Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)

Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)

Markin comment:

Old Brecht may not have been from the be-bop generation but he, in his way, knew how to speak truth to power through his poetry and plays.

To Those Born After

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.

The 100th Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution -Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-COMRADE TULA-Victor Serge-A Book Review

The 100th Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution -Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-COMRADE TULA-Victor Serge-A Book Review

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book Review


COMRADE TULA-Victor Serge

Generally, historical novels leave me dissatisfied as real history provides enough dramatic tension. However, every once in a while a novel comes along that illuminates a historical situation better than a history and begs for some attention. Victor Serge’s political parable falls in that category. His subject is a fictional treatment of the Great Terror highlighted by the Moscow Trials in the Soviet Union of the 1930’s. This Great Terror liquidated almost the whole generation of those who made the October Revolution of 1917 and administered the early Soviet state as well as countless other victims. Adding a personal touch, as an official journalist of the Communist International Serge knew many of that generation. The political and psychological devastation created by this catastrophe is certainly worthy of novelistic treatment. In fact it may be the only way to truly comprehend its effects. Serge is particularly well-placed to tell this story since he was a long-time member of the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and barely got out of there at the height of the Terror as a result of an international campaign of fellow writers to gain his freedom. The insights painfully learned from his experiences in the Soviet Union place his book in the first rank.


The plot line is rather simple- a disaffected Russian youth of indeterminate politics, as an act of hubris, kills a high level Soviet official in the then Stalinized Soviet Union and sets in motion a whirlwind of governmental reaction. As if to mock everything the Russian Revolution had stood until that time this youth ultimately goes free while a whole series of oppositionists of various tendencies, officials investigating the crime and other innocent, accidental figures are made to ‘confess’ or accept responsibility for the crime with their lives in the name of defending the Revolution (read Stalinist rule).

While the plot line is simple the political and personal consequences are not, especially for anyone interested in drawing the lessons of what went wrong with the Russian Revolution. The central question Serge poses is this- How can one set of Communists persecute and ultimately kill another set of Communist who it is understood by all parties stand for the defense of the same revolution? Others such as Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon, Andre Malraux in Man’s Fate and George Orwell in several of his books have taken up this same theme of political destruction with mixed success and ambiguous conclusions. In any case, aside from the tales of bureaucratic obfuscation in turning a simple criminal matter into a political vendetta which Serge treats masterfully, the answer does not resolve itself easily.

What Serge concludes, based I believe on his own personal trial of fire in that same period, and makes his novel more valuable than the others listed above is that one must defend ones revolutionary integrity at all costs. His personal conduct bears this out. The history of the period also bears this out not only in the Soviet Union but in Spain and elsewhere. For every Bukharin, Zinoviev or out of favor Stalinist factionalist who compromised himself or herself there were many, mainly anonymous Left Oppositionists and other such political people who did not confess, who did not abandon their political program and went to exile and death rather than capitulate. History being a cruel and, at times, arbitrary master may have not honored them yet. However, those courageous fighters need no revolutionary good conduct certificate before it, the reader of these lines, or me.

The 100th Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution (2017)-Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-The Spanish Revolution-1931-1939

The 100th Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution (2017)-Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-The Spanish Revolution-1931-1939

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book Review

Leon Trotsky-The Spanish Revolution-1931-1939
I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. My first term paper was on this subject. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish Fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class confronts the one-sided class war being waged against it today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the book reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in order implement a program of socialist revolution most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed, they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a pretty good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution and had a strategic conception of the road to victory.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here is the crisis of revolutionary leadership. That question entails, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Thus it is necessary to focus on what condition is missing that would assure success or at least put up a fight- witness the failure of the German Revolution in 1923). This is a continuation of an analysis that he developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. It is a question that still remains to be resolved. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend the revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitable heeded Trotsky's advise.

Trotsky's polemics are highlighted by the article "The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning", his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, They center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. He had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers especially the younger workers of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that situation by entry into those parties. Nin, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its expansion as a party and key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would after the Barcelona uprising suppress the more left-wing organizations. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book.

On The 100th Annivesary (2017)-Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-"Year One of the Russian Revolution"-Victor Serge

On The 100th Annivesary (2017)-Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-"Year One of the Russian Revolution"-Victor Serge 

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book Review

Year One of the Russian Revolution-Victor Serge
I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.

