Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the American scientist Stephen Jay Gould.
Markin comment:
The following is an article from the Spring 1992 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
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Punctured Equilibrium
Stephen Jay Gould and the Mismeasure of Marx
The following article is reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 563, 73 November 1992.
Stephen Jay Could describes himself as a teacher of biology, geology and the history of science. He is a rare commodity in the contemporary scientific world: one who is both an original thinker in his field and a facile communicator of science to the general public. He brings to mind another great popularizer of science, the late Isaac Asimov, who combined an academic career as a biochemist with a prodigious literary output (nearly 500 books), especially of science fiction, which attracted an entire generation of future scientists. Gould has dealt with science fact rather than fiction. His writings on natural history, which we Spartacists have found thought-provoking, are perhaps best known in his collections of essays (e.g., Ever Since Darwin, The Panda's Thumb) and books including The Mismeasure of Man and Wonderful Life.
Gould is also quite unusual in contemporary American science for forthrightly acknowledging that Marx and Engels had prescient insights on human biological and sociological evolution—a question which fascinates both Gould and ourselves. We were struck, therefore, by how far Gould strays from a scientific approach in his October 1992 column in Natural History, where he writes that the "Soviet collapse" signifies that "Marx's economics has failed spectacularly, at least in the largest and longest experiment ever carried out in its name."
Gould's column, "Life in a Punctuation," extensively quotes from an article by David Warsh, "Redeeming Karl Marx" (Boston Globe, 3 May 1992). Warsh begins with the statement, "So much for communism, Russian-style." But then he asks, "what has happened to Karl Marx?... Does that mean that Marx will be consigned to the intellectual scrap heap? Probably not. As a symbol, he'll be around as long as people hunger for justice—a tarnished but evocative figure, in whose name great crimes have been committed, not unlike other great religious figures, Jesus and Mohammed." It's hardly "redemption" to reduce Marx, the dialectical materialist and revolutionary, to the role of a religious figure. But Warsh acknowledges the enduring power of Marx's ideas, adding that "you don't need even a smattering of recondite economics to understand Marx's enduring place in the modern world. His memorial is the word revolution...."
Warsh in his article cites Marx as the father of the "idea of punctuated equilibrium," which was developed by Gould and his associate Miles Eldredge in the early 1970s in the field of evolutionary biology. This is an application in the field of natural science of Marx's refutation of gradualism and his understanding that the development of history proceeds through revolutionary leaps. Gould describes the counterrevolutionary transformation taking place in the former Soviet Union also as a "punctuation." Drawing on observations gleaned during a brief trip to Moscow and Leningrad last summer, he arrives at his conclusion about the "failed experiment" of Marxist economics. Gould's wrongheaded conclusion is based on a misunderstanding of what Marxism represents, and ignores the whole historical development which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 1917 October Revolution and its subsequent development was no isolated lab test in a Petri dish! Any evaluation of what happened in the former USSR that leaves out the historic context, the tremendous external pressures upon it and its impact on the rest of the world, cannot be scientific, and will certainly be wrong.
Gould does not pretend to be a political theorist per se, but when he addresses such questions, we can ask that he do so with the rigor that he would apply in his own field. We doubt that he would make such sweeping statements about scientific opponents without a careful study of their works. Gould's view of the Soviet collapse reminds us a bit of a would-be biologist coming upon a mass of drowned caribou at a river crossing and, upon viewing the evidence before his eyes, pronouncing the species not viable. Gould has trenchantly pointed to the influence of political bias in shaping scientific views. In a 1978 workshop on dialectics at Harvard, he remarked that "it's not irrelevant that my daddy raised me a Marxist" (Science and Nature No. 2, 1979). But what did he learn as Marxism?
And why does Gould, a member of the advisory board of the journal Rethinking Marxism, lend credence to the current bourgeois brouhaha over the "death of communism"? Let us put forward our own hypothesis: that Gould confuses Marxism with its falsification, Stalinism, which has indeed been struck a mortal blow. We find it remarkable that in his remarks on the Soviet Union he never mentions the name Leon Trotsky. Even conservative bourgeois historians recognize the need to address Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, if only in an attempt to refute it. And in a broader methodological sense, Gould accepts the Stalinist caricature of Marxism as a kind of mechanistic determinism. "He was still a child of his mechanistic age," writes Gould, and "embodied a related conviction that directions of change are progressive, predictable and well-nigh inevitable." Marx "hoped for a predictive theory of history, with progressive stages proceeding in a punctuational manner from primitive communism to slavery to feudalism to capitalism and finally to true communism."
This comes not from Marx but from Stalin's primer on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1938 edition, or one of those unreadable Soviet "diamat" manuals that present a mechanical and deterministic distortion of dialectical materialism. Marx, in his 1857-58 manuscripts on pre-capitalist economic formations, the Grundrisse, also wrote of an "Asiatic mode of production" in ancient Mesopotamia, India, China and elsewhere. Yet these writings were suppressed by the Kremlin for decades, because
they didn't fit into Stalin's simplistic schema, which reduced Marxism to a pseudo-materialist catechism. In contrast, Trotsky wrote, in his speech on "Radio, Science, Technology, and Society" (March 1926):
"Liberal scholars—now they are no more—commonly used to depict the whole of the history of mankind as a continuous line of progress. This was wrong. The line of progress is curved, broken, zigzagging. Culture now advances, now declines. There was the culture of ancient Asia, there was the culture of antiquity, of Greece and Rome, then European culture began to develop, and now American culture is rising in skyscrapers."
Or consider Rosa Luxemburg's poignant phrase from World War I, that mankind faces the stark alternatives: socialism or barbarism.
In fact, even in the first lines of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels noted that class struggles ended "either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." This is a theme which echoes throughout their later writings. Engels' 1891 introduction to Marx's The Civil War in France warned of the dangers of a European war involving tens of millions of men at arms. This was written over two decades before the cataclysm of World War I. Marx and Engels' dialectical outlook showed how existing and developing economic forces pave the way for social change but don't automatically "determine" that this or that political leadership will accomplish a particular historically possible task.
Gould acknowledges his intellectual debt to Marx—and to Engels—whose dialectical and materialist analysis unlocked an understanding of historical forces, and has been clearly shown to apply equally well to the natural sciences. Lenin, in his 1913 biographical sketch of Marx, quoted from Engels, with his own bracketed notes:
"Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics [from the destruction of idealism, including Hegelianism] and apply it in the materialist conception of Nature....
"Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich [this was written before the discovery of radium, electrons, the transmutation of elements, etc.!] and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis Nature's process is dialectical and not metaphysical."
This has been proved in virtually every field of science, from quantum mechanics to mathematics to recent developments in the understanding of how consciousness and perception occur in the human brain, and to Gould's own area of biology.
Consciousness and Contingency
The basic premise of Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium" is that species are stable for long periods, on the multimillion-year scale of geological time, until some geographical isolation separates a formerly genetically "homogeneous" population, or some climatic change or catastrophic event opens up new niches into which new species rapidly evolve. This "punctuation" is then followed by a new stasis. The nature of the changes during the "punctuation" are governed by what Gould calls "contingency"—i.e., along the rocky road of evolution, genetic change is essentially random and nature's path unpredictable, subject to the impact of powerful environmental events.
This is fine, so far as natural history is concerned. But when Gould considers a complex social question such as the USSR, his concept of "punctuation" guts Marxism of its key factor: the "contingent" factor is not nature's random choice but rather the presence or absence of conscious leadership. Take the work Gould cites, Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx describes in great detail how at many key points in the period 1848-51, the faction-ridden French bourgeoisie could have moved to prevent Bonaparte's coup d'etat. Marx lays bare that the fundamental question was a clash of class forces: the proletariat lacked the strength and leadership to take power in its own name, while the bourgeoisie, in fear of the ghosts of 1789 (and the proletarian masses of 1848), dawdled and surrendered political power to Bonaparte in order to preserve its economic class interests. And the bourgeoisie's response was no accidental fluke of "contingency"—the big financiers made a conscious choice that their sacred property was better defended by the empire than by the republic.
One might ask Gould, if Marx and Engels were such mechanical determinists, convinced that communism inevitably follows from capitalism as night from day, why then did they devote so much time to organizing a revolutionary political party, from the Communist League to the First and Second Internationals?
What does it mean, as Gould claims, that "Marx's economics has failed"? The economic system which issued out of the October Revolution proved the power of centralized planning. In describing his visit to Russia, Gould describes the Moscow subway system as "the world's best," and applauds "the wonderful paleontological museum in Moscow...one of the world's best both in content and display." How does Gould account for these achievements? Is it "Marx's economics" or capitalist market forces that are responsible for the fact that the museum is now closed indefinitely? Central planning performed wonders in transforming the Soviet Union from a backward peasant country to a modern industrial and military power that was capable of defeating the Nazi juggernaut
in World War II and was the first to launch satellites into space. As American Trotskyist leader James R Cannon said in 1939:
"The Russian revolution showed in practice, by example, how the workers' revolution is to be made.... By its victory, and its reorganization of the social system, the Russian revolution has proved for all time the superiority of nationalized property and planned economy over capitalist private property, and planless competition and anarchy in production."
—The Struggle for a Proletarian Party
So what did happen in the USSR? Where Gould claims that the Soviet collapse proved Marxism wrong, Trotsky long ago predicted that the continued domination of the Stalinist bureaucracy would necessarily lead to capitalist restoration. In his article, "The Class Nature of the Soviet State" (October 1933), he wrote: "The further unhindered development of bureaucratism must lead inevitably to the cessation of economic and cultural growth, to a terrible social crisis and to the downward plunge of the entire society. But this would imply not only the collapse of the proletarian dictatorship but also the end of bureaucratic domination. In place of the workers' state would come not 'social bureaucratic' but capitalist relations."
Trotsky pounded away at this theme, warning in his article "The Workers' State, Thermidor, and Bonapartism" (February 1935) that: "The inevitable collapse of the Stalinist political regime will lead to the establishment of Soviet democracy only in the event that the removal of Bonapartism comes as the conscious act of the proletarian vanguard. In all other cases, in place of Stalinism there could only come the fascist-capitalist counterrevolution." And again in his comprehensive analysis of the Stalinist degeneration, The Revolution Betrayed (1937), he sharply posed the two alternatives: "Will the bureaucrat devour the workers' state, or will the working class clean up the bureaucrat?" How Gould missed this and other writings by Trotsky is a mystery to us, particularly since Trotsky's archives are located in Harvard's Houghton Library, just a short walk from the buildings in which Could works.
