Nuclear Power & Climate Change w Organizing in the Pandemic

#210 • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 • $5

PERU: RISING AGAINST CORRUPTION Black Resistance w ROBIN D. G. KELLEY w ALEX LICHTENSTEIN w MALIK MIAH w DERRICK MORRISON w MARY HELEN WASHINGTON Motherhood & Work in the Pandemic w URSULA McTAGGART A Letter from the Editors: The 21ST Century Plague THE CALAMITOUS MALFEASANCE of the outgoing Trump regime’s response to the coronavirus pandemic threatens to obscure deeper realities of this global as well as U.S. crisis. The incoming Biden-Harris tem faces a deeper and more menacing emergency of both public health and the economy than the 2008-09 financial meltdown that confronted president Obama’s first year. Throwing money to keep banks solvent, as in the 2009-10 bailout, will not work this time. Distributing vaccines as they become available is a wartime-level challenge. And the racially-driven polarization of the United States’ political culture, escalating under Trump’s reign, has never been more acute, or dangerous. Yet even before the January 5 Georgia runoffs that How much of this human disaster was preventable? will determine control of the U.S. Senate, the incoming There’s an instructive comparison with Canada, which administration is taking its all-too-predictable shape — a has also been hard-hit and where the lack of regulation return of the centrist neoliberal policies of the Obama- and preparation in crowded long-term care facilities and Biden years, albeit with more gender and ethnic diversity. congregate shelters was especially disastrous [on this There are few if any surprises so far, giving rise to aspect of the crisis, see Ivan Drury’s article “Two-tier disappointment among some “progressive” folks over the Response to COVID-19” in ATC 206, May-June 2020]. absence of Cabinet-level appointments from that wing of At the beginning of December, Canadian medical and the Democratic Party. But what was to be expected in political authorities were deeply alarmed by an “out-of- the wake of Biden’s boasts that he was the candidate who control” surge penetrating every region and previously “defeated” the advocates of Medicare for All, the Green insulated Indigenous communities. Yet the per capita rate New Deal and cutting bloated police budgets? of coronavirus spread in Canada amounts to about 30% of [For a perceptive discussion of the choices facing the U.S. numbers. the new administration and its emerging trajectory, we That suggests we can attribute some 70% of the U.S. toll recommend Walden Bello’s article “The Biden Presidency: to disastrous political culture and leadership — manifested A New Era, or a Fragile Interregnum?” at https://fpif.org/ in Trump’s super-spreader campaign rallies, right-wing state the-biden-presidency-a-new-era-or-a-fragile-interregnum/. governors’ economy-over-everything proclamations in Another brief analysis, “Out with the Old, In with the — defiance of public health commonsense, mass anti-masking Older,” is posted at https://solidarity-us.org/.] protests, religious services’ exemptions from mask and Focusing here on the coronavirus, some statistics social distancing rules, and widespread denial of the reality about the U.S. situation help provide context. Consider a of the pandemic. That’s how infection rates, exactly as comparison with the 1918-19 so-called Spanish flu (actually medical experts warned, now come to top 200,000 daily an avian flu which, evidence suggests, originated in rural with more than 3000 fatalities and rising — more than a Kansas and quickly spread to a military base where troops 9/11 civilian death toll every single day. were mustered for deployment to World War I). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s That pandemic, before the advent of modern vaccines, appeal to avoid Thanksgiving travel, if issued three or four is thought to have infected 28% of the people and killed weeks earlier, might have had a greater impact than asking 675,000 in the United States, about 0.64% of a total people to make last-minute cancellations of longstanding population then of 106 million. Extrapolated to today’s U.S. family plans. It’s another case of government action too population of just over 330 million, that would produce a little, too weak, too indecisive, too unclear to convince tens death total of some 2.1 million. Is such a catastrophe possible? of millions of people whose decisions ultimately make the The first 11 months of the current pandemic, as of real difference. mid-December 2020, have now claimed over 300,000 lives We have to understand what it means not only that in this country. With the “second wave” raging as winter roughly 45% of the country supported Trump, but also that sets in, it’s difficult to imagine that the eventual total won’t 70% or more of Republican voters believe to one or another reach double that number. Thanks to science and improving degree that the election was “rigged” or “stolen.” This medical treatments, with vaccines hoped to be widely indicates that roughly 30% of the U.S. populace — mostly available to the public by mid-2021, and with the science- among white people — live in a reality-free alternative denying and medical-expert-sabotaging Trump out of office, universe, impervious to facts and open to the most bizarre the U.S. per capita death toll from COVID-19 can probably conspiracy fantasies. That has serious implications not only be kept between a third and half that of the flu pandemic for politics, but for dealing with the pandemic, the reception a century ago. of vaccines, and much else. That, of course, is horrific enough, especially considering the impact on Black, Latino and Native American Lockdown Conundrum communities, on essential and exhausted medical frontline In several countries (and U.S. states) initial successes in workers and the heartbreaking wreckage of small businesses economic closures and stay-at-home “lockdowns” were falling through the cracks of those expiring relief and followed by too-quick uncontrolled re-opening and new stimulus programs, which were inadequate and patchy to virus surges, so that of the sacrifices people made seemed begin with. For a discussion of the disproportionate impact to have gone for nothing. The result in places like Canada, on women, see Ursula McTaggart’s article in this issue of Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain: protests against reimposed Against the Current. continued on the inside back cover Editors Robert Brenner AGAINST THE CURRENT Dianne Feeley January / February 2021 — Volume XXXV, Number 6 David Finkel Adam Hefty Ursula McTaggart Susan Weissman Alan Wald Charles Williams Advisory Editors Sara Abraham Gilbert Achcar Delia D. Aguilar Manuel Aguilar-Mora Perry Anderson Rafael Bernabe Purnima Bose Melba Joyce Boyd Johanna Brenner Noam Chomsky Mike Davis Peter Drucker Terry Eagleton Sam Farber 2 Nuclear Power and Climate Change Ansar Fayyazuddin Reviews Ann Ferguson Ansar Fayyazuddin 31 The Trauma of Domestic Violence Milton Fisk 5 Motherhood and Labor in Giselle Gerolami Cecilia Green the Pandemic Adolfo Gilly 33 When Science Meets Capital Ursula McTaggart Nancy Holmstrom Guy Miller 8 Building a Union Campaign Kim D. Hunter 35 An Uprising and Its Fate Alison Jaggar interview with Dawn Tefft Promise Li James Kavanagh 10 Behind the Farmers’s Strike Robin D.G. Kelley 37 Indonesia as Testing Ground 11 Peru: Rising Up Against Corruption Michael Löwy Allen Ruff Stephanie Luce interview with Andrea Palacios 39 The Comintern in 1922-1923 Malik Miah Black Resistance Tom Twiss Val Moghadam 14 Challenges for African Americans Bayla Ostrach 41 A Life in the Revolution . Malik Miah Paul Prescod John Barzman Nomi Prins 15 Organizing Then and Now Joanne Rappaport . Robin D. G. Kelley Cultural Notes Allen Ruff 19 James Baldwin for Our Time Marsha Rummel 44 On the Life of Justin Townes Earle Mary Helen Washington Abra Quinn Alexander Billet David Roediger 21 The American Caste System Front Cover: Murals have emphasized Indigenous resis- Anwar Shaikh Malik Miah tance: this one is of an Indigenous Peruvian holding a Jane Slaughter sign saying “A New Constitution from and for the People.” 24 The U.S. South and Labor’s Fate Above: Leaders of the Liberty League of Negro-Americans. 1918. Tony Smith Its stated purpose was to uproot the twin evils of lynching and dis- Tim Schermerhorn Alex Lichtenstein enfranchisement. Trotter is in the front row, fourth adult from right. Hubert Harrison Papers Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Hillel Ticktin 26 Recovering William Monroe Trotter Columbia University Heather Ann Thompson Pages 5-7: Cartoon by Lisa Lyons Derrick Morrison Back Cover: Detroit living wage rally. www.jimwestphoto.com Julia Wrigley AGAINST THE CURRENT is published in order to promote dialogue among the activists, organizes and serious scholars of the left. We promote the vision of socialism from below, of a revolutionary, working-class, multinational and multiracial, feminist and antibureaucratic socialist movement. ATC is sponsored by Solidarity, a socialist organization founded in 1986, together with a group of advisory editors who believe that this magazine can contribute to building an effective U.S. socialist left.

Copyright © 2021 by Against the Current (ISSN 0739-4853) Published bimonthly by the Center for Changes, 7012 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, MI 48210. Phone (313) 841-0160. Email: [email protected]; web page address: https://againstthecurrent.org. Periodicals postage paid at Detroit, MI. Postmaster: Send address changes to ATC, 7012 Mich­i­gan Avenue, Detroit, MI 48210. Subscriptions $30 a year; $50 for two years; $35 a year supporting subscription, $35 a year institutional. Against the Current is indexed by the Altern­ative Press Index. Manuscripts are welcome; please send articles in text format to our email address. To become a distributor of ATC, tell us how many copies to send you. We give a 40% discount on standing orders of 3 or more copies. e c o s o c i a l i s m

Disasters Compounded: Nuclear Power & Climate Change By Ansar Fayyazuddin NUCLEAR REACTORS AS sources of elec- Even for the major accidents that we The environmental historian J. R. McNeill trical power date back to the late 1940s, know about, the public record is not com- notes that everyone living in the Northern when Soviet scientists first harnessed heat plete due to the secrecy that shrouds all Hemisphere has received a radiation dose produced as a by-product of plutonium nuclear ventures, whether “peaceful” or from Chernobyl. Nuclear disasters thus can- production to generate steam to drive elec- military. not be localized in space and their span in tricity-producing turbines. From these igno- Here I will delve into some consider- time lasts thousands of years. minious beginnings in weapons production, ations that should be part of any thinking In the preferred analytic frameworks nuclear reactors were quickly elevated to a about the use of nuclear power, in the light of modern sociology and a certain type of “peaceful” and socially beneficial technology of historical experience. We tend to value history, impersonal ways of representing the by the propaganda machines of both bellig- reason over experience, particularly when world tend to dominate. This impersonal erents of the Cold War. experience contradicts our analytic frame- accounting, “data” in their parlance, has its In this carefully crafted public image, work. It is time to reverse that hierarchy, place and can be helpful. nuclear power came to represent science which should surely be science’s sine qua These numbers and technicalities, with the aura of magic — it would be, in the non — giving observation precedence over however, often fail to make disasters com- famous and now discredited words, an ener- our theoretical prejudices. prehensible. How can one translate the gy source “too cheap to meter.” symbolic representations of facts into a Far from delivering on this promise, Chernobyl and Its Lessons picture of reality? The answer in my view is nuclear power has been an abject failure in Let us begin with a particular accident: that it can’t be done, as these symbols leave every respect that its advocates themselves Chernobyl. In history books you will find a out the very thing that gives them their proposed as measures of its success. Yet date and a place for this disaster: April 26, relevance — how these events are actually despite this record of failure, we are seeing 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant experienced by human beings. a revival in the advocacy of nuclear power. It located in the Ukraine. In the case of Chernobyl, we are fortu- is touted by some as a climate-change miti- As Kate Brown in her book Manual nate to have Svetlana Alexeivich’s Chernobyl gation strategy. The purpose of this article is for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future Prayer (some editions are titled Voices of to interrogate the claims of these proposals emphasizes, “accident” conceived as a local- Chernobyl), in which the people affected by and explore nuclear power’s larger conse- ized occurrence in space and time is not an the disaster tell their own stories. quences for humanity and nature. adequate way to describe Chernobyl or, by These stories are not just accounts of extension, any nuclear disaster. physical injury and loss, although there is In Case of Malfunction… The date marks only the beginning of much horror to recount, but are also the When we begin to examine a techno- the accident — it is not done, even now. stories of living with the knowledge that logical solution to a particular problem, we The time over which radionuclides decay your way of life has been permanently dis- are tempted to delve right away into the depends on the particular isotope involved, rupted. These are the stories of never being mechanics of the technology. In this way, we and those originating with Chernobyl will able to return to a place, of everything being predispose ourselves to the functioning of continue to be active for thousands of years contaminated by radioactivity, of living in a an idealized mechanism. to come. state of trauma that will never pass. It means One might consider instead to begin But it is not only the surrounding ecolo- living with the realization that having a child from, in a sense, the opposite vantage point gy of the power plant, the Pripyat marshes will require asking what will this child’s phys- — the consequences if the technology were and environs, that have been transformed ical needs be, and whether society will be to malfunction even in some small respect. indelibly. The radionuclides spewed out able to provide that support. Thus, before building a chemical plant, we into the atmosphere during the meltdown As the surrounding areas of the should ask not how it would operate ideally were transported throughout the Northern Chernobyl plant were evacuated and the but about the consequences of a leak, a fire, Hemisphere. inhabitants relocated, they found that they an earthquake. The first notice that the international became pariahs. Their bodies were trans- In the case of nuclear technology, we are community received of the disaster was formed by the accident into sources of not only able to imagine failures, we have a when radiation exposure from radioactive radioactivity from the inhalation of radioac- historical record that vividly illustrates what isotopes from Chernobyl were detected via tive dust and from consuming contaminated failure can look like. These events by no the radiation badges worn by workers at a food grown in the area, and having these means exhaust the ways in which nuclear Swedish nuclear power plant. This was hun- isotopes lodged in their physical bodies. reactors can malfunction or fail. Most cases dreds of miles away and only two days after They became unsuitable partners with of malfunction are not reported and infor- the incident. The detectors at the Swedish whom to have children. Indeed, the injuries mation about them is actively suppressed. reactor facility indicated that workers had of Chernobyl ran much deeper than the Ansar Fayyazuddin is a research physicist and been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation, recounting that our data-based method­ member of Solidarity. He would like to thank M. by the standards of the nuclear power plant ology can capture. Only once the testimony V. Ramana for his comments. itself! of individuals gives us a sense of how a 2  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 of the population. For the Manhattan Project (World War II development of the atomic bomb), the United States obtained a large fraction of its uranium from mines located in the Belgian Congo, where the mines were controlled by the colonial Belgian regime known for its distinctively murderous and sadistic rule. The natives who worked the mines were not provided with protection. We know very little about the impact of ura- nium mining on the Congolese miners and the surrounding population, as is so typical of the colonial disregard for the wellbeing of their dispensable colonial subjects. After the war, the United States started looking for uranium sources at home and discovered that it could be separated from a mineral ore found on Navajo land in the areas now called Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Over 1000 mines were established on this land for extract- ing uranium, employing miners from the Navajo population. The milling technique used to extract uranium involves separating other radio- The amount of radiation released by the Chernobyl — from only one of the four reactors — was the active ores from the uranium through a equivalent of several hundred Hiroshima bombs. process that disperses radioactive dust into the surrounding area. Then the unneeded single person can be affected are we able to The only reason why we have some level radioactive remains are dissolved in water begin to gain an appreciation of the magni- of understanding of Chernobyl is because of and discarded, which then leaches into the tude of the tragedy of Chernobyl through the dogged work of activists and research- ground. The process results in the con- numbers. ers, who have tried to piece together the tamination of the surrounding ecology and scope of the disaster, despite the hurdles The amount of radiation released by the water reserves. actively placed in their attempts to uncover Chernobyl explosion (not a nuclear explo- The most active uranium mines in the what happened and its consequences. sion) was the equivalent of several hundred world, including the ones in Canada and Hiroshima bombs. Had the fire spread, to Australia, have similar impacts on Indigenous one or more of the other three reactors, Extraction, Eco-destruction, Indigenous Rights populations. Thus, the brunt of uranium min- the result would be hard to imagine. ing and enrichment — a highly toxic process We were spared that fate either by luck Nuclear reactors pose a grave threat — has been felt most acutely by margin- or by the sacrifice of the first responders to humanity because of their use of radio- alized communities, particularly those of whose own fate was sealed the moment active isotopes that can easily result in the Indigenous populations and colonial subjects. they arrived at the site. Within the first year exposure to harmful levels of radioactivity (b) During the lifetime of a functioning of the accident, 135,000 inhabitants were of both workers and the population at large. nuclear reactor, there is great potential for acci- evacuated from the surrounding area now These exposures can take place at various dent. As Charles Perrow in Normal Accidents known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. stages of the lifecycle of nuclear reactors. explains, the complexity and interdependent This zone had to be expanded from an If we view the reactor’s lifecycle in terms processes taking place in a nuclear power initial radius of 10km to 30km from the site of certain moments, one could tentatively plant make major accidents triggered by a of the accident. This area will remain unin- enumerate (a) the extraction and enrich- minor glitch a very real possibility. habitable for thousands of years. ment of nuclear isotopes that serve as fuel While the behavior of workers is often The problem with using Chernobyl as for the reactor, (b) the running of the reac- blamed for nuclear accidents, Perrow points epitomizing nuclear disaster is that it is tor, (c) decommissioning reactors. All three out that accidents are in actuality inherent subject to the prejudice that what it reveals stages pose threats to safety. to the technology itself. The sensible behav- is more about the Soviet Union than about (a) Nuclear fuel — typically enriched ura- ior of workers acting on what they know the dangers of nuclear technology. However, nium — requires the mining of radioactive at the time often cannot be reasonably the most relevant aspects of the accident ores, separation of the compounds and the criticized. are universal and repeated in the so-called enrichment of the needed isotopes. As is the Studying previous incidents like Three West and elsewhere. case of most mines, these are typically locat- Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl shows The Japanese Fukushima Daiichi disas- ed in areas where marginalized communities that accidents are the result of a cascade ter from 2011 shows many of the same reside. of interconnected failures that are built features, including the secrecy, lack of Mining often requires the dislocation of into the system although not by conscious accountability and misinformation that char- populations and the disruption of lives and design. Even more severe versions of these acterized Chernobyl. We are yet to have a ways of living, sometimes in exchange for accidents could have occurred were it full accounting of the consequences of the “compensation.” This displacement and dis- not for something fortuitous, planned or Fukushima Daiichi accident. ruption is mostly done without the consent unplanned, that curbed the cascade. AGAINST THE CURRENT  3 In addition to the potential of accident, the management of radioactive waste asso- process of energy production. nuclear power plants produce radioactive ciated with nuclear power are also the However, as M. V. Ramana has shown (see waste, the disposal of which remains an responsibility of the state. for instance https://thebulletin.org/2016/11/ unsolved problem. Risk of nuclear disaster associated with a-fast-reactor-at-any-cost-the-perverse-pur- (c) The closure of nuclear reactors poses reactors are routinely misrepresented. In the suit-of-breeder-reactors-in-india/ and the a distinctive set of additional problems. Once design and commissioning phases of nuclear references therein), practical implementation closed, these sites are virtually permanent power plants, so-called experts assess the continues to be hounded by problems. sites of radioactive contamination. If they risk by various modeling techniques and While all the dangers and issues atten- go through a process of decommissioning, providing a reified number representing the dant on regular nuclear power remain for radioactive parts of the plant and nuclear probability of disaster. these breeder plants, new ones particular to waste need to be disposed properly. These exercises are carried out by peo- them are added. There are still no good options for the ple with a direct interest in the approval of A further important consideration in disposal of nuclear waste. Various “remote” the power plant, and are based on assump- deciding between technologies is to take sites have been designated as dumps for tions that are not always warranted and proper stock of the climate emergency and radioactive remains, but this comes at the often not spelled out. the need for immediate decarbonization of cost of making the surrounding areas of Looking at actual disasters (Chernobyl our energy supply. these sites hazardous for human habitation and Fukushima Daiichi, say), the specific While solar and wind technologies are and putting the local ecology at risk. circumstances of each illustrate very clearly easy and quick to deploy, nuclear power The site of the closed reactor itself that, while each particular scenario may be requires significant lead time. In fact, typical poses dangers as effluents from power highly unlikely (at least in one’s imagination), timelines require close to a decade from an plants leak into the surrounding environ- there is a cumulative compounding effect accepted proposal to an operational power ment and require independent remediation of many individually unlikely pathways con- plant. Historically, nuclear reactors have a during decommissioning. The process is tributing to making disasters possible and long record of delays in construction and of resource-intensive and requires years of even likely. Furthermore, as nuclear reactors running well over the initial cost estimates. remediation. proliferate they multiply the possibility of We have neither the time nor monetary disaster. resources needed to implement decarbon- Privatized Profits, Socialized Risk ization using nuclear power if we are to Green New Deal, or More Corporate achieve it within a timeline that avoids an The history of nuclear reactors is the Handouts? history of corporate welfare that socializes even worse climate catastrophe than what the costs and risks associated with their I have argued that nuclear power is a we are on target to confront. construction and running, while privatizing dangerous technology that poses distinctive The Green New Deal for state-spon- any profit. In his environmental history of hazards at all stages of its lifecycle. But how sored radical ecological intervention takes the 20th century, the historian J. R. McNeill does it compare economically to renewable its inspiration from the New Deal of the writes: energy sources such as solar and wind? 1930s. Public sector investment through the Although an aura of innovation emanates “Nuclear power held some of the same GND should therefore be about encour- from nuclear power, it is wholly undeserved. political attraction as dam building: it signified aging the growth of good jobs that provide In reality, it is a technology of the past vigor and modernity. Admiral Lewis Strauss, head security and good living standards as well as whose efficiency and cost have remained of the American Atomic Energy Commission, building publicly-owned infrastructure bene- uncompetitive and stagnant in the many predicted in the 1950s that by the 1970s nucle- ficial to humanity and subject to democratic decades of its existence. Solar and wind ar power would be too cheap to meter…. But control. power technologies, by contrast, continue to no nuclear power plant anywhere made com- Nuclear power fails on all these counts. improve in efficiency and cost. mercial sense: they all survived on an “insane” Several studies indicate that nuclear power If we compare the present-day cost per economics of massive subsidy.” (Something will make only a marginal contribution to MegaWatt-hour of electricity, solar and wind New Under the Sun: An Environmental job growth, unlike solar and wind power, power are notably cheaper than nuclear History of the Twentieth-Century World, W. which are already contributing significantly power. When one further takes into account W. Norton, 2000: 312) to job growth. that solar and wind technologies are becom- Hazardous nuclear technology cannot McNeill goes on to explain that when ing more efficient with time, it becomes be democratically controlled because of its Britain privatized its electrical industry, clear that they are better suited for public close connection to nuclear weapons man- there were no private takers for the nuclear investment. ufacture. Most importantly, in my view, any power plants. Thus the only way corpora- A notable feature of wind and solar Green New Deal should not contribute to tions made money from nuclear power is power is that they don’t require much in the further environmental degradation of through massive subsidization from public terms of operational costs, whereas mainte- our planet, which nuclear power most cer- funds. nance and operation are significant sources tainly will do. n While the state guarantees profits to of cost throughout the lifetime of nuclear corporations that build and manage publicly Fund Appeal Update power plants. AS WE GO to press, our annual fund funded power plants, the risks associated Despite its lack of new ideas, the nuclear appeal has brought in over $4200 and with accidents are always socialized. The industry is adept at promoting old ones as if counting, as well as a substantial number Price-Anderson Act dating back to 1957 and they were innovations that solve longstand- of gift subscriptions. This year we have serially renewed until its current expiration a matching grant up to $10,000 so help ing problems. One such idea that is receiving us meet our goal! Thanks to our read- date in 2025, caps corporate responsibility renewed attention is so-called breeder for liabilities associated with accidents. ers — and remember that the appeal plants. They are based on using more abun- extends through the secular midwinter Private insurance companies are also dantly available non-fissile radioactive iso- festival of Super Bowl Sunday! You can protected from the costs of nuclear disas- topes, such as those of thorium, that when mail your check to Against the Current, ters. The costs of the management of nucle- combined with fissile uranium isotopes lead 7012 Michigan Avenue, Detroit MI 48210 or donate through our website: https:// ar disasters are therefore almost entirely to the net production of fissile fuel in the relegated to the public sphere. Moreover, againstthecurrent.org/. 4  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 l i f e i n t h e p a n d e m i c

