The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- From The Archives Of Marxism-*On The Passing Of Folklorist And Ardent Stalinist Irwin Silber- A Short Note

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the late folklorist and political activist Irwin Silber.

Markin comment:

In a recent post linking to a New York Times obituary concerning the passing of Irwin Silber, well- known folklorist and left political activist I made a point, as I have in this headline, of mentioning his ardent and long time Stalinist inclinations. I also noted in the post that if one wanted examples of that political bent then one could Google the Guardian (U.S.) archive for anti-Trotskyist (using the classic giveaway “Trotskyite”) material that he wrote during the 1970s when his Stalinist bent tilted in the direction of the Maoism. As it turns out, at least for now, I have been unable to Google any articles by Silber, or for that matter the Guardian itself. That newspaper ceased publication in the 1990s and, apparently, no one has deemed it necessary, as of yet, to see that the archives enter cyberspace. However, in order to give a flavor of what I am speaking of I have enclosed the link to a twelve-part series run in the Guardian in 1973 (while Silber was on the editorial staff) by Carl Davidson entitled Left in Form, Right in Essence: A Critique of Contemporary Trotskyism. (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/guardian/index.htm).

Let’s make something clear on Stalinism, at least what is essential about it for those who stand in the Trotskyist tradition, while we are on the subject. In the United States, at least when anyone utters the epitaph Stalinist (or Stalin) that conjures up the KGB, gulags, Moscow Trials, slave labor camps, the Cold War, totalitarianism, and assorted other negative labels. As Trotskyists, whose forbears lost the political battle to Stalinism in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, we are painfully aware of all of that, including the lost of our historic leader to assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent in 1940.

But for us, and this is where a bloodline is drawn between the Stalinists and us, including Irwin Silber, it is our perspectives for revolution that distinguish us. In shorthand, does one stand in the tradition of “socialism in one country", or "half a country", or "one island', or whatever political franchise one is craving for and extolling or for international revolution? Does one stand for one-stage workers revolution in the modern age (basically post-1848) or two-stage revolution, first “democratic” (maybe) and then socialist (never, or in the very, very distant future- witness South Africa today for the latest edition). The fight in the international working class movement, at least of its Marxist component, has always, in the end, been fought on that axis. That is the sense is which one Irwin Silber was, from the time he was a pup, an ardent Stalinist.

Note: In the Marxist movement it has always been, or always should have been the case, that in writing political obituaries one should not take a pass on a person’s political life. I have taken my shots at Silber’s politics, and that is that. However, if one reads the whole of the Wikipedia entry one will find that Brother Silber (the brother will be explained presently) wrote a non-political book on the struggles involved with hip and knee replacements. This is one subject on which aging Stalinists and aging Trostkyists can make a principled united front. Hell, we can throw in the anarchists and social democrats as well. That said, back to the political struggles.

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”-The Last Word- Studs Terkel Tells His American Story

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”

Link to Christopher Lydon's Open Source program on the late "people's  journalist" Studs Terkel

http://radioopensource.org/sound-of-studs-terkel/ 

By Si Lannon

It was probably Studs Terkel via a series of book reviews of his interviews trying to get a feel for the soul of the American from Sam Lowell that I first heard the expression “speaking truth to power.” Spoke that message to a sullen world then. Unfortunately since that time the world had not gotten less sullen. Nor has the need to speak truth to power dissipated since Studs passed from this mortal coil of a world that he did so much to give ear and eye to. The problem, the real problem is that we in America no longer produce that pied piper, that guy who will tell the tale the way it has to be told. Something about those gals and guys who waded through the Great Depression, saw firsthand in the closed South Side Chicago factories that something was desperately wrong with the way society operated and slogged through World War II and didn’t go face down in the post-war dead ass could war night spoke of grit and of a feeling that the gritty would not let you down when the deal went down. When Mister (Peabody, James Crow, Robber Baron you name it) called the bluff and you stood there naked and raw.        

Fellow Chicagoan writer Nelson Algren (he of The Man With The Golden Arm and Walk On The Wild Side) put the kind of gals and guys Studs looked around for in gritty urban sinkhole lyrical form but Studs is the guy who found the gritty unwashed masses to sing of. (It is not surprising that when Algren went into decline, wrote less lucid prose Stud grabbed him by the lapels and did a big time boost on one of his endless radio talks to let a candid world know that they missing a guy who know how to give voice to the voiceless, the people with small voices who are still getting the raw end of the deal, getting fucked over if you really want to nitty-gritty truth to power). So check this show out to see what it was like when writers and journalists went down in the mud to get to the spine of society.     