Stalinism vs. Marxism
The program of Marxism is world proletarian revolution. Marx insisted that the construction of socialism would occur on the basis of an international division of labor and on the highest level of development of the productive forces, "because without it only want is made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities begins again and all the old crap must revive" (The German Ideology [1846]). Only with the "universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established," he wrote, for without this "each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism." Lenin and Trotsky stood for this internationalist perspective; they looked on the Russian Revolution as the first step in a European-wide revolution. In fact, none of the Bolshevik cadres thought that the Russian Revolution could survive without international extension, above all to Germany.
The idea that "socialism" could be built in a single country (and a backward one at that), surrounded by imperialist enemies, is a nationalist perversion of Marxism. One of the early exponents of such a "theory" was the revisionist German Social Democrat Georg Vollmar; at least he was honest about his revision of Marxism and sought to apply it to advanced capitalist Germany, not backward Russia. Even Stalin himself repudiated the very idea in his pamphlet "Foundations of Leninism" issued in the spring of 1924:
"The principal task of socialism—the organization of socialist production—has still to be fulfilled. Can this task be fulfilled, can the final victory of socialism be achieved in one country, without the joint efforts of the proletarians in several advanced countries? No, it cannot. To overthrow the bourgeoisie the efforts of one country are sufficient; this is proved by the history of our revolution. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient; for that the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are required."
Several months later, Stalin reversed himself and the first edition of his pamphlet was withdrawn. Now Stalin declared that the Soviet Union "can and must build a socialist society" within the confines of a single country.
Stalin's dogma of "socialism in one country" was the ideological afterbirth of a political counterrevolution which defeated Leninist internationalism and brought to power a nationalist bureaucratic caste. The failure of the German Revolution of 1923 greatly assisted the consolidation of this conservative stratum. The fact that Stalin had to ruthlessly purge and murder all the Bolshevik cadres who had led the October Revolution should be sufficiently sanguinary evidence of the gulf between the bureaucracy and Marxism. Trotsky characterized the Soviet Union under Stalinist rule as a degenerated workers state and called for a proletarian political revolution to restore soviet democracy.
The October Revolution was an enormous leap forward for mankind—the first time that the proletariat took state power in its own name. Such a conquest had to be defended; Trotsky and the Left Opposition fought the degeneration of the revolution, and they fought to unconditionally defend the Soviet Union against counterrevolution, despite and against Stalin. The Soviet system hardly developed in a bell jar. The Civil War of 1918-20, in which 14 foreign armies invaded the young Soviet republic, devastated the country. A generation later the Nazi invaders killed 27 million Soviet citizens and turned much of Russia into scorched earth. Twice the economy was rebuilt on socialized property forms, despite the constant capitalist economic pressure, most recently manifested in a colossal arms race designed to bankrupt the Soviet economy.
In the absence of soviet workers democracy, the planned economy could only go so far. As Trotsky predicted, when the period of extensive growth under Stalin gave way to the need for intensive development, for qualitative improvements in productivity, the bureaucratic "command" economy began to founder. Congenitally hostile to promoting the spread of revolution internationally, the Stalinist bureaucracy finally saw no way out but the introduction of market relations. Under Gorbachev the bureaucracy scuttled central planning as a conscious choice. The result of abandoning planning in a planned economy, however bureaucratically distorted, was economic chaos that spurred the drive for power by emerging capitalist forces. Compounding that problem are the consequences of the fragmenting of the USSR: the economy had been organized on an all-Union basis.
Today various Stalinist remnants are arguing that the Soviet Union was a "failed model of socialism," the result of the proletariat seizing power in backward Russia. This completely abstracts the question from its historical context. Amid the carnage of the First World War, the imperialist chain broke at its "weakest link," in Lenin's words. The key to the Russian Revolution was the conscious factor: the Bolshevik Party, rooted in the working class and with a program for proletarian power. In contrast, that very "contingent" factor was lacking in Germany—the Communist Party there was only constituted in December 1918, and it proved inadequate in the 1923 revolutionary crisis. Had the German proletariat made its October, subsequent history would have been very different. The isolation of the Soviet Union would have been broken and the way opened for socialist revolutions throughout Europe, cutting off the consolidation of the Stalinist bureaucracy. And a certain Austrian-born corporal would have spent the rest of his days hanging out in Munich beer halls.
But that's not the way it worked out, and mankind has suffered greatly with the outcome. Gould's essay cites Marx's aphorism from The Eighteenth Brumaire that "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please." He might also have included the rest of the sentence: "they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."
"Punctuating to a Better Place"
Gould astutely observes that "Russia is presently in the midst of a punctuation that must soon resolve itself in one way or another—into some form of promise or prosperity, or some species of chaos and dissolution." In his own way, Gould sees something that we have insisted on since Yeltsinite counterrevolution gained the ascendancy in August 1991: that this ushered in an unstable interregnum. From our statement then that Moscow workers should have torn down Yeltsin's barricades, to our call for workers committees to seize control over food supplies last winter, we have called for workers political revolution to sweep away the capitalist-restorationist regimes and place the proletariat in power.
Gould reports on the economic and social disintegration in the rush to capitalist counterrevolution; this is apparent even in his anecdotal observations from July 1992. Institutes and museums are closed for lack of rubles to pay the staff; people meet in impromptu market areas desperately seeking otherwise unobtainable items. The cataclysmic descent into the "free market" has already provided such capitalist virtues as homelessness, unemployment, street crime and the collapse of medical care. The New York Times (4 October 1992) reports that 60 percent of Soviet children now have rickets. According to the bourgeois sages, these and other ills are related to the previous Communist (Stalinist) regime's environmental crimes, but rickets is not due to mercury or PCBs— it is due to malnutrition: the lack of vitamin D.
Gould has done great service in his voluminous writings debunking wrongheaded and outright racist ideas found in the scientific literature, noting that scientists are influenced by the dominant ideologies of the societies in which they live. In The Mismeasure of Man he states:
"Scientists needn't become explicit apologists for their class or culture in order to reflect these pervasive aspects of life.... I believe that science must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of robots programmed to collect pure information."
Yet when considering the situation in Russia, Gould himself is held in thrall by the triumphalism of bourgeois anti-communism. He takes the "pure information" of the Soviet collapse to assert the failure of Marxism.
Gould applies contingency to human society in a mechanistic fashion, downplaying the role of consciousness, historically and materially conditioned. Human beings are not snails. In the October Revolution, accident played its role, yet it was the greatest achievement of human consciousness playing itself out on the stage of history. We Trotskyists seek the revival of the liberating goals of the October Revolution, not only in the former USSR, but across the planet. Socialism will make modern technique, science, culture and education available to all, with a corresponding explosion in creative human achievement.
In the end, Gould offers what amounts to a pious hope, "Perhaps we will punctuate to a better place." Or maybe not. Rejecting the mechanistic determinism which he falsely ascribes to Marx, Gould opts for what is essentially a religious outlook, hoping that "accident" will be beneficial. But the "punctuation" could be very negative: instead of evolution, there could be involution, or a cataclysmic descent into barbarism. It is upon the resolution of the crisis of proletarian leadership that the future of humanity depends.
We have enjoyed Gould's articles in the past and we look forward to more. Regarding Marx and the Soviet developments, his conclusions are impressionistic. Can he apply to those questions the scientific approach he applies in his own field? As Plekhanov said of the misconceptions of Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Labriola: "We should be very glad if it were so; it is pleasant to have intelligent people agree with you. And if he did not agree with us, regretfully we would repeat that this intelligent man is mistaken."
Showing posts with label SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. Show all posts
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- In Defense Of Science
Click on the title to link to a section of a 1925 article by Leon Trotsky, "Dialectical Materialism and Science".
Monday, January 11, 2010
***Those Who Fought For Our Commuist Future Are Kindred Spirits - On Eugene Debs- For Free Speech-He Should Have Never Spent A Minute In Jail.
Click Below To Link To An Article By Anthony Lewis On American Socialist Party Leader Eugene V. Debs' Free Speech Fight Against The Wilson Administration During World War I And The Role Of United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes "Justice Holmes And The Splendid Prisoner" From The July 2, 2009 Issue Of "The New York Review Of Books".
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=22800
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In the month of January as we honor the key revolutionary leaders of the early 20th century international labor movement Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg let's not forget the struggle of the American Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs. We, in the end had a lot of political disagreements with Brother Debs, especially on the need to break with the reformists and form a revolutionary vanguard party, but we have learned from his mistakes. Needless to say we respect his courage and fortitude for standing up against the American war machine when others, including so-called socialists took at dive on the question.
The well-known perspective, at least in legal circles, of Mr. Lewis is that of a liberal advocate in defense of free speech (except, of course, when it is inconvenient to the interests of the "democratic" state) and one with a general admiration for Justice Holmes' turn on the question. Our point is simpler- Brother Debs should never have spent a minute in jail for his speech against American entry into World War I and the draft. Nor should have the many IWW, socialist and other labor militants rounded up in the governments dragnet of war oppositionists. Old Justice Holmes was a little behind the curve on this one, even on the constitutional question.
Two points always come to mind around Debs' struggle during World War I. One is, although we are now older and wiser about running for executive office in the bourgeois state, that I still always love that picture of him campaigning for President Of The United States from his cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. That may be the only honorable, if politically incorrect, way to campaign for such an office. Second, the Debs fight, as this Lewis article vividly points out, also brings home the point about the labor movement relying on the good offices of the courts. We use them, and rightly so, but we depend on our own organizations and mobilizations to win our battles.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=22800
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In the month of January as we honor the key revolutionary leaders of the early 20th century international labor movement Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg let's not forget the struggle of the American Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs. We, in the end had a lot of political disagreements with Brother Debs, especially on the need to break with the reformists and form a revolutionary vanguard party, but we have learned from his mistakes. Needless to say we respect his courage and fortitude for standing up against the American war machine when others, including so-called socialists took at dive on the question.
The well-known perspective, at least in legal circles, of Mr. Lewis is that of a liberal advocate in defense of free speech (except, of course, when it is inconvenient to the interests of the "democratic" state) and one with a general admiration for Justice Holmes' turn on the question. Our point is simpler- Brother Debs should never have spent a minute in jail for his speech against American entry into World War I and the draft. Nor should have the many IWW, socialist and other labor militants rounded up in the governments dragnet of war oppositionists. Old Justice Holmes was a little behind the curve on this one, even on the constitutional question.
Two points always come to mind around Debs' struggle during World War I. One is, although we are now older and wiser about running for executive office in the bourgeois state, that I still always love that picture of him campaigning for President Of The United States from his cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. That may be the only honorable, if politically incorrect, way to campaign for such an office. Second, the Debs fight, as this Lewis article vividly points out, also brings home the point about the labor movement relying on the good offices of the courts. We use them, and rightly so, but we depend on our own organizations and mobilizations to win our battles.
