Inkubo; or Incubus

 

 

Incubus is a fairly well known property, unfortunately its mainly known as a joke or the answer to a question in movie trivia game. As one of the few who has watched the film I think that's unfortunate, its by no means a perfect film but it does do some things very well. I watched Incubus for the first time on Halloween during the COVID-19 pandemic, I stumbled upon a promotional video for a marathon of public domain horror on Twitch. I joined the stream just as Incubus was starting. I was pleasantly surprised, I had known its terrible reputation but still had fun watching it.

Its reputation isn't entirely wrong, its more that it's reputation has been exaggerated over time. If you're unfamiliar I've included an upload of the film above for you to enjoy, but I'll also summarise here. Incubus was the creation of Leslie Steven's the showrunner for the original The Outer Limits, the film was produced in the 1960s, it had a very rough production and reception. The film stars William Shatner before he became known as Captain Kirk, its a black and white atmospheric horror movie, set in the vilage of Nomen Tuum, a vaguely Medieval rural location with a church and a well. The plot is concerned with corruption and damnation and the Incubus of the title is both metaphorical and literal.

Oh, and they decided to use Esperanto as the language of the film and Stephen's resisted dubbing into other langauges. None of the cast or crew were familiar with the language so they aren't fluent in it. William Shatner famously despises this film and is the source of some of the most negative stories about it including an allegation that a group of Esperanto speakers were so incensed at the bad pronounciation of the language that they gave him death threats, including throwing bricks with threatening messages throug his window. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you believe that incident or not.

The odds were stacked against it, at one point after production but before a general release the reception to the film was so negative that the film stock was burnt and the film was considered lost until a print with hard subtitles was discovered in France in 1996. The version with English subtitles had to mask the French subtitles and write over them. In further bad news one of the cast members Milos Milos who played the Incubus took his own life and the life of his partner shortly the premiere. All of this created a mountain of issues that prevented the film being taken on its own merits. 

One positive aspect of this nightmare of a production was that the film entered the public domain, which meant that once the French print was discovered and shared it found a small lease of live amongst collectors of obscurities and curious Esperantists and has slowly grown in popularity ever since. I'm not calling it a cult classic, its still far too obscure for that label and many of the people who do collect are still doing "ironicly" though the film had a positive reception on the Twitch stream and it motivated me to watch the film again at a more reasonable time frame. 

So, having watched the film without the distraction of making jokes at its expense I think it deserves a chance. The Esperanto dialogue isn't good but it isn't incoherent, the main issues are pronounciation since they just used some reading materials and didn't get anyone from the UEA Universal Esperanto Association to check and feedback. If you'd like to see films where the Esperanto dialogue was supported by an Esperanto association I'd recommend the detective story La Angoroj (literally the Anxious ones but usually translated into Anguish or Anxiety) or some scenes from Antoni Ribas's The Burned City. I'm an Esperanto speaker but I wouldn't say I'm fluent and while I had to resort to the English subtitles for clarification on occasion there were times when I could follow the spoken dialogue. 

I also do think the decision to shoot in Esperanto was to the film's advantage and its a shame they rushed and cut corners on that aspect. The use of the langauge gives the film a sense of ambiguity, the village could be anywhere in Europe, and the shooting of backgrounds and establishing shots further cement this out of place and out of time vibe. And it helps to cement the antagonistic forces in the film as difficult to understand and predict. If it was shot in English it would lose much of its emotional impact and the plot would have to do the heavy lifting of carrying the audiences interest. And I think it would struggle as while there are nuances within the plot since it concerns temptation and the struggle for the soul of the Marc (Shatner) the protagonist this means the steps of plot repeat as the temptations seek to wear down Marc's resolve.

The extra ambiguity helps to mask this and keep you alert, trying to figure out what the angle of this sequence will be and how it will be resolved. The music is also a positive point in the films favour, I don't remember full tracks but parts of the score have stuck in my mind and they work to unsettle you and work well towards building up tension for the climax of the struggle.

