This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Good Night, Irene Indeed-In Honor Of Folk Legend Leadbelly
No question Leadbelly (Huddie
Ledbetter [maybe sic]) along with Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Pete Seeger and
the Weavers were the talent, the folk talent, that we who passed through that now
glorious folk minute of the early 1960s owed a debt to for keeping the music
alive, keeping us suppled with tunes, popular tunes in their time, until those
songwriters from our own time gathered voice and lyrics. So any efforts to preserve
what guys like the Leadbelly put together are entirely welcome in this quarter.
Clink on the link below to hear about
the latest efforts to play homage to one of the forebears of the folk revival.
Over the years that I have been presenting political material in this space I have had occasion to re-post items from some sites which I find interesting, interesting for a host of political reasons, although I am not necessarily in agreement with what has been published. Two such sites have stood out, The Rag Blog, which I like to re-post items from because it has articles by many of my fellow Generation of ’68 residual radicals and ex-radicals who still care to put pen to paper and the blog cited here, the Steve Lendman Blog. The reason for re-postings from this latter site is slightly different since the site represents a modern day left- liberal political slant. That is the element, the pool if you will, that we radicals have to draw from, have to move left, if we are to grow. So it is important to have the pulse of what issues motivate that milieu and I believe that this blog is a lightning rod for those political tendencies.
I would also add that the blog is a fountain of rational, reasonable and unrepentant anti-Zionism which became apparent once again in the summer of 2014 when defense of the Palestinian people in Gaza was the pressing political issue and we were being stonewalled and lied to by the bourgeois media in service of American and Israeli interests. This blog was like a breath of fresh air then. Still is.
An additional Jackman comment (Fall 2014):
The left-liberal/radical arena in American politics has been on a steep decline since I was a whole-hearted denizen of that milieu in my youth somewhere slightly to the left of Robert Kennedy back in 1968 say but still immersed in trying put band-aids on the capitalist system. That is the place where Steve Lendman with his helpful well informed blog finds himself. It is not an enviable place to be for anyone to have a solid critique of bourgeois politics, hard American imperial politics in the 21st century and have no ready source in that milieu to take on the issues and make a difference (and as an important adjunct to that American critique a solid critique of the American government acting as front-man for every nefarious move the Israeli government makes toward increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank).
Of course I had the luxury, if one could call it that, which a look at Mr. Lendman's bio information indicates that he did not have, was the pivotal experience in the late 1960s of being inducted, kicking and screaming but inducted, into the American army in its losing fight against the heroic Vietnamese resistance. That signal event disabused me, although it took a while to get "religion," on the question of the idea of not depending on bourgeois society to reform itself coming out of Democratic Party left-liberal politics, especially falling in love with Robert Kennedy’s idea of “seeking a newer world.” On specific issues like the fight against the death penalty, the fight for the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform and the like I have worked with that left-liberal/ radical milieu, and gladly, but as for continuing to believe against all evidence that the damn thing can be reformed that is where we part company. Still Brother Lendman keep up the good work and I hope you find a political home worthy of your important work.
A Jackman disclaimer:
I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out was the freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. Those jackboot theories, mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power, were theories that I earnestly adhered to sometimes more than one at the same time. Nevertheless by our exclusionism we were replicating the worst habits of the old Old Left (those who came of political age and fought the great class battles of the 1930s when kept their generation above water for a long time but which now despite the importance of studying have run out of steam). That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past.
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 various blogs and other networking media. 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 on.
The World of the French Revolution, R.R. Palmer, Harper and Row, New York, 1971
Needless to say the history of the French Revolution that began in 1789 and, arguably, has not been completed yet has been looked at from every possible perspective, some of them noteworthy others merely cumulative. In Professor Palmer’s little book I believe we have a noteworthy one although the good professor and I would not share the same reasons for that fact. A careful look, as here, at the influence of the French Revolution on Europeon politics, other national liberation movements of the time and the exigencies of military policy make this a worthy study.
At the end of 2007 we have been through a period when the American Bush Administration policy in the Middle East has seen as one of its aims the ‘export of democracy’; in the terminology of the French Revolution the ‘export of revolution’. I would also note that during the height of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, particularly in the immediate post World War II period the ‘export of revolution’ in that case, socialist, raised it head. Thus, the central point of Palmer’s book in relationship to the French Revolution today offers some important historical lessons about that phenomenon.
Professor Palmer divides his work into sections dealing with the pre-revolutionary period, the immediate issues of the revolutionary and the significant period of the reign of the Committee of Public Safety in the 1793-94 period. Those parts are fairly common in most studies. What he does additionally is give space to the various external movements influenced by the French example and the policies of the various adversaries of the French. Further he ties the whole period together by giving a fair outline of the Directory period (basically 1794-99) that is overlooked or undervalued in most works and the policies of the various governments toward outside revolutionary movements. This is also the period when the various republics, French created or otherwise, spring into being.
If there is one definitive conclusion that drifts through the Professor’s work it is that it is hard, extremely hard, to successfully export revolution, even world historic revolutions like the French one. For one thing history has shown more than one time disagreements on the question within the ruling strata of the revolutionary state. At various times, depending on internal French politics, there was hostility or indifference to those like, the Polish, who wished to emulate or come under French protection. Palmer gives us the highlights to further search for the relationship between local indigenous forces, the role of French military success on the ground and other governmental considerations that forced the creation of a least six French-like republics in the 1790’s. This book is hardly the last word on the subject of the French ‘export of revolution’ but it certainly is the first word. Read on.
Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For The French Revolution. As Always With This Source It Is A Good Place To Start In Order To Look Elsewhere For More Specific, And Sometimes More Reliable, Information.
