Ralph Whitlock - Peasant's Heritage

There is a particular literary tradition in England, of books that recount life in the countryside, or on farms. Some of these are justifiably famous, like Cider With Rosie, others are forgotten gems, like Adrian Bell's Men and the Fields, which I reviewed here. When I reviewed Bell's book, I made the point that there is a danger when writing about the rural past, that one falls into the trap of seeing the world through rose tinted glasses. Agricultural life was, and continues to be, hard work.

Ralph Whitlock's book is unusual, not in its subject matter, but because the majority of the text is devoted to his life as a farm labourer. Whitlock was from a very poor background, his mother narrowly avoided the workhouse because their deceased father had managed to build the family their own home. From his early teens, Whitlock worked in the fields, trying many jobs, though disliking most, except for his time as a shepherd.

First published in 1945, this book is pitched by the publisher (no doubt bending to some government propaganda wind) as a celebration of the life of the labourer, the "English peasant ... the same man as his forefathers, the men who fought and won Agincourt, the men who made the face of rural England with crude tools and by hard work, and defended as passionately as they worked for it."

Despite this rhetoric, the book is far more interesting. In part because of the descriptions of forgotten aspects of farming, in part because the hardwork, the poverty and the long hours are eye-opening. Whitlock's style is not as florid or poetic as Adrian Bell, but its not without humour and insight.

One interesting aspect to Whitlock's early life was the way that contracts with farmers lasted a year, from Michaelmas to Michaelmas. During that year, you were effectively tied to a particular employer, and only able to move on once that year was up. This enabled the young worker to try a different number of jobs, and find one suited, as Whitlock says "one year as a ploughboy was enough for me. When Michaelmas came again I made haste to get back to Uncle Jacob and the sheep."

Violence and abuse of young workers was clearly an accepted part of rural life. The man he works for as a ploughboy throws clods and rocks at him when he makes a mistake. But there was also laughter and free time. Whitlock learnt to play an instrument, worked long hours, but walked great distances to woo potential partners. Village life was centred on agricultural work and the church, but there was singing, dancing and games.

Towards the end of the book, Whitlock earns enough, through his and his wife's hard work to purchase land and a smallholding. But this is threatened by the changing of government subsidies between the wars and the economic recession. The Second World War was a return to boom time for farmers, and Whitlock's discussion of the expansion of farming in that period is fascinating. For those interested in agricultural history, this is a must read. For those who want to know more about those who shaped the British countryside, this is an entertaining piece of social history.

Related Reviews

Bell - Men and the Fields
Archer - A Distant Scene
Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford

Christopher Hill - God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution

Christopher Hill's biography of Oliver Cromwell is less of the history of the man, and more a history of the world that shaped him and was shaped by Cromwell's life. As Hill points out at the very beginning of the book, the first forty years of Cromwell's life a "tangled knot of problems was forming which was only to be unravelled, or cut through, in the revolutionary decades 1640-60".  In this "decisive century in English history", the "decisive figure" according to Hill, was Oliver Cromwell. Thus this book contains very little about Cromwell's detailed life (his children and wife get a bare couple of mentions for instance) and much more about the changes going on in English society.

The first couple of pages of the book begin with a beautifully written summation of the changes taking place in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were decades when fundamental changes in the economy and politics of Europe were beginning to reshape the old feudal order. These changes seemed minor - about the rights of people to trade without interference, about tax levels, and about the balance of power between king and parliament. But together they added together in ways that began to fundamentally shift the most established ideas of society. In particular, in England, this meant whether or not the king had the right to rule over everyone, simply as a result of the position given to him on account of his birth. The consequences for Europe were large, but in England they were the greatest. The revolution that Cromwell was a central figure of, "ensured that henceforth governments would give great weight to commercial considerations. Decisions taken during this [17th] century enabled England to become the first industrialised imperialist great power, and ensured that it should be ruled by a representative assembly".

