Students from coast to coast declare: “It’s On, Wendy’s!”
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Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Students from coast to coast declare: “It’s On, Wendy’s!”
The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Second Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life
The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Second Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life
By Frank Jackman
Over the first year of the Trump regime as this massive control freak regime has plundered right after right, made old Hobbes’ “life is short, brutish and nasty” idea seem all too true for a vast swath of people residing in America (and not just America either) I have startled many of my friends, radical and liberal alike. Reason? For almost all of my long adult life I have been as likely to call, one way or another, for the overthrow of the government as not. This Republic if you like for a much more equitable society than provided under it aegis. This year I have been as they say in media-speak “walking that notion back a bit.” Obviously even if you only get your news from social media or twitter feeds there have been gigantic attempts by Trump, his cronies and his allies in Congress to radically limit and cut back many of the things we have come to see as our rights in ordinary course of the business of daily life. This year I have expressed deep concerns about the fate of the Republic and what those in charge these days are hell-bend of trying to put over our eyes.
Hey, I like the idea, an idea that was not really challenged even by the likes of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes in their respective times that I did not have to watch my back every time I made a political move. Now maybe just every move. This assault, this conscious assault on the lives and prospects of immigrants, DACAs, TPSers. Trans-genders, blacks, anti-fascists, Medicaid recipients, the poor, the outspoken media, uppity liberals, rash leftist radicals and many others has me wondering what protections we can count on, use to try to protect ourselves from the onslaught.
I, unlike some others, have not Cassandra-cried about the incipient fascist regime in Washington. If we were at that jackboot stage I would not be writing, and the reader would not be reading, this screed. Make no mistake about that. However there is no longer a question in my mind that the “cold” civil war that has been brewing beneath the surface of American society for the past decade or more has been ratchetted up many notches. Aside from preparing politically for that clash we should also be aware, much more aware than in the past, about our rights as we are confronted more and more by a hostile government, its hangers-on and the agents who carry out its mandates.
I have been brushing up on my own rights and had come across a small pamphlet put out by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a good source for such information in these times. I have placed that information below.
As the ACLU disclaimer states this information is basic, should be checked periodically for updating especially the way the federal courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court have staked the deck against us of late. In any case these days if you are in legal difficulties you best have a good lawyer. The other side, the government has infinite resources, so you better get your best legal help available even if it cost some serious dough which tends to be the case these days with the way the judicial system works.
Most importantly when confronted by any governmental agents from the locals to the F.B.I. be cool, be very cool.
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Lost In The Rain On Desolation Row -With Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited In Mind
Lost In The Rain On Desolation Row -With Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited In Mind
By Jack Callahan
“I’ve met Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, I’ve been in the tower with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, “ declared Robert South to no one in particular although Jake Devine was the only one in the room at the time. With those words Jake, Jake known as Jake since childhood to distinguish him from John Devine, Senior although his father a genial Irishman addicted to sports betting and drinking whiskey not always in that order was more the “slap on the back Jake type” while Jake in the throes of his high hippie moments was trying to shed that moniker for the cooler one of Be-Bop Benny but old habits die hard and his old high school friends called him Jake when he went on the hitchhike road west with them in 1965,1966 the name stuck whether he liked it or not knew a couple of things about Robert’s condition with that outburst. [This whole moniker business, Robert’s was Prince Love for a while before he settled on Hash Man, awaits its sociological doctoral thesis since almost everybody had a sea-change name change moniker as if that mere fact would wash away a whole childhood of learned behaviors far removed from the idea of seeking a newer world away.]
Jake knew that Robert was two things-one, high as a kite on either speed or LSD the latter just then the drug of choice among the “hip” (not always the same as “hippie” but Jake did not want to argue the fine points on that one just then since he himself had been on a two day speed high-low) on the mind-expanding conscious West Coast cohort of the brethren and two, Robert had been listening to the whole, all eleven plus minutes including harmonica breaks, of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row at least once, probably more than once if he was high since he would not have had the stamina to switch the sound system that Captain Crunch had installed in their “digs” now that they were off the road for the winter and settled into Pablo ’s mansion. This Pablo was a friend of the Captain’s (not his real name obviously but a moniker like everybody then trying to reinvent themselves that he picked up along the way on the Pacific Coast Highway from some stoned chic when he picked up all and sundry in his yellow brick road bus and did his version of Ken Kesey’s merry prankster gig. Kesey a guy whom the Captain also knew and whom Jake and Robert had met when the bus swung through Kesey’s La Honda encampment on the way south). His mansion was purchased courtesy of many profitable drug deals in the south some of which the Captain had underwritten and hence the use of the mansion for the winter.
By the way in compensation for being called Jake by one and all on the bus, of which more in a minute, Jake had gathered some sense of respect because his latest flame, a serious “hippie chick” met on the road at Big Sur as they were heading south, Frilly Jilly, called him Be-Bop Benny, called him a few other things once they high on grass, you know marijuana, got down to the “do the do,” a term the guys still carried with them from the corner boy days in Riverdale after they had heard the bluesman Howlin’ Wolf do a song with those words in it, those words meaning hitting the sheets, having sex. What Frilly called him in her high hormonal moments under the sheets is best left to them.
