CORRESPONDENCE
Split in Ceylon COlnlnunist Party Editor ISR: weeklies of the CCP continued to publish articles support The Ceylon Communist Party, which did not register ing the Chinese position. The majority in the CC acted even the slightest impact of events like the Hungarian swiftly and removed Premalal Kumarasiri and H. M. P. Revolution, Poznan and the twentieth Congress, has cracked Mohideen from their posts as editors of the Sinhalese and wide open in the current crisis facing the international com Tamil papers. Subsequently, notices were served on N. munist movement. The split in this party, which has hither Shanmugathasan and Premalal Kumarasiri, requesting them to remained monolithic, is almost complete. It has only to to show cause why disciplinary action should not be taken be regularized at the "rebel" convention which is to be held against them for violating a CC decision. Shortly after this shortly. Premalal Kumarasiri left for Djakarta to attend the Afro About two months back the Central Committee of the Asian Trade Union conference. The CC of the CCP then Ceylon Communist Party (CCP) adopted by a majority postponed action on Premalal Kumarasiri and decided by vote a resolution condemning the Chinese position in the a majority vote to expel N. Shanmugathasan. current dispute. A minority in the CC, led by N. Shanmu This led to an intensive campaign by N. Shanmugathasan gathasan, Secretary of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation inside the party against the leadership. He was later joined (CTUF) and Premalal Kumarasiri, editor of the CCP by Premalal Kumarasiri after the latters return to Ceylon. Sinhalese Weekly, declared that the CC had no legal right Party cell meetings and public meetings were held in a to take this action because its term of office should have number of places in the city and the outstations. At these expired in December 1962. Claiming that the lame duck meetings the policy of the CP leadership came in for severe CC did not represent the views of the party, they initiated criticism. Attempts of the CP leadership to ban these meet a campaign for an immediate party conference to discuss ings for CP members and to prevent the holding of these this problem and elect a new leadership. meetings proved futile. Shanmugathasan alleges that the In spite of the CC decision the Sinhalese and Tamil CP leadership even resorted to bribery to disrupt his meet ings. Most of these meetings were very well attended. CP members took a prominent part in organizing these meet ings, but no disciplinery action was taken against them. INTERNATIONAL Published quarterly by the International - The displaced editors of the party papers were imme Socialist Review Publishing Association, 116 diately appointed as the editors of the Sinhalese and Tamil SOCIALIST University Pl., New York 3, N. Y. Second papers of the CTUF. These papers, which are utilised to REVIEW class postage paid at New York, N. Y. attack the CP leadership directly, were fortnightlies. Now they have been reorganized as weeklies and steps are being Contents taken to bring out the Sinhalese paper as a daily beginning January 1964. The CTUF has set up a well equipped print CORRESPONDENCE ...... 2 ing press with modern machinery obtained from the Ger man Democratic Republic. PROBLEMS OF NEW ADMINISTRATION ...... 3 So far the only rebels to be expelled are N. Shanmuga WHITE RADICALS AND BLACK thasan and T. Moorthy. Both of them belong to the Tamil speaking minority. This and the failure on the part of the NATIONALISM ...... by Robert Vernon 5 CP to take disciplinery action against a single Sinhalese DEUTSCHER ON TROTSKY ...... by Joseph Hansen 11 speaking rebel, together with the virulent communalist at tacks levelled at N. Shanmugathasan and other Tamil THE FLIVVER KING: A CENTENNIAL speaking revolutionaries who reject the reformist perspec APPRAISAL ...... by Evelyn Sell 17 tive of power through parliament, proves beyond doubt that THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE ...... by Evelyn Reed 24 the CP leadership has acted communally in this matter. The pro-Peking secretary and treasurer were removed from office by the pro-Moscow minority of the Central IN REVIEW Committee of the Communist Party and Progressive Youth COMPARATIVE MEDICAL CARE by Marvel Scholl 27 Leagues. Subsequently the majority in the Youth League CC (19 out of 30) met and expelled seven pro-Moscow THE LIVING TROTSKY ...... by William F. Warde 28 members including its president. This majority claims that THE BLACK MUSLIMS ...... by Robert Vernon 29 the president, Sarath Muththetuwagama, who was in agree ment with the Chinese position earlier, is now a prisoner U.S. ECONOMY: THE PAPER in the hands of the Kremlin wing. TIGER ...... by John Pederson 30 The CTUF, which is the trade union organization of the CCP, forms the main base of the Peking wing. All attempts STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP ...... 31 on the part of the CP leadership to take the trade unions away from Shanmugathasan's influence have failed. A few meetings summoned by the leadership in the branch unions Vol. 25 - No. 1 - Whole No. 166 to rally support for the official line of the CP proved to be miserable fiascos. This gave rise to a spate of meetings in a number of branch unions which reaffirmed their faith Editor, Tom Kerry; Business Manager, Karolyn in the Peking-line leadership. As yet the CP leadership has Kerry; Book Review Editor, Hedda Garza. made no attempt to form a separate trade union organiza tion. Attempts to capture the CTUF from within have proved SUBSCRIPTION RATES: 1 year (four issues) $1.50; 2 years (eight futile. A few of the Moscow supporters in the leadership issues) $3. Add 50 cents per year for Canada, Latin America and of branch unions have been removed from office at the overseas; single copy 50 cents, bundles 35 cents a copy for five branch level. But M. G. Mendis, a Moscow supporter, still copies or more, domestic or foreign. remains in the leadership of the CTUF. .,..,..345 (Continued on Page 31)
2 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW INTERNATIONAL Winter 1964 SOCIALIST Volume 25 No.1 REVIEW Problems DI the New AdministrlltiDn ENNEDY'S fatal end is being linked with that of in some form next year in view of the forthcoming K the martyred Abraham Lincoln. Their successors national elections, it does not provide adequate federal in office also bear certain resemblances to each other. enforcement of civil rights statutes and still less does Both have the same last name and come from the it try to remedy the intolerable conditions against South. More politically significant is the fact that both which the Negroes are protesting. Johnsons took over, along with the powers of the Pres Liberal and some Negro leaders alike have been urg idency, tremendous problems which their predecessors ing a moratorium on the civil rights struggle to give had been grappling with but were not able to settle. the new president a chance to show what he can do. Although Kennedy promised a far more vigorous and They overlook two things. First, that the pending in effective administration when he entered the White adequate civil rights legislation acquired priority in House in 1961, he had made little progress by the end national politics today solely through the pressures of 1963. As Walter Lippmann wrote after the assassi generated by mass actions and demonstrations. Second, nation on December 4: "The big hopes and promises that postponement of further actions of this kind goes of the New Frontier are at a standstill." In his first against the very spirit and dynamism of the Freedom weeks the new President is likewise striving to produce Now movement which is opposed to gradualism, token the impression of energetically disposing of unfinished ism and watchful waiting. business. But before him are the same roadblocks that It takes no exceptional skill in prophecy to foresee slowed down and frustrated Kennedy. that the new occupant of the White House, as well as Lyndon Johnson has inherited four major problems. the old, will find Freedom Now fighters not only in the Ironically, the foremost at home is a continuation at streets of the South and the North but close to his a far more advanced stage, of the crucial problem that doorstep clamoring for the jobs and justice Kennedy confronted and confounded Andrew Johnson at the promised but failed to provide. close of the Civil War. What is to be done about the long-postponed yet increasingly insistent demands of * * * the Negroes for freedom? Andrew Johnson of Tennes HIS brings us to the second big problem before the see was afraid to offend and overturn the Old South by T new administration. It is inseparable from the first. giving political power and economic sureties to the As the prime sufferers from economic insecurity, the freedmen. He drew back from the drastic step im Negro masses want jobs as well as justice. Where are peratively required by the tasks of the times. His critics these to come from? For twenty years our economy has said "he acted more like a Pharaoh than a Moses." been kept going by massive injections of military ex After being almost impeached by the Radicals, Johnson penditures. Even so, the United States has the highest was refused renomination. In order to assure Negro rate of unemployment of any major industrial country rights, revolutionary measures had to be instituted all except Canada. the way from military occupation of the South to the Why should anyone be out of work in the richest and denial of votes to secessionist leaders. This new birth most productive country of the world? Only because of freedom did not last long, as we know. Capitalist the system of producing for profit necessarily also reaction joined with the restoration of white supremacy produces unemployment as an essential byproduct of to wipe out the achievements of Black Reconstruction. its operations. Now, a hundred years later, another Johnson, this one The record of the past three years casts an ominous from Texas, faces an even more irrepressible Negro shadow over the coming decade. Although his time in revolt. He, too, is a moderate caught in a situation that office coincided with a boom, all Kennedy's efforts failed calls for radical actions. Moreover, he heads a white to reduce unemployment. The chief cause of this im power structure that has grown more rigid and reac potence is the technological revolution sweeping through tionary than it was a ·century ago. Is it, then, realistic factories, offices and farms. In this banner auto sales to expect that the rulers of today will be more ready year unemployment increased about 10 per cent in and able to redress the grievances and meet the de Michigan in February. Seventy-eight per cent of De mands of the Negroes than their nineteenth century troit's Negro youth has no work - and you need seven forerunners were? teen years seniority to be sure of your job at Ford's in In his first message to Congress Johnson requested Detroit. The same processes of displacement are going passage of the civil rights bill which has been in com on in steel, coal, longshoring, agriculture and elsewhere mittee cold storage all year. This bold warrior did not in the economy. dare specify prompt action this year. The Kennedy While automation is eliminating millions of jobs, administration had already agreed to weaken the provi twenty-six million new young workers will enter the sions of the measure. And, even if some bill is enacted labor market in the next ten years. A flood of new
WINTER 1964 3 workers com.es up against fewer job opportunities - have been made in Congress to regulate natural gas or here are the explosive ingredients of distress and deep tamper with the oil royalties racket he has worked to ening discontent on the New Frontier, especially among head them off. Politicians and political parties need the Negro and poor white youth. Johnson has set a campaign funds, don't they? He has never been so target of five million more jobs, but, like Kennedy, is ardent as a guardian of the rights of the people as he opposed to a shorter work week which might counteract has been of the revenue of the plutocrats. some of the worst effects of automation. He has no program to deal with unemployment other than to cut * * * the taxes of the corporations and the rich in the hope MOST serious of all is the fourth unresolved problem that they will reinvest in more plant facilities equipped bequeathed to the new chief executive. That is with automatic machinery which will eliminate more the problem of peace. In the first days Johnson hurried jobs and workers . . . to declare that the war in South Vietnam would pro ceed and the anti-Cuba drive would not lessen. Over * * * and above these impermissible interventions against the THE DEFENSE of the liberties of the entire American colonial movements of liberation hovers the ghastly people, and not simply those of twenty-million threat of nuclear war. Negroes, is a third area in which the Kennedy-Johnson One reason why the world trembled and held its administration has been in default. According to some breath at the news of Kennedy's assassination is the American academic historians, the perfecting of democ potential to destroy all life on this planet vested in racy is the predestined mission of our capitalist civiliza the tenant of the White House. He alone can order the tion. This judgment is based upon weighty historical button to be pressed that can doom us all. facts. But these, alas, pertain much more to the past Kennedy was prepared to risk such a decision in the than the present. confrontation with the Kremlin in October of last year. In its progressive periods capitalist America favored The assassin's bullet has now shifted that life-and and facilitated the growth of democracy. In the death power to the man from Texas. It is extremely eighteenth and nineteenth centuries our people created doubtful that the world feels safer as a result. and strengthened many democratic rights and institu Here, too, it is not a question of individuals but of tions, which we still enjoy. This expansion of freedom the workings of a social and political system. Where was halted and reversed as the monopolists and militar does this supreme inhumanity that hangs over us, where ists have become more unrestrained in their exercise does this possibility of universal assassination by nu of power during this century. clear devices come from? It is the deadly fruit of an Since the beginning of the Second World War, under outmoded system that is being pressed back by the on Democratic and Republican administrations alike, there rushing forces of national independence and socialism has been a steady restriction and erosion of our liber and does not relish losing much more of its power, ties. Over the past twenty-five years Congress has possessions, privileges and profits. It will stop at noth passed not a single law designed to enlarge our free ing to protect and preserve these, in the last extremity. doms. On the contrary, it has enacted a still unfinished This alone should suffice to condemn this system in series of instruments of oppression starting with the the eyes of everyone concerned with the salvation of Smith Act and culminating in the Landrum-Griffin the human race. bill, which have whittled down constitutional and labor rights. Lest this judgment be dismissed as hopelessly biased, coming from an avowed Marxist periodical, examine a quote from an eminent English philosopher who has opposed Marxism for more than forty years. Bertrand Special Offer Russell wrote in the April Frontier: "Since the end of World War II, the way to political power in the U.S. has been characterized by the To New Readers crudest persecution of dissident opinion. The object of this persecution has been to impose upon the U.S. an acceptance of capitalism and of the power of large in A four-month trial subscription to The Militant dustry. The corporate community finances both political parties, provides the millions necessary for bothcandi for only one dollar. Send this coupon with pay dates in senatorial elections, owns and controls the media ment to: The Militant, 116 University Place, of communication and, in effect, exercises the power of decision making. For this reason formal political New York 3, N.Y. democracy in the United States is largely a sham, and 'freedom' is a convenient myth at the disposal of face less bureaucrats." It should be noted that the Freedom Now movement Name ...... stands in the vanguard, not only of the struggle for social equality and economic security, but also of the fight against the encroachments upon our democratic Street ...... liberties. The few successes that have been scored in recent years against the enemies of democracy have come from the vigor of the civil rights movement. City ...... Zone ...... State ...... President Johnson has been a dependable friend of the natural gas and big oil interests. Every time attempts
4 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW Mite Rllt!icols lint! Blllck Notiono/ism
By Robert Vernon
Introduction a black power base independent of The only thing right about that and in opposition to the white power picture is that southern Negroes OR almost two decades the reac structure, - and those Negroes view fighting for integration under severe F tionary wave dominating the ing integration or assimiliation into odds and at great personal risk in American scene has sought to stifle American society as an immediate the South are indeed heroic and in and suppress all varieties and mani goal and as a life philosophy. spiring, and their struggle is certain festations of radicalism in the United Another conspicuous failure to ly the front line in the South today. States. Radical and revolutionary unite is seen in the vast gulf separ The comparisons are all wrong. Up trends and thoughts have been pro ating traditional white radicalism North (i.e. Up South), is not the scribed and labeled as directed from from both wings of the new black same as Down South. The problems Moscow, or Peking, or Havana. Their radicalism, again despite the exist of northern Negroes are not identical partisans have been hounded, slan ence of a vicious common enemy. with those of southern Negroes, how dered, harried and harassed. The principal aim of the present ever much they may have in com During that same period, a new article is to probe into the reasons mon. and vigorous radicalism has been why Negroes who are more or less The "real" Negro struggle con making headway among the masses oriented in a nationalist direction sists of several struggles on different of black people, the largest and most cannot understand or agree with fronts, all interrelated. Southern Ne combative oppressed grouping in the what white radicals are trying to say, groes have to struggle for the most United States. This new radicalism and to examine those aspects of the elementary rights: the right to sit develops to a large extent indepen experiences and thinking of most anywhere on a bus; to walk on the dently of the older, "white" radical white radicals which block their way sidewalk; to not suffer humiliation ism, and in forms which baffle the to any understanding of how nation in ten thousand segregated ways; to comprehension of all white Ameri alist-oriented Negroes think and feel. cast a ballot in a meaningless elec cans, whether radical, liberal, con In some respects the inability of tion; to sit at a greasy-spoon lunch servative, or racist. The two most Negro integrationists to understand counter to get served tasteless food; extreme variants of this new black black nationalism and its implica to have access to educational facili radicalism are the pro-integration tions is similar to the inability of ties - the list is endless. All this is freedom fighters in the South, and white radicals to do so. Also, the in addition to the problems that Ne the intransigent black nationalists new generation of white youth in groes in the North and West of this of the northern slum ghettos. partial rebellion against an unsatis great land have to cope with. But It is not an uncommon thing for fying and stale society generally the focus of attention is different. groups engaging in struggle against identifies with the integration strug The struggles in the South are the same enemy to speak vastly dif gle in the South, but fails to respond waged primarily to win aspects of ferent political languages and fail to meaningfully to the no-less-inspiring integration which Negroes elsewhere achieve unity in a common fight black nationalist revolt in the north already "enjoy." Negroes outside of against that enemy. When the factors ern ghettos. the South are more immediately in hindering realization of such unity Down South - Up South terested in higher wages, better liv are lodged deeply in the society and ing and working conditions, job and in the history and consciousness of The heroic struggle of Negro stu educational opportunities, political the contending groups, as they al dents and communities in the deep power and a lot more: a society in ways are, one of the most important Southland is viewed by white radi which they can feel at home as a aids to such unity would be a clear cals as the brightest spot in the na people, as humans; identification. in ing of the air, a comprehensive ex tional picture. This is a struggle their own eyes as part of humanIty. planation of the nature of the dis~n which white radicals and white lib Southern Negroes feel these needs ity and its causes, as prerequisite to erals, too, can understand (they too, but they are immediately oc any meeting of the minds in a com think), sympathize with and join in. cupied with more elementary strug mon effort. Concomitantly, the white radicals of gles for which they have fashioned Such disunity is striking and con ten draw the conclusion that the suitable weapons for the moment. spicuous in the black Freedom Now nationalists are phonies compared to struggle, where a strong cleavage the freedom riders and sit-in fight has developed - between those N e ers and that black nationalists are ~I ORTHERN Negroes have always groes oriented in a nationalist direc withdrawing from the real fight to I~ been lukewarm to the awkward tion, who engage in or promote escape to a never-never land. The efforts of white radicals to trans struggles and methods of struggle southern front is seen as the central plant southern issues, methods and not dependent on the notion of inte and dominant feature of the entire outlooks (or what the white radicals gration but instead aimed at building Negro struggle. take to be such) to the North, where
WINTER 1964 5 other problems take the forefront. harder time making it into the melt and South, on farms or in cities, There is no lack of sympathy for the ing pot than another, but it's all a whether isolated or living in huge southern front, but what the white matter of degree. It would only be ghettos like Harlem, faced the exact radicals have in mind in these efforts a matter of time and grit before sig same set of problems with exactly is not clear. Urbanized Negroes in nificant numbers of Negroes had the same outlook. the teeming hell-holes of Chicago, made it. Nationalism would be at There is in fact a striking degree New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, or best something to amuse a few old of homogeneity in the Negro struggle Pittsburgh don't have to freedom cronies born in the South who never in many respects. This article con ride on the bus or SUbway. They can adjusted to big city life. centrates on the less understood as eat in any greasy-spoon by legal Would white radicals then be hap pects of inhomogeneity, particularly right. Their kids can go to a token pier, seeing the urban Negro popula the gulf separating the southern in integrated school where they will be tion all solidly in favor of integration tegrationist from the northern na taught decadent white American ide and assimilation? Negroes in the tionalist. Clashes between these ology and effete white American val North all "enjoy" to one extent or 'views could be minimized once their ues (assuming these slum schools another the very elementary civil regionality is acknowledged. teach anything) . A Harlem Negro rights for which Negroes in the South Southern integrationists, white ra can take a suite in the Waldorf As are presently struggling. Yet it is dicals, white liberals and northern toria if he has the money and wants precisely in the urban Negro prole integrationists all make the mistake to splurge it that way (and if he tariat that black nationalism finds its of judging black nationalism not by calls in his reservation from some most fertile soil. Why should this be its relevance to its natural habitat non-Harlem address). It's the law. a source of distress, annoyance and in the northern slum ghettos, but Then why aren't northern Negroes chagrin to white radicals who are for instead by how it measures up to content and happy with those beach fundamental changes and not just as the southern integration struggle. In heads of integration? Negroes in the similation of Negroes into the status turn, black nationalists not only react North should seem about due for the quo? hostilely to the very m.ention of the great American melting pot. They The white radicals would never dirty word "integration," where it have the formal and legal status, have been able to influence these does not answer their problems in even more or less the economic sta people, and they don't know what to the North, but extend this reaction to tus, of previous ghetto immigrants say to them anyway. A radicalization condemn the methods and goals of (Irish, Italians, Jews) who have long of these masses through a mechan the struggle in Dixie. since been assimilated. So why don't ism operating independently, infus Many nationalists look down upon they melt? They have problems, true, ing self-confidence, self-expression, the integration struggle in the South but so did the other ethnic groups powered by the trem.endous appeal (or North) with a contemptuous air, mentioned. imparted by nationalist fervor, pro projecting the needs, conditions and The bulk of northern Negroes are viding an avenue for the organization inferences of their own ghetto life economically restricted to rat- and into a mass movement of previously onto the southern scene, where Ne vermin-infested slum tenements and politically unorganized and voiceless groes are faced with added difficul to the dirtiest low-paying jobs. But masses seething with hatred for the ties and a very peculiar white prob this was true of immigrant groups status quo - all this should be good lem. In evolving their own dynamic, in the past. As long as they knew reason for optimism among revolu revolutionary ideology of a total and some of their brethren had made it tionists. It might not be exactly what uncompromising break with the rot to "success" and had hope for their they expected; it is certainly not en ten white American society, many children rising up in the American tirely to their liking or understand black nationalists attack not only the world, they didn't lose faith in the ing' being out of their control; it is senseless goal of assimilation and in American Way. A few became radi far from being an ideal political ve effective integration tactics, but also cals but lost any interest in "that hicle for revolutionary change; but the very vital and unpostponable ne nonsense" as the society managed to it is a thousand times better than cessities of the southern struggle. absorb them. At no time was there the alternative picture of the same a mass rejection of America compar hundreds of thousands of northern able to what we see among Negroes Negroes sitting it out patiently in today. the illusion of getting their chance Bulletin of Marxist Studies Why this paradox of growing black to cash in on the American Dream. nationalism, stronger in the urban ized and integrated North rather Blind Spot Documents than in the totalitarian, segregated Another important and debilitating South? blind spot is the inability to perceive on the If Negroes in the North and West regional variations in the conditions were headed straight into the Ameri faced by Negroes across the country, Negro Struggle can melting pot, with the unques and in the response of Negroes to the tioned goal of becoming assimilated problems posed by regionally vary as have the various waves of immi ing conditions. This particular blind 65c grants from Europe and even from spot is not unique to white radicals, the Orient, then integration, and but affects black integrationists and graduaZ integration at that, would nationalists alike. Almost everyone PIONEER PUBLISHERS be on the order of the day, with no involved tries to figure out what 116 University PI,ace. N. Y. 3. N. Y. serious challenge from any quarter. "the Negro" wants or what "the Ne True, one ethnic group may have a gro" is up to, as if all Negroes, North