Mom? Mom! Mo-om!: Motherhood & Labor in the Pandemic By Ursula McTaggart PANDEMIC IS AN opening for revolution- We have walked back the gains that fem- work as well. ary thinking. It has forced us to realize that inism had made throughout the 20th cen- Men dispute these claims, apparently. the things we take for granted — getting up tury, sending women out of the workforce Forty-five percent of men in the same study and driving in to work, sending children off and back into unpaid household labor and maintained that they did the majority of to school on the bus, walking the aisles of childcare. the remote schooling. But as New York Times the grocery store, or packing ourselves into In other cases, we have asked fully writer Claire Cain Miller pointedly remarks, crowded bleachers — can change dramati- employed women to become teachers and men’s reports are unreliable. cally overnight. daycare providers at the same time that A 2015 study of inequities in parenting Even the most basic activities can, in a they do their paid jobs. found that both men and women over­ moment, turn 180 degrees, and we can learn We have told women not that they can estimated their increased work loads after to do them differently. “have it all” but that they have to “do it having a baby. However, women’s work loads This is an opportunity to see school all.” And there’s even more to do — wip- increased much more than men’s did, as and childcare, two staples of our society, ing down groceries with Clorox wipes, reflected in their time diaries. anew. We could remake them radically so supervising hand washing for 20 seconds, In this particular study, men believed that when we conquer this pandemic, we and washing loads of masks for in-person they were performing 15 hours of increased have stronger, better and more equal public schoolers. housework a week, whereas their time dia- schools and daycare structures. ries reflected a five-hour weekly decrease Unfortunately, our society hasn’t done Who’s Exaggerating? in housework. When childcare and house- that. Instead, what we’ve done is ask women Working fathers, too, have been involved work labor were combined, men believed of young children to bear the burden of in this dual work and childcare crisis, but that their load had increased by 30 hours childcare and remote schooling in this disas- evidence suggests that women are carrying a week, while time diaries indicated a 12.5 ter. In the process, we have widened eco- an unfair share of the burden. In a Morning hour increase. nomic and social gender inequalities. Consult poll for The New York Times con- Women, like men, believed that their Ursula McTaggart is an associate professor of ducted in April 2020, 80% of women inter- total work had increased by 30 hours English at Wilmington College in Ohio and a viewed said they did the majority of the when it had in fact, according to the diary, member of the Against the Current editorial homeschooling work in their household, and increased by 21 hours a week. When paid board. 70% said they did the majority of house- work hours were factored in, men in the AGAINST THE CURRENT  5 study recorded 69 total weekly hours of compared to men’s 13.3%. experience. work, and women performed 77 hours. In the midst of their financial and career I was five months into an unwanted and Although both men and women exagger- catastrophes, many of these women have unexpected divorce when the college where ate the amount of work they do, according been handed the daily responsibility of I teach announced that it would move to this study, men exaggerate more. And supervising their children’s online education online, first temporarily and later for the women do more, when it comes to child- and providing childcare that might have oth- whole semester. Within days my children’s care and housework. For mixed-gender erwise taken place outside the home. schools, where they were in third grade and couples, the pandemic replays this transition The continued need for childcare and kindergarten, followed suit. to parenthood and its concomitant demands homeschool supervision affects women’s As we entered lockdown, the help that I for more labor. And women again find abilities to apply for new jobs — many had been relying on, especially in the midst themselves doing more of the mothers in these situations feel that they of the divorce, from my parents, family work while receiving little of are needed at home, wheth- friends, and an aftercare program all van- the credit. er they can afford it ished. And it quickly became apparent that Not only that, but financially or not. there were not enough hours in the day to the pandemic has asked be both a homeschool teacher and a col- women to perform feats lege professor. I was a single adult with two of multitasking that are children and what felt like multiple often literally impossible. fulltime jobs. Working women have always I have heard many had to work “second shift,” stories of how parents doing the majority of the child handled this transition, care and household labor in and I know that those in most families in addition to their couples struggled as well. fulltime jobs. Now, how­ever, what Some couples split child- was simply unbearable has become care and work duties, literally untenable. Working women’s taking care of lives are tearing at the seams. children Impossible Choices from 7-3 and then For women who are “essential working from workers,” laboring in health care, grocery 3-11 while their stores, delivery or other fields that never partner did the “locked down” between March and May, Even women who have maintained opposite. Others took days or weeks off school closures meant that children were at steady, fulltime employment from home work to manage homeschool. home, and childcare options were limited. throughout the pandemic have confronted One friend must sit with her first-grade Working women like this had to choose the reality that household labor is rarely son on her lap for his Zoom calls, or he between sending children to daycare centers divided equally between men and women. refuses to participate. She had to schedule at the height of a pandemic, where they Many families with two working parents all of her Zoom teaching in the evenings. hoped daycare providers would also be able who now work from home — or families to supervise homeschool activities; leaving with only one working parent in the house- My solution was to allow my children to children at home unattended; risking the hold — must juggle the demands of fulltime watch many hours of TV a day while I taught health of older relatives by asking them to jobs with absent or reduced childcare and Zoom classes, planned future classes, and provide childcare (and also supervise edu- homeschool demands. graded papers. Then I harassed my kids into cation); relying on co-parents to do the vast Babies and toddlers cannot be left doing their homework urgently, in limited majority of the childcare and homeschooling unattended by a television while parents time, and with little patience. work; or dropping out of the work force work on Zoom. Young school-age children When my third grader told me he had altogether. — kindergarteners­ through fourth or fifth done all of his assigned work, I trusted him Many women in this situation chose to graders — require near constant supervi- — only to realize later that he had turned quit their jobs. Eighty percent of those who sion of their online work. in very little of the work. One day, while I have left the workforce in the pandemic Even older children and teenagers can’t struggled to manage my own lesson plans have been women. And among them Latinas simply teach themselves with online videos upstairs, I yelled for him to sign onto his have been affected disproportionately. In and worksheets. Teachers’ physical presence Zoom downstairs; I came down 10 minutes September alone, 865,000 women left; 35% is vital for children’s learning, and when that later to find him, on Zoom, wrapped in a were Latina. presence is limited to Zoom, it means that blanket with only underwear underneath. Beyond essential workers, whose chil- parents must frequently step in as advisors In the two days during the work week dren had no school to attend while they left and surrogate teachers. and the one weekend day that my kids went the house daily for work, women in other to their father’s house, I worked incessantly types of jobs have suffered differently. Firsthand Experience on my teaching, and was nonetheless con- Women who work in service, restaurant, These are the statistics. But the collected stantly behind. I felt daily gratitude that I entertainment or hospitality industries often stories of working moms convey the real- already had tenure — while I worked long faced layoffs, financial hardship, and poten- ity more profoundly. Journalists have done days on Saturdays to grade papers and prep tially risky returns to work as lockdowns the hard work of collecting these stories, for the next week, the book project I had eased. At the peak of the layoff-related and you can read many in The New York been working on back in September went unemployment crisis in April, 2020, more Times and The New Yorker, or listen to them untouched. women were effected by the mass layoffs on NPR. To those meaningful and diverse By August, my children’s school district than men, with a 15.5% unemployment rate collections, I can only add my own limited announced that I could choose either all-vir- 6  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 tual or all-in person school for them. My job, should have been our nationwide priority. we should embrace that. But practically however, told me that I would be returning We should have put all of our collective speaking, it means an erosion of the many to teaching fulltime in person, and I would resources, both financial and intellectual, workarounds that working moms have need a doctor’s note for anything else. into safely returning children to school and devised in the past decades to prop up their Although I didn’t feel that in-person daycare. professional lives. And it leaves women bal- school was safe for the kids, I signed them This could have been the moment for anced precariously on the edge of reversing up, and we all went back to school, masked, teachers to demand and for state govern- decades of gains in workplace equality. five days a week. ments or local administrations to grant This isn’t a criticism of teachers’ unions, drastic reductions in class sizes — classes of which operate in a pragmatic world. They COVID Strikes 15 or less not just for now but forever. did not have offers of better pay and smaller For nearly three months, all went We could have devoted public funds to class sizes to work with. They were often smoothly. No more than a handful of cases hiring legions of teachers, paying them well entering poorly maintained buildings without were reported at my college, and none at enough to lure them into the field from enough access to soap or hand sanitizer my children’s schools; we had each been other careers, and finding new spaces to to make teaching or learning safe. It was, in tested for COVID regularly, anytime we house small clusters of teachers and stu- many cases, the right call to maintain virtual have a minor cold. dents, outside when possible and inside, learning for the safety of teachers and stu- Then, in the weeks before Thanksgiving, masked, when not. dents. cases in both locations began climbing. Many well-paid, well-educated teach- It is our larger social response that has been When my kids’ dad had them tested in the ers with small clusters of students is the disjointed and unimaginative. When school hopes of taking them to visit his mother for exact right way to educate the population, and daycare are truly unsafe, then we should Thanksgiving, they both came back positive pandemic or no. We could choose to think fight for workers to have fully paid childcare for COVID. radically differently in this pandemic, to leave. If schools returned in hybrid format, Completely asymptomatic, they put education first. In doing so, we we could supplement that with reduced breezed through the virus and passed would give working mothers the work weeks — at the same, federally subsi- it to their dad, who became ill but not opportunity to return to their dized pay — for workers. dangerously so. I managed to escape, paid jobs and trust their chil- Reduced work weeks are part of the perhaps because I am participating in dren to skilled educators. socialist dream of less alienated labor and Pfizer’s vaccine trial and may be vaccinat- Or, on a similar note, we human-centric living, not production- and ed. Fortunately, they did not visit or endan- could have used this opportu- efficiency-centric culture. ger any grandparents or anyone outside nity to think about the deep The pandemic offers us the opportunity the immediate family. We believe that one value of childcare and educa- to think about the value of human lives, of them was infected at school and passed tion in our society. Without within and outside of family settings, rather it to the other. childcare, in the form of than the economic requirements of produc- I don’t yet know the impacts that daycares, schools or stay- tion. And that value of life isn’t simply about COVID may have on my children’s at-home parents, we cannot staying alive, but about thriving, physically, health long-term. I do know that their engage our work force in other tasks. They mentally, and emotionally. time at school endangered them and those will forever be getting cups of milk, opening I think that the U.S. left, as a whole, around them. My conservative small town bags of fruit snacks, and settling sibling dis- continues to push in-person school too hard has erred on the side of physical safety in putes, not to mention sounding out words considering the needs of elementary age and is unwilling to shut down the schools in and counting by fives. the face of the late autumn surge. children and advocated the homeschool These are not silly tasks — this is the option too unthinkingly. Collectively, we Yet my friends in more urban settings stuff of caretaking. And caretaking deserves have never sent their children back to need to understand that this situation is not compensation, not as unskilled labor or just “hard” for working mothers but that it school since March, even when cases were expected unpaid contributions to a family more manageable in the early fall. That was fundamentally endangers women’s ability to but as real, productive, often unalienated chase already elusive workplace equality. perhaps a mistake as well. labor. This is the labor of building our own This is our chance to demand, vocifer- future community — the most important What Are the Priorities? ously and urgently, the funds and resources and most skilled labor we have. I am not advocating for in-person school to implement small class sizes for in-person, at all costs. Nor am I discounting the terri- The Brunt of the Pandemic distanced learning. When right-wing pundits ble cost that teachers and the community Mothers are feeling the brunt of the shout about the economy, we should be may face from opening schools. We should pandemic because a patriarchal society has shouting just as hard about the centrality not put school opening over human lives. always handed them the labor of caretaking­ of education and caregiving to our social We should, however, prioritize school open- and declared it meaningless. This is our well-being. ings over all other economic activities, beyond chance, as a society, to demand compensa- Schools are easy to close because there basic food and medical care. We should open tion for the labor that takes place within are no small business owners decrying their schools long before we open bars and households. loss of income. But it should be the respon- restaurants. And we should have the social When my children throw things at me sibility of the left to think not only about support to do so. while I teach my Zoom classes — on one physical safety but about overall social good The pandemic has highlighted what occasion hitting me in the forehead mid-sen- in this pandemic — and, in doing so, to put teachers have always known — we need tence — this is a moment when it becomes political energy toward safe, well-funded them, and we need them in person. Online apparent that I have not one job but two. school openings, with across the board cuts education, while possible, is vastly inferior. The reality of my life as a working mom is to class sizes that could outlast pandemic. It favors those who are self-motivated, pre- visible in a way that it hasn’t been before. This is the moment when the world pared, and resourced. Symbolically, perhaps, that is useful. changes. We should be there to grab it We need children, especially young It humanizes me to my students — we and mold it into the shape that will benefit­ children, in classrooms and not online. This are more than our workplace selves, and teachers, parents, and children in the future. AGAINST THE CURRENT  7 Having had a successful strike under their belt in 2019 the UIC GEO was the first graduate student union to win impact bargaining demands. An Interview with Dawn Tefft Building a Union Campaign IN 2011, UNIONS and community members a contract the year before. The question then Were there issues you weren’t able to success- in Wisconsin demonstrated their outrage at became, how can graduate employees win what fully resolve at that time? Were you able to governor Scott Walker’s anti-union legislation in they needed at the beginning of the crisis? take up issues about how the university would daily protests and sit-ins. Dawn Tefft was then a Tefft also became active in the Emergency reopen? graduate student at the University of Wisconsin- Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a DT: Yes, shortly after the state of Illinois Milwaukee and active in her union. joint project of Democratic Socialists of America declared a state of emergency, UIC A few months prior to the start of a mass (DSA) and the United Electrical workers union GEO successfully impact bargained a uprising, Milwaukee Graduate Assistants (UE) taking up problems workers faced as Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Association were preparing to take action, COVID-19 spread. It is an experiment in running for immediate graduate worker needs that including a strike. They knew a strike wave a labor organizing project though a network of semester. We negotiated improvements to was unlikely to materialize due to longstanding volunteers. the healthcare plan for the semester, all bureaucratic approaches to unionism among Dianne Feeley from the Against the but one of which we’ve bargained to have many unions, but were doing everything they Current editorial board interviewed Tefft, who is extended in other semesters. could to help create the conditions for one. also a single mother with a two-year old. One of the biggest wins was two weeks What has become known as the Wisconsin If, after reading this article, you would like of paid sick leave, in addition to regular sick Uprising stopped short of a general strike, to read more about or contribute to EWOC, go leave, for those sick with COVID or who though the members of MGAA were willing to https://labor.dsausa.org/covidorganizing/. For had to take care of someone sick with it. to go out if other unions were, and the mass Labor Notes, go to https://labornotes.org/. This was critical because our members had movement, in failing to escalate to the point of about three-and-a-half days of sick leave on a strike wave, faltered. Against the Current: When COVID hit U.S. average. Eventually, the federal government Tefft learned from that experience that a campuses last spring, what were the major passed the CARES Act, and so an even more union needs campaigns that grow out of on-the- problems graduate student workers faced? In comprehensive sick leave policy replaced the job discussions with coworkers. From this an the rapid escalation of the COVID crisis that’s one we had won. organizing committee can form around a list unfolding now, how are graduate students The second-most crucial item we won of demands and a plan for how actions can dealing with their own studies as well as their was mass pre-authorization of COVID- involve the membership. Without building a teaching workloads? 19-related tests and treatments at ER and team that is thinking through how to broaden Dawn Tefft: Graduate student workers urgent care facilities. The campus has its its base, it can’t build the power it needs. And were faced with healthcare plans that own in-house healthcare services. Normally, without taking strategic direct action, it can't were inadequate for pandemic needs, gaps all students on campus are required to have exercise that power sufficiently. in healthcare coverage, and potential loss their out-of-network needs pre-authorized The appearance of the COVID-19 virus last of income. International graduate student in order for those to be covered. winter presented several challenges to workers workers also faced the possibility of becom- We had heard from members that it whether unorganized or in unions. Now work- ing houseless. could take days to get pre-authorized. And ing as an organizer at the University of Illinois ATC: At your university, the graduate students we knew that our members wouldn’t have Graduate Employees Organization (UIC GEO) are organized into a union. What were you able time for that, given how many people mani- in Chicago, Tefft had helped to campaign for to negotiate with the university administration? fest respiratory problems requiring that they 8  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 be seen immediately. Also, we knew that our Yes, there are still needs we haven’t man- geographical location. So far, all the organiz- members would want to limit the distance aged to have met yet. For instance, accord- ing assistance has been remote and occurs they traveled on public transport since pub- ing to a survey we conducted, a third of through Zoom meetings and is further sup- lic transportation increases risk of exposure. graduate workers are putting in more hours ported by phone calls and emails. We also won teletherapy services for than usual because online teaching takes ATC: What are the success stories? How do those with mental health needs. Studies more work than teaching in-person. And they win? What do are the central issues they have shown graduate workers have some according to that same survey, a third of our organize around; what are they able to win? of the highest stress levels of any workers, members have technology issues and could DT: Within the first six months, we helped which was underscored by how many of our use new laptops or subsidized internet. workers win 13 campaigns. At that six- members had written us to request that we While UIC claims a lack of resources to month-mark we had six active union drives, bargain for this item. take care of its faculty and work force, it 15 active Organizing Committee campaigns, currently has an unrestricted $2.5 billion in Another healthcare need the university and 37 worker leaders building organizing various investments, some of which it could met was to cover out-of-pocket exp­ enses committees. choose to spend. Additionally, the university at 100% for ER and 70% for urgent care, The central issues are having personal system has raised hundreds of millions of though they instituted this as a policy rather protective equipment (PPEs), the option to dollars for projects such as the Discovery than agreeing to it in a MOU. They instituted work remotely, hazard pay, and other critical Partners Institution and is spending $311.8 this for all students, including undergradu- needs born of the intersection of an inter- million for new buildings. We also note they ates, in response to our proposal, so we also national pandemic and global capitalism. spent $275,000 over five years on arbitra- helped students who weren’t workers or in For instance, the grad workers I assist- tion, most of which they lost because they our bargaining unit. ed at Texas A&M University won masks. were violating the law! The hardest-fought MOU, and the one The faculty I assisted at Lafayette College Last year the state raised its contribution that took the longest to nail down, was free forced the university to go entirely remote. to the university by 15% but the overall bud- summer housing in the dorms for interna- And the workers I assisted at University get only increased 5%. This means they were tional graduate workers who were stranded of Texas-Austin won a 65% reduction of saving money. in the United States due to international summer tuition for graduate students and travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic. EWOC’s Organizing Model a release from paying the already-planned Though not formalized in an MOU, we 2.6% increase in annual tuition. ATC: You have been working with the Emer­ also won 80 new internships and assistant- A Sprouts grocery store agreed to gency Workplace Organizing Com­mittee. What’s ships over the summer, 40 of which were provide PPEs to workers and to limit the its purpose and how did it develop? What have specifically for international graduate work- number of customers inside their McAllen you been doing? ers. As with one of the other wins, this was location. Workers at a Taco Bell franchise in response to our bargaining and organizing. DT: EWOC was created to help non-union- won $2 an hour hazard pay with back pay This was especially important for those ized workers organize to get their needs and two weeks of paid sick leave. international workers stranded in the met during the pandemic. Both DSA and However, we also help workers organize country because visa restrictions prevent the UE saw that non-unionized workers around issues that are specific to capitalism them from working off-campus. There aren’t were the ones hardest hit by the pandemic, but not necessarily to the pandemic. For usually many summer work opportunities and decided to apply a distributed model of instance, the workers I assisted at Ohio on campuses due to lower enrollments, and organizing, as used in Bernie Sanders’ cam- State University won raises of $4,000 over typically most international students return paign, to fill the hole. two years. And we’re available to help work- to their home countries over the summer. The Advanced Organizers are a team ers organize for racial justice, although that’s of trained and experienced organizers who an even harder task. Bargaining Over COVID Impact assist workers with organizing campaigns. At Currently EWOC is operating as a sort We were the first graduate union to win a first meeting with the workers, things an of remote, national labor center. Given that impact bargaining demands. I suspect part of Advanced Organizer and the workers might around 90% of the workforce isn’t union- this is because we went on a highly success- do include the following: ized, largely due to draconian labor laws ful strike the year before. The administration • rank issues and draft a set of demands; and court decisions that make it difficult or knew we would be willing to stand up for • build or plan how to build a list of impossible to organize most of the work- members’ rights, and we did. workers; force, we need this organization that helps Initially, they met with us to bargain but • divide up workers to contact in order workers with both emergency needs and refused all our demands. So we staged an to ask them to join a central organizing day-to-day needs under capitalism. email campaign, flooding administration’s committee or sign on to a petition of We’re having conversations about how inboxes. And our International Student demands and possibly take future action; to help more workers learn about us, as Caucus very publicly started agitating inter- • begin planning a first action or a series well as how to potentially transition to con- national workers, who make up 40% of our of escalating action. centrating some of our efforts on projects bargaining unit and whom the university Advanced Organizers are aided by that could unite larger swaths of workers courts in order to turn a profit. media and communications teams, who in order to further develop class conscious- We also acted quickly. Within 24 hours help on certain cases with press work and ness. We’re trying to imagine a future in of the governor declaring a state of emer- social media strategies. And workers find which we’re helping workers transform soci- gency, our stewards had met and crafted out about EWOC primarily through social ety on a larger level. bargaining demands and an organizing plan. media posts. When they click on a link in a That isn’t to say, though, that the cam- Most of our members are allowed to work post, they’re taken to a form they fill out to paigns we’re assisting workers with don’t remotely, and we believe this is due to our be put in contact with an Intake Organizer contribute to class consciousness or to nearly instantaneous organizing and history and, if feasible, an Advanced Organizer. transforming society too. I’m currently of offensive striking. Many more members We try to pair up workers with organiz- assisting graduate workers and faculty at of our sister union were forced to work in ers who have experience organizing in the Marquette University in resisting hundreds person than was true for our campus. worker’s industry and/or organizers in their of planned layoffs resulting from lower AGAINST THE CURRENT  9 enrollment due to COVID coupled with well as unite with workers nationally in their money for future rainy days, even long-time financial mismanagement by the resisting increasingly harsh policies. though they didn’t want to spend it during administration. They just staged a minority ATC: Progressive forces are calling on the Biden this particular rainy day. sickout, and their escalation plan was sup- administration to use executive power to cancel Some tenured faculty will lose tenure ported by undergraduates who planned student debts. Do you see a movement growing due to “financial exigency,” which could pave their own escalation. around this, and what would it mean for gradu- the way for further erosion of tenure rights. Graduate workers and adjuncts will face Facing the Neoliberal University? ate students struggling with their debts? DT: To be honest, I do not yet see a move- even more precarity than typically charac- Embracing direct action and working in terizes their work. unity across demographics are crucial to all ment around this. It’s interesting that you More and more undergraduate students efforts to work against the neoliberal model asked this question, though, because it’s one will find themselves priced out of educa- of the university that is omnipresent in the I’ve actually been thinking about after seeing tion as tuition increases to make up for United States. a labor activist Tweet about the need for a movement on the issue. lower enrollment and loss of other revenue In a neoliberal model, graduate work- streams. ers and adjuncts are specifically meant to At a recent EWOC meeting for graduate be cheap, exploitable, expendable labor. In workers to talk about what we might do in This is also, however, an organizing a situation such as low enrollment, these the face of a stolen election, I asked about opportunity to demonstrate the importance workers are meant to be sloughed off. The the possibility of coordinating on this issue. of state and federal funding of public educa- only way to make inroads in this situation is Everyone agreed that it would be important tion. Clearly, the increasing privatization of through unified action that truly disrupts the to do, but many felt they didn’t have the education has created an educational system work of the university and/or makes it hard- capacity to do that and to organize in all the overly dependent on tuition dollars, dorm er for them to recruit more students. ways they typically need to do plus organize fees, meal plan fees, etc. around issues arising from the pandemic. Any wins in one worksite help pave the When students started learning remote- way for future wins in another, which con- ATC: How will this current crisis affect higher ly for safety reasons, universities lost very tributes to helping build a more hospitable education in the long run? What are the chal- large revenue streams by having to refund future. At the end of campaigns, I’m also lenges the institutions face? What are the chal- payments for dorms, meals, gyms and other trying to connect some leaders with existing lenges those who work for the institutions face? such things. caucuses (such as DSA’s healthcare work- DT: Some small private colleges — which Universities and colleges shouldn’t have ers caucus or Labor Notes’ Public Higher depend on tuition dollars — will perma- to depend on property and services for Education Workers caucus), so that workers nently close. Public institutions might be funding. And education should be a basic without unions hopefully can continue to more loathe to part with money in the form right, not a commodity available for pur- learn and practice effective organizing, as of raises because they’ll want to “bank” chase only by those who are well off. n India: Behind the Farmers’ Strike PERHAPS THE LARGEST general strike in big corporations, allowing them to corner agitating for the last couple of years? history, farmers in India are in revolt against a essential food commodities in as large “Farmers are not just a residue from set of new laws imposed by the government of quantities as they want. our past; farmers, agriculture and village Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The following Contract farming, already happening India are integral to the future of India and is an edited excerpt from a lengthy article on informally at individual levels, once it is made the world,” declares the Kisan Charter the history of the struggle, “India: The Farmers’ the norm, is certainly going to seriously (Farmers’ Charter) released by the All India Struggle and the Agrarian Crisis” by Aditya compromise food security for all. For if an Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee Nigam, published by Europe Solidaire Sans agribusiness firm eyeing quick and massive (AIKSCC, a platform of over 250 peasants’ Frontieres, at https://www.europe-solidaire.org/. profits wants farmers to change from organizations) that had called for the massive essential food production to some other Kisan Mukti March in New Delhi, two years THE GOVERNMENT’S NEW laws seek crop, it will decide what will be produced. ago, on 29-30 November 2018. to hand over agriculture to the corporate Of course, what gets you quick profits This was a decisive declaration by the sector — which will effectively mean is not what is sold as essential food item in farmers of India, who until just the other destruction for a large mass of farmers. the domestic or local market, but could be day were committing suicide in the face Naturally they are up in arms in what is anything from potatoes for chips to corn of destitution. [It signals] that they are perhaps the most determined struggle of the to manufacture “alternative fuel” for U.S. not ready to vacate the stage and go into last four decades. consumers. So entire cropping patterns can oblivion in the name of Development or The three ordinances that are currently change, endangering our food sovereignty. Progress. pushing farmers into a “do or Die” strug­ The farmers, in short, are not just fight­ We no longer believe it was the historical gle are: (i) Farmers Produce Trade and ing a battle for their own survival but destiny of Native Amerians or Indigenous Com­merce Ordinance, 2020, (ii) The one where the survival of all of us is at people to make way for “modern civilization.” Farmers Agreement on Price Assurance stake. If the design visualized in the three The real challenge before the peasants’ and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020, and ordinances comes to pass, it will also lead and farmers’ movement now lies in (iii) The Essential Commodities Ordinance, to the complete destruction of hundreds articulating “an agro-ecology paradigm 2020. Farmers’ organizations opposing of thousands of people who earn their that is based on suitable cropping patterns the ordinances claim that they have been livelihoods by selling fruit and vegetables — and local seed diversity revival so as to very misleadingly named so as to give the for those too will be produced by farmers build economic viability and ecologically impression that they empower the farmers. under contract farming with corporations sustainable, autonomous and climate-resilient What the three together aim to achieve which will sell them at their retail stores. agriculture,” in the words of the Farmers’ is the dismantling of state procurement Prices for millions of consumers too will Charter. This is where it will require a great (though on paper it may remain), and there­ then be determined by giant retail chains. deal of patience and maturity and a readiness by open agriculture to contract farming for Why have the farmers and peasants been to re-think ideological articles of faith. n 10  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 p e r u o n f i r e

Rising Up Against Corruption An interview with Andrea Palacios THE DRAMATIC RECENT events in Peru, can commit. People are saying that barely covered by mainstream U.S. media, Congress made this decision, which have seen a popular uprising of massive destabilized the country at this moment self-organized protests. In November the stu- just because they wanted to protect dent-led demonstrations in Lima and other themselves. large cities were met by riot police equipped The Constitution that was written in with water cannons, tanks, and helicopters. 1993, during the dictatorship of Alberto Corruption has tainted the political elite Fujimori, gives complete immunity to for years. Elected president in 2016, Pedro congresspeople. Sixty-three of whom Pablo Kuczynski, was forced to resign two (out of 120) still have open investiga- years later over his failure to disclose ties to tions, whether for corruption or vio- the corrupt Brazilian construction company, lence against women, and for which they Odebrecht. Martín Vizcarra replaced him cannot be tried or judged. and attempted to carry out reforms. He Vizcarra was generally popular tried to get rid of the prosecutorial immunity because he tried to provide the judicia- granted to lawmakers, alter how judges ry with a little bit more power to bring are chosen and even dissolved Congress in the cases to court. Congress roared, 2019. Popular for his reform plans, he had “Hell no, obviously that’s what pro- no party backing him in Congress, which tects us,” so they took him down and for its part blocked his moves and finally, replaced him with Merino. on November 9 impeached him based on This is happening five months before an accusation of corruption when he was a April 2021 elections. Merino is the