Yippie Mickey

 

A satirical image produced by the Yippies! Youth International Party, a group on the radical fringes of the US New Left in the 60s-70s. The Yippies most famous member was Abbie Hoffman the author of Steal This Book! The Yippies were an eclectic bunch influenced by Anarchism and other anti-establishment ideas.

This gun toting Mickey Mouse is an example of the messaging and propaganda they circulated, though the Yippies were more well known for their street actions and stunts, including running a porcine called Pigasus for President. The image was used to promote calls for action and disruption of Disneyland in 1970, more details on that event can be found at libcom.org. 

Also, you may find this 1968 film produced by the Yippies informative.

Workers councils in the German revolution, a discussion between Rudi Dutschke and Bernhard Reichenbach

 

Discussion and analysis with a member of the KAPD on the party and its activity.

Workers Councils
in the German Revolution
Introduction

The Kommunistische Arbeiter Party Deutschland (KAPD) originated in a split in the German Communist Party at the second congress in Heidelberg in October 1919. The majority of the Communist party were expelled for their opposition to parliamentary and Trade Union activity, and founded a new party the KAPD.
The interview below is with a founder member of the KAPD, who was active in the German revolution, and is part of the material we plan to us in the [unreadable] a pamphlet on the struggles for WORKERS COUNCILS in the German revolution.

The relevance of the struggle in Germany in 1918-23 has been heightened by the rise of SDS and the recent wave of unofficial strikes in the coal, steel and ship building industries. As in France and Italy the question of workers councils is now being debated.

AN ACTIVIST SPEAKS

This discussion between Rudi Dutschke and Bernhard Reichenbach took place in June 1969.

Rudi: Assuming your analysis of society was valid at the time, where do you locate your failures?

B.R: A valid social analysis is one thing, implementing it in reality is another matter. One should distinguish between the theories of the KAPD and the practise through which it attempted to implement them, although the two are obviously interrelated. Up to 1923 we based ourselves on the revolutionary activity of the working class which was widespread throughout Germany in the wake of the collapse of the Kaiser regime, its political, social, economic and ideological institutions, but from the defeat of the March 1921 and later 1923 insurrections it became evident that whereas during periods of political collapse, and economic misery the working class exhibits independent revolutionary initiative and readiness to sacrifice a lot for the creation of a new social order it does not sustain this type of activity during the prolonged periods between one political/economic crisis to the next.

Rudi: You said you had certain doubts concerning Marx’s theory, could you elaborate?

B.R.: We, who considered ourselves as Marxists at the time, laid too much stress on the “objective conditions” as well as on the role of material misery. We underestimated the role of the individuals, which in certain conditions – can become the decisive factor. I think that Marx’s stress on the main motivation for revolutionary activity is not always and everywhere valid, whereas his sociological insights still are.

Rudi: At the time you acted as an extra parliamentary opposition, do you consider this essential?

B.R.: Yes, because this educates people to act on their own political initiative, independently of any representative.

Rudi: For you at the time, this expressed itself not merely as extra-parliamentary opposition but as anti-parliamentary opposition. Did you consider it essential that the working class should struggle against the parliamentary institutions?

B.R.: Definitely. You must remember that during 1918 there was an actual revolutionary situation in Germany. Any partaking in parliamentary activity was considered as betrayal, because that parliament, amongst other things, was held responsible for the war. During 1919 almost all the left politics took place within the workers councils, not in the trade unions or parliament. These were consciously, extra and anti-parliamentary institutions. The trouble was that in those councils the Social Democrats were in the majority. This was very much due to their insistence on economistic rather than political, and reformistic rather than revolutionary demands. It is those factors that made us doubt the independent revolutionary initiative of the class. The Social Democrats did not impose their views, their majority reflected the will of the broad mass of workers inside the councils, and that even during such a revolutionary situation.

