He (and his buddy, Friedrich, but let’s just keep it as he and save the parsing out of credits to literary agents, skeptics, revisionists, and sworn enemies, left and right, or to some Freudian psychoanalyst who will put some sexual shape on the thing and will get it all balled up anyway) said struggle. He, when asked by some wooden-headed journalist big city newspaper, maybe the London Times but don’t hold me to the exact paper but do hold me to the accuracy of the quote, looking for some fashionable and titillating quote, “What is?” answered struggle, class struggle (although on the news- printed titillating page it came out as mere struggle to avoid upsetting the Mayfair swells and their hangers-on who were a little skittish about threats to their empire in the making). The town was abuzz, no aflame, over that one, worse than when he connected the dots with those wobbly old greying Chartist boys who had raised holy hell a few decades back and kept king cotton from union with their beloved lion.
So struggle, class struggle it was (and is). He said, from his 19th century lonely graveside a head sculpture emblazoned hair flowing stern visage above his lot, and a head above his generation’s candor, push back, push back hard against, part one, Vietnam, and those who vouched for that war in somebody’s name, not mine or his. He said part two, the Vietnam push back part connects with that seemingly long time ago push back struggle to break out of “project boy” shames, and stark inequalities of not keeping up with the Joneses, or not fast enough anyway, and father hurts, and mother rages against unfortunate fates, food for tables and clothes for backs worries, and endless mother father hurts. He said, part three, mix the Vietnam push back, the empire push back learned later, painfully learned, the father hurt push backs and the tribune of the people push back (the hard part in no push back America, at least not too much push back) and maybe just maybe history will take a left turn, a sharp left turn. Parting, ghost shades parting, he whispered do not get mixed-message tied up with their politics, that McGovern do-good juggernaut but organize from the base and then strike the match, when it is time for such matters.
He said some other stuff too, stuff said fast, faster than the part one, two, three stuff. He said stay with your people, the wretched of the earth, whom you have abandoned (hell, he didn’t know it was really run away from, run hard away from with Jack Kennedy/Bobby Kennedy, hell, Hubert dreams of forty years, a pension, a gold watch and whatever could be stolen along the way in the “service” of the people). He said it would not be easy. Hell, he didn’t know the half of it. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people, with those gold-flecked dreams of yours. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. Damn, he was right.
He said look for a sign. He said, although he did not put it this way exactly, the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy, again. He said it again and again and would not let it, or me, rest. He said what is struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1871, he said it in 1917, and he was ghost dream saying it in 1972. What a cranky, crazy old guy to disturb Peter Paul’s sleep, huh.
*****Struggle. But where to start as Peter Paul sat, book in hand, Leon Trotsky’s “History Of The Russian Revolution,” down on a yogurt-spooned 1972 green painted bench on the Charles River near Harvard Square. Having devoured the “Communist Manifesto,” “Class Struggle In France,” “Critique Of The Gotha Programme,” “What Is To Be Done?”,and a few off-hand commentaries on them he was pushing for some sense of how to beat the monster. Beat the monster straight up. For just that Charles River bench seat minute he knew that he had to get beyond books but that books and struggle would be the combination to the golden age. Damn that old guy and his progeny too. Damn them for the heavy task they bequeathed to us ill-prepared descendants.
And for leaving us bends in the road, serious bends, fatal bends. Peter Paul told me how he have done his fair share of kicking one Professor Irving Howe, the late social -democratic editor of the intellectual quarterly magazine "Dissent", around back then and a guy who was supposed to know some stuff about Marxism or socialism when he was trying to figure the road to follow out. [I, on the other hand always appreciated Howe’s literary criticism and thought he had some things to say about politics too before he got indistinguishable from, say right-wing “National Review’s” William Buckley-JLB] But as this is, as is oft-quoted, a confessional age, Peter Paul had a confession, or rather two confessions, to make about his connections to Irving Howe. So for the time that it took to write the comments up he said he would call an armed truce with the shades of the professor. Here is what he had to say:
Confession #1- in the mist of time of my youth I actually used to like to read "Dissent." The articles were interesting, and as we were too poor for the family to afford a subscription, I spent many an hour reading through back issues at the local public library. I make no pretense that I understood all that was in each article and some that I re-read later left me cold but there you have it.
Probably the most impressive article I read was Norman Mailer’s "White Negro." I could relate to the violence and sense of 'hipness' that was hidden just under the surface of the article, especially the violence as it was not that far removed from that in my own poor white working class neighborhood, although I probably would not have articulated it that way at the time. Interestingly, Professor Sorin in his definitive Howe biography noted that Howe thought the article was a mistake for "Dissent" to publish for that very homage to violence implicit in the article. That now says it all.
The funny thing about reading "Dissent," at the time, thinking about it now, was that I was personally nothing more than a Kennedy liberal and thought that the magazine reflected that New Frontier liberalism. I was somewhat shocked when I found out later that it was supposed to be an independent 'socialist' magazine.
Most of my political positions at the time were far to the left of what was being presented there editorially, especially on international issues. I might add that I also had an odd political dichotomy in those days toward those to the left of my own liberalism. I was, not exactly aware then of the basis of the divide between them, very indulgent toward communists but really hated socialists, really social democrats. Go figure. Must have been something in the water, or rather some that said one was closer to solving those project and father hurts than the other.
Confession#2- Irving Howe actually acted, unintentionally, as my recruiting sergeant to the works of Leon Trotsky that eventually led to my embrace of a Marxist world view. But after some 150 plus years of Marxism claiming to be a Marxist is only the beginning of wisdom. One has to find the modern thread that continues in the spirit of the founders. Back in 1972, as part of trying to find a political path to modern Marxism I picked up a collection of socialist works edited by Professor Howe. In that compilation was an excerpt from Trotsky’s "History of the Russian Revolution," a section called "On Dual Power.” I read it, and then re-read it. Next day I went out to scrounge up a copy of the whole work. And the rest is history. So, thanks, Professor Howe- now back to the polemical wars against social-democratic accommodation - the truce is over.
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