Thursday, February 06, 2014

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Problems of Chinese Trotskyism by Wang Fanxi


BOOK REVIEW

PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, 1967


Recently I reviewed in this space Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate, a novelistic treatment of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, that emphasized the problems at the base of Chinese society in its late phase after the popular front alliance with General Chiang Kai-Shek’s bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang broke down and Chiang began his extermination drive against the Chinese Communists. In Leon Trotsky’s book, under review here, we get a real time, real life analysis of the political questions that led to that catastrophe and what revolutionaries could learn from it.

I have noted elsewhere that the Communist International (hereafter Comintern) evolved in the mid-1920’s , under the impact of Stalinization, from a revolutionary organization that made political mistakes, sometimes grossly so, in pursuit of revolution to an organization that pursued anti-revolutionary aims as it turned primarily into an adjunct of Soviet foreign policy. Prima facie evidence for such a conclusion is the Soviet Communist Party /Commintern policy and its implementation toward the budding Chinese Revolution.

As much as policy toward the Chinese Revolution became a political football in the internal Russian Communist party fights between Stalin’s bloc and Trotsky’s bloc it is impossible to understand the strategy for the Chinese Revolution without an understanding of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. No Marxist, at least not openly and honestly, put forth any claim that in the West the national bourgeoisie could be a progressive force in any modern upheaval. Russia, in the early 20th century was, however, still a battleground over this question. This is where Trotsky formulated the advanced Marxist notion that in Russia the national bourgeoisie was too weak, too beholding to foreign capitalist interests and too dependent on the Czarist state and its hangers-on to fulfill the tasks associated with the classic bourgeois revolutions in the West. Thus, for Russia alone at that time Trotsky postulated that the working class had become the heirs of the revolutions in the West. The Revolution of 1905 gave a glimmer of understanding to that proposition and the Revolution of October 1917 cannot be understood except under that premise.

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution the question of who would lead the revolutions of the countries even less developed that Russia, mainly colonial and semi-colonial regimes, formed one of the new political battlegrounds. And China was the first dramatic test that Trotsky’s originally Russia-only premise applied to underdeveloped ‘third world’ capitalist regimes, as well. However,unlike in Russia, this time Trotsky lost. The necessary independent organization of the working class and the political separation of the communist vanguard were not carried out and, to our regret, the Chinese Revolution was beheaded. As mentioned above this was a conscious Stalinist policy of kowtowing to Chiang by unequivocably ordering the Communist Party to make itself politically and militarily subservient to the Kuomintang as well as providing Comintern military advisers to Chiang.

Today, even a cursory look at countries of belated and uneven development emphasizes the fact that the various tasks associated with the Russian and Chinese Revolutions still need to be carried out. Thus, the political fights that wracked the international communist movement in the 1920’s which under ordinary circumstances would only be of historical interest today take on a more life and death meaning for many of the peoples of the world. That makes this book well worth the read.

I might add that there is a very interesting appendix at the end of this work detailing reports from the field filed by those Communist agents that carried out Comintern policy in China and who as a result of disillusionment with that policy had become oppositionists. These reports give added ammunition to Trotsky’s more theoretical arguments. They also give flesh and bones to the some of the points that Malraux was trying to bring out in Man’s Fate. Read on.

 


Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm


Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 

******** 

Problems of Chinese Trotskyism by Wang Fanxi
  

From Revolutionary History, Vol.2 No.4, Spring 1990. Used by permission.
When the Chinese Trotskyists split in May 1941, the minority group led by Zheng Chaolin and Wang Fanxi published the magazine The Internationalist, and from June 1946, New Banner. In July 1949 it assumed the name of the Internationalist Workers Party of China.
When the previous document by Peng Shuzi had been printed in Fourth International, the Internationalist group was “surprised and embittered”, describing it as a “combination of slanders, distortions, black lies and irresponsible boasts”, commenting that it “aroused no little indignation in our ranks”. This rejoinder was sent to the magazine’s editorial board as well as to the rival Workers Party, which published it in condensed form in New International, Volume xiv, no.2, February 1948, pp.58-62, and no.3, March 1948, pp.90-2. It should, of course, be read in conjunction with the former piece, along with Wang Fang-hsi, Chinese Revolutionary, London 1980, pp.232-7, 247-51. A more complete version of these memoirs is promised to appear in English, hopefully in the near future.
Of the names mentioned in this article “the traitor Liu-Jen-Ching” Is Liu Renjlng, who defected to the Guomindang after 1937, “Yvon Cheng” is the pseudonym of Zheng Chaolin, and “Li Fu-Jen” that of Frank Glass. The editor whose notes appear is Max Shachtman.  

The struggle with Chen Duxiu

The Report begins with a description of the struggle carried on between the Chinese Trotskyist organisation and Chen Duxiu. It attempts to describe the relations which existed between the Chinese Old Man and the old revolutionists of the 1925-27 generation. The Report says of Chen Duxiu: “He turned his back upon our League almost immediately after he left prison” and “declared in a letter to one of our old comrades in Shanghai that he had decided to combat damned Bolshevism to the very end of his life!”
Such a description is oversimplified, therefore incorrect. Chen Duxiu, “the father of Chinese Communism”, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party from its very inception until August 1927, the No 1 leader of the Chinese revolution of 1925-27, who became a Trotskyist after the debacle of the revolution, became one of the founders and leaders of the Chinese Trotskyist movement, served four years in a Guomindang prison while remaining a staunch Trotskyist – Chen Duxiu did break with Bolshevism during the Second World War. But this break did not take place “immediately” and it was not final.
During the period from the beginning of the anti-Japanese war down to the outbreak of the Second World War, he held the position that the Chinese Trotskyists could do nothing else than support the anti-Japanese war unconditionally. In his opinion it was quite out of the question to speak of revolution during the war or of transforming the war into a revolution. But as usual with him, Chen Duxiu did not present this position as a matter of principle but rather empirically and tactically. He justified his position in the following manner: we must at present support the war; as for this revolution, let’s speak of it later. You can see from this that Chen Duxiu’s position was false; but it was neither final nor systematic.
In 1939, one year after the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, in order to acquaint himself with the position of the Chinese Old Man, Trotsky asked Comrade Li Fu-jen to make an inquiry of him. Chon Duxiu wrote a statement in answer which was given to Trotsky by Li Fu-jen. After reading Chcn Duxiu’s statement Trotsky wrote Comrade Li as follows:
I am extremely glad to know that our friend remained our friend politically, although there are some possible divergences existing between us; but right now I cannot judge these possible divergences with necessary precision ... However, I consider that what he expressed is essentially correct. (Trotsky’s letter to Li Fu-jen, retranslated from the Chinese, 11 March 1939.)
Chen Duxiu’s position moved further away from that of the Trotskyists after the signing of the German-Soviet pact and the outbreak of war in Europe. He held that we should support the democracies versus the Fascist and Russian ‘imperialisms’. He was of the opinion that in order to facilitate the victory of the democracies in the war, the Indians should for the time being put a stop to their nationalist movement.
It goes without saying that this is the same as the position that was held by Plekhanov, Guesde and Co during the First World War and that was held by the Third International after the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, during the last slaughter of mankind. Needless to say, such a position meant a complete break with Trotskyism.
But, as we have said and as Trotsky had correctly observed, Chen Duxiu was not a theoretician of Plekhanov’s type but a revolutionist à la Lassalle. Lacking profound theoretical training, his action was always directed by impressions, his opinions were changeable and fallible; but at the same time and for the same reason he was often able to make bold corrections of his mistakes.
The over-thirty-years’ history of Chen Duxiu’s revolutionary activity was replete with such conflicts and mistakes. One’s defects sometimes become one’s merit. It was partially because of this ‘defect’, we believe, that Chen Duxiu was able to complete his evolution from a democrat to a Communist and from a Communist in general to a Trotskyist, in the brief period of seven or eight years.
We may speculate whether, if Chen had not died, he would have devoted the remaining years of his life to the cause of the Fourth International. We cannot give a definite answer to this question. That is why we also said that his break with Trotskyism would not be considered as final.
What attitude did we, the so-called “old comrades of the 1925-27 generation” take towards Chen’s false ideas? Comrade Li Fu-jen gave very good testimony on this point in the August 1942 issue of the Fourth International:
This polemic, which was carried on by correspondence between the remote Sichuan village where Chen lived and the Central Committee in Shanghai, left Chen in a minority of one [our emphasis].
How far the Chinese revolutionary movement has advanced beyond the political level which Chen represented is evidenced most strikingly in the fact that he could not find in the Chinese organisation a single supporter for his later political ideas.
Comrade Li Fu-jen is an old friend of the Chinese Trotskyists. He lived in China during the period from 1935 to 1941. He was a member of the Chinese organisation and more than that, he was once elected a member of the provisional Central Committee. Since he is quite conversant with the ideological groupings of Chinese Trotskyism, his testimony, of course, is trustworthy.
But the Report said, exactly to the contrary: “Almost all the comrades who belong to the 1925-27 generation were grouped around him; Chen’s retreat exercised a decisive influence over them.” What a black lie!
We, whom the Report calls the “old generation”, not only did not support Chen’s ideas but carried on a most uncompromising struggle with him; so much so that finally the ‘Old Man’ became very angry with us and broke off all relations.
In attempting to describe the ‘old generation’ the Report fell into a gross self-contradiction. In the first paragraph it said: “... Only after the comrades who returned from the Nanking prisons provided the organisation with a new impetus, only after a serious ideological re-education was the movement put in order ...” while in the second paragraph it said: “... it was a question of the complete retreat and disillusionment of the Old Bolsheviks ...”
Neither the first nor the second paragraph is correct. The former exaggerated the rôle of the ‘old comrades’, while the latter derogated them.