Monday, November 02, 2009
*On The 20th Anniversary Of The Fall Of The Berlin Wall - The Defeated Fight To Save Socialism- The International Communist League View
Click on title to link to "Workers Vanguard" two-part article published in September 2003, "Why We Fought To Defend The Soviet Union" that is germane to the comments that I have made below about the defeat of that struggle of which the fall of the Berlin Wall is something of a symbol.
Commentary/Discussion Issue
Random reflections on the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in the struggle for the world socialist revolution.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that had previously physically separated the two parts of Germany, an event that had significance for all political tendencies in the world, capitalist and anti-capitalist alike. Needless to say the various imperial states, chief among them the main anti-communist adversary the United States, but others as well, ‘democratic’ or otherwise, hailed the event as the beginning of the end of communism as they knew it- what has since been loudly trumpeted as the “death of communism”. Those capitalist opponents have since that time reveled, for the most part successfully, in that triumph.
For most of the Western left, following in the footsteps of their social-democratic forbears whose track record in helping to preserve capitalism speak for itself, this event was treated like “manna” from heaven. However, this attitude also included the vast majority of organizations that called themselves revolutionary as this demolition was heralded as the beginning of the newer, better struggle for socialism minus its Stalinist drag. Twenty years out we can take stock of those predictions and predilections and also make some comments on the significance of fall of the Wall and the fate of that much ballyhooed renewed socialist struggle with a “human” face.
The great Bolshevik organizer of victory and high Soviet official in the early days, Leon Trotsky, whom we can safely assign the role of the leading anti-Stalinist of his day and who paid with his head for that opposition, spent the last few years of his life, including his last major political struggle of his career calling for the defense of the Soviet state. Now Trotsky was not some mushy-headed sentimentalist (although I am sure as a revolutionary leader of the first workers state and a high ex-Soviet official that he held sentimental attachments to what he helped create) who, in hindsight was compelled to defend his creation. Rather, he argued, strenuously, in the famous fight over defense of the Soviet Union that broke out most dramatically in the American Socialist Workers party at the beginning of World War II and chronicled in his book, “In Defense Of Marxism”, that the overthrow of capitalist economic relations and the centralized planning, warts and all, made defense of those property forms a matter of revolutionary duty. No, more than that, of revolutionary necessity. That “little” proposition had been the wedge issue dividing revolutionaries and reformists then, and has since
This issue is where leftists of all persuasions went off the rails in the post-World II period when the Soviet Union, as an adjunct to victory in that war, created workers states that reflected their notion of property forms in their “sphere of influence”. And no more so than in the DDR. That factor in holding off Western imperialism was the first causality in the struggle against it. To deny the place of the workers state as a factor, distorted by Stalinist degeneration as in the Soviet Union or by deformation as in the East European states, in world revolutionary strategy ultimately led to incorrect (to say the least) analysis of the nature of world politics. Rather than seeing the demise of the Soviet Union and the other states of East Europe, especially the DDR as a world historic defeat for the international working class there was, and frankly still is, an assumption that starting over from scratch (pre-1917) was more important that preserving the gains at hand. Some of the more somber types who held that position now know better, others never will.
I mentioned above the key role of Leon Trotsky in the 1930s as the leading pro- Communist anti-Stalinist recognized even by his adversaries, grudgingly or not, as a heroic figure fighting in that struggle. While this is not the time to drag up old controversies one of the reasons that he was unsuccessful in defeating Stalin was the too quick tendency of various leftists, including those starch social –democratic types mentioned above to fall all over Stalin at that time, especially when the Communist International put its strategy of the ‘popular front’ in full motion. In short, to worship the accomplished fact of Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union.
Well, there is nothing that can be done about that now; however, all these latter day professions of undying anti-Stalinism that animated Western ‘socialist’ theory and practice in the 1980s cannot cover for the fact that this “knee jerk” reaction, reflecting petty bourgeois sentiment in the West, can only be characterized as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. My friends that is never a good policy. The assumption that once the deformed and degenerate workers states were off the political map that the newly created neo-capitalist states (as they have been called although a quick look at the situations there in the post- Soviet period makes them look an awful lot like the old-fashioned kind of capitalist states with all the economic and political tendencies that go with them) would be fertile ground for social- democratic propaganda and in the international working class of the old capitalist states as well has proved groundless. Rather, as the last twenty years have painfully demonstrated, the ‘lessons’ drawn by the working classes have been to dismiss socialist solutions, at least over the short haul, from their day to day struggles. While this decline in class consciousness can be directly laid to the foul doorstep of Stalinism the international social democracy and its horde of leftist hangers-on also share responsibility.
Finally, this above-mentioned decline in socialist class consciousness in the international working class is not only part and parcel of the demise of Stalinism but has hard strategic implications today when the world economic situation for the first time in a long time shows very clearly the desperate need for international centralized planning to push humankind forward. Although there is more to be heard from working people as this crisis remains unabated today the response (or rather non-response) to the decline in their living standards has either taken the path of passive acceptance, individual action or no political reaction at all. That, my friends, is what we should be taking away from the fall of the Berlin Wall. While others rejoice or have fond memories of this graphic example of capitalist restoration and we, for now, have to put up with it as a continuing symbol that impedes our struggle. But take heart,-to paraphrase something the old anti- Stalinist fighter Trotsky wrote in his lonely struggle against Stalin. Stalinism rising again–never. Communism rising again- forever. Forward to new Octobers!
Commentary/Discussion Issue
Random reflections on the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in the struggle for the world socialist revolution.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that had previously physically separated the two parts of Germany, an event that had significance for all political tendencies in the world, capitalist and anti-capitalist alike. Needless to say the various imperial states, chief among them the main anti-communist adversary the United States, but others as well, ‘democratic’ or otherwise, hailed the event as the beginning of the end of communism as they knew it- what has since been loudly trumpeted as the “death of communism”. Those capitalist opponents have since that time reveled, for the most part successfully, in that triumph.
For most of the Western left, following in the footsteps of their social-democratic forbears whose track record in helping to preserve capitalism speak for itself, this event was treated like “manna” from heaven. However, this attitude also included the vast majority of organizations that called themselves revolutionary as this demolition was heralded as the beginning of the newer, better struggle for socialism minus its Stalinist drag. Twenty years out we can take stock of those predictions and predilections and also make some comments on the significance of fall of the Wall and the fate of that much ballyhooed renewed socialist struggle with a “human” face.
The great Bolshevik organizer of victory and high Soviet official in the early days, Leon Trotsky, whom we can safely assign the role of the leading anti-Stalinist of his day and who paid with his head for that opposition, spent the last few years of his life, including his last major political struggle of his career calling for the defense of the Soviet state. Now Trotsky was not some mushy-headed sentimentalist (although I am sure as a revolutionary leader of the first workers state and a high ex-Soviet official that he held sentimental attachments to what he helped create) who, in hindsight was compelled to defend his creation. Rather, he argued, strenuously, in the famous fight over defense of the Soviet Union that broke out most dramatically in the American Socialist Workers party at the beginning of World War II and chronicled in his book, “In Defense Of Marxism”, that the overthrow of capitalist economic relations and the centralized planning, warts and all, made defense of those property forms a matter of revolutionary duty. No, more than that, of revolutionary necessity. That “little” proposition had been the wedge issue dividing revolutionaries and reformists then, and has since
This issue is where leftists of all persuasions went off the rails in the post-World II period when the Soviet Union, as an adjunct to victory in that war, created workers states that reflected their notion of property forms in their “sphere of influence”. And no more so than in the DDR. That factor in holding off Western imperialism was the first causality in the struggle against it. To deny the place of the workers state as a factor, distorted by Stalinist degeneration as in the Soviet Union or by deformation as in the East European states, in world revolutionary strategy ultimately led to incorrect (to say the least) analysis of the nature of world politics. Rather than seeing the demise of the Soviet Union and the other states of East Europe, especially the DDR as a world historic defeat for the international working class there was, and frankly still is, an assumption that starting over from scratch (pre-1917) was more important that preserving the gains at hand. Some of the more somber types who held that position now know better, others never will.
I mentioned above the key role of Leon Trotsky in the 1930s as the leading pro- Communist anti-Stalinist recognized even by his adversaries, grudgingly or not, as a heroic figure fighting in that struggle. While this is not the time to drag up old controversies one of the reasons that he was unsuccessful in defeating Stalin was the too quick tendency of various leftists, including those starch social –democratic types mentioned above to fall all over Stalin at that time, especially when the Communist International put its strategy of the ‘popular front’ in full motion. In short, to worship the accomplished fact of Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union.
Well, there is nothing that can be done about that now; however, all these latter day professions of undying anti-Stalinism that animated Western ‘socialist’ theory and practice in the 1980s cannot cover for the fact that this “knee jerk” reaction, reflecting petty bourgeois sentiment in the West, can only be characterized as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. My friends that is never a good policy. The assumption that once the deformed and degenerate workers states were off the political map that the newly created neo-capitalist states (as they have been called although a quick look at the situations there in the post- Soviet period makes them look an awful lot like the old-fashioned kind of capitalist states with all the economic and political tendencies that go with them) would be fertile ground for social- democratic propaganda and in the international working class of the old capitalist states as well has proved groundless. Rather, as the last twenty years have painfully demonstrated, the ‘lessons’ drawn by the working classes have been to dismiss socialist solutions, at least over the short haul, from their day to day struggles. While this decline in class consciousness can be directly laid to the foul doorstep of Stalinism the international social democracy and its horde of leftist hangers-on also share responsibility.
Finally, this above-mentioned decline in socialist class consciousness in the international working class is not only part and parcel of the demise of Stalinism but has hard strategic implications today when the world economic situation for the first time in a long time shows very clearly the desperate need for international centralized planning to push humankind forward. Although there is more to be heard from working people as this crisis remains unabated today the response (or rather non-response) to the decline in their living standards has either taken the path of passive acceptance, individual action or no political reaction at all. That, my friends, is what we should be taking away from the fall of the Berlin Wall. While others rejoice or have fond memories of this graphic example of capitalist restoration and we, for now, have to put up with it as a continuing symbol that impedes our struggle. But take heart,-to paraphrase something the old anti- Stalinist fighter Trotsky wrote in his lonely struggle against Stalin. Stalinism rising again–never. Communism rising again- forever. Forward to new Octobers!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
***Writer's Corner- James T. Farrell On Meeting Leon Trotsky
Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For The Writer (Most Famously The "Studs Lonigan" Trilogy)And Left-Wing Political Activist. More, Much More Will Appear On This Writer At A Later Time, Including His Political Disputes With Various American Followers Of Leon Trotsky And His Contributions To The Socialist Workers Party's Political Defense Work(Especially, The Defense Of Leon Trotsky, During The Heart Of The Moscow Trials- When It Counted).