Click On Title To Link To Studs Terkel’s Web Page.

BOOK REVIEW

Touch and Go, Studs Terkel, The New Press, New York, 2007

I have been running through the oral histories collected by the recently departed Studs Terkel, the premier interviewer of his age. As is my habit when I latch onto a writer I want to delve into I tend to read whatever items comes into my hands as soon as I get them rather than systematically or chronologically. Thus, I have just gotten my hands on a copy of Terkel’s “Touch and Go”, a memoir of sorts but more properly a series of connected vignettes (with a little off-hand celebrity name dropping along the way), that goes a long way to filling in some blanks in the life story of one Louis “Studs” Terkel (including information on that the nickname “Studs” - from the 1930’s Chicago-based trilogy “Studs Lonigan” by James T. Farrell, another author who will be reviewed here in the future). For those unfamiliar with Terkel’s work this little book acts as glue to understanding a long life committed to social justice, giving “voice” to ordinary people and expanding our knowledge of various musical traditions like jazz, folk music and the blues. Nice work, right?

And what of that life? The more famous second half of it is fairly well-known in Studs role as the ubiquitous interviewer and oral historian. That part is extensively covered through the materials in his various books such as “Working” and the “The Good War” and others that I have or will review elsewhere in this space and therefore will not spend much time on here. The less familiar first half of his life forms a fairly well-trodden exemplar of a life story from the early part of the 20th century but which today’s readers are nevertheless probably totally unaware of. Naturally enough, for an early 20th century American story, it begins with immigration of Studs parents to America, New York City as the first port of call, from the Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe. Then, later, the also familiar internal migration that landed them in Chicago in search of more promising prospects and, ultimately assimilation by Studs (and his two brothers) into the life of the heartland, including the old traditions of hard work, hard striving and hard inquisitiveness.

Studs, like many of the members of his generation, was formed, permanently it would seen, by the hardships and cruelties of the Great Depression that, as exemplified by his oral histories of the times, are his special contributions to the history of that period. I do not believe that those of us from later generations can get a full sense of that history without Studs’ work as companion pieces to the academic histories. That was a time, as a glance at today’s’ current dire economic and social events may be foreshadowing, where one was forced to get by one’s wits, cleverness and sheer “guts”.

After a stint at law school Studs did odd jobs around the theater trying catch on a performer. But not just any theater and not just any performer. This is the period of the Theater Guild and of the WPA which gave cultural workers or those who aspired to such a chance. In short, an engaged and leftist political theater. Needless to say Studs got caught up with the international politics of the period. The struggle against fascism as a “pre-mature” anti-fascist, the fight to save the Spanish Republic and at home the struggle to aid those who were decimated by the Depression. Name a progressive social cause, he was there.

For his efforts, then and later, Studs had some success in his career as a performer first in the ubiquitous field of radio that formed the mass consciousness of the so-called “greatest generation” as a disc jockey and interviewer of various musical figures like Billie Holiday on his shows, the Wax Museum and the Eclectic Disc Jockey. Later, after truncated service in the Air Force in World II, Studs got in on the ground floor of the television with the local Chicago success of Studs’ Place.

Then the roof caved in as the ‘’red scare’ hit home and hit home hard. This was not a good period for those “pre-mature” anti-fascists like Studs mentioned in the last paragraph. In any case Studs survived by “doing the best he could” and by one means or another got hooked onto his career as an interviewer that one really should get a taste of first hand by reading one of the dozen or so books of his dedicated to that art form.

I have not mentioned thus far much about the specifics of Studs’ politics. I believe that he was formed, and ultimately was stuck in, that ‘progressive’ (and capitalism-saving) politics that came to life with President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and was given highest expression by former FDR Vice-President Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party run for the presidency in 1948. A perusal of Studs later works, including comments in this memoir only confirm my impression that his worldview, formed in the 1930’s, remained about the same to the end.

That, however, is not why Studs has an honored place in the halls of the allies of the working class. His commitment to the “good fight” throughout a long life was commendable. We are always in need of those are willing to sign something, to speak to some pressing social issue and who do not squawk about it. No movement can survive without those kinds of publicists. The real tribune to Studs, however, will come when those myriad working class people that he interviewed- those downtrodden Chicago people, those poor white mountain people, those poor black migrants from the South get the society they desire and NEED. Kudos, Brother Terkel.