Cromwell's role in this was central. The man himself had little political understanding. His instincts stemmed from his own social and religious position, and Hill spends some time developing the readers own ideas of what a Puritan in Cromwell's position would have believed about the world he lived in. Much of Cromwell's early life was undistinguished, though once he became a significant landowner he was able to play an increasingly important role in debates inside and outside Parliament.

Cromwell's great strength seems to have been the ability to hold together a coalition of very different parties. The parties in this sense are not political ones in the way we know today, rather the representatives of different social trends and forces in English society at the time. The radicals of the English Revolution being in the same camp as the forces of the emerging Bourgeois made for an uneasy alliance, but they were united in their desire for change. What that change was, was open to question and Cromwell was able to offer much to both sides, tacking one way and the next in order to hold the coalition together. Cromwell was clear that he wanted a world where democracy was not open to all, only to those who had property. In this sense, he aligned himself far from the Levellers and Diggers who argued for a much more democratic rearrangement of society. But Cromwell also realised that he needed this radical vision of change to inspire the "russet coated" gentlemen to fight against the King.

Cromwell didn't start out wanting to commit regicide, this was forced upon him by the reality of revolution and civil war. But once the King was out of the way, Cromwell moved quickly to strengthen the position of the new ruling class, and this meant the destruction of those social forces that threatened the new, bourgeois order. Hill portrays Cromwell's later trajectory, from military leader to Lord Protector, not as a personal voyage for power, but as a attempt to shore-up the new order against internal contradictions. It was certainly not automatic that the revolution would not lead to the re-establishment of the monarchy, and Cromwell's struggle to prevent this meant the imposition of dictatorship. When the monarchy did return, it was in a subdued and weakened form, that was never able to regain its old position without facing the prospect of further revolution.

Hill finishes the book by focusing on the ambiguous nature of Cromwell to those who came after. Today, he is both the man who cut the kings head off, and the person who ordered the death penalty against the Levellers at Burford. He destroyed the people of Ireland in the name of progress, yet destroyed a monarchy in the interests of a more representative democracy. He championed the rights of those resisting enclosure early in his career, and by the end was encouraging further enclosures of land for the wealthy.

The only way to understand these contradictions is to understand the pressures upon Cromwell from different social forces, and his own class interests. At different points in Cromwell's life, his class had different interests and hence different allies. Cromwell's changing ideas are a reflection of those changing forces, as are his actions. Christopher Hill's superb Marxist analysis illuminates this brilliantly and this book is indispensable reading for anyone trying to understand the English Revolution.

Related Reviews

Purkiss - The English Civil War: A People's History

Adrian Desmond & James Moore - Darwin's Sacred Cause

Charles Darwin is one of those people whose lives inspire in all sorts of ways. His work on evolution is one part of this, his insights and his method are worth studying for the brilliance of his scientific method. But his science cannot be separated from his life and Darwin's travels, writings and activities are also fascinating in themselves. He is one of the few individuals who can inspire people to follow in his footsteps simply because he stands like some sort of colossus over science and history.

As a result of this, Darwin has had many biographers and Desmond and Moore's book at first seems like an attempt to find a new hook on which to hang yet another book about his life. The central idea of their work, is that Darwin's science and life cannot be separated from one of his great "passions", the movement to abolish slavery. From the desire to end slavery, and prove that all humans descended from the same origin, the authors argue, all the rest of Darwin's work flows.

What initially seems a convenient hook rapidly becomes a very readable and convincing biography that puts Darwin's genius in the midst of the intellectual and scientific debates of the 19th century, rather than locating the man, simply as a scientist with particularly brilliant insights.

