Interesting, Roger. The Radical Women's center is at 5018 Rainier Ave. S.
My elder sister belonged until it became too difficult for her to
travel from out in the North End. Seattle is like an hour glass,
squeezed between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Long and fairly
narrow. I've been to the Women's Hall, but had no idea there was a
bookstore close by.
The Department of Services for the Blind is a short distance North of
the bookstore. I worked there from 1975 through 1993, and never knew
there was a wealth of good reading so close by. The Southeast end of
Seattle had been called Garlic Gulch for many years. The fertile
Rainier Vally was a food basket for Seattle, mostly small Italian
farmers, along with Japanese and Filipinos. By the time I worked at
the Agency, Rainier Valley was undergoing a transition. Many Blacks
and Asians had begun to move into homes formerly owned by the farmers.
The area became a suburb of Seattle, with Renton on it's Southern
border. Renton, home of Boeing, but also home to Working Class
Itallian Miners. The more wealthy folks moved North, while the
Farmers relocated in the Kent Valley.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/18/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The next time you are in Seattle you might want to stop in at this
bookstore. I expect you will find some Trotsky titles there: *Seattle:
*5418 Rainier Ave. South
Seattle, WA 98118-2439
Tel: (206) 323-1755
On 10/18/2015 8:06 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Sadly, I have no clue as to where dad came to possess writings by
Trotsky. Nor do I know any of the titles. But in Seattle during the
40'sand 50's there were two bookstores in down town Seattle that
specialized in Progressive literature. And one of these stores
continued well into the 70's. Dad would always pay a visit to them
when the folks visited Cathy and me. Unfortunately I was totally
blind, and by the time I might have read a wider selection of
progressive literature, they did not provide any of it in accessible
format. I do have a number of tapes...somewhere, that dad recorded
for me, but mostly it was articles he'd written.
It's interesting that as much as Seattle was given the reputation of
being a hotbed of Communism, that there were so few outlets for
Progressive literature.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/17/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I wonder from where he acquired his writings of Trotsky. There are only
a limited number of radical publishers that have kept all of his
writings in print all these years. Pathfinder has been the main one. It
would be interesting to know whom he was in contact with. By the way, I
have heard that when Che Guevara was killed he was found to have
Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed in his possession.
On 10/17/2015 12:32 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Of course my memories are those of a five year old boy who was dragged
to boring meetings. Sort of the same punishment Church Goers put
their children through. But I recall lively discussions regarding the
writings of Trotsky. The Queen Ann Hill chapter of the American
Communist Party became enamored of Joseph Stalin. I know from later
years that my dad went through a period of time when he believed
Stalin was a man of principle.
The Soviet Union was the world's new benchmark. Without being able to
ask him, it seems to me that he never wanted to believe that the
murder of Trotsky was a decision made at the upper-most level of the
Russian Communist Party. But in later life, dad not only left the
local chapter, but began to believe that Stalin had derailed any
effort of a People's Party in Russia. When dad died in 2001 he had no
writings by Stalin, but did have a small collection of books by
Trotsky. My sister donated them to a local progressive second hand
book store. My dad and I did not agree regarding the need for violent
overthrow of an oppressive government. At first, he believed it was
necessary for Stalin to "weed the garden". Dad believed that as long
as the old beliefs were allowed to exist, there could be a resurgence
in future years. Especially in regards to religion.
When I became enamored with Martin Luther King Jr., Dad denounced his
nonviolence policy. He felt that King was misleading people, and
besides, he was a minister. My dad took years before he would trust a
minister. Anyway, I'm not doing dad justice. He was a product of his
times and is not here today to discuss his beliefs, based on current
events.
He had a natural curiosity and was more open minded than most men of
his time. Dad and I could disagree and debate an issue into the
ground without becoming angry at one another. Dad taught me to
respect people and accept them without the need to either embrace
their ideas or to denounce them. I work hard, not always
successfully, at expressing "my opinion without attacking the other
person. , I might say, "the way I understand the situation differs
from what I hear you saying."
I wonder how many of our great leaders from the past would hold to
their same beliefs, in the face of today's events?
Carl Jarvis
On 10/16/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I thought your parents' political movement detested Trotsky.
On 10/16/2015 8:08 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Leon Trotsky, 1879 to 1940. There was a black mood among my dad and
his associates back in 1940, when they learned of the murder of Leon
Trotsky. While they often debated his writings, they looked to
Trotsky in the same way that many of us today look to people like
Chris Hedges or Ralph Nader.