6 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW OUTHERN Negroes are beset by a in Birmingham, Alabama and Jack the American Way of Life is insipid S million and one unbearable hu son, Mississippi; but not with any en and empty to hosts of Negroes. miliations, cruelties and physical in thusiasm for the specific methods of It is no tragedy, then, that so many conveniences which are peculiar to struggle or the immediate goals of Negroes are not wild about more in the South, and which must be elim the campaigns conducted there. tegration and still more. The prob inated now, here, all of them. South Facing a set of generally different lem ahead is that black nationalist ern Negroes find it difficult to make conditions in the North, northern organizations are geared more to much sense out of separatist lean Negroes cannot simply copy from the ward expression of sentiment and ings, while northern nationalists dis southern integration struggles, but propaganda than toward action aimed dainfully sneer at the southern N e must develop their own methods and at winning material and political in groes' apparent longing to be "ac goals, and black nationalism is a vi dependence from the white power cepted" and "loved" by crackers. tal component in the northern ghetto structure. But Negroes in Dixie are not really struggle. The nature of the white There is a tragi-comic aspect in that eager to be merged with crack problem is different Up South and the spectacle of white radicals moan ers; they simply want to get that big Down South. ing that Negroes reject the society white foot off their necks and get a Northern nationalist-oriented N e that these radicals themselves say chance to breathe. Southern Negroes groes are quite justified, in fact, in history has condemned. have to fight for the right to use reacting with hostility to any at Thinking Black transportation facilities, public toi tempts by white radicals, white lib lets, schools, voting booths, hospitals, erals, or northern middle-class Negro "I got no flag. I got no country" libraries, every trivial convenience assimilationists to force the northern Negro teenager in which others take for granted. struggle into the straightjacket of a San Francisco, victimized b·y Although the black South is pre southern mold, completely ignoring "urban renewal" (June, 1963) the different conditions, relationships dominantly integrationist in orienta " white people have nothing of forces, history of struggle and tion, there is a formidable and deeply we want. They may have cars, needs of northern slum Negroes. lodged nationalist potential beneath clothes, homes. How they got it, The notion that the "real" Negro the surface. The integration drive of that's another matter. But they struggle is centered entirely in the southern Negroes aims at breaking lost something important aways down specific Jim Crow barriers, not South, with the goal being integra tion and assimilation into the Ameri back. " at merging or assimilating socially SNCC worker addressilng can Dream as envisaged by southern and ethnically with crackers. The Mississippi Negroes gap between the Negro and white Negroes, northern middle-class as populations in Dixieland may be similationists, white liberals and In the eyes of most Negroes, white even greater than in the North. One some radicals, is pernicious and div radicals appear to be far more at of the maj or barriers to the spread ersionary to the Negro struggle in tached to U.S. society than black na of overt nationalism among Negroes the ghettos of the North. The notion tionalists are. This should come as in the South is the sectarianism of that acceptance by whites as fellow a surprise to white radicals. In the Northern nationalists; their lack of Americans is the highest "achieve white radical framework of reason flexibility in adapting to the needs ment" and "progress" that Negroes ing, the radical has the truly funda and aspirations of southern Negroes can hope for this side of heaven is mental approach in explicitly stating living under different conditions. insulting as well. a decision for socialism and against This is a factor which can be cor The implications of this massive capitalism, thus definitively rejecting rected. swing toward nationalism are deadly US class society in a manner matched In any case, nationalism would for the prospects of the survival of by no other trend in society in the certainly sweep the South if it were the American Way. Of course, na profundity and sweep of the break as integrated as the North. To the tionalist sentiment among Negroes, with the status quo. Emotionally, extent that integration begins to raised to whatever fever pitch, is however, white radicals are more or achieve "progress" in some parts of not going to automatically alter the less in harmony and even in love the South, we need not be surprised status quo substantially. But this is with America and American atmos to witness an upsurge of black na only the beginning of a process, not phere (with American culture, if tionalism geared to southern condi the end stages. And even at this early such a thing can be said to exist), tions, especially in the case of large stage the promise of integration into and feel very much at home in the city ghettos like Washington, Atlan ta, Birmingham. INTERNATI,ONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW Goals Not Lauded Special Offer Crucial, monumental and heroic New subscribers will receive a copy of the Summer 1959 issue of the ISR though the southern integration which contains an article by James P. Cannon: The Russian Revolution and struggle is, it is not native to the the American Negro Movement. This article analyzes the early and recent black ghettos of the northern inte policies of the radical and trade union movement toward the Negro struggle. grated cities; nor does it answer the Send this coupon with $1.50 to: International Socialist Review, 116 University needs or fire the hopes of the inhab Place, New York 3, N.Y. itants of those crowded, sordid slums. Name Northern Negroes respond with rag ing indignation to the spectacle of Street ...... Apt. No...... black people being beaten, hosed City ...... State ...... Zone ...... down and hounded with police dogs
WINTER 1964 7 United States - their country. Of guage, culture, and religion; and that be admitted into such and such a course, they are intensely interested its heritage, way of life, and ethnic position, pulling down so many thou in altering this society through some identity are distinct from those of sand-dollars-a-year salary. But this revolutionary change. Their break is other groups." (E.U. Essien-Udom.: "success" will be in the service of an with bourgeois society, not with U.S. Black Nationalism - A Search for alien society and an alien people, society, in the sense of the American an Identity in America) and will be measured by the yard (white) people and its "culture." sticks of an alien culture. u.s. Rejected Black nationalists fight back against the cultural aggression of LACK nationalists, on the other Black nationalists entertain no hand, do not feel at all at home white America which floods and B hope or interest in improving any chokes Negroes with the symbols of in the United States or among their aspect of U.S. society, not even alleged fellow Americans. No Ne its alien, vapid and decadent Way of through some white people's revolu Life. Increasing numbers of Negroes groes do, to tell the truth. Just as tion to come about in some far-off the society rej ects them, black na respond with revulsion and contempt millenium. Black nationalists can to the Melting Pot, Old Glory, the tionalists reject every aspect of that find nothing good about the United society which they identify as white. Free W orld, Uncle Sam (the ugliest States and its white people that national symbol in the world), Our Remember that it is not just the might interest them: the materialis bourgeois class society which rejects American Heritage, the Halls of tic, TV -crazy, chrome-plated, com Montezuma, Horatio Alger, I pledge Negroes, but the whole of U.S. society modity-h a p p y , H-bomb-wielding (including white liberals and radi allegiance ..., rugged individualism, paradise of the white man has noth tall Texans, the clean-cut all-Ameri cals hostile to black nationalism). ing to offer Negroes even if the Negroes have the choice of trying can nordic look, God's Country, gra greasy-spoons, public toilets, movie cious living, Southern hospitality, to turn themselves inside out to live houses and public schools were in up to this white society and its per Clairol blondes and all the glittering tegrated. Americana garbage peddled by Ebo verse values or of rejecting this so The white US has no music wor ciety and seeking values of their ny magazine. thy of the name, no indigenous cul U nlike Negroes of any persuasion, own. ture, no soul, no life, no poetry, no white radicals along with all other A dominant culture decides for it national purpose, no meaningful melting-pot whites in the U.S. genu self and for "everybody" what is goals, no desirable friends abroad, inely feel that this is their country, normal, sane, in good taste; it sets no understanding of the world and not just in words but deep down in the standards for maturity, intelli its peoples, no genuine fraternal links their bones. White radicals seek to gence, morality and human nature. with other peoples struggling to identify with the country's alleged It also sets arbitrary standards for build a better world, no appreciably revolutionary traditions from way what is to be beauty and good looks large mass of poor white people who back two-hundred years ago (in the - what kind of nose and hair look appear to offer a reasonable prospect days of our slave-owning and slave "good." Those aspects of human be of being useful allies of the Negroes whipping founding forefathers), and havior and appearance which the in the foreseeable future. feel they are the realest and truest dominant culture represses or to Even the white-led trade-union Americans. For Negroes, nationalist which it assigns a low value are movement and the white U.S. Com or not, this is sheer self-deception looked upon with revulsion and rid munist party are shoddy specimens and escapism. Negroes are physic icule and are considered a badge of compared to their counterparts in ally present in America, and their inferiority. The dominant group pro other countries. Those few white ancestors may have been here longer jects its repressions onto the groups rebels and critics who exist in con than some white families, but Ne it dominates. It despises the latter formist U.S. white society do not groes are not Americans if that word for not measuring up to and not speak the same language as the black properly describes the white popu adopting the master group's values. rebels, are seldom interested in lation. Negroes have never been such The victimized group may chafe un learning from the black revolt and Americans, never will be such Amer der the "stereotypes" or may attempt are often a nuisance, if not just use icans, and many do not want to be to assert its own values. James Bald less kibitzers to the Negroes they or become such Americans (i.e. share win in Nobody Knows My Name elo seek to advise. the empty, cold, flatulent, material quently states the case: "One had Unlike youth in the newly devel istic, egocentric, IVladison-A venue the choice of either 'acting just like oping African countries, Negro stu touted Way of Life dedicated to lies, a nigger' or of not 'acting just like dents have no prospect of studying property and the pursuit of selfish a nigger' - and only those who have and making their living in the serv ness) . tried it know how impossible it is ice of their people, say as engineers, White radicals have nothing in to tell the difference." technicians, organizers of industry or their experience that equips them to A Negro is nationalist in direct statesmen. Liberals and radicals are understand this complex of feeling proportion to the extent of his rejec generally aware of the crushing of in a real human sense. White radi tion of this white society and his incentive in Negro children faced cals know from a distance and in self-identification with Negroes as a with the dim prospect of getting de the abstract of the powerful attrac distinct people. A useful definition cent jobs and opportunities. But the tion of nationalist feeling in other of nationalism, in general, applicable fact of not having a society to grow countries - other revolutions. They to this case, is that offered by Essien up into is at least as devastating. A can glibly quote great Marxist think U dom: "The belief of a group that few individual Negroes can achieve ers on the subject of "nationalism it possesses, or ought to possess, a American-style "success." They can and self-determination." But in deal country; that it shares, or ought to have their pictures in Ebony as the ing with black nationalism in the share, a common heritage of lan- First Member of the Negro Race to U.S. white radicals attempt to apply
8 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW their Marxist learning in a groping, assimilated Negroes in higher eche social force sharing even a tiny frac clumsy way, usually contrasting the lons of government service, and two tion of power with the white ruling extreme abstractions of complete all Negroes now on the Stock Exchange. class. Black capitalism in the U.S. is out assimilationist integrationism in But this constitutes no independent nonexistent as a social force, to the to America-as-it-is to the extreme point of the concept being ludicrous. of geographical separatism and back to-Africa separatism. White radicals are capable of writing erudite doc BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RILE U.S. Negroes are anything uments replete with excellent quotes W but explicitly pro-capitalist, from Marx and Lenin pertinent to ON THE the confrontation of socialism vs. these two extreme variants, spend capitalism as a concept leaves them much time discussing the history of CUBAN R:EVOLUTION cold for the most part. This is natur their disagreements with rival white al. since what U.S. Negroes face is a radicals on the subject, pat them By Joseph Hansen hostile white world, with all sections selves on the back for having the Trotskyism and the and income levels from the Rocke Correct Marxist Position on the mat Cuban Revolution .15 fellers and Kennedys and Goldwaters ter, but remain deaf and blind to In Defense of the on down to the poor white worker what Negroes are really concerned Cuban Revolution .25 and farmer arrayed against them in about in that area. Theory of the Cuban hostility, frigidity and contempt. In Revolution .25 this hostile bloc of all classes, the Buying Black Truth About Cuba: An white capitalist class does not stand Capitalism versus socialism is not Answer to T. Draper .25 out any more sharply in its hostility a crucial issue to Negroes at this than the other whites, and may es By Fidel Castro time. While any trained white rad cape being on the mind of non-Marx ical can point to some conceivable History Will Absolve Me 1.00 ist-oriented Negroes because of the danger resulting in some conceivable The Declaration of lack of direct personal contact. No situation from this ambiguity, white Havana .10 matter what Negroes say or don't radicals lack a sense of proportion To the Children .25 say, or think or don't think about in attaching undue importance to the On Unemployment .25 U.S. capitalism as such, U.S. capital lack of explicit stands again capital Cuba's Socialist Destiny .25 ism is not and never has been any ism per se on the part of Negroes United Nations Speech .25 friend of Negroes, and the Negroes not already recruited to white radical On Marxism-Leninism 1.00 are no natural friends of U.S. capi parties. The Second Declaration talism. White capitalism (the only Why should Negroes in the U.S. get of Havana .25 capitalism in the U.S.) is simply re worked up against the concept of The Revolution Must Be jected along with the rest of white capitalism as such? What in their A School of Unfettered society. experience would favor or hinder Thought .15 Nor does the dream of a future so such an attitude? And why should Cuba's Agraraian Reform .25 cialist society attract or inspire Negro their lack of interest in this great Denouncement of rebels. For white radicals, specula fundamental question be misinter Bureaucracy and tion about the society of the future preted into some sort of acquiescence Sectarianism .35 looms large in importance. Negroes to capitalism? The answer to the May Day Speech: 1961 .50 are much more intensely preoccupied last question is found in the formal Speech to the Women .35 with resistance to the present society. istic and dogmatic approach common By Che Guevara No black rebels need "faith in social ism" to strengthen and sustain their in the thinking of many white radi At Punta Del Este .25 revolutionary ardor. In any case, the cals. Since capitalism versus social Cuba and the "Kennedy experience almost all Negroes have ism is the basic question to the white Plan" .15 with white workers does not render radical, he is ready to judge and cat Guerrilla Warfare 3.00 alog other individuals and tendencies the picture of a society dominated by on how they respond to that question. * * * "the workers" very alluring. As long as the cataloging encom The Shark and the Sardines Now why should so many low-in passes social entities in the white By Juan Jose Arevalo 4.95 come black workers be interested world which he understands, the Fidel Castro in having black-owned businesses white radical categorizes well. Whites By Jules Dubois 1.25 prosper? Once the existence of black could be radically opposed to the nationalist feeling is acknowledged, Reflections on the status quo only insofar as they take some such attitude is to be expected. Cuban Revolution an explicitly anti-capitalist, pro-so But the attitude is irritating to white By Paul A. Baran .35 cialist stand. radicals, rubbing them the wrong But Negroes are already a solid How Cuba Uprooted Race way on a fundamental point of doc phalanx of non-capitalist mass, at Discrimination trine, so that white radicals immedi the bottom of the social heap and in By Harry Ring .15 ately feel impelled into a stubborn a state of continual economic depres A Visit to Cuba argument with any Negro who ar sion and unemployment. There is by I. F. Stone .25 gues BUY BLACK! to the detriment very little of anything that deserves of other points on which the white the name Negro middle class, and PIONEER PUBLISHERS radical and Negro might find sub there is no Negro representation in 116 University Place stantialcommon ground. the ruling class whatsoever. There N. Y. 3, N. Y. As the white radical pontificates are individual assimilated and ultra- on how capitalism is wrong no mat-
WINTER 1964 9 ter what the color of the capitalist class, run into head-on conflict with complete separation? The ghetto in is, and why separatism is no solu the very essence of white capitalist habitant living in the integrated tion, and why the unity of Negro society - that gigantic conspiracy northern city is already about as in and white workers, etc., etc., ..., the against the entire Negro people. tegrated as can be achieved by the Negro (not necessarily nationalist) Race-discrimination by labor unions, methods used in the South by mid will be thinking: "This is a damn banks refusing to issue loans to Ne dle-class-led movements. Aside from shame. This ofay is just against black gro businessmen, stores refusing to that, he is already effectively separ people having money. He raises hell accept merchandise produced or mar ated in his residence, social ties, out against capitalism and Wall Street keted by Negroes, concerns refusing look on life, relation to society, job at the top of his lungs right now, but to place Negroes in managerial ca opportunities, freedom and opportun in a couple of years he might forget pacities (not to mention those which ity of expression. It isn't a bad idea all that jive and settle down and refuse to hire Negroes even in menial at all to separate, politically if not make him more bread than I will jobs) are subject to counterattack. geographically, from such an obnox ever see. But it bugs him to see any Running white businesses off the ious society. The nationalist appeal black man accumulate money and main drag in the ghetto is a popular doesn't threaten to take anything power." notion, not at all limited to compet away, and it offers much not found Negroes have no experience with ing Negro businessmen. In fact, the anywhere else. black exploiters; even if there are a latter are horrified when the people Now, would that same unskilled handful somewhere in the country, among whom the notion is popular worker stand to lose anything if the they are too sparse to constitute a get going in direct (physical) action nationalist program was, or could be, recognizable social phenomenon. The to carry out such a Yankee Go Home! carried out at this time? Frankly, possibility of a black bourgeoisie (in program. (Cf. the Harlem riots of this question is academic and un the real sense, not E. F. Frazier's) 1935, 1943.) The end results may be realistic. The possibility of carrying taking shape in the country is fan no businesses left at all, only martial out that type of separatist program tastic and remote. law on the streets. would mean that almost all Negroes The BUY BLACK! argument aims The popularity of BUY BLACK! were involved in a violently anti at making the black ghetto black, is natural. The workers in the ghetto status quo movement, upsetting the i.e. owned, managed and run by slums have to take crap from white stability of the whole country. Long blacks. This urge seems to workers bosses on the job (and from white before the situation reached that in the slums no less practical or feas workers on the job), see white cops boiling point, other factors outside ible than the other "solutions" of patrolling the streets shaking down the black population and even out fered by middle-class integrationists numbers runners and beating heads. side the U.S. would have been or white advisers. The ghetto poor They rub elbows with alienated and brought into play through the inter want to see "some of our own" make distant poker-faced whites on the in action between the black revolution it. They will not accept any impli tegrated subways or busses. But they and the instability of the powerhouse cation that everyone else except Ne don't want to see whites raking in of the capitalist world right on its groes have the right to make big all the loot in the ghetto, too, run home grounds. money. They want to see the black ning even the local drugstore, bar, On the other hand, any counter communities built up economically, soda fountain, clothing shop. This is reform attempt to intensify discrim independently of the white man's a constant and grinding irritation. It ination or enforce segregation where stranglehold. Precisely the fact that is a more acute form of the irrita it does not now exist would provoke the Negro middle class is too aborted, tion at having to look at white mov ferocious resistance from all Negroes, hamstrung, decrepit, straightjacket ies, white TV stars, grinning white whatever their orientation. Black ed, too cowardly, too damn Ameri faces on the advertisements, the dour nationalists promote a separation on canized to do that job - precisely and ugly faces of white presidents terms decided by Negroes, not ac that fact intensifies the urge of other on the dollar bills. ceptance of humiliating and dehu social forces below them to try to What would an unskilled worker manizing segregation conditions dic do it and go even further to other resident of the black ghetto have to tated by southern whites. These are goals. lose by resonating enthusiastically not just words. No membership or Even though not feasible or to the Muslim rejection of white so following the nationalists could at achievable under capitalist condi ciety,coupled with a program of tract would tolerate it otherwise. In tions, particularly with the extra re any case, the black nationalist move strictions standing in the way of N e ment in its present northern form groes getting ahead in business, this gestates in and reflects the moods urge is natural, progressive in its FREEDOM NOW of the northern slum ghettos. It is context and potentially explosive. silly to judge it by how it would White radicals who buck this senti New Stage in the Struggle "work" in Dixie. Southern "separate ment head-on are sectarian idiots*. for Negro Emancipation but equal" institutions are controlled by whites and forced on Negroes. The Frustrating Experience spread of black nationalism to the 25 cents South will entail a fight against the Attempts by non-middle-class Ne entire Jim Crow structure to simul groes to smash through these eco taneously smash down segration bar nomic barriers, and clear the way for riers and build up black-controlled the feeble and stillborn Negro middle PIONEER PUBLISHERS bases of power and an end to the * Generally. white radicals will refrain from grotesque and ludicrous Gandhian arguing with Negro Integrationists who stress 116 University PI. New York 3, N.Y. Christian urge to win the "love" and the right of Negroes to "make it" in the bus iness world against existing obstacles. "acceptance" of Southern racists.