The traditional ideological differences within Chinese Trotskyism

The inception of the Chinese Trotskyist movement dates back to 1928. There were serious divergences, political as well as theoretical, in its ranks almost from its very birth.
During the 19 years of experience of the Chinese Trotskyist organisation there have been two main traditional issues on which there were great differences of opinion. These were: (1) the relation between the democratic revolution and the Socialist revolution. (2) Tactical questions regarding our attitude toward the Guomindang, centring around the slogan of the constituent assembly.
On the first question there were many comrades who showed Stalinist leanings, headed by Comrade Peng Shuzi, the present leader of the Struggle Group, and the traitor Liu Renjing, known in the foreign press as Niel Sih. The latter took and the former still takes the position that the democratic and Socialist revolutions constitute two different and successive stages, if not two different historical epochs. In their opinion the future Chinese revolution will begin with the democratic revolution during which the power will be conquered, while the Socialist revolution will begin only after the establishment of workers’ power.
The Report clearly describes this idea when it says: “We preach the elementary ideas of the permanent revolution, as a revolution starting from the democratic struggle to the goal of Socialism.” (Fourth International, July-August 1947, p.214.)
Another group of comrades, the present leading elements of the Internationalist Group, opposed this idea from the very beginning. They considered that such an explanation of the idea of Permanent Revolution has nothing in common with the Trotskyist theory, since the idea of “starting from the democratic struggle to the goal of Socialism” can be accepted not only by Stalin but also even by Leon Blum and Attlee. We hold a different position, one which really follows Trotsky’s analysis of the character of China’s future revolution.
According to Trotsky the character of the future Chinese revolution will be Socialist from the very beginning owing to the following considerations: (1) The class struggle, especially the struggle between bourgeoisie and working class, has become extremely sharp. (2) The agrarian revolution in China is anti-capitalist. (3) The struggle for the expropriation of the factories has become imperative. (See Trotsky, The Summary and Perspective of the Chinese Revolution, The Third International After Lenin, p.184.)
In accordance with his ideas we are of the opinion that the democratic and Socialist tasks of the Chinese revolution are interlaced with each other, not that they successively follow each other. Thus we held and still hold that the democratic tasks can only be solved, in passing, by the Socialist revolution; that the scope of the democratic movement can be widened and deepened into a revolution; and that the revolution can have a perspective of development only when the democratic struggle is waged as a factor of Socialist revolution. If, on the contrary, we make Socialism a ‘goal’ and limit ourselves to staying within the circle of ‘democratic struggle’ in the first stages of revolution, then the ‘goal’ would become (as we Chinese put it) the “flower in the looking glass” which will never be reached.
There were also two positions opposed to each other from the very beginning on the second question – that is, on the tactical question of our attitude toward the Guomindang, with the constituent assembly as the central slogan. One group, again headed by Peng Shuzi and the traitor Liu Renjing, saw in the constituent assembly slogan mainly a “historical driving force”. They hoped that there would be a parliamentary perspective of long duration in China, and that the Chinese proletariat would carry their Socialist revolution on to a “higher historical plane”.
Starting from this elementary idea, they always leaned toward maintaining a ‘United Front’ with the ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie and toward believing in the possibility of the solution (at least the partial solution) of the democratic and national tasks through ‘democratic means’, through the constituent assembly, etc. The traitor Liu Renjing gave a famous formulation on this point: “The constituent assembly is the popular formula for the proletarian dictatorship”.
This group of comrades, of course, entertained too much hope in the bourgeois “national and democratic struggles”.
Another group, also represented by the leading comrades of the present Internationalists, has always taken the position that the importance of the constituent assembly slogan lies mainly in the fact that it is a means of consolidating the proletariat and helping them to re-enter the political scene. Starting from this position the attitude of this group on other tactical questions naturally emphasised the problem of how to mobilise the masses in opposition to the bourgeoisie.
In their essence the many rich discussions within the Chinese Trotskyist movement during the past 19 years can be reduced to the above-mentioned two questions. They revolved around these two questions as around a permanent axis. Chen Duxiu’s position on the two fundamental questions coincided with that of Peng Shuzi & Co. except at the beginning of the ’thirties, when his ideas on the character of the future Chinese revolution were very close to ours. We are therefore justified in saying that Chen Duxiu’s eventual break with Trotskyism was due largely to his position on the fundamental disputed questions within the Chinese Trotskyist organisation.
It goes without saying that the two traditional divergences in Chinese Trotskyism reflected different social bases: the ‘democrats’ represent the petty-bourgeois wing of our ranks, while the ‘Socialist revolutionists’ represent the proletarian tendency. But we are not ready to resort to this ‘class analysis’ since the causes of our ideological division, we believe, is in no small degree due to infantilism and theoretical backwardness. In the case of only a few of the old leaders, such as Peng Shuzi, is their opportunism systematic and obstinate.

Issues in the split of 1942

The Report told you that the internal struggle among the Chinese Trotskyists in 1942 was “the continuation of the struggle in the American party in 1940”. This statement is false to the core, made with the obvious aim of winning your sympathy and support. In reality it was a continuation of the traditional struggle within the Chinese Trotskyists. It was merely the old divergences reflected in the new question of the Sino-Japanese war.
Prior to 1940 there were already differences of opinion among the Chinese comrades with respect to China’s anti-Japanese war, although these were still of a minor and episodic character. Although they could be already considered as divergences of principle, yet all participants in the discussion had not fully developed their arguments on the plane of principle. This fact was mainly due to the weakness of the Chinese organisation, and a result of it, its position did not have the opportunity to be matched against the real development of events.
Among the potential and episodic disputes the following facts are important:
(1) After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Comrade Peng Shuzi insisted on the withdrawal of our central slogan, “Down with the Guomindang”, while, on the other hand, the late Comrade Chen Chi-chang fought with equal persistence to keep the slogan in our programme. Peng’s proposal finally won out, when Comrade Yvon Cheng was out of Shanghai and Comrade Wang Ming-yuen was still in a Guomindang prison; the traditional slogan of Chinese Trotskyism, “Down with the Guomindang” was thus withdrawn.
(2) Comrade Chen Duxiu looked upon the anti-Japanese war as a higher development of the national struggle of the Chinese people, while other comrades preferred to point out that China’s anti-Japanese war was a result of the defeat of the Chinese revolution.
(3) The conference which took place in November 1937 under the leadership of Peng Shuzi decided that we should centre our attack upon the compromising tendencies of the Guomindang in the anti-Japanese war, and called for a workers’ and peasants’ uprising to support the war with the aim of prolonging it. On the other hand, other comrades, first Chen Chi-chang and then Wang Ming-yuen, took the position of deepening the social basis of the war, above all, of ‘supporting’ the war with agrarian revolution.
(4) Comrade Yvon Cheng was of the opinion that the Sino-Japanese war could only be considered as a part of the imperialist war; consequently, he opposed the war itself from the very beginning and wanted to apply the Leninist policy of revolutionary defeatism to the war. His position did not win a single supporter at that time.
If we ignore the tactical side of these questions, there were evidently two opposing fundamental tendencies behind the above-mentioned “episodic” divergences: on the one hand, a tendency which emphasised the meaning of the war itself and consequently considered it the means through which the national tasks of China might be solved; on the other hand, the tendency which looked at the anti-Japanese war from the point of view of proletarian revolution and consequently considered it mainly as a road through which one might or might not achieve the workers’ and peasants’ revolution.
The former is a position of pure democratism (national emancipation is only one of the democratic tasks), while the latter is the position of Socialist revolution, namely, the position of Permanent Revolution. The former was represented by Chen Duxiu and Peng Shuzi, while the latter was represented by the leading comrades of the present Internationalist Group (Comrades Chen Chi-chang, Yvon Cheng, Wang Ming-yuen and others). Such a line-up was not accidental but rather quite faithful to the traditional ideological groupment within the Chinese Trotskyists during nearly the past 20 years.
But the different views on the anti-Japanese war were not fundamentally and finally formulated until 1940 when the, war between the imperialists and the Sino-Japanese war began to intertwine. At the end of 1940 the international situation posed a new problem to the Chinese Trotskyists, namely, the fact that the fast-approaching Japanese-American war in the Pacific was sure to make China’s anti-Japanese war a phase of the imperialist war. Should the Chinese Trotskyists then reconsider their attitude and policy on the war?
With this question as a starting point there broke out a very sharp internal struggle which caused the traditional divergences of Chinese Trotskyism to again burst forth deeply and extensively on the question of policy on the anti- Japanese war in particular and on the national question in general.