Book Review
Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt, University Of California Press, Berkeley, 1984
This year marks the commemoration of the 220th Anniversary of the great French Revolution. Democrats, socialists, communists and others rightly celebrate that event as a milestone in humankind’s history. Whether there are still lessons to be learned from the experience is an open question that political activists can fight over. None, however, can deny its grandeur. Well, no one except those closet, and not so closet, modern day royalists, and their epigones that screech in horror and grasp for their necks every time the 14th of July comes around. They have closed the door of history behind them. Won’t they be surprised then the next time there is a surge of progressive human activity?
********
All great revolutions, like the French revolution under review here, are capable, especially when they are long over, of being analyzed from many prospectives. Moreover, official and academic historian have no other reason to exist except to keep revising the effects that such revolutions have had on future historical developments. Left wing political activists, on the other hand, try to draw the lessons of those earlier plebeian struggles in order to better understand the tasks ahead. As part of that understanding it is necessary to look at previous revolutions not only from the position of how it effected the plebes but to look at from the position of those who do not see the action of the plebeian masses as decisive, at least for the French Revolution.
Professor Lynn Hunt in the book under review, “Politics, Culture and Class In the French Revolution” has carved out a niche for herself exploring the morals, mores and customs of the insurgent revolutionary forces as they tried to legitimize their seizure of power. Moreover, she has done some extensive work culling through the statistics and other documentary evidence to see who, according to her lights, the main beneficiaries of the revolutionary struggle were. For those partisans of later social movements and revolutionary movements the questions posed by Professor Hunt’s study about the symbols and organization of power are a welcome addition.
If one, like this reviewer, spends his or her time looking at the base of society (here the urban sans culottes, the landless peasants and displaced village artisans)to see how those forces were brought to political life, organized, made politically effective (if only for a time, as noted above, before they as individuals like society in general also run out of revolutionary steam) and how they put pressure on their leaderships and how those leaderships responded to those pressures then one downplays the other social forces that are in play in a revolutionary period. Great revolutions, however, create all kinds of turmoil in layers of society that previously were dormant or were in control, although shakily. In that regard, virtually a sure sign that a pre-revolutionary situation exists is when a portion of the old ruling elite (or their agents) begins to make revolutionary noises. That is the value of Professor Hunt’s study.
All political/social movements have their rituals, symbols and customs. Of special note here is Professor Hunt’s focus on the work of the politician/artist David in creating many of the visual ‘myths’ of the revolution. The book is loaded with many other interesting cultural tidbits, as well. For those of us who cherish the memory of the French Revolution as the forerunner of greater social movements this little work is a welcome addition. For those unfamiliar with the inner workings of the French revolution a more generalized study is warranted before you tackle this work. Then come back here and appreciate this more intriguing and specialized study.
"La Marseillaise"
Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Refrain
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
Amour sacré de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Liberté, Liberté cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure à tes males accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
Refrain
Nous entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos ainés n'y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus.
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!
Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Recently after watching the 1973 film Badlands starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek I commented in a
short review I did of the movie that the film made me thing back to the days
when my own surly sullen corner boys and I were taking our various turns toward
life decisions which led some of us to plenty of time in various state pens and
others of us into white collar professional life. One guy from the old corner in
particular reminded me of Kit, the sullen, cranky, whacko, maybe even just greatly
misunderstood youth played by Martin Sheen kept creeping into my thoughts. A
guy named Pretty James Preston whom I met in fourth grade in elementary school
after he had come up with his family from nowhere in coal country in Kentucky
and landed in our working poor neighborhood because his mother had grown up in
our town, North Adamsville, an old shipbuilding town in Massachusetts after
they had busted out down south where his father had grown up. (James got the
name Pretty from all the girls who swarmed around him from junior high on and
the name stuck after he finally accepted the moniker but not before crashing a
few heads of guys who had mocked him for the moniker.) I might as well tell you
right now Pretty James at age twenty-one ended face down in a hail of police bullets
after killing a security guard in a botched lone wolf bank holdup a few towns
over.
That’s not what crept into my thoughts though. See Pretty,
seemingly like Kit, although we never got much of Kit’s pre-story in the film
and at the beginning he seemed like a million other awkward guys who came up
like the weeds in the be-bop 1950s where we all tried to look and act sullen
like Elvis, better James Dean, had not started out as a desperado but
everywhere he turned he got bumped around by society, got bumped around by his
own inner hurts and outrageous wanting habits. Other than having great looks
even when Pretty was a young schoolboy which caused him as much trouble as it
did to benefit him he seemed bedeviled by some kind of expectation that he was
made for great things.
Almost from day one in elementary school when he tried to
steal my milk money to see if I would let him do it, I didn’t but I also did
not know that he was testing me as he would do periodically later when I would
also be the beneficiary of his thefts, he was always reaching for something,
what would later be called his “fifteen minutes of fame.” All I knew was that
he was driven by the idea of not winding up like his poor downtrodden father,
no way he said. Tried a lot of things before the fall. Had a very good voice
and learned how to dance so that girls would notice and dream. Entered a couple
of talent shows, a few dance contests, and an audition process that would have
gotten him a record contract. But everything always fell a little short, he didn’t
have despite his incredible wanting habits, that last closer of the deal for
some reason.
With each “straight” defeat Pretty became more and more
sullen so by the time my own family moved across town I had begun a long
process of moving away from hisorbit
(although not the corner boy ethos I just picked it up with guys on that other
side of town). Of course before that long process of separation was over I have
been deeply immersed in the petty criminal life that he began to get a
hankering for, a way to feel better maybe. I was right there with him as
“look-out” on the first “clip” jobs he did grabbing jewelry and whatnot from
various shops and stores for his legion of girlfriends. (I also got his girl “rejects”
so I was more than happy to accompany him on his sojourns). Was with him on the
“midnight sifts” breaking into empty houses and grabbing whatever we could
pawn. I was there when he committed a few “jack-rolls” of drunks but I don’t
want to discuss that too much. And I was almost there the first time, at age
fourteen, Pretty attempted to do an armed robbery of a local gas station in
broad daylight. Only a serious sickness kept me off “having his back” that day.