provincial governor years ago. Rupafoto third president in the last four years, so Crowds gathering on during the early days of the protests. the country has gone through a lot of The following day Congress installed their changes. That’s partly why I say this was Against the Current: Could you provide a congressional leader, Manuel Merino. As a the last straw. People are tired of Congress basic rundown of what touched off what’s going member of the center-right Popular Action Party, members being under investigation but on in Peru? he immediately eliminated student benefits. This who cannot be legally tried because the Andrea Palacios: On November 9, 2020 one-two governmental punch led students to Constitution protects them. pour spontaneously into the streets. The police President Martín Vizcarra was forced out by Peru is one of the countries that has reacted to these massive demonstrations with the Peruvian Congress, a body that’s disliked been the hardest hit with the pandemic in force. But police brutality backfired and brought throughout the country for their corrup- all Latin America. The fact that Congress Merino to resign in less than a week. He was tion. They impeached him under a charge of would put the country through this kind of replaced by interim president Francisco Sagasti, “immoral incapacity.” Vizcarra is facing cor- instability in the middle of a pandemic meant an economist who has worked for the World ruption investigations that have not yet been people saw their self-motivated action as Bank. proven, but it is still an open investigation. Congress replaced him with Manuel Merino a coup. From the beginning of the demon- Sagasti is regarded as a consensus fig- the following day. This was the last straw strations, it became emblematic to see ure who can take the country to April 2021 pushing people to the streets in massive spray-painted posters on the street, “People elections. As founder of the centrist Partido numbers. against the coup.” Morado (Purple Party), a party that did not Many are saying “We haven’t seen these ATC: The police murder of two young people, vote for Vizcarra’s impeachment, he does have a protest numbers since the fall of the dicta- Jack Brian Pintado Sánchez and Jordan Inti party in Congress to back him. As president he torship in 2000.” Sotelo Camargo, inflamed the protests after must face the aftermath of the police actions, It’s a big deal, but the protests are not they started. Can you tell me a little about them deal with the highest per capita COVID-19 necessarily about the impeachment of and why that was so galvanizing? mortality rate in Latin America along with a Vizcarra, who has been accused of corrup- AP: From the first day the protests were contracting economy. That economy is based tion. It is more about generalized corruption predominantly led by young people, very on exports including copper, gold, zinc, textiles, and lack of democracy. loosely organized mostly through social chemicals, and fish meal. It has signed many ATC: He’s not perfect? media. And from the beginning it was clear trade pacts, most recently with China. AP: Right. Regardless, I think what guid- that the police were ready to attack, and Joe Stapleton interviewed Andrea Palacios ed people to the streets was a corrupted lobbying tear gas cannisters. in North Carolina to discuss the background of Congress that has been a reality for many, When young people saw that the police Peruvian politics and implications of this struggle many years. It’s a Congress that’s protect- were attacking in this way, they organized for the country’s future.] ed by the Constitution for any crime they themselves, talking through WhatsApp and AGAINST THE CURRENT  11 other channels and set up ATC: Describe the work brigadas del desactivación your group is doing. (“brigades of deactivation of AP: What’s been really gas bombs” or “brigades to cool to watch here in deactivate bombs.” the diaspora is that the They organized themselves, energy of the protests has saying, “What do we need? affected Peruvians every- Traffic cones, carbonated water, where — to gather and etc.” and with those things that do something collectively. they would find in their house- I think many of us holds they started organizing. started these conver- There were different bri- sations feeling we were gades. If demonstrators got too far away from home teargassed, “brigades to clean to actually do something. your face” would run and help. We’ve always felt like, There were nurses, doctors, “What do we do? I’m or student doctors –– a lot over here.” of them students actually –– Our collective start- forming first-aid brigades to ed very organically. I help the wounded. was invited to it by a Now these brigades are Peruvian friend whom I very highly regarded. The news- barely knew, but this has papers reported their work strengthened our con- because they were such a huge nection. We started as part of the protests. The Micaela brigade, named after the wife of Tupac Amaru, indigenous Incan leader Peruvians knowing each who fought the Spanish. This brigade is composed of all women. On Saturday, the sixth day other and inviting others. of protests, the police violence The phrase that’s used a lot is memory. It started as a WatsApp escalated. They started shooting directly at I think this alludes to the years of the dic- group, then we said, “Hey let’s meet over people, dropping bombs from helicopters, tatorship when people were unjustly killed, Zoom, let’s form a collective.” barricading protesters in specific areas, including a lot of students. It seemed that We call ourselves the PUMAS collective. dropping tear gas on them and making sure the country had forgotten. There was so We just selected the name two weeks ago. they couldn’t get out. much talk about reconciliation: “Let’s forget We are now focused on getting funds to the These things were not reported on Peru’s about …” and not remember. protesters we are directly connected with. mainstream media right way, but from the These two have become the faces of We have been thinking about money for beginning I was able to watch, through dif- the protests still happening now. We are things that were needed, like gas masks and ferent friends, Instagram live. I was saying, reclaiming our history, our memory. materials for all the brigades, especially the “Oh my god yes, the helicopters are right first-aid brigades. ATC: From what you’re hearing from people there, oh my god, they’re being gassed.” This The protests continue, but they’ve you are in contact with in Peru, how would you was happening at 1AM. dwindled. Since one of the people in our describe the atmosphere of these protests? collective is a therapist, tonight’s meeting is Murder and Memory AP: Both by what I’ve been able to watch discussing the idea of group therapy sessions Through Instagram live we could see on social media and hearing from family for the activist protesters and those who the helicopters dropping along with videos members there, it’s very much youth-led, have been watching these horrific things. of protesters talking while they were being and much like a festival or a party. Especially There might be a desire to sit down togeth- shot at. It was terrible, it was very violent. at the beginning of the protests, line of er and talk through it. This increased police attack took the lives drummers would lead off. They would start Also, we’re forming an Instagram plat- of two young men. One was 24 years old, and then everybody began to dance in the form in English to educate people about Inti Sotelo Carmago, and Jack Brian Pintado streets. It was a big party. what’s happening in Peru. We’ve noticed it’s was 22. The autopsies revealed that both My cousin told me that the Saturday hard to talk to friends about these events young men had been shot multiple times. when that police attack happened down because we don’t have resources in English. Right to this day the police maintain it was by the Palace of Justice, “It was just music It’s partly because Peru is a small country not their shots but must have come from and people were dancing,” and there were of 32 million and the diaspora here is small. protesters. They say “We did not use any the sounds of the bomberellas (firecrack- We want to have a platform in English that violence,” even though there are videos ers), they’re everywhere, which is also very would explain the political situation and showing their violence. Peruvian because Peru’s very into soccer the demands of the protests as they con- The day these two young people were and fireworks are always going off when tinue — especially as the election happens assassinated over 100 people were wounded soccer is happening. next year — as well as sharing things about and 42 people disappeared. The disappeared It’s those sounds that you encounter our country. We’ve been discussing a series were found days later and recounted how with big festivities, where a bunch of people on Peruvian cumbias, dances, and joys, and the police kidnapped and mistreated them. go out into the streets and dance. My cousin things about our culture. The two young men who died have was saying “It was just a party and we were become the face of the movement. People dancing and then the police started shoot- Inspiration from Chile, Bolivia have built altars throughout the city in their ing.” That’s the description that I get of the ATC: Do you feel that some of the other names and with their pictures. Written atmosphere, a lot of young people just hav- movements in Latin America over the past few alongside are the words “We will not for- ing fun while protesting, having fun dancing, months have had any effect on what’s going on get” and “This is the work of memory.” and then being attacked by the police. in Peru? 12  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 AP: I saw it from here — the brigades that of Indigenous descent and people from happening still, and because of the dictator- were organizing themselves were taking Indigenous nations who could represent ship of the 1990s or before. cues from those that were organized in themselves. That’s one of the big issues Living in the United States, I’ve read in Chile when they had big protests last year. Indigenous people participating in these pro- the newspapers that Peru is skyrocketing They were sharing and watching videos tests are raising. economically. It is a model for other coun- from Chile on how to deactivate bombs. Since the onset of what we call the tries. Supposedly all these neoliberal reforms Even the demands have been shaped Peruvian Republic, constitutions have have made it an example: “Everybody be like by theirs. Chile just voted to change their never been written for us, especially as we Peru!” constitution, which also comes from a dicta- think about Afro-Peruvians or people of I’ve always been skeptical. Who is ben- torship — the Pinochet dictatorship. Bolivia Indigenous descent. It was a constitution for efiting? My family is still struggling; a lot held their Constitutional Assembly and Peruvian elites. They wrote it for themselves of people are struggling. Especially since adopted a new Constitution as well. So, the and left others to face violence. the protests have been youth-led and stu- calls for a new constitution, or the call for a So, we need a new constitution that dent-led, I think a lot of the foundational constitutional assembly, definitely follow the would achieve the autonomy of the many issues here are about the impossibility of steps of Bolivia and Chile. Peru can imagine Indigenous nations, as Bolivia did. students getting a job and the impossibility and call for this because Bolivia has done it ATC: How have the class and ethnic and of getting an education. and Chile is on the way to doing it. national differences played out in the protests? One of the young protesters who was ATC: What do the protesters want? AP: It seems to me that the majority of murdered had to quit his studies because AP: It varies. Parents of the people who young people in the streets are unified. We he could not afford to continue. Poverty is were wounded or disappeared formed a want a new constitution, we’re tired of this a common reality. Neoliberal reforms have collective, too. They held a press confer- Congress — it’s corrupt, we can’t reform it, opened the country to foreign corporations. ence, saying “We want the government or let’s get rid of it. The economic and environmental devasta- the police to be held accountable for what I think the wrestling is much more with tion has created huge problems. they’ve done.” the liberal groups that aren’t necessarily out In the Andes and the Amazon, commu- That’s a big one. People are asking, in the streets, and with established political nities are being exposed to the pollution of “Who’s guilty for this?” The police are parties. Even the latest president, Francisco our water, our land, our air. The mass upris- claiming “We didn’t shoot anyone,” and time Sagasti, says we don’t need to get rid of the ing is a combination of a lot of things. is passing. Family members of the murdered constitution — let’s just reform it, or change ATC: What role, if any, do the political parties have publicly asked, “If anyone has a video one thing or another. have in the protests? of my son being killed by police, we need it Obviously, Sagasti is super pro-corpora- because they will not believe us.” tions. It wouldn’t make sense for him to ask AP: Here in the USA the Republicans and The police are threatening to close the for anything else. Democrats are established political parties. case while people are demanding justice. In Peru, a lot of times elections are more Roots of Uprising There’s a big call for a new constitutional about personalities and candidates rather assembly, as well. Some people say, “Let’s ATC: What was it that laid the groundwork for than parties. reform the constitution.” Others say, “This these mass uprisings? They didn’t come out of But the party of former president constitution cannot be reformed because nowhere, and they weren’t totally spontaneous. Manuel Merino was not well regarded. it was written under the dictatorship of AP: In the collective here, we often say, we You have more conservative parties that Fujimori and only benefits the economic are gathering because we understand the are very pro-police. You have the Partido interests of the foreign and domestic corpo- conditions that took these young people out Morado, which is more liberal, like the rations. We need to change it altogether.” to the streets are the same ones that took Democrats. They don’t want to take things In the Bolivia they got rid of the old us out of our country. too far. Then you have the Communist Party Congress altogether and elected new peo- Many of us emigrated from our country of Peru, which has never received a lot of ple. They made a point to include people because of the kind of corruption that is votes, but had a voice in the protests. ATC: What should the U.S. Left know about First aid brigades such as this one have been present throughout the protests. Police directly what’s going on in Peru? attacked these brigades even though they are clearly marked as medical. AP: It’s important to be aware that there is a revolution happening in Peru, a country that doesn’t often get the media attention because of how small it is, but that has been ravaged by colonialism and even afterward by the elites in Peru for years and years. And today we have foreign corporations, particu- larly American and Canadian. At the same time, Peruvians have fought beautifully against all this, and in many dif- ferent ways. I think in the United States we forget about the global context. In our con- versations about the possibilities of building a better life there is little about the global struggle. As a Peruvian living here — and initially not connected to what is happening in Peru — I understand how necessary it is to pay attention to the global struggle for human dignity. n AGAINST THE CURRENT  13 www.jimwestphoto.com

Given the pandemic, the Wayne State Galleries displayed Rashaun Rucker’s woodcut “Resting in Black” as a billboard on Detroit’s main avenue. Democrats in the White House: New Challenges for African Americans By Malik Miah WHAT DO AFRICAN Americans face with who believes the Trump vote was a “blatant activists as terrorists plotting a violent the new government of Democrats Joe attempt at voter suppression.” revolution. Biden and Kamala Harris? After four years “I do not believe that Trump has creat- “The document [is] distributed by the of a far-right regime that denied science ed racism amongst people, but I do think International Law Enforcement Educators and medicine in favor of death and profits, he was the safety net and the vehicle for and Trainers Association…. It alleges Black disproportionately destroying Black and people to be more active in practicing their Lives Matter and antifa, an umbrella term oppressed minorities’ lives, the answer for racism and their prejudiced beliefs publicly,” for leftist militants, are ‘revolutionary most is more a hope to lessen structural Small said. movements whose aims are to overthrow discrimination than it is high expectations Trump never saw his presidency as the U.S. government’ and claims they are for fundamental change. representing all Americans. Trumpism exac- planning ‘extreme violence.’” erbates what’s been true for centuries. The Biden, however, has not embraced the Meaning of Trumpism cult-like enthusiasm for whatever Trump Black Lives Matter movement or any of its The election results exposed the depth says and does means that white racism is demands. To fundamentally change how Black of white identity “grievance/victimhood” now more intense. and Brown communities are protected they politics. While Trump lost the popular vote have rasied the demand “Defund the Police.” by some seven million, he won over 73 What Biden Represents Instead, Biden has proposed sitting million voters — the most ever except for Joe Biden acknowledges that his nomi- down with so-called police union heads, Biden’s 80 million — including a large major- nation and electoral victory required large police chiefs, elected officials and leaders of ity of both white men and women. numbers of Black votes in urban areas establishment civil rights groups to modestly Republicans who follow Trump’s lead along with Latinos, Asian Americans and improve policing. Black activists leading the made gains in the Congress and state leg- Indigenous people. multiracial racial justice demonstrations are islatures. Trumpism is more than Trump. It Since the November 3 presidential not invited. reflects strong white-nationalist sentiments election, almost each week a Black man is Kamala Harris, the first Black and South in the white population and successful brutalized or murdered by police. It is not Asian woman vice president and a former voter suppression focused against African by accident. The ideology of policing is racist California attorney general, endorses Biden’s Americans. and in defense of the status quo (de facto vision of policing. It is in line with her own “I think it’s a dose of reality of the times white domination). practices in the most populous state. that we are living in,” said Nicole Small, vice According to the Associated Press, “A The first Black president, Barack Obama, chair of the Detroit Charter Commission, prominent law enforcement training group has openly attacked the demand of Defund Malik Miah is a longtime Black rights and union is promoting a lengthy research document the Police, calling it a misguided slogan. activist and an advisory editor of Against The riddled with falsehoods and conspiracies that For BLM activists, it is not a slogan. It is a Current. urges local police to treat Black Lives Matter continued on page 23 14  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 b l a c k r e s i s t a n c e

The Freedom Struggle Is a Labor Struggle Organizing Then and Now By Robin D. G. Kelley ROBIN D.G. KELLEY, THE Gary B. Nash profes- biracial campaign and won; in New Orleans sor of American History at UCLA, gave this pre- a lily-white campaign went down in defeat. sentation to a New York City DSA Labor webi- This brings me to the crux of the matter nar on a panel with Michael Goldfield, whose — the real question is not “labor’s” support book The Southern Key is also reviewed in this of “Black liberation” but rather: why has so issue of Against the Current. Professor Kelley’s much of the U.S. labor movement refused to first book was Hammer and Hoe: Alabama embrace the entire class? Just consider the Communists During the Great Depression long history of excluding Black workers, (1990). His subsequent works include the Asian workers, agricultural and domestic award-winning biography Thelonious Monk: workers. Why have so many unions histor- The Life and Times of An American Original ically consistently supported or tolerated (2009) and studies of African American and a racially segmented labor force and wage African culture and cross-fertilization. quickly we slip into a Euro/U.S.-centric differentials based on race? framework, and how we unwittingly privilege AS WE THINK, again, about the role of What explains white working-class sup- urban over rural. organized labor in the long Black freedom port for housing policies that not only main- I’m always reminding my own students struggle, it is worth noting that in India tain segregation but devalue homes in Black that the largest workers’ revolts of the at this very moment 250 million farmers, and mixed neighborhoods and boost home 19th and 20th centuries occurred neither workers, students and allies have joined in values in segregated white neighborhoods? in Europe nor the United States, but in the what had been a three-month long protest Or policies that have excluded Black people colonies and nations of the Global South. against the Modi government’s neoliberal from publicly funded institutions — better agricultural policies. schools, better hospitals and healthcare? Black Workers and “Racial Capitalism” Are these “labor” issues? Of course they The new parliamentary bills essentially When I’m asked about the role of orga- are! Spatial segregation explains so much eliminate state-run regulated agricultur- nized labor in the Black freedom movement, that a workplace focus cannot — hidden al markets, and allow direct transactions I’m always quick to point out that Black costs of living, food deserts, limits on mobili- between farmers and private corporate workers have been at the forefront of the ty to access decent jobs, home/property val- interests — namely international commodity labor movement, especially in the 19th cen- ues and impact on intergenerational wealth, traders and conglomerates such as Walmart tury, when labor organizing took the form of school funding, and services like access to and Cargill. parties and mass organizations rather than sanitation, fire fighters, and libraries. (Imagine The new arrangements will destroy small guilds and skilled trades unions — Knights what it means for Black and Brown kids to farmers and force those who survive to of Labor and the Greenback Labor Party, for attend school on-line by using the internet enter into contracts with corporate global example. at their neighborhood McDonalds.) seed and agrochemical suppliers, traders, Black workers provided leadership to This is what we mean by “racial capital- distributors and retail concerns. The legisla- white workers — or at least they tried. The ism,” which not only produces deep race, tion encourages the unregulated storage of more familiar story, of course, emphasizes class and gender inequalities but continues produce and commodity speculation, over- how capitalists deploy racism as a weapon to keep a segment of white-working class in turning laws that made hoarding food items to divide workers and crush opposition; use a state of precarity while convincing them for profit a criminal offense. the coercive arm of the state to put down that Black and Brown people are to blame. Imagine a quarter of a billion people strikes or contract out convict labor; bribe The hidden secret of racial capitalism’s trying to stop unfettered capitalism, save the conservative Black leaders to oppose unions longevity is the capacity of capital and the planet, and resist massive dispossession and and break strikes; foment mob violence in state to capture the “white” workers and a catastrophic migration to already overbur- the name of protecting white womanhood tie its identity to race (whiteness) and mas- dened cities — an example of militant soli- and fighting communism. culinity. We all need liberating from racial darity in the face of a global pandemic and a But wily capitalists alone are not solely capitalism. global recession. The largest general strike in to blame for undermining labor’s collective human history, and hardly anyone is talking power. Trade unions were also exclusionary, An Ideological Struggle about it in this country. not inclusive. They were based on skilled I am not suggesting that labor unions are And yet events in India might afford us trades and protecting those jobs. There hopelessly racist, nor is Michael Goldfield the most important lessons for the hour: were exceptions, like the IWW and the in his extraordinary book The Southern the strike invites us to confront the ques- CIO, but the key takeaway here is that when Key. On the contrary, we have many exam- tion, who makes up the working class and white workers attempt to go it alone by ples of unions dedicated to social justice where is it located? building exclusionary racist unions, they lose. and antiracism. I’m reluctant to call these When we talk about labor history on We can look at the 1866 campaign for an “exceptions” since it implies that the “labor a global scale, I’m always surprised by how eight-hour day: in St. Louis, unionists built a movement” is singular and unitary rather AGAINST THE CURRENT  15 than combined and uneven. Put simply, a union’s political orientation cannot be reduced solely to the inherent contradictions between labor and capital but must be understood within a broader ideological struggle. The extraction of sur- plus value alone does not explain why some sectors of the labor movement embrace a vision of racial and gender justice and equal- ity, others hold fast to racism, patriarchy and social order, and perhaps most reflect a messy, ever-shifting combination of these tendencies. And as I’ve suggested, some of the most critical battles have occurred not at the workplace but at the level of the state — struggles over social policy, state violence, budgetary and fiscal decisions, housing and welfare, education, etc. Indeed, as we revisit the 1930s, the era we hold up as the heyday of interracial working-class radicalism, there are three things we ought to consider. The Left, and They’ve always gone together: Marching for labor and civil rights in the 1940s. here I mean specifically the Communist Party, was different from other socialist Black workers built and sustained the Kenneth Williams.2 parties up to that point in that it centered International Woodworkers of America Collective Power Under Attack anti-racism. (IWA) campaign to organize sawmill employ- Whatever the CP’s many faults and mis- ees in the South, in spite of unremitting The success of the left-led unions such steps, it generally resisted color-blindness, violence from employers, allied businessmen as FTA, the International Mine, Mill, and underscoring distinctive features of Black, and white workers, and the CIO’s best Smelter Workers, the Farm Equipment Brown and Indigenous workers’ struggles, efforts to push race off to the side. Workers, United Electrical, Radio and while refusing to forgive or explain away In Elizabethtown, North Carolina where Machine Workers of America (UE) among the racism of white workers. Second, the in 1948 the IWA waged a militant strike others, were strengthened by the 1945-46 CP’s biggest mobilizations did not center on against one of the largest lumber companies strike wave, only to be bludgeoned by the relief or jobs or trade union struggles but in the Southeast, it was precisely racial sol- state and corporate response to the post- the defense of the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine idarity and Black community support that war labor insurgency. young Black men falsely accused of raping ensured their success.1 The collective power of labor, especially two white women on a train in Alabama. The largely Communist-led Food, in cases of exemplary interracial coopera- Third, the 1930s, the period we often Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers of tion, threatened to severely curtail corpo- describe as the U.S. left turn, was also char- America (FTA) rested on the union’s ability rate power, or worse for capital, usher in acterized by rising fascism that drew a seg- to tap into a deep well of black community a new political order that would further ment of the white working class into groups organizing and grievances centered around regulate business, expand the welfare state, such as the Black Shirts, the Klan, the White workplace conditions, wages, and racial protect workers’ rights, and undermine cor- Legion, and the American Nazi Party. discrimination. By 1947, FTA won 111 union porate profits. In other words, what often animates elections, bringing some 15,000 workers into We all know what happened next: the social justice or civil rights unionism are the union. war on labor ramped up in the name of movements with a vision of justice, move- Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had fighting communism. Left-oriented labor ments that are anti-fascist, anti-racist, and become the epicenter of FTA strength in militants were fired or deported or brought dare I say anti-capitalist (though embracing the region. Led by an extraordinary group of before the House Un-American Activities the latter doesn’t necessarily translate into Black women, notably Moranda Smith, Velma Committee (HUAC). embracing the former). Hopkins, Theodosia Simpkins, and Viola The Taft-Hartley Act (1947) restricted Brown, Local 22 had successfully organized workers’ right to strike; outlawed closed Where Organizing Succeeded workers at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. shops, secondary boycotts and “sympathy” In the South, Black labor militants, many They fought for more than higher wages strikes; imposed hefty fines on union officials of whom were Communists, were the key and better conditions; they promoted a who failed to oppose unauthorized strikes; to building the CIO in the region, even Black radical vision that civil and human prevented unions from contributing to polit- during the early stages of Cold War-era rights were inseparable from labor rights. ical campaigns; and required union officers attacks on labor and the Left. Operation They protested segregation, fought sex- to sign loyalty oaths and affidavits affirming Dixie, the postwar campaign to organize the ual harassment at work, revitalized the local they are not Communists. South, is usually seen as a total failure, but chapter of the NAACP, launched voter reg- Those that refused to sign were the left- as Will Jones demonstrates, it succeeded istration campaigns, set up worker education led unions — the unions that proved to be where Black workers were in leadership classes, and established a library stocked the most antiracist — for which they were positions — e.g. among Black lumber work- with volumes on African American history summarily expelled from the CIO between ers in North Carolina and Black tobac- and political economy, and were largely 1949 and 1950. co and cotton-press workers in North responsible in 1947 for electing Winston- The story doesn’t end here, however. Carolina, Arkansas, and western Tennessee. Salem’s first Black alderman, the Reverend There is a prevailing myth still in circulation 16  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 that Cold War repression forced the Civil Third, Randolph and other leaders This revolutionary vision of social justice Rights Movement to abandon labor and eco- excluded Black women’s organizations from unionism found expression among Black nomic justice in favor of desegregating pub- playing any significant role in the move- auto workers in Detroit. In May of 1968, vet- lic accommodations and other middle-class ment. This weakened the coalition, in part eran organizer General Baker led a wildcat demands. because activists such as Pauli Murray, Anna strike of 4000 workers at the Dodge Main The 1963 March on Washington, in fact, Hedgeman, Dorothy L. Robinson, Rosa Parks, plant to protest a speedup of the assembly was about two things: ending racist vio- Gloria Richardson, and Dorothy Height line. They did not win since most white lence and securing “jobs and freedom.” The had already committed to linking labor and workers did not support the strike, but out lead organizers, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip economic justice to questions of racial and of that action the Dodge Revolutionary Randolph, both had roots in socialist and gender equity.4 Union Movement (DRUM) was born. labor movements. The strikes spread to the Eldon Avenue A Radical Revival for Justice Randolph’s opening remarks laid out a Gear and Axle Plant, giving rise to ELRUM, clear agenda for labor. Echoing Karl Marx’s The Student Non-Violent Coordinating and other actions in other plants like the oft-quoted line in Capital, that “Labor cannot Committee (SNCC) and the Mississippi Ford Revolutionary Union Movement emancipate itself in the white skin where in Freedom Democratic Party never aban- (FRUM). DRUM’s specific demands included the black it is branded,” he warned doned economic justice. They not only workplace safety, lower production demands, “[T]his civil rights revolution is not confined embraced a program of economic justice and an end to racist hiring practices. but went further, calling for the redistribu- to the Negro, nor is it confined to civil rights for Of course the RUM leaders wanted to tion of wealth, reparations, and workers’ our white allies know that they cannot be free win better working conditions and wages power. while we are not. . . . for Black workers, but their ultimate goal “[W]e have no future in a society in which When SNCC organized its Freedom Vote was freedom for all workers — and that 6 million black and white people are unem- campaign in Mississippi in the summer and meant in their view the end of capital- ployed and millions more live in poverty. Nor is fall of 1963, they ran a slate of candidates in ism. So in 1969, leaders of all the RUMs the goal of our civil rights revolution merely the a “mock” election to challenge the state’s came together and formed the League of passage of civil rights legislation. Yes, we want all white Democratic party behind a fairly rad- Revolutionary Black Workers, with the long- public accommodations open to all citizens, but ical platform that included the right of labor term goal of becoming a political party or those accommodations will mean little to those to organize and engage in collective bar- revolutionary movement. who cannot afford to use them. gaining; a $1.25 minimum wage; support for farm cooperatives in place of sharecropping The League fought the leadership of the “Yes, we want a Fair Employment Practice UAW, who not only tried to crush the revo- Act, but what good will it do if profit-geared and dispossession; provision of low-interest loans for small farmers; a progressive land lutionary union movement but called police automation destroys the jobs of millions of to break up their meeting and relied on vio- 3 tax on tracts of land over 500 acres and tax workers black and white?” lence to undermine the League’s campaign The Negro American Labor Council exemption for those with plots smaller than 500 acres. to elect Ron March, a member of DRUM, on (NALC) was a lead sponsor of the March. the board of trustees of the UAW. It had organized local marches under the SNCC had also founded the Mississippi Even though March would have fought slogan, “Freedom from Poverty through Full Freedom Labor Union (MFLU) to organize for all workers and resisted speedups, too Employment,” and threatened to hold a agricultural workers in the Delta. In the many white workers were threatened by national one-day work stoppage to pressure spring of 1965, about 350 members of the Black leadership. Congress to pass the Civil Rights bill. union went on strike to demand $1.25 an NALC also fought to raise the federal hour for chopping cotton (clearing weeds). League members knew that racism limit- minimum wage and extend its coverage The planters would not budge and instead ed the ability of workers to unite, undermin- to all workers, and backed efforts to orga- evicted the workers, leaving them to starve. ing the strength of the entire class. But they nize domestic workers, abolish the House In January 1966 when the Greenville Air also argued that white workers benefited Un-American Activities Committee, and Force base was about to be sold, strikers from racism in the form of higher wages, build up the American Labor Party as a occupied it to draw federal attention to cleaner and safer jobs and greater union 7 third-party alternative. their plight. After Air Force police expelled representation. So what happened to this vision of eco- them, they regrouped in an encampment There are many other examples. nomic justice? First, the big groups — the dubbed “Strike City” and appealed to liberal Greensboro, North Carolina, has been a Southern Christian Leadership Conference, organizations and the government for food, center of interracial and anti-racist labor Congress on Racial Equality, the NAACP clothing, and other basic commodities.5 organizing. Last year we observed the 50th and the Urban League — threw their Unfortunately, without economic lever- anniversary of the Greensboro Massacre, energies almost entirely behind passing the age to force planters to meet their demands, when armed Klansmen and Nazis assas- watered-down Civil Rights bill, supporting a and lacking federal support, the MFLU was sinated five organizers in broad daylight Voting Rights bill, and trying to influence the defeated. But that defeat profoundly shaped — four of whom were members of the Democratic Party. the politics of the MFDP, which pursued a Workers Viewpoint Organization (later the Second, the labor movement betrayed radical economic vision even when mid- Communist Workers Party). The event on the coalition’s racial justice agenda. AFL-CIO dle-class Black Mississippians were finally November 3, 1979, is usually described as an leader George Meany and the United Auto admitted into the mainstream Democratic anti-Klan rally but they were also there to Workers’ Walter Reuther made lofty state- party. organize textile workers. ments and financial contributions in support By 1968, the MFDP backed a Guaranteed Fast forward to 1996, Local 2603 of of Civil Rights, while acceding to its rank- Annual Income, extended day care for poor the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and and-file white members who worried that and working mothers, comprehensive med- Textile Employees (UNITE) prevailed in the elimination of racial barriers to equal ical care for all, increased federal provisions a three-year campaign against K-Mart in wages, access to skilled jobs, and unfettered for food stamp programs, free higher edu- Greensboro, thanks largely to the union’s access to housing, would threaten their priv- cation, an end to the draft, and full military strong base in the African American com- ileged status. withdrawal from Vietnam.6 munity. AGAINST THE CURRENT  17 The union attacked racial discrimination head on, filing a complaint with the EEOC and enlisting key local Black community leaders to organize a boycott. The boycott forced K-Mart to raise wages and imple- ment a grievance process that would shield workers from unjust discipline and termina- tions. The Greensboro City Council passed a resolution requiring that all future employ- ers moving into the city pay a living wage of $12.50 per hour before receiving any city tax incentives. The boycott was organized by a coalition of Greensboro Black ministers called “The Pulpit Forum.” Forum leaders engaged in mass civil disobedience campaigns resulting in the arrest of several ministers, including the Reverend Nelson Johnson. Johnson, along with his wife Joyce, had organized the November 3rd rally where he suffered a serious knife wound in the conflagration. The main point is that UNITE adopted a civil rights/community based union strategy by appealing to the whole Black community and its tradition of resistance to racism and injustice. Mobilizing the entire Black commu- nity was the key to their victory.