What were the different views? How did the discussion take place?

The first question discussed at that time was formulated in the following manner: did the Sino-Japanese war become an integral part of the imperialist war in the autumn of 1940, when the so-called ‘ABCD front’ in the Pacific was formed? To this question nearly all the Chinese Trotskyists answered in the affirmative. They had some differences only on the question of the time. Peng said: the Sino-Japanese war will become a part of the imperialist war only after the outbreak of the war in the Pacific; Wang Ming-yuen said: the Sino-Japanese war has already been intertwined with the undeclared and not-yet-shooting war between Japan and the USA; while Yvon Cheng said: “It was part of the imperialist war from the very beginning”.
The second question was: is there any difference in the character of China’s anti-Japanese war now that she is fighting as the junior partner of an imperialist power as compared with the time when she was fighting independently? In answering this question Comrade Pens said: the character of China’s anti-Japanese war will not be changed in the least regardless of how it is fought. Other comrades [1] – that is, all members of the Political Committee except Peng Shuzi – were of the opinion that the anti-Japanese war was progressive when fought by China more or less independently but that it was reactionary when fought as a part of the imperialist war. In different cases the character of the same anti-Japanese war was different as well. In the course of discussion, however, Comrade Liu Chia-liang changed his views and went over to Peng Shuzi’s position.
The third question: if the character of the war has changed, should our attitude toward it be changed accordingly? Comrade Wang Ming-yuen, the sponsor of the “changing-character theory”, insisted that once the character of the war had changed from progressive to reactionary, our attitude must be changed from defencism to defeatism. Comrade Yvon Cheng, who had been a defeatist from the very beginning, naturally supported Comrade Wang’s position, while on the other hand Comrade Peng, and later on also Liu, fought desperately against the defeatist position.
The fourth question: what is defeatism? Is Trotsky’s position on the Chinese war defencist or defeatist? This question, as you may easily see, is merely a continuation of the third question. We, four out of six of the then editorial board of Struggle, were of the opinion that especially in the case of China’s anti-Japanese war, the meaning of defeatism should be understood as a policy of prosecuting the class struggle during the war with the aim of developing this struggle into a civil war. To take a historical analogy, the ‘defeatism’ of the Chinese Trotskyists may be compared, in a not very exact manner, to the ‘defeatism’ of the Russian Bolsheviks after the February revolution when they ‘supported’ Kerensky in the fight against the Germans and Kornilovists.
Peng Shuzi & Co., either out of simple ignorance or intentional distortion, declared that revolutionary defeatism with respect to China’s side of the war meant favouring the victory of Japanese imperialism and, even worse, it meant “sabotage and other destructive activities in the Guomindang area”. This explanation of defeatism by Peng Shuzi is in reality as great a distortion as was the prosecutor’s accusation against the SWP leaders in the Minneapolis courts!

Tactical

What position, in fact, did Comrade Trotsky adopt on China’s anti-Japanese war? In his letter to Diego Rivera (published in La Lutte Ouvrière, organ of the Belgian PSR, No.43, 23 October 1937), he repudiated ‘defeatism’; but in the same letter he outlined the following tactical line for we Chinese Trotskyists:
It is necessary to win influence and prestige in the course of the military struggle against the foreign enemy’s invasion, and in the political struggle against the weakness, failures and betrayals within. At a certain point which we cannot fix in advance, this political opposition can and must be transformed into armed struggle, for civil war like any other war is nothing else than the continuation of politics.
To fight against the internal enemy politically, and more than that, to transform this political opposition into armed struggle – i.e. to transform the national war into civil war – is a thoroughly revolutionary policy. In our opinion, this policy, no matter on what position we stand when we carry it out, is essentially different from traditional defencism and even from defencism à la Clemenceau, but quite close to the Leninist policy of revolutionary defeatism.
It goes without saying that defeatism, as applied to China, cannot be fully equal to the defeatism which was held by Lenin in 1914-1918 in relation to the Russo-German war. But this does not prevent us from considering Trotsky’s position on the Chinese war as defeatist in essence, just as the defeatism adopted by the French, English and American revolutionists during the Second World War was also somewhat different in application and implication from that of the Russian revolutionists in the First World War.
The victory of Hitler was not a ‘lesser evil’ for the French, English and American working classes. Therefore, during the Second World War, in the democratic imperialist countries, the defeatist position could and should be understood merely as a policy of prosecuting the class struggle during the war and transforming the national war into civil war. These two fundamental ideas were obviously implied in Trotsky’s position on China’s anti-Japanese war from the very beginning.
Thus, in the course of the discussion the attitudes of Comrade M.Y. Wang and Comrade Yvon Cheng on the anti-Japanese war became identical. The former also granted that the attitude which we adopted toward the war should be ‘defeatist’ or nearly ‘defeatist’ in essence from the very beginning, although he still insisted that China’s anti-Japanese war was objectively progressive in its first period.
With the deepening of the questions in dispute, the comrades who later organised the Internationalist Group came to the conclusion that the Leninist defeatist line was less concerned with the character of the war than with the task imposed upon a revolutionary party of conquering power during the war. They believe that if the task of the revolutionary conquest of power by the proletariat is put before the world working class in general, then once war breaks out, no matter in what country and no matter what character it may assume, the fundamental attitude toward the war which a revolutionist should take must be one which is nearer to ‘defeatism’ and farther from ‘defencism’. It cannot be otherwise if the revolutionists wish to seize power during the war. In other words, to transform the war into civil war is the strategic line of ‘defeatism’, no matter on what tactical basis one puts this line into effect.
On the other hand, Peng Shuzi and his similars had an opportunistic and obstinate attitude on this question. They were not willing to move a single step from their interpretation of ‘defeatism’ on the basis of their ridiculous definition, namely, “to explode bridges for the enemy”. From Trotsky’s position on the Sino-Japanese war they remembered only the term ‘defencism’. Its content – that is, “to transform political opposition into armed struggle”, “to overthrow the Guomindang during the war” – was forgotten by them completely.
Their essentially compromising attitude toward the Guomindang thus became clearer as a result of the discussion. They openly declared that “so long as the Guomindang fights against the Japanese we cannot change our attitude toward the war and toward the Guomindang government, we cannot put the slogan ‘Down with the Guomindang’ again in our programme”. According to their opinion therefore, it is absurd and false to subordinate the interests of war to that of revolution.
Thus the Peng Shuzi group supported Chiang Kai-shek’s war up to V-J Day. Before V-J Day they invariably declared that “in spite of the intertwining of the Sino-Japanese and Japanese-American wars, China’s war of resistance will never lose its great historical significance of regaining national independence from the hands of Japanese imperialism”. But after the ‘victory’, they had to admit in a resolution, as if suddenly awakened out of a dream, that “China is going to be a second Philippines”! They did not even bother to ask themselves the following question: were not Peng Shuzi & Co among those supporters of the war to the “victorious end” who had helped to make China “a second Philippines”?
The fifth question was on the possibility of an independent bourgeois China. We said and still say that while struggling for the independence of China we must make clear the following truth to ourselves as well as to the advanced workers: in the present stage of imperialism there are only two alternatives for China – either an independent soviet Socialist China (an integral part of the world Socialist union), or else a colony under the control of American imperialism. There is not and cannot be any middle way.
An independent capitalist China is an illusion. Peng and his followers, however, opposed this position of ours with all their strength, declaring that the ‘imperialism or Socialism" formula is false, a sort of ‘ultra-leftism’. For them a non-capitalist and non-Socialist perspective for China is possible. But you know no less than we that outside of the formula “imperialism or Socialism” there are only Shachtman’s “Socialism or bureaucratism or barbarism”
[2] or Mao Zedong’s “new democratism” left for Peng Shuzi to support.
The difference on this question clearly reveals two opposing tendencies: Permanent Revolution on the one hand, and on the other, the theory of a purely democratic revolution.

