976)

By Joseph Seymour

EDITOR'S NOTE: As a special feature Young Spartacus has been serializing the lectures on "Marxism and the Jac­obin Communist Tradition" presented by Spartacist League Central Commit­tee member Joseph Seymour at the re­gional educational conferences of the Spartacus Youth League during the past year. The talk reproduced in this issue was given at the SYL Midwest Educational held in Chicago over the weekend of April 16-18. The first part of the series, which appeared in our Febru¬ary issue, was devoted to the Great French Revolution and its insurrection­ary continuity through the conspirator­ial Jacobin communists Babeuf and Buonarroti. The next section, appearing the following month, discussed the Carbonari Conspiracy, the French Revolu­tion of 1830 and Buonarroti, the Lyons silk weavers uprising and the Blanquist putschin!839. The third installment in the April Young Spartacus analyzed Chartism in Britain. The concluding portion of the presentation on the ori­gins of the Communist League will ap­pear in our next issue. To preserve the character of the verbal presentation stylistic alterations have been reduced to a minimum.
*************
This talk is the fourth part of a projected seven-part SYL class series, entitled "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition." As such, the full significance of this presentation today cannot be understood without knowing something about the first three, which have been encapsulated in Young Spartacus, and then hearing the next three.

The basic theme, of the talk is how the communist movement was gen­erated and conditioned by the epoch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; how Marx assimilated that tradition, how Marxism was tested and in many ways found faulty by the revolutions of 1848, after which the bourgeois-democratic revolution in West Europe was off the historical agenda, and how Marx fundamentally changed his con­ception of political strategy between 1850 and 1853. This talk, therefore, deals with the origins of Marxism, the development of Marx' political strategy up to the eve of 1848 and its encapsula­tion and codification in the Communist Manifesto, which was published a few months before the outbreak of the February revolution in Paris in 1848.

First I'm going to discuss the gen­eral character of the European left in the 1840's. Next I'm going to go back [to the 1830'sJ and trace the history of the League of the Just, which, becoming the Communist League in 1847, was the inclusive organization of all German communist activists and which was the organization through which Marx be­came a communist leader in 1847. Then we're going to go back again to the ever-popular question of the "young Marx" and the origins of Marxism in the narrow sense—Hegel and all that. And finally I'll try to tie it all to­gether in 1846, when Marx became a Marxist and found himself on the polit­ical stage as a communist factionalist.

Now, before we get into this talk, I want to make one point about method. As both political activists and living human beings we tend to have a fairly good natural sense of the importance of time in politics. You know that the American political scene looked somewhat different five years ago than today; that Maoism, for example, represented something rather different in 1971 than Maoism today.

But when we reflect on the revolu­tionary movement of Europe in 1815, in 1820, in 1830, in 1840, we lose the sensitivity to time of a working poli­tician. Unless one struggles to think contemporaneously, then I believe the origins of Marxism will appear very obscure, simply because the French political alignment was very different in 1840, say, than in 1844, and again very different than in 1847. The period before 1848 was an extremely volatile period, during which politics was much more unstable than in the U.S. or even West Europe today and in which the po­litical alignments on the left, including Marx1 opponents, changed. Marx praised Proudhon in 1842 and polemicized against him in 1847, because in that short period Proudhon's politics had radically changed. So, while some of my talk may seem antiquarian—you know, this happened in 1843 and then that happened in 1844—you should re­alize that a year is a long time in a faction fight, no less so in 1846.

Revolutionary Politics Before Marx

Marxism developed in a period of relative depression throughout the in­ternational workers and revolutionary movement. The period 1830 to 1842— that is, the period beginning with the successful bourgeois-democratic revolution in France and ending with the suppression of the Chartist general strike in Britain—represents a certain kind of cycle of revolution and counter­revolution. It began with a series of relatively successful bourgeois -democratic revolutions or revolution­ary movements and it ended with the communist-centered proletarian movements, even the massive Chartist movement, going against the bourgeoi­sie and getting smashed.