Guest Commentary
James T Farrell
A Memoir on Leon Trotsky
I met Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1937. He seemed different from what might have been expected. He gave the impression of extraordinary simplicity. Alice Ruhl – wife of Otto Ruhl, one time left wing Socialist member of the German Reichstag and biographer of Karl Marx – said of Trotsky that he had changed from his younger days: he had, she said, become more simple, more like Lenin. Many who knew him earlier said that he was cold. He did not seem so in Mexico. He was easy to talk to and one felt less distance between him and oneself than is sometimes the case when one meets a man prominent in political life. But this comparison is perhaps not a good one. Trotsky was then a defeated leader, and a man in exile. He was seeking to rebuild a political movement and was engaged in the most dramatic fight of his life. Accused of betraying the revolution he helped to lead and the society he did so much in helping to found, he was defending his revolutionary honor. He lived behind guarded walls, and followers and secretaries of his carried guns inside his home. He was preparing to answer the charges Stalin launched against him in the Moscow trials.
Elsewhere I have described the Coyoacan Hearings held by the Commission of Inquiry of which Dr. John Dewey was chairman. [1] I shall not repeat this here, but shall merely offer a few personal impressions and anecdotes about him.
One could not separate Trotsky the man from Trotsky the historical figure. When you saw him and spoke with him, you were aware that he was the man who organized the practical details of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and also that he was the organizer of the Red Army. You were aware that you were speaking with one of the greatest revolutionaries in history. He himself had a deep sense of history and of his own historic role. The intense drama of his life was known to me. There he was in that home on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan, pitting his brain against an empire. It was because he was Trotsky that his simplicity was so striking when he was gray and living like a hunted man in Mexico. His followers spoke of him in worshipful tones. For them, he made life more important. He permitted them to believe that they, too, were entering history. They called him “the Old Man,” and they acted like disciples. Constantly, they would pose questions to ascertain what one thought of him, and when John Dewey remarked on Trotsky’s brilliance, they immediately began thinking and hoping that Trotsky would convert Dewey to Trotskyism.
There was an exactness about Trotsky. Even in English, his choice of words revealed this. He seemed to know how far he wanted to go with each person, and his choice of words conveyed or suggested this. There was not, however, much spontaneity in him – or, rather, his spontaneity was kept in check. He, himself, had given his life to an Idea. This Idea – the Revolution – and his personality were as though fused together. A brave man, he was always ready to make any sacrifice to the Idea, and he dealt with people in terms of their relationship to and their acceptance of the Idea. What use would they be to this Idea, this cause? He was working for and living for the cause.
Thus, while he was easy to talk. to, it yet remained that there was a distance between him and others. You did not come into contact with his full personality as you did with, say, John Dewey. This seemed most clear to me the last time I spoke with him. We sat by the long table on which he worked in the home of the painter, Diego Rivera, on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan. He asked me what I was going to do when I returned to America. “I’m going to write novels.” He said he knew that, but again asked me what I was going to do. The service to the cause was more important to him than your personality. Max Eastman, who knew him much better than I did, has often said that he was cold. This I believe is what Eastman means, this seeing individuals as servants to an aim and an idea rather than as personalities in their own right. And this was a trait in his character which marked him off as so different from John Dewey.
He was a witty, graceful, and gallant man. There was something deeply touching and inspiring in his relationship with his wife, Natalia. She was very small and elegant. One could see that she had once been a beautiful woman. The tragedies of her life, the loss of her children in particular, had saddened her. Hers was one of the saddest faces I have ever seen, and she is one of the bravest and noblest of women. Whenever you saw them together, you could not but sense how there was a current of tenderness between them. A gentleness and depth of feeling was apparent in the way he looked at her or touched her hand.
We went on a picnic with him after the ending of the Coyoacan Hearings. Waiting to leave and standing on the porch of the patio of the Rivera home, there was Trotsky bustling about, making sure that there was enough food for everyone, that there was beer for me, that nothing would be forgotten or overlooked. My wife said to me teasingly that Trotsky took an interest in his home and that if he could, why couldn’t I. He came up to me a moment later. I remarked: “L.D., you have ruined my life.”
I explained what I meant and told him what my wife had said.
“It is very simple,” he answered, speaking with a strong accent. “Once (pronouncing it like vunce) I had to feed five million men. It is a little more complicated than feeding five.” Often there was a point, a political reference, a moral in his wit.
We left for a nearby woods in two cars. My wife and I got into the back seat of a roadster. All was in readiness for our departure. Suddenly, Trotsky appeared at the side of the car and said: “Jim, I will (the w pronounced like a v) ride in the open car, and Hortense will ride in the closed car.”
There was gallantry here. For Trotsky to ride in an open car meant a possible risk to his life. Along with his gallantry, there was in his nature a deep respect for women. I have met many Europeans of the Left and of the Revolution, and I have read much of their lives and been told many anecdotes about them. Many of these men, without being quite aware of it, have given the best years of their lives to an effort to emancipate mankind. But with a good proportion of them, emancipation stops at the door of their own homes. Their wives are not completely included in this emancipation; they do all of the housework and serve their revolutionary husbands, sometimes slavishly. In one place in his recent biography The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, Isaac Deutscher mentions how Trotsky, busy as he was, would in a very un-European fashion, help Natalia with the housework and the care of the children. Trotsky’s gallantry was, I believe, real, and it was based on a sense of the dignity of women and of respect for them.
At the picnic, Trotsky and Natalia went off to walk in the woods in opposite directions. This was undoubtedly a solace to him. He lived a guarded life of confinement with little freedom of movement. His secretaries constantly guarded him, with guns on holsters at their side. A contingent of Mexican police stood outside the Rivera home to protect him. He fretted and balked in this confinement, and he was fatalistic about the danger of his being assassinated. He believed that when Stalin wanted really and finally to have him murdered, Stalin would undoubtedly succeed. And as is known, this happened.
After taking the walk, he returned to the group. One of the Americans present was building a fire. He was an ex-follower of Trotsky’s who had left the Trotsky movement, but who had come to Coyoacan to help the work of the Dewey hearings. Trotsky watched him for a moment and became impatient. He didn’t like the way the American friend was going about making the fire. He took over and made his own fire, accompanying it with raillery that was friendly but also sharp. And there was political point to this. Trotsky was teasing a one-time follower for having broken ideologically with the Trotskyite Movement. Trotsky always liked to tease Americans, especially about so-called American efficiency, and he also teased his American ex-follower in this vein.
We ate and talked and sang. One of Trotsky’s police guards was a tall, young, and good looking Mexican cop. Trotsky liked and trusted him. This policeman sang El Rancho Grande, and everyone liked it so much that he was asked to sing it again. After Trotsky was murdered, I was told that this policeman had been bought by enemies of Trotsky’s.
I had several talks with him. Having been an American in the twenties and having read my H.L. Mencken, I sometimes took a relish in telling stories which recounted stupidity. I told a story of this kind. The subject was a famous European writer with whom Trotsky had had controversies. This writer is not stupid, but he appeared this way because he had been evading questions concerning Stalin that would have pinned him down. Trotsky became quickly impatient and didn’t want to hear the end of the story. It bored him. He interrupted and said: “X should learn how to write better novels.”
He asked questions about American literature and spoke of having read Babbitt, but his admiration for Lewis’ book was qualified. The character of Babbitt seemed unintelligent to him. I spoke of Dreiser whom I praised as a great writer but whose philosophical and general ideas I thought sometimes banal. Trotsky asked how could a man be a great writer if his ideas were stupid. “What American writers need,” he said, “is a new perspective.”
He meant a Marxian perspective. He believed that America would one , day have a great Marxist renaissance. Actually he hadn’t read enough of American literature to know whether American writers did or did not need a new perspective. His statement was a consequence of the confidence of faith. Marxism was a science to him, and it permitted him to predict in faith.
Speaking of how Americans viewed him, I said that many saw him as a romantic figure, in fact as a romantic hero. He said that he knew this and disliked being so regarded. He wasn’t interested in my explanation of how it happened that he seemed to some Americans a romantic figure.
Just before the beginning of the first of the hearings of the Dewey Commission, Trotsky was standing on the porch outside his work room. The divorced wife of a famous American writer crashed the gate, and, inside the home, she went up to Trotsky. She told him that he didn’t know who she was and then identified herself by giving her former husband’s name.
“I am sure,” responded Trotsky, “that if I did know, I should be most impressed.”
Another time, I asked him if he thought that Stalin and Hitler would get together. This was in 1937, and some of us who had engaged in the bitter fight against the Moscow trials had come to believe that a Nazi-Soviet alliance was going to be made. Trotsky answered by remarking that if this happened, it would be a great catastrophe. Around that time, he predicted the Stalin-Hitler pact.
My publisher, James Henle, an old newspaper man, had worked on the New York World in 1917. He had been sent to interview Trotsky, then in New York, and they had met in a bakery on the East Side. Trotsky had struck Henle as an intelligent man. He had predicted the Russian Revolution. But as Henle tells the story, he heard endless predictions in those days. A month later, the February Revolution in Russia happened. Trotsky did not remember this interview.
The last time I saw him, I went to his home on the day before I left Mexico. When I arrived he was talking with Otto Ruhl in his office. Ruhl had stood with Karl Liebnecht during the first World War. When the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded, Ruhl had characterized it as a “pacifist putsch.” He and Trotsky had almost never agreed, it seemed. There they were, two old revolutionaries in exile in Mexico. They still disagreed, and speaking in German, their voices rose. I heard Trotsky talking loudly, in fact shouting. I couldn’t understand a word of German, but I could guess what they were arguing about. Ruhl was still, in Mexico, determined to press his disagreement, with the Bolsheviks of 1917. I was told that soon after this Otto Ruhl and Trotsky stopped seeing each other.
The lunch was simple, but less so than normal. Trotsky was a most gracious host. There was not much talk and then we said good-by. He went to take an afternoon siesta.
His was one of the fastest working minds I have ever encountered. And just to see and talk to him, one had a sense of a great will. His body, his habit were bent to that will. in many ways he was Spartan. There were times in fact during his days of power when he spoke like a man of a modern Sparta, and Isaac Deutscher uses the word Spartan in reference to Trotsky at one point in his biography.