10 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW Deutscher on Trotsky
By Joseph Hansen
THE PROPHET OUTCAST by Isaac Deutscher. New York: The Natalia, words written only for her. Finally, Deutscher has Oxford University Press. 1963. 543 pp. $9.50. interviewed many people who met Trotsky or who worked closely with him. From their reports he has selected what The final volume of the trilogy tells the story of Trotsky he felt he needed or had room for. in banishment from the workers' state which he, together Out of these rich and varied sources a picture of Trotsky with Lenin, had founded. It describes the great intellectual emerges that is the most life-like of the three volumes, contributions made by this giant revolutionist in these although, to be completely frank, the finished portrait does years, his final political battles, and the bitter personal not quite catch Trotsky, in my opinion, at least as he was tragedies that befell him before he was slain by Stalin's known to his closest collaborators in the final years, and emissary. The volume was obviously not an easy one for calls attention rather too much to the biographer. I will the biographer. The central issues of our time, in which return to this. Trotsky stood as the continuator of Marx, Engels and Lenin, are still with us, have grown in acuteness in fact, * * and it is impossible to deal with Trotsky wiihout also Deutscher considers the Prinkipo period, from 1929 to dealing with these. To talk about Trotsky means to talk 1933, to be by far the most productive and fruitful of about the capitalist system in its period of decay and violent Trotsky's final years. He devotes half the volume to it. resistance to social and economic change, about reviving TrGtsky's literary production at Prinkipo was indeed enor the proletarian democracy destroyed by the reactionary mous and of the highest quality: the three-volume History bureaucratic caste that appeared in the Soviet Union about oj the Russian Revolution; an autobiography, My Life; a the as yet unresolved problem of creating a leadership series of profound and stirring articles on the most crucial capable of leading humanity forward to a new and better issue of the day - the rise of Nazism; continuation of his order. C current appreciations of developments in the Soviet Union, No matter how Deutscher chose to handle these topics, the only original Marxist contribution on this subject at the what he said was bound to be controversial. An additional time; occasional writings of first-rate importance on such hazard was that the Trotsky of these years was the Trotsky topics as the beginning of the Spanish revolution; and a wide most familiar to the present generation, the man who still correspondence on an international scale related to the task exists in living memory and whose image seemed to be of reconstructing the revolutionary-socialist movement. come engraved on all who met him, if only briefly. Deutscher does an excellent job of inventorying and The biographer met these challenges very well indeed. assessing these treasures. His praise of T'rotsky as a his As in the previous volumes, he remains scrupulous toward torian is especially warm and appreciative. facts, * seeks the truth, and does not hide his own views "L,ike Thucydides, Dante, Machiavelli, Heine, Mal"x, and predilections. The disagreements one may have with Herzen, and other thinkers and poets, Trotsky attained him thus center on points in which his judgment and his full eminence as a writer only in exile, during the political views affect the final portrait he offers of Trotsky. few Prinkipo years. Posterity will remember him as the The merit of the biographical material he has assembled historian of the October Revolution as well as its leader. can be questioned by no one, unless ill will enters in. It is No other Bolshevik has or could have produced so great a precious contribution to knowledge of Trotsky, his ideas, and splendid an account of events of 1917; and none of and the character of the time he lived in. the many writers of the anti-Bolshevik parties has pre The general plan of the volume is the same as the two sented any worthy counterpart to it." previous ones. Deutscher presents summaries of Trotsky's Deutscher does not hesitate to estimate it as the greatest main writings during the years under consideration, plus work of its kind: "His historical writing is dialectical as is excerpts to give the reader a taste of the original. These hardly any other such work produced by the Marxist school are nearly always well chosen and consti1!ute a valuable of thought since Marx, from whom he derives his method part of the book. But since, unlike the earlier years, most of the original sources are readily available, the biographer • Even such a biased reviewer as Carleton Beals was reduced to point ing to the listing of "Almazar," a right-wing general involved in Trot has legitimately reduced the proportion of anthology to sky's political break with Diego Rivera, as "proof" of Deutscher's the necessities of historical narrative. "pseudo-scholarship." "No such general has ever existed or been a presi dential candidate," Carleton Beals assures us in the October issue of Conscientious work in the Trotsky archives at Harvard The Independent. "Such is Deutscher's notable scholarship." Beals evi has enabled Deutscher to present new material of the dently emotionally upset by the passing reference in the biography to his strange role in the Dewey Commission, displays such ill will that greatest interest. He was particularly fortunate to obtain he does not even offer to make the necessary correction about the the special permission of Natalia Trotsky before her death Mexican general. The name should be spelled Almazan. The petulance of Beals, of course, could be due to Deutscher's "pseudo-scholarship" to examine family correspondence. The revelation thus in another unfortunate matter: "Deutscher does not even spell my name provided of the family life of the Trotskys, particularly correctly. His account is a sham, and a distortion. Save your money." (Deutscher spelled the name of His Royal Highness "Carlton.") Beals' when it was caught up most tensely and tragically in the own pseudo-scholarship in relation to Mexico showed up, however, when tempestuous public struggles of the final years, adds a he failed to note the most obviOUS error in Deutscher's biography. In the photographs facing page 480, the caption reads: "Two views of the new dimension to the image of Trotsky hitherto available 'little fortress' at Coyoacan." The top view is of the home owned by to the pnblic. Deutscher even permits us to glimpse over Frida Kahlo where Trotsky first stayed after coming to Coyoacan. The bottom view is of the house which Trotsky had to buy after the break his shoulder a few lines related to Trotsky's love-life with with Diego Rivera.
WINTER 1964 II and style. To Marx's minor historical works, The Class As the titles of the trilogy indicate: The Prophet Armed, Struggle in France, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast, Trotsky's and The Civil War In France, Trotsky's History stands as capacity to see into the fu~ure was, for Deutscher, his most the large mural painting stands to the miniature. Whereas irresistible gift. He cites examples of Trotsky's almost un Marx towers above the disciple in the power of his abstract canny accuracy. Two of them in the final volume will thought and gothic imagination, the disciple is superior as undoubtedly impress everyone who reads them. The first epic artist, especially as master of the graphic portrayal one, on the grand level of the international class struggle, of masses and individuals in action. His socio-political anal illustrates the contrast between Trotsky's clear vision of ysis and artistic vision are in such concord that there is no the meaning of the rise of Hitler and the blindness of the trace of any divergence. His thought and his imagination Stalinists, represented in this case by Thaelmann: take flight together. He expounds his theory of revolution "As late as September 1932, a few months before with the tension and the elan of narrative; and his nar Hitler became Chancellor, Thaelmann, at a session of rative takes depth from his ideas. His scenes, portraits, and the Comintern Executive, still repeated, what Miinzen dialogues, sensuous in their reality, are inwardly illumined berg had said: 'In his pamphlet on how National Social. by his conception of the historical process." ism is to be defeated, Trotsky gives one answer only, Trotsky's autobiography, in Deutscher's opinion, is less and it is this: the German Communist Party must join satisfactory because of a certain unevenness. One can agree hands with the Social Democratic Party . . . . This, with Deutscher in this without sharing the reasons he offers according to Trotsky, is the only way in which the Ger for finding the latter part of the book not up to what can man working class can save itself from fascism. Either, be expected from Trotsky at his best. Deutscher holds that says he, the Communist party makes common cause with Trotsky's explanation of the struggle with Stalin is defective. the Social Democrats, or the German working class is Trotsky "does not go to the root of the matter and he leaves lost for ten or twenty years. This is the theory of an Stalin's ascendancy only half explained." Deutscher feels utterly bankrupt Fascist and counter-revolutionary. This that Trotsky pictures Stalin as too much villain and that he is indeed the worst, the most dangerous, and the most "virtually ignores the intrinsic connexion between the sup· criminal theory that Trotsky has construed in these last pression by Bolshevism of all parties and its self-suppression, years of his counter-revolutionary propaganda.' of which Stalin was the supreme agent." The flaw, in "'One of the decisive moments in history is approach Deutscher's view, is thus due to faulty political vision - a ing', Trotsky rejoined, '. . . when the Comintern as a considerable weakness in the man whom Deutscher other revolutionary factor may be wiped off the political map wise views as a supreme political genius. However, Trotsky for an entire historic epoch. Let blind men and cowards was quite familiar with the theory for which Deutscher refuse to notice this. Let slanderers and hired scribblers argues, concerning the alleged organic connection between accuse us of being in league with the counter-revolution. Bolshevism and Stalinism. He specifically rejected it on Has not counter-revolution become anything ... that more than one occasion, and with arguments that I find interferes with the digestion of communist bureaucrats still convincing. . . . nothing must be concealed, nothing belittled. We Trotsky's defective political insight, if such it is, is not must tell the advanced workers as loudly as we can: peculiar to My Life; it is common to everything he wrote, After the 'third period' of recklessness and boasting the touching this subject, in his final years. What really gives fourth period of panic and capitulation has set in.' In the autobiography its unevenness is the shift away from an almost desperate effort to arouse the communists, personal material. The first chapters are on the level of Trotsky put into words the whole power of his convic great autobiographical literature. The latter parts shift to tion and gave them once again the ring of an alarm bell: political polemic. Excellent as this may be in its own right, 'Workers-communists! There are hundreds of thousands, it clashes increasingly with the autobiographical form in there are miIlions of you.... If fascism comes to power which it is cast. In contrast to his openness in the first it will ride like a terrific tank over your skulls and parts in offering absorbing intimate material, Trotsky, in spines. Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. Only a the final parts, becomes more and more reticent. fighting unity with social democratic workers can bring The reasons for this are perfectly understandable and, in victory. Make haste, communist workers, you have very fact, do Trotsky credit. His primary interest was not psy little time to lose.'" chological self-revelation but political action. He remained The second example is Trotsky' admonition of Trygve Lie, to the end of his life a leader who necessarily subordinated who later became head of the United Nations. The then all other considerations to the interests of the political wars Minister of Justice in the Norwegian government put Trotsky he was engaged in. Deutscher, one must agree, is right in under house arrest, barred him from answering the charges saying about the autobiography that "if he had not written in the infamous 1936 Moscow frame-up trial, and even cut it in 1929, or shortly thereafter, he might not have written him off from correspondence.. Lie attempted to force Trotsky it at all." to sign a shameful agreement not to make any statements In unity of form and content, Deutscher's biography con referring to the Moscow frame-up trial, in which Trotsky trasts favorably with the final sections of My Life. As we and his son were principal victims, and to submit the mail, follow Trotsky's thought and the course of his political telegrams and telephone calls of himself, his wife and secre battles, we participate at the same time in his personal for taries to censorship. "Twenty years later eye-witnesses of tunes. We catch some of the pleasures, the more common the scene still remembered the flashes of scorn in Trotsky's emotional stress and the searing tragedies. We get to know eyes and the thunder of his voice as he refused to comply." something of Zina, the daughter who suffered a nervous He levelled a series of damaging questions at Trygve Lie. breakdown under Stalin's persecution, who resisted psy "At this point Trotsky raised his voice so that it re choanalytic treatment and who finally committed suicide. sounded through the halls and corridors of the Ministry: Leon Sedov, the devoted son comes to life for us-Leon, who 'This is your first act of surrender to Nazism in your had such a close political and personal relationship with his own country. You will pay for this. You think yourselves father that he became the receptacle for explosive paternal secure and free to deal with a political exile as you tensions that could find no other safety valve and which please. But the day is near - remember this! - the day Leon could not understand but only brood over in the final is near when the Nazis will drive you from your country, days before his own death at the hands of the implacable all of you together with your Pantoffel-Minister-Presi common foe. Natalia emerges as a granite figure. To dent.' Trygve Lie shrugged at this odd piece of sooth Deutscher she is the heroine of the epic and all who read saying. Yet after less than four years the same govern this biography are bound to share his admiration for her. ment had indeed to flee from Norway before the Nazi She was truly of the stature required to share to the end invasion; and as the Ministers and their aged King the fortunes of the prophet outcast. Haakon stood on the coast, huddled together and wait-
12 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW ing anxiously for a boat that was to take them to the rest of the Stalin era. But during that time there England, they recalled with awe Trotsky's words as a wa3 no chance in the Soviet Union of any political rev prophet's curse come true." olution either. This was a period of deadlock: it was * * * impossible either to cut or to untie the Gordian knots of There is justification in singling out this aspect, in em- Stalinism. Any programme of change whether revolu phasizing Trotsky as prophet. It helps create interest in tionary or reformist, was illusory. This could not prevent what he had to offer the world. Nevertheless, a certain a fighter like Trotsky from searching for a way out. But amount of reduction occurs. At worst, the image, with its he was searching within a vicious circle, which only undue connotation of extra-sensory intuitive powers, tends world-shaking events began to breach ma·ny years later. to obscure the image of Trotsky as scientist. It contributes And when that happened the Soviet Union moved away to an imbalance in the portrait. Before coming to that, from Stalinism through reform from above in the first however, it is perhaps advisable to say something about instance. What forced the reform was precisely the fac Deutscher's differences with Trotsky, which come to the fore tors on which Trotsky had banked: economic progress, in this volume. the cultural rise of the masses, and the end of Soviet Throughout the biography Deutscher stresses the con isolation. The break with Stalinism could only be piece tinuity of Marxist thought represented by Trotsky, evaluates meal, because at the end of the Stalin era there existed to the best of his ability what Trotsky added to the body of and could exist no political force capable and willing to Marxist literature and offers accurate and readable presen act in a revolutionary manner. Moreover, throughout the tations of Trotsky's special contributions. In previous vol first decade after Stalin there did not emerge 'from umes he considered Trotsky's theory of permanent revolu below' any autonomous and articulate mass movement tion, his brilliant work in the field of literary criticism, his even for reform. Since Stalinism had become an anach outstanding role in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, his pro ronism, nationally and internationally, and a break with gram for the first workers' state as it stood isolated in the it had become an historic necessity for the Soviet Union, twenties, his opening of the struggle against Stalinism. In the ruling group itself had to take the initiative of the this volume, Deutscher calls special attention to Trotsky's break. Thus, by an irony of history Stalin's epigones analysis of the nature of fascism and how to fight it - an began the liquidation of Stalinism and thereby carried addition to Marxism that is little appreciated today, pri out, malgr,e eux memes, parts of Trotsky's political marily because of the unending campaign of slander against testament. Trotsky. "But can they continue this work and complete it? Or Most of Trotsky's followers would add to this list, and is a political revolution still necessary? On the face of it, even put it in the top rank of his achievements, the analysis the chances of revolution are still as slender as they of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state, par were in Trotsky's days, whereas the possibilities of re ticularly Trotsky's estimate of the roots and nature of form are fare more real."* Stalinism. Deutscher has strong reservations on this. He In The Prophet Outcast Deutscher still holds that "con feels that Trotsky, while making the fundamental contribu tinuous reform" is more likely than "a revolutionary explo tion, did not see altogether clearly on the subject: sion." However, he agrees that this can be only a tentative "The Revolution Betrayed occupies a special place in conclusion. There can be "little or no certitude." He says Trotsky's literary work. It is the last book he managed finally, "At any rate, the present writer prefers to leave the to complete and in a sense, his political testament. In it final judgment on Trotsky's idea of a political revolution to he gave his final analysis of Soviet society and a survey a historian of the next generation." of its history up to the middle of the Stalin era. His It is not my intention to get into a dispute at this time most complex book, it combines all the weakness and with Deutscher on "self-reform" or "political revolution," a the strength of his thought. It contains many new and complicated question. I will only indicate the central issue. original reflections on socialism, on the difficulties with The immediacy of a political revolution is not at stake - the which proletarian revolution has to grapple, and on the disagreement is not about that. What is involved in principle role of a bureaucracy in a workers' state. He also sur is the character of the ruling caste in the Soviet Union. In veyed the international position of the Soviet Union Trotsky's view it was not just a bureaucracy but something before the Second World War and tried to pierce the more, somewhat like a class in its rapacity and its need to future with daring and partly erroneous forecasts. The monopolize power but lacking the economic roots and eco book is a profound theoretical treatise and a tract for nomic stability of a true class. Will such a social formation, the time; a creative restatement of classical M.arxist out of self-volition, eventually offer the masses effective views; and the manifesto of the 'new Trotskyism' calling forms of proletarian democracy? Trotsky held the view that for revolution in the Soviet Union. Trotsky appears here the answer was no, since the effective operation of prole in all his capacities; as detached and rigorously objec tarian democracy would signify liquidation of the bureau tive thinker; as leader of a defeated Opposition; and as cracy as a social formation enjoying special privileges, A passionate pamphleteer and polemicist. The polemicist's negative answer, in turn, implied that political revolution contribution forms the more esoteric part of the work was the only means left to the masses to intervene in their and tends to overshadow the objective and analytical argument. Because of the wealth of its ideas and its • In connection with this, Deutscher refers in a footnote to an attack imaginative force, this has been one of the seminal books on his views levelled by James P. Cannon inJ 1954. Perhaps it is op portune to attempt to clear this up. Some harsh and even unjustified of this century, as instructive as confusing, and destined things were said of Deutscher. At the time, Deutscher's theory about the to be put to adventitious use more often than any other possibility of the self-reform C1f the Stalinist bureaucracy figured in an internal crisis of the Socialist Workers party. A sector of the cadres and piece of political writing. Even its title was to become leaders were strongly influenced by Deutscher's theory. A split occurred one of the shibboleths of our time." and some of them capitulated to Stalinism. The crisis was not confined to the SWP but affected other sectors of the! world Trotskyist move Deutscher follows with a summary of the book which is ment. To many TrotskYists, Deutscher's position appeared as an alterna quite good. (However, "Stalinist state" for "Stalinist regime" tive program which could prove to be a bridge to Stalinism. It was therefore viewed with hostility. It turned out, however, that Deutscher in a "workers' state" is scarcely a happy condensation.) He was not interested in recruiting fram the Troskyist movement or in or finds himself in agreement with Trotsky's program against ganizing a sect of his own, still less a cult. This spoke strongly in his favor. After the Hungarian uprising another phenomenOOl soon became bureaucratism and for proletarian democracy and considers noticeable to the Trotskyist movement. Many members of Communist it still relevant "over a quarter of a century after its formu parties, shaken by the events, began reading forbidden literature. Not prepared to touch the works of the devil himself, Deutscher's writings lation." Then he indicates one of his main disagreements appeared less "counter-revolutionary" to them. Having begun dipping with Trotsky: into Trotskyism in this way, they thirsted for more. Through Detuscher, some of them eventually found their way to Trotskyism. Deutscher's "From the tenor of The Revolution Betrayed it is clear position under these circumstances proved to be a bridge from Stalinism that he saw no chance of any reform from above; and to Trotskyism. Trotskyists could not be against that kind of public facility. They therefore began undertaking their own self-reform - in there was indeed no chance of it in his lifetime and for relation to Deutscher.