Meaning

The sixth question is on the meaning of the theory of Permanent Revolution. This is simply a revival of an old divergence. As we said above, Peng and his followers “preached the elementary ideas of the Permanent Revolution as a revolution starting from the democratic struggle to the goal of Socialism”.
Dear comrades, are you satisfied with such an explanation of Permanent Revolution? What is meant by “to the goal of Socialism”? Do not Attlee and Leon Blum also take Socialism as their ‘goal’? Are we not correct in condemning this position as ‘opportunism’? We said that, to speak more exactly, we only followed Trotsky in saying that the future Chinese revolution will be Socialist from the very beginning. This is so, first of all, because we, together with the proletariat, in the future revolution will orient ourselves on the road of struggle for power at the first revolutionary tide, regardless of whether the immediate cause of revolution is democratic or nationalist.
Secondly, because the democratic and nationalist tasks of the Chinese revolution – that is, the agrarian revolution and the anti-imperialist struggle, just as Trotsky analysed them – themselves have an anti-capitalist character. Therefore, he said:
The third Chinese revolution ...will not have a “democratic” period...But it will be compelled from the very outset to effect the most decisive shake-up and abolition of bourgeois property in city and village. (The Third International After Lenin, pp.184-5)
Is it not clear from this quotation that according to Trotsky, ‘Socialism’ in the future Chinese revolution will be the means of carrying on the revolution, not a ‘goal’ to be reached? If we believe that the third Chinese revolution “will be compelled from the very outset to effect the most decisive shake-up and abolition of bourgeois property in city and village” then we are justified in asserting that the future revolution will be Socialist from the very beginning.
In his article entitled A Review and Some Perspectives, after quoting Ferdinand Lassalle, Trotsky wrote in 1906 that “the future Russian revolution must be declared Socialist from the very beginning”. The same view must be held by us on the character of the Chinese revolution. Trotsky has dealt with the same question in great detail in his Letters to Preobrazhensky, A Criticism of the Draft Programme of the Communist International, Retreat in Disorder, and other documents. His ideas constitute a flat refutation of the theory of ‘Socialism as a goal’.
It is our hope, therefore, that international Trotskyism will return to the old fundamental platform, Trotsky’s ideas on the character of the Chinese revolution, which as you well know has been one of the few most important questions marking the division between Stalinism and Trotskyism.

Conclusion

Our tactical divergences at the present stage are centred on the question of the civil war now being waged between the Guomindang and the Chinese Stalinists. In January 1946 the Struggle Group adopted a resolution on the civil war which declared the war to be a “meaningless strife between selfish gangs”. They ostensibly took the position of the ‘third camp’, but in reality they took the side of the Guomindang by branding the armed struggle led by the Chinese Stalinists as a manifestation of the “particularism of new war lords”, as “military adventurism”, and by demanding that the Chinese CP “give up their arms in order to fight for the constituent assembly”.
We reject and oppose this bankrupt position of theirs. We maintain that the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party represent different class forces in Chinese society. The former represents the landlords and bourgeoisie, while the latter represents mainly the poor peasants. Thus, if we take only its national factor into consideration, the present civil war in China is a kind of peasant war against the landlords and rural capitalists. As a peasant war, the civil war has a progressive character on the side of the peasants; but, as a peasant war only, the civil war is devoid of any perspective, and is even doomed to failure because of its Stalinist domination.
Basing ourselves on this estimate of the civil war, our attitude towards it is to defend the peasant forces from the oppression of the Wall Street-Guomindang alliance on the one hand, and to attack the treacherous Stalinist leadership on the other.
In defending the peasant forces we not only fight side by side with the masses, but also call for unconditional peace. This is not a self-contradictory policy. This is so because the slogan “immediate cessation of the war without disarming the Stalinist armies” at the present time would constitute a blow against the Guomindang war lords, and with the progress of events it would also mean a blow against the Stalinists. In war-weary China today there is no other slogan which can play as great a revolutionary rôle as the slogan of peace.
In a word, our position on the civil war is as follows: for the immediate and unconditional cessation of the war; in favour of participation in the de facto civil war on the side of the peasant forces; and at the same time to point out that the victorious outcome of the civil war can only be secured through the revolutionary leadership of the urban proletariat and the removal of the Stalinists from control of the peasant armed forces.
The position taken by the Struggle Group on the civil war is quite close to that of the Shachtmanites, but worse than that, they even openly take the side of the Guomindang.. Their participation in the Guomindang-sponsored ‘Sovereignty Protection Movement’ was an example of this position. In the Report they accused us of “boycottism” and “abstentionism” with respect to the “mass anti-Kremlin demonstrations”, while they, as they put it, “boldly plunged into it to expose all the evil intentions of the Guomindang, expand and deepen it, and try finally to convert its leadership”.
[But these ‘anti-Kremlin demonstrations’ were not really supported by large masses. Three such demonstrations have taken place since V-J Day, instigated by the most reactionary clique of the Guomindang, organised as anti-Russian demonstrations but really intended only to counterbalance pro-Russian feeling and support the failing prestige of the Ouomindang and of American imperialism. The first, in February 1946, drew large mass support, and we did not boycott it. We did not stand aside but participated, in order the better to expose and fight its reactionary sponsors and to distinguish our policy from that of the Stalinists. Our participation also produced good organisational gains for us.
[The second anti-Soviet demonstration, in March 1947, was a great failure. Nobody came out in support of it and no demonstrations of any size took place. Peng Shuzi and the Struggle Group were in favour of “boldly plunging into it” but we considered that it was merely the affair of a few professional red-baiters and advocated boycotting it.
[The third, in June, organised with an equally reactionary motive though ostensibly directed against the invasion of the Mongolian army into Sinjiang province, was an abortive attempt and even more miserable in scope than the second. Under the influence of our criticism, Peng Shuzi and his followers also took the stand of ‘abstentionism’ in this case.]
This mistake of the Struggle Group was not accidental either. Here we believe it fitting to tell you of an old difference of opinion among the Chinese Trotskyists. In 1939, when Stalin waged war against Finland, Peng Shuzi was the only one in the leadership of the Chinese section of the Fourth International who stood for the “defence of poor little Finland”. He stood on the position of national independence of Finland, and favoured the adoption of defeatism in the USSR.
In spite of this fact, however, Peng Shuzi now has the courage to tell you that he and his followers are simply “continuing the internal struggle in the American party” in China. What cheap flattery this is! Peng Shuzi followed in the footsteps of the American minority and was converted to Trotsky’s point of view only after he read the latter’s article; but on fundamental points he has not changed his opinion – it reappeared on the question of the civil war and also on the question of “plunging into” an “anti-Kremlin” demonstration.
Since the Struggle Group takes a neutral, even pro-Guomindang, attitude on the question of the civil war; since they identify the left mass movement partially led by Stalinists with the quite isolated ‘patriotic’ movement which was completely conducted by Guomindang agents, it is quite natural that Peng Shuzi cannot have correct views on party work.
A sort of liquidationist tendency has invariably decided the direction of the leadership of the Peng Shuzi group. Their ‘general line’ of activity is to “utilise the antagonism” between the Guomindang and the Stalinists in order to seek a full legal existence under the Guomindang regime. In order to attain this goal they are ready to pay, and have paid, no small price; until now, they did not dare to revive Struggle [their organ], which had been suspended for five years; they preferred the publication of ‘theoretical’ magazines and ‘popular’ periodicals with bourgeois scholars to the introduction and publication of any book or document of the Fourth International or of Trotsky; they discounted our slogans and adapted them to Guomindang policy; they echoed the Guomindang publicity ministry in branding the Chinese Communists as “new war lords” and demanding “the voluntary disarmament” of the Stalinist army.
All this was done in the name of the struggle for legalisation and in the belief that this was the shortest road for the Trotskyists to reach the ‘masses’. The direction of their policy can be justifiably called one of ‘legislation at any cost’.
Can the present Guomindang regime grant the Chinese Trotskyists the right to legal activity? If this is possible then it is only on the following condition: that the Trotskyists will fight against the Stalinist party only, and put this ‘fight’ under the direction of the Guomindang. If the Chinese Trotskyists were ready to accept this condition, the Guomindang government would grant us not only legal status but ‘protection’ and ‘subsidies’ as well ...
With respect to the party work and the party paper, our attitude is precisely contrary to that of the Peng Shuzi group above mentioned. We maintained and still maintain that, no matter how bad the circumstances of our organs (Internationalist from 1942 to October 1945 and The New Banner from June 1946 until now), we would rather translate and publish Trotsky’s books and the documents of the Fourth International than cooperate with bourgeois scholars in issuing legal magazines. We would rather that our New Banner were banned by the Guomindang (October 1946) than change our attitude toward the government; we would rather assemble insignificant worker revolutionaries under the programme of the Fourth International than to recruit more petty-bourgeois sympathisers under the ‘democratic banner’ of a third party.

