ResoluteReader: January 2024

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Kenneth Austin - The Jews and the Reformation

This is an engaging book about European Jews and the Reformation. It mostly examines how Jews were perceived and treated before, during and after the Reformation. Author Kenneth Austin begins with a survey of Jewish life before the great changes of the 16th century, and quickly moves into what the Reformation meant for Christians - he says that this frames how they thought about Jews.

The figure that looms largest over this period is, of course, Martin Luther. Austin explores Luther's own changing attitudes which began with a more friendly attitidue to the Jews but as they failed to come over to Reformed Christianity, turned into horrificly racism. Luther's words do not need to be quoted here again, suffice to say that they were taken up by antisemites at the time and since. Austin, however argues that such beliefs were not themselves universal. Rather:

Catholic and Protestant attitudes to the Jews in the Reformation era were highly complex and multivalent. Fortunately, few were quite as hostile towards Jews as was Luther, on the other hand, there were relatively few who could be considered genuinely tolerant either. The Reformation had made Europe a religiously pluralistic society, but the place of Jews in this world was far from secure.

Exploring these "complexities" takes Austin through a fascinating account of the history of Jewish people in Europe, their specific beliefs and how Christians understood Jews in terms of their relations to Christians and Jesus. One of the fascinating aspects to this is how the study of the Bible by those contesting the Reformation caused a renewed interest in Hebrew as scholars tried to read the Bible in its original language - meaning that some Jews became highly important as teachers, and their works were published and widely read.

Austin also explores how Christianity had varying attitudes to Jews, that were not simply shaped by religious prejudices or concerns. For instance, there were a number of places were Christian rulers encouraged Jews to live in their towns or cities, for economic reasons. Jews, Austin writes, became "particularly associated" with two roles - doctors and money lending. The former was often proscribed because Jews were commonly believed to deliberately kill a proportion of their Christian patients. The latter was often the reason Jews were invited into an area, though this was often accompanied by various restrictions on life - from bans on them joining Guilds, to restrictions on their rights to travel. It lead to some contradictions, Strasbourg for instance was a city that "could claim to be... almost entirely free from a Jewish presence, while at the same time accomodating Jews in various ways to their mutual benefit." The construction of Ghettos was often about restricting Jews, but allowing them space to continue working in ways that benefited the wider economy, watched over by the anti-Jewish rulers or city council. Such contradictions arose because there was no "monolithic" position towards the Jews. Indeed, successive Popes or monarchs seemed to vary their attitudes dramatically.

The antisemitic beliefs about Jews here, including the blood libel, are explored by Austin in detail. This makes for fascinating, if uncomfortable reading. Austin explores the "blood libels" and racist beliefs, particularly over antisemitic ideas that saw Jews as responsible for killing children. These were widespread in the period covered, but without foundation. Nonetheless they led to frequent pogroms and repression of Jewish communities.

The Reformation had contradictory outcomes for Jews. On the one hand Jews became pawns for arguments from boths sides. On the other, the political demand for religious equality by Protestants, also as a by product led to the toleration and acceptance of Jewish communities. It worked the otherway too. In France, in 1561, the Protestants asked Charles IX to tolerate them, "since the Jews are allowed, and the Turks".

Kenneth Austin's book is insightful and interesting. But not without problem. His tendency to see developments in terms of purely religious differences obscures his argument in places. He argues, for instance, that the Dutch Revolt and the Thirty Years war were the result of Reformation tensions. But the religious debates are better understood as reflecting the tensions caused by the rise of the capitalist order. This new economic system caused enormously changes and, this created new problems and opportunities for Jewish people. For instance, it would have been fruitful if Austin had explored the way that the concepts of bourgeois equality and freedom created spaces for the freedom to worship. Instead Austin tends to see this as a consequence of "ongoing" religious tensions, rather than the ideological expression of a new social and economic system.

Nonetheless, at the end of the Reofrmation, both wings of the Christian Church "tried to position themselves as the heir to the Jewish people". Why that could be true is a fascinating story and it is well told by Kenneth Austin.

