Click on title to link to one of YouTube's film clips of the "Russian Revolution". Some are in English, some are in Russian, some are absurd. Good luck in sorting them out. But honor the 100th anniversary of that watershed event.
Commentary/Reflections
Today, as we honor the 100th anniversary of the Great Russian October 1917 revolution I am in a reflective mood. Although the resulting Soviet Union that I spend a great part of my adult political arguing in the defense of is no more that bright shining moment in 1917 still lingers in my soul. Perhaps that mood is a result of once again having to think about the seemingly daunting task of making the American October. Perhaps that mood is a result of a certain disappointment over the blasé reaction of many, who should have known better, to the latest imperial moves by the Obama administration in Afghanistan when the called for reaction was anger and an urge to action.
Or perhaps it is a result of the grinding down, no, the virtual atomization of the American working class (and by extension the international working class) symbolized by the high unemployment rates and the failure to response to the capitalist deprivations of the past several years. Whatever the cause today, at least, I am thinking back to the little accumulation of factors; many that I am sure have been lost in the mist of time that made me so receptive to the siren call of the victory of the first workers state although I was two generations removed from its actuality.
As communists, particularly those of us who follow the ideas generated by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, we are always talking about stages of human consciousness: ruling class consciousness; working class consciousness; political consciousness; international working class consciousness;, and revolutionary consciousness are all mixed together. Clearly, and certainly based on my own personal experiences, there is no straight line development of political consciousness much less that one is born a Bolshevik. However, many life circumstances sure as hell can pave the road. I have spend no little time in this space over the past several years relating relevant incidents and commentary from my lifetime of left wing personal and political experiences. I do not intent to repeat those observations here. I actually want to go back to my youth and recount some things that, now, make my political direction seem more like that straight line mentioned above.
Having grown up in a dirt- poor working class family and living in those early days of the post- World War II “American Century” which promised unheard of prosperity after the trials and tribulations of the 1930s Great Depression and the World War II fight certainly made a deep impression on me. Moreover, living in an almost exclusively working poor environment with all of its adverse pathologies, also gives one, of necessity, a much distorted world view. As I pointed out in a commentary last year it was a very long time before I knew that there was anything other than being poor. Although I sensed it on the few occasions that I came up against middle class and rich kids. So early on I knew that there was an us, and them. And I definitely was with us-whatever that meant.
So that is predicate-but how does that take one away from what in most cases is a turning inward away from society rather than to defiantly fighting the monsters. That, my friends is not a simple story and do not believe those who give too quick an answer to how they developed their world view. It is a mix of impressions, understandings, misunderstandings and turning points. Hell, some of it is just happenstance, or at least it seems that way. How explain that in the heart of the Joe McCarthy-led “red scare” I did not hate communists. I did not want to turn anyone I suspected in to the government. In fact a quick run through of my political trajectory that I have made people laugh at is that when told that someone was a communist (by this I mean a Stalinist, the only game in town that I was aware of at the time) I said, in my best “family of the left” voice- so what that is one more for our side. When I moved left and was actively searching for communists to unite with I could only find them deep inside the Democratic Party. And when I seriously took up a Marxist worldview I dreaded running into them.
But enough of that. What do you make of this- In 1960 I distinctly remembered rooting for the Soviet Union to win more gold medals than the United States at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Or, being in a frenzy to get a copy of the “Communist Manifesto”, although for fairly long time to use it as a political opponent of that world view. (Which I got by sending away to the Government Printing Office. The reason that the GPO had it was that it was part of the ‘evidence’ from the famous 1960 San Francisco sessions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the one that were being demonstrated against as one of the first acts of the 1960s rebellion in the North or West.). Or being non-plussed when a high school history teacher called me a “Bolshevik” (I wasn’t… then) for some minor disobedience. Those are all well and good examples but let’s leave it at this. All of this was the stuff that made up, helter-skelter, the development of my political class consciousness. I like to think that all of that was natural for a working class kid. Hey, a theory that says labor must rule should be like moth to a flame for a working class kid. I have never regretted sticking with my class. And I never have regretted my “softness” for the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Except this- Forward to more Octobers!