As a consequence, all the leading revolutionary cadres and all the political tendencies in the mid-1840's, when Marx and Engels first came on the scene, were profoundly shaped by these defeats. Etienne Cabet—a leader of the Society for the Rights of Man [formed 1832] and the most important socialist in France in the 1840's, had been sent into exile after the 1834 Lyons silk-weavers' uprising. Feargus O'Connor, the leader of the Chartists, was sent into exile after 1839 [the Chartist agi­tation to petition Parliament, leading to isolated uprisings] and imprisoned after 1842 [the Chartist insurrectionary general strike]. Karl Schapper, who was the leading cadre of the League of the Just, had also been sent into exile as a result of his role in the Blanquist putsch of 1839. So that unless one understands that the leadership of the principal revolutionary tendencies in the 1840's were rebounding against a series of defeated minority actions, that their attitudes and ideologies were profoundly shaped by that experience, then the political world that Marx en­tered and what Marx contributed be­come essentially incomprehensible.

Moreover, you need to realize the scale of the revolutionary movements at that time. Before 1848 there were only two mass movements of the left: the movement of Etienne Cabet in France and Chartism in Britain. All the other tendencies were either prop­aganda groups, such as the League of the Just; or literary sects, such as German True Socialism; or simply literary figures, such as Proudhon. These two mass organizations, there­fore, exerted a profoundly shaping in­fluence upon the League of the Just, whose main cadres were in exile in France and Britain. It is important, then, to have at least a working know­ledge of the Cabet movement and Chart­ism in the 1840's.

Reaction to the Reaction

Etienne Cabet, as I said, was a lead­er of the Society of the Rights of Man who was forced into exile following the repression of 1835. Cabet returned to France at a time when all the revolutionary communist sects had been
driven underground in the wake of the 1839 Blanquist putsch. Cabet built a mass utopian-socialist movement on the basis of class collaborationist!!, pacifist anti-revolutionism and bourgeois philanthropism. Known as "Father Cabet" for his appeals to Christianity, he espoused "communism with a human face."

Above all Cabet was consciously anti-violent. Week after week his paper, Le Populaire, carried letters, for example, £rom wives of the Lyons silk-weavers who said,

"In the old days our husbands were communists and they believed in violence. We had to worry about the police coming at night and arresting our husbands. Now they have been converted to your kind of com­munism and we don't have to worry about that anymore."

Among the inner circle of Cabet was Herman Ewerbach, who was one of the leaders of the League of the Just, translated Cabet's writings into German and sought to give his movement an international dimension.

The other mass movement was Chartism, which during the 1840's was an extremely complex political phe­nomenon. Between 1839 and 1842 Chart­ism had been both an inclusive mass organization and, in its basic thrust, a revolutionary movement. After the defeat of the general strike of 1842 the Chartist movement moved to the right, became more exclusive and its leadership—around Feargus O'Connor —became bonapartist. O'Connor degen­erated into cooperativism—raising, and apparently mismanaging, money to buy all the land in England in order that the workers could become small­holders. His schemes were not only Utopian but also downright shoddy.

Now, Chartism is complex largely because O'Connor was by no means the most right-wing leader arising out of the reaction to revolutionary Chart­ism. On the contrary, there were a whole series of Chartist leaders who wanted to liquidate Chartism entirely and form a political bloc with the liberal bourgeoisie. O'Connor staunchly opposed that. So, in one sense, he stood for class independence, even though relative to the earlier period he had moved far to the right and abandoned an insurrectionary perspective for petty-bourgeois cooperativism.

Chartism also contained a con­sciously Jacobin communist left wing led by Julian Harney. Yet in the 1840's Harney was reduced to being the left-wing lieutenant of O'Connor. Neverthe­less, I would argue that in some ways Harney during this period [1843-44] was the most advanced socialist of his day; he believed in a mass or­ganization of the proletariat, class independence and violent revolution. The problem was that Harney was not a factional politician. Or, to use a Spartacist characterization, he did not draw the proper organizational conclusions from his political ideas. Instead of fighting O'Connor—a fight he might well have lost—Harney at­tempted to placate O'Connor and do his own thing, which was mainly acting as an honest broker to the left-wing exiles in London. In particular, with the left wing of the Polish immigrants, some French Babouvists and German com­munists, he put together something in 1845 called the Fraternal Demo­crats, which, its name to the contrary, represented communism, although not Jacobin communism.