Note: In this review I have used "antisemitism" to refer to anti-Jewish beliefs and racism. Kenneth Austin points out that this is "rather problematic", because it tends to relate to a modern racism based on racial and genetic ideas of Jewishness, that dates to the 19th century onward. Secondly, Austin writes:

"the term implies a more positive attitidue towards the Jews than was acutally the case. Most of the fitgures who are generally described as philo-Semites valued the Jews not on their own terms, but rather because of the role they could perform. Wanting Jews in the country in order that they could convert to Christianity, thereby heralding the Last Days, could hardly be construed as genuinely sympathetic."

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Michael Collins - Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys

Michael Collins was the third man on Apollo 11. He was the bloke that stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin landed, and the one who was routinely described as the loneliest human in the universe for being the most isolated from other people. This biographical account of his life before Apollo 11, and the years afterward was published in the early 1970s. It is, by far, the best of the astronaut books that I have read. A highly driven individual, Collins went in the airforce, applied twice to be an astronaut and ended up flying to space in Gemini 10 and around the moon in Apollo 11. Had he stayed with Nasa he would likely have commanded Apollo 17 and landed on the moon.

Carrying the Fire is an exceptionally interesting biography. Collins is no wooden military pilot - he is a deep thinking individuals, fascinated by literature and poetry (as this remarkable short interview with him illustrates). Collins was, I thought as I read this, one of the Apollo astronauts that I would most liked to have drunk a cup of tea with.

The book gives a sense of the drudergy behind the headline grabbing achievements of Nasa's space programme. Collins describes the monotony of the training. Every aspect of the Apollo missions was practiced before hand. The crew trained for every eventuality, and Collins explains how they were almost on autopilot. Nothing was left to chance - every conceivable disaster, however unlikely - was considered, trained for and practiced. But it was exhausting and hard work. By the time of the mission it seems that the crew could do it blindfold.

The mission was, of course, a collective effort involving thousands of people in addition to the three astronauts. But the crew is often portrayed as a collective. But Collins implies that they were really three very different individuals, that did not quite hit it off. It's clear that he felt that he was a slight outsider - not having to train for the landing meant that Aldrin and Armstrong had a very different, closer relationship. That said, it's interesting that Collins reports that Aldrin carried a huge chip on his shoulder that Armstrong pulled rank and took the first steps on the moon. I certainly got the impression that Collins didn't really like the other too very much. He confides, "evern as a self-acknowledged loner, I feel a bit freakish about our tendency as a crew to transfer only essential information, rather than thoughts or feelings."

This comes out in small ways. I don't think I had quite appreciated the extent to which the return from the lunar surface to rendezvous with the Command Module Colombia and Collins was such an unknown. Collins talks about the stress and anxiety - orbiting the moon surrounded by magnificent sights, but only wanting the mission to move on to the next step. When the other two come back and enter into Colombia, Collins says that Aldrin is the first one in and "I grab his head a hand on each temple, and am about to give him a smooch on the forehead... but then, embarrased, I think better of it and grab his hand, and then Neil's." It's a remarkable admission that illustrates the gulf between them.

Collins is a professional, and his book is full of the sort of detail that appeals to people like myself, obsessed with the details of spaceflight. But it is also full of the human factor - the struggles he had on Gemini with using the sextant to navigate the ship. The problems he encountered on the Gemini space walk. The fear and anxiety that were constantly there, among the amazing achievements of the space programme. Collins himself was a huge advocate of futher exploration, and his dismay with the retrograde motion of Nasa after Apollo is palpable in the prefaces written forty and fifty years after the first landing.

But after Apollo, and in the years that followed, it's clear that Collins developed a much deeper set of ideas. He writes about his ecological worries for the planet and even, in 2009 and 2019 declares that "we need a new economic paradigm to produce prosperity without growth." Degrowth enthusasts would probably be surprised to find Michael Collins was a fellow traveller!