Commentary/Reflections
Today, as we honor the 100th anniversary of the Great Russian October 1917 revolution I am in a reflective mood. Although the resulting Soviet Union that I spend a great part of my adult political arguing in the defense of is no more that bright shining moment in 1917 still lingers in my soul. Perhaps that mood is a result of once again having to think about the seemingly daunting task of making the American October. Perhaps that mood is a result of a certain disappointment over the blasé reaction of many, who should have known better, to the latest imperial moves by the Obama administration in Afghanistan when the called for reaction was anger and an urge to action.
Or perhaps it is a result of the grinding down, no, the virtual atomization of the American working class (and by extension the international working class) symbolized by the high unemployment rates and the failure to response to the capitalist deprivations of the past several years. Whatever the cause today, at least, I am thinking back to the little accumulation of factors; many that I am sure have been lost in the mist of time that made me so receptive to the siren call of the victory of the first workers state although I was two generations removed from its actuality.
As communists, particularly those of us who follow the ideas generated by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, we are always talking about stages of human consciousness: ruling class consciousness; working class consciousness; political consciousness; international working class consciousness;, and revolutionary consciousness are all mixed together. Clearly, and certainly based on my own personal experiences, there is no straight line development of political consciousness much less that one is born a Bolshevik. However, many life circumstances sure as hell can pave the road. I have spend no little time in this space over the past several years relating relevant incidents and commentary from my lifetime of left wing personal and political experiences. I do not intent to repeat those observations here. I actually want to go back to my youth and recount some things that, now, make my political direction seem more like that straight line mentioned above.
Having grown up in a dirt- poor working class family and living in those early days of the post- World War II “American Century” which promised unheard of prosperity after the trials and tribulations of the 1930s Great Depression and the World War II fight certainly made a deep impression on me. Moreover, living in an almost exclusively working poor environment with all of its adverse pathologies, also gives one, of necessity, a much distorted world view. As I pointed out in a commentary last year it was a very long time before I knew that there was anything other than being poor. Although I sensed it on the few occasions that I came up against middle class and rich kids. So early on I knew that there was an us, and them. And I definitely was with us-whatever that meant.
So that is predicate-but how does that take one away from what in most cases is a turning inward away from society rather than to defiantly fighting the monsters. That, my friends is not a simple story and do not believe those who give too quick an answer to how they developed their world view. It is a mix of impressions, understandings, misunderstandings and turning points. Hell, some of it is just happenstance, or at least it seems that way. How explain that in the heart of the Joe McCarthy-led “red scare” I did not hate communists. I did not want to turn anyone I suspected in to the government. In fact a quick run through of my political trajectory that I have made people laugh at is that when told that someone was a communist (by this I mean a Stalinist, the only game in town that I was aware of at the time) I said, in my best “family of the left” voice- so what that is one more for our side. When I moved left and was actively searching for communists to unite with I could only find them deep inside the Democratic Party. And when I seriously took up a Marxist worldview I dreaded running into them.
But enough of that. What do you make of this- In 1960 I distinctly remembered rooting for the Soviet Union to win more gold medals than the United States at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Or, being in a frenzy to get a copy of the “Communist Manifesto”, although for fairly long time to use it as a political opponent of that world view. (Which I got by sending away to the Government Printing Office. The reason that the GPO had it was that it was part of the ‘evidence’ from the famous 1960 San Francisco sessions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the one that were being demonstrated against as one of the first acts of the 1960s rebellion in the North or West.). Or being non-plussed when a high school history teacher called me a “Bolshevik” (I wasn’t… then) for some minor disobedience. Those are all well and good examples but let’s leave it at this. All of this was the stuff that made up, helter-skelter, the development of my political class consciousness. I like to think that all of that was natural for a working class kid. Hey, a theory that says labor must rule should be like moth to a flame for a working class kid. I have never regretted sticking with my class. And I never have regretted my “softness” for the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Except this- Forward to more Octobers!
No comments:
Post a Comment