WINTER 1964 13 own rule. This did not necessarily mean a "violent explo (Photography always misses somewhat.) This is all the sion," although it would certainly signify a thoroughgoing more notable since Deutscher never happened to meet shakeup undertaken at the initiative of the masses. Trotsky and had to rely on the impressions of others None of the concessions granted by Stalin's heirs up to beSides, of course, the written record. now have affected the political monopoly held by the The portrait as a work of art, one must also agree, is quite bureaucratic caste. Trotsky's conclusions would thus seem good. A reservation, however, must be registered. Deutscher's to have received corroboration from the pattern of the re preoccupation with accounting for the apparent discrepan forms themselves. cies between Trotsky's program of political revolution in From the viewpoint of the world Trotskyist movement, the USSR and the actual post-Stalin concessions; Trotsky's Deutscher's agreement on the validity of Trotsky's program program of socialist revolution in the industrially advanced establishes the possibility in principle of practical collabora countries and the actual advance of the world revolution in tion with him, even though action, so far as he is concerned. the colonial sector; Trotsky's program for rebuilding the might never go beyond working for "continuous reform." revolutionary-socialist movement and the actual organiza Since advocates of "continuous reform" and "political rev tional weakness to this day of the Fourth International; lead olution" have the same end in view - the establishment of him, in my opinion, to miss something very important. I am proletarian democracy in the workers' states - a rather not interested here in debating these questions but in con wide basis for co-operation exists. To this it can be added sidering how Deutscher's positions affect his finished por that it will doubtless be in the process of seeking to obtain trait. reforms of increasing importance that the Soviet masses Trotsky was enormously attractive to not a few intel will eventually prove in life who saw most clearly and lectuals. His power of prediction, his range of intellect and who suffered to some degree from illusions as to the means culture showed his mind without the slightest doubt to be by which Stalin's alteration of the political structure will one of the greatest the West has produced. eventually be rectified. To follow Trotsky's thought in all its ramifications is an absorbing study, as Deutscher's biography proves. It is a * * * challenge to measure Trotsky's theory against the historical In addition to inability to prophesy correctly how the reality. The temptation can even be strong to vie with the workers' state would be regenerated, Deutscher holds that master by attempting a better construction where it may Trotsky failed to forecast correctly the pattern which the world revolution actually took in the postwar period. I seem he went wrong. This is perfectly legitimate and one would not deny that there is an element of truth in the cannot quarrel with such ambitions. They can prove to be latter assertion. The specific pattern of the Chinese Revolu productive. A trap does exist, however. The very subtlety, tion - organization of the peasantry into armies and their range and depth of Trotsky's thought and the quantity of advance from the countryside to the city - offers the most his productions, which make him so magnetic to intellectuals, spectacular example of a mode foreseen by no one. The can lead one to overlook Trotsky's essential simplicity. Cuban Revolution offered powerful confirmation of what In working closely with Trotsky, one soon noted an extra could be deduced in the case of China - that there is much ordinary combination of qualities: enormous energy un still to be learned about potentialities in the revolutionary believably quick perception and rapport, extraordinary process, in particular about the increasing role of revolu memory, and the mobilization of these gifts in a most ef ficient and businesslike way. Mobilized for what? A very tionists of action (foreseen by Trotsky) in cO~ltrast to the earlier predominance of the pioneers of theory. simple task - the establishment of planned economy in To say that these revolutions deviated from the pattern place of the anarchic relations of capitalism. This was the forecast by classical Marxism does not bring us to the heart elementary chore which this genius set for himself as a youth of the matter, however. The October Revolution in its time when he decided to choose Marxism as his field. It was the likewise deviated from the forecasts of classical Marxism job to which he stuck steadily through the years. He was (Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution was not yet part still working at it when he was struck down. of "classical" Marxism), yet in the final balancing of ac If you wish to question the wisdom of how Trotsky directed counts the October Revolution offered the most powerful his genius, as Deutscher does in the instance of his seeking confirmation of classical Marxism. The problems in theory to build a new international, it would seem in order to offered by China and Cuba are not qualitatively different. begin by questioning the wisdom of this primary decision. What they point to is the importance of the method to be A case can be made out concerning the abysmal waste of used in approaching them. This was already indicated by taking humanity's very greatest intellects and compelling Trotsky - if not as prophet, then as scientist. them to become occupied with bringing order into our way In a postscript, Deutscher offers some contributions in of organizing the production and distribution of food, cloth relation to this. What he says is interesting but not exactly ing, housing and taking care of the rest of our basic social new to the Trotskyist movement, which has been discussing needs. Trotsky's answer to that is that we do not choose the these questions since the downfall of capitalism in eastern time we are born into. Our problem as individuals in Europe. finding our niche is to grasp the main tasks facing mankind, * * * and, as members of the human race, do what we can to help In passing, Deutscher notes certain physical characteristics accomplish them. From Trotsky's viewpoint this also offers of Trotsky. The likeness grows to photographic accuracy. a human being the greatest possible satisfaction. All the rest follows, including the burning importance which Trotsky placed upon organization of the Fourth In ternational. Bulletin 0/ Marxist Studies But like all great men Trotsky had his foibles! Of course. But having granted this can we in all consistency maintain that the biographers of great men, including the biographer THE CHINESE REVOLUTION of Trotsky, are free from them? If we concede to Deutscher the saving grace of having his own foibles, perhaps it will not be considered out of order to suggest that one of them PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES was failure to see the importance of probing deeply into by Leon Trotsky the meaning of the kind of human relations that Trotsky (35 cents) advocated, sought, instigated, enjoyed, and participated in organizing, above all at the close of his life, in the light of PIONEER PUBLISHERS his enormous experience and when he was at the very 116 University Place New York 3, N. Y. height of his intellectual powers. To bring the inner Trotsky into full light, he must be seen, I would judge, in the setting
14 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW of his active pursuit of these human relations and as they the leaders of the opposing faction, but they hardly sounded fitted into his own great guiding purpose in life. that way to Trotsky or his closest collaborators. Our biographer's usually keen insight deserts him at this We can perhaps better appreciate Trotsky's meaning by crucial point, and in place of all the threads falling satisfy considering the same basic alternative which he posed as ingly into place to disclose the coherence of Trotsky's it stands today, almost a quarter of a century later. If the intelligence and will, the threads fray out into loose ends. acuteness of the alternative had grown less, without the Deutscher shows his prophet with eyes growing dim. action of the working dass, then the founding of the Fourth How such a clear-sighted genius could fail so lamentably International would have turned out to be a utopian project to see things which Deutscher considers obvious remains an because its aim - the mobilization of the working class to unresolved contradiction in the biography. Deutscher seems avert barbarism - proved to be not necessary. Or if we faced to sense this. He grants that Trotsky remained unfailingly the opposite situation - an actual perspective of centuries optimistic about revolutionary perspectives to the very end; of barbarism, the project likewise would have proved to yet he suggests that doubts had begun to creep in. He makes have been utopian. What is the truth? Neither situation much of Trotsky's argument in the factional struggle that holds. The alternative is still posed, but the delay in de broke out in the Socialist Workers party in 1939 that if the termining its outcome has enormously increased its acute working class proved incapable of meeting its historic ness. obligation then Burnham's anti-Marxist theory of "bureau The alternative, socialism or barbarism, has become the cratic collectivism" would prove to be the wave of the fu alternative, socialism or nuclear ruin. Physicists now tell ture, socialism a mere utopia and all of Marxism wrong. us - Trotsky's followers only repeat it - that war with He suggests that Trotsky at bottom discounted the move atomic weapons can signify the suicide of mankind and ment he had founded: "his real last will and testament" even the destruction of all the higher forms of life. Trotsky's contains "not a single mention of the Fourth International." picture of the possibility of a barbarism in which mankind Deutscher bears down rather heavily on the theme: would have to crawl painfully forward on all fours is idyllic "Thus at the close of his days Trotsky interrogated compared to the "tragic solemnity" of the picture now facing himself about the meaning and the purpose of all his life us - a barren planet in which life itself might have to crawl and struggle and indeed of all the struggles of several up again from the amoeba or, if lucky, some of the lower generations of fighters, communists, and socialists. Was vertebrates. a whole century of revolutionary endeavour crumbling Does this mean that we must abandon hope or that there into dust? Again and again he returned to the fact that is room for more doubt than in Trotsky's last years before the workers had not overthrown capitalism anywhere the outbreak of World War II? On the contrary! The need outside Russia. Again and again he surveyed the long for socialism is posed all the more imperatively. and dismal sequence of defeats which the revolution had This leads us directly to the point of sharpest difference suffered between the two world wars. And he saw him with Deutscher. Who is to be credited with this "success" self driven to the conclusion that if major new failures in intensifying the acuteness of the historic dilemma facing were to be added to this record, then the whole historic the world? The Second and Third Internationals! The life perspective drawn by Marxism would indeed come un and-death importance of Trotsky's final efforts to construct der question." a new international has received sufficient confirmation we I think that Deutscher is wrong in believing that Trotsky should think. "interrogated himself." He was answering the interrogations A pure pragmatist will demand "All right, where are of others, and with the most powerful arguments at his the revolutions in the West?" The question lacks the in command. Trotsky was as hard as diamond and completely tended force because it leaves out the great postwar up flawless in his view of the long-range course of history. surge, especially in Italy and France, a phenomenon which What did Trotsky really do "again and again?" He posed Deutscher does not consider although it is surely relevant in the alternative facing mankind: barbarism or socialism. He any discussion of Trotsky's forecasts. Is another upsurge, of did not hesitate to pick up the arguments raised by those even greater potential power, ruled out? In questions relat who had really begun to doubt and to sicken of the strug ing to the decline of a system and the rise of a new one, gle. He spun them to logical absurdity and exposed their sufficient range must be taken; exactly how much range is theoretical bankruptcy - their bankruptcy. not easily determined even by a genius like Trotsky. Commenting on the "overemphatic and hyperbolic" ar Deutscher is so concerned to prove the hopelessness of gument which Trotsky levelled against Burnham, Deutscher Trotsky's project of rebuilding the world-wide revolution comments: "Perhaps only Marxists could sense fully the ary socialist movement that he puts in question a different tragic solemnity which these words had in Trotsky's mouth." thesis which he proffers; namely, that Stalin was much It is true that this was the way they sounded to some of more capable than Trotsky estimated him to be. Stalin, as Deutscher proves, was infinitely afraid of the Fourth In ternational. He displayed an obsession over it. Was this merely paranoia, the counterpart to Trotsky's grotesque foible, or did the capable Stalin have a certain amount of WORLD OUTLOOK reason in his efforts to exorcise the phantom? Why Stalin's extraordinary concern over the sectarian squabbles and impotent goings-on of Trotsky's followers? (Other rulers, A Labor Press Service too, have shown strange disinclination to accept the view News and political analysis of special interest to that the Trotskyist movement can be dismissed as a "fail ure.") militant unionists, socialists, colonial revolutionists, op It is hard to know exactly what Deutscher thinks Trotsky ponents of nuclear war and supporters of civil rights and his run-of-the-mill followers should have done in the and the Negro struggle for freedom. years when they were fighting the spread of fascism, struggling against Stalinism and the reformism of the Social Compiled weekly from the vantage point of Paris. Democracy, warning of the danger of World War II, posing the historic dilemma facing mankind and seeking to build For 26 issues send $7.50 to: a revolutionary-socialist leadership. Trotsky's work in collaboration with the "vulgar" fol PIERRE FRANK lowers who rallied to his program provides one of the best keys to a deeper understanding of his character. Deutscher 21 RUE O'ABOUKIR, PARIS 2, FRANCE is grievously blind to this. If you view Trotsky primarily as a prophet, as Deutscher does, this blind spot becomes un-
WINTER 1964 15 derstandable. It is not easy for a prophet to transfer his could lay hands on. Deutscher also indicates Trotsky'S feel gifts; it is even quite a foible to try it. If you look at Trotsky ings toward them. But the emotion Trotsky felt for his just a bit differently, however, his efforts come into better Russian followers was not qualitatively different from the focus. Let me resort to analogy. In an epidemic it is neces warmth he displayed toward all who shared the vicissitudes sary for a physician to take a leading part in the community of the struggle with him, his comrades in China, the rest defense, utilizing his special knowledge to help organize, of Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, in Western Europe, with whatever means are available, a campaign to stem the in Canada and the United States. epidemic and eventually eliminate the possibility of its Trotsky's feelings could not be much different towards recurrence. In his novel La Peste, Camus offers us the them because they, too, to the best of their abilities, were figure of Dr. Bernard Rieux, who finally succeeded in fighting the plagues of fascism, Stalinism, "democratic" mobilizing his home town against the disease first noticed witch-hunting and the approaching war. They too shared in the abnormal behavior of the rat population. The team with him the conviction that what is required to right things assembled by Dr. Rieux learned a great deal about bubonic in this foul time we live in is basically rather simple. In plague and how to meet it at the risk and even cost of their short Trotsky and his followers, many of them at least, own lives. Dr. Rieux, a genuine humanist, offers his highest understood each other. tribute to these comrades and collaborators in the fearful Instead of this unity, Deutscher presents a grotesque work they had to undertake together. A certain symbolism mismatch between Trotsky and his followers. And instead is evident in this remarkable novel. The perceptiveness dis of the unity of Trotsky's Marxist outlook and his action played by Camus in the case of his main figure is instruc in founding the Fourth International, Deutscher presenti an tive and well worth pondering. irrational contradiction between the lucid vision of a prophet Deutscher condemns the human material Trotsky had to and the ludicrous bungling of a dabbler in petty sectarian work with, implying that this was one of the basic reasons politics. In studying the finishing touches to the portrait, for the "failure" of the Fourth International. He feels that where we have been led to expect a standard worthy of the the human material which Lenin and Trotsky had at their subject, we suddenly become overly aware of the artist. We disposal before the October Revolution was better. In the notice the brush in his hand and hear him arguing his West, particularly, the quality was poor. special points of difference with the subject. The question, however, is not that simple. As the Spanish Just the same, the portrait is good enough so that looking Revolution - to name an outstanding instance - proved, at Trotsky on Deutscher's canvas, we suspect the Old Man the raw human material was adequate to the task at hand. of winking at us over the gesticulating brush. "We have The cadres that came to Trotskyism at the time were far always had trouble with our artists. Let us not ask too much from being the worst fighters, the least self-sacrificing, or from them, but take gratefully what they can give." the least intelligent. The Stalinists, anyway, feared them to an uncommon degree and with good cause because they were of the same rebel type that staffed the ranks of the Communist parties, men and women who were loyal to those parties by mistake, because they had not yet had time or opportunity to understand the difference between A SPECIAL OFFER the Soviet state and its Stalinist regime. The tempo of developments, which in general favored the swift growth of Trotskyism, particularly in relation to the Send $ 6 for copy of outstanding historical work Communist parties, turned against the movement in two supreme instances, the outbreak of war and the victory of the Soviet Union. The first event temporarily deferred everything, laying the foundation, of course, for explosive The First Ten Years developments later on. The second, a completely progressive outcome, had the contradictory effect of temporarily strengthening Stalinism (as the Trotskyist movement clearly saw at the time) while preparing even more certain condi Of American Communism tions for its ultimate liquidation (as the Trotskyist move ment predicted). By James P. Cannon In any case, on the exceedingly difficult, complex and challenging problem of building a revolutionary-socialist movement, Trotsky and Deutscher are of different schools. And ask for your FREE copy of Deutscher's deep skepticism was not to be found in Trotsky, not a trace of it. On the other hand, Trotsky was thoroughly From Lenin to StalIn familiar with the skeptical attitude, considered it without foundation objectively, held it to be a deadly danger and By Victor Serge did his best to immunize his youthful followers against this disease. A 112-page booklet in which the brilliant revolutionary literary Having said this, we can grant that the Trotskyist move ment did have many difficulties, had its share of tem figure outlines the rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. peramental personalities who exercised undue weight in the small organization and who no doubt offered the great teacher problems of little novelty or intrinsic interest. Trotsky's attitude toward his pupils, for his movement was also a training ground, was one of infinite patience. And, we repeat, while he could be acidly ironic he never displayed skepticism, if we may make exception of his well-known PIONEER PUBLISHERS reservations concerning followers of petty-bourgeois origin, especially the "intellectual" variety, a subtlety in Trotsky's 116 University Place thought which Deutscher does not examine, since he dis misses the whole subject. New York 3, N. Y. The strangest part is that Deutscher shows the highest regard for Trotsky's followers in the Soviet Union who were butchered by Stalin down to the last man and woman he