Price

Needless to say, we are not fetishists on ‘underground work’ and we know no less than they the significance of the struggle for legality. But at the same time we firmly believe that it would be a betrayal of our cause if we were ready to pay the price of legality: suspension of our party organ, refraining from propaganda for the ideas of the Fourth International and Trotskyism, cessation of fife against the Guomindang, and finally, supporting the Guomindang and conducting a one-sided attack against the Stalinists. We believe that a revolutionary party’s struggle for legal existence is an uncompromising fight, not an adaptation to the reactionary laws, still less to the reactionary policy, of the ruling class. But the ‘struggle for legality’ made by the Struggle Group in recent years has consisted precisely of political concessions. That is why we could do nothing else but criticise and oppose them mercilessly.
The favourite accusation which the Struggle Group directs against us is that we “attacked the Transitional Programme”, that we “revised the colonial programme of the Fourth International”. According to them, it is absolutely impermissible to “attack” or “revise” the Transitional Programme, regardless of how the programme is revised and whether the revision is right or wrong. The demand for, or attempt at, revision is in itself in their opinion a sort of “betrayal” or “crime”. We consider this attitude far from a healthy one and quite contrary to the spirit of Trotskyism. In this respect Trotsky said correctly: “but a platform is not created so as not to part from it, but rather to apply and develop it”. (Fourth International, September-October 1947, p.254.)
[The Struggle Group attacks Comrade Wang and others as ‘eclectics’.] According to these ‘eclectics’, the anti- imperialist war of a colonial or semi- colonial country is progressive, even if it is under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. This is, of course, the traditional Leninist position and also the position of the Transitional Programme. But, these comrades say, if the leadership of the emancipation movement of a colonial country remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie for long, then the progressive movement will sooner or later degenerate into a kind of counter-revolution, serving the interests of the imperialists and against the interests of the native workers and peasants. In addition these comrades hold the opinion that, once the anti-imperialist war of a colonial country intermeshes with a war waged between rival imperialist powers, it is in no circumstances progressive but becomes reactionary in character. Therefore, according to them, China’s anti-Japanese war was no longer progressive since it had become intermeshed with the anti-Japanese war of American imperialism.
This position cannot be found in the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International, because at the time the programme was drafted such a situation did not exist, and consequently there was no need for a corresponding answer to be given to it. Here, quite clearly, it is not a question of revision or non-revision of the programme; in this respect there is nothing to be revised in the programme. But if we consider the question in the light of the fundamental ideas as well as the writings of Lenin and Trotsky, we can easily see that such a position rather coincides with the tradition of revolutionary Marxism.
In his History of the Russian Revolution Trotsky said: the participation of China in the First World War was “the interference of a slave in the fight of the masters” (p.38). “The interference of a slave in the fight of the masters” is, of course, not progressive. As for Lenin, it is well known that he had two different views on the first and later stages of Serbia’s war of resistance against Austria in World War I in 1916. In a polemic against Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin also admitted, in an article entitled The Military Programme of Proletarian Revolution, that the “national wars may be swallowed up by the war between rival imperialists and become imperialist in character”. On this question we believe that we have not revised the programme but have supplemented it with something which was not said previously.
[However, the Struggle Group’s fiercest criticism has been levelled against Comrade Yvon Cheng. They attack him for “revising” the programme but do not bother to criticise the content of his ‘revision’. There are two points to Comrade Cheng’s view. At first, he said only that China’s war had been a part of the imperialist war from the beginning; that it was reactionary from the beginning; but he still agreed that the anti-imperialist war of a colonial country alone is progressive.]

Doomed

Secondly – that is, later on – having studied Lenin’s theses on the national and colonial question, Comrade Cheng arrived at the conclusion that in the imperialist epoch all emancipation movements or national wars led by the colonial bourgeoisie are doomed to be impotent and devoid of progressive significance. He developed this idea in a pamphlet called The Permanent Revolution and the Chinese Revolution. It found some supporters in our organisation.
This position of Comrade Cheng’s is, of course, a revision of a certain point in our Transitional Programme. But, whether we support or oppose his ideas, the fact of ‘revision’ itself is not a ‘crime’. Instead of calling it so, we should rather call for its consideration and discussion. Now, there are not a few comrades in the Fourth International who propose to give up the slogan of “unconditional defence of the Soviet Union”. This is also a revision of a very important part of the Transitional Programme. We can and should discuss such revisions in the field of theory, fight against or in favour of them; but we cannot simply attack them and refuse to discuss with their proponents on the sole ground that our programme is “not to be parted from”.
Positions resembling Comrade Cheng’s were held 30 years ago by Rosa Luxemburg, and during the first years of the Communist International they were held by some Italian Communists. Yet we never heard that Lenin or Trotsky refused to cooperate with, or refused to make attempts to unite with, Luxemburg or Serrati because of this difference – or called them ‘traitors’. Twenty or 30 years have elapsed since then; during these stormy years there have been revolutions and counter-revolutions in Turkey, Iran and China. Many colonial wars took place during and after the Second World War. History has provided us with a great deal of experience and many lessons which are worth our most careful study and attention. We sincerely hope, therefore, that the Fourth International and its sections will carry on an unprejudiced consideration and decision on the colonial question. Only then can we decide what should be preserved out of our traditional positions, what should be revised, and what should be developed.
[In order to refute the Struggle Group’s accusations that we are “opportunist”, “sectarian”, and “ultra-leftist” we cite our programme. You can clearly see whether we have “abandoned the transitional demands”, “want no democratic struggles but only Socialism”, or “yield to the pressure of Stalinist-controlled public opinion”.]
  1. For the immediate cessation of the civil war ...
  2. For workers’ security and the improvement of their livelihood ...
  3. Land to the poor peasants ...
  4. For the democratisation of the army ... (Guomindang and Communist) ...
  5. Defend the standard of living of the urban poor ...
  6. Equality in education and job security for the youth ...
  7. Freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, demonstration, appeal, striking and picketing ...
  8. For the national independence of China and self-determination for minorities ...
  9. Defence of the USSR. Down with the policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy! Against the Guomindang as the cat’s-paw of American imperialism to attack the Soviet Union ...
  10. Solidarity with the working class and oppressed peoples of the world ...
  11. For the immediate convocation of an all-powerful constituent assembly elected on the basis of universal suffrage ... For a workers’ and peasants’ government.
At the end of this long letter we wish to say a few words about the publication of the Struggle Group’s Reports in your magazine. The writer of that Report repeated the following many times:
Our struggle was obviously the continuation of the struggle in the American party in 1940.
Our minority had the same class basis as the Shachtmanites.
The Chinese minority was a miniature of the Shachtmanites.
In publishing their Report, you did not express your opinion of it. That was cautious. But readers of your magazine were naturally impressed by the fact that you were satisfied with the declarations in the Report, and that you had thus taken sides in the internal polemics of the Chinese organisation. We admit that the ideological groupment in the ranks of Trotskyism will take place on an international scale; but we do not think that such groupment has taken place definitely in the national sections as in the whole International.
For example, on questions like the character of the USSR, the estimation of the international situation, the civil war in China, national questions in Europe, etc, our position still coincides with yours; while on the question of the attitude toward China’s anti-Japanese war after it had been merged with the imperialist war, the Shachtmanites took, after the Pearl Harbour debacle, the same position which we held before that event. On the other hand, the Struggle Group, especially its leader Peng Shuzi, took the same attitude toward the Soviet-Finnish war as the Shachtmanites, and their position on the present Chinese civil war was and is quite close to that of the Workers Party of the USA. But on the question of China’s war, their position coincides with yours.
In such circumstances, which group in the Chinese organisation shall be labelled as the “petty-bourgeois wing”, and which group as the “proletarian tendency”? Again: the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, for example, took the same point of view on the colonial anti-imperialist war, during the World War, as we did; should the B-LPI be called the Indian “miniature of the Shachtmanites”? Of course not!
A sharp process of ideological regroupment is taking place in the world Trotskyist movement. This is a result of the development of the world situation. We are not pessimistic about it. On the contrary, we rather consider it quite natural. But instead of weakening or destroying world Trotskyism, artificial factional prejudices must be carefully avoided in order to strengthen and consolidate it. To reach that goal, we hope that the Trotskyists of all countries will take the trouble to learn and study the polemics arising in the various national sections before taking sides on them.
We agreed completely with Comrade Li Fu-jen when he said in his last letter to us that “it was an error to print the article [the Report] as it was written”, although we also agreed with him when he said in the same letter that you “cannot be blamed for it as you are not conversant with the affairs of China”.
 