This memoir is passing and random. It does not treat of Trotsky’s theories and ideas. This I shall try to discuss on another occasion. Here, I merely wished to set down passing impressions of Trotsky. His personality was not only strong but highly attractive. He was very gracious. There was a mocking look in his bright eyes, and I had the feeling that he looked out on life with a kind of mockery and irrepressible sense of irony. He had committed himself to an idea, and he had risen to heights of power that few men know. And then, there he was, back in exile. Most of his life was spent in exile. In Siberia, Turkey, England, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, he had been an exile – writing, talking, urging, serving a burning idea with total conviction.
He was strikingly different from many exiles. Revolutionary exiles frequently decay and disintegrate. Trotsky didn’t. No man could have known a defeat more total than he. It was amazing how little it damaged him. Writing, fighting the same battle, he didn’t seem like an embittered or unhappy man. I thought of this, and how different are the stories of Napoleon’s exile. Trotsky was a man who might be compared to Napoleon. But in exile, Napoleon bore the strains and the isolation less well than Trotsky. With Napoleon, power was all. To Trotsky, power was the means of making his ideas possible. It was the means whereby man achieved his historic destiny. Power was the arm of a faith. That faith served him in exile.
I was in the hospital, weak and worn, following an operation for a carbuncle. It was night. A radio was on at the head of my bed. I was not listening to it. There was a news broadcast. About half of the words penetrated my mind. Leon Trotsky ... assassin ... not expected to live.
I was shocked. I couldn’t sleep and was given a pill. The next morning, I woke up with a feeling of guilt. I had had some dream. Then the news vendor came, and there was the story of the murder. His life was like a Greek tragedy. He was a great hero and a great martyr. But the tragic character of Trotsky’s death only focuses on the great and terrible tragedy of our century. Such burning conviction, such brilliance, such Spartan sacrifice as his – and it went to create a state that evolved into the most terrible tyranny in history. Today, the state which he helped to create stands threatening the freedom of all of us. The values we cherish, the hopes of man for a more decent world, these are now threatened by that powerful state. Trotsky and Lenin were among the great men of this century. But has it ever been that the work, the life of two great men has ended in such brutal and inhuman tyranny? The ironies of their stories are written in blood and suffering. It is now almost thirty-seven years since they were the leaders of the October Revolution. And as we can look back, it, seems from this particular vantage point that we could be no worse off if their work and their achievement had never been. The horrors of Tsardom are as nothing to those which succeeded it.
Trotsky walked in his garden. The sun was shining. The afternoon was at the point of beginning to wane. He went into his work room and sat down with the manuscript his assassin had brought him. The Alpine stock was driven into his brain. His blood fell on a page of the manuscript of his biography of Stalin. The last words he had written were “the idea.” His own blood spilled on that page.
Footnotes
[1] John Dewey in Mexico, in my book, Reflections At Fifty and Other Essays, New York 1954.
Guest Commentary
James T Farrell
A Memoir on Leon Trotsky
I met Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1937. He seemed different from what might have been expected. He gave the impression of extraordinary simplicity. Alice Ruhl – wife of Otto Ruhl, one time left wing Socialist member of the German Reichstag and biographer of Karl Marx – said of Trotsky that he had changed from his younger days: he had, she said, become more simple, more like Lenin. Many who knew him earlier said that he was cold. He did not seem so in Mexico. He was easy to talk to and one felt less distance between him and oneself than is sometimes the case when one meets a man prominent in political life. But this comparison is perhaps not a good one. Trotsky was then a defeated leader, and a man in exile. He was seeking to rebuild a political movement and was engaged in the most dramatic fight of his life. Accused of betraying the revolution he helped to lead and the society he did so much in helping to found, he was defending his revolutionary honor. He lived behind guarded walls, and followers and secretaries of his carried guns inside his home. He was preparing to answer the charges Stalin launched against him in the Moscow trials.
Elsewhere I have described the Coyoacan Hearings held by the Commission of Inquiry of which Dr. John Dewey was chairman. [1] I shall not repeat this here, but shall merely offer a few personal impressions and anecdotes about him.
One could not separate Trotsky the man from Trotsky the historical figure. When you saw him and spoke with him, you were aware that he was the man who organized the practical details of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and also that he was the organizer of the Red Army. You were aware that you were speaking with one of the greatest revolutionaries in history. He himself had a deep sense of history and of his own historic role. The intense drama of his life was known to me. There he was in that home on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan, pitting his brain against an empire. It was because he was Trotsky that his simplicity was so striking when he was gray and living like a hunted man in Mexico. His followers spoke of him in worshipful tones. For them, he made life more important. He permitted them to believe that they, too, were entering history. They called him “the Old Man,” and they acted like disciples. Constantly, they would pose questions to ascertain what one thought of him, and when John Dewey remarked on Trotsky’s brilliance, they immediately began thinking and hoping that Trotsky would convert Dewey to Trotskyism.
There was an exactness about Trotsky. Even in English, his choice of words revealed this. He seemed to know how far he wanted to go with each person, and his choice of words conveyed or suggested this. There was not, however, much spontaneity in him – or, rather, his spontaneity was kept in check. He, himself, had given his life to an Idea. This Idea – the Revolution – and his personality were as though fused together. A brave man, he was always ready to make any sacrifice to the Idea, and he dealt with people in terms of their relationship to and their acceptance of the Idea. What use would they be to this Idea, this cause? He was working for and living for the cause.
Thus, while he was easy to talk. to, it yet remained that there was a distance between him and others. You did not come into contact with his full personality as you did with, say, John Dewey. This seemed most clear to me the last time I spoke with him. We sat by the long table on which he worked in the home of the painter, Diego Rivera, on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan. He asked me what I was going to do when I returned to America. “I’m going to write novels.” He said he knew that, but again asked me what I was going to do. The service to the cause was more important to him than your personality. Max Eastman, who knew him much better than I did, has often said that he was cold. This I believe is what Eastman means, this seeing individuals as servants to an aim and an idea rather than as personalities in their own right. And this was a trait in his character which marked him off as so different from John Dewey.
He was a witty, graceful, and gallant man. There was something deeply touching and inspiring in his relationship with his wife, Natalia. She was very small and elegant. One could see that she had once been a beautiful woman. The tragedies of her life, the loss of her children in particular, had saddened her. Hers was one of the saddest faces I have ever seen, and she is one of the bravest and noblest of women. Whenever you saw them together, you could not but sense how there was a current of tenderness between them. A gentleness and depth of feeling was apparent in the way he looked at her or touched her hand.
We went on a picnic with him after the ending of the Coyoacan Hearings. Waiting to leave and standing on the porch of the patio of the Rivera home, there was Trotsky bustling about, making sure that there was enough food for everyone, that there was beer for me, that nothing would be forgotten or overlooked. My wife said to me teasingly that Trotsky took an interest in his home and that if he could, why couldn’t I. He came up to me a moment later. I remarked: “L.D., you have ruined my life.”
I explained what I meant and told him what my wife had said.
“It is very simple,” he answered, speaking with a strong accent. “Once (pronouncing it like vunce) I had to feed five million men. It is a little more complicated than feeding five.” Often there was a point, a political reference, a moral in his wit.
We left for a nearby woods in two cars. My wife and I got into the back seat of a roadster. All was in readiness for our departure. Suddenly, Trotsky appeared at the side of the car and said: “Jim, I will (the w pronounced like a v) ride in the open car, and Hortense will ride in the closed car.”
There was gallantry here. For Trotsky to ride in an open car meant a possible risk to his life. Along with his gallantry, there was in his nature a deep respect for women. I have met many Europeans of the Left and of the Revolution, and I have read much of their lives and been told many anecdotes about them. Many of these men, without being quite aware of it, have given the best years of their lives to an effort to emancipate mankind. But with a good proportion of them, emancipation stops at the door of their own homes. Their wives are not completely included in this emancipation; they do all of the housework and serve their revolutionary husbands, sometimes slavishly. In one place in his recent biography The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, Isaac Deutscher mentions how Trotsky, busy as he was, would in a very un-European fashion, help Natalia with the housework and the care of the children. Trotsky’s gallantry was, I believe, real, and it was based on a sense of the dignity of women and of respect for them.
At the picnic, Trotsky and Natalia went off to walk in the woods in opposite directions. This was undoubtedly a solace to him. He lived a guarded life of confinement with little freedom of movement. His secretaries constantly guarded him, with guns on holsters at their side. A contingent of Mexican police stood outside the Rivera home to protect him. He fretted and balked in this confinement, and he was fatalistic about the danger of his being assassinated. He believed that when Stalin wanted really and finally to have him murdered, Stalin would undoubtedly succeed. And as is known, this happened.
After taking the walk, he returned to the group. One of the Americans present was building a fire. He was an ex-follower of Trotsky’s who had left the Trotsky movement, but who had come to Coyoacan to help the work of the Dewey hearings. Trotsky watched him for a moment and became impatient. He didn’t like the way the American friend was going about making the fire. He took over and made his own fire, accompanying it with raillery that was friendly but also sharp. And there was political point to this. Trotsky was teasing a one-time follower for having broken ideologically with the Trotskyite Movement. Trotsky always liked to tease Americans, especially about so-called American efficiency, and he also teased his American ex-follower in this vein.
We ate and talked and sang. One of Trotsky’s police guards was a tall, young, and good looking Mexican cop. Trotsky liked and trusted him. This policeman sang El Rancho Grande, and everyone liked it so much that he was asked to sing it again. After Trotsky was murdered, I was told that this policeman had been bought by enemies of Trotsky’s.
I had several talks with him. Having been an American in the twenties and having read my H.L. Mencken, I sometimes took a relish in telling stories which recounted stupidity. I told a story of this kind. The subject was a famous European writer with whom Trotsky had had controversies. This writer is not stupid, but he appeared this way because he had been evading questions concerning Stalin that would have pinned him down. Trotsky became quickly impatient and didn’t want to hear the end of the story. It bored him. He interrupted and said: “X should learn how to write better novels.”
He asked questions about American literature and spoke of having read Babbitt, but his admiration for Lewis’ book was qualified. The character of Babbitt seemed unintelligent to him. I spoke of Dreiser whom I praised as a great writer but whose philosophical and general ideas I thought sometimes banal. Trotsky asked how could a man be a great writer if his ideas were stupid. “What American writers need,” he said, “is a new perspective.”
He meant a Marxian perspective. He believed that America would one , day have a great Marxist renaissance. Actually he hadn’t read enough of American literature to know whether American writers did or did not need a new perspective. His statement was a consequence of the confidence of faith. Marxism was a science to him, and it permitted him to predict in faith.
Speaking of how Americans viewed him, I said that many saw him as a romantic figure, in fact as a romantic hero. He said that he knew this and disliked being so regarded. He wasn’t interested in my explanation of how it happened that he seemed to some Americans a romantic figure.