Yeah, Jake, Robert, Jimmy Jenkins, Frank Riley, and a guy whom they had met and taken as kindred from a mill town in Maine, Josh Breslin (who wound up taking the Prince Love moniker when Robert abandoned the title and it fit him better since he was the best-looking guy on the bus and a magnet for young women who wanted to “do the do” on that assumption), on Russian Hill in San Francisco where they were camped out in a small park when he stopped by the bus and asked for a joint had been on quite a ride since coming West to see what it was all about and were learning quickly it was all about “drugs, sex and rock and roll” at its core but also about getting out from under the old ways of thinking and living. So when they hit Frisco they headed like lemmings to the sea to Golden Gate Park where all the hell was breaking loose met a few guys who “turned them on,” got them invited to a few parties, including one Captain Crunch was throwing around the new yellow brick road bus that he had just purchased (allegedly in a trade for a big sack of dope but all the time they were on the bus they never had that rumor confirmed by the Captain or anybody else and mainly it didn’t matter by then).
This bus was nothing but an old school bus that had been turned into a moving commune after the seats had been torn out, mattresses thrown down, a storage area for family living material like utensils, dishes, and pots and pans, the thing had been repainted in every Day-Glo psychedelic color under the sun and best of all hooked up with a great sound system Dippy Mike, the guy who did the sound system for Fillmore West and the Dead, put together for any trips they would take.
And almost from the start at Golden Gate Park the trips began once Captain had selected the Riverdale boys as part of his crew to head south with him. The reason for that heading south, the reason Robert was holding forth those lines from Desolation Row was to “house-sit” there in La Jolla at this mansion that belonged to Pablo Rios, a friend of the Captain’s and a serious south of the border drug dealer who was in Mexico for the winter and the Captain had agreed to doing the sitting as we got into “winter quarters.” Now that the bus was not being used, was being refitted with a new engine and so not useable, the sound system had been transferred to the house for the weekly parties the Captain threw for his friends (and whoever happened to hear about the event and knew where to find the place, not as easy as it sounds when stoned as it was located in a hideaway between the cliffs in La Jolla.
Robert, once settled in, once he got his own room with his lady-friend, Lavender Minnie, got heavily into the dope, got heavily into listening to the amped up music and Jake thought he had begun, like they had all heard about with kids who did too much dope, to go over the edge.
Just as Jake thought that thought Robert ragged out again with “they’re selling postcards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown,” and Jake knew that Robert had gone for the next eleven plus minutes to his own world. Eleven plus minutes if he was lucky, since more than once Robert had decided that he needed to give his own take on what the whole thing meant, what the various references meant to him. For example that business with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, the two self-imposed exile poets who almost single-handedly broke from the old forms and created modern poetry and were treated like gods among the hip at one point was Dylan throwing out the gauntlet, telling those guys a new sheriff was in town. Well, maybe, if you think Dylan was a lyric poet rather than a song-writer, or maybe put the two together.
For example Robert explained that postcards of the hanging stuff was his, Dylan’s political moment like Billie Holiday had had with Strange Fruit about the scandalous open lynching of black men in the South put together with a new sense of masculinity turned in on itself with sailor boys caught out on the seven seas who transformed themselves into boy-girls with those all male crews. Once they hit port they hit the beauty parlors to freshen up their looks for the boys, the tough Jean Genet our Lady of the Flowers rough trade boys now that they had the taste for the seamy side, for the anal treats (truth be known not all the seven sea boy-girls once they hit the docks looked for rough trade or even ordinary faggots, a term of the time among Riverdale corner boys and not only corner boys, just like guys getting out of prison went back to their hetero dreams and left the permanents to the truly deprived girly boys, this in a time when all homosexual behavior was below the radar so who knows all Jake knew when Robert laid out his thoughts such talk about homos, faggots, guys light on their feet by old corner boys was usually derogatory and faggot was one of the kinder terms back then).
Jake had made his fatal mistake by reminding Robert of the old days and of taking what Robert had to say as good coin rather than the ravings of a drug-addled junkie and so he now knew he would have to listen as Robert went through the whole litany. (Oh, don’t forget that Jake, pretty boy Jake now being called more frequently Be-Bop Benny and whatever Frilly Jilly called him behind closed doors when they made loud love was also high on some mescaline so fair game). Robert continued with his “deconstruction” before deconstruction was in fashion, literary or literal, about that blind commissioner who somebody had put LSD, acid in his whiskey glass and were leading him by the nose while he was playing with himself in public. Robert truly believed that this was the ultimate political strategy to bring in the new society that they all thought they were creating on the road in places like the Pacific Coast Highway.