He didn’t succeed that day although the Bowie knife he wielded at the scared
rabbit gas jockey almost succeeded since the guy had the money already to give
Pretty except a cop car came by. That scared rabbit who knew who knew who Pretty
was never squawked, not even later when Pretty hit the place again and grabbed
five hundred bucks from the same guy who told the cops he could not identify
the robber. That later robbery was done when he had his motorcycle for getting
around. He would later, would become known as the motorcycle bandito once he
dropped out of school and began his life as a career, short career, felon.
At that point, the point when he was doing his robberies off
of the bike though I was well out of his orbit and would only hear about his
exploits from guys on the corner who knew stuff. When he made that last run
before he was gunned down after the botched lone wolf robbery I had only heard
about it by reading the Boston newspapers. Of course those newspapers played
the whole set-up for all it was worth, as an example of a bad apple getting his
just due. In those day, the 1950s, the same time frame of Kit’s murder spree and
Pretty’s time too such sullen youth, called juvenile delinquents, JDs, were
seen as almost as much as a threat to the good social order as the Cold War Red
Menace that made every self-respecting person nervous (and so thought maybe the
Reds had put those guys up to their wicked ways). So yeah good riddance. But
some fifty years later I know a little about what made the guy tick, knew him
when a few breaks the other way might have turned him around. Had turned me
around.
Here is the way this one played out in the 1950s North
Adamsville night, played out not all that differently than a lot of other
corner boy stories from back then except Pretty James went way over the edge
like Kit had done. See the way I heard the real story much later was when the
sister of the girl, Mimi Murphy, whom Pretty had been hanging with before the
fall told me the details, as much as she knew. Pretty was just drifting around
out there in the barren foothills near North Adamsville (the physical place and
the place in his head), playing the motorcycle cowboy philosopher king all cool
in leather after he had dropped out of high school under the principle that
there was nothing else that he needed to learn in the public schools for his
career.
In the summer before her senior year Pretty James saw Mimi one
day walking and talking with a guy, a guy from the football team who was sweet
on her, meaning trying to get into her pants as the expression went the and had
been getting nowhere as far as anybody knew, down at Adamsville Beach when he
decided he had to have her on his back seat. Now Mimi if she wasn’t the prettiest
girl in school was close, longnatural
blonde hair, slender, great legs, nice blue eyes, good lips, smart and perky I
guess is the best way to describe her personality. I had a crush on her in
junior high when every Sunday I would sit a few pews in back of her at 8
o’clock Mass and watch her ass the whole time but nothing ever came of it. All Pretty
did was stop his bike in front of the couple, gave the guy some version of the
evil look, the “don’t fuck with me, kid” look, nodded without a word spoken to
Mimi to get on back, she hesitated for a minute thinking, and then quickly took
her place at Pretty’s back.
Wild story but wilder still was that Mimi dropped out of
school even though she had been a very good student and only needed to finish
senior year and go forward in life in order to follow Pretty. From what her
sister said when she was still in contact she gave Pretty what he wanted, all
he wanted that very night so maybe she was just waiting like we all were for
the right moment, maybe the right guy or maybe she was ready for “kicks,”
something we all were interested to relieve our dreary lives. In any Mimi went
home a few days later, packed some bags and split without talking to her
parents or anything. She wrote a letter to her sister later from some place
over in Riverdale telling her the details, telling her that she would never
leave Pretty.
At one point Pretty, when he was maybe eighteen, nineteen,
had been with a gang of older guys who dealt with various acts of armed
robbery, mostly small banks and factory payrolls. That association died after a
caper in which Pretty was not involved went awry when the manager of the
factory the gang was trying to hold-up got rum brave and said no, said no and
got shot dead for his efforts. His refusal though gave the cops time to get
there and after a short shoot-out with one gang member, Frizzy, dead they were
apprehended. All drew long sentences, very long in Walpole. That left Pretty
high and dry, left him without a source of cash, cash necessary to keep up his
bike and his own upkeep. Once Mimi came into the picture later that just added
to the expenses so for a year or so everybody would hear of an occasional
robbery, usually armed, of some grocery store or gas station, maybe a small
supermarket, by a lone wolf biker. None other than Pretty.
Then for a while nobody heard anything about Pretty like he
and Mimi had drifted off the face of the earth. What Mimi’s sister had heard
from the little contact she had with her before she really did seem to drift
off the face of the earth was that Pretty had been working on a plan to rob the
Granite National Bank, the bank that held all the payrolls for the various
shipbuilding companies that dotted the south coast area and would put them on
easy street. He planned to do it alone in broad daylight with lightning speed
and daring not figuring that anybody would think a single guy could rob Granite
National. And he almost succeeded, had a bagful of dough when a security guard
who must have thought the money was his personal stash tried to stop Pretty
with his gun, Pretty shot him dead, and ran out to his bike. The cops though
were already out there approaching and in the inevitable shoot-out Pretty James
Preston came up short, came up just a little short like he had all his life.
Some witness across the street said she saw a young blonde girl, seemingly
pregnant, standing there on her side of the street a few yards away who flee
the scene when the cops came. Rumors flew that Mimi had gone to Maine, or someplace
like that, but she never came back to North Adamsville so maybe she did drift
off the good green earth.
Yeah, Pretty James was something else but I still wonder
what would have happened to me if I had stuck with him.