League of the Just

Now we come to the League of the Just and the Communist League. And again we must double back in time to the 1830's in Paris. At that time Paris had an enormous German population, and there was an inclusive ^organization closely affiliated with the French Society for the Rights of Man known as the League of Exiles. Just as during 1832-34 in the Society for the Rights of Man there was a parallel factional struggle in the League of Exiles be­tween the Jacobin communists led by Buonarroti and the revolutionary bour­geois democrats. The factional strug­gle in the Society for the Rights of Man was arrested by the state sup­pression of that organization. But the German group was clandestine to begin with, since they were worried about being deported back to Germany. So that factional struggle- went to a con­clusion in a split; the communists, the German artisan and communist intel­lectuals, took the majority, while Jacob Venedy, who was later a liberal delegate to the Frankfurt parliament of 1848, led the minority.

The German Jacobin communists reorganized as a secret paramilitary organization called the League of the Just. The organization, of course, con­tained a large number of German ar­tisans, who were not steeped in the rationalist tradition of the French com­munist movement, so that the League of the Just remained impregnated with religious fundamentalism. There were not only atheists and rationalists and materialists but also Utopian Christian socialists such as Wilhelm Weitling, who wrote revolutionary propaganda couched in the language of Christian messianism. A self-taught tailor, Weitling wrote psalms and nursery rhymes such as "I want to be like Jesus who was also a communist, "for which Weitling was arrested for blasphemy. It was very powerful propaganda, for Weitling believed it himself. And it was effective in recruiting to communism backward German workers who had been raised as Lutherans and still believed in the Bible.

When Buonarroti died, his base was taken over by the young Auguste Blanqui. The leading cadres of the League of the Just participated in the Blanquist putsch of 1839, and as a result of the ensuing repression many of them were banished from France. So he remained in Paris, but others went to London and Switzerland. This exile tended to color very strongly the political groupings.

The Paris section of the League of the Just fell under the influence of the Cabet movement and, therefore, re­jected the insurrectionary traditions of Blanquism in favor of goody-goody class collaborationism of the worst
kind. In Switzerland—which was kind of the Berkeley of Metternich's Europe-there were all sorts of odd communist sects, and Weitling degenerated into setting up study circles to preach the secret gospel about how Jesus Chris really wants you to be a communist Weitling genuinely believed communism was the Second Coming, but he was not a pacifist. He ran somewhat amok yet he had great authority. In 1843 Man declared that Weitling was the great representative of German worker communism.