What Dylan was saying was an early version of “drop out and drop acid,” get away from the nine to five life but do it quietly, don’t confront the bastards directly because they have all the guns and they will, they absolutely will, unleash those weapons once the gentle folk get righteously angry. So Robert was living that life, was a fugitive from bourgeois society which they more and more called the square life they had run away from and sit back and watch the action with his Lavender Minnie (and would do so for a while although not with Lavender Minnie who went back to Vassar to be Sarah Stein, graduate student in sociology, but with Red Rose, a girl who had dropped out of college to seek a newer world, she was under the influence of Robert Kennedy via Alfred Lord Tennyson just then).
Robert, hell, Jake and all the other corner boys, maybe everybody except Captain Crunch and Ken Kesey were knee deep in the myths of their incomplete childhoods. Dylan probably too and so it was necessary to break with the illusions, forget Prince Charming, forget looking for midnight fled slippers, forget sleeping beauties live for black beauties, fuck little bitch red riding hood, kiss off Hansel and Gretel, blow off most of Western literature starting with the cause of more baloney and bullshit than one could reasonably understand, yeah, blow off Shakespeare and his rusty dime store nostrums and two bit philosophy, dig Buddha or Hari Krishna or Saint William Blake but lay off those heavy subtle literature messages. Let the bears eat their fucking porridge, let Cinderella end up an old charwoman, let snow white land inside her dreams with some sweet sister rolling a dollar bill off some mirrored image up her nose. Let the dead bury the dead. For a change.
All is illusion, all is gypsy ladies selling plastic encrusted roses on drought ridden streets to harmless schoolboys and their bitch goddess dates. Ride the Ferris wheel baby and take a chance that you won’t come down in one piece, walk the midway and seek the geeks of truth hiding out from the law in Madame LaRue’s all-comers tent once that trip, that one way trip out of the garden [here Robert was thinking of the Garden of Eden, about getting kicked out for good all for some unknown, maybe unknowable, reason just because Ma had bitten the apple of freedom, had taken the serpent for a ride and lost-the first adultery and you wonder, remember Jake how we wondered in Sunday school class with Sister Mary Kenny about why they got thrown out for one simple transgression and how later when we knew more about sex and sexual relations that Ma was just taking seed nothing more nothing less in case Pa was sterile. Remember too we laughed when the sons, the first sons went at each other tooth and nail that was to end in gunplay, something like that, what got killed anyway, who killed which brother and why didn’t that old man God give a goddam and save the situation instead of letting things get out of hand. Ironic ain’t it.]
Jake had to laugh at the next part since this required some minimal idea about English literature of which Robert was woefully and studiously ignorant since he had barely slipped by and only be the good graces of Frankie Riley who whatever his shortcomings as a stand-up guy when things got heated on the midnight creep had done Robert’s senior paper for him and squeezed him by tassel and all.
Think about that stuff we all were hoodwinked on about Ophelia, you know Hamlet’s chick and how she was giving up the ghost (committing suicide) not because of some lost love but because she was pregnant, even then they had ways of figuring that out hard fact by using some wild herb according to what Lavender Minnie said she had heard some professor postulate on in her Freshman English class in college, and was not sure who the father was. She, Orphelia, had been, let’s face it, as young as she was Fontinblas’ whore and who knows who else and if you thing about how depressed that Hamlet dude was she was probably just puckering his seed anyway, wasting his manliness. You have to laugh about that iron vest, what did they call them chastity belts that all they did was make the locksmiths rich on both ends, locking them on some squire’s orders and unlocking them when milady was left alone for more than three days. Hell that little whore(Ophelia okay) had duplicates made and was giving them out like candy to every half-ass princeling in Denmark who had a codpiece that looked promising and maybe that was what it was like in that troubled tower. That Shakespeare was way too polite to tell the real story and let that asshole Hamlet grab the big lines and big story like we were supposed to bleed all over the place for a guy who couldn’t decide whether to have veal or chicken for supper. No wonder she gave up the ghost and every guy with a key to the kingdom was crying for weeks after she went to ground.
I already told you about Einstein and his buddy Robin Hood splitting a tab of acid and creating atomic flowers out of rainbows made big bangs in the silent night and the heathens paid the price and thereafter bowed down so courteously every time some big bass drum went off in the Elysian Fields of dawn. What you didn’t know or I didn’t mention before is that Robin Hood was punking for the old man, was giving him his pleasure if that is what you want to call the madness. Learned the arts from a guy named Friar Tuck out in Hard Rock Candy Mountain along with some, servile sisters hiding in a convent which every Thursday night featured a bawdy strip show for the boys out in the woods adjoining the mountain. Yeah, that acid trip business would do old Albert in once Tim Leary got him over into that midnight Harvard University lab with the shrouded windows and the screams written off to the coyotes of the moon. And you laughed at me and Ophelia when we went our separate ways. The laugh was on you brother, the last laugh.