With Trotskyist salutations,
The Communist League of China
(Internationalists)
M.Y. Wang (Wang Fanxi)

12 November 1947
Shanghai, China

Notes

1. The leading body of the Communist League of China was the editorial board of Struggle, corresponding to the Political Committee of your party. Six comrades constituted the board; these were Comrades Chen Chi-chang, Kou Woo, Wang Ming-yuen, Yvon Cheng, Peng Shuzi and Liu Chia-liang. [MYW]
2. Comrade Wang here gives sad evidence of the effects of the systematic slander and misrepresentation campaign against the Workers Party carried on by the Cannonite agents abroad, especially among those Trotskyist groups not yet in close contact with us. He is the undoubtedly honest victim of these slanders, having not yet learned to distrust their purveyors. There are only two things wrong with his reference here to Shachtman’s “Socialism or bureaucratism or barbarism”. (1) Neither Shachtman nor the Workers Party has ever, anywhere, put forward such a triple formula. We accept as ours only Trotsky’s and the Fourth International’s “Socialism or barbarism” as the historic alternatives before society. We do add that the ‘barbarism’ here counterposed to Socialism can mean a form of totalitarian bureaucratic statism or bureaucratic collectivism – but that much even Trotsky said already in his In Defence of Marxism. The only place where this absurd triple-alternative formula can be read written down in print is, to be sure, m an SWP attack upon us (see Shachtman’s The Nature of the Russian State, NI, April 1947). (2) In any case, neither the use of “Socialism or barbarism” by us or Trotsky, nor our view that Russia is a totalitarian bureaucratic-collectivist society has anything to do with the more immediate alternatives of “imperialism or Socialism” for China today. It is undoubtedly correct that either China breaks with all imperialism through a revolutionary Socialist workers’ government or it remains under the direct or indirect control of imperialism. We urge the Chinese comrades to remember that the same Cannon who prints what they call Peng Shuzi’ s slanders against them is the master workman in that field, Peng at worst only an apprentice. [Ed. – (Max Shachtman)]
 

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love  

 

 ...come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell. Come on over here and get away from that midnight phone waiting and maybe put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,

Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are different, well, well there you have it.
And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints 1950s story (although maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village small print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario).

And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.

And let’s make it a winter night, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…

And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along.

I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. Her Eddie’s flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.

Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. Yes, I know the story because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more after the mailman came.

Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a mantrap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way. Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge:

“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.

Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes car but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Eddie John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,

Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do automatically, even though I secretly thrill to know that that once over is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We talked, idle talk, sex in the air talk, but don’t talk it straight out about it talk, still talk a lot for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.

Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Eddie John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date”, some donk poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.

And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.

Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.

I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day.”

Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that.

But Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Eddie John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well, enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on.

Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone…

EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Eddie, please write me one line

Tell me your love is still only mine

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens

recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

 

Wednesday, February 05, 2014


As the Wars Wind Down... Are We Nearing a Turning Point?

Toward a Just & Cooperative
U.S. Foreign Policy

Massachusetts Peace Action 2014 Annual Meeting

Saturday, February 8, 2014
1:00 to 5:00 pm - doors open 12:30
St Ignatius Parish, Boston College
28 Commonwealth Ave, Chestnut Hill
What a year! A popular outcry stopped a U.S. war with Syria and diplomacy promises relaxation of tensions with Iran (if Congress doesn’t interfere). The Budget for All proved that voters want less military spending and more social investment, and the Autumn Convergence showed that we can connect peace, climate, and economic and social justice into a single progressive agenda.
  • Why is the U.S. the world’s policeman and what is the alternative?
  • How can we move our nation towards a more peaceful foreign policy?
RegisterButton300 We present two important voices to solve these riddles and shape our work in 2014.
Barney Frank served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 2013. A constant campaigner to cut the military budget by 25%, he formed the Sustainable Defense Task Force in 2010 to propose practical ways to do so, and criticized U.S. support for NATO . The primary architect of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act, Frank is now at work on a book.
Andrew Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. A West Point graduate and retired U.S. Army Colonel, he is author of The New American Militarism, Washington Rules, and Breach of Trust.  Read an important recent article. Bacevich urges the U.S. to abandon its hegemonistic foreign policy and focus on rebuilding its society at home. His books will be available for signing.
Attendees will have a choice of 5 workshop topics;  Read detailed information on the workshops.
• Seeing Through the Smokescreen; Reflections on Continued War in Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Organizing to Stop a War with Iran; Stop Congressional Sabotage– Support a Nuclear Weapons Free Middle East
• Transitioning Towards a Peace Economy
• Seeking Peace and Justice in Palestine/Israel
• US Strategic Pivot to Asia/Pacific and the Trans Pacific Partnership
We will complete the election of new and continuing board members.  Read about the board nominees here and return your ballot.
RegisterButton300All are welcome! Click here to register
Doors open 12:30 for registration and refreshments.  Program begins promptly at 1:00.  Read the detailed agenda here.
Directions: Take the Green Line "B" train to the end of the line and walk across Commonwealth Ave. to the church. Parking Directions: Click Here.  
Free to members – others $10.  Make your membership donation today to receive free admission to the meeting, enable you to vote for the Board, and to support our work for peace and justice.
I look forward to seeing you there!

Cole Harrison

Cole Harrison
Executive Director


Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership today!  
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***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator,  Gringo Blood  

 
 
As readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious father told him. Here’s one such story although not about Marlin but about an operative for the largest detective agency on the West Coast, John “Stubs” Lane that he ran across on some cases and who taught him a thing or two about private detection work. (Stubs nick-named for a habit picked while sitting alone endlessly in cold cars drinking cold coffee and picking out cigarette stubs from the ashtray after his fresh deck ran out).

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

 
One never really associated one of our tough guy private detectives, our primo organizational gumshoe, John “Stubs” Lane, out in the slumming streets of Los Angeles when that port of call was just a dusty burg out in the desert's edge (and the ocean's edge too) with women, women to get involved with romantically and not just some twist who is good for a night or two under the downy billows. Oh sure, Stubs liked women, maybe even had loved one or two in his time, and he certainly was not that way, you know, what did they use to call it, oh yeah, “light on his feet,” no way, not like some Hollywood houseboy or something like that. But women in his life were are kind of used merely as flowery backdrop. Yeah women to Stubs were like in some of those Chandler novels and short stories as damsels in distress like General Sternwood’s daughters in the Big Sleep or low-down femmes fatales, like Velma in Farewell, My Lovely nothing to get excited over except in that dogged pursuit of some kind of rough justice in this wicked old world. Certainly Stubs was not some closet feminist waiting to proclaim some rough equality of sexes by his very actions. No, that was not part of his code, no way, prone was his favored position when he was younger and if not that then leave them alone.