16 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW THE FLIVVER KING: A CENTENNIAL APPRAISAL
By Evelyn Sell
This year marks the one-hundreth $330 a year. Detroit had a population his steam carriage, "It never kicks or anniversary of the birth of Henry of 50,000, and its principal industry bites, never tires on long runs, and Ford, the sixtieth anniversary of the was the grinding of corn and wheat. never sweats in hot weather. It does founding of the Ford Motor Companry not require care in the stable and and the fiftieth anniversary of the Big City Life only eats while on the road." moving assembly lilne introduced to Henry was trained to follow in his On March 6, 1896 auto pioneer the world at the Ford Highland Park father's foosteps, but he hated farm Charles B. King drove the first horse plant. Throughout this past year ing. In his autobiography Ford ex less carriage seen on the streets of newspaper articles have been glori plained, "It was life on the farm that Detroit. Later that year Henry Ford fying the accomplishments of He,nry drove me into devising ways and drove his first car. His success en Ford. Her'e is a view of Henry Ford means to better transportation . . . couraged him to devote himself to the and the empire he founded frO'm the There was too much hard hand labour automobile industry. After two rather other side of the class fence. on our own and all other farms of unsuccessful essays into manufactur the time. Even when very young I ing autos, Ford organized the Ford HE Emancipation Proclamation suspected that much might some Motor Company in 1903. He was then T was seven months old when how be done in a better way. That forty years old - and in his case, life Henry Ford was born on a farm near is what took me into mechanics ..." really did .begin at forty! Within four Dearborn, Michigan. Four months be So, at the age of seventeen, Henry years the company, which had started fore his second birthday, Lee sur left the farm and went to the Big off with a total cash investment of rendered to Grant at Appomatox. City. By then, Detroit's population only $28,000, was able to show a net Ford's boyhood years were set against had grown to almost 117,000, and the return of 310 percent on its original a background of tremendous indus city was a busy manufacturing cen investment. (Imagine starting an auto trial expansion. The years after the ter, with iron foundries, machine company today with only $28,000 Civil War marked a new stage in the shops, wagon and carriage works, or even one-hundred times that development of this country. A new flour mills and breweries. amount!) industrial revolution swept over The young boy started working at America. The development of the the Michigan Car Company for $1.10 I N THE first five years of its ex- western lands, long delayed by the a day. This was the largest railroad istence the Ford Motor Company conflicts between the North and car producer in the country at that experimented with eight different South, now proceeded rapidly. Dur time and boasted a work force of models of cars, varying in price from ing Ford's young manhood the Rocke 1,900 men, a crude assembly line and $850 to $2,000. As a result of these fellers, Carnegies and Morgans laid a production record of almost ten experiences, Ford discovered a great down the foundations of their great railroad cars a day. From there, Ford truth: "Every time I reduce the wealth and power. went on to jobs as a machine-shop charge for our car by one dollar, I The American economy was on the apprentice, a traveling repair man get a thousand new buyers." In 1908, boom; there were no limits! The for a farm machinery firm and fi therefore, he stated that his company American Way was an example to nally as the chief engineer of the "would limit its efforts to the produc the whole world. Here were all the Edison Illuminating Company. He tion of a single, standardized, rela answers to mankind's dreams! Free worked days around electricity, and tively inexpensive car." Enterprise! High Standard of Living! he worked nights and Sundays on a Ford was at the brink of the great Class peace and Class Co-operation! gasoline engine. est period of his life. In the next Henry Ford became the personifi The horseless carriage was on the dozen years he would make his great cation of the American Dream. If minds of many men at that time. The est contribution to the industrial de Ford could do it, why not you or I? first internal combustion engine had velopment of mankind. He would His life was a shining example of already been created through the revolutionize the social and work life how "a poor boy could succeed to work of Nicolaus Otto. In 1886, Gott of the American people, and he would fame and riches in America." His lieb Daimler drove an automobile accumulate the greatest personal for father was an Irish immigrant, driven through the streets of Paris. Euro tune in the country. from his country by the devastating pean production of motor cars led the They say that behind every great Potato Famine of 1846. Henry was field for the first couple of decades man there stands a woman. Well, born July 30, 1863, on the family of auto manufacture, but soon the behind Henry Ford stood Lizzie - farm near Dearborn, a suburb of Americans were getting into the act. the "Tin Lizzie," "Model T," "Mech Detroit. At that time the average In the Scientific Amerioan of May 21, anical Cockroach," "the Flivver." She income of workers in the area was 1892 Ransom E. Olds boasted about was born in October 1908, and she
WINTER 1964 17 died May, 1927, at the ripe old age Moving belts were already in use in Around 1910 farmers began sending of eighteen. By the end of her first sawmills, and overhead conveyors photos into the Ford Motor Company year she had outsold every other car were an integral part of the Chicago showing Lizzie hauling loads, pulling made. By the time she died 15,000,000 meat industry. Quantity production plows and supplying power for Model T's had been built. Her price of commodities had gone on for years threshing machines, water pumps, through the years ranged from $900 in the making of bicycles, telephone circular saws and even vacuum to $265. Gross sales in her lifetime s~ts, typewriters, cash registers, cleaners. Ford had called the Model came to $7 billion. The year she was clocks, watches and sewing machines. T "the Universal Car" - and so she born there were about 200,000 autos The Ford personnel drew on these was for the farmer. on the roads, and over 200 companies previous developments, refined them, The Tin Lizzie was, also, the Uni were making cars like the Hup and put them together in an over-all versal Joke, and Ford loved every mobile, Stanley Steamer, Cadillac, system of production. Mass produc joke about his creation; they were Reo, Buick, Maxwell; more than half tion depends on the complete syn the best free advertisements in the of the population of the U.S. lived chronization of all its parts: the world. As a matter of fact, when he in the country or in very small towns; creation of standardized, interchange visited President Wilson in 1915 he choice rib roast of beef cost $.10 a able parts by precision machine tools; told the President his own original pound; the average weekly earnings simplification of design; very fine Tin Lizzie joke. It seemed he was in manufacturing were $9.84 for a division and subdivision of labor; passing a cemetery .one day and fifty-one-hour week. Automobiles factory lay-out which allows for the noticed a grave-digger excavating an were out of the reach of the ordinary steady progress of the materials from exceptionally large hole. When he farmer or workingman. That was the one point to the next; continuous asked about the unusual size, he got world of the Model T - a world she motion of all parts, so that the right this answer, "Well, the deceased pro was to help change forever. thing is at the right place at the right vided in his will that he must be Ford had announced: "I will build time. This system has been adapted buried in his Ford because, said he, a motor car for the great multitude. by industries and fields outside of 'My Ford has pulled me out of every It will be large enough for the family the automobile world and is one of hole thus far; I'm sure it will pull me but small enough for the individual the foundations of modern civiliza out of the last one.'" to run and care for. It will be con tion. A car for the masses became a For many years the jokes about structed of the best materials, by the new pattern of living and working Lizzie's lack of speedometers and best men to be hired, after the and consuming for the masses. shock absorbers were affectionately simplest designs that modern en The results of the new system, told, but towards the end of her life gineering can devise. But it will be which developed over the period of the jokes had a biting edge to them. so low in price that no man making five years, 1908 to 1913, were im In putting America on wheels, Ford a good salary will be unable to own mediate and phenomenal for the Ford had set off a chain of events that one - and enjoy with his "family the Motor Company. Under the old sys eventually doomed the Model T. With blessings of hours of pleasure in God's tem a car was built pretty much more cars on the road, there were great open spaces." as a house is built today. It was put successful campaigns to get better Ford couldn't build that kind of car together at some particular spot on highways. Good roads meant that under the conditions which existed in the floor, where the workers would Lizzie's high clearance and flexible the automobile industry at that time. bring parts to the growing car as they frame were no longer needed. The In orded to create a car "for the great were needed. Before the new assem maturing of the automobile industry multitude" he had to revolutionize bly techniques were fully worked out, meant that cheap second-hand cars the technique of auto production. each chassis represented twelve-and were becoming available. Lizzie's low That revolution has been convenient a-half hours of labor. A crude as price had real competition, and in ly summed up under the term "mass sembly line was put into operation, stallment buying meant that people production" - a term that has be and the time was cut to five hours could afford more expensive cars. come synonymous with the name of and fifty minutes. By December 1, Other auto companies, catching up Ford all across the world. 1913 the time was cut to two hours to and even surpassing Ford produc Birth of Mass Production and thirty-eight minutes. In January tion techniques, were cutting into the The elements of mass production 1914 the time was cut to one hour Model T market with disastrous re already existed in American industry thirty-three minutes. The progress of sults. Ford had said, "Any customer when Ford ordered his engineers and mankind is measured in hours and can have a car painted any color designers to devise ways and means minutes of labor time saved in the that he wants so long as it's black." of bringing about his dream of a car production of man's material needs Americans had put up with that man for the great multitude. Eli Whitney and desires. date for many long years, but the had already used a system of inter The name Ford was carried across new-slung, streamlined, powerful changeable parts to make rifles back the world on the radiators of the Tin cars, with all kinds of modern im in 1800. (In 1903 auto genius Henry Lizzie - bringing America and the provements, pleased style-conscious Leland amazed Englishmen when he American Dream to remote corners customers much more than did Liz took three American-made Cadillacs of the world. Lizzie was no beauty, zie's old-fashioned, never-changing apart, removed ninety-one parts from but she sure got around, and she sure style and utilitarian drabness. the heap of materials, substituted was loved. She helped transform , ninety-one stock parts, put the cars rural American life. That city siren, ODEL T sales slipped from forty back together again with screw driv Lizzie, brought the farmer into the M eight percent of the market in ers and wrenches and concluded the mainstream of modern industrial life. 1924 to forty percent in 1925 to demonstration by speeding the recon Ford realized his childhood dream of thirty-nine percent in 1926. Nev2r structed cars around a race track.) doing something to better farm labor. again was Ford to lead the pack. His
18 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW position in American society, how capitalists the world had ever seen. saying during the reign of Queen ever, had been very firmly estab He made millions from war con Lizzie explains how he earned the lished during the great creative days tracts. Yet he made these statements: admiration of both the capitalists and of the Model T. He became the only "Do you want to know the cause of the working and farming population. individual in America to have total war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty control over an organization the size hunger for dollars. Take away the Ford, the Philanthropist of the Ford Motor Company - not capitalist and you will sweep war In 1914 Ford electrified the nation even Rockefeller or Morgan could from the earth." with the announcement that he would make such a claim! He was one of As a result of the contradiction pay "even the lowliest laborer and the richest, most powerful capitalists between what Ford really was and the man who merely sweeps the of all time, yet he posed as "just what he appeared to be, he earned floor" $5 a day, and he would reduce plain folks." He once visited one of the admiration and respect of both the work day down to eight hours. the Morgan partners and afterwards the rich and the poor. He was admired Ford was then paying his workers remarked to newspapermen, "It's a by the sharp operators and the big the prevailing rate in the area, $2.34 great experience to see how the rich money circles because he was their a day. His labor policies had never live." blood brother. The farmers and work been radically different from other How did Ford himself live? Well, ing people of this country admired employers in the industry. Detroit in 1927 the New York Times con and even loved him, mainly because was a notorious open-shop city, and cluded that Henry and Edsel Ford he became inseparably associated the Employers' Association of Detroit "were the richest men on earth." with the creation and benefits of ruled supreme. This group included Ford had a $600,000 yacht; he found mass production. Ford never let any about sixty-seven firms, representing ed his own country club when he one else take credit for the achieve a wide cross-section of industries. Its briefly became interested in golf; he ments of the Ford Motor Company, labor bureau screened out workers played host to visiting royalty from and since the company bore his name with pro-union sentiments, and the Europe, and when he went to Eng and was owned and controlled by the laborers referred to it bitterly as land he was received by the King and Ford family, it was easy to personal "The Union Wreckers' Association." Queen; he used his own private rail ize every achievement. Every dis The Ford Motor Company had be road car when he traveled; the Ford covery was publicized as due to the come active in this group in 1910. residence, Fairlane, was valued at "guiding" genius of Mr. Ford," from Now, Ford suddenly more than more than $1 million, and, in addi the development of soy beans to the doubled the basic wage at his plant. tion, he had a winter home on the treatment of physical ailments at the Five dollars a day! Workers by the Gulf of Mexico and a 100,000 acre Henry Ford Hospital. thousands flocked to Detroit from all plantation in Georgia. Of course, even The second reason Ford was liked corners of the nation. The millennium Ford had his limits. He never did own by millions of Americans was be had come for sure. At first his fel a Cadillac. cause he seemed to be fighting on the low-capitalists called Ford a traitor You've probably heard that tired side of the poor and the helpless to his class. The editors of the Wall old argument: the poor are really against Wall Street, the monopolists Street Journal called his plan an happier than the rich; the best things and the war-makers. At a time when "economic crime." Ford called it in life are free. The writer Upton the country was alarmed over the "profit-sharing." Sinclair once asked Ford, "Does the growing power of trusts and mono The first to learn the bitter lesson possession of great wealth make you polies, Ford single-handedly fought of the five-dollar day were the thQu happier than you would be without against monopoly in the auto indus sands who crowded in front o.f the it?" try. Some ninety percent of American Ford employment office. The second "Yes, of course," answered Ford, auto manufacturers were organized week after the announcement theTe "because I can do things with it that into the Association of Licensed Auto were still several thousand hopefuls I could not do otherwise . . . In those mobile Manufacturers. The ALAM waiting in the slush of a miserable days [before he was so wealthy] I used the Selden Patent to literally January day. When the day shift was struggling to do something. Now blackmail manufacturers into paying workers tried to push a path thr0ugh I am in a position to do it, and do it royalties and buying licenses from the crowd in order to enter the plant, exactly as I want to do it." the association. Ford refused to ac fights broke out. A full-scale street The things he did went far beyond cept the claims of the Selden Patent riot resulted. Police finally ended the auto empire he built and con and battled it for eight years until the fracas by turning fire hoses on trolled. What Ford said and what the courts ruled in 1911 that the Sel the unemployed men. The water in Ford did became important and den Patent did not cover the type of stantly froze on them. newsworthy - not because his state motor vehicle then commonly pro The workers inside the plant ments were profound, or original, or duced in the U.S. Ford's victory was found the five-dollar day to be only his actions were particularly com hailed as the conquest of David a sugar-coated bitter pill. Like Amer mendable, but because, in a land against Goliath. ican Motor's profit-sharing in 1962, where money talks, the biggest The story goes that back in 1923 Ford's 1914 version was based on money talks loudest and is most two Wall Street operators were dis speed-up. The end result of Ford's easily heard. cussing Ford, and one said, "Ford plan was that the ~ver-al1 wage of talks like a socialist." Ford workers remained about the Ford, the Anti-Capitalist "Yes," responded the other, "but same as in other plants in the area. It's really surprising to hear and he acts like one of us and he gets Even two-and-a-half years after read some of the things Ford said away with it." profit-sharing was announced, thirty and wrote during his lifetime. He was How could Ford "get away with precent of the Ford workers were one of the richest, most powerful it?" A look at what he was doing and still earning less than $5 a day.