You ain’t heard nothing yet though because there was this dude that put Einstein, T.S. Eliot and that crypto-Nazi Pound into the deep shade, put them on cheap street remember we used to say that all the time when we were nothing but from cheap street ourselves with our Woolworth trinket dreams and our outsized appetites for everything that we could not have except maybe a trip around the world with Emma when she learned the fine arts although I don’t think she learned her trade from that Friar Tuck who hung tough around that candy cane mountain. What we didn’t know, couldn’t figure was why she was so passive when she showed her wares, didn’t know that she was seeping dope when that was nothing but a nasty habit and sent people to Lexington, places like that to dry out when all she wanted was to be able to feel, feel something, something beside her bread crumb sins. Still passive or not she gave a boost when it was needed and remember it was from her we learned what it was all about when somebody said she was going to play the flute, yeah, play the flute.
Hell I am seeing ghosts, ghosts of Christmas pass if you let me focus on the scene with that little bastard, Tiny Tim, you know the crippled boy who broke everybody’s heart and got more graft than anybody living and he was a bastard make no mistake, since no way he looked like Bob Crackpot but more like Eddy Sneeze or whatever that hard-ass boss’s name was and he had been tipping the old lady, Bob’s old lady, all along and Tiny Tim’s older sister too just to get his way with skinny worn out factory girls who were looking to go off the clock. If that is what you like that is what you like, right Lavender Minnie. [Minnie nods her assent too fucking stoned to do more than lift her head just then.] Maybe they liked old geezers, maybe they liked the street outside their factory doors leading straight without detour to the desolate night, to the row if you really want to know what we really are looking for in those sunless nights when the stars seemed to have abandoned the heavens and words, man-invented silly words are not enough, don’t have enough energy to blow out a candle much less a starless night. If only they wouldn’t grab all the light, let the skinny girls fatten up on protein and sexual desire then we would not have to worry about strong-armed guys hitting on Lavender Minnie or Frilly Jilly and having to defend our turf when all we want to do is seek out some, what did that dandy Fitzgerald call it way back when-something like the fresh green breast of the new world an unspoiled world a world that had existed for eons without words or strong-armed guys hitting on taken womenfolk.
[Now Robert was definitely coming down from the high of his high as he attempts to wax poetic and philosophical and it will be easier to understand where he is going with all of this word play unless he takes another tab of benzene which is what we are reduced to until the Captain comes back with a fistful of drugs he has about six million connection to working the whole scene like some market owner.]
Hey you know as well as I do that you, me, Frankie, Jack, Lavender, Frilly and a million other kids are trying to get out from under that nine to the five rattrap our parents were crazy to have us invest in, hustle us off to the white picket fence noise without a squawk, going like sheep to the slaughter. We put the brakes on that, everybody except old Bart Webber who just wanted to taste the fresh life for a couple of minutes before running as fast as he could to his Betsy Binstock and start paying life insurance, health insurance, mortgage insurance and whatever else the “man” had to entice him with a security blanket wrap. Funny those ten percent guys couldn’t light a candle to that brother who got me out a few scrapes when the deal when down or to Betsy either but played on that stuff, maybe genetic going back to the Stone Age when they first started hustling insurance against the dinosaurs and meteor showers. Yeah those guys, I guess women too, just can’t wait to have the big brother blanket put over the whole fucking world and make us like it too. Make us get down on our knees and thanks the mother-fuckers, make us like we don’t know from nothing just because our parents coming through the war got all ass-tight about having everybody do their vanilla routine. No thank you. [Apparently Robert got hold of some kind of interim dope because he was getting edgy, out on edge city a place he liked to be when he was in his Desolation Row high dungeon.]
You know if I thought it would make a rat’s ass difference I would go on and on about how that pompous ass Eliot and that Nazi-boot licker Pound twisted up the language and good. Made us figure out that modern man, maybe women too, were spending their time counting coffee spoons when the ship was leaving the dock, turned what did we call it “stup” and “sim” when the deal went down and they had a chance to prison breakout except Eliot wanted to be the Queen and Pound wanted to do some shit with cantos and other Latin delights that we gave up on when we were altar boys and saw Father Lally sucking up the church wine before preaching to the brethren and before giving everybody some stale daily bread at the altar rail. Made us like it too according to my grandmother who wouldn’t brook anything said against the man, a man of the clothe like Eliot wanted to be if he could not be the stately queen of England and Pound trying on his very first pair of high heels Jesus this dope is getting to me and Lavender Minnie is starting to look at me like I just blew in from Frisco or outer space. Let’s never fight okay Min.
Hell I’m getting tired now, tired of the bullshit it took for me to get out here, tired unto death of the crap I took all those years from my mother who was always harping on something like I was some professor who was holed up with a book and could write letters to the four corners of the earth when all I wanted to do, all I ever wanted to do was blow some smoke, do dope until my brain got good and fried and figure out what my take was on Dylan’s lyrics and head out alone to the back alleys of Desolation Row, our home. Fuck it.