However every once in a while, and the story ahead is one of them, a past love, a past forlorn or at least unattainable love interest showed up to give us a glimpse of what our man Stubs was up to before he got so dogged about that rough justice kick. Naturally, that love interest, Bess, was unattainable back in the day, although a flicker, maybe more than a flicker, remained as the two were reunited under trying circumstances after some time had elapsed. The reason that Bess was unattainable by the way was very easily understood, if not by Stubs then should be by the reader. She was in love with another man, let's call him Spanish Johnny just to keep things easy, a man who also happened to be our man Stub’s best friend back in the day. A guy, a professional politician with some money, who could give Bess things, lots of things. Coming from nowhere and with nothing that is what she wanted. So let's just say that Bess played the percentages in the struggle for plenty of life's goods and it came out Johnny. Stubs to the rear.

That long ago romance would have stayed there, stayed down in the embers, except Spanish Johnny (he had plenty of Spanish blood, old time Spain Spanish blood from back when the conquistadores ran amok in California not some Mex bracero stuff with the from hunger eyes and eternal stares) got himself killed, got himself good and killed, got murdered, got murdered at close range in his office and everything pointed, on the surface anyway, to a professional hit. A professional hit assumed to be ordered by the governmental machinery in power in town, Mack Sturgis’ guys who controlled city hall and who were hooded up with Bags Magoo’s criminal outfit back then. Bags had the whole town sewed up, women, gambling, dope, fencing stolen goods you name it that was the name to be reckoned with, or else. They certainly wanted to eliminate Johnny because he wanted to end the endemic corruption in our 1930s city of angels. Tough job, too tough for one man as Stubs would have told him if he had asked his advice. But that was Spanish Johnny, on the taking on tough stuff part, and the not taking advice part too. Yeah, Spanish Johnny went in big time to upset their gravy train. So the idea of a hit was a no-brainer. End of case and RIP sweet boy Spanish Johnny-so long old amigo.

But appearances are sometimes deceiving, some things just didn’t add with the evidence at hand. It was too clean, had the look of an obvious set-up, was made to look too cosy for the cops to come to that hit conclusion. Of course they were more than happy to write it down as a hit after fifteen hard minutes on the case and then throw the thing in deep cold file heaven. But see Stubs has an uneasy feeling that there was something amiss with the political hit theory, something that spoke of a more personal motive to slice Spanish Johnny up.

So in Stub’s mind, in Stub’s twenty year private operative mind the percentages were against that idea, although he knew as well as anybody over the age of about twelve that the city's political machine was ready to move might and main to close down Spanish Johnny’s investigations. That included a standard roughing up of Stubs, a serious third- degree as it came out later, to keep the lid on things just in case he got wise to something. Or maybe they roughed him up just because they could do it, just to show him that if he intended to go too far that he would like very much like Spanish Johnny did when he was found in his office looking kind of peaked.

Here is where things went awry though, awry for the cops, the crooks, and the city hall boys. Went awry after a few false leads and a few bodies piled up, a couple of Bags’ boys and a cop or two. Stubs finally coped to what happened on that murderous day when Spanish Johnny took his hit. Seems that old amigo Spanish Johnny was playing footsie with the help, one blonde bombshell secretary named Zelda whom hot-blooded Johnny was having affair with (and had had a string of previous affairs with the female help and a few bar-room queens as well). Bess, tried and true Bess, couldn't take that hard fact of his philandering anymore and so she put a few slices in him to show her displeasure. Spanish Johnny, although bleeding profusely, lived long enough to mess up the evidence to keep Bess in the clear so Bess must have had, in the end, as big a hold over Johnny as she had over Stubs. See Stubs let her walk, walk free out of some sense of friendship for the wishes of a fallen brother. And Bess? Well Bess tried to rekindle that old flame thing with Stubs, that old flame thing that had suddenly flickered out cold back when there were choices to be made. And as we leave that scene Stubs, professional, hard-boiled private operative was mulling over that possibility. Jesus.

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes 



From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

February is Black History Month

 

Bound No'th Blues
Goin’ down the road, Lawd,
Goin’ down the road.
Down the road, Lawd,
Way,way down the road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.

Road’s in front o’ me,
Nothin’ to do but walk.
Road’s in front of me,
Walk…an’ walk…an’ walk.
I’d like to meet a good friend
To come along an’ talk.

Hates to be lonely,
Lawd, I hates to be sad.
Says I hates to be lonely,
Hates to be lonely an’ sad,
But ever friend you finds seems
Like they try to do you bad.

Road, road, road, O!
Road, road…road…road, road!
Road, road, road, O!
On the no’thern road.
These Mississippi towns ain’t
Fit fer a hoppin’ toad.

Langston Hughes

… he, Bradley Brim (juke joint, roadside house, rent party stage moniker, Clarksville Slim, but let’s just stick with Bradley until he needs to use that moniker again up north), was sick and tired of, hell, being sick and tired. First off, after last Saturday night, Bradley was sick and tired of every no account jive- ass jackass field hand, cotton field hand, in the great state of Mississippi feeling like he could, like he could as a natural right, all rum brave on Spider Jones’ homemade, feel that he could throw his whiskey jar at the stage when he didn’t like a particular number Bradley was doing. Damn, go elsewhere. Next off he was sick and tired unto death of every Louella, Bee, Sarah, Selma, and Victoria (those his last four, ah, five girlfriends, for those not in the know, not in the juke joint circuit know), taking what little money he had (and it wasn’t much after expenses, a little reefer, a couple of bucks for some trifle for his girl of the moment) and spending it on her walking daddy, her husband or her pimp. And then at the end of the night saying, sweet purr saying, he was her one and only walking daddy, after he had picked up her tab and they headed to his place, his cabin for what no walking daddy, husband or pimp was giving her. And lastly off he was just about ready to shake the dust of old Spider Jones’ juke joints (road houses and cafes too, he had a string of them around the southern part of the state), his cornball liquor, the dust of Clarksville, and the dusts of the great state of Mississippi and follow the northern star to the promised land, to Chi town, to legendary Maxwell Street where a man could make himself and still come out ahead.
And as he started thinking, thinking once again about shaking that damn dust off, he thought too about how he wouldn’t miss his day job at Mister Baxter’s Lumber Company that was hampering his musical development because he couldn’t practice during the day like he should, wouldn’t miss every Mister James Crow-craving white man, woman, and child in the state telling him, sit here, don’t sit there , walk here, don’t walk there, eat here, don’t eat there, drink the water here, don’t drink the water there, even Mister Baxter, wouldn’t miss every cornball white hick, white trash hick, really, eye-balling him anytime he went downtown for Mister Baxter, or on his own hook. Wouldn’t miss a lot of things, except those women who shook loose of their walking daddies and wanted him to be their coffee-grinder when the dawn came up.

He heard, and he thought he heard right, heard it from Mickey Mack’s woman who was waiting for Mickey to send for her to come to Chi town any day now that there were plenty of jobs up there, good paying jobs in steel mills and slaughter houses (he thought about, and laughed too, how in school Miss Parker had read the class a poem by some crusty old white guy who called Chi town “hog-butcher to the world”), the housing wasn’t too bad (some cold- water flats which sounded better than the raggedy ass old Mister Baxter cabin he lived in) and get this, nobody, nobody on this good green earth cared where you ate, drank, sat on the bus, as long as you didn’t bother them (and maybe didn’t live next door to them).But mainly all he cared about was making it, or breaking it, he held that possibility out too, on Maxwell Street (or starting out on one of the side streets and working his way up) singing his stuff, singing his covers of Robert Johnson that he thought would drive the women wild (especially his version of Dust My Broom) and of Muddy too. Yeah, all he cared about was following that northern star to sweet home Chicago.

 

Update 2/3/14: Chelsea Manning nominated for 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, and supporters get creative

Several European Parliamentarians have decided to nominate both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize! The Pirate Party, to which the parliamentarians belong, is a multi-national political party which supports supports civil rights, direct democracy and participation in government, transpareny, freedom of information and network neutrality.  In their nomination letter they write: “The nominees are both whistleblowers who have inspired change and encouraged public debate and policy changes that contributed to a more stable and peaceful world.”  Read the full letter on MP Birgitta Jonsdottir’s blog.
Recently, at a Chelsea Manning solidarity benefit in Wales, a security guard began a Welsh singalong in her honor. Watch the short video on youtube:


Finally, volunteer artist Larry E. Goines Jr. has created a pop poster design that he’d like to share with Chelsea Manning’s supporters. Download the high-res version online.