The Working Class As It Really Is In closing, what the Indian general strike tells us is that we need to rethink the com- position of the working-class. When we shift our attention from the big industrial unions where we imagine the working class resides to low wage, marginalized workers in fast food, retail, healthcare, homecare, domestic work, agriculture, etc. — workers who have to survive on involuntary part-time work, short-term contracts, zero-hours contracts, telemarketing (homeworkers and prison labor for example), and the concierge econ- Nine years after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, the 1963 March on omy: Uber, Lyft, Grub Hub an so on — the Washington still demanded school integration, but much more too — full equality, jobs and free- horizon looks radically different. dom for African Americans. Civil Rights struggles were always labor struggles as well. Once powerful engines of racial and gen- building the most dynamic labor movement American History 75 (December 1988), 786-811. der exclusion, often working with capital to we have seen in generations.8 n 5. https://snccdigital.org/events/occupation-of-greenville- impose glass ceilings and racially segmented air-force-base/ wages, the 21st century labor movement has 6. Program of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party largely embraced principles of social justice, Notes [1968], https://www.crmvet.org/docs/mfdp_program.pdf 1. William P. Jones, “Black Workers and the CIO’s Turn anti-racism, immigrant rights and cross-bor- 7. James Geschwender, Class, Race, and Worker Insurgency Toward Racial Liberalism: Operation Dixie and the (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Dan der strategies. North Carolina Lumber Industry, 1946-1953,” Labor Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: History 41 no. 3 (2000), 279-306; see also Goldfield, The It seems that the new labor leaders are A Study in Urban Revolution (Chicago: Haymarket Books, Southern Key. 2012, orig. 1975); Muhammad Ahmad (Maxwell Stanford), teachers, nurses and other healthcare work- 2. Robert Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations, ers, clerical workers, fast food workers and and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century 1960-1975 (Chicago: Charles Kerr, 2003), 237-283; and flight attendants, among others. South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, see film, “Finally Got the News,” dir. And prod. Stewart 2003). Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter Gessner (First Run Icarus They have adopted new strategies, from 3. Andrew E. Kersten, A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Films, orig. 1970) passing minimum wage laws at the munic- Vanguard (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 155-56. 8. See Sarah Jaffe, Necessary Trouble: America’s New Radicals 4. See, for example, William P. Jones, March on Washington: (New York: Nation Books, 2016); Bill Fletcher, Jr. and ipal and state levels to using Community Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights Fernando Gapasin, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Benefits Agreements to secure living-wage (New York: Norton, 2013); Michael K. Honey, Going Down Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice (Berkeley and jobs, equitable working conditions, green Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009); Dorian building practices, affordable housing, as Last Campaign (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Robert T. Warren, “The American Labor Movement in the Age of Zeiger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America Obama: The Challenges and Opportunities of a Racialized well as childcare provisions. And in alliance since 1865 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, Political Economy,” Perspectives on Politics, 8 no. 3 with movements such the Movement for 2010); Alan Draper, Conflict of Interest: Organized Labor and (September 2010), 847-860; Robin D. G. Kelley, “Building Black Lives, and immigrant rights activists, the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell a Progressive Movement in 2012,” Souls 14, nos. 1 and 2 University Press, 1994); Robert Korstad and Nelson (2012), 10-18; Premilla Nadasen, Household Workers Unite!: campaigns such as OUR Walmart, Fight for Lichtenstein, “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, The Untold Story of African-American Women Who Built a Fifteen, Change to Win, are leading the way, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016). 18  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 b l a c k r e s i s t a n c e

James Baldwin for Our Time By Mary Helen Washington Begin Again: some aspects of Black Power, then set James Baldwin’s America and about becoming an internationalist, one Its Urgent Lessons For Our Own who knows that ‘American power fol- By Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. lows one everywhere.’” Crown Publishing, 2020, 272 pages. In the end, Glaude believes that Baldwin resisted despair by finding his James Baldwin: place in solidarity with “those who fight Living in Fire from the margins,” thus becoming a pow- By Bill V. Mullen erful example for our current moment. Pluto Books, 2019, 256 pages. Glaude’s second goal is to establish Bald­win as a prophetic voice, one who BOTH EDDIE S. Glaude’s Begin Again: James forces us to confront not only soci- Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons For ety but also our own moral choices. Our Own and Bill V. Mullen’s James Baldwin: Eloquently capturing the brilliant, pas- Living in Fire are organized around what sionate and morally persuasive Baldwin, Mullen calls the “arc of change, reflection, Glaude writes that “ [Baldwin] insisted and evolution” in Baldwin’s life story. that we see the connection between Both are motivated, to some extent, the disaster of our interior lives and the by a renewed interest in Baldwin since the mess of a country that believed, for some emergence of the Black Lives Matter move- odd reason, that if you were white you ment, which was started, I note, by three mattered more than others.” (xxv) Black women-Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Begin Again opens with the meeting Patrisse Cullors. between Baldwin and Stokely Carmichael Baldwin seems to be everywhere these at Howard University in the spring of days. His 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk James Baldwin, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1963, shortly after Baldwin had published was adapted for a 2018 film by filmmaker September 1955. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs The Fire Next Time, and when Carmichael Barry Jenkins, and Raoul Peck’s 2016 film I Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, [LC-USZ62-54231] was a young nonviolent student activist. Am Not Your Negro has become a major doc- new directions in the analysis of Baldwin’s Baldwin was invited to address the ques- umentary on Baldwin. In 2016, young Black queer identity. Additionally, there is William tion of “the role and responsibility of the writers and activists responded to Baldwin’s J. Maxwell’s exploration of Baldwin’s 1884- black writer in the civil rights struggle.” (4) 1963 essays The Fire Next Time with a book page FBI file, James Baldwin: The FBI File (2017 Later that evening, a small group of essays, The Fire This Time: A New Generation paperback), which tracks J.Edgar Hoover’s assembled for an all-night conversation, an Speaks About Race. intense surveillance of Baldwin. impromtu rap in a small apartment with Another major biography, Douglas Field’s Ossie Davis, Baldwin, John O. Killens, the All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Why Baldwin Now? “older brothers,” and a group of students, Baldwin, was published in 2015. Ta-Nehisi This resurgence of literary, cinematic, including Carmichael. Coates modeled his acclaimed 2015 book political and scriptural interest in Baldwin Four years later that impromptu meeting Between the World and Me on Baldwin’s The is a cause for wonderment. The question became the catalyst for Baldwin’s political Fire Next Time. that nags me as I observe this widespread evolution when Carmichael stepped off a Previously, at least three major biogra- cultural homage to Baldwin is: Why Baldwin plane from Paris on December 11, 1967, phies of Baldwin were published in the 20th and why now? Professor Glaude, scholar of and called for revolution and solidarity with century. There is a political blog called “Son African American Studies and religion at anti-colonial struggles in places such as Cuba of Baldwin” by Black queer and transgender Princeton University, answers that question and Tanzania. His passport was confiscated; activists, and Queer Studies has produced in two ways. newspapers labeled him a traitor; politi- His first goal is to establish Baldwin’s Mary Helen Washington is a distinguished uni- cians called for his arrest; Barry Goldwater versity professor in the English Department at importance for the age of Black Lives proclaimed that if he were found guilty, he the University of Maryland, College Park special- Matter, or, in Glaude’s terms, to show how should be put to death. izing in 20th and 21st century African American Baldwin has become “a critic of the after In the wake of Carmichael’s move literature. She is the author of The Other times,” a period Glaude calls a kind of toward Black Power, Baldwin realized that Blacklist: The African American Literary “interregnum as the old is dying and the he was required to tell a different story and Cultural Left of the 1950s (2014), which new is coming into being. Baldwin is the about the country and its unwillingness examines the role of Black radicalism during perfect subject for such a time; he is the to give up its racism. Baldwin’s defense of the Cold War. She is currently writing a biog­ writer-activist who continued to evolve after Carmichael was so incendiary that neither raphy of Paule Marshall. the civil rights movement, who embraced The New York Times nor the London Times AGAINST THE CURRENT  19 would publish it. It eventually appeared in James Arthur Baldwin was inex- and Arabs nurtured by the Palestinian the Los Angeles Free Press and is unlike any- Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions move- thing else I’ve ever read by Baldwin. tricably linked to 30 of the most ment (BDS)” for Palestinian rights. (xviii) Proclaiming his solidarity with Car­ consequential and controversial In a 1979 essay for The Nation, “Open michael, Baldwin calls the United States years of Black American life. He Letter to the Born Again,” Baldwin critiques “racist to the core,” and raises his protest settler-colonial Zionism and declares there against the Vietnam War, declaring that lived his life in that fire. can be no peace in the Middle East with- “every bombed village in Asia is my home He relentlessly probed every out attention to the Palestinians, lessons town.” According to Glaude, this is the aspect of his own personal life as he learned from the Black Panther Party, moment which, for Baldwin, exposes “the lie from Vietnam War protest, and from the at the heart of the American idea.” (xxvii) he interrogated the life and strife of Palestinian liberation struggle. (xxi) For Glaude, “Baldwin’s courage, defiance, a racialized nation. What is finally most fascinating and most and willingness to confront his own com- and work. productive in Baldwin’s “final acts” is found plicity in evil, provide the key to Baldwin’s in his fiction, in his profound engagements This archival boon allows Mullen to surviving and mustering the strength to with the meanings of race, sexuality, and recover Baldwin’s left-wing associations keep fighting amid the after times.” political affiliations in his sixth and final novel going back to the 1930s, which have been Just Above My Head (1978). Chapter One, “The Lie,” establishes what neglected or downplayed in much earlier Glaude (and Baldwin) see as the central “lie” scholarship. In particular there were con- This focus on fiction is important at the heart of America: the belief and justi- nections with Communism, as well as 1940s because unlike Baldwin’s speeches, which fication of the dehumanization of Black peo- links to socialism, anarchism and Trotskyism, can more easily be read as transparent polit- ple. Although,Glaude admits that we should although some details are still unknown. ical messages, fiction does not allow such more properly define “the lie” as “several easy access to meaning. Mullen considers Beyond that, we learn much more about sets of lies with a single purpose,” “the lie” this novel as the work that finally allows a the evolution of his anti-imperialism, his remains throughout Begin Again as the racial full expression of erotic pleasure through support for Palestinian liberation, and finally, lie, that Black people are inferior because of Baldwin’s “most fully realized black and a more expansive view of Baldwin’s sexual “the color of their skin.” (7) openly queer character, Arthur Montana.” politics. These revelations show the trans- Baldwin also represented “The American In another example of Baldwin’s evolution, formation of Baldwin’s political thought that lie” as confined to race: the “fatal flaw” in this novel “reflects for the first time in his pushed him past his early fixation on white the nation’s founders is that they could not work the centrality of black women’s lives liberals, past his own sense of defeat and “recognize a man when they saw one,” i.e. “a and their wide range of sufferings in U.S. demoralization as he watched Black leaders black man, whose destiny and identity have society.” (169) assassinated and Black politics failing, and always been controlled by others.” (2) In addition to the queer character past his investments in Black masculinity. Baldwin was indeed producing a new Arthur Montana, Baldwin creates the char- I want to focus on the last chapter of “native son”; he was also construing acter of Julia Miller, a one-time child preach- Living in Fire, called “Final Acts,” where in blackness as inherently male, and defining er, sexually abused by her father, who leaves the last 10 years of his life we see Baldwin’s the race problem as a gendered conflict the United States for Africa to discover political radicalism in full flower. In a 1978 between “the white man” and Black man- something about her identity. As Mullen essay, he coupled the Reagan administration hood. suggests, Julia is Baldwin’s female avatar and with the UK’s Margaret Thatcher as “sym- Baldwin’s transnational solidarity with the his first effort to express “in profoundly bols of white, Western capitalist supremacy.” North Africans he met in Paris “murdered gendered terms the destructive effects of in the streets and corralled into prisons,” In 1980, he derided the persecution of patriarchal power.” was also gendered male. Even when Baldwin the Black Panthers and Angela Davis and the Mullen attributes Baldwin’s willingness is dealing with queer sexuality, he can only demonizing of poor Black women as “wel- to openly engage both queer and feminist conceive of male desire, ideals of masculinity, fare queens” as part and parcel of the rac- issues to the political conversations he the complexity of manhood. (96) ism and corruption of the Reagan regime. In had in the last decade of his life with the his final years, Baldwin wrote against capital- Glaude confers on Baldwin the title of lesbian feminist writer Audre Lorde, who ist inequality, against a racist, indifferent state “moral compass,” comparing him to the helped him “to part forever with his lifelong and Cold War ideology “for suppressing the patriarchal “Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, attachment to black men—and black mascu- question of black liberation.” (119) speaking God’s truth.” The problem with linity — as the center of his analysis of the elevating Baldwin to the stature of prophet He knew that he had incurred the wrath world.” (165) is that once he takes on Biblical propor- of J.Edgar Hoover, who began to target him My question — Why Baldwin and why tions we are no longer able to see him as intensely, resulting in his massive FBI file, now? — is partially answered in these two human and fallible and to see his witness as yet still remained committed to a radical impressive studies of the life and work of imperfect — partial, limited, problematic and critique. Baldwin. James Arthur Baldwin was inextri- contradictory. The Baldwin whom Mullen most clear- cably linked to 30 of the most consequential ly brings to light, and few know, is the and controversial years of Black American Baldwin’s Transformation “self-conscious black internationalist,” par- life. He lived his life in that fire. In Living in Fire Professor Bill V. Mullen, ticularly in his relationship to the Middle He relentlessly probed every aspect of a scholar at Purdue University of African East and to Afro-Arab and Afro-Palestinian his own personal life as he interrogated American literary and cultural studies and solidarity. the life and strife of a racialized nation. He the Cold War, draws on a raft of new mate- This aspect of Baldwin’s political history became an important interpreter and critic rial on Baldwin made available in the past is especially relevant in the light of relation- of the global order. And, lest we forget, this 10 years, including newly released material ships that have developed between Black extraordinary American of such intellectual at the Schomburg Center for Research in U.S. activists and Palestinians in the West brilliance and political fire came out of the African American Culture that enlarges and Bank and Gaza, specifically the trend toward poverty, racial violence, wretchedness and enriches our understanding of Baldwin’s life “anti-racist unity between African American resilient beauty of Harlem, USA. n 20  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 b l a c k r e s i s t a n c e

The American Caste System By Malik Miah Caste: The Nazis, she points out, studied the The Origins of Our Discontents extreme laws and discrimination in the for- By Isabel Wilkerson mer slaveholding South — Jim Crow legal Random House, 2020, 477 pages, $32 hardback. segregation. The Nazis were both impressed and amazed how a modern “democracy” “The worst disease is the treatment of the could justify such a legal system and still be Negro. Everyone who freshly learns of this called a democratic country. state of affairs at a mature age feels not In India, the historic caste system was only the injustice, but the scorn of the prin- formally banned in the new constitu- ciple of the Fathers who founded the United tion after independence from the United States that ‘all men are created equal.’ [I Kingdom in 1947. Yet the caste system could] hardly believe that a reasonable man is still alive, and Dalits (then known as can cling so tenaciously to such prejudice.” “Untouchables”) are still looked down upon — Albert Einstein in 1946 by higher castes. (Quoted, Wilkerson, 377) African Americans still suffer from insti- THE BRILLIANT PHYSICIST and Nobel tutional racism more than 50 years after the Laureate Albert Einstein left Germany in civil rights revolution returned the right to December 1932, one month before Adolph in journalism. In 2011 she wrote the nonfic- vote that had existed under federal protec- Hitler took power. In the United States tion best seller, The Warmth of Other Suns: tion for twelve years after the Civil War. he was astonished to see the way African The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Americans were treated. winning numerous awards. Caste in Context He knew discrimination as a Jew, no Wilkerson defines the caste system as a A Social Construction matter his intelligence and accomplishments, social construction: in Germany and Europe. Jews under Nazi Wilkerson explains the caste system as “A caste system is an artificial construction, rule were living under a manufactured caste the foundation where institutional racism a fixed and embedded ranking of human value system that justified their mistreatment and sits. While she does not discuss how Blacks that sets the presumed supremacy of one group eventual near extermination. from many African tribes, languages and cul- against the presumed inferiority of other groups The United States has never had a Truth tures became an oppressed nationality, the on the basis of ancestry and often immutable and Reconciliation Commission to discuss failure to end that system is why institution- traits, traits that would be neutral in the the history of caste, racism and national al racism is so strong and prevalent. abstract but are ascribed life-and-death mean- oppression of Black people. The mass awak- She says that what occurred — white ing in a hierarchy favoring the dominant caste ening that began with the uprising against supremacy — was not inevitable. Yet it is whose forebears designed it. A caste system police violence and terror following the easy to understand why and how it hap- uses rigid, often arbitrary boundaries to keep murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on pened: The vast wealth created for the white the ranked groupings apart, distanced from one May 25, 2020, marks another opportunity settlers who slaughtered Indigenous peoples another and in their assigned places.” to do so. and owned slaves made it easy for them and She goes on to explain how caste and The power of that Black-led uprising their descendants to treat Africans and their race are connected: played a central role in defeating President children so harshly. “Race does the heavy lifting for a caste sys- Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential George Washington, the first president, tem that demands a means of human division. election, and electing Kamala Harris, the owned 300 slaves through his marriage to If we have been trained to see humans in the first Black, South Asian woman to the vice Martha Dandridge Custis Washington and language of race, then caste is the underlying presidency. chased down any who tried to escape. grammar that we encode as children, as when Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, Caste: The Caste describes how that second-class learning our mother tongue. Caste, like gram- Origins of Our Discontents, describes the status of African Americans has remained, mar, becomes an invisible guide not only to how “American caste system” forged over 400 even with the growth of a vibrant Black we speak, but how we process information, the years. While others have written about the middle class. The class gap between haves automatic calculations that figure into a sen- unique American caste system (notably and have-nots has widened within the tence without our having to think about it.” (17) Oliver Cox, Caste, Class, and Race [1948]), oppressed nationality, even as the wealth gap She further adds: she gives a well-documented analysis and between African Americans and the domi- “Race in the United States is the visible timely presentation. nant “white caste” has grown. agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the In 1994, Wilkerson was the Chicago Wilkerson looks comparatively at the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, bureau chief of The New York Times. She oldest caste system in India, the American the physical traits that have been given arbi- became the first woman of African- caste system and the caste system created trary meaning and become shorthand for who American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize under Nazi Germany. a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure AGAINST THE CURRENT  21 that holds each group in its place.” (18) Wilkerson observes how the caste sys- Nuremburg meeting was held in 1934 to These themes are repeated with exam- tem still impacts India. Higher castes still turn anti-Semitic ideology into new laws. ples throughout the book. see themselves by their words and attitudes Wilkerson explains: Wilkerson is describ­ as superior to Dalits “The Nazis needed no outsiders to plant the ing the origin of the and lower castes. She seeds of hatred within them. But in the early special oppression and attended conferences years of the regime, when they still had a stake exploitation of African of Indian scholars in the appearance of legitimacy and the hope Americans. While the where she could iden- of foreign investment, they were seeking legal Bible and other holy tify upper castes and prototypes for the caste system they were build- texts have been used to Dalits even if all had ing. They were looking to move quickly with their justify it, the bottom line similar academic cre- plans for racial separation and purity and knew is that the skin color of dentials. that the United States was centuries ahead of slaves and former slaves The Indian consti- them with its anti-miscegenation statues and was used to justify the tution written after race-based immigration bans.” dominant (whites) and independence, banning The rapidity of entrenching the dominant inferior castes (Blacks). discrimination on the caste system in Nazi Germany was similar By extension, other basis of caste, states to what occurred after the U.S. Civil War. groups or subcastes were that all Indians are Legal rights were taken away through laws in relationship to these equal. Yet the social and and violence. “Ordinary” citizens accepted two dominant castes. economic inequalities this violence and terror directed at the Indigenous peoples were remain despite “affir- lower caste. unique since the white mative action” laws In Germany, it didn’t matter that Jews settlers sought to exter- aimed at leveling the had been co-workers and neighbors. Just as minate and later forced playing field. white Americans cheered lynchings, these them into “reservations” In the United States ordinary Germans looked the other way as on the least habitable the constitution was Hitler exterminated Jews. lands. amended after the Civil War to provide The post-Civil War citizenship Amend­ former slaves citizenship. For a decade that Caste and National Oppression ments did not apply to the original tribes. brought real change, including the election Why is the caste system important Indigenous people did not gain formal U.S. of the first Blacks to public office including to understand? As all three examples citizenship until 1924. to the Senate and Congress. All were in for- Wilkerson cites show, racist ideology was mer slave states. enlisted to justify their actions. While caste Connections Between Caste Systems Yet in 1877 under the “Great Compro­ and race are social constructions and not A feature of Wilkerson’s study is how mise,” Union troops left the South. Quickly, identical, the caste system is essential to see similar various caste systems are. She tells on the ground in the former Confederate how the dominant group rules. the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his trip states, the citizenship rights for Blacks were The caste system allowed new immi- to India in the winter of 1959. King and his gutted violently and then overturned. grants from Europe, for example, to quickly wife Coretta went to India, as he said, not as Blacks had been seen as inferior and learn that their future was tied to the tourists but as pilgrims. a subordinate caste since 1619. Under Jim dominant caste, not the old relationship India was the home of Mahatma Gandhi, Crow era segregation these caste and racial of groups in Europe. Thus, Irish who were the recognized spiritual leader and prac- divisions were reinforced. The education or seen as less than English soon recognized it titioner of the strategy of “nonviolence” economic status of a Black person mattered was okay to be “white Americans” and look around the world. little. down on Blacks and other nonwhites. King arrived in Mumbai (then known as Class differences exist. But that’s within Caste explains that the defeat of Radical Bombay), invited by the Indian government. each caste group. Whites, including union Reconstruction in 1877 ended the possibil- He wanted to see the Untouchables (Dalits), and nonunion working-class whites, see ity of a new “American colorblind nation.” who were treated historically as bad if not themselves primarily first as part of the Wilkerson clearly explains that the caste worse than Black Americans. dominant white group and have rarely seen system is the foundation, and racism is the He went to the southern state of Kerala Blacks as allies on non-economic issues. political justification. That’s how, by the 20th and visited a high school where the students Wilkerson provides numerous examples, century, Blacks became an inferior “racial” were from Dalit families. The school princi- including current ones, where this attitude group. pal gave an introduction that surprised King: persists. The oppressed Black nationality was “Young people, I like to present to you a forged in the period following Recon­ fellow untouchable from the United States Nazi Germany’s Caste System struction’s defeat. The radical concept of the of America.” Wilkerson discusses a third caste system “right to self-determination,” emerging in Wilkerson writes, “King was floored. He — Nazi Germany for 12 years until Hitler’s 19th century Europe, also applies to African did not see the connection.” She continues: defeat and death in World War II. Americans: To end the inferior caste and “For a moment,” he later wrote, “I was a In Chapter Eight, “The Nazis and the race system means that the right to form an bit shocked and peeved that I would be Acceleration of Caste,” Wilkerson discusses independent country within the boundary referred to as an untouchable.” how a modern creation of caste was accel- of the territory of the United States may be After further thought comparing the erated in Germany. required. oppression of Blacks and Untouchables, The Nazi hierarchy decided early in Wilkerson does not discuss the national King said, “Yes, I am an untouchable, and its rule to legally and otherwise isolate question in this book but her analysis of the every Negro in the United States is an German Jews from “Aryan” Germans. They origin of institutional racism opens the door untouchable.” (Chapter Three, An American studied the Jim Crow South and its method to understanding a permanent solution to Untouchable) of domination and terror over Blacks. The national oppression. 22  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 Persistent Oppression so difficult to overcome and end them in it, these all-too-rare people are a testament to In the 21st century caste, race and the bourgeois democracy founded by slave the human spirit, that humans can break free national oppression remain strong. Trumpism holders. of the hierarchy’s hold on them. could not exist without the support of In her “Epilogue A World Without “These are people of personal courage and “ordinary whites” who don’t face cop Caste,” Wilkerson indicates a possible conviction, secure within themselves, willing to violence as a norm or race-based financial future: break convention, not reliant on the approval discrimination. “And yet, somehow, there are the rare of others for their sense of self, people of deep There is no level playing field for Blacks people, like Einstein, who seem immune to and abiding empathy and compassion. They are and whites. It is why the issue of reparations the toxins of caste in the air we breathe, who what many of us might wish to be but not near- continues to be raised by African Americans. manage to transcend what most people are ly enough of us are. Perhaps, once awakened, A Washington Post feature discussed two susceptible to. From the abolitionists who risked more of us will be.” (384) communities — one African American, one personal ruin to end slavery to the white civil Caste and her first book, The Warmth of white — both composed of middle-class rights workers who gave their lives to help end Other Suns, are first rate. They should be professionals with decent-paying jobs. But Jim Crow and the political leaders who outlawed taught in schools and universities. n there was one major difference. As explained in an October 23 article New Challenges for African Americans — continued from page 14 by personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary, “Being Black lowers the value of thought-out demand based on decades of inequalities of the health care system. Black my home: The legacy of redlining.” experience dealing with occupying police and brown people have always received “If I picked up my home and moved it 20 forces in Black and brown communities. inferior health care compared to whites in miles west to a White neighborhood, it would be Obama, whose record toward African general. Based on past and ongoing racial worth much more.” Americans communities was right-of-center policies many African Americans don’t trust How much? Her community average policies that did little, is Biden’s approach. the medical establishment. home value is $300,000 versus $700,000 for His appointment of “moderate” Black, Activists Push People’s Action the white-owned homes. Latino and women figures to his cabinet Wilkerson explains how decades of rac- reflects the rise of a layer of well-off African American activists and commen- ist housing policies, including the New Deal middle class and professional people into tators see the reason for the polarization: of the 1930s, excluded African Americans. mainstream capitalist society. But these White-identity “grievance” politics convinces Due to housing segregation, the cheap GI individuals do not represent the best the poorest working-class whites to unite loans in the 1950s also kept Blacks on the interests of the working class, particularly its with billionaires against Blacks and non- margins. African Americans have been denied poorest. whites. Blacks understand this. It as part of the massive potential wealth, as the Post article Movements Respond to Crises shows. blood and bone of American history. The Various BLM groups said before the race card is always played by white politi- The exception is when Blacks can move election that they would continue to cians and those in power to win the white into white suburbs as a minority and do not respond to police terror with street racial group to oppose socio-economic become a majority. Realtors can then still protests and demands on city, state and progress. sell the homes at standard “white” market federal officials, including Democrats, to Biden’s concept of government is to value. enact radical changes. The key, they all say, make deals with conservatives even at the The wealth gap between Black families is to force governmental­ and corporate sacrifice of more liberal positions. His team actually grew wider from 1968 to 2020. powers to advance the interest of the will reflect pro-corporate Democrats who Working-class Black families are worse off. African American community, and not rely care more about working with mainstream Wilkerson says these facts are connected to on capitalist politicians who “look like us.” Republicans than promoting progressive the inequities of the institutionalized caste The same applies to the health pandemic policy. system. crisis facing the African American, Latinos, The New York Congresswoman from the Revolutionary socialists have always Asian American and Indigenous communities Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, has been argued that to end caste and racial discrim- who are the worst hit by the coronavirus. the most outspoken against Biden’s move to ination means the overthrow of capitalism Will Biden and Democrats make sure that the center right. Her demands and those of and its replacement by a democratic social- these communities get the vaccine first, other progressives are intended to pressure ist society. Since the late 1960s with demo- and will it be free to those without health Biden’s team. graphic changes, hope for an end to institu- insurance? That’s a flawed strategy — working tional racism has ebbed up and own. But the Biden is opposed to universal health inside the Democratic Party to bring social power of white nationalism based on the care (Medicare for all). He does not explain and economic change. It does not work. ideology of white supremacy is entrenched. how essential low-wage workers, including What inspired a multiracial and work- The most significant fact of the 2020 Latinos (many undocumented) working in ing-class coalition against Trump, and by presidential election is that 2016 was not agriculture (many are undocumented), will default for Biden, was the broad-based an aberration. A large majority of “ordinary be safely vaccinated and not targeted by Black-led racial justice uprising. The move- whites” backed Trump again in the 2020 immigration cops. ment against the police built an effective election. There is a racial gender gap too, as Biden says he will return the United Rainbow Coalition to fight racism. a vast majority of women of color voted for States to the WHO (World Health Organi­ The answer to Trumpism, modern-day Joseph Biden while 56% of white women zation). But he has no a plan to make sure white supremacist politics, is to continue to went for Trump. the entire world, especially “Global South” mobilize for real change. The leaders of the Hatred and fear of the “others” is countries, are able to get low-cost vaccines. Black Lives movement have all pledged to Trumpism’s core strategy. Wilkerson’s dis- The big pharmaceutical companies are there fight police violence and political corruption. cussion of caste makes clear why these for profits not health care. Others including leaders of the women’s, gay attitudes remain prevalent — and why it is The pandemic has exposed the rights and unions must do the same. n AGAINST THE CURRENT  23 b l a c k r e s i s t a n c e