Reading Carrying the Fire is a rewarding experience. Collins was lucky to be part of one of humanity's finest achievements. He is greatful for that. But he also describes it in terms of work and personal life. He knew he could walk on the moon if he stuck with the programme, and was encouraged to do so. But he didn't, because he also wanted to live a life with his friends and family. He writes, candidly, about how Aldrin in particular struggled with the post-Nasa life, quickly being hospitalised for mental distress. Collins avoided that, though life had its ups and downs. Collins did not go back to the moon, because he could not face two or three more years of simulator training and stress. Anyway, he thought that others would carry the fire. But the politicians and penny counters had other ideas.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Sebastien de Castell - The Malevolent Seven

Riffing off The Magnificent Seven, the The Malevolent Seven is a fantasy story of a group (coven) of mages who do quests for cash, violently protecting or attacking anyone who they are paid to. The narrator, mage Cade Ombra, opens by telling the reader that "real mages don't wear funny hats". Rather they are violent, angry and dirty killers for hire. There are few "long scraggly beards" here, and rather a lot of sweary murderers covered in blood and mud.

Its an unusual twist on the genre, but of course Cade doesn't remain the indifferent angry killer, after a slow arc of redemption in The Malevolent Seven, Cade turns into an impassioned angry killer, fighting a little less for cash and a little more for a cause. Cade, and his compatriot, Corrigon (who has even fewer moral compulsions than Cade) are hired to put together the titular seven numbered coven and undertake a quest. The prize is allegedly an artificat that can grant the bearer even more powerful magical abilities. In de Castell's novel, mages gain power from other realms and their inhabitants, utlising spells through the energy and power they can draw from elsewhere. Cade, true to his corrupt self, buys such spells from an infernal demon, who has his own plans and macinations.

Much of the novel follows Cade and Corrigon's putting together of the band - just as the best bits of The Maginificent Seven film and its sequels are the finding and hiring of the other guns, the same is true of de Castell's novel. The quest actually takes up only the last third of the book. Most of the novel is scene setting - usually involving mud, blood and violence.

While it's a fun setting, it's hard to be that enthusastic about the book. The world building is superficial, and I lost interest in de Castell's explanations of how the mages powered their spells. In particular the rat mage simply didn't work as a character. The gathering of the various mages, with their different types of magic, was only a little interesting. I liked the ride, and I enjoyed a novel where magical users are not all good guys. But sadly its not enough to make this a classic.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

William Morris - The Pilgrims of Hope

This little book is simultaneously a piece of art and a historical document. Of the 108 pages, just forty or so are given over to the piece of the title, William Morris' poem The Pilgrims of Hope. This, as Michael Rosen says in his introduction is a "fascinating piece of work" in which the author struggles to depict a contemporary class struggle through a long, descriptive poem. For someone like myself who struggles with poetry as a literary form, Rosen's introduction and the longer discussion of the context of Pilgrims of Hope's publication by Nicholas Salmon are extremely useful, both in understanding the poem and putting it in context.

The Pilgrims of Hope tells the story of Richard, a young man living in the country, who learns about the wider world and its struggles through an encounter with a refugee from France. This leads him to London where, among other things, he attends a socialist meeting - much like the ones that William Morris himself organised - and there gets involved in Communist ideas and struggles. When the Paris Commune breaks out, Richard, his wife and his French friend travel to Paris to take part in the struggle and defend it from the counter-revolution. There they form a classic love triangle and Richard's friend and lover die on the barricades, leaving the exact nature of their relationship unclear.

Its a short story, and surprisingly, it's not well told. I am greatful to Salmon's deep reading of the poem for understanding events. What is interesting is the way the poem rises and falls, climaxing on the barricades. Here I was tempted, as Salmon suggests, to see the love triangle as representing the intensity of emotion experienced by the participants in the Commune. Interestingly Morris tends to portray socialists politics in such an emotional way. His hero's discovery of socialism at a political meeting is described as a rebirth, "I was born once long ago: I am born again to-night." After this Richard becomes the "New Proletarian" imprisoned for his role in the fight for the right to protest.

But it is the trip to join the Commune that is the centre of the story - this Morris calls "A Glimpse of the Coming Day", implying that the Commune's democracy and freedom was a vision of a future socialist society. Richard had "never yet" been abroad and his arrival but arriving in Paris:

Yet here we beheld all joyous the folk they had made forlorn!
So at last from a gray stone building we saw a great flag flu,
One colour, red and solemn 'gainst the blue of the spring-tide sky,
and we stopped and turned to each other, and as each at each did we gaze,
The city's hope enwrapped us with joy and great amaze.