*"We Are Coming Father Abraham"- A Song Of The American Civil War
*"We Are Coming Father Abraham"- A Song Of The American Civil War
On the anniversary of the start of the American Civil War.
An example of an American Civil War song that I gleaned from reading the book, Civil War Curiosities" by Webb Garrison.
In the event, although the United States Congress authorized and budgeted for those 300,000 soldiers, I do not believe that the quota was met.
WE ARE COMING, FATHER ABRAHAM
Words by James Sloan Gibbons
Music L.O. Emerson
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more,
From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore.
We leave our plows and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear.
We dare not look behind us but steadfastly before.
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more!
CHORUS: We are coming, we are coming our Union to restore,
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more!
If you look across the hilltops that meet the northern sky,
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride;
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour,
We are coming, father Abr'am, three hundred thousand more!
CHORUS
If you look up all our valleys where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer boys fast forming into line;
And children from their mother's knees are pulling at the weeds ,
And learning how to reap and sow against their country's needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door,
We are coming, Father Abr'am, three hundred thousand more!
CHORUS
You have called us, and we're coming by Richmond's bloody tide,
To lay us down for freedom's sake, our brothers' bones beside;
Or from foul treason's savage group, to wrench the murderous blade;
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade.
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before,
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more!
CHORUS
On the anniversary of the start of the American Civil War.
An example of an American Civil War song that I gleaned from reading the book, Civil War Curiosities" by Webb Garrison.
In the event, although the United States Congress authorized and budgeted for those 300,000 soldiers, I do not believe that the quota was met.
WE ARE COMING, FATHER ABRAHAM
Words by James Sloan Gibbons
Music L.O. Emerson
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more,
From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore.
We leave our plows and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear.
We dare not look behind us but steadfastly before.
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more!
CHORUS: We are coming, we are coming our Union to restore,
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more!
If you look across the hilltops that meet the northern sky,
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride;
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour,
We are coming, father Abr'am, three hundred thousand more!
CHORUS
If you look up all our valleys where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer boys fast forming into line;
And children from their mother's knees are pulling at the weeds ,
And learning how to reap and sow against their country's needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door,
We are coming, Father Abr'am, three hundred thousand more!
CHORUS
You have called us, and we're coming by Richmond's bloody tide,
To lay us down for freedom's sake, our brothers' bones beside;
Or from foul treason's savage group, to wrench the murderous blade;
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade.
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before,
We are coming, Father Abraham, 300,000 more!
CHORUS
"REDS"-The Movie-"Radical Chic"-The John Reed-Louise Bryant Romance
"REDS"-The Movie-"Radical Chic"-The John Reed-Louise Bryant Romance
DVD REVIEW
REDS, THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION (ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN 1981)
The important contribution of John Reed to the revolutionary movement here in America before World War I and later during the Russian revolution and its aftermath has never been fully appreciated. Thus, Warren Beatty, whatever his personal motives, has done a great service in filming the life of this “traitor to his class” (and his Harvard Class of 1910) and partisan of the international working class.
As usual with such commercial enterprises the order of things gets switched in the wrong direction. The love affair between Reed (played by Beatty) and budding writer and early feminist Louise Bryant (played by Diane Keaton)(and a little third party intervention by playwright Eugene O’Neill, played by Jack Nicholson) is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution not the other way around, but such is cinematic license. More than most film depictions this one mainly gets the story straight; Reed's early free-lance journalism tied to the Mexican Revolution; the bohemian life of pre-World War I Greenwich Village in New York City including it patronage by socialites like Mabel Dodge; the socialist fight against American participation in World War I; the fight among socialists (and anarchists) over support to the Russian Revolution; and, an interesting segment on the seemingly bewildering in-fighting in the early communist movement between the foreign-language federations and the Reed-led “Natives” (which included James P. Cannon,later a founder of American Trotskyism)that that ultimately had to be 'resolved' at Communist International headquarters in Moscow.
Those ‘natives’, the likes of Earl Browder, James Cannon and William Z. Foster, in the course of events would form the leadership of the party through most of the twenties when the cadre still wanted to make a revolution here and not just cheer on the Russian Revolution from afar. A nice touch in the film is the interweaving of commentaries by those, friend and foe, who knew or knew of Reed or were around during this time. See this movie.
DVD REVIEW
REDS, THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION (ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN 1981)
The important contribution of John Reed to the revolutionary movement here in America before World War I and later during the Russian revolution and its aftermath has never been fully appreciated. Thus, Warren Beatty, whatever his personal motives, has done a great service in filming the life of this “traitor to his class” (and his Harvard Class of 1910) and partisan of the international working class.