The conditions in Germany differed considerably from those of Russia. Russia emerged from centuries of autocratic rule and the whole social atmosphere was ripe for a fundamental change of political institutions, a tradition of government by elected representatives. Germany had a tradition of government by elected representatives, in such circumstances it is much harder to accomplish a political revolution because it appears as coercion against democratic representatives. Moreover, after all the years of a Rightist majority in parliament the victory of the Social Democrats appeared as a decisive victory for the left. It is true that the decisive arena of the struggle for political power was within the workers councils but, the reasons mentioned earlier, any action against the elected government was out of the question especially while those in government had a majority inside the councils.

Rudi: How many revolutionary parties existed then?

B.R.: In 1920 there were five parties aspiring to achieve socialism by revolution, all of them defining themselves as Marxist. Apart from this there were various Anarchist groups. The working class was torn by the mutual strife between those organisations and did not exhibit unified action vis-à-vis the Bourgeoisie.

Rudi: What could you tell us about the 1921 insurrection?

B.R.: At the time I was in Russia, as an observer on behalf of the KAPD in the session of the Third International. The German Communist party came out openly against that insurrection whereas our party actively supported it. Lenin declared the insurrection “Adventurist”, yet afterwards Paul Levi, the secretary of the party who was responsible for its policy was dismissed for his failure to support it. He was replaced by Clara Zetkin, who incidentally continued to carry out the political line of Paul Levi. A person was dismissed, the policies remained. Moreover, both Lenin and Trotsky endorsed Zetkins policies.

Rudi: Do you believe that there was any connection between the New Economic Policy of Lenin in 1921 and the policy of the Third International towards the March 1921 insurrection.

B.R.: There was no direct connection. However, one can discern some common underlying factors. The NEP was considered by Lenin as a fortification of the political revolution in Russia; he considered that revolution as a process which had already terminated. The Bolsheviks expected a revolution in Western Europe. This failed to occur. This created an ambiguous relationship between them, as a ruling party and the capitalist regime in Europe; on the one hand they wanted normal inter-state relations which would ensure peaceful borders on the west, on the other hand the revolutionary struggle inside those countries weakened those regimes. Once the disillusion with the revolution in the west sunk in they began to consider the revolutionary movements in the west mainly as an auxiliary tool of Russian foreign politics. This attitude of the Bolshevik politicians towards the revolutionary movements in the west did not start with Stalin, but with Lenin and Trotsky back in 1921.

Rudi: Could you describe the actual activity of the councils vis-à-vis the Unions and parties looked like?

B.R.: Independent councils based on factories rather then trades, as was common earlier, appeared spontaneously all over Germany. This was to a considerable extent a result of the economic chaos. When a factory came to a standstill due to the lack of fuel or raw materials there was no one to turn to help. Government, parties, unions, capitalists could do nothing to solve the basic problems of transportation, raw materials, fuel etc. Resolutions, orders, declarations, even paper money, were of little use. Under such circumstances the factory workers would form a factory council and set out to solve those basic problems by themselves. We of the KAPD believed that the traditional Trade-Unions were an obstacle to the creation of a new society, and that the main thing was to encourage direct action, independent of the unions.
Rudi: Why did the KAPD disband in 1923?

B.R: When the March 1921 insurrection failed, and later also the one in 1923, only a few hundred activists remained in the party. Originally we were a party of industrial militants, with only very few paid functionaries. When the direct activity of the industrial militants died down our party simply ceased to exist. It was not a matter of taking political resolution; when our militant workers ceased to be active all that was left to do was to acknowledge that fact and draw the conclusion. We the younger activists, decided to enter other political parties, simply because this was the only place where we could meet politically minded workers and try to win them over.

This interview provoked some critical comments in the following issue of Solidarity (Aberdeen)

K.a.p.d. and the german revolution
some comments

The interview in the last issue of Aberdeen “Solidarity” with a founder member of the K.A.P.D. threw interesting light on the policy of the Bolsheviks and the K.P.D. during the German Revolution, and also opened the way for a discussion of the reasons for its failure.