The voice of the loyal opposition. The sound of reason. And yet,
not
one of those young men and women took the strong stand that Trotsky
took. Nor did I. Nor did any of my Progressive or Radical friends.
Sure, we in the Opposition Movement do work for a better government.
As long as we do not have to put everything on the line.
But if we do not take bolder steps and risk our safety, who will? Do
we simply wait for another Trotsky to come along? And how will we
protect that person when we can't even protect our Whistle Blowers?
Some of my friends say, "Jarvis, you're nuts!" Which may or not
speak
to the issue. I simply suggest to them that we need to put our
beliefs where our mouths are. "We can't sacrifice everything we've
struggled for", they tell me.
But when we take the safe road and protect what we have, isn't that a
statement of our real belief?
I would like to think that I would stand up alongside all of
America's
poor and disenfranchised, and tell the mighty
Military/Industrial/Corporate Empire to go straight to Hell. But
would we be able to stand together? What if drones began dropping
their deadly cargo among us? Are we willing to die for what we
believe? Can we speak for our children and grand children?
Yet, waiting for our Knight on a White Stallion is just as futile.
They are also subject to being murdered.
While I know that I'm no hero, still, I do not want to leave this
life
without leaving a small piece of hope behind. It may be the best I
can do.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/16/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://socialistaction.org/leon-trotsky-revolutionary-fighter/
Leon Trotsky: Revolutionary Fighter
Published October 15, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Oct. 2015 Trotsky & Dobbs
By JEFF MACKLER
Paul LeBlanc, “Leon Trotsky,” Reaktion Books, distributed by
the
University of Chicago Press, 2015, 224 pages, $16.95 paperback
Paul LeBlanc’s new and admirable brief biography of Leon Trotsky
comes
on the 75th anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination in Coyoacan,
Mexico,
at the hands of Stalinist agent Ramon Mercader. Trotsky, along with
Vladimir Lenin, was the co-leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution,
the
world’s first socialist revolution. This was an event that changed
the
course of world history in establishing for the first time a
government
and state of the working class—a workers’ state—which abolished
capitalism and ruled society through democratic working-class
institutions (soviets) that advanced the interests of the vast
majority.
Interest in the ideas of Leon Trotsky, as LeBlanc aptly notes, has
far
from waned in recent decades, with one or another book, novel, and
other
works—poems, plays, films—focusing on Trotsky’s revolutionary
socialist
ideas published on average every six months. LeBlanc is a lifelong
revolutionary socialist activist and scholar, currently Professor of
History at La Roche College in Pittsburgh. He is the author of
“Unfinished Leninism” and the co-editor of “Trotsky’s Writings from
Exile.”
LeBlanc sets out to focus on the latter period of Trotsky’s life
when,
following his failed Left Opposition efforts to challenge Stalin’s
bureaucratic regime, he was expelled from the central leadership of
the
Bolshevik Party and exiled, first to Siberia and then to Prinkipo, a
small island off the Turkish coast. As with any serious scholar,
however, LeBlanc does not refrain from covering critical aspects of
Trotsky’s leading role during the Soviet Union’s revolutionary
period.
LeBlanc writes, “To understand the man, we must, of course, look at
his
entire life—but in some ways the most decisive qualities of this
revolutionary are to be found in the Trotsky who, in order to remain
true to the ideals that animated his entire life, followed a
trajectory
that took him out of the center of power. This was the doomed but
determined fighter who sought to defend and explain the relevance of
the
heroic best that was the early communist tradition. He expended
immense
energy to place the recent revolutionary experience—including
achievement, mistakes, and failures—into perspective, and to use
such
insights for analyzing and battling global crises, new
totalitarianisms
and the deepening violence that engulfed humanity from 1929 to
1940.”
While LeBlanc properly refers to Trotsky as a “brilliant innovative
theorist,” early on in his book he nonetheless, and strangely,
refers
to
“aspects of unoriginality in Trotsky’s thought, especially in
relation
to the much-vaunted theory of permanent revolution, his analysis of
Stalinism, his prescriptions for defeating Hitler, and the much
misunderstood Transitional Program” (emphasis in original).
Here LeBlanc’s weak side, or super-objective “scholarly” impulse to
present a “balanced” view of Trotsky’s politics, at least at first,
is
far off the mark. While he attributes this “unoriginality” to the
fact
that Marx and other revolutionaries had previously dealt with
similar
issues, none did so in the context of the actuality of the Russian
Revolution, not to mention Trotsky’s Marxist epic analysis of the
conditions that led to the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the
rise
of fascism in Germany, and the necessity of the workers’ united
front
to
thwart Hitler’s drive for power.