As usual with such commercial enterprises the order of things gets switched in the wrong direction. The love affair between Reed (played by Beatty) and budding writer and early feminist Louise Bryant (played by Diane Keaton)(and a little third party intervention by playwright Eugene O’Neill, played by Jack Nicholson) is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution not the other way around, but such is cinematic license. More than most film depictions this one mainly gets the story straight; Reed's early free-lance journalism tied to the Mexican Revolution; the bohemian life of pre-World War I Greenwich Village in New York City including it patronage by socialites like Mabel Dodge; the socialist fight against American participation in World War I; the fight among socialists (and anarchists) over support to the Russian Revolution; and, an interesting segment on the seemingly bewildering in-fighting in the early communist movement between the foreign-language federations and the Reed-led “Natives” (which included James P. Cannon,later a founder of American Trotskyism)that that ultimately had to be 'resolved' at Communist International headquarters in Moscow.
Those ‘natives’, the likes of Earl Browder, James Cannon and William Z. Foster, in the course of events would form the leadership of the party through most of the twenties when the cadre still wanted to make a revolution here and not just cheer on the Russian Revolution from afar. A nice touch in the film is the interweaving of commentaries by those, friend and foe, who knew or knew of Reed or were around during this time. See this movie.
THE GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1923
THE GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1923
COMMENTARY
A proper perspective on the question of the failed German revolutionary socialist opportunities starting in 1918 after the debacle of German defeat in World War I, the overthrow of the Kaiser and the establishment of a democratic republic until 1923 with the failure of the revolutionary opportunities resulting from the French reparations crisis is the subject of on-going controversy among revolutionaries. At that time most European revolutionaries, especially the Russians, placed their strategic aspirations on the success of those efforts in Germany. A different outcome during that period, with the establishment of a German Workers Republic, would have changed the course of world history in many ways, not the least of which would have been the probable saving of the isolated Russian socialist revolution and defeating German fascism in the embryo.
Since then, beginning with the Trotsky-led Russian Left Opposition in 1923 and later the International Left Opposition, revolutionaries as well as others have cut their teeth on developing an analysis of the failure of revolutionary leadership as a primary cause for that aborted German revolution. Against that well-known analysis, more recently a whole cottage industry has developed, particularly around the British journal Revolutionary History, giving encouragement to latter day hand wringing about the prospects (or lack of prospects) for revolution at that time and drawing the lesson that a revolution in Germany then could not have happened.
To buttress that argument the writings on the prospects of the 1923 revolution by August Thalheimer, a central theoretician and key adviser to German Communist Party leader Brandler in this period, have been warmly resurrected and particularly boosted. This kind of analysis, however, gets revolutionaries nowhere. It is one thing for those on the ground at the time in Germany and in the Comintern to miss the obvious signals for revolution it is another for later ‘revolutionaries’ to provide retrospective political cover for those who refused to see and act on the revolutionary opportunities at the time. The events surrounding the failed German revolution were also echoed in what was called the ‘literary debate’ inside the Russian Communist Party in 1924 at a time when the internal struggle, after the death of Lenin, was getting to a white heat. While at this historical distance it is probably impossible to argue all of the specifics of the revolutionary crisis of 1923 some lessons stick out.
A quick sketch of events beginning from the start of World War I with the famous treachery of the German Social Democratic leadership in voting for the Kaiser’s war budget (and continuing to vote for it) are in some ways decisive for what happened in 1923. Later, facing the consequences of the defeat of the German army, war exhaustion and the possibility of harsh reprisals from the Allied forces the Kaiser’s government was overthrown shortly after the armistice was signed and the fight was on in earnest for the future of Germany. That question as least temporarily, however, was not decided until the German working class had been subdued and or brought off with a bourgeois democratic republic, the notorious Weimar Republic. Unlike the earlier Russian experience in 1917 no independent mobilization of the working class through Soviets or other pan-working class organizations was fought for to the end. And that is the rub. This is the start of the problem. No Bolshevik-type organization was present to take advantage of the revolutionary situation. What is worst, the forces that did exist led by the heroic martyrs Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were defeated and they personally were tragically and ominously murdered. Thus, a known and tested leadership was an essential missing ingredient that was to have consequences all the way through to 1923.
When a German Bolshevik-type organization finally was formed it contained many elements that were subjectively revolutionary but political naïve or disoriented, and suffered from anarchistic excesses in reaction to the stifling Social Democratic atmosphere of the pre-war period. While a party needs those subjectively elements to make the revolution, and this writer would argue that it cannot be made without them, this confusion gave the Social Democratic party plenty of ammunition for its reformist, parliamentary position. The key result of this lack of organization and proper preparededness was the so-called March Action of 1921. Unlike the overwhelming reaction of the German working class to the attempted Kopp Putsch of the previous year this was an action that went off half–cocked and did much to discredit communists in the eyes of the working class. The sorry results of this action had reverberations all the way up to the Communist International where Lenin and Trotsky were forced to defend the action in public, expel the former German party leader Paul Levi for a breech of discipline for his open criticism of the action (while it was going on) but also point out that it was the wrong way to go. In any case one cannot understand what happened (or did not happen) in 1923 without acknowledging the gun shyness of the Communist party leadership caused by the 1921 events.