Morris doesn't dwell on the gains of the Commune. Indeed the editors include a piece by William Morris written for the 16th anniversary, but even this does not include much about what the Commune and the Communards did, or any real analysis of the importance. It is, however and important read, as it demonstrates both Morris' commitment to revolution and the fact that he acknowledged the Commune as an event. Some biographers, including EP Thompson suggest that Morris never discussed the event.

It is thus important that the editors also include two short pieces by Friedrich Engels written for the 20th anniversary that both describe and analysis the Paris Commune and place it in its revolutionary context. Together these short articles explain why Morris was moved to write a long poem about the Paris Commune, and take up precious space in his newspaper week after week.

As a poem I do think that The Pilgrims of Hope lacks something. Morris experiments with the style and material. In places its over romantic and the story feels thin and contrived. Nonetheless reads, as Salmon points out, would have been familiar with events and experiences - such as the socialist meetings.

All in all this is a interesting period piece with some excellent analysis by Michael Rosen and Nicholas Salmon. Perhaps not the best place to start your reading of the history of the Paris Commune, but one to add to the list.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Liz Carlisle - Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America

Ahead of a trip to Montana I was intrigued to find Liz Carlisle's book Lentil Underground. Montana is known for it's agriculture, with thousands of farms farming almost 60 million acres of land. That farming is dominated by highly industrial agriculture, high in inputs likes fertiliser and pesticide, vulnerable to drought, and highly carbon intensive - while producing a huge percentage of grain for the United States. It is a model of farming driven from the very top - encouraged by successive US governments, and linking food production to the massive corporations that buy the wheat, and sell the tractors, combines, chemicals and fuel needed by the farmer. But as Liz Carlisle's book shows, the consequences were not good for farmers, food or the land. In the early 1980s:

Their fields looked good, at least early in the season, but the "For Sale" signs popping up amid Conrad's garin were proving a more serious menance than any weed. Behind every bankruptcy was the heatbreaking story of a good farmer undercut by dought or rising fertilier costs or poor commodity prices... Conrad's farmers tried even harder to control what they could-spraying more herbicides, cultivating more acres. But instead of solvign their provlems, these efforts just sunk the despeartae farmers further into debt.... Farmers were paying so much for the sophisticated machinery and chemicals that made their extraordinary sixty-bushel grain possible that they couldn't afford a dry year or a depressed commodity market-the margins were too tight. Meanwhile, the American heartland wasn't just losing people; it was also losing topsoil, at the rate of 3 billion tons a year.

Intensive, industrial agriculture was undermining the basis of agriculture and the viability of farming. Carlisle points out that this favoured (and highly subsidised) farming was driving pollution, climate change and cancer.

Lentil Underground tells the story of how a small group of farmers recognised the problems and began to adapt their agriculture. These farmers were sometimes progressive thinkers, on the left of the US political spectrum. But not always. One of the things I was reminded of while reading Lentil Underground is that the farmers, often with deep family roots in their farming communities, have a close knowledge of their land, love farming and hate the way they have become trapped by the logic of the industrial system. Even those with less progressive ideas were seeking ways out.

The way out turned out to be two-fold. A return to an older form of farming, that broke with the high-intensive, chemical driven agriculture and a change to new crops. The new crops included the lentils of the book's title but also more traditional or heritage grains like spelt, or oats were also added. These, the farmers found could be grown with less inputs, mixing crops together and crucially breaking from the favoured no-till system.

The wide open prairies of Montana are very vulberable to soil loss. To prevent this, US agriculture encouraged (and subsidised) forms of farming that did not use ploughing to turn over soil. This meant the extra application of chemicals to kill weeds. But it saved topsoil. But the Lentil Underground farmers discovered that ploughing, if combined with mixed crops that protected and fertilised the soils, had the same effect - while reducing costs and pollution.

The small network of farmers that began to develop into a group of farmers essentially were returning to a more traditional approach to farming. It was less costly, was less vulnerable to external shocks, and produced better food - not least because it could be certified as organic. Quickly the farmers were able to tap into a growing market for organic foods.