Studs At His Craft

The Spectator, Studs Terkel, The New Press, New York, 1999

As is my wont, I have been running through the oral histories of the mainly average citizens of America collected by the recently departed Studs Terkel, the premier interviewer of his age. When I latch onto a writer I want to delve into I tend to read whatever comes into my hands as I get it rather than systematically or chronologically. Thus, I have just gotten my hands on a copy of Terkel’s “The Spectator”, a professional actor’s memoir of sorts, that goes a long way to filling in some blanks in the life story of one Louis “Studs” Terkel (including information that the nickname “Studs” is from the Chicago trilogy “Studs Lonigan” by James T. Farrell, another author who will be reviewed here later). For those unfamiliar with Terkel’s work other than his seemingly endless capacity to interview one and all this little book acts as glue to understanding a life-long commitment to his craft as an actor, his appreciation of those who gave memorable performances, his fantastical recall of such moments in the theater and on film and his creating of a wider audience appreciation for various musically traditions like jazz, folk music and the blues. Nice work.

Studs, like many of the members of his generation, was formed by the hardships and cruelties of the Great Depression that I believe in his oral histories are his special contribution to insights into that period and that is reflected here. That was a time, as today’s’ current economic and social events seem to replicating, where one was forced to get by on wits, cleverness and sheer “guts”. Studs himself did odd jobs around the theater trying catch on a performer. But not just any theater and not just any performer. This is the period of the Theater Guild and of WPA which gave cultural workers or those who aspired to such a chance. These early efforts formed the lifelong interest that he has in the theater, playwrights, directors and the tricks of the trade in order to make the audience “believe” in the performance. I found, personally, his probing and informed interviews with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams , two of my own favorite playwrights, the most interesting part of a book filled with all kind of interesting tidbits.

For his efforts, then and later, Studs had some success in his career as a performer first in the ubiquitous radio that formed many a consciousness of the so-called ‘greatest generation” as a disc jockey and interviewer of various musical figures like Billie Holiday on his shows, the Wax Museum and the Eclectic Disc Jockey. It is the combination of the radio as a format and the in-depth interview that sets Studs apart. Today we have no comprehension of how important these little extended interviews are as a contribution to the history of our modern culture. Will the ubiquitous mass media sound bites of the 21st century or even the unfiltered presentations on “YouTube”, or its successors, tell future generations what that culture was all about? I don’t even want to hazard a guess. But for now, savor, and I do mean savor, Studs going one-on-one with the above-mentioned Miller and Williams or songwriter Yip Harburg, come-back actor James Cagney, culture critics Harold Clurman and Kenneth Tynan and many, many more actors, actresses, playwrights, impresarios, directors and other cultural gadflies. Kudos and adieu Studs.

*From The Spartacist Archives- The 1948 Henry Wallace Progressive Party Campaign

Click on the headline to link to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the 1948 Henry Wallace-led Progressive Party campaign as background for the article below.


Workers Vanguard No. 918
1 August 2008

From the Archives of Spartacist

On Bourgeois “Third Parties” and the 1948 Henry Wallace Campaign

The following article, originally titled “Henry Wallace and Gideon’s Army,” is reprinted from Spartacist No. 7 (September-October 1966). The article is about Wallace’s 1948 Progressive Party presidential campaign. In the current election year, the “third party” capitalist Greens have nominated former Georgia Democratic Party Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney as their presidential candidate. The parallels between Wallace and McKinney are striking: the candidates’ rousing talk of “peace,” “justice” and a better deal for the little people is meant to corral dissatisfaction with the two main bourgeois parties into yet another capitalist electoral vehicle. Our forebears in the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1948 gave no political support to Wallace. Today, in contrast to reformist groups like Workers World Party, which has endorsed McKinney, we give no political support to the Green/McKinney “Power to the People” campaign. It represents no break with bourgeois politics.

Nor, as Marxists, would we run for executive office—such as mayor, governor or president—ourselves, although Marxists have and can run for parliamentary office as a tactic to propagate our revolutionary program and as part of the struggle to imbue the working class with the understanding that the capitalist order, including its parliamentary facade, must be overthrown through socialist revolution. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels taught long ago, the capitalist government is the executive committee that manages the common affairs of the capitalist class as a whole. In the U.S., the president is the chief executive responsible for the most massive military power in history and for the domestic machinery of repression that maintains social oppression and exploitation. To run for executive office means to aspire to be the next Commander-in-Chief who decides who gets tortured, who gets bombed, who gets invaded (see Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 60, Autumn 2007).