However, simply because the K.A.P.D broke away from the K.P.D. Over the latter favourable policy towards participating in Trades Union and Parliamentary activity, it would be wring to automatically assume that it is an organization with which Solidarists should retrospectively identify themselves.

In the first place, as is evident from the interview, the K.A.P.D. held an extremely mechanical conception of the socialist revolution, which was held to be possible only in times of economic collapse and misery. Socialist consciousness is the grumbling of an empty belly. This conception gripped the minds of the most libertarian of those who broke with German Social Democracy, eg, Luxembourg and Pannekoek, who in other respects such as insistence on the rule of Workers Councils and proletarian democracy we would endorse.

Similarly, the K.A.P.D. was permeated with elitist thinking. As Gorter, their leading thinker stated in his “Reply to Lenin”, '...most proletarians are ignoramuses. They repeatedly make mistakes.” From this he concluded that an elite party, based on quality was necessary to educate the masses and expose the reformist leaderships. There was always an ambiguity in the K.A.P.D. over whether they or the Workers Councils should rule, and they never fully identified themselves as the future dictatorship. In this respect, as in others we can possibly see resemblances between the K.A.P.D. and the “Workers Opposition” group in the Bolshevik Party. It is more than an accident that it was a K.A.P.D. member who brought Kollontai's text to the west.

Thirdly, it would be wrong to overestimate the hostility of the K.A.P.D. to the Third Internationl to which they adhered in a special status until they ceased to be a viable force in the German left after 1923 or so. Although Trotsky accused them, in the “First Five Years of the Communist International” of intending to establish a Fourth International, there is no real evidence for this. The K.A.P.D. even, on the instructions of Lenin, or 'advice', got rid of Ruehle, Laufenberg and others who were originally party members, but whose implacable hostility to Bolshevism Lenin could not tolerate.

If we are to look for historical progenitors in the area of ideology, the ideas of Ruhle need to be further examined. Ruehle voted as early as 1915 with Liebknecht against War Credits in the Reichstag, and maintained a consistent anti-war attitude afterwards. Almost alone of the ex-social democrats he broke with elitist thinking, holding the profoundly true idea that if the working class was too weak and stupid to achieve socialism by its own efforts, then no leadership can remedy this- the only alternative is permanent class society.

Similarly, at a time when socialism was held to be nationalisation and planning and a social democrat government, Ruehle developed his ideas on the meaning of socialism in advance of this. In 1924 he said: “ the nationalisation of the means of production which remains the programme of the social democracy as well as the communists, is not socialisation. Through nationalisation it will be possible to attain a strongly centralised State capitalism, which will perhaps have some superiority to private capitalism, but which none the less will be capitalism.”

Ruehle's brilliant critique of the entire Trades Union apparatus, published as the article “On German Trades Union” in Solidarity Scotland Vol.2 No.2. from his book 'From the bourgeois to the proletarian revolutions' (which still awaits translation), is one which all Solidarists would endorse. In it he stated: “The Trades unions … develop into auxiliary organs of capitalist organs of capitalist economic interest, exploitation and profit making. They have become the bourgeoisie's most loyal shield bearer … always and everywhere the unions stood at the side of capital ready to help; a praetorian guard always prepared to carry out the most common and revolting crimes, always against the emancipation and autonomy of the working class”.

As early as 1921, Ruehle, and the federation of factory organizations, AAUD-E (which eventually linked to the Syndicalist International), to which he belonged criticised the bureacratisation of the Russian Revolution and the suppression of the Kronstaft sailors. The refused to participate in the Central German rising of 1821 on the grounds that it was an attempt by the K.P.D. to cover up events in Kronsdadt at the same time.

Ruehle accused the K.A.P.D. of being only distinguishable from the K.P.D. by its rejection of the parliamentary activity, and its subsequent history confirmed his analysis.

Given its basic ideas, and the decline of the revolutionary wave in Germany after 1923, the return of most K.A.P.D. members to the folds of the S.P.D. or K.P.D., or their decline into inactivity was inevitable.

R.M.