It is important to point out though that this was not an automatic win for the farmers who made the switch. They still had to cope with the vicissitudes of the free market. A massive contract with a health food chain proved disastourous when the company suddenly pulled out. They also found that other farmers treated their efforts with disdain, which is why the Underground of the title became so important - the network of self help and support that developed among the farmers and families that chose to make the leap. Interestingly this network goes far beyond Montana:

Another hallmark of the lentil underground is their openness to new people and ideas. They aren't bound by an unquestioning loyalty to the way that Granddaddy did it, or by a suspicious wariness of outsiders. The heritage and heirlook crops they grow manifest deep relational ties and long experience, tbut these carefully chosen plants are certainly not xenophobes. Black medic [a type of legume that is a green fertiliser, adding nitrogen to the soil as it grows] made its way to Monatana from the American Southeast. Ley cropping came from Australia. Lentils were domesticated 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, and breeders like Al Slinkard borrowed liberally from international collections.

Lentil Underground is a remarkably interesting book. It tells the story of how US farming turned into an ecologically and socially destructive method of producing food precisely because it was transformed by industrial capitalism - profits before people and planet. A similar process took place in the British Isles. At the same time it shows that it is possible to rapidly change things in a positive direction using the inherent skills and knowledge of existing farmers and labourers. The farmers who've made the transition are still trapped by a capitalist logic, at the whims of a much larger system. But they give us an indication that things can change - and that the people who will build a future sustainable farming system are the ones who work in the existing unsustainable one.

Friday, January 19, 2024

Lee Child - Killing Floor

A recent bout of sickness left me temporarily unable to concentrate on books, so I watched the first Reacher series. I chose it precisely because what it seemed to offer was what my brain needed - a strong story line, simple plot and plenty of bad guys being punched by the good guys. Having watched it, I decided to read the book it is based on, the first Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child, Killing Floor.

Reading Killing Floor directly after watching the televised version is an interesting experience. Like the series, the book propels the reader along. There's plenty of action - every few pages a new plot device keeps the reader interested - which creates this feeling in the reader that they need to keep reading. Killing Floor is set in the fictional Georgia (US) town of Margrave. Reacher gets off the bus in order to visit the site of the death of a favoured Blue Singer. His brother has told him about the town, which is the plot device that drags Reacher into the action.

The setup is rather good. Margrave is an extremely pretty, clean and unfeasible wealthy place. Reacher is quickly arrested, framed for the town's first murder in thirty years, and then released. Because of the place of his brother in this weird setup, Reacher essentially gets dragged into the police investigation to find the killer. Quickly more bodies pile up, and there are some very dubious events.

It is all highly improbable. But the reader keeps reading, and Reacher keeps finding out new information. No surprise that Margrave isn't the idyllic location it looks like at first glance. Instead it turns out to be a hot bed of international crime.

Reacher punches, kicks and shoots his way to retribution. Everything is neatly completed and packaged up by the end of the book. Its very like the series - if you enjoyed one while ill with the flu, you'll like the other. I was slightly surprised by the first person format. Perhaps that changes. Either way, its a good thriller that does what it says on the tin.

Monday, January 15, 2024

Peter Cozzens - The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West

In 1869 General William Sherman, one of the Union Army's most successful Civil War commanders wrote to his brother Senator John Sherman, "The more I see of these Indians, the more I become convinced that they all have to be killed or be maintained as as species of paupers... Their attempts at civilisation are simply ridiculous". The irony of this statement, which serves as a summary of the attitude of most of the US Army's high command and its political leadership, was that Sherman was supposed to be a "peace commissioner", responsible for protecting the rights of the indigenous people from external threats, including from his own army. It is a contradiction that runs deep into Peter Cozzens' history of the Wars.

The problem is, that however Washington dressed up its policies toward the various indigenous tribes, however they tried to draw distinctions between belligerent and nonbelligerent bands, and however well meaning individuals might have been, policy was shaped by a series of racist assumptions that meant that the outcome was always genocidal. The Indian way of life could not be allowed to survive, because otherwise it was a barrier to the natural, unlimited, expansion of US capitalism. The tribes had to be moved to reservations, and made to conform to a new way of life. If they didn't they would starve, or be murdered. The tribes that did not conform, or resisted, or fought back, moved easily from nonbelligerent to belligerent and then the Army could unleash the guns.