As we pointed out in Spartacist No. 7’s front-page article, “1966 Elections,” to which the Wallace piece was a companion, “In sum, independent campaigns must not only break with the Democratic Party, but must break with the system of bourgeois rule, and aim toward arousing the working class from its present passive allegiance to that system.” The 1966 midterm elections, two years after Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide victory against Barry (“In your guts, you know he’s nuts”) Goldwater, saw growing opposition to the Vietnam War and recognition that the Democratic Party was, as we wrote, “the favored tool of those forces which are committed to maintaining American capitalist hegemony throughout the world.” In sorting out the various forces running “independent” candidacies, we relied on the working-class Marxist analysis developed in part by James P. Cannon, the founding leader of American Trotskyism, and the SWP.

* * *

In late 1947, Henry A. Wallace announced his intention to run for the presidency of the U.S. as an anti-war, pro-labor candidate. Wallace had been secretary of agriculture, vice president and secretary of commerce, all under Franklin D. Roosevelt, capitalism’s phony champion of the working man. But for the 1948 campaign Wallace ran at the head of the new Progressive Party, a third party challenge to the two established capitalist “front groups.”

During 1946 and early 1947, old-line New Dealers and some Democratic politicians; CIO President Philip Murray, left-dominated unions in the CIO and organizations based on the CIO; and the Communist Party [CP] had all shown an interest in such a third party. However by December 1947, the first two groupings, partially under the pressures of a growing red scare, had almost all retreated to the Democratic Party. Only the CP and groupings closely allied to it gave any substantial support after the end of 1947. The nature of that support can be seen by the continuing withdrawals throughout the campaign by Stalinist-led unions confronted by CIO pressure, and by the composition of the Progressive Citizens of America, a largely petty-bourgeois CP front group, a good section of which later formed the Americans for Democratic Action. Wallace, with his announcement, initiated not a wide-based movement but a petty-bourgeois “Gideon’s Army,” captained by Stalinists.

The Messiah Movement

The nature of the third party campaign waged by Wallace is accurately indicated in that term. Wallace himself relished the designation and seemed eager to portray himself as a latter-day Gideon. His appearances were accompanied by gospel singers, trumpets and a revivalist camp atmosphere. He campaigned on the basis of peace among nations, brotherhood among men and justice for all. Rather than use the first campaign of a new nation-wide party as a means for raising the consciousness of the working class, Wallace accepted the role of a messiah, come to save the American people.

Just before the election, Wallace proclaimed that the Progressive Party could count many victories: a third party had been put on the ballot in 45 states; moreover, his campaign had slowed the “cold war,” given pause to the assault on civil rights and eliminated the possibility of a witch hunt.

The rejoinders to Wallace’s claims are today obvious, but they need to be made because the type of victories which Wallace claimed are the same type that many peace and independent candidates seek today. Where is that third party today? What use, other than electoral, was made of the more than a million voters who supported Wallace? If the “cold war” has slowed, it has slowed only to be replaced by a series of U.S. maneuvered hot wars and CIA-run counter revolutions, most aided by the treacherous role of Stalinist parties. As for the last two claims, one need point only to the continuing police assaults on Harlem, Watts, Chicago, Cleveland and East New York and to the McCarthy period, followed by the HUAC period, followed by the Epton “trial.” [Epton, a leftist activist who at that time was in the Progressive Labor Party, was the first person in New York State since the 1919 “red scare” to be convicted of “criminal anarchy” for his courageous efforts to provide leadership and organization to the besieged black masses during the 1964 Harlem police riot. See “In Memory of Bill Epton,” WV No. 781, 17 May 2002.]

Role of the Guardian

The totally capitalist nature of Wallace’s third party can be seen by reading the early issues of the National Guardian and by comparing the specific items of Wallace’s platform to those in any Democratic Party platform.

The National Guardian began publication in October 1948, primarily as the propaganda organ for the Wallace campaign. Its very first issue (18 October 1948) proclaimed:

“This editorial point of view will be a continuation and development of the progressive tradition set in our time by Franklin D. Roosevelt…

“We conceive the progressive tradition to be represented today by Henry A. Wallace…

“We believe, with FDR and Henry Wallace, in expanding freedoms and living standards for all peoples as the essential foundation of a world at peace.