The U.S. South and Labor’s Fate By Alex Lichtenstein The Southern Key this out. Indeed, at times it can be hard to Race, Class, and Radicalism in reconcile Goldfield’s assertion that estab- the 1930s and 1940s lished scholarship ignores this dynamic with By Michael Goldfield his heavy reliance on that same scholarship, Oxford University Press, 2020, 432 pages, much of it quite old-fashioned. $49.95 hardcover. When it comes to the Textile Workers Organizing Campaign of 1937-38, he argues IN THE SOUTHERN KEY, Michael Goldfield that a CIO leadership prone to put its draws on more than three decades of faith in the National Labor Relations Board scholarship, both his own and that of many missed a golden opportunity to tap into others, to elucidate a deceptively straight- organic militancy in the southern mill towns. forward point: The failure of the American labor movement to organize sustainable Communists’ Contradictory Role interracial unions in the South in the 20th Secondly, Goldfield wrestles with the century had long-term deleterious effects role of the Communist Party and the relat- on the American labor movement and polit- ed anticommunism that proved a major ical economy, many of which remain with us obstacle to left-wing leadership in nascent today. CIO unions. He recognizes, for instance, that Just look at a recent COVID map, which the story of the unionization of the steel traces directly onto maps charting slavery, industry requires not only acknowledging sharecropping, segregation, disfranchisement, the activism of CP organizers in the early incarceration rates, 1948 votes for Strom phase, but also consideration of the Party’s Thurmond, 1964 votes for Barry Goldwater, errors which left its militants vulnerable to and much else besides. a subsequent purge of the USWA (United conclusion on the study of a single industry, This isn’t exactly a novel interpretation, Steel Workers of America) by more conser- state or locality. Goldfield’s account, drawing as a very long list of sociologists, political vative forces once the steel magnates were on years of research and synthesizing a huge scientists and historians, many acknowledged forced to the bargaining table. swath of existing scholarship, covers coal, in this book, have made this point sufficient- In particular, Goldfield argues, during steel, textiles and the paper industry, all sites ly. It is fair to say that this has become the the mid-to-late 1930s Popular Front the of protracted struggles to build interracial reigning orthodoxy in the historiography Party’s “acquiescence without a struggle” to unions in the segregated south. If the broad of the southern labor movement during its the hegemony of liberals like Steelworkers conclusions he draws about the long-term heroic CIO moment (1936-1955). President Philip Murray “paved the way consequences of the failure of these orga- for the dominance of right-wing, racially As works by Goldfield himself, Robert nizing drives mirror that of other scholars, Korstad, Nelson Lichtenstein, Jacquelyn insensitive” leadership.” (179) Similarly, the author offers some important reinter- Goldfield maintains, in the fight to organize Dowd Hall, Michael Honey, William P. Jones, pretations of the reasons for this failure. Michelle Brattain, Barbara Griffiths, Patricia woodworkers the CP’s “surrender to the Sullivan, Bruce Nelson, Ira Katznelson and Where Goldfield claims to depart most CIO rightists” and “the maintenance of the many others attest, a combination of fac- dramatically from existing scholarship is Popular front” (240) sabotaged the potential tors — redbaiting (by local governments in his account of the role of the state. In for organizing Black workers in the South. and union leadership alike), conservative and his view, the importance of the National Although he does not shy away from racist AFL unions, individualism, fundamen- Industrial Recovery Act in 1933-1934 (par- detailing the “self-destructive sectarian talist religion, state repression, straight-out ticularly section 7a, making joining a union behavior” (350) of the CP, Goldfield never- union-busting, labor’s strategic errors, and a federally sanctioned right) in prompting theless endorses the notion that the Party’s not least the racism of rank-and-file white southern workers to overcome their fears true role as a spark to labor militancy workers — helped defeat the concerted and seek union membership has been vastly peaked during its ultra-sectarian phases — drive to organize the South over these two overstated in the literature. i.e. the Third Period (1929-1933) — and was crucial decades. He extends this skepticism to the 1935 then squandered when the Party followed Wagner Act, which ostensibly enshrined this Soviet dictates to make nice with those to Contested Role of the State right in federal labor law. its right, like Roosevelt liberals or moderate While recapitulating this well-established Looking closely at pre-NIRA organiz- CIO leaders. framework, Goldfield’s book still has some- ing drives in the coalfields, for example, After 1935 the Party “often abandoned thing to offer. Most previous studies rest this Goldfield concludes that whether sparked its members in order to preserve harmo- Alex Lichtenstein is a professor of history at by Communist Party (CP) militants or long- nious relations with national CIO leaders,” Indiana University. His work focuses on race time local stalwarts on the ground, miners Goldfield complains. (358) Such subordina- relations and interracial radicalism in labor and seemed primed to build unions before the tion, Goldfield insists, not the CP’s political agrarian movements in both the United States Roosevelt Administration opened the door, adventurism, sectarian zigzags and constant and South Africa. but he is hardly the first scholar to point injection of political causes of little interest 24  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 to the rank and file, facilitated the purge of a highly competitive sector by ruthlessly Deep South states. More attention to the the left from the CIO. reducing per-unit labor costs. Wallace campaign, and the divisions it occa- This critique of the Party’s Popular Front Some of this astute analysis is diluted sioned on the left wing of the CIO, would labor politics from the ultra-left is, to put it by Goldfield’s all-too frequent meanderings demonstrate the left’s political adventurism bluntly, perverse. And yet, during the Third away from southern history, so that readers at this moment. Period, Goldfield avers “a less sectarian may lose this main thread of the story. In Communist Party…would have had far a lengthy chapter on SWOC, for example, Labor and Civil Rights more influence and support.” (351) Yes, but Goldfield spends far more time on the well- One problem Goldfield does not grapple then it wouldn’t have been the Communist told story of the steel towns from Chicago with sufficiently is the widespread assump- Party. to Western Pennsylvania than he does on tion that the defeat of the southern unions Whatever the causes of the Party’s Alabama, the heart of the industry in the expunged any economic orientation from vulnerability, the consequences of the anti- South. the civil rights movement that arose in the communist purges were significant. In steel, 1950s and 1960s. In his desire to demon- Goldfield insists, despite the crucial role The failure of the American strate that the driving of militants — CP Black workers had played in building the labor movement to organize or otherwise — from the labor movement union, by the postwar period, USWA lead- sustainable interracial unions ended all left-labor civil rights activism, he ership at best ignored them and at worst simply asserts its disappearance. perpetuated racism within the union. in the South in the 20th Of course, significant union density Oddly, Goldfield suggests that the USWA century had long-term and more powerful interracial unions in has been held up by many scholars as a deleterious effects on the the South would have added an important “democratic” union, and claims to offer a dimension to the so-called “King years” of bold revision by demonstrating otherwise. American labor movement the movement. In fact, however, the civil Yet it has always been widely recognized and political economy, many of rights struggle remained consistently about that because of the way SWOC (Steel which remain with us today. “more than just a hamburger,” and even Workers Organizing Campaign) was orga- with the relative absence of left-wing mil- nized and consolidated the union structure If Goldfield’s book has the potential itants or trade unionists in its front ranks was top-down and autocratic — as the to reconfigure our understanding of the (and they were by no means eliminated many accounts of the USWA which he “southern key,” it lies in a shift in period- entirely), continued to emphasize economic draws from indicate. ization. Whereas most scholars still see the rights. defeat of the postwar southern organiz- E.D. Nixon’s persistent activism in Understanding the South ing drive, popularly known as “Operation Montgomery in the 1950s is but one exam- In organizing his analysis by industry, Dixie,” as the turning point in the fortunes ple; Dr. King’s call for a general strike in Goldfield eschews cultural explanations for of mass industrial unions in the South, Memphis during the 1968 sanitation work- the behavior of southern white workers Goldfield now argues that this was more a ers’ strike is another. In between came the — e.g. individualism or religiosity — and feeble culmination of previous trends than 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and focuses instead on the structural factors the crucial do-or-die moment many have Freedom. that encouraged or impeded organizing at assumed it to be. Despite the enormous amount of mate- the regional, local and even plant level. This He correctly regards as crucial the “asso- rial brought between the covers of The allows him to avoid the deus ex machina of ciative power” — what others might call Southern Key, ultimately the book confirms an ill-defined “culture” as the explanation “social unionism” — lent to the labor move- an existing interpretation, one that remains for (white) southerners’ alleged hesitancy to ment by the wide array of militant organiza- badly in need of revision. join unions. tions during the Depression, including in the In this account the early CIO unions in Protestantism, for example, could cut South. The CIO’s unwillingness to work with the South, led by the left, bore the promise either way, depending on circumstances, as the left and civil rights activists during its of interracial democracy. If permitted to could resistance to being told what to do by postwar southern organizing drive, especially flourish, they would have transformed the outsiders (who could be owners of capital in textiles, Goldfield argues, hamstrung its South, breaking the hold of the Dixiecrats as well as labor militants), depending on the operations while doing nothing to shield it on the Democratic Party as early as 1948. time and place. from red- or race-baiting by employers, the But anticommunism got in the way, as lib- One week a fire-and-brimstone sermon press, or its AFL rivals. erals purged the left from the new unions, might be devoted to the CIO as antichrist; The futile accommodation to racist thus sapping their interracial promise. but the following Sunday, workers might whites, and the failure to reach out to Black The result was a delayed civil rights find a local or itinerant churchman happy workers, also weakened the union drive. movement, and one that remained aloof to preach the union gospel to an eager This is all true, as far is it goes, and from questions of class and political econo- audience. Which one represents southern much of it has been said before. However, my. Elements of this narrative are certainly ”culture”? As Goldfield insists, southern Goldfield remains mute about the impact accurate; I have made a variation of this workers “when they had sufficient structural of the culmination of all this ferment, the argument myself. and associative power, were often as ready Progressive Party’s 1948 doomed southern But by now we need a more sophisti- and able to unionize as their compatriots in campaign, during which some left-wing orga- cated version of this history, one that pays the North.” (289) nizers sought to swing the political weight sufficient attention to the left’s postwar Global comparative analysis by indus- of the new southern unions in the direction miscalculations, acknowledges the quixotic trial sector also helps steer The Southern of Henry Wallace (Wallace, George, appears nature of the Henry Wallace campaign in Key away from the shoals of foggy cultural in the index; Wallace, Henry does not). the South, and recognizes the persistence of explanations. For example, as Goldfield The national CIO backed Truman, but CP the impulse for racial democracy inside the points out, textile workers from Gastonia unionists and their waning allies demanded trade union movement and its allies, even in to Guatemala worked in a labor-intensive that their locals endorse Henry Wallace; the the absence of the Communists, who may at industry that could only seek profits in segregationist Strom Thurmond won the times have done more harm than good. n AGAINST THE CURRENT  25 b l a c k r e s i s t a n c e