Cozzens tells the story well. His account is readable, and he desperately tries to be fair. Fair, for Cozzens, means giving accounts that demonstrate the violence (and occasional non-violence) from both sides. There's plenty of the former, and precious little of the latter. Massacres, rape, murder and battles occur with depressing frequency. We learn of the inadequacies and ineiptudes of the US Army that led to the Fetterman Massacre and defeat on the Little Big Horn. But we also read of the lesser known killings and fights, and much about events far from the classic area of the Great Plains. There is also plenty of material on various figures - from US generals to Native American chiefs.

The problem with Cozzens' book though is actually his attempt to be fair. In places it reads a little like he is looking for a "gotcha" moment. One that proves there was violence on both sides, so that the violence almost becomes justified. This is particularly noticeable when Cozzens' writes about "intertribal conflict". This sees various tribes in conflict with each other, and frequently one group siding with the US government against other Indians. Cozzens' emphasises this in the introduction. He argues it is not "appreciated". And he writes,

the wars between Indians and the [US] government for the northern plains, the seat of the bloodiest and longest struggles, represented a displacement of one immigrant people by another, rather than the destruction of a deeply rooted way of life.

He continues by quoting a Cheyenne chief about why they made war on the Crows, "We stole the hunting grounds of the Crows because they were the best. We wanted more room". The implication is, of course, that the US government's Army was only doing to the some Native tribes what they had already done to others. The problem is that these things are not the same. And Cozzens' repeatedly fails to grasp the distinction between the colonial violence of the US army, engaged on a genocidal project and that of the tribal warfare between existing peoples' who were historical part of a larger landscape - not invaders. In those latter conflicts you might have one side that was right, or wrong, but in the former there was a "destruction of a deeply rooted way of life" taking place - and it was not led by a immigrant people, but by the incomers.

This false equivalence, pitched as an attempt to be fair to both sides, however doesn't make it into other aspects of the book. This is noticeable when Cozzens writes about the differences between cultures. For instance he tells the reader that:

The mutilation of enemy dead was a common Plains Indian practice in which both sexes indulged. Westerners considered it conclusive proof that Indians were irredeemable savages; for their part, the Indians believed that disfiguring an enemy's corpse protected the killer from the dead man's spirit in the afterlife.

Something makes me uneasy about the use of the word "indulged" there. But the bigger issue for me is the implication that Europeans did not mutilate - of course they did. And there's well documented evidence for this disfurging of indigenous dead people by Westerners in the Americas and many other places. European museums are only just beginning to recognise that having the remains on display isn't that great.

Later on the same page Cozzens describes the link between sex and war for some Indian tribes. Writing about the Crow, he says,

War honors were inextricably linked to sex. They were the surest way to win a girl's heart, making them excellent motibators for young men to fight hard. A Crow man, for instance, could not marry until he had turned twenty-five or counted coup.... Among the Cheyennes, young men could not even court girls until they had demonstrated their courage in battle or on raids. Mothers grilled their daughter's' suitors on their war records and dismissed as a coward any man found wanting.

The implication is that violence is ingrained in Native American culture, shaping their response to the European arrival, rather than the nature of settler conquest. But such beliefs by the Crow and Cheyenne aren't that different to European culture either. The Knights of the Round Table supposedly went on quests to win the hearts of their maidens. And then, fifty pages later Cozzens tells us about the Seventh Cavalry's officer's behaviour after the Battle of the Washita:

Although the officers of the Seventh Cavalry were bitterly divided over Custer's handling of Elliott's disappearance [during the battle], they did agree on one thing: the desirability of their female Cheyenne cpatives.... Cheyenne survivors said Custer and his officers appeared among them to select bedmates. Custer, the captives said, chose the beautiful nineteen-year-old Monahsetah, daughter of Chief Little Rick... As other Cheuennes drifted in to surrender, the officers of the Seventh Cavalry picked out more sexual partners... Custer's unbridled sexual appetite was well establioshed, and a company commander boasted in a letter to his bother that some of the officers had ninety Cheyenne females from which to choose.