WINTER 1964 19 The great prQfit-sharing plan nQuncement Df the five-day-week he gates and returned to. America after turned Qut to. be full Qf tricky gim annQunced, "We are tQday prQducing the Oscar II reached EurQpe, but he micks. In the first place, the $5 didn't the same number Qf cars with the cQntinued to. supPQrt the grQUp until apply to. WQmen WQr kers, unmarried same number Qf men as we fQrmerly February 1917 when President WilsQn men under 22, married men who. prQduced in the six-day-week." FQrd severed diplQmatic relatiQns with were nQt supPo.rting a family, Qr to. really meant it when he said, "I give Germany. any perSQn who. was "living un nQthing for which I do. nQt receive When America entered WQrld War wQrthily as a prQfit-sharer." HQW did CQmpensa tiQn." I, FQrd urged the natiQn to. "back FQrd decide who. was unwo.rthy? He He shared his prQfits with hiscus Qur Uncle Samuel with a shQtgun created the FQrd SQciQIQgical Depart tQmers, too. - and received CQmpen IQaded to. the muzzle with buckshQt." ment, which started Qut with thirty satiQn. In the summer Qf 1914 he He declared that all o.f his war prQfits investigatQrs and rQse to. a peak Qf annQunced that every buyer Qf a Ford WQuld be turned Dver to. the gQV 150 by 1919. This "peace cQrps" visit WQuld receive a $50 refund if 300,000 ernment. His aVQwed disdain fQr war ed wQrkers' hQmes in Qrder to. en cars were SQld within the next twelve prQfiteering made great publicity, CQurage savings aCQunts, budgeting mQnths. He paid Qut $15lh milliQn in but an inquiring repQrter, checking Qf incQmes and AmericanizatiQn fQr rebates the fQllQwing summer. HQW up Qn FQrd's statement, received this the fQreign-born. They gave lessQns CQuld anyQne questiQn his right to. letter in 1928 fro.m Andrew W. Mel in hygiene and hQme management to. rake in the extra prQfits resulting IQn, Secretary Df the Treasury: "The the wives, fQrbade the use Qf liquQr frQm such phenQmenal sales Qr his Treasury recQrds do. nQt sho.W the and frQwned UPQn divQrces. CQncern fo.r the little peQple Qf this receipt Qf any such donation." Then they made sure their mQral wDrld, especially after his Qther spec FQrd's reputatiQn Qn bQth sides Qf lessQns were being taken to. heart. tacular activity Qf 1915: the FQrd the class fence brQught him into. Wives were called Qn to. infQrm Qn Peace Ship? PQlitics twice. In 1918 FQrd's can husbands; children were asked abQut Ford, the Pacifist didacy fQr U.S. SenatQr frQm Michi parents, neighbQrs abQut neighbQrs. gan was urged by President WilsQn. If a wQrker was nQt living up to. FQrd FQrd had been CQncerned Qver FQrd supPQrted WilsQn's plans fQr a ideals he was suspended frQm the American inVQlvement in the EurQ League Qf NatiQns, and he had CQn prQfit-sharing plan. His pay was cut pean war, and a newspaper repQrter tributed heavily to. a PQlitical cam in half. Each mQnth he was a black qUQted him as saying, "I will do. paign that WQn CalifQrnia fo.r WilsQn sheep meant that much less pay when everything in my PQwer to. prevent in 1916. FQrd said, "I have been he was finally reinstated. After five murderQus, wasteful war in America cQmmanded to. run fQr SenatQr. mQnths prQbatiQn, the mQst he CQuld and in the whQle wQrld." Besieged NQw, we shall see whether I can hQpe fQr was a twenty-five percent by anti-war grQups and letters, FQrd build anything but autQmQbiles, trac bQnus Qr $3.01 a day. If he didn't chDse to. supPQrt a plan to. establish tQrs and ships." The New YQrk straighten up and fly right within the Neutral CQnference fDr CQntinu Times Qbserved that FQrd's entrance six mQnths, he was discharged. QUS MediatiQn which WQuld attempt into. Po.litics "wo.uld create a vacancy to. bring the belligerent natiQns into. bo.th in the Senate and in the autQ peace negotiatiQns. In NQvember, FORD immediately winnQwed the mQbile business." In the electiQn 1915, he tQld the press, "We're gQing FQrd carried his Qwn cQmmunity by prQfit Qut Qf prQfit-sharing while to. try to. get the bo.ys Qut Qf the the wQrkers had to. wait quite a 2 to. 1, but IQst the state by abQut trenches by Christmas. I've chartered 7,500 vQtes. He explained that he had while to. do. the shar~ng. The wQrk a ship and SQme Qf us are going to. was speeded up, and the fear Qf IQs been defeated by "Wall Street" and EurQpe." On December 4, the Oscar an "influential gang Qf Jews." ing what little benefits there were II sailed fQr Scandinavia. The press drQve the wQrkers to. cQnfQrm to. the called it a "IQQn ship" full Qf "rain Ford the Anti-Semite FQrd cQnditions. Meanwhile FQrd bQw-chasers" and "crack-brained basked in the limelight and mQdestly dreamers." Ford left the peace dele- FQrd's campaign against the Jews disclaimed any credit fQr his rev was a IQng and viciQUS Qne. It was QlutiQnary departure frQm accepted carried Qut mainly in the pages Qf wage scales. It was just gQQd business the DearbQrn Indepenc1ent. When to. share the wealth with his wQrk By L.eon Trotsky Ford bQught this paper in 1919 it was ers. "If the flQor-sweeper's heart is a sleepy rural weekly with a small in his jQb he can save us five dQllars These valuable works now circulatiQn limited to. the village Qf a day by picking up small tQQls in available as a set for DearbQrn. Under FQrd it reached a stead of sweeping them Qut." In years peak circulatiQn Qf 700,000 readers. to. CQme he WQuld annQunce the six $5.00 The paper railed against sinful sex, dQllar day (1919), the five-day-week rum, HQllywQQd Qrgies, wild Paris (1926) and the seven-dollar-day The Stalin School ians, jazz and the "speculative cap (1929). He was prQclaimed a great of Falsification italist" Qf Wall Street. At the same public benefactQr each time, but his and time, it supPQrted the striking steel brQther capitalists and the wQrkers wQrkers in 1919 and the striking cQal on the line knew what he meant The 3rd International miners in 1922. when he said, "The payment Qf the after Lenin On May 22, 1920, Ford Qpened fire five dQllars a day fQr an eight hQur Dn the Jews with a frQnt page edi day was Qne Qf the finest CQst-cut PIONEER PUBLISHERS tQrial entitled, "The InternatiQnal ting mQves we ever made, and the six 116 University Place Jew: The WQrld's PrQblem." This dQllar day was cheaper than the New York 3. N. Y. was the first in a series that ran fQr five." Two. mQnths after the an- ninetY-Qne cQnsecutive issues. It was
20 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW later reprinted in book form, trans taking full responsibility for every "It's a good thing the recovery is lated into many foreign languages thing printed in the paper. The case prolonged. Otherwise people wouldn't and was a stock text in the book was finally settled out of court. Ford profit by the illness." shelves of the American fascists of personally apologized to Sapiro, and "The average man won't really do the thirties. The Jews were presented a full retraction of the smear articles a day's work unless he is caught as destroyers of the American Way was printed. and cannot get out of it." of Life. They were "vile," "lewd," It was thought by many in the "I think that the depression really "erotic," "criminal"; they were re Ford organization that his campaign taught a lot o.f people how to love sponsible for the "skunk-cabbage of against the Jews had cost him co.n their fellow men . . . we did find American Jazz," crime waves and the siderable car sales. The Model T a blessing in economic misfor corruption of American sports. Queen cDuld hardly stand any cuts in sales tune ..." Isabella, who financed Columbus, was during those years. Sales kept going (Just to show that Fo.rd's ideas really a "Jewish front." Benedict down, do.wn, down. In May, 1927, weren't really old-fashioned com Arno.ld was a "Jewish front." Ford abruptly discontinued the Mod pare his remarks with Harry Tru Ford's second venture into politics el T. FDrd plants were shut down for man's statement in 1950: "A certain came in the middle of this anti a complete re-tooling job. The long amount of unemployment, say fro.m Semitic campaign. In the summ.er of shut-down affected 60,000 workers three million to five millio.n, is sup 1922 Fo.rd-For-President circulars in the Detroit area alone and some portable. It is a good thing that job were being distributed. The Dearborn 500,000 thro.ughout the country. seeking should go on at all times. Independelnt printed statements like: Workers, parts manufacturers, auto This is healthy for the economic "The next President of the United d e ale r s , suppliers, merchants body.") States will be a man who can read a throughout the nation suffered. By Mr. Ford had his own ideas on blueprint and who understands the the time Ford was back to full pro how to cope with the depression. problems of production and how to duction on the new car, the Model One of his pet schemes centered keep men employed." The August 8, A, the workers had no choice but around the village of Inkster. This 1923 issue of Collier's magazine to accept demotio.ns, wage-cuts, was a jerry-built community of five carried a Ford-authorized article, "If speed-up and added job insecurity. hundred families, most of whom I Were President." Public-opinion Ford spiced up the long payless were Negro. Ford decided to make polls that year showed that he had months with remarks like: a shining example of Inkster. He set a great deal of popular support. When "If there is any unemployment up a public commissary, saw to it Hitler heard about Ford-for-Presi it is simply because the unemployed that the families were decently dent he told a Chicago Tribune re do not want work." housed and clothed, paid up their porter, "I wish that I could send some "I know it's done them a lot of back bills. Ford hired every adult of my shock troops to Chicago. and good - everybody gets extravagant male in the village and put them o.ther big American cities to help in - to let them know that things are to. work at the Ford Motor Co.mpany the elections . . . We look to Heinrich not going along too even always." at $4 a day. One dollar of that Ford as the leader of the growing wage was given to the worker and Fascist movement in America." Ford, the Philosopher carefully budgeted for him so that The campaign for the White House When the Great Depression par the vital requirements of the family were covered. The other three dol tDok a back-seat, however, to Ford's alyzed the country two years later, campaign to buy the government Ford had some more gems to. offer: lars were retained by the company developed power sites at Muscle " ... the very poor are recruited in order to. pay back the costs of rehabilitating Inkster. This check-off Shoals. Fo.rd was invited to the White almost solely from the people who was continued even after the plan House for a personal conference with refuse to think and therefore refuse was officially ended in 1933. In 1934 Calvin Coolidge. Several days later to wo.rk diligently." Inkster men complained that they Coolidge recommended to Congress had been fired for "insubordination" that Muscle Shoals be sold to private because they demanded an account interests. Three weeks later Fo.rd ISR Bound Volumes ing of their past debts and the pay announced, "Mr. Coolidge means to ment of their full wages. do right. I would never for a moment Bound Vo.lumes o.f the think of running against Calvin International Socialist Review Ford, the Killer Coolidge for President on any ticket are Now Available This was gentle treatment, how whatever." Ford, of course, never got ever, compared with Fo.rd's reaction Muscle Sho.als. Instead, a 1933 act of to other victims of the depression. Congress created the Tennessee Val 1961 through 1963 with index $8.00 In March, 1932 the unemployed in ley Authority. 1957 through 1960 with index $8.00 the Detroit area decided to o.rganize Ford had lost that rich plum, and a hunger march on the Rouge plant. soon he was to eat humble pie. In They wanted to present their de 1927, attorney Aaron Sapiro sued Limited Special Offer for Advance mands for jobs or adequate relief. Ford fDr $1 million damages. An ar Orders Their march through Detroit was ticle in the Dearborn Independent BOoth Bound Volumes for $15 authorized by the mayor, but when had accused Sapiro of fleecing his they reached the city limits of Dear clients. Ford's whole anti-Semitic Business Office born, they were stopped by the Dear campaign was put on trial when the born police. The Dearborn city ad case came to. court. W. J. Cameron, 116 University Place ministration functioned as a politi the editor of the Dearborn Inde New York 3, N. Y. cal department of the Ford Motor pendent, helped Ford save face by Company. In this case they served as
WINTER 1964 21 an addition to the regular Ford plant Rouge plant. The April 4 Detroit BETWEEN them, Ford and Bennett protection department. Ar:med with created the largest semi-mili Labor News quoted Ken Bannon, tear gas bombs, they insisted that tary organization in existence - a now head of the U A W Ford Depart the hunger-marchers stop at the private police force to keep the Ford ment: "There are over 100,000 other Dearborn city line. The Rouge plant worker in his place and Henry Ford people who are working for Ford's lay one mile beyond. The three in his. The Service Department today that don't know what it was hundred hunger-marchers kept on ruled over the Ford workers for like back in the days before the marching, and the police tried to some twenty years. Most of the mem union when our hands were bloody stop them with force and violence. bers were ex-convicts, but many all day from Monday morning to A running free-for-all resulted. The were ex-boxers, wrestlers and sports Friday night because we weren't battles finally ended up at Gate figures. Known gangsters were part permitted to wear safety gloves." Three of the Rouge. Two high-pres of the department. They terrorized sure fire hoses were run out from Ford, the Union Buster the workers by beatings (many right the plant and used on the unem Ford and Bennett pulled every in the aisles of the plant), destruc ployed. Then the Dearborn police trick in the book to keep the union tion of tools, threats, loss of jobs. and Ford's private police opened fire out of the Ford plants. Suspected on the crowd. Four of the hunger From 1937 to 1939 there was one and known union sympathizers were marchers were shot dead, and a "serviceman" for every thirty pro fired, beaten up, intimidated. Work couple of dozen were wounded. While duction workers at the Rouge. At the ers were spied on inside the plant, the bodies of these dead men were Kansas City assembly plant the ratio where their lunch buckets and over being publicly mourned in Detroit, was one to fourteen. coat pockets were searched, and out Ford was busy preparing for an ex The Service Department was an side the plant, where their conver pected "Red 'Invasion." Armed guards economic necessity for Henry Ford. sations in bars, stores and restaur patrolled the Rouge; floodlights lit The really revolutionary days of the ants were taken down and duly re up the gates at night; tear gas sup Ford technology were over by 1921. ported. Phony company unions were plies were readied and machine guns Increased production was possible formed. Attempts were made to bribe were set up. only by speeding-up the work and and corrupt union officials. At one Five years passed before Ford forcing the men to snap-to-it! Ford point, Hary Bennett boasted that half staged a repeat performance. Dur workers were forbidden to talk, of his men were undercover spies ing those five intervening years, the whistle, or sing on the job - or within the union itself. sit-down strikes had shaken the even during their fifteen-minute The Supreme Court and the N a thrones of American big business; lunch periods. As Foro said, "There tional Labor Relations Board backed the General Motors and Chrysler is not much personal contact - the up the Ford workers and the union workers had won the right to or men do their work and go home - organizers. Their records were full ganize and bargain collectively. On a factory is not a drawing room." of bloody tales from the Ford plants. May 26, 1937 a group of fifty or It was forbidden to sit down or to No other employer in the country sixty unionists, led by Walter Reu lean against a post. No assembly line had as bad a record with the NLRB ther and Richard Frankensteen, at in the field drained the life out of as did Henry Ford. From 1939 tempted to distribute handbills to the men or aged them more quickly through 1941 the Board found Ford the Rouge workers. When the union thaI). Ford's. Ford's solution for the guilty of unfair labor practices in ists stepped onto the Miller Road strains and pressures of the assembly nine separate rulings. In February, overpass they were attacked by the line was to advise, "Anyone who 1941 the Supreme Court forced Ford waiting goons. Ford "servicemen" does not like to work in our way to put up compliance notices in the viciously beat and kicked men and may always leave." Rouge plant stating that the workers women distributors, uNder the eyes Henry Ford, who proclaimed him could organize a union without in self for "a man's independence," terference from the company. Thou of shocked observ~rs and newspaper reporters. Newspapermen we r e thought smoking was bad, so his sands of Ford workers showed up workers were forbidden to smoke. for work wearing the long-forbidden threatened, and their films and notes He issued a pamphlet called "The union button. Pro-union signs mys were grabbed away. The story of Case Against the Little White Slav teriously appeared all over the plant. the "Battle of the Overpass" became er." In the introduction, written by Shop stewards began demanding that a nationwide sensation. Ford, it was pointed out: "If you management settle grievances that This was only one of many gory will study the history of almost any had been piling up for forty years. stories that make up the history of criminal, you will find that he is an An NLRB election was set up so that unionization at Ford's. Ford had de inveterate cigarette smoker. Boys, the workers could vote on the kind clared: "We will never recognize through cigarettes, train with bad of union representation they wanted. the United Auto Workers Union or company. They go with other smok Court rulings and laws could only any other union. Labor union organ ers to the pool-rooms and saloons. go so far, however. Local 600 still izations are the worst thing that ever The cigarette drags them down." had to be organized through the di struck the earth, because they take Funny? Quaint? Yes, but the writer rect action of the workers them away a man's independence." (This was the owner of huge factories selves. Ford and Bennett didn't care from a man who pried into every where his word was law. He had the about the law - they were the law intimate, personal habit of his em power to force his workers to bow in their kingdom. In spite of all the ployees' lives!) Ford's right-hand to his whims, no matter how stupid rulings, they continued to fight man, Harry Bennett, echoed his mas or laughable. against the union. Just before the ter's views. He called unions "irre Ford Local #600 recently com NLRB election Bennett finally set sponsible, un-American, and no God memorated the twenty-second an off a mass strike. In April, 1941 he damn good." niversary of the first strike at the fired the eight unionists who made
22 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW up the over-all grievance committee. and what was good for the worker tic industrial empire, Ford produced For the first time in its history, the was good for the capitalist. "If you more than automobiles - he pro mammoth Rouge plant was shut cut wages," he wrote, "you just cut duced the Ford worker. Thousands down by the workers. the number of your own customers. upon thousands were taken from the Henry Ford had said, "Anyone If an employer does not share pros farms, forests and small towns and who does not like to work in our perity with those who make him brought into modern industrial ur way may always leave." Well, one prosperous, then pretty soon there ban life. Ford promised them a bet fine April day Ford suddenly found will be no prosperity to share. That ter life - and they insisted on get himself with the largest auto plant is why we think it is good business ting that better life. He broke their in the world but with no workers. always to raise wages and never to backs on the assembly line, but at The workers proved that in their lower them. We like to have plenty the same time he unified them in solidarity there was a much greater of customers." terms of their common physical sur power than in all of Ford's millions. Prohibition, for example, was con roundings, their common problems The governor of Michigan finally sidered good because it helped this and their common aims. They didn't arranged a meeting between the partnership relationship between the dare talk together in the plant, but company and the union representa bosses and the bossed. "The coming they thought together, and once out tives. On May 21, 1941, 83,000 Ford of prohibition has put more of the side the plant they met together and workers at three Detroit area plants workman's money into savings banks planned together. Ford imported Ne voted on their choice of three kinds and into his wife's pocketbook ... gr:oes from the South and tried to of union representation. Less than Workmen go out of doors, go on use them as strikebreakers, instead three percent voted for "no union picnics, have time to see their chil creating a new source of strength at all." A little more than twenty dren and play with them - and, in and militancy for Local 600. Ford five percent voted AFL and seventy cidentally, they buy more. This stim used government bodies and the percent (58,000) voted for the CIO. Ulates business and increases pro courts in order to maintain his rule, The contract, drawn up on June 21, perity, and in the general economic and he forced the workers to learn included all the union demands plus circle the money passes through in the truth about capitalist politics and two surprise additions from Ford. dustry again and back into the work capitalist justice. Ford himself forced Ford declared that anyone wishing man's pocket. It is a truism that what his workers to develop class con to work in his plants must join the benefits one is bound to benefit all, sciousness, class organization and union, and he volunteered to collect and labor is coming to see the truth militant methods of class struggle. union dues from employee pay of this more every day." When Dean Marquis was head of checks and turn them over to the The labor leaders of today have the Ford Sociology Department, he union. No other auto company at embraced this Fordism; they have told the National Educational Asso that time had granted the closed swallowed this phony partnership ciation: "The impression has some shop or the dues check-off. theory, hook, line and sinker. Reu how got around that Henry Ford is The story is told that a few months ther was brutally beaten by his in the automobile business. It isn't after the contract was signed Reu "partners" in 1941, but, as they say, true. Mr. Ford shoots about fifteen ther met Ford while on an inspec time heals all wounds. Reuther to hundred cars out the back door of tion trip through the Willow Run day talks and acts like a partner of his factory every day just to get rid bomber plant. Ford told the union the industrialists; he is now a "labor of them. They are but the by-prod leader: "You know, Mr. Reuther, it statesman." It's not so easy, how uct of his real business, which is was one of the most sensible things ever, for the rank-and-file workers the making of men." Harry Bennett ever did when he got to forget the years of terror, speed The end product of the Ford as the U A W into this plant . . . you've up, wage cuts, and dictatorship over sembly line was not the Ford car been fighting General Motors and their :most intimate personal habits. but the Ford worker and Ford Local the Wall Street crowd. Now you're They are constantly reminded by the #(300. The two greatest achievements in here and we've given you a union daily problems they still face in the of Henry Ford can be summed up in shop and more than you got out of plant today. Job security, decent those two marvels of twentieth cen them. That puts you on our side, working conditions and personal tury capitalism: the fabulous Rouge doesn't it? We can fight General freedoms were not won through plant and the men working inside it. Motors and Wall Street together, "partnership" with Ford but only In 1945 the creator of those won eh?" through struggle against Ford. The ders of the modern age suffered the The statement that Bennett "got Apostle of Class Harmony and Class first sharp mental and physical de the U A W" into Ford plants was pure Co-operation provided the American cline of his life. His grandson, Henry gall, but the idea that the Ford workers with some of the most bitter II, became president. Ford died of workers were on the side of the Ford lessons of the reality of class struggle a cerebral hemorrhage on April 7, management in their common fight and class antagonism in American 1947. He was not quite eighty-four against Wall Street and the compe labor history. years old. They say that as the pall tition was pure Henry Fordism. bearers were carrying his casket, a Who Creates Class Struggle? light tapp.ing was heard from inside LL through his writings and Some people have the mistaken the coffin, and the old familiar voice Astatements there runs the idea idea that Marx and the communists commanded, "Put this thing on that the worker and the capitalist create class struggle. The plain truth wheels and layoff six men." are partners in the individual enter of the matter is that capitalists create prise and in the economy as a whole. the class struggle in today's world. Ford called wages "partnership dis Capitalism not only created modern 'Don't Miss the Next Issue I tributions. ' What was g~od for the industry but the modern working SUBSCRIBE! capitalist was good for the worker, class as well. In creating his gigan-