In The Time, Prime Time, Of The T.V. Huckster-Elia Kazan’s A Face In The Crowd
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
A Face In The Crowd, starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, directed by Elia Kazan (yeah, the guy who back in the Red Scare Cold War 1950s night ratted out everybody he could to save his own neck and has rightly been, whatever his considerable cinematic talents, treated like a pariah and should be every time who was who among the Hollywood red scare rat snitch fraternity comes up), 1957
Any who thinks that the current war-circus of hucksterism in politics, advertising, hell, just in interpersonal social network communicationsstarted this year or last should take a serious cinematic look at the granddaddy of critiques of modern media, Elia Kazan’s A Face In The Crowdto see that is simply not true. (I have already made my point about Mister Kazan’s lack of spine when the deal went down about his role as snitch during the red scare Cold War night acre elsewhere so this review is about the considerable artistic creative aspects of his career of which this film is something of a defining masterpiece.) The power of in its time, radio, television and now the Internet to form opinion, to push somebody’s agenda, to get people to buy something from candidates for office to sunglasses and laundry detergent gets a full workout here in the “golden age” of black and white television, the medium many of us older reviewers cut our teeth on.
Here’s the beauty of this one as a cinematic statement in contrast to say the whiplash rise of a Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men or the film Network which also dealt with the power of mass communications to shape everyday life and to throw up characters who were willing to grab the brass ring when it was thrown at them. There is always something to being in the right place when that ring is thrown and that was the case of the central character known to his public as Lonesome Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith in a memorable performance and far removed from his silly role as the high sheriff of Mayberry. Old Lonesome was nothing but a good old boy grifter, a rolling stone, a ne’er do well sitting in some Podunk Arkansas jail for drunkenness and vagrancy when Marsha, played by Patricia Neal, the daughter of a local radio station owner who was trying to spice up the station’s programing with some authentic Americana and thought the local jail might produce some colorful characters.
And that was the start of the Lonesome Rhodes trip to heaven, to the top of the ratings in both radio and television in succession. Old Lonesome had that something that the average listener could relate to in his faux homespun manner and that ability carried him to the top in short order. He could have cared less about playing high-brow to the elites or to use the mass media to educate. His genius lay in being a born hustler, a hustler of whatever had to be hustled. What Lonesome knew as he rose up the food chain was that all he had to figure out was what would sell to the rubes out there who wanted, well, wanted something, wanted entertainment anyway. He gave them that with a combination of folksy bologna, a cracker barrel general store style and a bit of strumming on the guitar. Yeah, as he said in a moment of candor at the end, the end of his run he had them eating out of his hand.
Needless to say a high-brow film based totally on a huckster’s rise and all would be a flop if there wasn’t a counterbalance, wasn’t somebody to rein in old Lonesome’s excesses. Tone him down a little, give him some semblance of style. That, of course, was woven into the film by the tensions between Lonesome and Marsha over his future, especially when he later began to believe half the stuff that was being said about him. Began to get too big for his britches. That match-up also produced the serious love interest, mostly on Marsha’s side, but at key points his as well, that created as much chaos in their lives as any sense of gaining happiness from Lonesome’s success.
Something would have to give and it eventually did when after hustling pills for a right-wing ex-general’s Big Pharma company Lonesome began to keep some pretty unsavory political company (although not maybe so unsavory in the 1950s when the post-World War II red scare and “golden age of the American way” created by a big stretch of prosperity which belonged to the victors in that war produced a lot of characters ready to ditch the gains of the New and Fair Deals). Poor old Lonesome began got so hopped up on his success that he began to think that he could sell lackluster political candidates to the public, his average American public ready to jump at anything he had to say, just like selling high energy pills.
Here’s the funny part as his audience grew he became more contemptuous of the hand that feed him. That con man’s contempt along with treating Marsha lie a dishrag at the wrong times, like the time when he said he would marry her and then went and grabbed a teenage bride would lead to his undoing. Between the woman scorned and her felt need to curb Lonesome’s excesses Marsha pulled the plug, brought him down in the long gone age of live television the easiest way possible. Let the home audience hear what he really thought of them once the sound was supposed to be off after the show was over. Yeah she pulled the switch and he was broken, utterly broken, thereafter.
I wonder though whether today old Lonesome in the age of “realty television” and “in your face” characters who have become celebrities based exclusively on applying that skill set wasn’t just a man before his time, and that despite the contrived ending in this film he would have kept a great part of his audience. Think about that possibility and watch this classic from the “golden age” of black and white film.
Click On Title To Link To National Public Radio's (NPR)Segment On The Sounds Of The French Revolution. It is not hip-hop, blues, folk, jazz or the thousand and one other types of music that have drifted onto this space but if it takes a certain combination of factors to make a great revolution then music is surely part of the mix.