“We believe, with FDR and Henry Wallace, that peace can be secured only by seeking areas of agreement among nations, rather than seeking areas of disagreement.”

The high-blown rhetoric cannot conceal three basic fallacies in those few sentences: that FDR, capitalism’s front man par excellence, was in reality the advocate for the working man; that capitalism, which can do nothing to stem famine in India or prevent an approaching famine in Latin America, is able to improve the living standards of the whole world’s population; and that there is no significant difference between the capitalist U.S. and socialist Russia.

A campaign based on such fallacies can do nothing but dull the consciousness of the working class. Why should the labor movement back a minor party candidate who pleads, “Capitalism would be just fine if slightly reformed, so vote for me”? The Democratic Party asserts the same line and its candidates can be immediately elected. Such a campaign can have no outcome other than the strengthening of the Democratic Party’s hold over the working class.

When just that did happen in the ’48 election, the CP and others backing Wallace took credit for such a strengthening of the party which the bourgeoisie have increasingly realized is their protector. The Guardian exulted in its post-election issue (8 November 1948):

“The people of a whole world can look toward America today with renewed confidence. The American people have reaffirmed their progressive tradition. They have repelled the bold maneuvering of monopoly and reaction to take over America through Thomas E. Dewey and the Republican Party. They have handed Harry S. Truman an unmistakable mandate to return to the principles of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“The mandate would not have been possible if the Progressive Party had not introduced the Roosevelt program into the 1948 campaign.”

Wallace’s Program

The laughable absurdity of such a statement is apparent as soon as one analyzes the class nature of the Roosevelt program which Wallace introduced. Its demands have already been fulfilled or have been repeated as truisms in the Great Society of another messiah.

Wallace’s program broke down into two general areas, isolated from each other: the achievement of international peace and the progressive reform of U.S. capitalism at home. According to Wallace, the U.S. could achieve worldwide peace by establishing faith in the UN, by negotiating with Soviet Russia, by recognizing new small countries such as Israel and by abolishing military conscription at home.

The domestic reforms required slightly more complex solutions. On the social side, Wallace advocated abolition of Jim Crow laws and the establishment of legal guarantees for civil rights; federal aid to housing, health and education; and governmental promotion of science and culture. On the economic front, he called for a council of economic planning to assure high production, full employment and a rising standard of living; public ownership of key areas of the economy in TVA type developments; repeal of the Taft-Hartley law and a one dollar an hour minimum wage; anti-trust action against monopolies; and rollback of prices covered out of exorbitant profits.

A Bourgeois Program

Capitalism has been able to fulfill most of these demands or hold out the promise of their fulfillment without seriously damaging its own position. Thus the program posed no questions which capitalism itself could not appear to solve. It did not serve to link up the economic pressures at home with the already mounting imperialism of the “cold war.” Thus Wallace’s general evaluations of Progressive Party successes were all proved incorrect because his platform, accepted gladly by Truman, dealt with specific ills in a capitalist society and not with the capitalist mode of production which produces those ills.

There was no ideological content to the Wallace campaign—only the slogans of a messiah-reformer—and the one million votes formed no base for the development of a third party opposed to capitalist control.

Labor Control Needed

James Cannon in a 1948 internal SWP discussion on the Wallace candidacy offered several criteria which can be used as measures today of these new third parties. He stated that Wallace’s policies showed only tactical differences in the camp of the bourgeoisie and that to support Wallace would mean an entrance into “lesser-evil” politics. He differentiated between the pseudo-radical party of a petty-bourgeois reformist like Wallace and the revolutionary labor party, which would proceed from the aim to assist the development of independent political action by workers and turn that action towards its revolutionary culmination. Finally he insisted that the class character of a party is determined not primarily by the class which supports it but by the class it supports, in its program, daily policy and practice.

The SWP Political Committee resolution on the Wallace candidacy developed on the basis of these criteria its minimum requirement for critical support to a third party: that the party be based on a significant section of labor and be subject to its control and pressure.

The incipient third parties could easily use these criteria in order to distinguish the class nature of their own demands, and therefore the possibility of those demands leading to a revolutionary culmination. More importantly, parties claiming to be Marxist need to establish such criteria as the basis for their own support to third party movements. (The SWP might well take note of its own past history.)