WINTER 1964 23 Review Article A STUDY OF THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
By Evelyn Reed
The Feminine Mystique* is an out the trap that their grandmothers fought glamorized package of the Feminine standing sociological study - an over to escape from. Mystique. due challenge to the mercenary myth Betty Friedan reminds us that in The author likens the blind docility makers who have invented the glorified the nineteenth century and in the first with which middle-class women ac image of the Happy Housewife Heroine decades of the twentieth, progressive cepted their fate to prisoners in Nazi and imposed it upon American women. middle-class women led an inspiring concentration camps, who became un The author, a mother of three chil "feminist" struggle for women's rights. protesting "walking corpses" marching dren, analyzes the plight of women like Out of this rebellion they won the to their own doom: herself who belong to the privileged right to higher education, participation "In a sense that is not as far upper middle strata of American so in production, professional careers, in fetched as it sounds, the women who ciety. Most women have no choice ex dependent ownership of property and 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up cept to be tied to a household or chained the vote. These reforms were an im wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are to a factory or office job - or both. But mense improvement over their previous in as much danger as the millions the women that Betty Friedan examines chatteldom, and could have been a who walked to their own death in the are more fortunate. They have access to springboard to further advances to full concentration camps - and the mil all the advantages of our culture - human stature and dignity. lions more who refused to believe that education, scholarship, interesting and Instead, the Second World War and the concentration camps existed." well-paying professions. And yet most of its aftermath brought about a sweeping True, the barbed wire surrounding them have forfeited development of their setback, characterized by the author as the "comfortable concentration camps" higher capacities to enroll in the ranks a "counter-revolution" against women. of Suburbia was invisible. What was listed as: "Occupation: housewife." The call for this retreat was sounded visible to these victims of "The Ameri Exposed by the author are the realities by Farnham & Lundberg's book Mod can Dream" were the gilded trappings behind the show-windows of Suburbia ern Woman: The Lost Sex, published of the standard middle-class home. As where female residents suffer agonies in 1942. The "lost" women were the in a lifetime occupation, however, they from "a problem that has no name." dependent ones interested in science, were bogged down in domestic trivia This is their inability to "adjust" to art, politics and engaged in careers be requiring the intellectual exertions of their narrow, stultifying sphere of ex yond the family circle. an eight-year-old. Even then there was istence. She also describes the catas In place of intelligent, creative, pub not enough work to occupy their full trophic consequences that this debase lic-spirited women came the new time. Thus, housework "expanded to fill ment of women inflicts upon the whole image of the "feminine" woman - the the time available," as the inmates family. Few escape the pathology flow empty-headed housewife contented with squandered their energies in more fran ing from the "Feminine Mystique." in the "cozy" walls of a pretty home. tic "busywork" on meaningless details. Betty Friedan's findings have a wider As the Mystique gained momentum, Working women can usually polish off relevance than the well-to-do housewives domesticity became "a religion, a pat in an hour the chores on which full she has investigated. These set the pat tern by which all women must now time housewives spend six hours and tern of behavior and aspiration for live or deny their feminity," writes still leave unfinished at dinnertime. working-class housewives, who mistaken the author. What began as a trek back "Even with all the new labor-saving ap ly believe that because middle-class to the old corral became a stampede pliances," the author points out, "the women have all the advantages, they during the prosperity of the 1950's. modern American housewife probably also have all the answers. In this way To mobilize women behind their own spends more time on housework than distorted ideas and values seep down to defeat, facts about the pioneer fighters her grandmother." infect masses of women, including some for women's rights were distorted. Al "Like Diogenes with his lamp," Betty working women who wonder whether though most of the feminist crusaders Friedan went in search of at least one they might not lead a better life as a had husbands, children and homes, they intelligent, capable woman who felt ful full-time housewife. This book should were depicted as "embittered sex filled as a full-time housewife. She found help settle their doubts. starved spinsters" incapable of fulfill none. What she did find, out of a sam ing their "femininity" as wives and ple test of 28 women in an upper-in Springing Old Trap mothers. Among the unforgivable traits come community was the following: The Feminine Mystique is a modern of these spirited women was their en "Sixteen out of the 28 were in anal ized version of the old formula for joyment of participation in the struggle ysis or analytical psychotherapy. domestic enslavement more bluntly ex for social change! Eighteen were taking tranquilizers; pressed as "Woman's place is in the Also blacked out of the record was several had tried suicide; and some home." The new element is the poisoned the ultra-reactionary source of this re had been hospitalized for varying bait of the Mystique by which women treat back to the home. It was Hitler periods, for depression or vaguely today are voluntarily lured back into in the 1930's who enforced the notorious diagnosed psychotic states. ('You'd be Three K's for women: Kinder, Kuche, surprised at the number of these * The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Kirche (children, cooking, church). By happy suburban wives who simply go Friedan, W. W. Norton & Co., New York. the 1940's a similar slogan was sold to berserk one night, and run shrieking 1963. 410 pp. $5.95. American women in the disguised, through the street without any clothes
21 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW on,' said the local doctor, not a psy "wAMism" swept the nation, spear with the penis and defined feminine chiatrist, who had been called in, in headed by middle-class women who creativity in terms of the passive recep such emergencies) . . . Twelve were "led all the others in the race to have tivity of the uterus," says the author. engaged in extramarital affairs in more babies." Thus, "through her influence, procrea fact or in fantasy." "The average age of first marriage, tion became a cult, a career, to the ex It was this conflict of reality with in the last 15 years, has dropped to clusion of every other kind of creative the widely publicized image of the the youngest in the history of this endeavor." happy housewife which caused Betty country, the youngest in any of the Ironically, Margaret Mead did not Friedan to break the hypnosis of the countries of the Western world, al guide her own life by what she wrote Mystique in her own life. Asking the most as young as it used to be in in her books, as Betty Friedan points key question: "What made these women the so-called underdeveloped coun out. "She has demonstrated feminine go home again?" she then proceeded to tries • . . the annual rate of popula capabilities that go far beyond child collect the data which explained how tion increase in the U.S. is among the birth; she made her way in a man's the trick was done. highest in the world - nearly three world without denying that she was times that of the Western European a woman." But not until recent years The Brainwashers nations, nearly double Japan's, and has Margaret Mead modified her posi A high-powered propaganda machine close on the heels of Africa and In tion and begun to chide women - as was put into motion to exalt house dia." well as their over-domesticated hus wifery and stifle women's desires for Sustaining and extending this re bands - for too much preoccupation something more than a husband, home direction of women are the powerful with home and family. and children. Beginning with the "sex moulders of public opinion: editors and However, all these educators, scien directed" educators in the schools and writers of the slick magazines for wom tists and other moulders of public opin colleges, this campaign has penetrated en, newspaper columnists, TV shows, ion are not independent thinkers. They into every avenue of mass indoctrina movies, popular novels, pulps, and all are themselves moulded by the control tion. The key word in this technique the rest. Insidiously and unremittingly lers of our economy and directly or in of thought control - as effective as a they warn women that even yearning directly serve their needs. Paramount blackjack on the skull in a dark alley to express their intellects and talents among these, of course, is the need for - is the word "feminine." would be "heavily paid for" by the loss expanding sales and greater profits. College girls, terrified lest they lose of their "femininity." their "femininity" through any display The social sciences: applied sociology, The "Sexual Sell" of brains or serious study, learn to psychology and anthropology are like Betty Friedan generously says that camouflage their intelligence or obe wise misused to buttress this F'eminine the "Sexual Sell" in consumer's goods diently empty their minds altogether. Mystique. Even alert and intelligent is not the result of an "economic con Their main preoccupation, fostered by women find it difficult to question spiracy" by big business. However, she parents and educators alike, is "the propaganda when it is disguised as sci presents ample evidence that the profi pursuit of a wedding ring." As one edu ence. The more dubious findings of the teers are the main movers and prime cator put it, college for women was eminent psychologist, Freud, are per beneficiaries of the immense apparatus the "world's best marriage mart." verted and vulgarized to lend authority generating the drive toward keeping Higher education for women was to the theme that woman's place is in women in the home. Women are the readjusted to fit the new goal; it be the home. "For reasons far removed major buyers of things for the home came a veneer for suburban wifehood. from the life of Freud himself, Freudian and its inmates. Thus, as the author Courses in advanced cooking, in mar thought has become the ideological points out, "In all the talk of femininity riage and family adjustment displaced bulwark of the sexual counter-revolu and women's role, one forgets that the courses in chemistry, physics, etc. Old tion in America," says Betty Friedan. real business in America is business." fashioned educators, repelled by the For example, "penis envy" became a To step up the sale of things and "sophisticated soup" dished up as Lib psychological catch-all; the answer to more things, through rapidly changing eral Arts courses, were brought into women's resentment against their in fashions, is the job of the commercial line - or pushed aside. Even such Ivy ferior status. It was invoked as a advertising and sales promotion agen League colleges as Vassar, Smith, bludgeon against such "unfeminine" de cies. Women's weaknesses are carefully Barnard and others, "which pioneered mands as freedom and equality with studied and ruthlessly exploited by the higher education for women in Amer men. most unscrupulous members of the ica and were noted for their uncom The noted "functional" anthropologist, Madison Avenue brainwashers, the promising intellectual standards," tum Margaret Mead (perhaps unwittingly) "manipulators in depth." Taking ad bled from their heights. As the spokes has been one of the most influential vantage of the knowledge that most man of a famous woman's college put contributors to the pseudo-scientific housewives are restless, unhappy and it: "We are not educating women to campaign propping up the Feminine bored, the "Depth Boys" have come up be scholars; we are educating them to Mystique. According to this "major with magic formulas promising "fem be wives and mothers." With com architect" of opinion about women, it inine fulfillment" through the purchase mendable irony the girls promptly ab is the "entrances and exits" of the body of things. breviated this to "wAM." which are decisive in shaping the in The endlessly "hungry" women who Summing up the consequences of this dividual in society. do not understand that they are really deterioration in education, the author Utilizing bits and patches of Freud's starved for means of expressing their writes: teachings, she returned from the South productive, social, cultural and intel "Sex.directed education segregated Seas where she charted tribal person lectual potential become easy prey for recent generations of able American ality according to literal "oral" and this gigantic sales swindle. Since her women as surely as separate-but "anal" tables, bringing women the good own identity as a human being has equal education segregated able news that in their bodily organs they collapsed, writes Betty Friedan, "she American Negroes from the opportu are, after all, the equals of men. Since needs these external trappings to but nity to realize their full abilities in women possess that supremely feminine tress her emptiness of self, to make the mainstream of American life." "entrance," the vagina, the equality of her feel like somebody." Along with this lowering of educa women stems from the fact that for One of the chief professional "mo tional standards, the age level for mar every penis - there is a uterus! She tivators," who is paid about a million riage took a sharp plunge (often be "equated those assertive, creative, pro a year for his services, told the author ginning even in the high schools), while ductive aspects of life on which the how cunningly this fraud is perpetrated: the birth rate soared. The fashion for superstructure of a civilization depends "Properly manipulated (if you are
WINTER 1964 25 not afraid of that word) American the Fabulous Fifties, the author writes: ever-growing size of the Holly housewives can be given the sense of "It would take a clever economist to wood startIet's breast, by the sudden identity, purpose, creativity, the self figure out what would keep our af emergence of the male phallus as realization, even the sexual JOY they fluent economy going if the housewife as an advertising 'gimmick.' Sex has lack - by the buying of things . . . market began to fall off, just as an become depersonalized, seen in terms "In a free enterprise economy we economist would have to figure out of these exaggerated symbols. have to develop the need for new what to do if there were no threat of "But of all the strange sexual products. And to do that we have to war." In short, just as the Merchants phenomena that have appeared in the liberate women to desire these new of Death prosper by exploiting the era of the feminine mystique, the products ... This can be manipulated. "menace o.f Communism" on foreign most ironic are these - the frustrated We sell them what they ought to fronts, the Merchants of the Mystique sexual hunger of American women want, speed up the unconscious, move get rich by exploiting the "menace of has increased, and their conflicts over it along . . . The manufacturer wants unfemininity" on the home front. femininity have intensified, as they her back into the kitchen - and we But the real menace, which lies be have reverted from independent activ show him how to do it the right way. low the level of general consciousness, ity in search for their sole fulfillment If he tells her all she can be is a is the dehumanization of the American through their sexual role in the home. wife and mother, she will spit in his people - a process that affects not And as American women have turned face. But we show him how to tell only the housewife but sucks the whole their attention to the exclusive, ex her that it's creative to be in the family into its vortex. plicit, and aggressive pursuit of kitchen. We liberate her need to be sexual fulfillment, or the acting-out creathYe in the kitchen." The vortex of sexual phantasy, the sexual dis To stimulate the housewife into be The purchase of things - even a interest of American men, and their coming a passionate thing-buyer the mountain of junk - fails to produce hostility toward women, have also "Depth Boys" overstimulate her' ap the Happy Family of Togetherness pic increased . . . The sellers, it seems, petites for food, sex and procreation. tured by the advertisers. On the con have sexed the sex out of sex." Thus the slick magazines feature dra trary, family relationships degenerate Other housewives turn toward their matic full-page color spreads of "gar into relationships among owners of own children as the closest and most gantuan vegetables; beets, cucumbers, things. There are many millions of im malleable means for relieving their dis green peppers, potatoes," not to speak poverished women who are deprived of satisfactions. For the woman who "lives of succulent roasts dripping with gravy the necessary things that would make through her children," mother-love be and fluffy pies and cakes. In large their lives more bearable and fruitful. comes converted into "smother-lo.ve." sized print usually reserved for a first But among these surfeited middle Even worse, women who are robbed of grade primer, foods are "described like class women, the possession of things normal, adult relationships carryon a love affair." This "oral" satisfaction possesses them - and impoverishes what amounts to "love affairs" with requires, in turn, the buying of the their personalities. their children. The more susceptible right home with a gorgeous kitchen, When the wife is reduced to a thing young males can be "virtually destroyed sometimes decorated with mosaic buyer. the husband becomes a "thing in the process." Women and boys com murals and original paintings, equipped around the house" who justifies his own prise the majority of patients in the with gleaming electric mixers red frantic activities in the rat-race by psychiatric clinics. stoves with rounded corners, a~d all claiming it's all necessary for the "wife Girls, brought up under the influence the other paraphernalia and gadgets and kiddies." The children, too.. become of the Feminine Mystique are likewise that subtly tie in status with stomach. converted into living possessions in a vulnerable to becoming emotionally ar Sexual gratification is likewise prom home filled with ornaments of all kinds. rested at an infantile level. Those who ised in glamor ads featuring lipsticks Unable to understand, much less artic marry young become the transmission and hair dyes, hi-fashion clothes, per ulate, the real source of their resent belt for conveying this infantilism to fumes, chrome-plated cars and the ments. husbands and wives, parents and their own children. Betty Friedan calls like. The sacred joys of procreation children, become alienated from one this "progressive dehumanization." demand a great diversity of products another. often blaming one another for Equally damaging is the parasitism from pink and blue, toy-filled nurseries their stunted lives. encouraged in the middle-class homes to Dr. Spock's current baby bible. Most desperate are those housewives where everything is done for the chil Through some oversight, that bodily who have abandoned attempts to kill dren, everything supervised for their "exit," the anus, is least imaginatively aU their time with housework. But they comfort and pleasure down to the "curl treated; soft toilet tissue is still toilet seek for relief in the wrong directions. of their hair." The advertisers feed paper even if it comes in four different Some, guided by the all-pervasive this indulgence with sales campaigns colors and white. exaltation of sex, become the "sex directed at the "gimme" kids. This ex If, after all their frenzied purchas seekers" inside or outside of marriage. cessive pampering is imitated by better ing, the results do not stack up with But the more a~gressive they become income working-class parents who are the promises, the housewives are invited in the pursuit of sexual bliss, the less deluded into believing this is giving to slake their thirst with salt water. they find what they are seeking. Betty their own children "the best." But in They can double and triple their pur Friedan sums up the "faceless, deper homes where the living is easy, the chases of things, but, as the author sonalized" sex-seeking of today as fol children tend to grow up soft, passive, points out, women have minds and lows: lazy and incompetent. Unable to organ capacities that food, sex or procreation "Instead of fulfilling the promise of ize a program of serious study and by themselves cannot satisfy. And those infinite orgiastic bliss, sex in the work, and lacking ambition to achieve who think that their discontents can be America of the feminine mystique is maturity, they seek to fill up their va removed by more money, a bigger becoming a strangely joyless national cant time with "kicks." As the author house, two fireplaces instead of one, compUlsion. if not a contemptuous writes: three cars, another baby, moving to a mockery. The sex-glutted novels be "A questionnaire revealed that there better suburb, "often discover it gets come increasingly explicit and in was literally nothing these kids felt worse." creasingly dull; the sex kick of the strongly enough about to die for, as The Feminine Mystique plays as big women's magazines has a sickly sad there was nothing they actually did a role in supporting the consumer ness; the endless flow of manuals in which they felt really alive. Ideas, market as cold-war propaganda does describing new sex techniques hint the conceptual thought which is in the domain of producers' goods. Com at an endless lack of excitement. This uniquely human, were completely menting on the explosive sales boom of sexual boredom is betrayed by the absent from their minds or lives."
26 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW This absence of vital purpose, this "It was easier, safer, to think describes with so much penetration and indifference to human values, was noted about love and sex than about Com courage are the products of a diseased by army doctors and psychologists who munism, McCarthy, and the uncon social organism, in which the rights, studied G.!. prisoners of the Korean trolled bomb. It was easier to look welfare and opportunities of human be war. Many of them, unlike their Yankee for Freudian sexual roots in man's ings are subjected to the dictates of the forebears, lost all resourcefulness, be behavior, his ideas, and his wars than profiteers. During a capitalist war wom came inert, uncommunicative, did noth to look critically at his society and en can be taken out of their homes by ing to help their sick comrades, and act constructively to right its wrongs. the millions and put to work in the even cast others out in the snow to die. There was a kind of personal retreat, factories. But when they are no longer Such dehumanized behavior, opined one even on the part of the most far needed as producers, they are sent back doctor, was "the result of some new sighted, the most spirited; we lowered home to become primarily consumers. failure in the childhood and adolescent our eyes from the horizon, and In both instances, what is decisive is training of our young men." steadily contemplated our own na not the needs of women as human be vels." ings but the interests of the monopolists. Social Connections This is certainly true. But what is These masters of America shape the Betty Friedan connects all the conse the alternative to total submersion in lives and livelihoods of womanhood and to family life? Betty Friedan's diagnosis the whole family according to their own quences of the flight back to home and corrupt and corrupting aims. family with the predominant state of of the disease is superior to her remedy for it. She suggests. that more serious Woman's destiny cannot be funda conservatism and loss of interest in mentally transformed until this truth public affairs and social struggles: education and study, together with in teresting, well-paying jobs, will open is understood and acted upon. The "What happened to women is part the door of the trap. This is the same feminists of the past could achieve their of what happened to all of us in the kind of limited, individual solution that limited reforms within the framework years after the war. We found the feminists formerly proposed - and of a still-ascending capitalism. But to excuses for not facing the problems that subsequently proved so ineffective. day it has become dead-end capitalism. we once had the courage to face. Some fortunate women can do what the It is good but not enough for women The American spirit fell into a strange author has done - turn around, make to become more social-minded, as Betty sleep; men as well as women, scared a "new life plan" and escape the domes liberals, disillusioned radicals, con tic cage. But the life-plans for the great Friedan advocates. They should now be servatives bewildered and frustrated majority of women are determined for come socialist-minded, because only a by change - the whole nation stopped them by forces outside their personal root-and-branch change in the whole growing up. All of us went back to control - the ruling powers. venal system can save us all from fur the warm brightness of home . . . The sicknesses that Betty Friedan ther dehumanization.