The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And try to stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated Russia as the weakest link in the capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as Utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the specific Russian Question as a factor in world politics anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.

In Lieu Of A Hook- In Defense Of One Woman Vigilantism-Frances McDormand’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017)-A Film Review

In Lieu Of A Hook- In Defense Of One Woman Vigilantism-Frances McDormand’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, starring Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, 2017 

I frankly don’t know what to make of this film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri which I do know rightfully won Oscars for two of the actors in this effort. One for the righteous Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes and the other as supporting actor Sam Rockwell as Jason Dixon. My quandary though is about what the cluster of themes are supposed to represent. What that means in “film speak,” in what I mentioned in one recent film review piggy-backing off of long time film critic and my longtime companion, Sam Lowell, is that I don’t have a “hook,” something to turn this review on. Sam’s safety valve suggestion which mainly is good for older films, black and white films from the 1940s and 1950s which he made his reputation on, wrote what many until recently anyway considered the definite classic on the genre, is to take on the “American slice of life” aspect when all else fails or you are stuck.

I am not sure though in this case this film tells us much about contemporary America, at least anything that you can put a hook into. A suggestion that this film is the current classically fashionable “fight” between the Eastern intelligentsia and the redneck backwoods “good old boys and girls” who sense of justice and political correctness are worlds apart seems snarky. A cinematic replay of the 2016 American presidential campaign, interfered with or not, doesn’t put this round peg in the square. Moreover, the way the whole political correctness aspects play out makes me believe (and Sam too when I asked for candid and serious advice) that the producers have missed out on the Occupy Movement, more importantly what #Me Too stands for, and most decisive of all is that it is clueless about race, about what Black Lives Matter which after all started in real Ferguson, Missouri and either they didn’t hear the news or were more comfortable with stale old clichés about the matter. I make no pretense to have the pulse of the racial question right in this country but if I knew that when I was making a film like this I would not flaunt that ignorance straight up.

Maybe it is best to lay out the storyline and let the emotions wrought by the situation stand in for a hook. I don’t like the idea but I also don’t like the aforementioned slice of life pitch either. Mildred, played by McDormand, is the bereft mother of a raped and murdered teenage daughter by person, or persons unknown. Also in the mix the ditched wife of a wife-beater husband and devotee of intergenerational sex having copped a holy goof nineteen- year old girlfriend after ditching Mildred in a fit of his 27^th mid-life crisis. Mildred is far from over the grief of losing that daughter and the local police’s seeming readiness to throw the case deep into in the cold files. Down the road from her house are the three billboards of the rather inelegant and unfashionable film title and she decides to move things off of dead center by renting the long unused signs to shame/egg on/belittle the efforts to find her daughter’s murderer.

Needless to say the cops, especially top cop Willoughby, played by Woody Harrelson, and one of his young deputies, a wacko cop, Jason Dixon, played by Sam Rockwell did not like this aspersion on their commitment to solving this or any crime. The townspeople in general back them up on this and so stoic and determined Mildred stands essentially alone in seeking some rough justice in this wicked old world for her beloved and mourned daughter. To add fuel to the fire (no pun as will be mentioned shortly) Willoughby is dying of cancer and before the whole deal had gone down commits suicide which some contend Mildred’s seemingly unwarranted campaign had a hand in. With the top cop’s death Jason goes into overdrive first crashing and trashing everything in sight and then when he is fired by the new sheriff in town, a black man no less, he get’s “religion”  about what a cop is supposed to, and not supposed to do.

Meanwhile Mildred still on a rampage turns into a one woman guerilla unit firebombing the police headquarters not knowing that Jason was inside. He got out but had severe burns over a good part of his body. Guys like Jason though never get a break, whether the deserve one or not, and when he does try to solve the case after hearing a random bar conversation which might be related to the daughter’s murder and collects DNA surreptitiously from the suspect it turns out there was no match. Which leaves Mildred and Jason now confederates on that so-called suspect’s trail as over-the-top vigilantes.

See what I mean about where the hook is despite the two excellent acting jobs. In the end though maybe the query of the title of this review can stand in-in defense of one woman vigilantism. Hope that will do.        