So what is the specific argument of 1923 all about? Was there or was there not a realistic revolutionary opportunity to fight for a Soviet Germany which would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution? On the face of it this question is a no-brainer. Of course there was a revolutionary situation. If the disruptions caused by the French take-over in the Ruhr in order to obtain their war reparations and the resultant passive resistance policy of the German government and the later inflationary spiral that affected many layers of German society was not a classic revolutionary situation then there are none this side of heaven. End of story.
The real question that underlines any argument against a revolutionary crisis is what to do (other than stick your head in the sand). This is where the previous “ultra" policies of the German Communist Party came into play. The party remained passive at a time when it was necessary for action. The leadership, including our above-mentioned friend Thalheimer, acted as if a revolutionary crisis would last for a prolonged period and that they had all the time in the world. They caught Zinoviev's disease (named for the Bolshevik leader who always seemed instinctively to go passive when it was necessary for action, and visa versa). Moreover, most critically they did not take advantage of the decline in the authority of the Social Democratic Party in order to win over the mass of the rank and file Soical Democrats that were leaving it in droves. That is where the preceding events described above come into play. The destruction of the authoritative leadership of Luxemburg and Liebknecht left a lesser layer of cadre not known for pursuing an aggressive strategy when called for. It is hard to believe that Luxemburg and Liebknecht would have responded in the same way as the Brandler/Thalheimer leadership. I would argue, if anything, Liebknecht would have had to be restrained a little. This is, in the final analysis, the decisive problem of the failure of the German Revolution in 1923. Nobody can predict whether a revolutionary crisis will lead to revolutionary success but one must certainly know when to move as the Bolsheviks did.
And what of the other reasons given for holding back. The fascists were a menace but hardly more than that. Damn, if they were really as much of a menace as right-wing social democrats and communists have portrayed the situation in 1923 what the hell were the fascists in say 1930, when they had 100,000 well-organized and fighting mad storm troopers in the streets. With that view the only rational policy for Communist would have been to make sure the German working class had its passports in order. As we tragically know there are never enough passports. And what of the German Army and outside capitalist military intervention? The army was not that big even though augmented by ‘unofficial’ paramilitary forces. It definitely would have been harder to split these forces along class lines. But workers militias would have at least been able to hold the line. And do not forget the more than willing Red Army was within a few days march to assist. As the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing Civil demonstrated in the final analysis a revolution is victorious or defeated despite the influence of whatever foreign forces are scheming against the regime.
And what about the internal capitalist opposition? And what about the stabilization of the economic situation? One can go on forever with the problems and talk oneself out of any action. While all these factors individually might argue against a revolutionary crisis in 1923 jointly they create the notion that this was a big revolutionary opportunity lost. That should make one suspicious, very suspicious, of the credentials of those ‘revolutionaries’ who argue that one did not exist. Read more on this subject.I know I will.
COMMENTARY
A proper perspective on the question of the failed German revolutionary socialist opportunities starting in 1918 after the debacle of German defeat in World War I, the overthrow of the Kaiser and the establishment of a democratic republic until 1923 with the failure of the revolutionary opportunities resulting from the French reparations crisis is the subject of on-going controversy among revolutionaries. At that time most European revolutionaries, especially the Russians, placed their strategic aspirations on the success of those efforts in Germany. A different outcome during that period, with the establishment of a German Workers Republic, would have changed the course of world history in many ways, not the least of which would have been the probable saving of the isolated Russian socialist revolution and defeating German fascism in the embryo.
Since then, beginning with the Trotsky-led Russian Left Opposition in 1923 and later the International Left Opposition, revolutionaries as well as others have cut their teeth on developing an analysis of the failure of revolutionary leadership as a primary cause for that aborted German revolution. Against that well-known analysis, more recently a whole cottage industry has developed, particularly around the British journal Revolutionary History, giving encouragement to latter day hand wringing about the prospects (or lack of prospects) for revolution at that time and drawing the lesson that a revolution in Germany then could not have happened.
To buttress that argument the writings on the prospects of the 1923 revolution by August Thalheimer, a central theoretician and key adviser to German Communist Party leader Brandler in this period, have been warmly resurrected and particularly boosted. This kind of analysis, however, gets revolutionaries nowhere. It is one thing for those on the ground at the time in Germany and in the Comintern to miss the obvious signals for revolution it is another for later ‘revolutionaries’ to provide retrospective political cover for those who refused to see and act on the revolutionary opportunities at the time. The events surrounding the failed German revolution were also echoed in what was called the ‘literary debate’ inside the Russian Communist Party in 1924 at a time when the internal struggle, after the death of Lenin, was getting to a white heat. While at this historical distance it is probably impossible to argue all of the specifics of the revolutionary crisis of 1923 some lessons stick out.