A Black Freedom Trailblazer: Recovering William Monroe Trotter By Derrick Morrison WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER, a too colored people from Cambridge to New Bedford, attorneys little-known pioneer of the fight for civil as well as passionate janitors and bootblacks.” (77) rights in the South and civil equality in the North, is captured brilliantly in Kerri Roots of Black Studies K. Greenidge’s book, Black Radical, The Life Professor Greenidge teaches at Tufts University, in the and Times of William Monroe Trotter (New Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora. York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, While the book reflects tons of research, it’s also very read- a division of W.W. Norton & Company, able, a real page-turner. 2020). This book and many like it flow out of programs that Among the highlights of the trail study African-American history. And these programs came Trotter blazed: out of intense struggles. I was reminded of that after viewing “On May 13, 1902, the [Boston] Guardian Agents of Change, a film that appears sometimes on world- sponsored a rally at Faneuil Hall in support channel.org, a Public Broadcasting System (PBS) channel. of the Fourteenth Amendment and congressional investigation of That film spotlights the 1968 San Francisco State student southern disfranchisement. The event called itself the Crumpacker strike and the armed occupation of the student union at Rally in honor of the Indiana Republican Edgar D. Crumpacker, who Cornell University in 1969. wanted Congress to reduce southern representation in those states Black students initiated, organized and led both struggles, where black citizens were denied the right to vote. demanding the institution of some type of Black Studies pro- “Crumpacker, and fellow Pennsylvania Republican Marlin E. gram. These programs and departments, commonplace today, Olmsted, invoked Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which were forged in such battles at many college campuses across allowed Congress to reduce representation in those states that the country. denied citizens’ rights. Olmsted introduced the resolution on January Let some of us remember, and many learn for the first 3, 1901, less than three months after Republicans took control of the time, about these events that extended U.S. civil democracy White House and both houses of Congress in the 1900 elections.” and pushed back social inequality. Professor Greenidge’s book If that section of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. is one of the fruits of those battles — let’s digest what it has Constitution had escaped your attention — it did mine — it to tell us. didn’t evade the laser-like focus of William Monroe Trotter. William Monroe Trotter “Crumpacker had worked on the resolution months before Among the many battles against civil and social inequality the presidential election, mainly in response to widespread white in the first decades of the 20th century, the efforts of Trotter violence against black voters across the South. In 1898…five hun- stand out. These include the movement for women’s suffrage, dred white North Carolinians, angry at the predominantly black fought against a most gross civil inequality — the denial of the city of Wilmington for electing Republicans to the state legisla- right of women to vote. The Socialist Party of America and the ture, stormed the town hall, seized control of the city council and fledgling union movement of native-born and immigrant work- attacked black people and their businesses in a violent political ers fought the plutocracy of the giant industrial companies coup. over the right to organize and make a dent in social inequality “Although the new, white Democratic Wilmington government by sharing a little in the wealth the workers produced. clearly violated the Fourteenth Amendment, neither state nor Trotter not only confronted the civil inequality facing the Federal officials intervened, allowing the ‘Old North State’ to fall people of color in the North, but utilized that zone of restrict- under Democratic control with little attention outside of the black ed civil democracy to fight the encroachment of Jim Crow in community.” (72-73) the South. Boston Guardian As the founder and editor of the [hereafter People of African descent in the North could exercise Guardian referred to as the ], Trotter reached out far and wide their constitutional rights as outlined in the 14th and 15th to build the rally. Crumpacker sent a letter of support, and Amendments, the “Reconstruction amendments.” However, “apologies for their absence” came “from Massachusetts those rights were null and void in the South. governor Winthrop M. Crane” and “ex-governor George S. The imposition of Jim Crow meant not only the denial of Boutwell….” the Reconstruction Amendments, but the overthrow of civil The rally “attracted overflowing crowds to Faneuil Hall” democracy, the disavowal of the rule of the U.S. Constitution. and “included a diverse cross section of the black public — Both Blacks and whites lived a constrained and repressive Derrick Morrison is a community activist in New Orleans, Louisiana. existence, the former serving as the scapegoat for the all the 26  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 ills wracking society in the South. Washington and white political bosses [Washington died in The plutocrats, and those whom they subsidized, counseled 1915]. accommodation and acceptance of the emerging status quo. “Part of this was due to the mass migration of black southern- Booker T. Washington, the founder and builder of Tuskegee ers to the urban North and Midwest, and their rising literacy rates Institute in Alabama, was a recipient of generous subsidies since Reconstruction.” (230) from Northern industrialists and bankers. The “most popular black newspaper in the country by the “As the infamous ‘Wizard start of World War One” of Tuskegee’ who used racial was the Chicago Defender, accommodation as a politi- edited by Charles S. cal tool, Booker T. Washington Abbott. was ... secretly subsidizing “Abbot was actually an black newspapers across the early admirer of Trotter’s country, and crushing those — when he began the editors who refused to be Defender in 1905, he bought. often wrote admiringly to “By 1900 ... Wash­ington Trotter about ‘the colored managed to subsidize nearly man’s rights.’ Trotter, in turn all of the black weeklies in published excerpts from the the country….” (57-58) Defender in the Guardian Washington opposed the Crumpacker Bill. (74) But he to point out the ‘rising colored man of the middle West.’ couldn’t stop the Guardian’s effort because he didn’t control “By 1915, however, the Defender, with over 500,000 weekly that paper. readers, outsold Trotter in cities and towns across the country, including Boston. With just over 2,000 weekly subscribers, the Legacy of Trotter’s Father Guardian would always cost more to produce than it earned….” The paper’s financial independence was due to the legacy Unlike Trotter, Abbott “had no problem taking advertising left by William’s father, James Monroe Trotter. James and his revenue from products and companies that his racial politics two sisters, Fannie and Sally, were born out of the union found objectionable.” (231-2) between Letitia, a slave, and Richard Trotter, a slave master who owned several plantations in the Mississippi Valley. Niagara Movement and Brownsville An unusual planter, Richard provided the children with a In July 1905, twenty-nine men from the Northeast and classical education as opposed to laboring in the cotton fields. Middle Atlantic regions of the U.S. met at a hotel in Ontario, Letitia, mindful of the vicissitudes of the plantation — Canada and created “the first black-led civil rights organiza- meaning that any abrupt downturn could cause “Richard or tion of the century.” his relatives” to “count their losses and sell off their slaves,” Trotter’s ideas, Greenidge writes, “colored all aspects of finally decided to flee with her three children, landing in a the Niagara Movement’s Declaration of Principles. Written small town along the Ohio River in 1850. (9) by Trotter and edited by [W.E.B.] Du Bois, these principles After the Civil War broke out and upon the issuance of claimed political independence and equal suffrage as the basis the Emancipation Proclamation, young James signed up with for civil rights. ‘The race stands at the webbed crossroads the Massachusetts’ Fifty-Fifth Regiment (not to be confused where it must choose between cowardice and courage, apolo- with the Fifty-Fourth whose story is told in the film Glory). gy and truth…or a conscientious stand for right with the faith He became a sergeant and was eventually commissioned a that right will ultimately win over the costliness of liberty….’” lieutenant by the state’s governor. The document “urged black men to ‘protest emphatical- After the war, James moved to Hyde Park, a Boston suburb. ly and continually against the curtailment of their political He was granted a government pension in 1870 and wrote a rights…the voice of protest of ten million Americans must bestselling book on African American musical history in 1878. never cease to assail the ears of their fellows so long as (12) America is unjust.’” (122-3) After the 1873 Depression, which was global in scope, W.E.B. Du Bois was chosen as the “movement’s executive property prices plummeted, enabling the lieutenant to amass secretary.” While the organization was hobbled with person- some real estate. These holdings grew in value, providing ality clashes — some due in no small part to Trotter — its financial security for William and his two sisters, Maude and formation pointed up the need for a national response to the Virginia Elizabeth (Bessie). imposition of Jim Crow in the South. William graduated from Harvard, Maude attended Wellesley. When William launched the Guardian in 1901, his rownsville, Texas, became a flash point in 1906. The all- mother, Virginia, managed the real estate holdings. Black Twenty-Fifth Infantry “served with distinction in the Philippines, Cuba [Spanish-American War of 1898], The Growing Black Press B and various frontier settlements across Texas, Arizona, and Greenidge notes that between the start of the Guardian in Nebraska. It was on the Western frontier that the men earned 1901 and the 1917 entry of the U.S. government into the Great their nickname, ‘Buffalo Soldiers,’ and entered the ranks of War in Europe, “the number of black periodicals increased African American popular culture through icons like West from less than 100 to over 288. And unlike the 1890s and early Point graduate Henry Ossian Flipper.” 1900s, these periodicals operated independently of Booker T. Stationed at Fort Brown, the men were “shot at, harassed, AGAINST THE CURRENT  27 and pistol-whipped” when they entered Brownsville. Maude’s Federal prohibition of discrimination in labor unions.” (183) father-in-law Theophilus Gould Steward, a chaplain with Woodrow Wilson, who had become governor of New the Twenty-Fifth, “stated that white and Mexican citizens in Jersey in 1910 with the help of the Black vote, was the Brownsville constantly complained that black soldiers refused Democratic Party nominee for President in 1912. In his search to obey racial custom by getting off of the sidewalk when a for Black votes, he agreed to meet with the NIPL leadership white man passed by.” (140-1, 144) in July, 1912. He said he would In “the early morning hours of “observe the law in its letter and August 13, 1906…bullets rained spirit….” (185) down” on the town. It “ended with Trotter called upon Guardian one death and the wounding of a readers “to vote for Wilson, and police lieutenant….” Democratic congressional can- President Theo­dore Roosevelt didates generally, pointing out “disparage[s] black soldiers as ‘par- that the GOP had so thorough- ticularly dependent’ upon white ly degraded black voters since officers, lacking in ‘leadership capac- Reconstruction that the modern ity,’ and prone to panic under fire. era called for a different politics.” ‘Here again I attributed the trouble Greenidge continues: to the superstition and fear of the darkey,’ he confided to “Du Bois agreed with Trotter in his own Crisis endorsement of a colleague, ‘[which is] natural to those but one generation Wilson. Over 500,000 popular votes in the national election were removed from slavery and but a few generations removed held by black men in the North and West, Du Bois pointed out, a from the wildest savagery.’” (141) number that could make or break an election. These remarks illustrate how the rise of Jim Crow went “Rather than sell these votes for ‘toothless appointments for hand in hand with the elaboration of white supremacy the- assistant attorney general, recorder of deeds and a few other black ories. But Roosevelt, concerned about the Black vote in wooden men whose duty it is to look pleasant,’ black men should the midterm elections, waited until November to order a sell their 500,000 votes for ‘abolition of the interstate Jim Crow car; dishonorable discharge of the soldiers, which “meant loss of the enforcement of the Thirteenth Amendment by the suppression their Federal pensions and a lifetime ban from future Federal of peonage; the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment by cut- employment….” (142) ting down the representation in Congress of the rotten boroughs of With the printed testimony of Chaplain Steward, the the South; National aid to elementary public schools without class Guardian provided firsthand accounts. The articles were or racial discrimination.” (186) reprinted in the New York Tribune and in some of the Black press. In the course of a year, Steward and another writer Disappointment took an “investigative trip” to Texas. Their accounts “provided national coverage, beyond the Guardian, of the Brownsville Trotter and Du Bois were to be cruelly disappointed. Both incident.” “underestimated the speed at which Wilson’s cabinet trans- Trotter “organized massive community rallies in Boston, formed southern-style white supremacy into official Federal D.C., Hartford, and New York City….” Those rallies also sup- policy.” (189) ported the efforts of Joseph B. Foraker, an Ohio Republican Segregation was just one part of the Jim Crow toolbox, senator who sat on the Senate’s Military Affairs Committee. along with lynching and all the other insidious measures He introduced a resolution for an investigation by the com- designed to deny and stamp out any trace of Black human- mittee as to “whether President Roosevelt had the authority ity. Segregation of the Federal work force caused “job loss, to discharge the black soldiers.” (145, 146) salary decreases or humiliating work conditions” for black In January 1908, a bill known as the Tucker Act, was intro- employees. Trotter and NIPL leaders met with Wilson again duced to Congress to allow “the Twenty-Fifth Infantry’s offi- in November 1914, and tried to hold him accountable for his cers to sue the Federal government for their discharge….” policies. After the meeting Trotter set out on a speaking tour (158). denouncing the President’s course. Before the confrontation he addressed “an antisegregation NAACP, NIPL and Woodrow Wilson rally at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, where hun- The Niagara Movement finally unraveled in 1908. Two years dreds of black men, women, and children cheered as Trotter later a group of plutocratic reformers, concerned about the rose to speak.” (194) Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a prominent anti- civil and social deterioration of conditions for the Negro, lynching activist, also spoke. formed the National Association for the Advancement of The speaking tour saw Trotter address mass rallies in New Colored People. W.E.B. Du Bois was picked to edit its monthly York, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Des Moines, magazine, The Crisis. Iowa. August, 1911 saw Trotter gather his allies in Faneuil Hall “When black readers wrote letters praising Trotter’s ‘manly to form the National Independent Political League. By 1912 stand for our rights,’ then called out various ‘colored office-holders’ the NIPL had members in over 15 states, mostly northern. by name for ‘failing in their duty to the race,’ the Richmond Planet Greenidge states its three demands on elected officials: “a [a Black weekly in Virginia] agreed by sarcastically noting, ‘Brother Federal law against lynching, Federal enforcement of the Trotter and his committee forgot that they were citizens of the Fourteenth Amendment provision that denied congressio- United States without a country. They believed that the Constitution nal representation for states that disfranchised citizens, and and the laws of the United States mean just what they say.’” (206) 28  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 Anti-lynching Law Struggle of her lawyers, she was fired — but hired again after the state After launching the National Equal Rights League (NERL) legislature voted unanimously to overrule the hospital head. around 1911, Trotter hooked up with New York City Caribbean- As the case showed, civil democracy — the rule of law American radicals like Hubert Harrison to start a campaign — existed in the North and West, but had to be fought for for “Federal antilynching legislation” in 1917. continually. “On June 12, at the Bethel AME Church on West 132nd Street, African Blood Brotherhood and UNIA Harrison led hundreds of black people in calls for Federal anti- With the approach of World War I, Trotter increasingly lynching legislation, and introduced the crowd to a rising star in found himself in the company of native-born and West Indian Caribbean radicalism, the Jamaican lecturer and newspaper editor radicals like Reverend M.A.N. Shaw, Thaddeus Kitchener and Marcus Garvey. Uriah N. Murray of Boston, and Hubert Harrison, A. Philip “The next day, June 13, Harrison arrived at Trotter’s (Boston) Randolph, Cyril V. Briggs and Marcus Garvey of New York City. Faneuil Hall rally after boarding a midnight train from New York. In These radicals fought not only against Jim Crow in the Boston, as in New York, the hall was crowded to overflowing... over South and civil inequality in the North and West, but also two thousand blacks cheered as Harrison and Trotter denounced against social inequality. Randolph joined the IWW (Industrial ‘mob justice’ and demanded ‘a liberty congress for the colored Workers of the World) and edited The Messenger in 1917. masses.’” (243) Briggs edited a Harlem magazine called The Crusader. They formed an ad hoc group called the Liberty League In the fall of 1919 Trotter and Briggs initiated the African and set their sights on a “Liberty League Congress” in 1918 to Blood Brotherhood, based mainly in Harlem. Some of its lumi- organize an anti-lynching petition to the U.S. Congress. In the naries included W.A. Domingo, Richard B. Moore, Anselmo early summer of that year the LLC gathered 115 delegates to Jackson, Arthur Schomburg and Otto Huiswood. write the petition. (255) But the one who caught the high tide was Marcus Garvey. Their action complemented the activity of Congressman He organized the first chapter of the Universal Negro Leonidas Dyer, a Missouri Republican. In early April Dyer Improvement Association, UNIA, in Jamaica in 1914. Upon submitted House Resolution 11270. Known as the Dyer Bill, landing in the United States in 1916, he set up a chapter in it called for federal prosecution for lynching when the state Harlem. failed to protect victims and included compensation for the In 1917 Garvey lectured in “Boston, Atlanta, Washington, victim’s heirs. It became the focus of civil democratic radicals Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinnati, for the next four years. Trotter and others welcomed the Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, and other cities.” (Theodore support of the NAACP. G. Vincent, Black Power And The Garvey Movement, San Francisco: Significantly, the U.S. House of Representatives­ passed Ramparts Press, 1972, 100) the Dyer Bill on January 26, 1922. The vote was 230 to 119. A new consciousness arose after World War I: However the Senate killed the bill. (323 and https://www.loc. “The new awareness reached a dramatic height in the United gov/exhibits/naacp/the-new-negro-movement.html) States…as black troops returned from Europe. Writing in the Jane Bosfield’s Struggle NAACP magazine Crisis in 1919, W.E.B. DuBois exemplified the militant mood of the day: ‘We return. We return from fighting. In 1915, Jane Bosfield acted on the premise that the State Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great of Massachusetts’ civil rights laws “mean just what they say.” Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know Her “high test scores [state civil service examination], coupled the reason why.’ with her academic records at Boston Evening High School “Men who had seen a comparatively non-racist France want- and Cambridge Girls’ Latin, made her eligible for a secretary ed to bring some non-racist culture home, and returning blacks position at Medfield State Hospital, fifteen miles south of the refused to accept segregated facilities and protested discriminatory city.” (223) practices. When white America tried to terrorize the Negro back The 22-year-old Bosfield got an offer of employment in into his ‘place’ by bringing lynch mobs into black communities, the April. When she and her mother showed up to talk with the black man fought back. head of the hospital, Dr. Edward French, the job offer was “The newly returned black troops took a leading role in defense withdrawn. against the mobs, as the community expected them to. Black sol- Trotter and the Guardian went to work. Black ministers diers had learned how to fight and, as some three dozen post-war in and out of the National Equal Rights League protested race riots showed, black people pressed together in the compact and publicized the case in their churches. Trotter confronted ghetto could now snipe at invading whites and then escape in the Governor David I. Walsh, “a Democrat who owed his own maze of tenements. election to black voters” in Boston. (196) “Participation in community defense was for many a first step The Governor “‘took a personal interest’ in Bosfield’s toward involvement in a broad political struggle.” (Vincent, 34-35) case” and “wrote a letter of complaint” to the state hospital It was this backdrop that brought tens of thousands of board. He “publicly ‘deplored caste prejudice’ anywhere in the Blacks into the UNIA, styling themselves as “New Negroes.” Commonwealth….” Further, he issued an order “for Medfield The first convention of this social momentum occurred in State Hospital to rehire Jane Bosfield or face retaliation by the 1920. state licensing board.” (224) Billed as “International Convention of the Negro Peoples Bosfield was rehired, but barred from congregating and of the World,” the UNIA affair opened “on Monday night, eating with other employees. When she defied the ban and ate August 2, 1920, at Madison Square Garden. The New York amongst her fellow workers in the dining hall on the advice Times reported a crowd of nearly twenty-five thousand, and AGAINST THE CURRENT  29 thousands who could not get in gathered in the area to dis- That victory shook the global imperial structure, a struc- cuss the day’s happenings.” (Vincent, 114) ture born in 1492 with the Spanish and Portuguese plun- The ABB drew up a manifesto for the occasion and was der and exploitation of South, Central, and parts of North permitted to address the convention. The group chose Trotter America; the transatlantic slave trade; the pillage of India by to present it. He urged the gathering to “‘devise means to the British and French; and the spread of colonialism through- organize our People to the end of stopping the mob-murder out the 19th century. of our men, women, and children and to protect them against Colonialism and Jim Crow sinister secret societies of cracke[r] whites.’” During Trotter’s lifetime there was the 1884 Berlin He also called upon the UNIA to “work with the ABB and Conference, where European powers decided how the the NERL [National Equal Rights League — ed.] to ‘devise human and natural resources of Africa would be divided up means to raise and protect the standard of living of the Negro among them. Then came the invasion and division of China People;…take steps to bring about a federation of all Negro around 1900 by the same European powers plus the United organizations, thus molding all Negro factions into one mighty States and Japan. In addition, there was the naked aggression and formidable factor, governed and directed by a Central and occupation by U.S. Marines of any Latin American or Body made up of representatives from all member organiza- Caribbean country that obstructed the operations of U.S. tions.’” (306-7) big business — Haiti 1915-1934 and Nicaragua 1912-1933 as “While Trotter’s wordy, heartfelt, and dramatic manifesto examples. Colonialism and neo-colonialism formed the inter- earned applause from the audience, his final demand ended the national roots of Jim Crow. And the plutocrats bankrolled honeymoon between the NERL, the ABB, and Garvey. No doubt white supremacy theories to explain their global domination. influenced by Briggs’s Communism, despite the fact that neither he The ferocious ruling-class support of Jim Crow defeated nor Trotter formally joined the CP, the ABB concluded that Soviet the Crumpacker Resolution, the Tucker Act and the Dyer Bill, Russia should ‘be endorsed…and the real foes of the negro race creating a complaint Southern labor force for whatever oper- denounced.’ ations decided upon by big business. This was behind the fail- “Trotter, Briggs, and other ABB delegates insisted that they were ure of any post-Reconstruction movement for social change. not members of the CP, nor were they members of the SP; they The “farmers’ Grange, the Woman’s Christian Temperance were concerned with militant black civil rights, as Briggs, Randolph, Union, and the Knights of Labor,” all rising in the last 40 years and other black radicals later testified. If these rights could be of the 19th century, backed away from any questioning of Jim secured through an international union of workers, as provided Crow. (See an excellent work by Charles Postel, Equality, An by recently created Soviet Russia, then the ‘International Race American Dilemma, 1866-1996, New York: Farrar, Straus and Congress’ should endorse the Soviet cause.” Giroux, 2019, 12.) According to Greenidge, “…the UNIA delegates to the Even the women’s suffrage movement did not dare defy the race congress were stunned…. UNIA members tried to act racial hierarchy in the South for fear of alienating southern as if Trotter and the ABB weren’t there….” (307) congressmen and senators. Decades later, Briggs stated in his papers, “…he was not inspired by Garveyism, ‘nor was I interested in socialism per rotter died on the eve of the three great events that set se. My sympathies were derived from the enlightened atti- in motion the labor upsurge of the 1930s — the Toledo tude of the Russian Bolsheviks toward national minorities….I auto-light strike, the Minneapolis coal drivers’ strike, believed then and still believe that the Russian Communists T and the San Francisco longshoremen’s strike. That upsurge, had successfully solved the national question.’” (Vincent, 79) which might possibly have confronted Jim Crow, was cut short The important point is that the Russian Social Democratic by World War II. Labor Party (Bolsheviks) was taking their approach toward The victory of the Soviet Union over German Nazism in national and racial minorities inside the Russian Empire onto Europe (Hitler planned to colonize the USSR) and Japanese the international plane. militarism in Manchuria (Stalin gave captured arms to Mao’s Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party of America, liberation army) would set the stage for an event that blew up “argued in 1903 that ‘there is no “Negro problem” apart from of the whole international edifice of Jim Crow — the Chinese the general labor problem’ and expressed the hope that even Revolution of October 1949. (See Jack Belden, China Shakes in the South racial prejudice would soon evaporate. In another the World, Monthly Review Press, New York and London, article the same year Debs insisted that the party had ‘noth- 1970.) ing specific to offer the negro, and we cannot make special That event enabled the initial success of the Korean and appeals to all the races. The Socialist Party is the party of the Vietnamese revolutions, social democratic revolutions in working class, regardless of color — the whole working class the same mode as that of 1917. The Vietnamese victory at of the whole world.’” (Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, Citizen Dienbienphu, sealing the end of French colonialism in Asia, and Socialist, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, occurred in the same month as the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court 1982, 226) decision outlawing school segregation. Jim Crow had one foot With all due respect for the revolutionary credentials of in the grave. Comrade Debs, Comrade Lenin did make “special appeals” The victories of African independence movements plus the to oppressed national minorities. Inclusion of this approach 1959 Cuban Revolution, and, most importantly, the Civil Rights in their program was a big reason why the Russian Bolsheviks Movement in the South, led to legislation in 1964 and 1965 led the workers, peasants, and soldiers to victory in October that ultimately put Jim Crow’s whole body in its grave. 1917. William Monroe Trotter was finally vindicated. n 30  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEW The Trauma of Domestic Violence By Giselle Gerolami No Visible Bruises: recognizes that men may also yard, celebrating holidays but there were What We Don’t Know About be victims — but since the vast also many where Rocky filmed Michelle in Domestic Violence Can Kill Us majority of perpetrators are her underwear. She repeatedly asked him to By Rachel Louise Snyder men, she refers to perpetrators stop but he never does and eventually she Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 320 pages, as “he/him” and victims as “she/ doesn’t even bother asking. $28 hardcover. her” throughout the book. On top of the obvious objectification involved, this behavior is also a sign of the IN 2010, JOURNALIST Rachel The End: Michelle Monson power dynamic in the relationship where Louise Snyder returned to the Mosure he slowly eroded her confidence over time. United States after years of In 2001, on the Monday In one video, Snyder notes a very brief and working in Cambodia, Afghanistan, before Thanksgiving,­ in Billings, unmistakable flash of anger from Rocky that Niger and Honduras and other Montana, Rocky Mosure shot no one in Michelle’s family had picked up on. countries. One day a friend’s sis- and killed his wife Michelle and Michelle was one of the approximately ter, Suzanne Dubus, shared with Snyder that their two kids, Kristie and Kyle, before kill- 1200 abused women who are killed in the the work she was doing involved predicting ing himself. Michelle was only 23 years old United.States every year. That figure does homicides from domestic violence. and had endured almost a decade of abuse not include the abusers themselves, children, This was a wakeup moment for Snyder, from Rocky, and was on the verge of finally other family members or bystanders who who began to question all her previous leaving him. may also be killed in domestic violence assumptions about domestic violence, and They started dating when she was only homicides. it would lead her to research and write 14 and by the time she was 17, they had two Advocate Jacquelyn Campbell developed the book No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t children together. Despite his increasingly the Danger Assessment decades ago, but it Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us. The controlling behavior — she was not allowed is now one of several tools used to deter- book received widespread acclaim and was to wear makeup, to leave the house without mine how much danger an abused woman chosen as one of The New York Times Book permission, to see her family — she had might be in at a given time. There are 22 risk Review’s “Ten Best Books of 2019.” finished high school and was studying to factors which include substance abuse, gun The book is divided into three main become a nurse. ownership, jealousy, threats to kill, strangu- parts. “The End” is the victim’s story, in this In the months before the murders, lation, forced sex, isolation from family and case, the story of Michelle Monson Mosure. Rocky had acquired a rattlesnake that he friends, children from a different biological The second part, “The Beginning,” focus- used to terrorize Michelle and the kids. He parent, threats of suicide or violence during es on the abusers, and the last part, “The was using drugs and regularly threatening to pregnancy, stalking, chronic unemployment. Middle,” examines the work of the change- kill himself and the rest of his family. Charting a timeline and pinpointing esca- makers, the tireless advocates who are Snyder spent years researching this case lation can be critical in determining risk. In seeking to address the scourge of domestic and talking with the family members, who the Danger Assessment, Michelle would have violence. were wracked with guilt and grief in the scored 16 to 18 with a couple of questions The book’s title is a reference to the aftermath of the killings. They wondered to which the answers are unknown. She emotional abuse that abused women suffer, why it had happened and what signs they would have been considered at high risk. which many of them claim is worse than the had missed. A year after Michelle’s murder, the physical abuse. A couple of months before she was mur- Montana Domestic Violence Fatality Review Snyder makes conscious choices about dered, Michelle revealed the extent of the Commission was formed. Michelle’s mother language. The term “domestic violence” is abuse to her mother and said she wanted to met with Matthew Dale of the Department no longer the preferred term for advocates leave him because he was having an affair. of Justice and requested that Michelle’s who feel that the word “domestic” softens She took out an order of protection case be reviewed. Snyder attended a fatality the reality; they prefer “intimate partner vio- against Rocky after he was arrested for hav- review session years later. The recommenda- lence.” Snyder’s choice would be “intimate ing assaulted her mother and sister in order tions included being able to access the his- partner terrorism.” However, as these terms to kidnap his daughter. When Rocky’s family tory of protective orders across state lines do not cover violence against children and bailed him out, Michelle recanted and he and better training for judges, clergy, law other family members, she chooses “domes- was released. enforcement and healthcare workers. tic violence” for the purposes of her book. Snyder was so immersed in the story She also chooses “victim” over the more that she came to feel as if she had known The Beginning: The Abusers commonly used “survivor,” because survival Michelle and her family personally. In fact, Snyder deserves credit for dedicating a is something that happens at the end rather she had to take a year off from reporting on full third of her book to abusers. Working than in the middle of the process. Finally, she domestic violence for self-care. It took her with abusers is relatively new, and there are Giselle Gerolami is a member of Solidarity a long time to bring herself to watch the questions about the extent to which they and has served on its Gendered Violence many home movies that Rocky had taken of can unlearn violence. Domestic violence Commission since 2013. She is a paralegal and the family. advocates tend to be focused on the needs has volunteered as a court advocate for sur­ Most of the movies are of the family in of victims, and rightly so. vivors of domestic violence. their everyday lives, camping, playing in the Snyder spent considerable time with AGAINST THE CURRENT  31 Jimmy Espinoza, a former pimp, who abused seen a 25% decrease in homicides when victim’s trust and get her talking the next. many women. He now leads a program those restrictions are enforced. Latessa is the aunt of Bresha Meadows, a called RSVP (Resolve to Stop the Violence) teen who killed her father after years of at the San Bruno prison in San Francisco, The Middle: Making Change abuse and whose imprisonment led to the which began in the late 1990s, for prisoners In the third part of the book focused on #FreeBresha movement. with a history of domestic violence. advocates Snyder tells the story of Dorothy With regard to the police, Snyder The program is quite rigorous: 12 hours Giunta-Cotter. She had suffered years of appears to be ambivalent. On the ride- a day, six days a week and lasting for a horrendous abuse and was in a shelter with alongs, she thought that the police made year. Recidivism for those who completed her daughter when she contacted advocate bad situations worse. She noted that police the program dropped by 80%. Despite its Kelly Dunne in Amesbury, Massachusetts. officers are often abusers themselves. She success, RSVP has not been replicated else- She did not want to remain in the shelter, so asked several of them how they would treat where. she and her daughter returned home with a one of their own. They all said they would The “male role belief system” goes as fol- security system, new locks, new cell phones do nothing differently but she does not lows: “Man does not get disrespected. Man and a restraining order against her husband. believe it. does not get lied to. Man’s sexuality does One day her daughter, expecting a friend, On the other hand, Snyder believes that not get questioned. Man is the authority. opened the door for her father. He took women police officers could be part of the Man does not get dismissed. Woman should Dorothy hostage while the daughter called solution and she has nothing but praise for be submissive, obedient, supportive to man.” a neighbor who called the police. As the the work of women like Martina Latessa. This belief system is challenged in the police busted down the door, Dorothy’s hus- At the end of her book, Snyder hints that program. Men in RSVP learn about account- band shot and killed her. She had predicted what’s needed in the long term is prison ability and that they need to own their her own death and Dunne was devastated reform and restorative justice. This is some- violence and stop blaming others, blaming by her killing. Like Michelle, Dorothy would what at odds with the police being part of substances and minimizing their violence. have scored 18 on the Danger Assessment. the solution. The book was written before The men also learn to listen and to be in It is estimated that ten percent of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests made touch with their feelings. domestic violence cases involve a danger “Defund the Police” a household slogan. A In the 1970s in Boston, David Adams of homicide. Poor communication among critical look at the role of police in handling began working with abusers. He had no police, the courts and advocacy groups had domestic violence is certainly in order. contributed to Dorothy’s killing, and Dunne models or guidelines but over time, he Seeking Causes and Solutions developed EMERG which is widely emulated was committed to changing things to make across the country. There are 1500 programs it safer for abused women to stay in their Snyder believes that the increase in in the United States with most participants communities. domestic violence homicides since 2014 can court-ordered to attend. Even though the advocates, who are be partially attributed to the misogyny of the Trump administration and the greater Courts often mistakenly send men to feminists, are often at odds with the police, availability of guns. She also sees reasons anger management classes, even though a patriarchal institution, the two came for hope in the widespread use of some domestic violence has little to do with anger. together in 2005 in Amesbury to form the version of the Danger Assessment in police Fewer than one quarter of violent men suf- Domestic Violence High Risk Team. departments across the country, in the fer from rage but they are often narcissists Shelters have been around since the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), in who manipulate, blame and deny when con- 1960s with the advent of domestic violence the expansion of Family Justice Centers, in fronted with their violence. They often pres- advocacy, and are necessary in saving lives. charging stalking as a felony, in the increased ent better than victims who are traumatized Today they number over three thousand in communication among agencies, and in the and have messy lives. the United States. They have serious limita- #MeToo movement. Familicide is quite rare but is on the tions, however. Even the nicest, most home- It’s not hard to see why this book has rise. It has not been well studied, possibly like shelter involves a huge disruption in the won so much praise. When Snyder writes because the perpetrators usually kill them- lives of women and their children. about victims’ stories, it reads like a novel. selves and it’s impossible to fully understand There is a now a push to keep abused This is particularly true for the first part their motives. The families of the victims are women in their communities. That can of the book that is dedicated to Michelle often traditionally gendered, religious, and mean transitional housing in some cases. In Monson Mosure. There is plenty of informa- socially isolated. A sudden change in eco- Washington, DC, DASH provides housing tion, accessibly presented, in this book for nomic circumstances can be the catalyst to for two years and sometimes longer, which anyone not familiar with domestic violence. the killings, coming from a warped sense of is often the minimum amount of time it Even for those with some knowledge, there altruism. takes women to rebuild their lives. may be surprises. Synder interviewed at length a man who In Cleveland, Snyder shadowed Martina For instance, a woman is in the most had killed his family but survived his suicide Latessa, one of two detectives assigned danger when she tries to leave an abusive attempt. Whatever insights he might have to the Homicide Reduction Unit. It is not relationship. Less well known is the fact that offered were clouded by his deep religiosity, uncommon for police departments to this danger drops after three months and which led him to believe that what he’d have units dedicated to domestic violence, drops precipitously after a year. The time in done was part of God’s plan. but one focused on homicide reduction is which we need to keep women safe is rela- Snyder did ride-alongs with police offi- unique. Latessa handles 50 high-risk cases a tively short. Can we not do better? cers who were called to domestic violence month and gives her cell phone number to Stalking, sometimes depicted as romantic incidents. Second only to mass shootings, victims so that they can reach her 24/7. in popular culture, is an extremely dan- domestic violence situations are the most Snyder accompanied her to visit “Grace” gerous risk factor in abusive relationships. dangerous for police officers, especially whose husband “Byron” came home drunk, Strangulation vs. any other kind of physical when guns are involved. put a loaded gun to her head, beat her violence is also associated with a high risk of Homicide is eight times more likely when and held her hostage for a week. Snyder homicide, yet it doesn’t always leave marks there are guns. States which have firearm witnessed how Latessa can entertain an and often gets missed. restrictions in their protective orders have autistic child one moment and then gain the continued on page 34 32  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEW When Science Meets Capital By Guy Miller The Tragedy of American Pence’s record From the time the first factory-made Science: includes such anti-sci- cigarette emerged from a rolling machine From Truman to Trump ence gems as: “global in 1880, its toxicity was an open secret. By Clifford D. Conner warming is a myth,” The expression “coffin nails” already dates Haymarket Books, 2020, $26.95 hardcover. “smoking doesn’t kill,” from the 1880s, and “cancer sticks” was in along with his espousal common usage as slang for cigarettes in my “WE’RE NUMBER ONE!” has been of “intelligent design.” 1950s childhood. the battle cry of American exception- The epilogue goes By the 1950s the big tobacco compa- alism for decades. In the best of times on to explain how big nies sensed that storm clouds threatening it rings arrogant and boastful. Now, as agribusiness sets the their profits were gathering on the horizon. the COVID-19 pandemic approaches stage for viral out- Conner puts it this way, “Scientific evidence the year mark and the U.S. death toll breaks. Conner writes, of tobacco’s carcinogenic and addictive climbs over 250,000, the chant has “Poultry farms are the properties began to surface in the 1950s. taken on the ghostly pallor of delu- notorious incubators of Large-scale tobacco growers and cigarette sional. viral diseases (i.e. bird manufacturers recognized the myriad As New York Times columnist Maureen flus).” To grasp the tectonic shift that U.S. threats to their industry that the revelations Dowd summed it up, “The Shining City on egg production has undergone, consider that posed.” the Hill is an ugly pile of rubble.” in 1929 the average chicken flock contained What to do? Certainly, telling the truth The Tragedy of American Science (TAS) was 70 birds, by 1992 the average flock size had was never on the table. Instead, Phillip ready to go to the printer just as the pan- grown to 30,000, and by 2002 the total Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Benson and demic was gaining a foothold in the United chicken population reached a staggering nine Hedges turned to public relations sharpies States. The publisher, Haymarket Books, billion hens. In short, big flocks make big flu. Hill and Knowlton to find a simpler solution: wisely decided to postpone the release Author Clifford D. Conner is a veteran combat good science with bad science. date to allow Clifford Conner to write an historian of science (a one-time aircraft As TAS quotes Hill, “it would be crucial epilogue. “The COVID-19 Pandemic” stands design engineer blacklisted for his stand for the industry to assert its authority over as a searing indictment of the Trump admin- against the Vietnam war). His previous the scientific domain.” To that end two vet- istration’s response to the crisis. books are A People’s History of Science: erans of the Manhattan Project, Frederick Conner condemns the Trump leadership Miners, Midwives and Low Mechanicks (2009) Seitz and Fred Singer, were put on tobacco’s as “characteristically fatuous and obstruc- and Jean-Paul Marat: Tribune of the French payroll. No matter that Seitz was an atomic tionist.” Almost two years before the first Revolution (2012). physicist or that Singer was a rocket scien- confirmed U.S. COVID case, the Trump The 22 chapters in The Tragedy of Ameri­ tist. Their job wasn’t to argue the fine points wrecking crew was busy eliminating the vital can Science can be read independently. of oncology, but to use their credentials as early warning system so essential in contain- Conner’s writing style hits the sweet spot scientists to muddy the waters. It didn’t take ing the spread of a virus. between popular and academic. The con- much: In May, 2018, the White House put the necting thread that weaves TAS together can “Thanks to the largesse of the tobacco National Security Council directorate on be found in the Introduction: industry’s lobbyists, politicians needed only the the chopping block. This directorate had “The river of the tragedy has two headwa- slightest whiff of science to be persuaded not to been set up, in the wake of the earlier SARS ters: corporatization and militarization. Both are burden the cigarette manufacturers with oner- and H1N1 flu alarms, precisely to respond consequences of a profit-driven economic sys- ous regulations.” quickly to a potential viral pandemic. tem that hamstrings humanity’s ability to make No need to attack rigorous research Another cost-cutting blow came in rational economic decisions.” findings head on, just manufacture contro- September, 2019, when the administration The book also spotlights at least two versy where there was none in order to shut down a USAID program called Predict. tributaries to Conner’s river of tragedy: pub- create public uncertainty, and they were Predict had been responsible for identifying lic relations and universities. home free. 1200 viruses, among which — what leaps Tobacco sells a product that can only out in retrospect — 160 were novel coro- From Tobacco Cover Up cause harm to its customers, while Big naviruses. to Big Pharma Pharma markets products that — at least in TAS goes on to catalogue blunder after Tobacco and its corruption of science theory — benefit its customers. blunder by the science-challenged Trump. serves as a template for how corporations But where the two industries are indis- Conner cites several, but nothing sums up can manage the public and, at the same time, tinguishable is in their relentless pursuit of Trump’s frivolous disregard for the burgeon- neutralize the government. profits. Bayer CEO Marjin Dekkers dispelled ing catastrophe better than his appointment Tobacco pioneered the strategy for fend- any lingering doubt about the drug indus- of Vice President Mike Pence to head up the ing off restrictive legislation and altering a try’s priorities: “We did not develop this White House Corona­virus Task Force. negative image. Its methods in doing so have medicine for Indians. We developed it for Guy Miller is a retired United Transportation stood the test of time; Big Pharma and the western patients who can afford it.”* Union member, long-time socialist and lifelong fossil fuel industry among others have suc- If more proof were needed, the opioid resident of Chicago. cessfully copied tobacco’s game plan. epidemic has provided it. A super-profitable AGAINST THE CURRENT  33 money maker for Big Pharma, opioids were researchers working on a grand scale with two hundred Dachau inmates were tested in hyped and sold to the American public like substantial governmental and corporate a low pressure chamber.... Eighty of the two peanuts at a ballpark. funding.” hundred subjects died of asphyxiation, and the The U.S. Drug Enforcement Adminis­ The Second World War, and especially survivors were killed so their bodies could be tration database reveals that 76 billion the Manhattan Project that developed the autopsied.” oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills were atomic bomb, were the harbingers of this Thus was American Cold War science sold between 2006 and 2012. That’s a lot of new reality, and soon the developing Cold polluted with murderers from its inception. pills; a lot of pain. Even more painful is that War was there to seal the deal. Conclusion opioid overdoses are now the leading cause The Manhattan Project at its height The American people’s relation to sci- of accidental death in the United States. employed 130,000 workers and cost ence has always been governed by a series Over the last 40-plus years, neoliberal- $30 billion in 2017 dollars. Weaponized of binaries: approach/avoidance, skepticism/ ism has turned large swathes of America’s Keynesianism was born, and Cold War ide- trust and rational/irrational. heartland into what journalist Chris Hedges ology was soon there to nurture it through Since the days of Truman, corporations calls “sacrifice zones.” The disappearance of its infancy. have mastered the art of manipulating these decent-paying jobs in these zones, leaving Even before Germany surrendered, the contradictions, pressing on the accelerator millions of working-class Americans with lit- U.S. had complied a list of 1600 scientists of trust when profits were to be gained tle hope and less future, is the real pain that complicit in the Nazi war effort — not to (e.g. selling unnecessary drugs), and hitting opioid addiction addresses. be punished, but to be co-opted. The secret the brake of skepticism when profits were program that rounded up and vetted this Thinkers in the Tank threatened (e.g. discrediting environmental German cohort was given the code name concerns over oil drilling.) TAS detours from the critique of “Operation Paperclip.” American science proper with a chapter The Tragedy of American Science makes The biggest fish in the Paperclip pond “Think Tanks and the Betrayal of Reason.” a strong case for freeing science from the was Werner Von Braun, himself a member The founding of the Heritage Institute in fetters of capital and rededicating it for the of the notorious SS, the Schutzstaffel, but 1973 marks in Conner’s words “a new kind good of humanity. “Science for the People,” reinvented by his new American patrons to of think tank, devoted primarily not to more than a chant or a slogan, is an imper- appear as a mild, pragmatic technocrat with studying issues, but to advocacy.” ative. The choice between science for profit a squeaky clean past. His job was to build Throughout the rest of the 1970s the and science for the people is stark and the big rockets for the U.S. military; big rockets number of similar think tanks mushroomed, stakes are high. The survival of our planet that could carry big nuclear payloads. functioning as facilitators to the long rolling demands we make the right choice. n Thermador of American neoliberalism. [The 1960s satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer wrote the lyric: “When the rockets Conner cites the Heartland Foundation Violence — continued from page 32 as the think tank “least likely to pass a smell go up, Who knows where they come down? test.” Because of its aggressively anti-sci- ‘That’s not my department,’ says Werner Von There is only passing reference to ence agenda — especially regarding climate Braun.” — ed.]) domestic violence in the LGBTQIA commu- change — it was dubbed the Flatland In the closing months of WWII, Von nity. When one considers the levels of vio- Institute. Braun had been instrumental in bringing the lence experienced by this community, espe- From kindergarten to high school, V-2, or Vengeance Weapon-2, online. The cially violence against trans men and women, Heartland specializes in lavishly produced V-2 was the world’s first long range guided this is a fairly serious flaw. A full chapter and widely distributed materials injecting ballistic missile. 1,500 V-2’s rained down on would be the minimum one would expect. doubt and misinformation into the blood- Britain in a desperate, last minute attempt Similarly with regards to race, there is stream of American education. Its funding to change the course of the war. less than a paragraph that discusses racial is well hidden and its cash flow thoroughly The missiles killed 7,250 British citizens. differences. In February, 2017, Snyder attend- laundered. It’s a safe bet, however, that the It was even more deadly to the concen- ed a conference in Detroit where she first money trail ultimately leads back to the fos- tration camp inmates who assembled the heard Jacquelyn Campbell talk about the sil fuel industry. weapon, killing at least 10,000 of them in the Danger Assessment. Campbell noted that Dora-Nordhausen camp. Dora-Nordhausen domestic violence is the “second leading Birth of Big Science slave laborers who did not meet quotas cause of death for African American women, There is a romantic vision of science were routinely hanged directly above the third leading cause of death for native featuring heroic scientists grinding away in assembly line. The dead bodies were meant women, seventh leading cause of death for near obscurity: Madam Curie risking her life to be seen, and Von Braun, who visited the Caucasian women.” in a laboratory deep in the bowels of the assembly line, surely saw them. Snyder’s sensibility around the universal- University of Paris, Edwin Hubble spending Another murderous Nazi conscripted ity of the experience of domestic violence sleepless nights peering through the tele- for the U.S. war machine was Dr. Hubertus among women globally does not let her off scope on Mount Palomar, or Watson and Strughold. Brought to Randolf Field, Texas in the hook for not looking more closely at Crick defying the skeptics at Cambridge 1947, Strughold previously plied his trade at some important differences. University. Dachau. At Dachau, Strughold was the direc- She is more consistent in acknowledg- To whatever degree those images were tor of the Luftwaffe’s Institute for Aviation. ing class differences and the options that ever true, they are no longer. Science is Conner writes: wealthier women have. Her stories are big business done on a big scale. Conner “Another focus of Strughold’s research was exclusively of working-class women. deconstructs the myth: “Science today is how hypoxia — oxygen deprivation — at high As a journalist, Snyder did not feel she the domain of large teams of professional altitudes affects human beings. In a 1942 study, could be prescriptive. As such, she focused *On January 21, 2014, Ketaki Gokhale of Bloomberg published a story in Businessweek on disputes over drug patents. mostly on what is being done, not on what The story closed with a rather sinister quote attributed to Bayer CEO Marjin Dekkers, “We did not develop this could be done. Her goal, beyond education, medicine for Indians. We developed it for Western patients who can afford it.” The comment in question was made would be to “render this book obsolete.” by Dekkers at a December 3, 2013 event hosted by the Financial Times, titled “Buffering the Pharma Brand: Restoring Reputation, Rebuilding Trust.” Quoting from Transcript of Bayer CEO Marjin Dekkers’ quote at the December 3, 2013 May this book allow us to take a step in that FT Events, regarding India compulsory license of Nexavar, from Knowledge Ecology International, www.keionline.org direction. n 34  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEW The Goose and the Dragon: An Uprising and Its Fate By Promise Li Hong Kong in Revolt eggs, although it also ated from the start. The Protest Movement and believed that it treated Although not all localists are right wing, the Future of China the goose well. That is Au names a critical aspect often gone By Au Loong-yu not how the goose has unnoted: the right-wing localists have been Pluto Press, 2020, 177 pages plus notes seen it, however.” (138) on the offensive from the end of the 2014 and index, $22.95 paperback. Hong Kong as the Umbrella Movement, actively smearing the “golden-egg-laying left as ineffectual, laying the groundwork for “Two events in 2019 marked the goose” to the “dragon” a whole new generation of activists who turning point for both mainland of the CCP has helped China and Hong Kong: the 2019 are convinced that radical tactics against open up the Chinese revolt and the Covid-19 pandemic. the establishment must be matched with a proletariat to exploit- They lay bare the fundamental con- crude, inchoate sense of ethnicization and tradictions of Greater China accu- ative Western markets xenophobia. On the other hand, the right mulated throughout the ‘reform and since the beginning also lacked organizational and ideological opening’ period. The two events also of market reforms in coherence. The result was a genuine mass started to change the status quo the 1980s. The “two movement, propelled by youth and a new and put the one-party dictatorship capitalisms” — Hong generation, that has nonetheless adopted in China to an even greater test.” (Hong Kong’s laissez-faire system and China’s “state a localist framework inflected for years by Kong in Revolt, 138) capitalism” — complemented each other right-wing ideas. as “state capitalism protected China from HONG KONG’S EXPLOSIVE year-long Hong Kong’s contradictions are effective- predatorial global capital.” (7) struggle, although one of the most live- ly explored in Au’s analysis of the different From the time of Mao Zedong’s reluc- streamed and broadcast uprisings in modern actors in the movement. For Au, many of tance to broach the Hong Kong issue, the history, is still characterized by confounding the city and its movements’ limitations can city has long been just the bargaining chip obscurity in its details. Is it a right-wing be traced back to the CCP’s perpetuation of for Beijing and the West — left by Beijing to movement? Is it a national independence colonial paradigms. the whims of the British colonial system. struggle? Who were the different actors? Hong Kong’s police force, fundamentally In a sense, Au’s perspective helps inter- Au Loong-yu’s timely book, written as unchanged from the British model, “had face his own experience growing up in a city the movement’s protracted struggle transi- always operated under a kind of ‘paramil- formed in tension between colonial powers tioned into a break in what would become itary internal security model’” (32), and with that of the new “1997 generation,” the a global pandemic, not only succinctly cap- the city’s low political consciousness was vanguard of last year’s struggle. tures the timeline of the movement, but also wrought by decades of colonial-style edu- This generation grew up in the shadow provides incisive insights to Hong Kong’s cation and hyper-capitalist infrastructure. of the Handover, caught in a double bind: political conditions and history. But the “doubly unlucky” new generation exploited by the colonial and capitalist The book is written from the perspec- “does not enjoy the stability and prosperity frameworks preserved by Beijing’s author- tive of a long-time left-wing activist and of earlier generations,” and has come of age itarian state, while thinking the West to be active participant in the struggle, bearing during “a period of offensive after offensive its only alternative. witness to the minute details of the move- from Beijing.” (43) Accordingly, it responds with its back ment while discerning and explaining its against the wall only to be condemned by The complex and often contradictory ideological complexity. Without apologizing China as the West’s foreign agents. Like Au’s motivations and actions of the protesters for the movement’s reactionary elements, own 1970s generation, the “1997 genera- reflected the various attempts to make the book ably unpacks the diverse political tion’” is another ‘lost generation” — one sense of the city’s oppression in this colo- choices that the protestors made. that has fought back with full force in all its nial context. The nativists’ demonization of Au’s central conceit of “the dragon and contradictions. Mainlanders plays into the CCP’s trap, allow- the goose” guides his nuanced interpreta- ing it to position the city’s struggle as one of tion of Beijing’s relationship to Hong Kong Contradictions of the Movement purely racism and “foreign interference,” and in the book — one in which the Chinese The book is organized in five chapters — masquerading its own role in perpetuating Communist Party (CCP) has long seen the detailing the overview of the movement, its colonial dynamics. city in coldly economic terms. main actors, important events, how political Au points out that localist activist Ventus “The dragon in Beijing has always treated issues have manifested in the struggle, and Lau promotes a deeply conservative vision Hong Kong as the goose that lays golden a summary that recaps the book’s central of independence for Hong Kong against Promise Li is a member of Solidarity and DSA, arguments as well as delineating recommen- China, just as he has been seen trying to and a former tenant organizer in Los Angeles dations for ways forward. organize Mainland Chinese to support the Chinatown. He is also a member of Lausan The opening chapter gives an essential cause. (55) Localism as a movement has Collective, a left collective and publication pro- context to the rise of Hong Kong localism, often been seen as formed in response moting transnational solidarity with Hong Kong. how the uprising last year became a mass to the perceived failures of traditional (https://lausan.hk). movement, and why the left has been alien- pan-democrats’ nonviolent strategy — and AGAINST THE CURRENT  35 yet pan-democrats’ resources and infra- there are aspects, like the historic upsurge self-determination has the benefit of connecting structure have been pivotal to the move- of new unions, in which the opposition camp with mainland people if we extend this slogan ment, especially during the district elections may offer a way forward from this bind. beyond Hong Kong and encourage the main- in late 2019. land people to pursue their own right to self- These contradictions are brought to There are never total determ­ination as well.” (144-5) life by Au’s dedication to foregrounding In fact, Au’s formulation is one that has the voices of left-leaning protesters, from defeats: the masses remember been reiterated and refined over the years long-time organizer Kyun Go to other anon- their political experience, and of successes and failures in the Hong Kong ymous youth voices, who can speak with movements have always built social movement. Its earliest iteration was nuance on the events they have witnessed in the pages and pamphlets of the Trotskyist on the ground. Student protesters like Wong upon each other. groups in Hong Kong in the 1970s and ’80s Hon-tung spoke of the “chaos and mis-man- — perhaps the most ideologically coherent, agement” during the November siege of the Need for Transnational Solidarity though weak, pole of the city’s little-known Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). radical left at the time. Pioneer Group, of While Hong Kong has become a focal which Au was a key member, wrote similar Students and non-student outside pro­ point in a larger geopolitical game between words in a statement in 1983, a year before testers often clashed over tactics, and capitalist state elites in the last year, it has the Sino-British Declaration: democratic processes slipped away as the also served as a wake-up call for leftists situation turned desperate. These debates and grassroots movements to rethink easy “If Hongkongers can form a movement for even spilled into online forums in real time, solutions and paradigms of anti-imperialism, democracy of great proportions, and publically and for a few days online discourse and self-determination and transnational work- aim to return power to all people, that would on-the-ground action organically bled into ing-class solidarity in the 21st century. empower the people of China and Taiwan one another, as tactical debates, cop-watch The aspiring global hegemon in this to struggle in solidarity. Then, the ten billion Telegram channels, and mutual aid efforts all “New Cold War” has no pretension to Chinese would not be swayed by the CCP raged on while the city suffocated from its covering up its neoliberal ambitions. Rather bureaucracy to oppress Hongkongers’ strength, worst days of teargassing yet. than being a counterweight to global cap- but would be our greatest ally, and fight with us to take back their sovereignty from the state Unruly Mass Movement italism and the forces of imperialism, Xi Jin-ping has become a rising man in Davos, as well.” This detailed overview of events is not a new kind of steward of the global neolib- Though Hong Kong’s sovereign has purely observational: Au’s narrative is a eral order — a position only reinforced by changed, Pioneer’s words remain all the politically rigorous case study in the unruly Trump’s erratic, far-right rule and the decline more prescient and relevant. As Au points processes of democratic, mass movement of U.S. hegemony. out in his book, the colonial infrastructure work. Nothing should be uncritically glori- China’s economic success, in fact, was remains constant, and in a sense, the best fied; but as leftists, we bear witness to every built off of the backs of the Chinese pro- way to address the greatest limitations of contradiction by staying as embedded in the letariat. Its rise to power spells the end of last year’s movement is the same strategy movement as possible. the 20th-century dream that Third World that Pioneer advocated — one that Au pow- This ethos informs Au’s incisive critique solidarity can be achieved without centering erfully re-articulates in the final chapter of of the movement: working-class leadership and self-deter- his book. “(I)t was rare to see actions related to mination movements over left-nationalist Tragedy and Hope assemblies where people had exchanged ideas alliances. or made democratic decisions about future The failure of the Western “anti-war” left From one perspective, Au seems to steps to be taken. Even when this did occur, to grasp this reality is a disaster for global present a political tragedy, in which the city they often ended up quarrelling or splitting up anti-capitalist movements. What Western seems doomed to relive defeat again and very soon thereafter. The reason for this was leftists fear — that ongoing U.S. aggression again. He emphasizes the same political less because of inexperience and more because on China would create a vacuum for imperi- epiphany that he developed as a young left- the mainstream among the radical youth was alist exploitation, as in Libya — has ironically ist again as the solution, albeit one that falls hostile to any idea of assembly, organisation, been the reality for decades, enabled by the upon deaf ears once more. or democratic decision-making such as voting, Chinese state itself: Hong Kong has become But it is ultimately not a tragedy. Au’s believing that these all jeopardised the move- the playground for Chinese capitalists to Marxist perspective means that hope is not ment for democracy.” (117-18) reap the benefits of Western markets, built simply a subjective affect or condition, but As Au suggests in the text, this is not on the backs of an increasingly precarious the result of an objective understanding of a new problem in Hong Kong. Even from class of citizens and a hyper-exploited class the relations of force. the colonial period, its social movements of migrants. Over the years Au has seen protests, are propelled by bursts of spontaneity but But Hong Kong’s complex identity political figures and organizations rise and ultimately fail to sustain themselves. Au attri- means that one cannot simply apply it into fall. The attitude that allowed him to persist butes this to the legacy of colonialism, and a “national liberation” framework. In fact, and stay active in the movement, despite the lack of history of movement-building more and more liberation movements in all odds, is the same that propelled him to and political consciousness. recent years have been falling into a similarly write the text with perspicuity and vigor. Custodial politics has characterized ambiguous state, in which self-determination There are never total defeats: the mass- almost all aspects of Hong Kong’s political does not always entail a progressive sense es remember their political experience, society, from bureaucratized unions to of “national independence,” from Xinjiang to and movements have always built upon NGOs. This movement reacts against that, Puerto Rico. Au’s answer to this problem for each other. Through the uprising last year, but has little local inspiration to draw from Hong Kongers is clear and precise: the Hong Kong people have created for for an alternative and sustainable kind of “(T)he best way forward is neither nation- themselves an enormous groundswell of mass politics. Organization and process are alism nor independence; we only need to be resources and experiences — one that the often conflated with hierarchical thinking, assertive in our identity and our vision for Hong CCP can never fully erase. Au’s text is a tes- but as Au and other local leftists point out, Kong’s self-determination [...] the slogan of tament to this reality. n 36  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEW Method of Mass Murder: Indonesia as Testing Ground By Allen Ruff The Jakarta Method Among them was the fact control over varied nationalized sectors of Washington’s Anticommunist that he set out on a course the economy. Crusade & the Mass Murder of neutrality as an initiator of So what happened in 1965 and after? Program that Shaped Our World the “non-aligned movement.” As Indonesia historian John Roosa has By Vincent Bevins. He certainly overstepped put it, “Almost overnight the Indonesian New York: Public Affairs/Hatchett, 2020, by hosting the April, 1955 government went from being a fierce voice $28 hardcover. “Asia-Africa Conference” at for cold war neutrality and anti-imperialism Bandung with representatives to a quiet, compliant partner of the U.S. AT THE START of October 1965, from 29 decolonizing­ nations world order.” a U.S.-aided and abetted military looking to forge “Third It did not come from nowhere, of course, coup overthrew Indonesia’s left- World” development paths as the groundwork was laid well in advance. leaning Sukarno government. Not indepen­dent from the Cold Already in the mid-1950s, Indonesian army just an account of that tragic episode and War’s East-West binary system of Moscow personnel had begun training at various U.S. the subsequent slaughter of a million or satellites and U.S.-dominated “Free World” bases, most notably at Fort Leavenworth, more actual and alleged communists and the neocolonial dependency. Kansas. horrific imprisonment of another million, The “Bandung Conference” drew Wash­ By 1965, up to a quarter of Indonesia’s veteran journalist Vincent Bevins’ The Jakarta ington’s attention and led, in 1958, to an Army command, some 2,800 officers, Method is something far more. unsuccessful CIA attempt to destabilize had come to receive not only technical This book recounts how what transpired the regime from the outside that included instruction and ideological indoctrination but across the sprawling archipelago nation the arming of outlying-island insurgents importantly, Bevins tells us, some intoxicating became a model for U.S.-assisted rightist and U.S.-piloted air assaults launched from taste of the “American good life” at off-base terror across the Global South. It explores the Philippines. (Striking a familiar note, the bars and clubs. how the blood-drenched annihilation operation was exposed when one of the In addition and continuing through the of Indonesia’s left provided a blueprint planes was shot down and the American Kennedy and early Johnson years, on-the- for, in the author’s words, a “monstrous pilot captured.) ground U.S. advisors instructed the country’s international network of extermination” that When that stratagem failed, U.S. assis­ national police as the country became the laid foundations for future U.S.-led capitalist tance already underway to internal anti- second largest recipient of police funding, “globalization.” communist forces and regime opponents, behind South Vietnam. Simply put, the resource-rich and most notably in the Indonesian military, Such “assistance” provided not only strategically located country of 140 million, increased. weapons but also the technologies deemed too valuable to be left to its own Sukarno’s second major offense was that of surveillance, record keeping and devices, had to be reined in and integrated he provided space in his ruling coalition communication that would come to play a into the U.S. imperial orbit. for the public and unarmed Indonesian vital role in 1965 and after. With the Cold War rhetorical threat Communist Party (PKI). By the early 1960s, The catalyst came on the night of of an expanding “communist menace” the PKI was the third largest CP in the September 30 when a group of regime- providing the pretext, Washington sought world after China and the Soviet Union, loyal junior army officers kidnapped and out, trained, and directly assisted the willing with 3.5 million members and a popular murdered six rightist generals plotting to executioners at all levels while providing base of some 20 million non-members overthrow Sukarno and impose a military them international cover through a organized into a broad array of popular mass junta. (Five of the six had trained in the concerted disinformation campaign in the organizations. United States.) Western press. While the actual role of the PKI in the The Overthrow counter-coup would later become a topic Transgressions Against Empire While Sukarno sought to govern through of debate, the immediate response by the The country’s first president and a long- a delicate balancing act that recognized the military led by the future dictator Suharto standing leader of the national liberation country’s major power blocs — the PKI, a was to depose Sukarno and to open a year- movement that successfully resisted post- Muslim establishment, and the military — long terror campaign that targeted the PKI World War II Dutch attempts to reinstall there certainly was internal opposition. It and all those somehow associated with it, colonial rule, Sukarno had to be overthrown. included old colonial elites alarmed by the actual or alleged. His major transgressions as a non-com­ nationalization of extractive industries and Carried out by the army, police, munist anti-imperialist were several, as the redistribution of large land holdings; paramilitaries, civilian death squads and viewed in Washington and CIA headquarters more conservative anti-communist Muslims Muslim youth gangs, the wave of horrific in Langley. opposed to a range of social reforms violence also took aim at the country’s Allen Ruff is an historian and author, anti-impe- including women’s rights; and elements of ethnic Chinese, rumored to be communist. rialist activist and radio talk show host based in the military command looking to expand Among those targeted by the repression Madison, Wisconsin. their own political authority and increased were the members of Gerwani, the country’s AGAINST THE CURRENT  37 three million-strong women’s organization. mysterious graffitied slogans “Yakarta viene” aged woman who, as a 17-year-old in 1965, As part of a U.S.-assisted propaganda and “Jakarta se acerca” began appearing was picked up and interrogated, accused campaign­ to incite anti-communist hysteria, on walls across Santiago, Chile. Postcards of being a Gerwani “witch,” tortured, military psychological warfare specialists marked with the arachnid logo of the far- repeatedly raped and imprisoned for years. circulated the story that a satanic, com­ right Pátria y Libertad began arriving at the Her only crime? As a worker in a Jakarta munist, witch cult of emasculating Gerwani homes of members of socialist Salvador T-shirt factory she, like all her co-workers, women had assassinated the September 30 Allende’s government. became a member of the PKI-associated generals after mutilating and castrating them Foretelling the September 1973 U.S.- union association. in some bizarre orgiastic ritual. backed “General’s Coup” and mass arrests, When Bevins met her, she was surviving As a result, innumerable Gerwani disappearances and killings to come, the on meager charity and living all alone in members were rounded up, raped and cards simply read “Jakarta is coming.” a small shack, cut off from her family and executed, at times with their entire families, In Brazil during the same period, security ostracized by the local community. Why? while countless others faced years of brutal state officials plotted their own “Operação Her life was still stigmatized by her alleged imprisonment. Jacarta” to execute suspected “subversives.” association with “communism.” The direct U.S. role in the PKI’s While that plan never materialized, the In another passage, Bevins speaks with annihilation, long minimized or denied, military dictatorship — in power since a witness to the mass butchery and burial was central. The Pentagon and CIA rushed the 1964 overthrow of the moderate João on a beach in Bali, a local killing field that in logistical support of all sorts, including Goulart — arrested, jailed and tortured became the site of a luxurious resort. The communication systems that aided in the thousands. island’s tourism boom centered in that very coordination of the persecution and mass The country’s “security services” played location, we learn, started soon after the slaughter across the archipelago. a key role, along with their Argentinian violence as the Suharto regime turned to The U.S. Jakarta Embassy’s “political counterparts, in the U.S.-backed murderous encouraging foreign investment in today’s officer” provided Suharto’s forces with long- campaign of cross-continent state terror, “island paradise.” compiled lists that targeted for execution “Operation Condor.” Toward the end of the book, Bevins thousands of known PKI members in the Clearly, by the early-mid ’70s, as Bevins recounts his conversation with Winarso, unions, peasant and student organizations, informs us, the “Jakarta Method” had at the time of the interview the head of and among the intellectuals. As Bevins morphed into an international state-terror an organization for survivors of the 1965 described it: network under U.S. tutelage. genocide. He asked the lifelong activist who “(T)he U.S. government helped spread the While researching the proliferation of won the Cold War. propaganda that made the killing possible and “The Method” across South America in The man answered succinctly that the engaged in constant conversations with the Army the ’70s and Central America in the ’80s United States won; that capitalism had won. to make sure the military officers had everything (where in Guatemala, the primary target Bevins then asked how that took place. they needed, from weapons to kill lists. The became entire Indigenous peoples deemed Winarso’s answer poignantly went right to U.S. embassy constantly prodded the military “subversive”), Bevins counted a total of the heart of it all. “You killed us,” he replied. to adopt a stronger position and take over the 22 countries in the “U.S. camp” where While it has some minor flaws (the government, knowing full well that the method murderous state terror was employed absence of an index being one), Bevins’ being employed to make this possible was to against unarmed, innocent civilians. He “Jakarta Method” is important. It should round up hundreds of thousands of people actually discovered use of the term “Jakarta” be read by anyone seeking a handle on the around the country, stab or strangle them, and as a code word for such rightist violence in nature of the contemporary global system throw their corpses into rivers. The Indonesian eleven of them. and the ubiquitous violence underlying its military officers understood very well that the While the bulk of the Indonesian mass construction. n more people they killed, the weaker the left murder occurred within a year of the 1965 coup, arrests and jailings continued for a would be, and the happier Washington would Earle — continued from page 44 be.…” decade as Suharto’s “New Order” regime became an exemplar of an inherently It is also, in notable contrast with Justin The Murder Export Trade corrupt, crony capitalist state and an IMF- Townes Earle’s previous work, an album Importantly, what occurred was imme­ backed “favorable investment climate.” that dares to assign blame. The title track, diately viewed in Washington as a major The mass murder also continued as the opener of The Saint of Lost Causes, treats victory in Asia at a time when far more military, with a U.S. “green light,” invaded those cheated and left behind almost like costly and escalating “boots on the ground” neighboring East Timor in December, 1975. vengeful ghosts, biding their time, waiting for efforts in Vietnam had already long soured. The resultant 25-year occupation, amplifying a chance to get their own: Bevins goes so far as to argue that while the full range of “Jakarta Method” genocidal How many encounters do you ever have the Vietnam War dominated U.S. domestic techniques, led to the death of perhaps a But again, how many wolves you ever seen? politics for many years, “it achieved exactly third of the tiny nation’s population. You got about as much chance of seeing nothing;” in contrast, the mass killings in A savvy multilingual journalist who one of them Indonesia, done on the cheap, were possibly traveled worldwide to uncover the story of As you do running into me the biggest “win for the West” in the entire “The Method,” Bevins interviewed survivors Still take nothing for granted Cold War. of the horror on several continents. Their Might live on the best block in Beverly Hills The lessons of the Indonesian “‘scorched stories, interwoven with the histor­ical Be sure you lock up tight at night earth” approach, what came to be known narrative, bring an extraordinary, human ’Cause you know poor folks ain’t got as the “Jakarta Method,” were well-heeded dimension and some glimpse of the long- nothing to steal as the “national security state” ratcheted up lasting personal and collective trauma to the Just pray to the Saint of Lost Causes support for slaughter of unarmed civilians account. Now the man who wrote these words and backing of authoritarian capitalist is himself a ghost. Reports tell us it was a regimes elsewhere. Human Dimensions drug overdose. Was he the lost cause? Are Bevins tells us that some seven years In one of the most moving parts of the we? That’s ultimately a question he couldn’t after the genocide began in Indonesia, book, Bevins pays a visit to Magdalena, an answer on his own. n 38  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEW Charting New Paths: The Comintern in 1922-1923 By Tom Twiss The Communist Movement Included here are their respective countries’ war efforts and at a Crossroads: records of the three who had shown greater readiness to ally Plenums of the Communist enlarged plenums with capitalists than with Communists. International’s Executive Committee, from the critical years Some insisted that the only permissible 1922-1923 1922-1923. Each is united front was “from below” with the Edited by Mike Taber; translated by John Riddell fascinating just for masses, not “from above” with the leaders. Leiden: Brill, 2018; Chicago: Haymarket Books, the addresses by such However, Karl Radek, speaking as majority paperback edition published 2019, 796 pages, $50. leading luminaries of reporter on the united front, explained to international com- the Second Expanded Plenum, it was neces- IN 1922-1923 THE Communist International munism as Gregory sary to go through the Social Democratic found itself in shifting terrain that presented Zinoviev, Leon Trotsky, leaders: fresh opportunities and new dangers. The Nikolai Bukharin, Karl Radek and Clara “Anyone who now says ‘united front from clearing of smoke from European battlefields Zetkin, as well as important contributions below’ misunderstands the situation. For in order and barricades had revealed devastated by lesser-known figures. But the collection is to reach the base, to go to the masses of Social economies and exhausted workers. especially valuable for the light it sheds on Democrats, we must first get an obstacle out of Years of war and revolution had left issues of continuing relevance. our path.”4 European workers exhausted. But by 1922 they were slowly regaining their combative- The United Front During the discussions in this volume and at the Fourth World Congress, the pol- ness in the face of mounting pressure from A red thread running through the plen­ icy gained increasing acceptance within the their ruling classes. ums was a discussion and debate about the Comintern. At the same time, as noted by Following two years of fascist terror united front — a strategy for the unified Taber, it continued to evolve. in Italy, Benito Mussolini’s appointment as action of all working-class organizations prime minister was stimulating the spread of around immediate demands. By late 1922 Comintern leaders had similar movements throughout Europe. The strategy, which had been imple- begun to describe the united front not Meanwhile, in the heartland of the revo- mented by socialists as early as the First simply as a short-term defensive approach, lution, Lenin’s incapacitation by strokes was International, was resurrected by the but increasingly as a longer-term offensive opening a struggle for leadership that would German Communist Party in January 1921. orientation. Also, by the Third Enlarged lead to sharp reversals of Comintern policy. In an open letter the KPD called upon other Plenum in 1923 they had begun to per- In multiple ways then The Communist socialist parties and trade unions to join it ceive its applicability in a range of contexts Movement­ at a Crossroads is a highly appro- in demanding higher wages, reduced living beyond the defense of workers’ standard of priate title for a published collection of costs and workers’ defense. That summer living, including a united front against war, an Comintern materials from these years. This the Comintern’s Third World Congress anti-imperialist united front in colonial and volume, edited by Mike Taber and translat- endorsed the open letter as a model for semi-colonial countries, and a united front 5 ed by John Riddell, is the latest addition to campaigns that would enable the working against fascism. the monumental multi-volume series, “The class to struggle for its immediate interests.2 One other important application of Communist International Publishing Project,” Then in December 1921 the First the policy discussed at the Third Enlarged with titles published by Pathfinder Press, Enlarged Plenum unanimously adopted Plenum was the demand for a “workers’ and Brill, Haymarket and LeftWord Books.1 theses proclaiming that Communist parties peasants’ government.” It consists of proceedings (mostly exten- of the world must strive everywhere for Six months previously, the Fourth World sive summaries of speeches) and resolutions “unity of [the] masses, as broad and com- Congress had issued a call for the creation from the enlarged meetings of the Executive plete as possible, in practical action.” of “workers’ governments” based exclusively Committee of the Comintern (ECCI), trans- The theses explained that the recent on united fronts of workers’ parties.6 The lated primarily from the German versions of offensive by international capitalism against Third Plenum broadened the class base of the official public record. the living standard of workers had given the envisioned front to include working The enlarged plenums were important rise to a spontaneous striving for unity. By peasants in all countries — although for gatherings, described as “mini-congresses” championing this impulse, Communist par- North America the slogan was modified to by the ECCI’s president Gregory Zinoviev, ties could expect to attract broader support “workers’ and farmers’ government.”7 of representatives from the Comintern’s from workers and become better situated While urging parties to forge united member parties between world congresses. to expose resistance to unity from the fronts in all these areas, the Comintern 3 Tom Twiss is a librarian emeritus at the Univer­ reformists and centrists. leaders repeatedly stressed the necessary sity of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Trotsky Not everyone in the Comintern wel- limits of those alliances. Most importantly, and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy comed the new approach. Its most vocifer- they advised parties “to maintain absolute (Haymarket, 2015), and co-author with Dianne ous critics were in the leaderships of the autonomy and complete independence,” Feeley and Paul Le Blanc of Leon Trotsky French and Italian parties. Representatives of including the “right and capacity to express and the Organizational Principles of the both sections distrusted and resisted collab- . . . their opinion regarding the policies of Revolutionary Party (Haymarket, 2014). oration with reformists who had endorsed all working-class organizations,” and they AGAINST THE CURRENT  39 explicitly excluded support by united fronts and resolution in the Crossroads volume is adopting universally binding decisions only for capitalist governments and electoral alli- that the reader can see the appreciative on questions in which such decisions are ances with capitalist parties.8 responses of the other delegates and their possible.”14 remarks on the growth of fascism in their By the time of the Third Enlarged The Struggle Against Fascism own countries. Plenum, the Norwegian and Swedish parties A crucial related issue that the One especially significant — and trou- had begun to chafe at the “super-centralism” Comintern addressed in these years was the bling — contribution to the discussion was they perceived in the Comintern. rise of fascism. Karl Radek’s notorious “Schlageter speech.” Although delegates from both parties The Comintern briefly discussed the Radek began by confessing it had been dif- claimed to be strong advocates of central- issue at the Fourth World Congress in ficult for him to follow Zetkin’s report, for ism, they argued that the Comintern was November 1922, shortly after Mussolini’s hovering before his eyes was “the corpse interfering in issues that were purely local appointment as prime minister. However, of a German fascist, our class opponent,” in nature and insisted that centralism should its first serious examination of fascism was Albert Leo Shlageter, who had been execut- be introduced only gradually in their parties in a brilliant report and resolution pre- ed by the French. because of their strong federalist tradi- 15 sented to the Third Enlarged Plenum the Schlageter was a member of the right- tions. Predictably, their opponents in the following June by Clara Zetkin, the famous wing paramilitary German militia, the Comintern were more inclined to see the veteran of German socialism, collaborator Freikorps, which had carried out acts of international implications of all the issues of Rosa Luxemburg, and leading figure in sabotage against the French occupation of under discussion. the Communist women’s movement. The the Ruhr. After his arrest and execution Zinoviev, while admitting “We should not Communist movement was already well by the French in May 1923, Schlageter was intervene in local questions,” insisted “All acquainted with brutally repressive rightist treated as a martyr by the Nazis and other the major questions today are international regimes. But Zetkin emphasized the distinc- German rightists. At the plenum Radek sim- in significance.” tiveness of fascism as a mass-based move- ilarly eulogized him as a “martyr of German Others were even more extreme ment of violent terror. nationalism,” and a “courageous soldier of in their assertions. Arthur Ewert from She explained that in Italy and other the counterrevolution” who deserved “to be Germany argued, “[T]here are hardly any parts of Europe, the war had brought the sincerely honored by us, the soldiers of the issues that have only a national, local sig- collapse of the capitalist economy and bour- revolution.”11 nificance,” and Richard Schüller from the geois state, the impoverishment of workers, No one at the plenum objected spe- Youth International flatly declared, “All issues and the proletarianization of the middle cifically to Radek’s tribute to Schlageter, before the individual sections are of concern 16 classes. Seeking a way out of the crisis, those although a Czechoslovakian delegate reject- to the International.” most adversely affected should have been ed the appropriation of nationalism on However, the Comintern reality seems drawn to socialism but were demoralized by which it was based.12 However, the German to have been considerably less oppressive the failures of the working-class leadership. Social Democrats subsequently denounced than these remarks suggest. In 1922 both Consequently “masses in their thou- the speech as an obvious appeal to the the French and Italian sections refused to sands” streamed to the fascists, who court- Nazis for collaboration. participate in a major united front initiative of the Comintern, yet they experienced no ed them with anti-capitalist demagogy and Radek later explained that his purpose disciplinary consequences. promises of salvation by a strong, authori- had been to combat fascism politically by During these plenums, the decisions tarian state towering above social classes. showing the petty bourgeoisie that capi- taken by the ECCI that were related to the This growing fascist movement was wel- talism was the source of their legitimate policies and practices of individual parties comed and supported by the capitalist class national grievances. But as Taber has appro- were almost always recommendations, not as an “extralegal and nonstate instrument of priately observed, Radek’s approach involved instructions. Most of the delegates who force” that could further subjugate the pro- serious dangers, including the possibility spoke about the direct involvement by letariat, facilitating the reconstruction of the that such adaptation to the right could lead the Comintern in the affairs of their par- capitalist economy. The movement’s shock sections of the working-class movement to ties testified to the helpful nature of that troops were the fascist gangs that terrorized cross over to the class enemy.13 peasant organizations, unions and parties of intervention. Furthermore, the discussions the left. Centralism in the Comintern and debates throughout the plenums were remarkably open and freewheeling.17 Zetkin called for a united front of all An additional concern addressed in labor organizations and labor parties to the plenums was the accusation that Paths Not Taken and the Road Ahead organize workers’ self-defense against the the Comintern was becoming exces­ As Taber explains, all the Comintern pol- fascist attacks. She also emphasized the need sively centralized. From the beginning, the icies discussed here would be dramatically to challenge fascism, ideologically and polit- Comintern’s founders had envisioned that it revised in the years after the Third Enlarged ically, by building a communist movement would be not only democratic, but also sig- Plenum. On one level, this was the result that addressed the needs of the social layers nificantly centralist in nature. Decentralism, of the change in leadership that began with that were drawn to it. they believed, had been largely responsible Lenin’s incapacitation in 1923. More deeply, it In this regard, she viewed the slogan of for the failure of Social Democracy to was a product of the bureaucratization that “workers’ and peasants’ government” as uphold its internationalist principles at the was already discussed in the appeal submit- especially valuable for combatting fascism in outbreak of the world war. ted by the Soviet Workers’ Opposition to rural areas. At the same time, she stressed Consequently, the Comintern stat- the First Enlarged Plenum in 1922. the importance of promoting the inspiring utes adopted in 1920 emphasized that the The rejection of the Comintern’s 1922- world outlook of communism as an alterna- Communist International “must be orga- 1923 understanding of both united fronts 9 tive to fascism. nized in a far more centralized way than was and fascism was most evident from 1928 Zetkin’s report and resolution have been the Second International,” while conceding onwards. During the years 1928-1933 (the published along with useful supplementary that the Comintern would need “to take “Third Period”), the Stalinist Comintern material in a separate Haymarket volume.10 into account the diverse conditions under disastrously insisted there was no real However, a benefit of reading the report which each party has to struggle and work, continued on page 43 40  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEW A Life in the Revolution By John Barzman Memoirs of a Critical munists and Circumstances (wars, repression, demo- Communist socialists conti- ralization, cultural divisions) do not always Towards a History of nuing a century- make such a process realistic, but it was the Fourth International old struggle. possible in the years covered by the book, By Livio Maitan Individuals even if sometimes only on a very small scale. Preface by Daniel Bensaid, translated by periodically Stretching material resources and human Gregor Benton, edited with and redis­covered, endurance to the breaking point, the inter- introduction by Penelope Duggan through national mechanism worked and produced a Resistance Books, IIRE, Merlin Press, 2019, research or framework for understanding — and acting 456 pages, $28. experience in on — world reality that is an essential struggles, that legacy today. For me this is quite different LIVIO MAITAN WAS born in Venice the doctrine and from a collection of radical individuals inves- in 1923; he was politically active from practice of these tigating social dynamics in the context of 1943 until his death in 2004. During parties were academia, the news media, banks or official this period, both the world capitalist incompatible administrations. system and the bureaucratic coun- with the socia- There might be intermediate solutions tries that escaped its grip generated lism advocated such as circles of intellectuals and militants great discontents, social movements by the founders producing a journal, or a professional jour- and crises. Unfortunately none of and leaders of nalist being an active member of a revolu- these upsurges was able to establish a the socialist movement before the 1920s. tionary organization. But what we see in society that was democratic and egalitarian But their discovery was slow, painful, incom- Maitan’s testimony is somehing different: a in a lasting way. plete, often prevented from reaching a wide person functioning as a leading member of a As a young socialist in postwar Italy, audience, and could not be tested even on a network of revolutionary groups in 20 to 50 Livio could see the problem as it was small scale by practical collective action. countries, a rare and interesting experience. crystallizing into the Cold War.1 When he How much faster and deeper would be Since the 19th century, social move- met the Fourth International in Paris in their learning process if they could meet an ments of different nations have organized April 1947, he decided to dedicate his life organization that transmitted the lessons international congresses and elected perma- to making socialist democracy a real per­ drawn by others like them and brought nent coordinating bodies. Political workers spective for militants searching a way out of comfort and assistance to continue the fight. reached out to form the First, Second, Third the “Washington or Moscow” dilemma. He This was the function that he ascribed to and Fourth Internationals, each with differ­ stood by this commitment all his life. the Fourth International. ent functions and forms of organization. Craft and industrial unions, women’s What was needed, he thought, was not A Global “Collective Intellectual” just more brilliant books like Trotsky’s The organizations, civil rights, peace and envi- Revolution Betrayed, but a network of mili- In his memoirs, Livio often uses the term ronmental movements also regrouped tants organized globally and sharing informa- “we” for the FI: we decided, we sent, we beyond national borders. Today Greenpeace, tion, analysis and at times, a helping hand. reacted, we made a mistake. Amnesty International, antiwar coalitions, As Livio joined the fray, the worldwide He does not deal specifically with the school strikes to save the planet, all clearly socialist movement was embodied almost issue of the “International” as a collective need to coordinate their actions across exclusively by states (the USSR, Yugoslavia, intellectual formulating the collective will of several countries. China) whose leaders called themselves rational humanity. But as I read page after Such international organizations inevi- communist, and large social-democratic page, I was led to make an analogy with tably face the question of determining the parties prepared to manage capitalist states Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the party as basis for representing national delegations, engaged in the Cold War. the collective intellectual of the working electing international officers, funding com- Both trends, known as the “traditional class and oppressed layers of one country, mon activity, translating not just words but leaderships,” expended considerable energy grasping the totality of the situation and for- national cultures and experiences to make to attract, control to their advantage, and mulating the collective will for the common them understandable to others, settling dis- sometimes repress popular protests. They good. putes, rooting out fraud and corruption in presented themselves to the world as com- Can one transpose this concept from the their own ranks, finding compromises. territorial context for which it was meant, Livio’s story provides many case studies John Barzman was born in Los Angeles and to the whole planet? Maitan describes how of such problems, the solutions applied and lives in France. A university professor, he is active his international group gathered information their outcome. in the SNESup union and Ensemble! His U.S. both from the press and from militants, experience includes serving on the National followed situations, debated interpretations, A Contribution to FI History Committee of the SWP and United Secretariat produced analyses, tested them, elaborated The FI had already gone through diffe- of the Fourth International between 1974 and balance sheets, sent emissaries to verify, rent phases before Livio joined, and would 1979. He is the author of Dockers, métallos, published and distributed its findings, coordi- go through at least three phases during the ménagères : mouvements sociaux et cultures nated actions, elected and replaced leaders. period described in the book: 1945 to 1968, militantes en France 1912-1923. AGAINST THE CURRENT  41 a chain of mainly small organizations hoping the resulting isolation and fatigue of the until Pablo became engrossed in material for a break; 1968 to 1985, rapid growth most enlightened and dedicated militants. support for the Algerian liberation struggle. leading to a stronger international center; But Livio’s story brings out another fac- Pablo saw it as a potential future base for 1985 to 2000, adaptation to setbacks and tor: the social atmosphere and leadership a much enlarged revolutionary movement, downsizing. styles that can develop in these groups. For and one centered on the colonial revolution. The author does not pretend to write Livio, the FI “mainstream” or “majority” to Reunification with the U.S. SWP proceeded a full or even skeletal history of the FI in which he belonged escaped the main devia- without him; when Pablo left in 1965 he had these years, but rather a contribution based tion of authoritarian or dictatorial regimes. very little support inside the International. on what he found most significant through Maitan was part of several teams, one of On Posadas, Livio’s account is precious. his participation in leadership bodies and which was dubbed “the troika”: Maitan, What comes out is the portrait of a man specific assignments. But that is quite a Ernest Mandel and Pierre Frank, known for convinced of his own importance and willing mouthful: he offers detailed accounts of a while in the U.S. Socialist Workers Party to bully his closest associates and subvert major events, problems they posed for revo- as “MMF.”2 democratic procedures.4 lutionaries, and the organizational efforts In fact there was no single preeminent Both Posadas and Nahuel Moreno used deployed to respond to them. leader in this mainstream current. It always Argentina as their base to bring other Latin In the “Eastern bloc” countries receiving brought together representatives of several American sections into their orbit and claim sustained attention are the Soviet Union countries on the basis of pluralism, free dis- to represent the colonial revolution against and Russian Federation, Yugoslavia, China, cussion, a fair representation and inclusion the allegedly Eurocentric mainstream of the Poland; in the “global south” Argentina, of minorities in leadership bodies. It empha- Fourth International.4 “The concept of the Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Algeria, Ceylon sized the democratic dimension in democra- guiding section was present and played out (Sri Lanka); in the “north” Spain, Portugal, tic centralism. in recurring behaviour and practices, linked France. In addition, interesting insights on The only exception took place in 1952- to cultural pretensions.” (216) particular episodes concern Czechoslovakia, 53 when Michel Pablo sought to impose But there are other figures of the same Germany, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, his international line on the majority of the type. In the U.S. SWP, “(Jack) Barnes and his Colombia, El Salvador, Vietnam, Indonesia, French section, which opposed it. Attempts group seriously corrupted the internal life of Greece, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. were made relatively rapidly to repair the the movement, by making systematic use of There are occasional worthwhile ensuing split, but the explosion had set in the arbitrary category of ‘disloyalty’ toward mentions of India, Pakistan, Japan, the motion dynamics and bitter recriminations the party…” (330-331) United States, Canada, Ireland and Britain. that could no longer be overcome.3 Livio discusses only characters that he Discussions on the revival of feminist the- Of interest for readers of ATC is the fact dealt with inside the FI, but his insights mes appear after 1968 and environmental that despite considerable attention focused might inspire analogies with attempts to preoccupations emerge in the 1980s. on the analysis of the Soviet Union and build international organizations by leaders The book is spiced with first-hand social transformations in Eastern Europe such as Gerry Healey, Ted Grant and Tony impressions, such as the qualms of an orga- and China, then Cuba, the FI did not consi- Cliff (Britain), Pierre Lambert and “Hardy” nization having won parliamentary represen- der “differences over the Russian question” (France).5 Livio believes that participation in tation and invited to join a left government as grounds for a separate organization. a democratic and pluralist International can (the Lanka Sama Samajama Party of Ceylon Various analyses of the issue coexisted be a counterweight to “authoritarian temp- 1963-65), or militants having won mass and evolved within the FI and its sections. tations.” However, this is easier to accept in influence in trade unions and peasant lea- Attempts were made to overcome the a small country like Belgium than in a major gues and preparing to particpate in demons- 1939-40 split in the U.S. SWP between the imperialist center. trations forbidden by the army (Bolivia). supporters of Cannon and Shachtman and In the case of the United States, Livio More generally, Livio’s specific interests similar splits in a few other countries. identifies an argument that underlay the are evident in the analysis of the contra- The issue reemerged after 1989 as the option of both James P. Cannon in 1953 dictions of bureaucratized systems (USSR, Soviet bloc disintegrated. Even then it was and Jack Barnes in the ’70s and ’80s: “At its China, Yugoslavia), the potential and limits of unclear which description best illuminated origin lay an idea that was, in itself, incontes- the Maoist and Castroist currents, shifts in reality: “bureaucratic collectivism,” “state table: the fate of the struggle for socialism in “the center of gravity of the world revolu- capitalism,” “degen­erated and deformed the world would be decided, in the last ana- tion.” For a reader seeking to understand workers states,” “Stalinism,” “bureaucratized lysis, in the supreme bastion of capitalism, in the fundamental features of world politics societies of the transition.” In examining the the United States. This was the origin of the from the end of World War II to the new weaknesses and strengths of each approach, propensity to consider the role of the SWP century, the book provides a framework and which could best guide promoters of socia- as primary…” (264) many important examples. list democracy? To me, this argument explains neither the dominant relation which the Barnes Difficulties of Organization Authoritarian Centralizers leadership imposed on its allies in Canada, Decisive events for the relationship of Livio deals most extensively with three Australia, New Zealand and Britain, nor the forces between the classes on a world scale cases of authoritarian centralist leaders that monolithic conformism which it demanded are the main but not the only subject of the emerged inside the FI and then left it: Michel of its own membership, through its twists memoirs. Livio also deals with the difficulties Pablo, Juan Posadas and Nahuel Moreno. and turns. But the United States is not one of small revolutionary organizations to func- Pablo seems to have developed an of the subjects on which Livio worked the tion in a pluralist and democratic fashion. authoritarian style not in any national base most during his long career, and one can be The main source of these problems is (Greece or France) but amid expectations thankful for his lucid interpretation of what identified as the weight of objective fac- in very difficult times (1949-1953) that the he did witness. tors: the ability of capitalism to overcome International needed a resolute secretary its crises, the wealth and power of state who could step into the shoes of its mar- For Further Exploration bureaucracies, the small numbers willing to tyred founder, Leon Trotsky. In his introduction, the author regrets prioritize the struggle for emancipation, the According to Livio, this tendency was that neither Mandel nor Frank wrote a effects of enemy propaganda and repression, limited by Mandel, Frank, himself and others political autobiography, and announces 42  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 that his text will not be a history of the some of its fundamental achievements: respectively leaders of the Italian, Belgian and French International but a personal testimony. maintaining a revolutionary Marxist analysis sections. According to Maitan, Michel Pablo (Raptis), a prominent figure between 1943 and 1961, was the first Besides the omission of Italy, apparently of world reality, detailing the perspective of to apply the term “troika” to them in the 1950s, because because another book already dealt with socialist democracy,7 overcoming the iso- they stood in the way of his supremacy. that story, important subjects are not devel­ lation of revolutionary socialists operating 3. The main result was the formation of a dissident cur- rent in France which gradually congealed as “Lambertism oped. Perhaps the FI as a whole did not deal in one country, and producing an analysis and refused the reunification of 1963. Michael Löwy iden- with them extensively, or where the FI did of major events in the world since 1945 tifies the problem in his review: “Heroism of reason. On expend considerable time on them, they showing at once their potential for socialism Livio Maitan’s memoirs,” http://europe-solidaire.org/spip. php?article51838. were not assigned to him. Or perhaps he and the obstacles that must be overcome to 4. Posadas had established the Buro Latino Americano chooses to gloss over them. achieve that goal. (BLA) and Moreno the Secretariado Latino Americano Thus we find very little on northern Today, the new generation of revolutiona- del Trotskismo Ortodoxo (SLATO). Europe (Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia, ries are told that a socialist democracy with 5. Currents known respectively as Healeyism, “The feminist and ecological values is utopian, and Militant” (Grant), International Socialism (Cliff), Switzerland, Belgium and Holland), the Lambertism, Lutte Ouvrière (Robert Barcia). Smaller United States and Canada, important parts that they must choose between profoundly attempts include the Spartacist (Jim Robertson) and of the Middle East (Egypt, Iraq, Syria, the corrupt and unfair capitalist welfare states other offshoots. The circumstances of each internal or bureaucratic dictatorship on the Chinese regime’s incubation and rise need comparative analysis. Arabian peninsula), Japan, India and Australia. “Cult studies” relevant to our subject examine religious The growing attention given by the FI model. The recent history presented in Livio and political volunteer organizations focusing mainly on or its sections to the women’s movement, Maitan’s Memoirs shows why it is worth leaders (charisma, transmission, persuasion, managerial preparing for breaches to open in these two skill), but also on followers (transference, self-definition, antiwar and ecology issues, immigrant or dedication). systems and strive for socialism. n sub-proletarian sectors, gay movements, long 6. For more material on the subject, the introduction before 2000, is underrepresented. We await Notes by Penelope Duggan recommends the Marxists Internet the accumulation of memoirs, oral testimo- 1. He says little about how he radicalized first as Archive including the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line Mussolini’s fascist regime was collapsing in northern (ETOL), and RaDar (documents in French) and Red Mole nies and archives from different countries, Italy between 1943 and 1945, then in the turmoil that Rising (documents in English). and attempts at synthesis to get a more pre- followed. Readers interested in the Italian far left can 7. See “Dictatorship of the proletariat and Socialist cise idea of the balance sheet of the Fourth probably find more in La strada percorsa. Dalla resistenza Democracy” adopted by the 12th World Congress of 6 ai nuovi movimenti: lettura critica e scelte alternative, 2002, the Fourth International in 1985 (main author: Ernest International for that period. not yet translated. Mandel), available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/ In the meantime, Livio’s book stresses 2. Livio Maitan, Ernest Mandel and Pierre Frank were mandel/1985/dictprole/1