While Cozzens is in no way endorsing this behaviour, there's a very different approach to the two cultural traditions. When he describes Custer's celebration (and popularity) among the people (and women in particular) on the East Coast following military success, there's no attempt to draw parallels with Native American warriors similar portrayal. In fact I read the book as suggesting that one was inherently bad.

The Earth is Weeping tells a tragic story. But Cozzens does not have the framework to tell it properly. His desire at "historical balance" means that he sees no difference between the violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressor. This is perhaps most clear in the final chapter. After telling the awful story of the massacre at Wounded Knee, Cozzens simply ends the book. There's no context. No attempt to ask what the legacy was. What does it mean for Native American people today? What did it all mean for the development of the Settler Colonial States of North America? What can we learn about violence and culture in the modern US from this history? It is all neatly partioned off by the end of the Wars.

Cozzens' book does not hide the violence and slaughter of the Indian Wars, nor does it pretend that this was all one sided. Quite the opposite. But the book doesn't do justice to the history - or its victims - at all.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Andrew Drummond - The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Müntzer

Thomas Müntzer is one of the great, near forgotten heroes of the radical tradition. Karl Marx said that the German Peasant War, the struggle that Müntzer was to play a leading role in and give his life to, was "the most radical fact of German history". But today, as we approach the 500th anniversary of the start of that great rebellion, and indeed, the half millenium since the death of Müntzer himself, few on the left will know much about this figure.

So it is very welcome that Andrew Drummond has written this detailed account of Müntzer's life and ideas. That said, Drummond mostly focuses on his subject's ideas, for there are gaping holes in our knowledge of Müntzer's life. Indeed such is the paucity of material that we do not even know the name of his child. But we do know a good amount, and Drummond skillfully places what we know into an account of the great changes shaking Germany in the early 16th century. It was, most famously, a time of religious turmoil. Martin Luther, who was to be a great inspiration, then a great enemy of Müntzer, had helped turn religious discontent into mass uproar at the dominant church - the German Reformation. But, as Drummond emphasises, the Reformation itself had roots in wider social and economic changes that were driving revolt. The peasantry was being squeezed from all sides and their response was shaped by the prism of religious ideas.

Suffering under the entire weight of the feudal burden, it was primarily the peasant or disenfranchised lower-class town-dweller who participated in religious heretical movements or in rude and untrammelled riot. None of this was new. All the countries of Europe had been affected at one time or another... Without exception, the expression of this discontent and rebellion was a religious one. Social analysis and class politics were several hundred years into the future. Religious disagreement, frequently termed ‘heresy’, was almost the only way in which unrest could manifest itself.

As Drummond points out rebellion from those at the bottom of society was not new. The difference was that because the Reformation was already challenging the dominant ideas of society, those who articulated its ideas found themselves becoming ideological leaders for an emerging movement. How they reacted to this position was crucial. Luther, horrified by the radicalism and self organisation of the peasants, quickly turned his back on the movement, preaching that Christians should obey their betters. Müntzer, who developed his own ideas in the cauldron of radical debates and gone far beyond his former ally, takes his ideas into wider, revolutionary, realms.

Drummond shows how Müntzer's radicalism emerges out of his own intense engagement with scripture, but also out of the milleau he finds himself in. Arriving into the town of Zwickau where he is appointed a minister ("by men who later had cause to regret it") Müntzer finds himself in a place where "three sections of society were in conflict: the burghers coveted municipal power, the patrician and rich families wished to retain and increase their monopoly of power and wealth, and the lower artisans and craftspeople – often relegated to lower positions by the influx of the new wealth of the mining magnates – strove for a general improvement in their condition." Crucially, a new emerging class of producers, somewhere between workers and self-employed middle class producers found themselves willing engagers with Müntzer's radicalism.

How Müntzer's ideas developed, and what they were, forms the core to Drummond's book. A key section looks at Müntzer's 1521 Prague Manifesto, a document which was never published, but in which the author laid out his ideas. As Drummond explains this is a document where "Müntzer made it quite clear that the degradation of the Papal Church had led to a global crisis of Apocalyptic proportions, in which only the Elect could change the course of history." Revolution then was on the agenda for Müntzer, if not in open rebellion, at least in the sense of individuals transforming their historical circumstances.