A quick sketch of events beginning from the start of World War I with the famous treachery of the German Social Democratic leadership in voting for the Kaiser’s war budget (and continuing to vote for it) are in some ways decisive for what happened in 1923. Later, facing the consequences of the defeat of the German army, war exhaustion and the possibility of harsh reprisals from the Allied forces the Kaiser’s government was overthrown shortly after the armistice was signed and the fight was on in earnest for the future of Germany. That question as least temporarily, however, was not decided until the German working class had been subdued and or brought off with a bourgeois democratic republic, the notorious Weimar Republic. Unlike the earlier Russian experience in 1917 no independent mobilization of the working class through Soviets or other pan-working class organizations was fought for to the end. And that is the rub. This is the start of the problem. No Bolshevik-type organization was present to take advantage of the revolutionary situation. What is worst, the forces that did exist led by the heroic martyrs Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were defeated and they personally were tragically and ominously murdered. Thus, a known and tested leadership was an essential missing ingredient that was to have consequences all the way through to 1923.
When a German Bolshevik-type organization finally was formed it contained many elements that were subjectively revolutionary but political naïve or disoriented, and suffered from anarchistic excesses in reaction to the stifling Social Democratic atmosphere of the pre-war period. While a party needs those subjectively elements to make the revolution, and this writer would argue that it cannot be made without them, this confusion gave the Social Democratic party plenty of ammunition for its reformist, parliamentary position. The key result of this lack of organization and proper preparededness was the so-called March Action of 1921. Unlike the overwhelming reaction of the German working class to the attempted Kopp Putsch of the previous year this was an action that went off half–cocked and did much to discredit communists in the eyes of the working class. The sorry results of this action had reverberations all the way up to the Communist International where Lenin and Trotsky were forced to defend the action in public, expel the former German party leader Paul Levi for a breech of discipline for his open criticism of the action (while it was going on) but also point out that it was the wrong way to go. In any case one cannot understand what happened (or did not happen) in 1923 without acknowledging the gun shyness of the Communist party leadership caused by the 1921 events.
So what is the specific argument of 1923 all about? Was there or was there not a realistic revolutionary opportunity to fight for a Soviet Germany which would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution? On the face of it this question is a no-brainer. Of course there was a revolutionary situation. If the disruptions caused by the French take-over in the Ruhr in order to obtain their war reparations and the resultant passive resistance policy of the German government and the later inflationary spiral that affected many layers of German society was not a classic revolutionary situation then there are none this side of heaven. End of story.
The real question that underlines any argument against a revolutionary crisis is what to do (other than stick your head in the sand). This is where the previous “ultra" policies of the German Communist Party came into play. The party remained passive at a time when it was necessary for action. The leadership, including our above-mentioned friend Thalheimer, acted as if a revolutionary crisis would last for a prolonged period and that they had all the time in the world. They caught Zinoviev's disease (named for the Bolshevik leader who always seemed instinctively to go passive when it was necessary for action, and visa versa). Moreover, most critically they did not take advantage of the decline in the authority of the Social Democratic Party in order to win over the mass of the rank and file Soical Democrats that were leaving it in droves. That is where the preceding events described above come into play. The destruction of the authoritative leadership of Luxemburg and Liebknecht left a lesser layer of cadre not known for pursuing an aggressive strategy when called for. It is hard to believe that Luxemburg and Liebknecht would have responded in the same way as the Brandler/Thalheimer leadership. I would argue, if anything, Liebknecht would have had to be restrained a little. This is, in the final analysis, the decisive problem of the failure of the German Revolution in 1923. Nobody can predict whether a revolutionary crisis will lead to revolutionary success but one must certainly know when to move as the Bolsheviks did.
And what of the other reasons given for holding back. The fascists were a menace but hardly more than that. Damn, if they were really as much of a menace as right-wing social democrats and communists have portrayed the situation in 1923 what the hell were the fascists in say 1930, when they had 100,000 well-organized and fighting mad storm troopers in the streets. With that view the only rational policy for Communist would have been to make sure the German working class had its passports in order. As we tragically know there are never enough passports. And what of the German Army and outside capitalist military intervention? The army was not that big even though augmented by ‘unofficial’ paramilitary forces. It definitely would have been harder to split these forces along class lines. But workers militias would have at least been able to hold the line. And do not forget the more than willing Red Army was within a few days march to assist. As the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing Civil demonstrated in the final analysis a revolution is victorious or defeated despite the influence of whatever foreign forces are scheming against the regime.
And what about the internal capitalist opposition? And what about the stabilization of the economic situation? One can go on forever with the problems and talk oneself out of any action. While all these factors individually might argue against a revolutionary crisis in 1923 jointly they create the notion that this was a big revolutionary opportunity lost. That should make one suspicious, very suspicious, of the credentials of those ‘revolutionaries’ who argue that one did not exist. Read more on this subject.I know I will.
301 Days in Jail So Far! & Reality's trial date is postponed again
301 Days in Jail So Far! & Reality's trial date is postponed again
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