*****Down At Duke’s Place-With Duke Ellington In Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
One night Sam Eaton was talking on his cellphone to his old friend from high school (Carver High, Class of 1967), Jack Callahan about how his grandson, Brandon, his oldest grandson of his daughter Janice from his first marriage (first of three all ending in divorce but that is merely a figure for the Census Bureau and not germane to what follows so enough) had beguiled him recently with his arcane knowledge of classical jazz (the jazz from the age of King Oliver say until the death of the big bad swings bands which died in the late 1940s for the most part giving way to cool ass be-bop and what followed). Jack braced himself for the deluge, got very quiet and did not say word one, since lately the music Sam mentioned, maybe even thought about mentioning the slightest thing connected with jazz he knew he was in for it, in for a harangue of unknown duration on the subject. Sam, recently more conscious that Jack, who hated jazz, hated it worse when as a child of rock and roll as Sam was, his father would endlessly play Count this, King that, Duke the other thing and not allow the family record player centered in the family living room to be sullied (his father’s word) by heathen stuff like Roll Over Beethoven or One Night With You, would go silent at the word “jazz” said not to worry he would only say a few words from his conversation with Brandon:
No, Jack, my man, this will not be a screed about how back in the day, back in the 1950s the time of our complete absorption into rock and roll, when be-bop jazz was the cat’s meow, when cool was listening to the Monk trip up a note, consciously trip up a note to see if anybody caught it and then took that note to heaven and back, and worked it out from there or Dizzy burping then hitting the high white note all those guys were struggling against the limits of the instruments to get, high as hell on tea, you know what we called ganja, herb, stuff like that. Frankly I was too young, you too but I knew how you felt since I couldn’t listen to rock in my house either as the 1940s Andrews Sisters/Perry Como/Frank Sinatra/Peggy Lee cabal were front and center in our living room and I was reduced to listening on my transistor radio, way too young to appreciate such work then and I only got the tail end, you know when Hollywood or the popular prints messed the whole be-bop jazz “beat” thing up and we got spoon-fed Maynard G. Krebs faux black and white television beatnik selling hair cream oil or something like that, and ten thousand guys hanging around the Village on Saturday night in full beret and whatever they could put together for a beard from the outreaches of Tenafly, New Jersey (sorry but Fort Lee was out) and another ten thousand gals, all in black from head to toe, maybe black underwear too so something to imagine at least from Norwalk, Connecticut milling around as well. Square, square cubed. No, this will not be some screed going back further in the hard times of the Great Depression and the slogging through World War II when “it did not mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing” when our parents, the parents of the kids who caught the end of be-bop “swang,” did dips and twirls to counts, dukes, earls, princes, marquises even leading big band splashes to wash that generation clean. Come on now that was our parents and I wasn’t even born so no way I can “screed” about that. And, no, no, big time no, this will not be about some solitary figure in some dank, dusty, smoke-filled café, the booze flowing, the dope in the back alleys inflaming the night while some guy, probably a sexy sax player, blows some eternal high white note out against some bay, maybe Frisco Bay, and I was hooked, hooked for life on the be-bop jazz scene.
No, it never even came close to starting out like that, never even dreamed such scenes. Unlike rock and roll, the classic kind that was produced in our 1950s growing up time and which we have had a life-long devotion to or folk music which I came of age, political and social age too later in the early 1960s, jazz was a late, a very late acquisition to my understanding of the American songbook. Oh sure I would hear a phrase, a few bing, bang, bong notes blowing out the window, out the door, sitting in some bar over drinks with some hot date, maybe hear it as backdrop in some Harvard Square bookstore when I went looking for books (and, once somebody hipped me to the scene, looking for bright young women who also were in the bookstore looking for books, and bright young men but that scene is best left for another time), or at some party when the host tired of playing old-time folk music had decided to kick out the jams and let the jazz boys wreak their havoc. But jazz was, and to a great extent still is, a side bar of my musical tastes.
About a decade ago, a little more, I got seriously into jazz for a while. The reason: the centennial of the birth of Duke Ellington being celebrated when I was listening to some radio show which was commemorating that fact and I heard a few faint bars which required me to both turn up the volume and to listen to the rest of the one hour tribute. The show played a lot of Duke’s stuff from the early 1940s when he had Ben Webster, Harry Carney, and Johnny Hodges on board. The stuff blew me away and as is my wont when I get my enthusiasms up, when something blows me away, I grabbed everything by the Duke and his various groupings and marveled at how very good his work was, how his tonal poems reached deep, deep down and caught something in me that responded in kind. Especially when those sexy saxs, when Johnny or Cootie blew me away if they let it all hang out.
Funny though I thought at the time that I hadn’t picked up on this sound before, this reaching for the soul, for the essence of the matter, before since there are very definitely elements of the blues in Brother Duke’s work. And I have been nothing but a stone blown blues freak since the early 1960s when I first heard Howlin’ Wolf hold forth practically eating that harmonica of his on Little Red Rooster and Smokestack Lightnin’. Moreover I had always been a Billie Holiday fan although I never drew the connection to the jazz in the background since it usually was muted to let her rip with that throaty sultry voice, the voice that chased the blues, my blues, away.
So, yes, count me among the guys who are searching for the guys who are searching for the great big cloud puff high white note, guys who have been searching for a long time as the notes waft out into the deep blue sea night. Check this out. Blowing that high white note out into the surly choppy Japan deep blue seas foaming and slashing out into the bay the one time I was sitting in fog-bound Frisco town, sitting around a North Beach bar, the High Hat maybe, back when Jimmy La Croix ran the place and a guy with a story, or a guy he knew could run a tab, for a while, and then settle up or let the hammer fall and you would wind up cadging swigs from flea-bitten raggedy- assed winos and sterno bums.
On Monday nights, a slow night in every venue you can name except maybe whorehouses and even then the business would only fall off a little since guys had to see their wives or girlfriends or both sometime, Jimmy would hold what is now called an “open mic” but then, I forget, maybe talent search something like that but the same thing. The “Hat” as everybody called it was known far and wide by ex hep-cats, aging beats, and faded flower child ex-hippies who had not yet got back to the “real” world once those trends petered out but were still looking, as I was, looking for something and got a little solace from the bottle and a dark place to nurse the damn thing where you could be social or just hang out was the place around North Beach where young talent took to the boards and played, played for the “basket” just like the folkies used to do back in the 1960s when that genre had its heyday, and probably get a few dollars from the mostly regular heavy drinker crowd that populate any gin mill on Monday, whether they have seen their loved ones or not. Jimmy would have Max Jenny on drums and Milt Bogan on that big old bass that took up half the stage, if you remember those guys when West Coast jazz was big, to back-up the talent so this was serious stuff, at least Jimmy played it that way.