FILM: "High Power"

 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the Cambridge Peace Commission

has invited nuclear engineer-turned-environmentalist
Pradeep Indulkar
 to show his film High Power
When: Thursday February 6 at 6:45PM  
At: Cambridge Main Library , Community Room, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA.
The film is free.
The film is open to the public. Please circulate widely to interested people.
High Power, a 27-minute documentary about the health issues faced by residents of Tarapur, a town in Maharashtra, and home to the 50- year-old Tarapur nuclear power plant, recently won the Yellow Oscar in the short film category in the Rio de Janeiro leg of the Uranium Film Festival. 
“The government was showing a very rosy picture of Tarapur on TV, so a few of us thought of going there and interviewing the people...That material was very strong, people were talking from their heart, and instead of showing it on a news channel, I thought it could be made into a documentary,” says Indulkar.
After the film, Indulkar will describe the passionate anti-nuclear movement in India and their request for support from the global anti-nuclear movement, particularly from those countries whose nuclear industries are building plants in India.
 Indulkar’s film tour in the western MA occurs at a time that the US has agreed to a deal in which India buys 6 nuclear power plants from Westinghouse – a boon for the industry that is going bust in the United States.  India reprocesses nuclear power waste into nuclear weapons and, thus, more nuclear power translates into greater weapons capability.  The US-India agreement will require that India accept liability in case of a nuclear accident, a tragic undermining of the post-Bhopal Indian law that placed liability on the shoulders of the industry selling the equipment.
 
Upcoming Events: 

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle And Roll

 

 
 …she had been through it all before, six or seven times now at least,  been through the part about what happened to her when she heard the new music on the radio, some called it rhythm and blues, some called it rockabilly, some, more recently, had begun to call it rock and roll after some DJ from New York City called it that and it was starting to catch on as the way to describe the beat, the dancing, and the feeling of freedom just being around the scene. Her parents, her know-nothing parents, called it the “devil’s music” but what did they know, what could they know about what she felt, what she felt in certain private places when the beat got strong. How could they know never having been young, never having those feelings. She was not exactly sure why she felt that way, why she felt warm in what all the girls in the before school “lav” called their “sweet spot” whenever she heard the local radio station or the kids at Doc Drugstore on the juke-box endlessly playing Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle, and Roll or Warren Smith on Rock and Roll Ruby but she did. (Some of the rougher girls, the girls who smoked, drank and did “it,” so they said, called it other things which she did not find out until later, much later, guys called it too but she then still preferred the more modest “sweet spot.”) All she knew was that when the beat began to pick she would start swaying, maybe dancing by herself, maybe with a girlfriend and get that feeling like she was not in Olde Saco but New York City getting checked out by all the cute boys whose leers when she swayed told her they were interested in some of her.
Someone, Betty, she thought, a girl that she had grown up and gone to school with,  said it was just her coming into “her time,” although she did not know what to make of that idea since she had that same feeling before and after she came into her time. Got her “friend.”   Betty, or whoever it was who had said it said she did not mean that, that thing every girl had, but the time when everything was confused and when a teenager did, or did not, know which way to jump. Somebody on the news programs called it alienation but she was not sure what that meant. All she knew was that the old songs on the jukebox or radio, the ones that she loved to listen to the previous  year, Frank, Bing, Patti, Rosemary, did not make her feel that way anymore. Didn’t make her feel that she wanted to jump out of her skin.

Tommy from school might have had a better handle on it, have had a better sense of what turbulence was going on inside her when he told the whole class in Current Events that there were some new songs coming out of the radio, some stuff from down south, some negro sound from down in Memphis somewhere, some white hillbilly sound from around that same town, that he would listen to late at night on WJKA from Chicago when the air was just right. Sounds that made him want to jump right out of his skin. (She never dared to ask whether it made him feel warm in his “sweet spot” since she didn’t know much then about whether boys had sweet spots, or got warm).

When Tommy had said that, said it was about the music, she knew that she was not alone, not alone in feeling that a fresh breeze was coming over the land, although she, confused as she was would not have articulated it that way (that would come later). And so she asked Tommy about it after class, asked him about what it felt like for him to jump out of his skin when he heard the beat beginning. He explained to her his feelings, feelings that she said she shared with him and he smiled. She agreed to let him walk her home after school and they had talked for a couple of hours on her front porch before he left. This went on for a while since neither one was assertive enough to ask for a date for a long time. Then both of them saw the announcement in the newspaper for the next dance around town and one night called each other to see if, ah, they might go together. And so they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down in Olde Saco and listen to some guys, a band, the Ready Rollers, play the new music. She wondered to herself (she could not speak of such things to Tommy) as she prepared for that night whether she would feel warm again in her sweet spot when they danced, she hoped so…         

 
… things were different now, different from a few months ago when he was all balled up and thought he was the only kid, guy or female, aged fifteen, who was confused, uncomprehending, misbegotten about how he felt, about his place in the universe and about how he felt so very sorry himself because he didn’t understand what was happening to him, and what spoke to him now that he was no longer a kid. He, Tommy Murphy, could hardly wait until the weekend, wait to hear the new sounds coming out of the south, rhythm and blues stuff, rockabilly stuff, that he kept hearing on his transistor radio up in his room on clear nights out of WJKA in Chicago, stuff called that because some hip DJ in New York City called it that was starting to catch on under the name rock and roll. (Funny he could get Chicago on good nights but not New York City to hear that DJ call out to all the cats to swing to the beat of rock and roll.)

He couldn’t get WJKA clear every week, damn, but when it did come in Tommy would start snapping his fingers to the beat, the swinging beat that “spoke” to him somehow. He could not explain it but it made him feel good when he was down, was all confused about life, okay, okay, about girls, school, and that getting ahead in the world that his parents, his mother especially kept harping on. Made him think that maybe he would be a musician and play that stuff, play and make all the girls wet. Yeah, he knew all about that part about girls, about how this rock and roll music was making them get warm, warm in all the right places according to George his older brother who knew all about girls. Had them hanging off of him even though he wasn’t a musician but just a hep cat. Make that new girl of his, Susie, warm too. He hoped.

Funny how he had met Susie, how they had met, or not really met but started out, started out in school of all places, in class. Jesus. He had noticed her before but before she was just part of that all balled up stuff he was feeling, although he had taken a few peeks at her and he thought she might have peeked back once but he was not sure. Then in Current Events one week it was his turn to make a presentation and he chose to talk about that radio station out in Chicago and about the sounds he heard that made him want to jump out of his skin. He couldn’t exactly explain why and blushed a bright red when the teacher, a cool guy, Mr. Merritt asked him point blank about why he felt that way except to say that it made him feel good, made him less angry, less confused. A couple of people in the class nodded and he thought Susie had too (although she later said no she hadn’t she just was thinking how brave he was to talk like that about his reactions to the music and while looking at him found out something she had not noticed before, he was cute).  

After class Susie had come up to him and practically begged him to tell her more about his feelings, about how the music made him feel,  because she said when she heard Big Joe Turner coming all snapping fingers on the radio on Shake, Rattle and Roll, she felt funny inside. (Of course nobody, not even Tommy, who was keen on such knowledge knew that Big Joe was a Negro then, Christ their parents would have fits if they knew that.)  Tommy knew what kind of funny Susie was talking about, her “sweet spot” funny but he knew, knew because George had told him, not to say that to girls. Not modest girls like Susie and maybe not to any girl if you wanted to get past first base with them. That conversation had started their thing and she had asked him to walk home with her so they could talk which they did until they got to her house and just stood there talking for a couple of hours before he left.

He had walked her home a few times and he found that she was easy to talk to but they both seemed to back off on talking about a first date. Then both of them saw an announcement in the newspaper for the next dance around town and one night called each other to see if, ah, they might go together. And so they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down in Olde Saco and listen to some guys, a band, the Ready Rollers, play the new music. Tommy  didn’t know what would happen as he prepared that night to pick her up at her house but he hoped the music would calm him down and that he would get that funny feeling inside when they danced, he sure hoped so…