*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor The Anabaptists of the 16th Century Munster Commune

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for an early, mainly religious (as virtually all politics was couched in at the time) communist experiment at Munster.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

WHEN AMERICA DEFENDED ENLIGHTENMENT VALUES

BOOK REVIEW

REVOLUTIONARY CHARACTERS: WHAT MADE THE FOUNDERS DIFFERENT, GORDON S. WOOD, PENQUIN, NEW YORK, 2006

In earlier times this writer has been rather blasé about the American Revolution tending to either ignore its lessons or putting it well below another revolution- The Great French Revolution, also celebrated in July- in the pantheon of revolutionary history. However, this is flat-out wrong. We cannot let those more interested in holiday oratory than drawing the real lessons of the American Revolution appropriate what is the hard fought property of every militant today. Make no mistake, however, the energy of that long ago revolution has burned itself out and other forces-militant leftists and their allies- and other political creeds-the fight for a workers party and a workers government leading to socialism- have to take its place as a standard-bearer for human progress. That task has been on the historical agenda for a long time and continues to be our task today.

That said, the eminent, if not preeminent, historian of the American revolutionary period Gordon S. Wood has written a collection of sketches which every militant leftist should read in order to get a handle on where the great promise of that American democratic experiment has gone fatally off track. It might be the current paucity of political leadership, it might be the ongoing frontal attack on the Enlightenment values that this country was founded on but this writer finds himself drawn to restudy the lives of the participants and the revolutionary history of the founding of this country. Yes, revolutionary-that is the operative word here and it fits. That action was what was necessary to turn royal subjects into citizens and the Founders rose to the occasion. Make no mistake these were big men (and women, although Mr. Wood strangely, in this day in age, does not include any in this study), from Washington on down, with big ideas that are for the most part codified in the frame of government, a genuine Enlightenment document, - the Constitution and, as importantly, the Bill of Rights. It is necessary, as always, to add that this document is severely marred, among other problems, by the capitulation to slavery and the race question embedded in it that has plagued this country to this day. But that is a question for another time.

Mr. Wood concentrates on the founders here- Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Hamilton. There are no closet socialists here, or for that matter, radical democrats such as Sam Adams, Tom Paine or James Otis. Nor are there nods to the plebian masses that made the revolution and stuck by it through thick and thin. Those types of studies more closely fit the reviewer’s own predilections. Nevertheless, on his own chosen ground Mr. Wood has brought the leadership cadre of the American Revolution to life and done an admirably job of discussing the virtues and anxieties of those men. Notably, there is a great divide between the Founders concepts of civic virtue, use of the public square and civic disinterestedness in comparison to what passes for the leadership of the country today. You know that we are in trouble when John Adams, a not so-closet-Tory, looks damn good in comparison to today’s open reactionaries.

The field of historical writing, like other fields of social research, has gone through various trends in appreciation of the role of leadership and of the masses. Until fairly recently the rage was to look closely at the role of the masses in social struggles. Those studies are still desperately needed. However, I do not believe that it is accidental that today’s trend is to rethink the leadership question in the American Revolution at a time when there is such an obvious lack of it. Some of Mr. Wood’s judgments about particular leaders can be disputed but the overall impression is that these men were not faking their Enlightenment values; in short, they for the most part put their lives on the line for this little democratic experiment. And they were not wrong. As stated above, we need to defend those hard fought for rights- and move beyond them. Read this book.

*Outsourcing For Fun And Profit- A Film Review Of "Outsourced"

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of the trailer for "Outsourced".

DVD Review

Outsourced, starring Josh Hamilton, directed by John Jeffcoat, 2006

Okay, it was bound to happen, right? After all the gnashing of teeth about the lost of American jobs to other countries, after all the India-China bashing as the symbol of those loses and after all the strident, if fruitless, lambasting of those facts by every yahoo politician and cretin-like labor bureaucrat we were bound to get out of Hollywood (or Bollywood, for that matter) a comedic take on this phenomenon. And, given the political ethos of these times, a little ‘lesson’ in multi-culturalism to boot.

It may be unfair to lay the vagaries of the world labor market and the current phase of capitalist “globalization” on a simple film, and I won’t, at least not much because this was actually an entertaining film on its own terms, but its subtext (nice weasel word, right?) does fit in rather nicely about the state of the still fervent “outsourcing” strategy that virtually every large corporation in America (and elsewhere) has hit upon in order tot reduce (and reduce significantly) their wage bills, particularly administrative costs and the price of unskilled and semi-skilled labor.

A quick sketch of the plot is in order. An American telemarketing corporation in order to cut those high administrative costs fires it’s American–centered order-taking staff and out sources to the highly skilled but cheap wage Indian labor market. A middle level executive, the star of the film, Josh Hamilton, is called upon to bring the Indians up to speed and the twists and turns of the plot turn around the struggle to get the Indians to conform to the Taylor productivity speed up system well-known in American business circles. The faults and follies of this transformation drive the, sometimes understated, comedy of the film. Along the way, naturally, said executive gets an up close and personal lesson in multiculturalism from a very fetching Indian love interest.

But here is the point for our purposes-in the end, and I am really giving nothing away here, the Indian employees in their turn are fired so that the corporation can set up shop in the even cheaper Chinese labor market. In short, the race to the bottom continues on its merry way unabated. It is that unabated condition that I will finish up with. I’ve mentioned those cretin-like labor bureaucrats above who have “belly-ached” about the flight of jobs to other countries without lifting finger one to organize labor internationally to drive wages up and make the flight of jobs out much less attractive . Hell, they haven’t, at least since the great wave of industrial unionism led by the CIO drives of the 1930’s, done anything to organize labor in the cheap-labor American south or, and here is the real crime, Wal-mart. This is hardly the end of the discussion. Let’s leave it at this for now- organize globally and think locally. Thinking the other way around gets us no place- American, Indian or Chinese.