Most of the stuff early on that night was so-so some riffs stolen from more famous guys like Miles Davis, Dizzie, Coltrane, the cool ass jazz from the fifties that young bud talent imitates starting out, maybe gets stuck on those covers and wind up, addled by some sister habit, down by the trolley trains on Market Street hustle dollars from weary tourists waiting to get up the damn hill. So nothing that would keep a steady drinker, me, from steady drinking in those days when I lifted low-shelf whiskeys with abandon. Maybe half a dozen other guys spread out around bar to prove they were there strictly for the drinking and chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes to fill up Jimmy’s ashtrays and give Red the bartender something to do between pouring shots (otherwise the guys hungry for women company would be bunched near the dance floor but they must have had it bad since Monday night the serious honeys were not at the “Hat” but home getting rested up for the long week ahead of fending guys off).
Then I turned around toward the stage, turned around for no particular reason, certainly not to pay attention to the talent, when this young guy, young black guy, barely out of his teens, maybe sixteen for all I know and snuck out of the house to play, Jimmy wasn’t taking ID cards in those days and if the kid wasn’t drinking then what did it matter, to get play to reach the stars if that is what he wanted, slim a reed, dressed kind of haphazardly with a shiny suit that he probably wore to church with grandmother, string tie, clean shirt, couldn’t see his feet so can’t comment on that, maybe a little from hunger, or had the hunger eating him up. Kind of an unusual sight for ‘90s Frisco outside of the missions. But figure this, figure his eyes, eyes that I know about from my own bouts with sister, with the just forming sad sack yellow eyes of high king hell dope-dom and it all fit.
The kid was ready though to blow a big sexy tenor sax, a sax as big as he was, certainly fatter, blew the hell out of one note after another once he got his bearings, then paused, paused to suck up the universe of the smoke filled air in the place (a whiff of ganja from the back somewhere from some guy Jimmy must have known since usually dope in the place was a no-no), and went over to the river Jordan for a minute, rested, came back with a big blow that would get at least to Hawaii, rested again, maybe just a little uncertain where to go like kids always are, copy some somebody and let it go at that for the Monday crowd or blast away, but even I sensed that he had something going, so blew up a big cloud puff riff alternating with pauses hard to do, went at it again this time to the corner of paradise. Stopped, I thought he was done, he looked to hell like he was done, done in eyes almost closed, and then onward, a big beautiful dah, dee, dah, dee, dah, dee, blow, a “max daddy” blow then even an old chattering wino in a booth stopped to wonder at, and that big high white note went ripping down Bay Street, I swear I could see it, on into the fog-bound bay and on its way, not stopping until Edo, hell maybe back to Mother Africa where it all started. He had it, that it means only “it” and if he never blew again he had that “it” moment. He left out the back door and I never saw him at the “Hat” again so maybe he was down on Mission or maybe he went somewhere, got some steady work. All I know was that I was there when a guy blew that high white note, yeah, that high white note. So yeah count me too among Duke’s boys, down at Duke’s place where he eternally searched for that elusive high white note.
In Honor Of The 145th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-All Honor To The Communards
Some events can be honorably commemorated every five, ten, twenty-five years or so like the French Revolution. Other events need to be honorably commemorated yearly, and here I include the uprising which went on to form the Paris Commune, established on March 18, 1871, the first time the working class as such took power if only for a short time and only in one city, although that the city was Paris was not accidental since the city of lights had an honorable history of such plebian uprisings from 1789, 1830, and 1848 and other lesser such insurrectionary happenings (there was an expression at the time in radical and revolutionary circles that as long as Blanqui was alive and people remembered the Babeuf uprisings that when the deal when down you could always depend on Paris to rise). We can, those of us in what now is a remnant who still believe in the old time verities and who still fight for such things as working-class led revolution, socialism leading to a world communist federation or some such seemingly utopian vision and a fairer shake in the appropriation of the world’s good, still draw lessons from that experience.
Sadly the bulk of the world’s working classes most definitely in the wake of the rather quick demise of the Soviet Union and East Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s which for better or worse had represented some socialist vision however distorted (or to use Trotsky’s terminology deformed workers states) have either dismissed socialist solutions out of hand these days when the situation in places like Greece, Spain and lots of East Europe countries cry out for such solutions or the links to such previous socialist ideas has become so attenuated that the ideas are not even in play. To take Greece as a current example anybody with the least bit of sense knows that you cannot keep squeezing the living standards of the vast majority of people in that country yet the number of those who seek a communist way out, at least as exemplified by the recent parliamentary results, a quick measure of the strength of the harder left is disheartening.
So yes, in the absence of more current positive examples, we can use the Commune to draw lessons that might help us in the one-sided fight against the human logjam that the international capitalist system, complete with its imperial coterie at the top, led by the United States, the has bequeathed us almost a century and one half later and that is ripe, no overripe to be replaced by a more human scale way of producing the good of this wicked world. Hence the commemoration in this the 144th anniversary year.
Some “talking head” commentator in the lead-up to the 2015 celebration of the French Revolution on July 14th, a commentator specifically brought in for the occasion, I heard recently on a television talk show reflecting the same sentiment I have heard elsewhere from other academic and ideological sources, had declared the French Revolution dead. By that he meant that the lessons to be learned from that experience has been exhausted, that in the post-modern world that event over two hundred years ago had become passé, passé in the whirlwind of the American century now in full bloom (an American century that we thought had run its course in the wake of the Vietnam defeat but drew new life, if only by default, with the demise of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence). While not arguing here with the validity of that statement on the French revolution, a classic bourgeois revolution when the bourgeoisie was a progressive movement in human history and actually drew some connections between the Enlightenment philosophies that gave it inspiration and the tasks of the risen people, there are still lessons to be drawn from the Commune. If for no other reason than we still await that international working class society that such luminaries as the communist Karl Marx expanded upon in the 19th century.