Just before the beginning of the first of the hearings of the Dewey Commission, Trotsky was standing on the porch outside his work room. The divorced wife of a famous American writer crashed the gate, and, inside the home, she went up to Trotsky. She told him that he didn’t know who she was and then identified herself by giving her former husband’s name.
“I am sure,” responded Trotsky, “that if I did know, I should be most impressed.”
Another time, I asked him if he thought that Stalin and Hitler would get together. This was in 1937, and some of us who had engaged in the bitter fight against the Moscow trials had come to believe that a Nazi-Soviet alliance was going to be made. Trotsky answered by remarking that if this happened, it would be a great catastrophe. Around that time, he predicted the Stalin-Hitler pact.
My publisher, James Henle, an old newspaper man, had worked on the New York World in 1917. He had been sent to interview Trotsky, then in New York, and they had met in a bakery on the East Side. Trotsky had struck Henle as an intelligent man. He had predicted the Russian Revolution. But as Henle tells the story, he heard endless predictions in those days. A month later, the February Revolution in Russia happened. Trotsky did not remember this interview.
The last time I saw him, I went to his home on the day before I left Mexico. When I arrived he was talking with Otto Ruhl in his office. Ruhl had stood with Karl Liebnecht during the first World War. When the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded, Ruhl had characterized it as a “pacifist putsch.” He and Trotsky had almost never agreed, it seemed. There they were, two old revolutionaries in exile in Mexico. They still disagreed, and speaking in German, their voices rose. I heard Trotsky talking loudly, in fact shouting. I couldn’t understand a word of German, but I could guess what they were arguing about. Ruhl was still, in Mexico, determined to press his disagreement, with the Bolsheviks of 1917. I was told that soon after this Otto Ruhl and Trotsky stopped seeing each other.
The lunch was simple, but less so than normal. Trotsky was a most gracious host. There was not much talk and then we said good-by. He went to take an afternoon siesta.
His was one of the fastest working minds I have ever encountered. And just to see and talk to him, one had a sense of a great will. His body, his habit were bent to that will. in many ways he was Spartan. There were times in fact during his days of power when he spoke like a man of a modern Sparta, and Isaac Deutscher uses the word Spartan in reference to Trotsky at one point in his biography.
This memoir is passing and random. It does not treat of Trotsky’s theories and ideas. This I shall try to discuss on another occasion. Here, I merely wished to set down passing impressions of Trotsky. His personality was not only strong but highly attractive. He was very gracious. There was a mocking look in his bright eyes, and I had the feeling that he looked out on life with a kind of mockery and irrepressible sense of irony. He had committed himself to an idea, and he had risen to heights of power that few men know. And then, there he was, back in exile. Most of his life was spent in exile. In Siberia, Turkey, England, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, he had been an exile – writing, talking, urging, serving a burning idea with total conviction.
He was strikingly different from many exiles. Revolutionary exiles frequently decay and disintegrate. Trotsky didn’t. No man could have known a defeat more total than he. It was amazing how little it damaged him. Writing, fighting the same battle, he didn’t seem like an embittered or unhappy man. I thought of this, and how different are the stories of Napoleon’s exile. Trotsky was a man who might be compared to Napoleon. But in exile, Napoleon bore the strains and the isolation less well than Trotsky. With Napoleon, power was all. To Trotsky, power was the means of making his ideas possible. It was the means whereby man achieved his historic destiny. Power was the arm of a faith. That faith served him in exile.
I was in the hospital, weak and worn, following an operation for a carbuncle. It was night. A radio was on at the head of my bed. I was not listening to it. There was a news broadcast. About half of the words penetrated my mind. Leon Trotsky ... assassin ... not expected to live.
I was shocked. I couldn’t sleep and was given a pill. The next morning, I woke up with a feeling of guilt. I had had some dream. Then the news vendor came, and there was the story of the murder. His life was like a Greek tragedy. He was a great hero and a great martyr. But the tragic character of Trotsky’s death only focuses on the great and terrible tragedy of our century. Such burning conviction, such brilliance, such Spartan sacrifice as his – and it went to create a state that evolved into the most terrible tyranny in history. Today, the state which he helped to create stands threatening the freedom of all of us. The values we cherish, the hopes of man for a more decent world, these are now threatened by that powerful state. Trotsky and Lenin were among the great men of this century. But has it ever been that the work, the life of two great men has ended in such brutal and inhuman tyranny? The ironies of their stories are written in blood and suffering. It is now almost thirty-seven years since they were the leaders of the October Revolution. And as we can look back, it, seems from this particular vantage point that we could be no worse off if their work and their achievement had never been. The horrors of Tsardom are as nothing to those which succeeded it.
Trotsky walked in his garden. The sun was shining. The afternoon was at the point of beginning to wane. He went into his work room and sat down with the manuscript his assassin had brought him. The Alpine stock was driven into his brain. His blood fell on a page of the manuscript of his biography of Stalin. The last words he had written were “the idea.” His own blood spilled on that page.
Footnotes
[1] John Dewey in Mexico, in my book, Reflections At Fifty and Other Essays, New York 1954.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
*Humankind….Unplug Thyselves, Please!!
Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For Luddites.
Social Commentary, Of Sorts
Let me set the following scenario that will help explain the title of this entry. Recently, in preparation for a vacation I had to do the following things. Make sure that my cell phone and charger plug-in were set, including my capacity to text message, etc. Make sure that my answering machine was set with an appropriate message. Make sure that I had my DVD player at the ready so that I could watch rented movies from NetFlix that I had ordered on my computer. Well, of course, the ubiquitous computer, complete with card (and separate charger unit to boot that baby up). Moreover, no one can leave home without an MP3 player (and another separate) charger, including in my case an additional CD player (old fogy stuff) in order to play CDs to find tracks I want on put on the MP3 player. I could go on but you get the drift. And all of this is even before I even got out of the house. Enough, right?
Now before I am accused of being something of a technological Luddite (click on title to see Wikipedia’s entry on this subject, for those who are unfamiliar with the term) I want one and all to know that I am more than happy, on most days, to use all that technology has to offer, including the capability necessary to post this little pearl of wisdom. I confess that in the old days I WAS something of a Luddite, at least in those days when I purposefully lived in a rooming house, hitchhiked (for the younger reader you may have to look up that old custom on Wikipedia, no link though-for that one you are on your own), lived off the land, lived out of a knapsack and didn’t seemingly have the burdens of leaving the house that one incurs today.
Moreover, in the bright socialist future that I keep spewing reams of propaganda about in this space technology and its innovations that will make humankind lazy (in the good sense of being able to pursue more important goals than struggling for the necessities for survival) we will have scores of scores of troops of technocrats working on every conceivable practical(and some impractical) ways to make the lot of the human race easier.
What worries me, and ultimately is the point of this screed, is that not all technologies are created equal. For every breakthrough in, say, complex surgical procedures and the like that allow people to recover the function of some lost body part that does all of society proud there is a seemingly parallel use of technology that has a socially isolating, anti-personal and, I believe, thwarting effect on the development of the human personality.
Am I the only one who shutters a bit to see the almost universal use of the cell phone (or among the young, text-messaging) rather than face-to-face or other more personal way to communicate. The strangest event may be the use of e-mail to communicate with someone in the next room at work or school. Let’s leave it at this- let technology create abundance for all, everywhere under socialism so we can all be lazy enough to sit down and talk together. Of course, for all that we need to get rid of the capitalists and their system for openers, and to do that we need a workers party. So we have plenty to talk about face-to-face before that bright day. I'm off.
Social Commentary, Of Sorts
Let me set the following scenario that will help explain the title of this entry. Recently, in preparation for a vacation I had to do the following things. Make sure that my cell phone and charger plug-in were set, including my capacity to text message, etc. Make sure that my answering machine was set with an appropriate message. Make sure that I had my DVD player at the ready so that I could watch rented movies from NetFlix that I had ordered on my computer. Well, of course, the ubiquitous computer, complete with card (and separate charger unit to boot that baby up). Moreover, no one can leave home without an MP3 player (and another separate) charger, including in my case an additional CD player (old fogy stuff) in order to play CDs to find tracks I want on put on the MP3 player. I could go on but you get the drift. And all of this is even before I even got out of the house. Enough, right?
Now before I am accused of being something of a technological Luddite (click on title to see Wikipedia’s entry on this subject, for those who are unfamiliar with the term) I want one and all to know that I am more than happy, on most days, to use all that technology has to offer, including the capability necessary to post this little pearl of wisdom. I confess that in the old days I WAS something of a Luddite, at least in those days when I purposefully lived in a rooming house, hitchhiked (for the younger reader you may have to look up that old custom on Wikipedia, no link though-for that one you are on your own), lived off the land, lived out of a knapsack and didn’t seemingly have the burdens of leaving the house that one incurs today.
Moreover, in the bright socialist future that I keep spewing reams of propaganda about in this space technology and its innovations that will make humankind lazy (in the good sense of being able to pursue more important goals than struggling for the necessities for survival) we will have scores of scores of troops of technocrats working on every conceivable practical(and some impractical) ways to make the lot of the human race easier.
What worries me, and ultimately is the point of this screed, is that not all technologies are created equal. For every breakthrough in, say, complex surgical procedures and the like that allow people to recover the function of some lost body part that does all of society proud there is a seemingly parallel use of technology that has a socially isolating, anti-personal and, I believe, thwarting effect on the development of the human personality.
Am I the only one who shutters a bit to see the almost universal use of the cell phone (or among the young, text-messaging) rather than face-to-face or other more personal way to communicate. The strangest event may be the use of e-mail to communicate with someone in the next room at work or school. Let’s leave it at this- let technology create abundance for all, everywhere under socialism so we can all be lazy enough to sit down and talk together. Of course, for all that we need to get rid of the capitalists and their system for openers, and to do that we need a workers party. So we have plenty to talk about face-to-face before that bright day. I'm off.
Friday, July 17, 2009
*Carnival Of Socialism-Carnival Of Struggle
http://advant.blogspot.com/2009/07/carnival-of-socialism-40-is-here.html
Kudos to Renegade Eye.
Kudos to Renegade Eye.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
*Hard Times In Babylon- The California Supreme Court Gay Marriage Decision
Click Title To Link To California Supreme Court Gay Marriage Decision Article
Commentary
The result of the California Supreme Court's decision on the validity of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in California is in. Not good, for sure. Moreover, as I pointed out in a recent commentary, until states like California get it right then while the tide is turning for the better on this important democratic question it will continue to be a rather "New Englandish" kind of right (No, I haven't forgotten Iowa). I have reposted that commentary because it really makes the key points that I want to make on this issue.