Interview with Augusto Masetti from 1964 now translated into English

 

Awhile a go I discovered the late Stuart Christie's massive anarchist film archive and spent many hours digging through it. Unfortunately while its a great resource very few of the entries have explanations as to what they're about so if it isn't immediately clear from the film or you don't speak one of the dozens of languages the content is in some of them can be very strange and obscure.

For me one of those videos was a short 2 minute video called Augusto Masetti, its a short black and white interview with an elderly man in Italian. The only information was the year of recording 1964, searching the name I found multiple sources all in Italian, but my limited experience and machine translators I found out that in 1911 when the Italian army was about to send troops to occupy Libya Augusto Masetti shot and wounded his superior officer and when being detained and investigated it was found that he had an anti-militarist pamphlet on him and was an Anarchist. He became a sort of celebrity with defence committees setup across Italy to protest in support of him and rally opposition to the military adventures of the Italian state. 

I also found an upload of the video on youtube, and the uploader had some interesting things to say in the comments. 

Intervista del 1964 ad Augusto Masetti, l'anarchico che nel 1910 aveva sparato al suo colonnello inneggiando all'anarchia e contro la guerra di Libia. Durante i giorni della 'Settimana Rossa' del 1914 fu preso come simbolo della lotta antimilitarista. (Questo video - come gli altri sul tema settimana rossa - è stato recuperato da un'unica cassetta vhs (prima Betamax) lasciata da Sergio Zavoli alla biblioteca di Alfonsine, e mai usata dalla RAI. La cassetta era ormai abbandonata in biblioteca da 40 anni e a rischio smagnetizzazione. Su sollecitazione di Luciano Lucci fu riversata da Betamax a VHS, e poi il Lucci stesso ne fece una versione digitalizzata e messa su youtube.) 1964 interview with Augusto Masetti, the anarchist who in 1910 had shot his colonel in praise of anarchy and against the war in Libya. During the days of the 'Red Week' of 1914 it was taken as a symbol of the anti-militarist struggle. (This video - like the others on the red week theme - was recovered from a single vhs cassette (first Betamax) left by Sergio Zavoli at the Alfonsine library, and never used by RAI. The cassette had now been abandoned in the library for 40 years. and at risk of demagnetization. At the request of Luciano Lucci it was transferred from Betamax to VHS, and then Lucci himself made a digitized version of it and put on youtube.)

Which was interesting but didn't help me understand what the video was about. My very weak knowledge of Italian meant I was sure the first question at least was about his time as a soldier and the shooting of thee officer, but that was it apart from a few words about Professors and a song and family.

I turned to the subreddit r/translator for help, and within a few hours user Jordanj got in touch and gave me a transcript in Italian of the conversation and then an English translation.

So mystery solved, and in the interest of preservation I've used both to create subtitle tracks for the video and will reproduce them here as transcripts.

Video Link

Interviewer: Good morning, Mr. Masetti.

Masetti: Good morning.

I: Sorry to bother you.

M: No need.

I: Would you mind coming here a moment, on the balcony?

M: Sure.

I: Here under the light, so we can see you well.

M: But remember I don't want [money].

Me, I'm available for the [king].*

I: What happened at the Salvini barracks in Bologna? Can you tell us?

M: We were 300 soldiers, lined up in three rows, and 8 officers were on the stage, among which was the superior officer, the lieutenant colonel Stroppa, who was making the speech, where he said we all have family, girlfriends, and you know friends, but right this moment we only have our nation to defend... and at that moment, I put my [rifle] on the shoulders of the [second] - I was in the middle, in the middle row - and then I shot once. I was going to recharge, so they jumped on me... officers, and so on.

I: And the lieutenant colonel was only wounded...

M: Wounded, yes, till the shoulder, here. And the bullet deflected, and wounded an unlucky fellow of a soldier right under there.

I: Now, I'd like to ask you, Mr. Masetti. Yours was a an act of folly, but were you indeed crazy, like they were saying?

M:... there's 36 hours I have no recollection of. From the evening of the 29th till the 31 of the morning. Something I've always said and I'll have to always say, because it is so.