Obviously like the subsequent Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Chinese revolutions of the 1920s and 1940s, the Vietnamese which took up a great deal of the middle third of the twentieth century, and others the Paris Commune was formed in the crucible of war, or threat of war. Karl Marx, among others, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky for one, had noted that war is the mother of revolution and the defeat of the French armies and the virtual occupation by the victorious German armies around Paris certainly conformed to that idea that the then current government was in disarray and the social fabric after a near starvation situation required more. Every revolutionary commentary has noted that those factors formed a classic pre-revolutionary phenomena. Moreover the Commune had been thrust upon the working masses of Paris by the usual treachery of the bourgeois government thrown up after Louis Bonaparte lost control. That had not been the most promising start to any new society. But you work with what you have to work with and defend as Marx, the First International, and precious few others did the best you can despite the odds, and the disarray. So no hard and fast blueprint on revolutionary upheavals except by negative example, by what was not done, could come ready-made from that experience.
To my mind, and this is influenced by the subsequent Russian revolutions of 1905 and February and October 1917, no question the decisive problem of the Commune was what later became to be known as the crisis of revolutionary leadership. Of course they should have expropriated the banks and centered their efforts around strengthening the authority of the Central Committee of the National Guard and not let lots of windbags and weirdos have their say based on barely deserved reputations but the result of those failures were that no serious party or parties were available to take charge and create a strong government to defend against the Thiers counter-attack from Versailles. (Also no appeals to other communes to come to the defense of Paris and no work among the Versailles soldiers.) It is problematic whether given the small weight of the industrial proletariat (masses factory workers like at Putilov in Petrograd rather than the small shop artisans and workman which dominated the Paris landscape), the lack of weaponry to fend off both the Germans and the Versailles armies, and food supply whether even if such a revolutionary leadership had existed that the Commune could have continued to exist in such isolated circumstances but the contours for the future of working class revolution would have been much different. The central and critical role of a revolutionary leadership which got fudged around in places like Germany where the working class party for all intents and purposes was barely a parliamentary party in the struggle against capitalism would have been clarified and at least a few revolutions, including those in Germany between 1918 and 1924 might have turned out differently and the world as well. The “what ifs” of history aside which are always problematic that is the bitter lesson we still before us today.
This past April, the last imprisoned member of the NATO 3, Jared Chase, was sentenced to an additional year in prison on bogus charges of aggravated battery against a guard while he was awaiting trial. This additional time is purely vindictive, especially in light of his serious health problems. Chase has been diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a degenerative hereditary neurological condition, as well as hepatitis C. Prison authorities have repeatedly refused to provide him with adequate health care.
In May 2012, the NATO 3 were swept up in a wave of state repression targeting the thousands who were gathering in Chicago to protest a summit meeting of the NATO imperialist military alliance. The summit took place against the backdrop of the U.S./NATO occupation of Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya the year before. To ensure this gathering of war criminals in Commander-in-Chief Obama’s hometown went off without a hitch, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, mobilized thousands of National Guardsmen, active-duty troops and cops from as far away as North Carolina.
Four days before the summit, on May 16, Chicago cops raided an apartment housing out-of-town protesters and arrested Jared Chase, Brent Betterly and Brian Church. Undercover cops who were living in the apartment at the time of the police raid alleged that the three were plotting to make four Molotov cocktails and hurl them at police stations and other targets. They were slammed with frame-up charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device. As we said at the time, “the arrests of Betterly, Church and Chase have all the earmarks of a classic case of police entrapment and provocation” (“Defend Anti-NATO Protesters!” WV 1003, 25 May 2012).
The Illinois anti-terror statutes under which the NATO 3 were charged had been enacted as part of the “war on terror” in the wake of 9/11. From the beginning, we have warned that while the first targets of the “war on terror” were mainly immigrants, particularly Muslims and those from the Near East, the ultimate targets would be the labor movement, black people, the left and anyone who dared to protest the depredations of U.S. imperialism.
In February 2014, after having spent nearly two years in jail awaiting trial, Chase, Betterly and Church were convicted of possessing Molotov cocktails and of misdemeanor mob action. They were sentenced to prison terms of eight, six and five years respectively.
Chase received the longest sentence after a guard testified that Chase had thrown human waste at him. According to a professor of neurology who testified at Chase’s trial, it is common for people with Huntington’s to throw urine and feces. Other symptoms of the disease include personality changes, impulsiveness and impaired judgment, as well as slurred speech and involuntary, jerky movements. In April, Chase pleaded guilty to the alleged assault, fearing he would receive another three to five years if convicted. He has effectively been punished twice for the same incident.
We print below a June 13 letter by the PDC—a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—to the Acting Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
* * *
The Partisan Defense Committee writes to protest the inhumane treatment of prisoner Jared Chase, the last member of the “NATO 3” to remain behind bars. His inhumane treatment includes repeated beatings and harassment by prison guards, denial of needed medical treatment, and being stripped of good time credits.
Chase, along with Brent Betterly and Brian Church were victimized in a sting operation as part of the Chicago cops’ efforts to quash protest against the May 2012 gathering of NATO in Chicago. Although the jury rejected trumped-up charges of “conspiracy to commit terrorism,” the NATO 3 were convicted in 2014 on felony charges of possessing Molotov cocktails, as well as misdemeanor “mob action” charges.
On April 11, Chase was sentenced to an additional year in prison based on a new set of bogus charges, claiming that he committed “aggravated battery” against a Cook County guard while he was awaiting trial. Chase, who turned 32 years old this month, has also lost a year of good time based on a series of incident reports he received for persistently demanding treatment for Huntington’s disease, an incurable hereditary degenerative neural condition. Although Chase is rapidly deteriorating, he has faced inhuman conditions in prison, including beatings by guards and long periods in solitary confinement without access to visitors or necessary medical treatment.