Before The Fall-Before The Garden Of Eden Fell Into Disrepair-Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “I Confess” (1953)-A Film Review

Before The Fall-Before The Garden Of Eden Fell Into Disrepair-Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “I Confess” (1953)-A Film Review    

DVD Review

By Lenny Lynch

I Confess, starring Montgomery Clift,  Anne Baxter, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1953

I admit, freely admit that I am a lapsed, very lapsed Catholic of the Roman persuasion although that is no factor in the how or why of drawing this review of an Alfred Hitchcock minor classic I Confess set in Catholic Canada, French-Canadian Canada, Quebec, which is actually a separate country or could be if the Quebecois wanted such an outcome as many have demonstrated for in the past, where my good friend and mentor Josh Breslin’s people came from a couple of generations back. What does factor in is the still scarred, scary, bizarre ritual (ritualistic cleansing at least) memoires of facing the inquisition in the confessional box in the person of the parish priest, one Father Lally who was one son of a bitch on dragging out every last sin out off his charges and pronouncing high dungeon penance that would make many a knee weary down at the blessed altar rail. (Many years later it came out, came out during the scandalous cover-ups and then exposes of the sodomites in the pulpits in the Boston Catholic diocese that good old Father Lally was giving absolution gratis for his favored boys who confessed to all kinds of sexual fantasy sins that the bastard then made them pay for scarring at least one of maybe two generations of innocent boys. He died before any of them got any satisfaction of seeing his crimes exposed and sent prison bound. Money will never wash away the crimes against humanity that Father Lally inflicted on this troubled world. As least for believers there is the satisfaction that he will burn in hell for eternity and maybe a few can get some solace from that.)

But all that has nothing to do with the plot of the film except that the sanctity of the confessional, the so-called penitent-priest confidentially plays a big role in this film. A rather extreme way that the privilege which after all is a legal privilege in a court of law and no something church ordained although maybe it had its roots in that way back when which can be looked at. Penitent X (I don’t want to violate that sanctity even as a lapsed, very lapsed Catholic) has committed murder, maybe not murder one but murder nevertheless and maybe murder one if X had done it in the act of a robbery which would make it felony murder. He and his wife work for Priest A, played by Montgomery Clift, at the rectory and after he committed the dastardly crime he confessed in the confessional to Priest A. He is home free or at least he thinks he is since he has some kind of understanding that Priest A will not snitch on him to the coppers, and he doesn’t.

Where things get dicey is that way back when before he was ordained, before he got “religion” after being in the military during World War II he had a torrid affair with a woman who subsequently married somebody else but was still in love him. Why that matters is that she and Priest A were seen together the night of the murder and he can’t explain where he was at the time of the murder. Looks like the big step-off for a guy just doing his job. Things get a little better after a trial in which the good priest is found not guilty although that standard is not the same as innocent and the festering parishioners are ready to nail his ass to the wall over the romance stuff. Before they can get the tar out though Penitent X’s wife tells all her husband was the murderer and for that act of sanity he kills her and then runs like a bastard to get away. No way will he do so though as the coppers nab the bastard and he buys nothing but six feet of hard dirt for his troubles. Yeah, nothing here made me want to jump back on the priest-ridden bandwagon as much as I hate to see an innocent guy, a straight-laced priest with a sullen past come close to the big step-off.      

Once Again Through The Sherlock Holmes Miasma-Round Up The Usual Private Eyes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s-Based “Voice Of Terror” (1942)-A Film Review

Once Again Through The Sherlock Holmes Miasma-Round Up The Usual Private Eyes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s-Based “Voice Of Terror” (1942)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror, starring foppish Basil Rathbone, fellow fop Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, 1942

Finally, I have gotten rid of the lame idea of having to do “dueling” reviews with young pup Will Bradley in this seemingly endless series of Sherlock Holmes flics. This is the series where Sherlock, played by aging dandy Basil Rathbone, and his male companion, make of that what you will, funky Doc Watson, played by foppish Nigel Bruce have been resurrected from late Victorian times to World War II times when it really was touch and go whether there would be some sun setting on the British Empire courtesy of Hitler’s Third Reich.