Comparative Medical Care
By Marvel Scholl
MEDICAL CARE AND FAMILY SECURITY - ernment. The plan encompasses all NORWAY, ENGLAND AND USA, Drs. Karl phases of medical care, as well as pen Evang, D. Murray Stark, Walter J. sions for the aged and disabled, and Lear. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood cash grants to sick workers and new Cliffs, N. J., 1963. 344 pp. $6.50. mothers. The one remaining "bug" (in my estimation, not Dr. Evang's) is the This book is timely indeed. A sym 30 percent of the doctor bill each posium by three medical men from patient must still bear on his own. Norway, England and the United States, Norwegians of all political stripe con its main value, in my estimation, is the sider health a human right. Through striking contrast it exposes between many generations of differing political health and security standards existent governmental leadership, the right of in Norway and Great Britain, where the citizenry to adequate care when national health services have proven they are ill and preventive medical care their worth, and the situation in this to keep them well has grown apace. Dr. zation, The Group Insurance Plan of country, where health and family secur Evang describes in full the structure of Greater New York (HIP), and the ity are treated as commodities for profit, the program, the benefits derived by Kaiser Plan (Permanente) on the West not a human right and a national social the whole people from it and the false Coast as proof of his contention. obligation. ness of all the arguments we hear today Dr. Lear presents a clear and devas Dr. Evang traces the history and ac from the AMA about the evils of "so tating picture of the whole health in complishments of the Norwegian Secur cialized medicine." surance industry, including the faults of ity Insurance program from its incep Dr. Murray deals with the results of the Blue Plans, but the only government tion in 1911, when it covered only the fourteen years of the British National financed and sponsored health plan he lowest paid workers, to today, when it Health Service. A comprehensive study actually supports is Medicare for the takes in the whole population. Security of the NHA appeared in the Summer, aged. insurance, administered by the Minister 1963 issue of this magazine. I advise reading this book for the of Health and thence down through the Dr. Walter J. Lear, for the Americans, contrast it offers between national smallest government bodies, is com is a strong advocate of group medical health services, which take off the pulsory. Workers pay a payroll tax practice, centralized Health Centers, shoulders of the individual the onerous equal to 3 percent of their annual and, as an interim (he doesn't say to burden of illness and its economic and wage. The balance of the total medical what), more private, non-profit health social consequences, with the anarchy and social security bill is paid by con insurance based on communities, not and inequality which exist in this tributions from employers and the gov- small groups. He cites his own organi- country.
WINTER 1964 27 IN REVIEW
THE LIVING TROTSKY
By William F. Warde
TROTSKY VIVANT, by Pierre Naville. all the problems afresh, and work out room of Preobrazhensky, the Soviet Juillard, Paris, 1962. 198 pp. 10.20 NF. new positions and perspectives under economist, he again encountered the unprecedented difficulties. And there amiable and intelligent Rakovsky, who This is an informative and perceptive was Naville, an inexperienced young was, next to Trotsky, the ablest op volume of reminiscences about Trotsky. man, called upon to shoulder the re ponent of the bureaucracy. Until some N aville was one of the earliest and sponsibilities of contending against the weeks before, Rakovsky had been Soviet youngest recruits of the Communist Left authority of the Kremlin soon after he Ambassador to France and was instru Opposition in France who participated had joined the Communist movement. mental in getting Naville to the Con in the leadership of the Trotskyist move Trotsky's expUlsion from the party gress against the wishes of the secre ment there until shortly before the tariat of the French C.P. Second World War. He has since ac had not changed either his determina quired merited reputation as one of the tion or his outlook one iota, comments The ex-diplomat wore a Russian most qualified Marxist scholars in Naville. What impressed him in this blouse with a good-looking Western France, best known for his studies of first contact was that, although Trotsky jacket which stood out amid the bare the socioiogy and psychology of labor. lived in the USSR, he did not cease ness of the small room. Rakovsky Naville tells of his experiences and thinking and acting as though the whole smilingly told them this was the sole discussions wi th Trotsky in Moscow, world was his province. He paid as relic of his ambassadorship. Upon re Prinkipo, Paris, Copenhagen and other much attention to the preparatory stir turning it was the government's custom places from 1927 to 1940. He first met rings of revolution in other parts of the to take from the envoys everything they Trotsky at Moscow in November 1927 globe as to the economic and political had acquired during their service ex on the tenth anniversary of the October development of the Soviet Union. cept their clothes. Revolution when the internal conflict "Socialism had not become for him "I would have preferred a room," between the Stalin-Bukharin majority merely a state policy, and still less that Rakovsky said," but they expelled me and the combined Trotsky-Zinoviev of an isolated state. His questions un from the Soviet Foreign Trade Commis Kamenev bloc had reached the breaking ceasingly directed us to the only point sion with a jacket. The French chucked point. that was decisive in his eyes: how are me out of Paris for having signed a Naville saw Trotsky at the office of things going with you? What's happen declaration of the Opposition. Stalin the Committee on Concessions the day ing in France? What can we expect chucked me out of the Trade Commis after he had been expelled from the from the European workers? What is sion for having signed the same declara Russian C.P. He was to lose that post determining the development of the tion. But, in both cases, they left me a few days later. Their conversation British or American workers? He ex my jacket." revolved around the perspectives of the pected only one kind of effective aid Two years later Naville in Paris re work of the Opposition. Trotsky urged for the RUssian Left Opposition: that ceived lengthy documents from the ex the young French revolutionist to pub of the international revolution." iled Rakovsky on the transformations licize the platform of the Communist His stay in Moscow coincided with in the Soviet power written on tiny Opposition abroad, arm himself and his the 15th Congress of the Russian C.P. cards. These made the passage in the co-thinkers for a prolonged struggle, Naville, as a member of the French dele lining of a fur coat. "That was also in prepare themselves for sudden turns, gation, met with the Central Committee a way a diplomatic pouch not to lose hope in the party but never of the Party to hear a report by Bukha to place affiliation above faithfulness to rin condemning the Opposition. He at * * * principles. tended the funeral of A. A. J offee, the One of the most rewarding segments Naville brings out the extraordinary opposition leader who committed suicide of these memoirs takes up the problem drama of that tense turning point in in protest against his mistreatment by of the relation between individuals and Soviet history. There he observed the the regime. He talked with the workers their environment in connection with leaders of the Russian Revolution, in the factories; met a sympathetic re the decline of the Russian Revolution. Lenin's closest colleagues, the organizer ception from the poet Mayakovsky; "More than one biographer and historian and commanders of the Red Army, the conferred with many of the opposition of the Russian Revolution, dealing with foremost figures of Soviet diplomacy leaders; and attended their meetings this subject, has been satisfied with at and economic reconstruction as they which had to be held secretly in apart tributing the continued defeat of Trotsky were cast out of the Bolshevik party. ments and out in the woods. in the USSR after 1923 to his 'errors,' They faced the necessity, a decade after Naville describes the cynical scepti refusing to understand the kind of the 1917 victory, of coping with the cism of Radek and the melancholy of deliberate sacrifice he made of the degeneration of the first workers' state. Zinoviev which foreshadowed their sub present for the future, if not his per This compelled them to think through sequent capitulations to Stalin. In the sonal future, at least that of a new
28 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW generation," remarks Naville. "If he had turn of Danton and his friends. His "But political abstention was hardly died, as Lenin did, at the moment when torians and biographers never stop won more favorable. The stages of the revolu a conservative period in the Russian dering at the confused, passive and tion and counter-revolution succeeded Revolution was emerging, coinciding puerile attitude of Danton in the last one another at an accelerated pace, the with successive setbacks of the socialist months of his life. The same thing for contradictions between the protagonists revolution in Europe, doubtless the his Robespierre and his associates: dis of a certain program and the changed torians would have ascribed the decline orientation, passivity and incoherence situation acquired an unexpected and of Bolshevism after 1923-1925 to this at the most critical moment. extremely acute character. That gives double disappearance. But since he lived "The explanation is obvious. Each of the historian the possibility of display and carried on the struggle - in con these groupings had at a given moment ing his retrospective wisdom by enu ditions of an implacable reaction, un exhausted its political possibilities and merating and cataloguing the mistakes, precedented in working class history - could no longer move forward against omissions, ineptness. But, unfortunately, without success coming to crown it, the the overpowering reality: internal eco these historians abstain from indicating historians, fascinated by the accom nomic conditions, international pressure, the right road which would have been plished fact, heap it all upon him under the new currents which these generated able to lead a moderate to victory in a the artificial argument of his errors and among the masses, etc. In these condi period of revolutionary upswing, or on shortcomings." tions, each step began to produce re the contrary to indicate a reasonable Trotsky replied to such superficial sults contrary to those that were hoped and triumphant revolutionary policy in critics on many occasions. But never so for. a thermidorean period." profoundly as in a letter written in 1938 which is cited by Naville. Since, to my knowledge, it has never before ap peared in English, the passage he quotes World of the Black Musl'ims is worth giving in full. Here is what Trotsky wrote on this controversial By Robert Vernon issue. "I have come to the necessity of clari WHEN THE WORD Is GIVEN ... A report their alienation from the Southern in fying a theoretical question which also on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and tegration struggle. As Lomax puts it: has a great political importance. It es the Black Muslim World by Louis E. "Allah and Jesus fight it out for the sentially involves the relation between Lomax. New York. World Publishing spiritual allegiance of the American the political or historical personality and Co. 1963. 223 pp. $3.95. Negro at a lunch counter in Wool the 'milieu.' To go straight to the heart worth's." Poor white man's Jesus: he of the problem, I would like to mention The Black Muslims are, without is bound to lose both at "Woolworth's" Souvarine's book on Stalin, where the doubt, one of the most fascinating social down South and in Harlem, where Allah author accuses the heads of the Left phenomena on the American scene. has the distinct advantage. Opposition, myself included, of various Lomax's book is only the third to ap Lomax misinterprets the reactions of errors, omissions, blunders, etc., begin pear on this key topic. But like its two a crowd at a Harlem street meeting ning with 1923. counterparts, also by Negro authors (C. last July - at which this reviewer was "I do not at all wish to deny that Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in present - listening to Elijah Muham there were not many mistakes, unskill America and E. U. Essien-Udom, Black mad's son Akbar and to Malcolm X. ful acts, and even stupidities. N everthe Nationalism: The Search for an Identity The crowd was cool to Akbar Muham less, what is important, from the theo America), this contribution falls far mad who spoke for unity between all retical as well as the political view short of an incisive picture of the Black Negro leaders, because the nitty-gritty point, is the relation, or rather the dis Muslims and of the America which pro people in Harlem have nothing much proportion between these 'errors' and duced them. The three books share to gain from NAACP, CORE, or the their consequences. It is precisely in this much the same defects - primarily the Urban League. The crowd warmed up disproportion that the reactionary char outlook of their authors which is con only when the Muslims implied that acter of the new historical stage ex fined to the frame-work of existing so their unity approach was meant to force pressed itself. ciety and their inability to understand these conservative forces into unity on "We made not a few mistakes in 1917 phenomena which transcend that society an apparently militant basis and not and in the following years. But the and reflect revolutionary urges to break that the Muslims were hankering for sweep of the revolution filled up these free from it. any old kind of "unity" with the con gaps and repaired the errors, often with Lomax's treatment is conscientious servative elements. our aid, sometimes even without our and honest, within his limitations. The most valuable contribution Lomax direct participation. But for this period Lomax does not brandish the ridiculous makes to the literature on the subject the historians, including Souvarine, are argument that the segregation enforced is the extensive quotes and texts of idulgent because the struggle ended in by white America and the separate whole speeches by Elijah Muhammad victory. During the second half of 1917 black power advocated by the Muslims and Malcolm X, taking up at least half and the following years, it was the turn is the "same thing." He points out the the book. These present an incomplete, of the liberals and Mensheviks to com failure of the white man's religion, but instructive, picture of the content of mit errors, omissions, blunders, etc. Christianity, to meet the emotional and Muslim utterances. For this alone, the "I would like to illustrate this his material needs of many black people book is worth reading. torical 'law' once again with the ex and the way the role of Negroes in Like Lincoln and Essien-Udom, Lomax ample of the great French revolution America has been whitewashed out of sees a good or "functional" side to the where, thanks to the remoteness in time, history. He clearly establishes the fact Muslims in their pricking white Amer the relations between the actors and that the Nation of Islam is a religion ica's conscience and spurring integratiol their milieus appear much more clear if anything else on the scene is. This by demonstrating the awful alternatives cut and crystallized. is a religion swept up in the revolu of the failure to integrate the "Negro "At a certain moment in the revolu tionary anger of a frustrated and embit problem" right out of existence. Miss tion the Girondin leaders entirely lost tered people and fashioned in their self ing here is any realization that white their sense of direction. Despite their image. American capitalist society not only is popularity, their intelligence, they could Like most critics, Lomax tries to incapable of accepting Negroes to its commit nothing but errors and inept judge the Muslims not on their rele bosom as equals in a declining society, acts. They seemed to participate actively vance to the northern ghettos which but has nothing to offer that will satisfy in their own downfall. Later it was the gave birth to the movement, but on black people.
WINTER 1964 29 The Black Muslims are by no means oriented to mass action, but will have on the arbitrary rule of the Soviet the extreme far black or the last resort reason to thank the Black Muslims for bureacracy. He further predicts that as in the black revolt. The new forms of their scorching indictment of white the Soviet Union becomes more pros black revolt in the North (and South America and their legacy of fierce pride perous and the bureaucracy realizes that too) will be more practical and more in being black inside a white prison. it can never hope to defeat the United States in economic competition, it will become ever more conservatized and gradually give up its alleged desire for u.s. E'conomy: The Paper Tig'er world domination. The cold war will gradually dissipate itself, and the world By John Pederson will be saved from nuclear distruction. Thus, Bazelon believes that the present American socio-economic system must THE PAPER ECONOMY by David T. Ba irrelevant today because it deals with be analyzed as a new, post-capitalist zelon. Random House, Inc., New York, a system - capitalism - which no property system, in which the "paper" 1963. 467 pp. $6.95. longer exists. The "managerial revolu or fictitious capital structure is an in tion" has, according to Bazelon, brought tegral, growing, permanent feature, and The tremendous growth of paper about a new property system in which "assets," or what Marxists call fictitious the control of capital has become ownership of property has become separated from ownership. He sees capital, is an outstanding aspect of the divorced from control of that property, post-World War II American economy traditional "free-enterprise" capitalist thus making necessary the application ideology as a dangerous anachronism dealt with by David T. Bazelon in his of entirely "fresh" theoretical concepts. book, The Paper Economy. Bazelon's constituting a serious block to the de description of this capitalist phenomenon One of these "fresh" concepts, first velopment of effective government eco is important for its informational value, introduced by John K. Galbraith, a Har nomic policy. Should this be overcome if nothing else. This growth of debt and vard economics professor, in his book, and effective economic policies put into inflation of stock prices is an aspect of The Affluent Society, is that the primary effect, Bazelon sees a very bright fu the modern capitalist economy which is problem facing American capitalism is ture ahead including economic well-be of great importance today, not only for one of abundance as opposed to scarcity. ing for all and lasting peace. The alter the role it has played in extending the Bazelon points to the excess productive native to this, Bazelon maintains, can post-World War II prosperity, but also capacity, surplus capital and plentiful only be continued economic stagnation, for the role it threatens to play in ag credit within the U.S. economy to sup a concomitant growing threat from the gravating to an extreme degree the next port this thesis. At the same time, colonial revolution and alleged Soviet great capitalist economic crisis. Bazelon observes that traditional capi expansionism ultimately ending in the In the fifteen years between 1948 and talist ideology with its emphasis on free victory of the Soviet Union in the cold 1963, the gross federal debt rose from competition and a minimal role for the war or the destruction of civilization by $252 billion to $309 billion. State and state in economic matters and based nuclear war. local debt has skyrocketed from a 1946 upon the supposed fo:rmer condition of The author of this book is a very economic scarcity still reigns supreme low of $13.6 billion to over $80 billion confused man. His analysis betrays a at present. Net corporate debt has more - in the mass media, in utterances of complete misunderstanding of the cold than trebled between 1946 and 1960. politicians, in the educational institu war which is a conflict between two Non-farm mortgage debt, which hovered tions and in the minds of the ru1ing social systems based on antagonistic around $26-27 billion during World War elite. Bazelon sees this ideological lag property relations in which the Soviet as the single most serious problem fac II, stood at $179.9 billion at the end of Union has played a defensive role. His 1960. The total amount of short- and ing the American ruling class and the ideal solutions to the problems facing world captialist system. If only this intermediate-term outstanding consumer world capitalism indicate a total lack of credit has gone from about $5.7 billion mental paralysis could be overcome, the appreciation for the real nature of these state would be allowed to playa more in 1946 to $56 billion in 1962. The value problems - rooted as they are in the significant role in the economy. As a of stocks listed on the New York Stock growing anachronism of capitalist prop Exchange has risen by more than $200 consequence, a rapid rate of economic erty relations. growth, comparable to that of the Soviet billion in the 1950's alone. And so the Bazelon undoubtedly reflects the Union's, and a full utilization of the "paper" mounts. thinking and interests of an important nation's productive capacity and labor Marx pioneered the study of fictitious section of the American capitalist class resources would be attained, and defeat capital in Volume III of CapitaL back which sees as necessary the greatest in the nineteenth century and predicted in the "cold war" would be avoided. possible flexibility with respect to So its increased significance as capitalism Provided that this optimum economic viet-American relations and the utiliza matured. He defined fictitious capital as performance is attained, Bazelon is tion of state measures in an attempt capitalized earning or taxing power. For optimistic about solving the serious in to alleviate domestic economic prob example, government bonds issued on ternational problems facing American lems. This intellectual contribution, the basis of taxing power are one form imperialism. The threat from the colo along with those of Galbraith, Keynes of fictitious capital. Consumer debt nial revolution would be alleviated by and others, will help to weaken the based on the earning power of individ massive foreign aid to undeveloped hold of traditional capitalist ideology uals and stock prices (based on rising countries. With respect to the cold war, which is no longer appropriate to the corporate earnings), inflated far above Bazelon forsees the possibility of con current needs of the dominant section liquidation value (selling price of plants sciously orienting American foreign pol of the American capitalist class as it and inventories) represent other forms. icy toward an eventual convergence of pragmatically attempts to solve the This is essentially the same definition American and Soviet societies. He pre problems of private property while at used by Bazelon for his "paper" con dicts for the U.S. side of this synthesis the same time being incapable, because cept. a larger role for the federal govern of their vested interests, of touching the It should be pointed out that Bazelon ment in the U.S. economy, administering core of this problem - private property does not bother to credit Marx with the prices and introducing a measure of itself. . original development of this concept and planning in the main sectors of the analysis of this capitalist phenomenon. economy. On the Soviet side, he predicts This is but one manifestation of his the development of institutions through anti-Marxist bias which is consistent which public opinion can be expressed Subscribe Now! with his belief that Marxist theory is and effective pressure brought to bear
30 INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW Split in Ceylon COlTJlTJunist Party
(Continued from Page 2) The factional struggle in the CCP has brought to light At the annual general meeting of the Afro-Asian solidarity the corruption that existed in it. Building up "yes men" by league the two wings clashed openly. An attempt by the granting favours like providing jobs in embassies and firms CP leadership to out Mrs. Theja Gunawardena from her that engaged in trade with Soviet-bloc countries, organizing post as president of the league failed. The Peking wing also trips abroad for their henchmen, racketing in commissions alleges that the party leadership maneuvered to get her out from trade with Soviet-bloc countries, cO'vering up embez of the press commission. They charge that in doing so the zelment of party and trade union funds and thereby build CP leadership served the interests of the bourgeois press. ing up corrupt stO'oges while victimizing those who dis Mrs. Theja Gunawardena is a prominent supporter of the agreed with the leadership. All of this is in the process of Chinese position in the Sino-Soviet and the Sin WINTER 1964 31