Chase should never have spent a day behind bars. We demand his immediate release. We also demand that his good time be reinstated and that he receive all the medical care he urgently needs.
Poet's Corner- William Wordsworth's "Ode
To The French Revolution"- In Honor Of Its 227thAnniversary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvGT94NjML4
Click on the link to a YouTube film
clip about William Wordsworth.
Markin Comment:
Here is William Wordsworth's famous ode to
the beginning of the French revolution full of all the youthful enthusiasm such
a world historic event can elicit. That he, like many another former 'friend'
of revolutions over the ages, went over to the other side when things got too
hot does not take away from his efforts here.
The French Revolution as it appeared to
Enthusiasts
. Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then
stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!—
Oh! times, In which the meagre, stale,
forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her
rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress--to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole
earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself )
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and
strength
Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had
stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;--they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more
wild,
On The 227th Anniversary Of The French Revolution-In The Time Of The Republic Of Virtue-1793
BOOK REVIEW
PARIS IN THE TERROR, JUNE 1793-JULY 1794, STANLEY LOOMIS, J.B. LIPPINCOTT, NEW YORK, 1964
This year marks the 225rd anniversary of the beginning of the Great French Revolution with storming of the Bastille. An old Chinese Communist leader, Zhou Enlai, was asked by a reporter to sum up the important lessons of the French Revolution. In reply he answered that it was too early to tell what those lessons might be. Whether that particular story is true or not it does contain one important truth. Militants today at the beginning of the 21st century can still profit from reading the history of that revolution.
The French Revolution, like its predecessor the American Revolution, is covered with so much banal ceremony, flag- waving, unthinking sunshine patriotism and hubris it is hard to see the forest for the trees. The Bastille action while symbolically interesting is not where the real action took place nor was it politically the most significant event. For militants that comes much later with the rise of the revolutionary tribunals and the Committee of Public Safety under the leadership of the left Jacobins Robespierre and Saint Just. Although the revolution began in 1789 its decisive phases did not take place until the period under discussion in this review, that is from June 1793 with the expulsion of the (for that time moderate) Gironde deputies from the National Convention. That event ushered in the rule of extreme Jacobins under Robespierre and Saint Just through the vehicle of the Committee of Public Safety. That regime, the Republic of Virtue, as it is known to militants since that time and known as the Great Terror to the author of the book under review and countless others, lasted until July 1794. It was in turn ousted by a more moderate Jacobin regime (known historically as the Themidorian Reaction, a subject of fascination and discussion by militants, especially the Bolsheviks, ever since).
Robespierre’s and Saint Just’s overthrow in 1794 stopped the forward progression of the revolution although it did not return it back to the old feudal society. The forces unleashed by the revolution, especially among the land hungry peasantry, made that virtually impossible. In short, as has happened before in revolutionary history, the people and programs which supported the forward advancement of the revolution ran out of steam. The careerists, opportunists and those previously standing on the sidelines took control until they too ran out of steam. Then, not for the first or last time, the precarious balance of the different forces in society clashed and called out for a strongman. Napoleon Bonaparte was more than willing to be obliging when that time came.
Mr. Loomis takes great pains to disassociate himself not just from the excesses of the period (the executions) but seemingly the whole notion of democratic revolution at that time. He essentially favors a constitutional monarchy, and let the revolution stop there. In short, a regime run by a Lafayette-type- but with brains. Great revolutions, however, do not go halfway, despite the best laid plans of humankind. That said, why would militants read this book which paints everyone to the left of the most moderate Girondists as some kind of monster or at least an accomplice?If militants only read pro-revolutionary tracts then they are missing an important part of their education- the fight against patented bourgeois mystification of events. The terror in Paris is a question that needs to be dealt with critically by us while we defend the members of the Committee of Public Safety in their efforts to defend France against internal hostile elements of the old regime and the counterrevolutionary Europe powers. And at the same time defend the Committee’s program of social democracy initiated in order to maintain their base among the sans-culottes.
That said, every place Mr. Loomis places a minus we do not necessarily place a plus. We need to do our own sifting out of revolutionaries from the pretenders. Mlle. Corday by all accounts was a royalist at heart before she murdered Marat. Marat was by all accounts a fanatic. You cannot, however, make a revolution without theses types. A combat-type revolutionary party, if such a party existed in Paris at the time which this writer does not believe did exist, would rein a Marat in.Danton is still an equivocal character who wanted to stop the revolution at his threshold. A Danton-Robespierre political bloc could have carried the revolution over some tough spots. That was not to be. The fault lies in the personality of Robespierre.
Moreover, the execution of the leading Hebertists was a serious mistake, as it weakened the Committee’s base of support among the sans-culottes.Robespierre and Saint Just are portrayed here as little more than monsters. But without those two figures the contours of the revolution would have been different, if it had survived the Coalition military forces arrayed against it at all.The question of the military defense of the revolution and its requirements domestically takes short shrift in Mr. Loomis’s account. That is the book’s abiding error. Robespierre headed the key administrative component of that defense. Saint Just was instrumental in the military aspect of that defense. One can rightly ask, with the possible exception of Carnot, who else could have organized that defense? One should moreover note that a revolution brings the fore all kinds of personalities, not all of them as well- adjusted as modern humankind (sic) - it however, can never be reduced solely to that factor. Thus, militants should look for other sources elsewhere in order to find ammunition in defense of Robespierre and Saint Just. Apparently, according to Mr. Loomis and others, they are in need of defending. Nevertheless, they are worthy of honor in any militant’s pantheon. Enough said.