************************
*Another Small Victory For Gay Marriage Rights-Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage With Veto Override
Here are a few paragraphs from the Associated Press report of April 7, 2009 on the Vermont legislative actions that legalized gay marriage in that state.
******
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature's vote.
The House recorded a dramatic 100-49 vote, the minimum needed, to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto. Its vote followed a much easier override vote in the Senate, which rebuffed the Republican governor with a vote of 23-5.
Vermont was the first state to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples and joins Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa in giving gays the right to marry. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.
Tuesday morning's legislative action came less than a day after Douglas issued a veto message saying the bill would not improve the lot of gay and lesbian couples because it still would not provide them rights under federal and other states' laws....
*****
Commentary
Full Marriage (And Divorce) Rights For Gays And Lesbians In Every State!
As I noted just last week in this space (see “A Small Victory For Gay Marriage Rights- The Iowa Case”, dated April 4, 2009) I have, more often than I would like, noted that on some key democratic questions, here the question of equal access to the marriage bureau for gays and lesbians, we get help from some unlikely sources. As always though, we will take our small but important victories anyway we can get them. In that case it was the Iowa Supreme Court doing yeomen’s work on this issue. Here, in the Vermont case, it is the state legislature that has provided the impetus.
That is indeed unusual as most legislative action has been going in the opposite direction. This has allegedly reflected the social opinions and political desires of the so-called ”silent majority” of heterosexual marrieds who are assumed to feel threatened by opening the marriage bureaus to gays and lesbians, including those here in Massachusetts. Here, unsuccessful attempts were made to override the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s landmark decision by calling a constitutional convention as the prologue to initiative action like California’s successful efforts to put the issue before the voters. The Vermont decision may not have the same political impact as the Iowa decision as it may seem to be seen as reflecting some exotic New England quirk but the legislative action should nevertheless not be underrated for its value as precedent. In short, a good talking point for further actions as the struggle heads to other states.
As I also mentioned in that Iowa commentary in discussing this issue the core location of the struggle for the democratic right for gays and lesbians to have access to the marriage bureaus now appears to be in the states. The highest courts of three states (Massachusetts and Connecticut, along with this recent Iowa case) and a now overturned fourth, California, have held that such restrictive marriage regulations are unconstitutional in their unequal application and do not serve any rational governmental purpose. Although this represents a small minority (and here is where the initiative defeat in California in November 2008 really slowed down the momentum) there is something of a “snowball” effect to these kinds of judicial decisions as other state supreme courts now have some precedents to hang their hands on. But as I said then that is for later. For now though, another small victory goes into the books. As always our slogan remains- Full democratic rights for gays and lesbians, for the full rights of marriage (and divorce) to all. Everywhere.
Commentary
The result of the California Supreme Court's decision on the validity of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in California is in. Not good, for sure. Moreover, as I pointed out in a recent commentary, until states like California get it right then while the tide is turning for the better on this important democratic question it will continue to be a rather "New Englandish" kind of right (No, I haven't forgotten Iowa). I have reposted that commentary because it really makes the key points that I want to make on this issue.
************************
*Another Small Victory For Gay Marriage Rights-Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage With Veto Override
Here are a few paragraphs from the Associated Press report of April 7, 2009 on the Vermont legislative actions that legalized gay marriage in that state.
******
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature's vote.
The House recorded a dramatic 100-49 vote, the minimum needed, to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto. Its vote followed a much easier override vote in the Senate, which rebuffed the Republican governor with a vote of 23-5.
Vermont was the first state to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples and joins Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa in giving gays the right to marry. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.
Tuesday morning's legislative action came less than a day after Douglas issued a veto message saying the bill would not improve the lot of gay and lesbian couples because it still would not provide them rights under federal and other states' laws....
*****
Commentary
Full Marriage (And Divorce) Rights For Gays And Lesbians In Every State!
As I noted just last week in this space (see “A Small Victory For Gay Marriage Rights- The Iowa Case”, dated April 4, 2009) I have, more often than I would like, noted that on some key democratic questions, here the question of equal access to the marriage bureau for gays and lesbians, we get help from some unlikely sources. As always though, we will take our small but important victories anyway we can get them. In that case it was the Iowa Supreme Court doing yeomen’s work on this issue. Here, in the Vermont case, it is the state legislature that has provided the impetus.
That is indeed unusual as most legislative action has been going in the opposite direction. This has allegedly reflected the social opinions and political desires of the so-called ”silent majority” of heterosexual marrieds who are assumed to feel threatened by opening the marriage bureaus to gays and lesbians, including those here in Massachusetts. Here, unsuccessful attempts were made to override the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s landmark decision by calling a constitutional convention as the prologue to initiative action like California’s successful efforts to put the issue before the voters. The Vermont decision may not have the same political impact as the Iowa decision as it may seem to be seen as reflecting some exotic New England quirk but the legislative action should nevertheless not be underrated for its value as precedent. In short, a good talking point for further actions as the struggle heads to other states.
As I also mentioned in that Iowa commentary in discussing this issue the core location of the struggle for the democratic right for gays and lesbians to have access to the marriage bureaus now appears to be in the states. The highest courts of three states (Massachusetts and Connecticut, along with this recent Iowa case) and a now overturned fourth, California, have held that such restrictive marriage regulations are unconstitutional in their unequal application and do not serve any rational governmental purpose. Although this represents a small minority (and here is where the initiative defeat in California in November 2008 really slowed down the momentum) there is something of a “snowball” effect to these kinds of judicial decisions as other state supreme courts now have some precedents to hang their hands on. But as I said then that is for later. For now though, another small victory goes into the books. As always our slogan remains- Full democratic rights for gays and lesbians, for the full rights of marriage (and divorce) to all. Everywhere.
Friday, May 08, 2009
*The Zen Of Golf And The Struggle For Socialism
Click On Title To Link To United States Golf Association web site. That is the golf part. The Zen and Socialism part you are on your own.
Commentary
Has old Markin finally gone off the deep end? Golf, Zen and socialism under the same headline. What gives? What gives is this. It is spring time in New England when a man’s thoughts (or at least this man’s thoughts) turn to the need to get to the great outdoor. To commune with nature. To smell the roses. In short, to get to the local public golf course and tempt fate and incur the ire of the golf gods. For those of a certain age though this thought may seem to place me in the category of “counter-revolutionary” Trotskyites that I have, more than once in my life, been accused of being. Why?
Back in the days, in the late 1960’s, “when to be young was very heaven” those of us who considered ourselves either politically or culturally radical would probably have heartily endorsed the slogan “burn down the country clubs”. And we would not have been too far off then, or now. The late Wobblie folk singer/songwriter Utah Phillips has spun more than one on-target line about the usual denizens of such haunts. Golf and its earliest manifestations in a conservative country club ethos were the stuff of bourgeois life, leisure and status and begged to be made fun of. The novelist John O’Hara made a literary career in the mid-20th century writing of the foibles and follies of the mainly conservative and status conscious American country club set, most notably in “Appointment In Samarra” That book is still a good read to get the feel of being trapped in that world. More recently and vividly the Ponzi artist supreme, Bernard Madoff, worked his financial ‘magic’ among a more contemporary section of that set down in Palm Beach, Florida.
All the above points are very true. As far as they go in our hatred of the ethos of the country club set. There is another aspect, however, that ‘corrects’ our youthful misunderstanding of the aims of socialism, our capacity to fight for it and our staying power in that struggle. I do not know if it was the old, somewhat dour, picture of what a Bolshevik existence was to be like that colored our perceptions, handed down by the old time Stalinists (except, of course, the conduct of the privileged bureaucrats). Or if it was the pressure to seem to be “at one” with the workers by scorning various bourgeois lifestyle traditions but somewhere along the line the sense of the need for more opportunities for rest and relaxation rather than less got thrown by the wayside. To the contrary the idea of socialism, at least any socialism worth fighting for and asking others to fight for as well, is to increase socially useful productive capacity, redistribute goods more equitably and thus allow for greater free time for creative activities. Or just hit golf balls, if one so desires.
Although, admittedly, we are far away from that socialist goal today those who fight under the banner of socialism need to keep some balance in their lives in order to stay with the struggle. Thus, a certified revolutionary leader like Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’ life long co-thinker, liked to fox hunt while in his British exile. While I fully support Oscar Wilde’s comment about the ‘virtues’ of that endeavor that was Engels’ “thing”. The Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, after Vladimir Lenin the best and most well-known Bolshevik, liked to hunt, fish and later in life collect cacti. None of those hobbies are particularly associated with strictly proletarian social interests. In short, other than some patently illegal or outrageous activity, one’s personal forms of relaxation are no one’s concern. That, moreover, is probably the secret to the staying power of these great revolutionaries mentioned above. They were in it for the long haul and balanced their personal lives accordingly.
But why golf rather than, let us say, bowling or stamp collecting? Well, go back to that first paragraph about communing with nature. Most golf courses located near urban centers offer interesting natural sites like woods, ponds and sand that one can become very familiar with if one’s golf ball goes astray. Moreover, nobody should object to getting a little walking in and to get out in the sunshine and away from the damn computer for a bit. But here is the Zen part. For this average golfer there is nothing like hitting a golf shot from about 150 yards away and having it land on the green (the target area for the shot for those who do not know the game). That is what now passes for “very heaven”. And then make the putt (put it in the hole). Nirvana.
Commentary
Has old Markin finally gone off the deep end? Golf, Zen and socialism under the same headline. What gives? What gives is this. It is spring time in New England when a man’s thoughts (or at least this man’s thoughts) turn to the need to get to the great outdoor. To commune with nature. To smell the roses. In short, to get to the local public golf course and tempt fate and incur the ire of the golf gods. For those of a certain age though this thought may seem to place me in the category of “counter-revolutionary” Trotskyites that I have, more than once in my life, been accused of being. Why?
Back in the days, in the late 1960’s, “when to be young was very heaven” those of us who considered ourselves either politically or culturally radical would probably have heartily endorsed the slogan “burn down the country clubs”. And we would not have been too far off then, or now. The late Wobblie folk singer/songwriter Utah Phillips has spun more than one on-target line about the usual denizens of such haunts. Golf and its earliest manifestations in a conservative country club ethos were the stuff of bourgeois life, leisure and status and begged to be made fun of. The novelist John O’Hara made a literary career in the mid-20th century writing of the foibles and follies of the mainly conservative and status conscious American country club set, most notably in “Appointment In Samarra” That book is still a good read to get the feel of being trapped in that world. More recently and vividly the Ponzi artist supreme, Bernard Madoff, worked his financial ‘magic’ among a more contemporary section of that set down in Palm Beach, Florida.