I: But, do you feel guilt for that act or not?

M: No, no! How can I feel guilty? Can you feel guilty for something you don't know about (/remember doing)? They were saying that to me In Reggio Emilia too, those professors. "Well, you must feel sorry for [???]." "Me? Why should I feel sorry?" "So you're proud of it?" "No to that too! I can't be proud of something I don't know I did!". And that's how things were, you know.

I: Were you aware that all over Italy, pro Masetti committees were being established?

M: ... Not right away, no, I didn't know right away. I learned it some days after, when the professor... Sacossi and Pedrassani, they were saying "There's a lot of support for you out there". And I said "I know nothing about it, [if there is,???] I know nothing, no one was bringing me anything. They only came the evening, some... middle-class people, you know, outside, to say hello from the window... and then they'd sing a song they made up themselves...

I: How did the song go?

M: Ah, they said "At the cell number 9 the soldier Masetti is being locked up", but then I don't remember anything else of all that stuff.

* I don't fully understand this but Masetti was making a pun the words he uses for King and money sound very similar. "Ma ricordatevi che non voglio [rei]!  Ci sono per [il re] io."

Interviewer: Buongiorno Signor Masetti.

Masetti: Buongiorno.

I: Scusi se la disturbiamo.

M: No.

I: Le dispiacerebbe venire qua un attimo, sul balcone?

M: Si.

I: Venga al sole, si faccia vedere.

M: Ma ricordatevi che non voglio [rei]!

Ci sono per [il re] io.

I: Come andarono le cose alla caserma Salvini di Bologna? Me lo vuole raccontare?

M: Eravamo in 300 soldati, sfilati in tre fila, e 8 ufficiali erano sul palco, il quale l'ufficiale superiore, che era il sergente colonello Stroppa, fece la morale, dove disse che tutti abbiamo la famiglia, abbiamo la fidanzata, abbiamo insomma gli amici, ma in questo momento qua non abbiamo altro che la patria da difendere... e io, in quel momento li', misi il fucile sulle spalle del secondo - ero in mezzo io, nella fila di mezzo - e poi sparai un colpo. Quando ritornai a caricare, allora mi saltarono addosso con... ufficiali, e cosi' via.

I: E il tenente colonnello rimase soltanto ferito...

M: Ferito, si, fino alla spalla qui. E la palla divio', e andette a ferire un disgraziato di un soldato che era li sotto.

I: Ora io vorrei chiederle, signor Masetti. Il suo fu un gesto folle, ma lei era pazzo come si disse, o no?

M: ...io ho 36 ore che non ricordo niente! Dalla sera del 29 fino al 31 della mattina. Cosa che ho sempre detto e che dovro' sempre dire, perche' e' cosi'.

I: Ma lei e' pentito di quel gesto o no?

M: No, no! Posso mica esser pentito? Come fate a esser pentito di una cosa che non sapete? A me lo dicevano anche a Reggio Emilia, i professori la'. "Beh ti dispiacera' pure della [comesono]..." "Io? Cosa vuole che mi dispiace?" "Allora hai piacere?" "Ma neanche! Non posso mica aver piacere di una cosa che non so di aver fatto". E cosi' andavano le cose, insomma.

I: Lei sapeva che in tutta Italia si stavano costituendo dei comitati pro Masetti?

M: ... Subito no, subito non lo seppi. Lo seppi qualche giorno dopo, quando il professore... Sacossi e Pedrassani, mi dicevano "c'e' un gran movimento per te fori". E io dissi "Non so niente", [gh'era la ren se gava] non sapevo niente, nessuno mi portava niente. venivano solo alla sera, dei... borghesi insomma, dal di fori, a salutarmi dalla finestra... E poi cantavano una canzone, che avevano inventato loro...

I: Come faceva questa canzone?

M: Ah, dicevano, "alla cella del numero 9 sta rinchiuso il soldato Masetti", ma io poi non mi ricordo piu' niente di quella roba li'.