In this either twelve or fourteen series I can’t get a straight answer about how many they did they do their bit, do more than yeomen’s work, maybe OBE work to stem the freaking Nazi tide, a movement that had more than a few supporters in high places in old London town. Hell, the joint was crawling with them. In the previous ten or so reviews I have under the guiding hand of our esteemed site manager, Greg Green, aka the guy who hands out the assignments and hence esteemed, had to “battle” young Bradley for the true meaning of the Holmes myth. Greg’s idea, foolish idea if he dares to print this, was to have an old-timer vs. fresh look at the films to see what flushed out. I will not bore the reader with the details of that dispute, essentially a question of challenging the myth about the supposedly platonic Holmes-Watson relationship with hard evidence or their then closeted love for each other and their joint knee-deep involvement in every criminal operation from illegal drugs to armed robberies and more in greater London using the private eye gag as a cover. Against Will’s unbelievable naivete, really head in the sand, both on the true sexual relationship between the two men and the way they really supported themselves in the lap of luxury and idleness in their Bake Street digs.  

But enough of that, and good riddance, since Greg has now seen that the younger generation does not give a fuck about the old has-been Holmes and Watson and get their idea of this match-up from later Robert Downey, Junior-type interpretations of the Holmes myth. So with the film under review Voice of Terror I will just do what my old friend Sam Lowell, a fellow reviewer who is now, rightly so, under siege in his own older-younger writer wars called giving the ‘skinny.”

Apparently not trusting the vaunted foreign and domestic intelligence operations, MI5 and MI6 (the latter the one that one Bond, James Bond, took out of disgrace after Kim Philby ran the organization a merry chase during the early post-World War II Cold War period Winny Churchill kept warning about) the British intelligence inner council, you know the lords and such who ran things into the ground called in Holmes and by extension Watson to stop the flow of Nazi saboteurs and propaganda flooding Merry Olde England in post Munich, post Neville Chamberlain times. They really were running amok creating mortal terror among the ordinary citizenry especially with their radio broadcasts, their voice of terror broadcasts, about bad things happening in the country before they happened. Have everybody on edge. Looked like curtains for old John Bull (and his colonial tyranny).          

Off to work, off to figure out who was running the operation, the hearty team is stopped in its tracks when one of its operatives is killed trying to find out who is working for the filthy Nazis and where. All of this leads to two things first grabbing that operative’s wife Kitty, played by screaming Evelyn Ankers (who is not the dreaded voice of terror in this one like she was in a series of forgettable horror films, okay) and pumping her for information about the last words of her late husband. This is nothing but a ruse, an inner circle joke between Holmes and Watson since the last word was “Christopher,” meaning the dark and mysterious Christopher Wharves which they were quite familiar with from their trolling for “dilly boys” who worked the area and whose services both men were very familiar with. (If you are not familiar with the term “dilly boys” look it up but remember that reference to their sexual preferences and you will not be far off.) Be that as it may this was also the hideout of the key German operatives who had their own off-beat sexual proclivities to take care of. In any case through either Holmes or Watson’s stupidity they and Kitty were “captured” casing the area. Eventually they escaped as to be expected and found out that a German espionage operation was planned for southern England.

Off they go and from this point on you have to do some serious suspension of disbelief. As it turned out as almost anybody could tell who has read at least one detective novel in their lives this had to be an inside job. And it was. One of the esteemed members of the inner council was a traitor (remember I told you the sceptered island was swarming with Nazi sympathizers in high places) and that was that. Well not quite because Kitty in her attempts to thwart the Nazi scum took a fall, got killed holding off the leader of the Nazi thugs. A good soldier. Here is where that “suspension of disbelieve” comes in. Of course a member of the inner council could not be a British traitor, this before the Philby Cambridge spies exposes, no way, so the gag is that that person was an impostor, a German of similar appearance and status, sent as an infiltrator to England after killing the real guy. What gave him away. Well the real guy had a scar from an early age. The imposter’s was only about twenty years old and so it was another case of “elementary, dear (note the “dear”) Watson.” WTF. And you wonder why I have spent some considerable time bursting this balloon, taking these overblown amateurs to school who guys like Larry Larkin, Sam Spade, and Phil Marlowe, would have had for lunch and still have time for a nap.