All the above points are very true. As far as they go in our hatred of the ethos of the country club set. There is another aspect, however, that ‘corrects’ our youthful misunderstanding of the aims of socialism, our capacity to fight for it and our staying power in that struggle. I do not know if it was the old, somewhat dour, picture of what a Bolshevik existence was to be like that colored our perceptions, handed down by the old time Stalinists (except, of course, the conduct of the privileged bureaucrats). Or if it was the pressure to seem to be “at one” with the workers by scorning various bourgeois lifestyle traditions but somewhere along the line the sense of the need for more opportunities for rest and relaxation rather than less got thrown by the wayside. To the contrary the idea of socialism, at least any socialism worth fighting for and asking others to fight for as well, is to increase socially useful productive capacity, redistribute goods more equitably and thus allow for greater free time for creative activities. Or just hit golf balls, if one so desires.
Although, admittedly, we are far away from that socialist goal today those who fight under the banner of socialism need to keep some balance in their lives in order to stay with the struggle. Thus, a certified revolutionary leader like Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’ life long co-thinker, liked to fox hunt while in his British exile. While I fully support Oscar Wilde’s comment about the ‘virtues’ of that endeavor that was Engels’ “thing”. The Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, after Vladimir Lenin the best and most well-known Bolshevik, liked to hunt, fish and later in life collect cacti. None of those hobbies are particularly associated with strictly proletarian social interests. In short, other than some patently illegal or outrageous activity, one’s personal forms of relaxation are no one’s concern. That, moreover, is probably the secret to the staying power of these great revolutionaries mentioned above. They were in it for the long haul and balanced their personal lives accordingly.
But why golf rather than, let us say, bowling or stamp collecting? Well, go back to that first paragraph about communing with nature. Most golf courses located near urban centers offer interesting natural sites like woods, ponds and sand that one can become very familiar with if one’s golf ball goes astray. Moreover, nobody should object to getting a little walking in and to get out in the sunshine and away from the damn computer for a bit. But here is the Zen part. For this average golfer there is nothing like hitting a golf shot from about 150 yards away and having it land on the green (the target area for the shot for those who do not know the game). That is what now passes for “very heaven”. And then make the putt (put it in the hole). Nirvana.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
* The Emerging Political Possibilities In Haiti- A Guest Commentary
Click on the title to link to an Internationalist Group online article on the current prospects for revolution in Haiti, "Haiti: Workers Solidarity, Yes! Imperialist Occupation, No!"
Markin comment:
I, as much as anyone would like to believe that the current political situation in Haiti would lead to an intact and politicized working class leading the struggle for socialism, but this argument, in the wake of the horrific human disaster there seems premature to say the least. Politically it is hard to grasp what the IG is getting at other than some future hopeful expectation and the obvious anti-imperialist point that we do not support yet another U.S. occupation there.
Markin comment:
I, as much as anyone would like to believe that the current political situation in Haiti would lead to an intact and politicized working class leading the struggle for socialism, but this argument, in the wake of the horrific human disaster there seems premature to say the least. Politically it is hard to grasp what the IG is getting at other than some future hopeful expectation and the obvious anti-imperialist point that we do not support yet another U.S. occupation there.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
*Defend The Republic Window Workers' Chicago Factory Occupation
Click on the title to link to an article in December 2009 "Socialist Appeal" concerning last year's factory take-over at the Republic Door and Window factory in Chicago.
Commentary
This is a little news item that I have just picked up from the AP. I note here that last week I mentioned as a "fantasy" that the Detroit auto workers needed to "seize" the factories in order to get something for all the wealth they had produced. One should also note that this was a union-led action. More, hopefully much more, later. Markin
Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago
By Rupa Shenoy
Associated Press Writer / December 6, 2008
CHICAGO—Workers laid off from their jobs at a factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.
About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant's operation.
Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down.
Workers also were angered when company officials didn't show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat, she said.
During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.
"We're doing something we haven't since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," Fried said.
Union officials said another meeting with the company is scheduled for Monday.
Representatives of Republic Windows did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.
Crain's Chicago Business reported that the company's monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors."
© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
More articles in Nation
Commentary
This is a little news item that I have just picked up from the AP. I note here that last week I mentioned as a "fantasy" that the Detroit auto workers needed to "seize" the factories in order to get something for all the wealth they had produced. One should also note that this was a union-led action. More, hopefully much more, later. Markin
Idled workers occupy factory in Chicago
By Rupa Shenoy
Associated Press Writer / December 6, 2008
CHICAGO—Workers laid off from their jobs at a factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.
About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began their sit-in Friday, the last scheduled day of the plant's operation.
Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers, said the Chicago-based vinyl window manufacturer failed to give 60 days' notice required by law before shutting down.
Workers also were angered when company officials didn't show up for a meeting Friday that had been arranged by U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, a Chicago Democrat, she said.
During the peaceful takeover, workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building, Fried said.
"We're doing something we haven't since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," Fried said.
Union officials said another meeting with the company is scheduled for Monday.
Representatives of Republic Windows did not immediately respond Saturday to calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said authorities were aware of the situation and officers were patrolling the area.
Crain's Chicago Business reported that the company's monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the business journal, Republic CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors."
© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
More articles in Nation
Saturday, March 01, 2008
The "First Wave" Folk Revival- In Honor Of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly
DVD/CD REVIEWS
A Shared Vision:Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly Tribute, 1988
If any of the older generation needs an introduction to Woody Guthrie or Leadbelly then I ask what planet have you been on. Woody’s "This Land Is Your Land" is practically a national anthem (and is just that in some quarters). And Leadbelly’s "Goodnight, Irene" is in that same category. So to have the two highlighted on one program, as they had been in life on a number of occasions, is a treat. This tribute has the further virtue of highlighting both original performances by them and tribute performances by some of these who have been influenced by their work, individually or collectively.
Anytime you get Taj Mahal, Little Richard, Sweet Honey in the Rock (a real treat as I was not familiar with their work), Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen and a host of others under one cinematic roof you are bound to have a good performance. And added attraction was the appearance of Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son and a folk legend in his own right, commenting on his father’s work. And, of course, an all too brief recorded performance by Bob Dylan, a man who probably did more to revive Woody’s work in the 1960’s than any other. For my money though, John Mellencamp and his ensemble band (including washboard player) stole the show at the end with their rendition of the afore-mentioned "This Land Is Your Land". Watch it.
The First Folk Wave- Woody Guthrie And Lead Belly
Folkways: The Original Vision-Songs Of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Smithsonian/Folkways, 2005
If any of the older generation, the “Generation of ‘68” needs an introduction to Woody Guthrie or Lead Belly then I ask what planet have you been on. Woody’s “This Land Is Your Land” is practically a national anthem (and in some quarters is just that). And Leadbelly’s “Goodnight, Irene” is in that same category. So to have the two highlighted on one program, as they had been in life on a number of occasions is a treat. This tribute has the further virtue of highlighting original performances by them unlike a documentary and CD “A Shared Vision” reviewed earlier in this space that was composed of tribute performances by some of those who, like John Mellencamp, have been influenced by their work, individually or collectively.
As always with a Smithsonian/Folkways production the CD includes a booklet of copious liner notes that detail, for the folk historian or the novice alike, the history of each song and its genesis. I am always surprised by the insightful detail provided and as much as I know about this milieu always find something new in them. Moreover, the information here provided inevitably details the rather mundane genesis of some very famous songs. Here, for example, “Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie” is just what it says back in Lead Belly’s old family farm hand days.
I do not believe that I need to detail the work of these two artists but will finish with a note of what you should make sure to hear. “Goodnight, Irene” and “This Land Is Your Land”, of course. “Rock Island Line” has aged well, as has “Do-Re-Mi”. A Woody ‘talking blues’, “Talking Hard Work”, will strike your funny bone. Lead Belly’s “Midnight Special” is fine. All of this is rounded out by a Woody/Lead Belly duet on “We Shall Be Free” that has subsequently been covered by many folkies, young and old.
A Shared Vision:Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly Tribute, 1988
If any of the older generation needs an introduction to Woody Guthrie or Leadbelly then I ask what planet have you been on. Woody’s "This Land Is Your Land" is practically a national anthem (and is just that in some quarters). And Leadbelly’s "Goodnight, Irene" is in that same category. So to have the two highlighted on one program, as they had been in life on a number of occasions, is a treat. This tribute has the further virtue of highlighting both original performances by them and tribute performances by some of these who have been influenced by their work, individually or collectively.
Anytime you get Taj Mahal, Little Richard, Sweet Honey in the Rock (a real treat as I was not familiar with their work), Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen and a host of others under one cinematic roof you are bound to have a good performance. And added attraction was the appearance of Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son and a folk legend in his own right, commenting on his father’s work. And, of course, an all too brief recorded performance by Bob Dylan, a man who probably did more to revive Woody’s work in the 1960’s than any other. For my money though, John Mellencamp and his ensemble band (including washboard player) stole the show at the end with their rendition of the afore-mentioned "This Land Is Your Land". Watch it.
The First Folk Wave- Woody Guthrie And Lead Belly
Folkways: The Original Vision-Songs Of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Smithsonian/Folkways, 2005
If any of the older generation, the “Generation of ‘68” needs an introduction to Woody Guthrie or Lead Belly then I ask what planet have you been on. Woody’s “This Land Is Your Land” is practically a national anthem (and in some quarters is just that). And Leadbelly’s “Goodnight, Irene” is in that same category. So to have the two highlighted on one program, as they had been in life on a number of occasions is a treat. This tribute has the further virtue of highlighting original performances by them unlike a documentary and CD “A Shared Vision” reviewed earlier in this space that was composed of tribute performances by some of those who, like John Mellencamp, have been influenced by their work, individually or collectively.
As always with a Smithsonian/Folkways production the CD includes a booklet of copious liner notes that detail, for the folk historian or the novice alike, the history of each song and its genesis. I am always surprised by the insightful detail provided and as much as I know about this milieu always find something new in them. Moreover, the information here provided inevitably details the rather mundane genesis of some very famous songs. Here, for example, “Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie” is just what it says back in Lead Belly’s old family farm hand days.
I do not believe that I need to detail the work of these two artists but will finish with a note of what you should make sure to hear. “Goodnight, Irene” and “This Land Is Your Land”, of course. “Rock Island Line” has aged well, as has “Do-Re-Mi”. A Woody ‘talking blues’, “Talking Hard Work”, will strike your funny bone. Lead Belly’s “Midnight Special” is fine. All of this is rounded out by a Woody/Lead Belly duet on “We Shall Be Free” that has subsequently been covered by many folkies, young and old.
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