The London branch of the-League of the Just was by far the most important. It was led by Karl Schapper, who has a fascinating history. While a student in 1834 Schapper was won to revolutionary democracy and soon thereaftei joined a small German revolutionary organization. Then, with about 20 01 30 other guys Schapper attempted to seize a police station in Frankfurt It didn't work. He was on the lam ii Switzerland, where he joined with the democratic-nationalist Mazzini, am with about 300 others they attempted to invade Italy. It didn't work. Got to Paris, joined the League of the Just allied with Blanqui, and this time, with a thousand men, attempted to overthrow the French state. It didn't work. He was on the lam again, and made his way to< Britain. Now, I would like to say that upon arriving in London he and 1500( guys attempted to overthrow Queen Victoria, but he changed his line Schapper was a genuinely heroic figure Engels writes that he and his partners had fights, and they took on 300 guys. But in any case Schapper decided that his politics were not working very well. He was not an intellectual, but he was a thoughtful man, and he asked himself, "Why have all these move¬ments failed?" Obvious question. He created an organization called the Ger­man Workers Educational Society and arrived at a position which I would characterize as between Cabet and Chartism. Schapper concluded that in order for a revolution to succeed the revolutionaries had first to win over the masses. He in fact denied the struggle for revolution, arguing that once the communists had their demo­cratic rights to organize and educate the masses, that would be adequate to bring about communism. Schapper thus wrote, "The German communists agree with English socialists in thinking that communism could be obtained by peaceful means and free discussion alone." The London-based section of the League of the Just led by Schapper thus was influenced, on the one hand, by the Cabet movement and, on the other, by British Chartism. From the Cabet movement they derived their re­jection of revolution, which Schapper tended to associate with putschism, that is, with the only historic experience which they had. Also, from the Cabet movement Schapper acquired an em­phasis on propaganda and education— virtually the linear recruitment of the working masses, one by one, to com­munism through enlightenment. Indeed, his organization was called the German Workers Educational Society. From the Chartist movement Schapper derived a strong rejection of class collaborationism, which characterized the Cabet movement in France. So his movement was very much the German Workers Educational Society, although they were certainly willing to asso­ciate with bourgeois radical intellec­tuals who had come over to commun­ism—like Engels. Moreover, the German Workers Educational Society broadly embraced the traditions of French enlightenment and rejected Christianity. They were pacifists and propagandists, but proletarian pacifists and propagandists. In that sense Schapper and his followers were closer to Barney. They completely rejected bar­racks socialism, communalism and the equality of want. Again and Once Again Factional Struggle In 1844 Weiting, the overwhelmingly prominent political personality in German communism, was released from prison in Switzerland and went into exile in London. Weitling at once joined his old comrades now in the German Workers Educational Society. Well, they soon discovered that they were old comrades in the League of the Just but they were no longer comrades now. A factional struggle developed in 1845 pitting Weitling against Schapper. This faction fight involved only a very small group of individuals, but they were poli¬tical personalities who had not only enormous capacity but also great repu­tations. Interestingly enough, this fac­tional struggle was recorded in writing, mainly because these people were very concerned with doctrine and ideas. And we in the Spartacist League owe thanks to comrade Vladimir Zelinski for translating from the German the dis­cussion within the London branch of the League of the Just. It is a very interesting discussion that without propaganda you get nothing: It begins with Schapper asserting that everything must be based on reason. At that time there was among the workers a very strong sense that they were deprived of access to bour­geois culture. The workers’ educa¬tional organizations, such as the Ger­man Workers Educational Society, were not simply front groups to secure legal functioning. Rather, they provided the workers in the age before mass public education with a means to learn. (In fact, the origins of the massive German Social Democratic Party were a small educational society of workers who wrote to Ferdinand Lassalle, “Would you teach us what you know?" > Lassalle came, and mat's the beginning of the German Social Democracy.)

So this is Schapper:

"The reason for the failure of com­munism is lack of knowledge, lack of enlightenment. It was only the French Revolution which began to create a certain degree of enlightenment. Only through the struggle of opinion will communism develop firm roots."

But Weitling, the fundamentalist rabble-rouser, replies:

"Reason will play a pitiful role. The greatest deeds will result from the power of emotion. The crown of thorns of the martyrs wins more adherents than the moral needs of poets and orators."

In response Schapper emphasizes that without propaganda you get nothing:

"Communism could hitherto not be created because understanding was not sufficient. Our generation will no more realize communism than did the pre­vious ones. Our activity is for the coming generation. These will carry through in practice what we have hitherto been able to propagate only by means of enlightened propaganda ... Let us build our guard against revo­lutions, where through them mankind is brought back again into servitude."

Weitling replies simply by praising revolution: "Revolutions come like a thunderstorm. No one can foretell their effects."

Now, with historical hindsight, we can discern that the Schapper tendency was more serious, even though Weitling aptly criticizes Schapper for relegating the revolutionary struggle to the distant future.

In 1845, therefore, the German com­munist movement had arrived at a Hobson's choice: either passive and pacifistic propagandist!! seeking to edu­cate the entire working class, or revo­lutionary communist messianism, which did not even have the virtue of good military organization. Weitling never organized any unsuccessful putsches, because he was incapable of organizing anything.


In 1845, therefore, the German com­munist movement had arrived at a Hobson's choice: either passive and pacifistic propagandist!! seeking to edu­cate the entire working class, or revo­lutionary communist messianism, which did not even have the virtue of good military organization. Weitling never organized any unsuccessful putsches, because he was incapable of organizing anything.

It is at this point that Marx enters the history of the communist movement. And—to sort of give the show away— Marx is important and became a leader because he found a way out of that dilemma, that false counterposition of propaganda and revolutionary action.