The Comintern in 1922-1923 — continued from page 40 difference between Social Democracy and Along with a clear translation by John 1159-1162. fascism, thereby excluding any alliances with Riddell, the volume has a valuable introduc- 7. Taber, 414-415, 446, 457, 654. 8. Taber, 260, 361, 355. 18 Social Democrats. tion by Mike Taber that provides essential 9. Zetkin’s report is in Taber, 580-606. Her resolution is Then in 1935, it redefined fascism as historical context. It includes an extraordi- on pages 664-669. “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most nary collection of notes and a glossary that 10. Clara Zetkin, Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win, edited and with an introduction by Mike Taber reactionary, most chauvinistic and most together identify virtually every individual and John Riddell, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017. imperialist elements of finance capital,“and and event mentioned and that by themselves 11. Radek’s “Schlageter speech” is in Taber, 613-18. instructed Communists to form binding constitute a major scholarly contribution. 12. Taber, 512. 13. Taber, 24-27. For other balanced accounts of Radek’s alliances even with “anti-fascist” bourgeois Additionally, the book contains a useful speech and the subsequent “Schlageter line” of the parties. All this was accompanied by a chronology of events that impacted the KPD, see Pierre Broué, The German Revolution 1917-1923, deepening centralization that eliminated the Communist movement during the years Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006, 727-730; E.H. Carr, The Interregnum: A History of Soviet Russia Vol. 4, London: autonomy enjoyed by Comintern sections 1921-1924, an extensive bibliography of Macmillan Company, 1954, 179-186. and the openness of Comintern discussions works consulted, and a comprehensive 14. Taber, 538. John Riddell, ed., Workers’ of the World and in 1922-1923. and very useable index. All in all, this is an Oppressed Peoples, Unite!: Proceedings and Documents of The Communist Movement at a Crossroads, the Second Congress, 1920, New York: Pathfinder Press, important and worthy addition to a remark- 1991, vol. 2, 770. For a discussion of the organizational along with the other volumes in the series, able series. n principles of the early Comintern, see Taber, 32-36; and is an essential resource for studying the John Riddell, “Party Organization in Lenin’s Comintern,” history of the Communist movement and its Notes Marxist Essays and Commentary, Nov. 10, 2020, Part 1, 1. For a complete list of the titles in this series, see John “Defining Democratic Centralism,” https://johnriddell. parties. But more than that, it is a valuable Riddell, “Comintern Project Book List Hits a Dozen,” com/2020/11/08/party-organization-in-lenins-comintern/, tool for those who would apply the lessons Marxist Essays and Commentary, June 24, 2019, https:// and Part 2, “How Democratic Centralism Was Applied,” of the early Comintern. johnriddell.com/2019/06/24/comintern-project-book-list- https://johnriddell.com/2020/11/10/how-democratic-cen- hits-a-dozen/. tralism-was-applied/. For activists in today’s United States, 2 John Riddell, ed. and trans., To the Masses: Proceedings 15. Taber, 431, 437, 468, 537-538, 541, 558. Zetkin’s analysis of fascism seems especially of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921, 16. Taber, 477, 545, 547. relevant. Despite commonly heard claims Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015, 1061-1063, 939-940. For 17. On the indiscipline of the French and Italian sec- the history of the united front slogan, see Mike Taber’s tions, see Taber, 290-291. For recommendations to the that the Trump administration is fascist, it “Editorial Introduction” in The Communist Movement Norwegian section, see Taber, 626-632. An exception clearly does not resemble the mass-based at a Crossroads, edited by Mike Taber and translated by to the practice of recommendations was the Third movement of violent terror depicted by John Riddell, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018, 1-49, and Plenum’s demand that the Italian section alter its exec- John Riddell, “The origins of the united front policy,” utive body to facilitate a fusion with the Socialist Party. Zetkin. Nevertheless, it is also clear that International Socialism, Issue 130, April 5, 2011, http://isj.org. (Taber, 682). For appreciative remarks by delegates about among Trump’s supporters there are ele- uk/the-origins-of-the-united-front-policy/. Comintern intervention, see Taber, 466, 543, 545-546, ments of such a movement, that Trump 3. Taber, 254-264. 547, and 557. However, the Swedish delegate Höglund, has relied upon and encouraged those ele- 4. Taber, 284. See also 137. complained of Comintern interventions in Norway and 5. Taber, 17-18, 219, 256, 605-606, 668. See also John Denmark. (Taber, 428.) ments, and that they continue to be active. Riddell, “The united front: adoption and application,” Links 18. Taber, 22-23. One leading Marxist who continued The Communist Movement at a Crossroads International Journal of Socialist Renewal, July 2, 2020, http:// to apply the Comintern’s earlier understanding of both provides some important clues to how links.org.au/the-united-front-adoption-and-application. united fronts and fascism was Leon Trotsky. For Trotsky’s 6. John Riddell, ed. and trans., Toward the United Front: writings on fascism, see especially Leon Trotsky, The contemporary activists can combat such a Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, New York: Pathfinder movement. International, 1922, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011, Press, 1971. AGAINST THE CURRENT  43 c u l t u r a l n o t e s