Unlike some on the radical left, Drummond is careful to warn us of historical traps. When Münzter writes in his Manifesto words that resonate today:

God will pour his insurmountable anger over such proud, wooden men, who are impervious to all good, Titus 1:7, for they deny the basic healing of faith . . . Yes, they are not insignificant, they are greatly damned villains who have existed in all the world since the beginning, here to plague the poor people who are thus so benighted.

Drummon is careful to point out that poor does not mean economically desperate. Rather he meant spiritually poor. A great strength of Drummond's book is that while written from a revolutionary and socialist point of view, it doesn't fall into the trap of extrapolating later politics backwards. But that said Drummond makes it clear that Müntzer was penning revolutionary arguments, even if he could not yet explicitly make this clear:

Finally, the practical conclusion to be drawn from all this – although one which Müntzer himself did not expressly assert – was that the Elect must strip all power from the centralised religious apparatus (the chamber pot in the coal shed), from its academic support (the hen-coop full of chicken shit) and from the Papal court (the brothel with its courtesans). Against all this would be posed the common people, the members of the Elect and the heretofore ignorant masses, a combined force with its own ultimate justification for its social and political aspirations.

The outbreak of the Peasant War gives Müntzer his moment. In August 1524, as rebellion breaks out, Müntzer arrives in the town of Mühlhausen to find the place in uproar. Drummond says "He had arrived, after all, with the doctrinal weapons to destroy the godless opposition. He came ready to educate and to organise the people, free from the immediate gaze of any feudal authority. There was to be no further attempt to hold a dialogue with such tyrants, no rapprochement with Wittenberg."

Wittenberg, of course, was Luther's base, and Luther was busily backtracking on anything that tied him too close to the emerging rebellion. In contrast, Müntzer throws himself in. As the storm grows Müntzer becomes closer and closer to his subject - the rebellious, discontented, and deprived masses. They feature more and more in his writing, and he engages closer with them in an organisational sense.

This was the road to revolution and to Müntzer becoming a revolutionary leader. A leader, but not the leader. Indeed at the final battle at Frankenhausen that was to lead to Müntzer's capture and death, he was only one of many people - but it is clear that he was the theoretical, ideological leader of the movement. His enemies, indeed the enemies of the revolution knew this, and his capture and torture were designed to produce documents that the victors could use to destroy the movement itself.

Today if we remember anything of Müntzer, it is for his phrase "omnia sunt communia" (all things are to be held in common). Its a slogan beloved of many contemporary revolutionaries. But Drummond shows how this was not actually something that Müntzer likely said, more a product of counter-revolutionaries who wanted to discredit the whole Peasant War as a communist plot. Disppointingly but importantly; "Any temptation to build grand theories on it out of context should be avoided."

Yet the fact that such an interpretation could be put on Müntzer was precisely because the desire for such a change did exist within the movement itself, and Drummond shows the close links between Reformation and revolution through the documents produced by the peasantry. Müntzer's radicalism drew and expanded upon the revolutionary ideas of, at least some, sections of the peasantry and oppressed classes.

Drummond's book finishes by telling us more about the long life of Müntzer through his influence on the anabaptists and the later Communist movement. These are important sections but for me Munzter's real importance lies in the inspiration he gave to ordinary people and consequently the fear he placed in the minds of those who opposed him. Drummond gives one example, steming from an official report into the ideas of a radical anabaptist heretic, whom, the official alleges, wanted to see the common man, "stand up against their magistrates and clear them away, and finally end up simply overthrowing the whole structure, and in its place arouse a Müntzerish army without magistrates."

Müntzer haunted the powerful and wealthy. Andrew Drummond's fantastic account of his life, ideas and fate is a brilliant reaffirmation of the importance of Müntzer for contemporary times. Told with a firm grasp of the archival material, fresh new translations of Müntzer's ideas and a wry sense of humour, this is a book for the 500th anniversary that everyone should read.

ResoluteReader