Click on the title to link to the "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive" online copy of Leon Trotsky's "Forward" to his 1930 memoir, "My Life"; definitely a necessary memoir for future revolutionaries to read and take heart in, and that idea will give some perspective to the rationale for the entry below.
Markin comment:
A couple of years ago someone, who had paid attention to the various entries that I had placed in this space (and in other blogs that I write for) concerning various episodes that I have related about my wayward childhood and about the scatter-shot way that I came to communist political class consciousness, suggested that I make some kind of autobiographical sketch out of the entries. And place them in one spot so that any interested party could see them, and reflect on his or her own path to political maturity. Her hope, which she tried to instill in me, was that some of the more searching elements among today’s youthful activists might find some useful information in order not to go through the same kind of mistakes that I had made.
That prospect, I admit, was enticing, especially as I have recently been making connections with more young activists in my anti-war political work as a few of them have come to see that the over-inflated prospects that Obama came into presidential office floating on have not panned out. And they are therefore now looking for some other answers. However, I have balked at the notion of a “memoir” for a number of reasons that I will describe below: mainly, that my experiences, after comparison with the life stories of many others in the ostensibly revolutionary movement, are too unique to serve any useful political purpose; that in the age of the “death of communism” the recollection of such experiences would seem to be passé; and, that, in the final analysis, each generation must and will come to see the need for a communist future in its own way, and place its own stamp on that collective historical experience.
I have, by now, seemingly endlessly made the autobiographical point that I come from the bottom part of the working class, the place where the erratically employed, unskilled working people edge over into the lumpenproletariat; the hardened criminals, big and small. All I have ever needed to say to bring that point home is that my formative years were spent growing up in a public housing project. That cultural gradient evokes shades in the 20th century of the novelists James T. Farrell and Nelson Algren, and maybe, in the 19th century Charles Dickens, more than the biographies of most socialists that I have read about. And that is the point I am trying to make here. In the end, communists need to get to the housing project dwellers but this was hardly the recruiting grounds when I was a kid, and it certainly is not today, for those who want to make communist propaganda and make their political statements through work in small circles.
Additionally, I have read many biographies of our socialist and communist forbears, at least those who stayed in the movement long enough to be memoir or biography- worthy, and have noted that while they come from a variety of backgrounds, usually middle class, I distinctly do not recall, except, maybe some of the Jewish immigrant children from the Lower East Side in New York City like Irving Howe or Howard Fast, many coming from utter poverty to the socialist movement. And in those New York cases that utter poverty was trumped by the cultural uplift of the Jewish experience and their parents’ exposure to prior socialist propaganda in Europe.
I have met, in a lifetime of left- wing political activism, many activists who came from the lower classes but the more typical case is one like Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich who grabbed the main chance with the Democratic Party. That rags-to-riches story, or a variation of it has helped hold up the “American dream” for far longer than it was ever true, if it was ever true. In short, the bottom edges of society are a dangerous place, a hard place to survive in even for the honest working poor. What they are not is a place where we can build today the working class party we need to eliminate the vestiges of this class on the way to our communist future.
Even if the uniqueness of my off-beat way to political consciousness were not enough to stall any plans for creating a memoir the timeliness of such an effort seems questionable. In 1975, perhaps, when there was still some residual effect from the social and political turmoil of the 1960s in the air it might have made some sense. However, deep in the age of the “death of communism” it seems rather passé, except to some of the old geezers of the “Generation of ‘68” that want to cut up old torches. The way that some poor working kid from the “projects” came to see the virtues of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and their progeny seems like a “yawner” to this writer. I am not sure that I would want to read that story, and I lived it!
And that gets to the real point for not writing a memoir in this age and that one must keep focused on. In the age of "Sidekick", "paypal", in your "Facebook", in "Myspace" book, "Twitter", glitter and whatnot technology my story is as dead as … print in a real book. The political language that I have learned to use, the political concepts that I am trying to impart are somewhat incomprehensible to those we are trying to reach today. I think in great systematic and global strategic terms. This is not, and correct me if I am wrong, the way that kids think today. The best of them, as far as I can see are happy just to get through the day; maybe connect with what they think the world is by “social networking”; and, maybe, carving a niche for themselves in some small sector of the global preservation movement. No high risk adventures or grandiose theories for this crowd, but also not way out of the morass. Still, and this is key, each generation must find its own way out, and an old geezer’s tale will not lead the way out.
That said, we have all of the above against the possible effect of some little cyberspace memento. However, as the person who attempted to goad me into this thing noted, the entries are almost all here already, the reading of the various entries to draw the political lessons requires only minimal time and, here is the clincher, maybe one person, would be drawn to the posts and think through his or her own experiences and decide that he or she has to break with bourgeois society, break with the imperial war machine, and break with the Democrats. (I will not even assume that such a person is interested the Republicans, that is too far a political trail to traverse in these times.) Although I have decided not to do the project there is plenty of material here to whet the appetite for those who are looking for that way out. Forward.
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