The Saint of Lost Causes On the Life of Justin Townes Earle By Alexander Billet THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, crit- part left unad- tence always denied us. ics would comment on Justin Townes dressed. If you Though comparing him with his father Earle’s apparent lack of politics. It want to know remains an unfair way to measure his music, wasn’t an observation out of nowhere. why a signifi- one can nonetheless hear a poignant narra- Justin was the son of fellow record- cant portion of tive come out when listening to the music ing artist Steve Earle, the “hardcore post-industrial of Steve and Justin side-by-side. troubadour,” a musician whose proud America votes Steve’s is the story of post-’60s radi- embrace of socialist politics compli- for Donald calism, stubbornly holding on even as the cates the widespread (and inaccurate) Trump, this is prospects of working America are gutted association of country music with con- it. It is also the before his eyes. While notions of inherently servative politics. reason for a conservative country music and country To be sure, the younger Earle, who great amount people swirl around him, he clings fiercely to died at the age of 38 in August, was of despair and those beautiful stories of people struggling his own artist. Where his father’s sound has hopelessness, loneliness and isolation. for a life worth living. always embraced a rough-around-the-edges These are the types of places where an Justin’s music picks up the torch, but in folksiness,­ Justin’s songs were a polished opioid haze is preferable to acknowledging an undeniably millennial manner. Much as blend of country, R&B, gospel, blues, and your own futurelessness. Neither Trump nor he wants there to be something better, his early rock and roll. Steve’s radical parables Biden — who played his own crucial role in experience tells him otherwise. weren’t regular parts of Justin’s repertoire. the disappearance of American jobs — can He has no reason to disbelieve what Justin’s lyrical stories were always more per- offer anything to fundamentally resolve this. his father tells him, but he himself can only sonal, intimate and poetic. touch the things that make him alien in his The Hurt Inside It would be wrong, however, to say that own home. Through the majority of his the younger Earle’s music doesn’t reflect In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, albums, we are left wondering what would something of the working-class experience, Justin said, happen were these exquisitely painful sto- particularly among young people. Being born “[I]t ain’t a drug company’s problem that ries to be imbued with a bit more of his to a country music legend didn’t guaran- somebody started taking pills. You know what father’s righteous anger. tee Justin much of anything. He was raised the problem is? It’s something hurt inside them. mostly by his mother Carol Ann after Steve Something wasn’t right inside them. And the Kicking Against the Confines left and his parents split. In interviews years world didn’t treat them right. They never felt In the spring of 2019, Justin Townes Earle later he would talk about being abused and comfortable. And they found something that released what was to be his last album: The molested (he never said by whom). made them comfortable.” Saint of Lost Causes. Again, his protagonists Though he would end up playing in and Of course, he was wrong about the com- are all kicking against the confines of their touring with his father’s band, he was kicked plicity of drug companies. But he was right own isolation. But there is a greater aware- out after his own addictions turned him into about the wider setting. A world that fails ness of the active role his settings play in a whirlwind of addiction and destruction. to meet our human needs is one in which making existence so intolerable. According to him, he was 12 the first time humans are slowly broken. “Appalachian Nightmare” takes us from he tried heroin, 16 when he first overdosed. This is what makes Justin Townes Earle’s Cincinnati to West Virginia to Tennessee The phrase “white working-class” is music resonate. He was a storyteller first to tell us of a doomed young man over- almost used as a slur in American political and foremost. Given his namesake — whelmed with addiction and crime, gunned discourse. Liberals love to trot it out with Townes Van Zandt, perhaps the greatest down after accidentally killing a cop in a a wink, a coded phrase for rural drawls, singer-songwriter in country music history robbery. MAGA hats and a fanatical love of guns. But — he had better be. In interviews he also “Over Alameda” is a story of a Black then, class is mostly cultural to American lib- referenced Woody Guthrie as an influence. family leaving the Mississippi Delta behind erals, devoid of any real economic meaning. His albums, particularly early ones like for Los Angeles, only to find the same segre- The disinvestment and immiseration Midnight at the Movies and Harlem River gation and deprivation waiting for them. Two of the American Rust Belt is for the most Blues, tapped into an existential displace- songs, “Don’t Drink the Water” and “Flint Alexander Billet is a writer of prose and poetry, ment that defines young working-class lives; City Shake It” use the Flint, Michigan water fiction and nonfiction. He is an editor at Locust the feeling of being rootless and yet trapped. crisis as their backdrop. Review, co-host of Locust Radio and regularly The songs’ stories will take place in This is an album populated by shuttered writes about music for Jacobin. This article Memphis or New York as often as they do factories and poisoned wells, desperate peo- originally appeared in the German publication nondescript small towns. No matter the ple and broken hearts. In other words, it is a Melodie & Rhythmus. He can be reached setting or action, there is always a forlorn profoundly American album, coming from a at alexanderbillet.com and on Twitter: @ sense of a larger world that the narrator genre obsessed with its own American-ness. UbuPamplemousse. He lives in Los Angeles. cannot reach, a more fulfilling plane of exis- continued on page 38 44  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021 Letter from the Editors — continued from the inside front cover restrictions, sometimes violent, although nothing that to choose the risk of illness or financial ruin — while stock we know resembling the armed right-wing takeover of market indices reach all-time highs and billionaire fortunes the Michigan state legislature building or the kidnap- proliferate like toxic weeds — should be unthinkable. assassination plot against governor Gretchen Whitmer. But these are products of how capitalist production and Although protests against closures may be instigated or markets operate — business not only as usual, but with manipulated by far-right forces, they reflect real popular even more brutality in moments of crisis. grievances ripe to be exploited. (Of course, severe economic shutdowns should not be confused with simple Emerging Global Crises common-sense rules about masks and social distancing, the Despite vaccines, human society today is increasingly defiance of which is pure-and-simple celebration of pseudo- vulnerable to novel pandemics. The misnamed “Spanish “libertarian” irresponsibility.) flu” was spread globally by the mass troop movements Lockdowns and quarantines pose tricky political, public and other consequences of a world war. Compared to health and civil liberties problems. On the one hand, they that relatively unusual circumstance, today’s world is much work: Melbourne, Australia has emerged from a near-total more subject to the rapid spread of what previously might shutdown after 28 straight days of no new cases or deaths. have been local outbreaks. For one thing, rapid mass global At the same time, harsh closures inflict social as well as travel can carry a virus to the corners of the earth before economic damage, and become more difficult to enforce the it’s even detected at the source. Second, human incursions longer they last and the more they’re repeated. Socialists into wildlife habitats greatly increase the interfaces for virus of all people should be the last to demand expanded spread from animal to human hosts. re­pressive government and state powers. That can be the Third is a point emphasized by researcher Rob Wallace road to Guantanamo, the World War II internment of in his important new book Dead Epidemiologists. The Japanese Americans, and much else including today’s mass conversion of natural, diverse ecosystems to much simpler detention of asylum seekers. agricultural or farming zones removes ecological checks The other side of the coin, in a number of Global on the rapid multiplication and spread of pathogens. That’s South nations, is pandemic denial and neglect to avoid why, Wallace emphatically warns, we need to look far “back economic damage. In Brazil, the policies of Jair Bolsonaro beyond Wuhan” to consider how much easier it’s become have produced a level of death and devastation second for a virus to jump from a bat to humans, whether directly only to the USA. In Mexico president Andres Manuel or through an intermediate animal host. Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has ridiculed the pandemic, with In addition to destructive agricultural practices, climate ruinous effect. India’s Narendra Modi managed to combine change is also expanding the range and reach of pathogens the worst of both options: declaring a severe lockdown in and the plagues they cause. The most destructive of these major cities with barely a few hours’ notice, resulting in is malaria, which in 2018 infected an estimated 228 million millions of suddenly unemployed workers fleeing toward people resulting in 405,000 deaths. The slow decrease their villages and carrying the infection with them. in malaria infections and fatalities over the past couple What becomes an intractable contradiction — under decades is threatened both by drug-resistant strains and by capitalism with its inherent inequalities and oppression the enlargement of the disease’s range in a warming climate. — between public health and basic rights, could be For all these reasons and more, society needs to handled quite differently. In a functioning socialist society, anticipate a proliferation of outbreaks becoming global human needs would come first. The development and free pandemics with increasing frequency. At a very minimum, distribution of vaccines, and of course all medical services, that desperately requires changing the system of just-in- would be top priority. Public health centers would be widely time delivery of personal protective equipment — the available on the community level, and if lockdown and harrowing shortages of N95 masks for frontline medical quarantine measures became necessary they’d be organized workers being just one example — as well as the deliberate with democratically organized mutual aid and solidarity. restriction of hospital facilities and the number of medical In that kind of society people would be supported, not workers in so-called “normal” conditions to barely what’s isolated, in circumstances of public health emergency. needed for profitable just-in-time operations. More fundamentally, the entire system of food production To be sure, here in the USA, the world’s sickest society would be transformed. The corporate-agribusiness model in more ways than one, we have a special aggravating that wipes out essential ecosystems for “efficiency” and circumstance. The outgoing criminal-in-chief Trump has profit, ripping off small producers in the Global South while shown himself fully committed to sabotaging the economy, poisoning water systems at home with fertilizer runoff and wrecking the incoming administration’s capacity to address livestock waste and breeding new deadly pathogens in giant the multiple crises facing the country, and poisoning factory farms, would be gone. Forests would be protected, political life for years to come, as he exits screaming “rigged not destroyed for the sake of expanding cattle raising and election!” on his way out. industrial agriculture. Mining would be regulated to provide In addition, Trump has escalated the confrontation with good working conditions and ensure what is necessary for China, the war drive against Iran, and the brutal betrayal of production. peoples in the Middle East from Palestine to the Kurds to Right now, for 15-20% of the U.S. population to be facing Western Sahara — all of which must be the focus of future hunger or the soul-destroying stress of “food insecurity,” discussions. We hold to what we’ve said before, that Donald tens of millions risking eviction or homelessness, masses of Trump couldn’t have created this wreckage all on his own, low-income workers and small restaurant owners forced but it wasn’t for lack of effort. n Against the Current is only possible through

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