Using LeBlanc’s method, one might easily point to the
“unoriginality”
of
Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity since Einstein undoubtedly
based
his ideas on the accomplishments of the mathematicians and
physicists
who preceded him. Indeed, were we to apply this ahistorical
conception
to any human field of endeavor, we would be compelled to discount as
“unoriginal” the contributions of Beethoven in music or Manet and
Picasso in art. The latter artists were all trained in the school of
classical realism, much as Marx was trained in the classical
economic
theories first advanced by Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
Fortunately, LeBlanc’s “unoriginal” label with regard to a number of
Trotsky’s key contributions to Marxism gives way to a valuable and
accurate exposition of Trotsky’s central ideas. Indeed, perhaps
forgetful of his initial evaluation, LeBlanc spends considerable
time
explaining the brilliance and uniqueness of Trotsky’s ideas,
especially
when contrasted to their twisted distortions at the hands of Stalin,
his
heirs, and Trotsky’s pro-capitalist critics.
Undoubtedly, Trotsky himself sought to root in Marxist theory his
views
and the absolutely necessity of their relevance in the fight against
Stalin, but to the end of returning the Soviet Union to its
revolutionary roots as opposed to affirming some religious-type
dogma.
At times, I did find LeBlanc’s effort at balance a bit disturbing.
He
has the habit of making statements that are patently untrue or
distorted, only to soon afterward present the other side of the
equation, in which he almost always returns to a clear-sighted
affirmation of Trotsky’s political conceptions and practice. Perhaps
this is just the required or acquired academic expression of
LeBlanc’s
work, wherein “balance” is a prerequisite to publication.
Like this reviewer, LeBlanc received his initial education in
revolutionary socialist politics from the Socialist Workers Party
(SWP),
founded in 1928 by James P. Cannon and other expelled U.S. Communist
Party members. Trotsky himself played a key role in the formation of
the
SWP, once the preeminent revolutionary socialist party in the U.S.
until
its degeneration beginning in 1979. That LeBlanc retains the
essential
lessons preserved in the SWP’s half-century of leading revolutionary
Marxist work is a testament to his integrity.
In a few important instances, however, LeBlanc briefly challenges
Trotsky’s views on critical questions, as with his interpretation of
the
events surrounding the 1921 Red Army’s crushing of the Kronstadt
Rebellion during the height of the civil war. Without a single
reference
to Trotsky’s writings on this subject—one that has inflamed
anarchist
passions and anti-Leninist/Trotskyist sentiment to this day—LeBlanc
faults Trotsky, who led the Red Army’s quashing of this “rebellion”
that
threatened the very existence of the nascent Soviet state by opening
the
door to a possible British imperial invasion.
Trotsky was the central leader of the 1.5 million person Red Army
that
successfully and heroically defended the beleaguered Soviet Union
when
it was invaded by the armies of 14 nations, including armies from
opposed sides of the first world imperialist war.
Similarly, and again without a single reference to Trotsky’s
writings,
LeBlanc comes close to identifying Trotsky’s views with those of
Joseph
Stalin with regard to the latter’s disastrous 1929 collectivization
of
agriculture and associated slaughter of untold tens of thousands or
more
of Russian peasants. Serious students of Marxism and its
revolutionary
practice would do well to revisit these questions from Trotsky’s
vantage
point.
Despite these significant lapses, LeBlanc’s book is a modest but
important contribution toward the education of today’s emerging
youthful
revolutionaries. The author properly references a number of
Trotsky’s
key writings as landmark accomplishments and necessary readings in
revolutionary socialist literature, including Trotsky’s magnificent
three-volume “History of the Russian Revolution” and his
autobiography,
“My Life.”
Trotsky bibliographer Louis Sinclair long ago told this reviewer
that
Trotsky’s life works constituted some 80 volumes, making him perhaps
the
most prolific writer among revolutionary socialists. That he was
also
among the pantheon of Marxist thinkers, the central organizer of the
insurrection that toppled capitalist rule, the founding leader of
the
revolutionary Soviet Army, and the most important post-revolutionary
expositor of Marxism makes LeBlanc’s contribution all the more
valuable.
I am sure that he would agree that reading Trotsky’s work is
similarly
a
necessity for those who would follow in this great revolutionary’s
trailblazing and heroic footsteps.
Photo: Farrell Dobbs of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party speaks with
Trotsky (rt.) in Mexico.
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