The boo, and Darwin's life, can be split into two parts. The first centres of Darwin's upbringing. His family were rooted in the liberal anti-slavery movement. The authors show how Darwin's childhood and early adult years would have been seeped in political discussions about slavery. The accounts of the barbaric mid-Atlantic passage, the murder of slaves and life on the plantations were something that Darwin would have known well. His family were subscribers to a number of political campaigns on the question, attending meetings and supporting candidates that pushed for abolition and reform. By the time he got to university, Darwin's blood was thoroughly abolitionist. At university Darwin worked closely for some weeks with an ex-slave. The authors speculate, with some basis, on the way that their conversations would have turned to the realities of slavery. Interestingly, Darwin's notebooks and diaries contain no hint of racism or prejudice. To him, the black man teaching him to stuff animals was another man, slightly lower on the social scale, but in no way unequal. This contrasts, the author's point out, with the reality of life in the cities as viewed by many from the United States. Visitors from the other side of the Atlantic were appalled to see white and black couples parading the streets, arm in arm.

Darwin's experiences on the Beagle are well documented, as are his disagreements with his Captain over the question of slavery. Less well know, are the way that these experiences and what he saw of the reality of slavery helped steel his anti-slavery position. This might seem unsurprising, but several of Darwin's contemporaries later in life, visited the states and came to opposite, pro-slavery positions. Darwin's experience with indigenous people in South America also bore fruit later in his life, as he took up the political and scientific arguments associated with the origins of humans.

The second part of the book, and, it could be argued Darwin's life, is associated with the work that he began towards publishing his two masterpieces, the Origin of the Species and the Descent of Man. These two works are the culmination of a lifetime of study and research, and I will not repeat the science here. But the authors of this biography put them squarely at the heart of the changing debates that took place in England in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery.

During the campaign to free the slaves and end the slave trade, the notion of equality between black and white was taken as read. In the aftermath though, there was a increasing tendency to argue that the "races" were different. White people were superior, and blacks represented either a different race, or an earlier place in the development of humans. These debates were tied up with political questions justifying the existence of Empire, or the supposed lack of civilisation in Africa, for instance. They were also rooted in some of the new science that was developing, around the questions of brain size and head shapes.

Darwin placed himself in the camp of those who argued for a common ancestry for humans. But to explain this took Darwin decades of work and study. His reading was enormous, on everything from geology to the breeding of pigs and sheep. He ordered specimens from around the world and, in order to make sure that his scientific credentials were valid, he made himself a world expert on barnacles. Most interestingly, as the authors document, he engaged in the great debate about the origin of domesticated animals. In order to prove that domesticated pigs, sheep, cows and pigeons came from single origins, rather than multiple locations he needed to demonstrate that the great variety of life was possible from a single pair on animals. In order to do this, Darwin became an expert pigeon breeder. He spent time with working class breeders in their homes, to learn all he could and finally proved beyond doubt that it was possible to create enormous variations in animals from a single breeding pair.

This obscure work on pigeons was greatly important, because it undermined that argument that different "races" of humans, with their different coloured skins and different body shapes must have originated from different apes around the globe.

"After setting up his [Darwin's] target,

'The doctrine of the origin of our several domestic races from several aboriginal stocks, has been carried to an absurd extreme by some authors...

he would let pigeons lead the fight-back. The social context of Darwin's offensive has slipped away and been subsequently lost, but recovering makes sense of the project in Darin's moral world. It scientifically undermined the ethnographic drive for segregation and 'aboriginal' homelands so comforting to the 'slave holding Southerns'."

As America descended into Civil War, intellectuals on both sides grasped different aspects of the argument to polemicise in favour or against slavery. Darwin found himself part of that debate, his publications being quoted in the arguments and used against the pro-slavery side. But Darwin was propelled to his work by the growing crisis. He understood that part of winning the war, was undermining the idea that black people were suited to slavery because they were not biologically equal for Darwin "Slavery, race and evolution remained inseparable."

The book finishes with Darwin publicising his final work on human evolution. As with Origins it caused enormous debate and argument. Darwin had long since abandoned his religious beliefs, but if anything he was a stronger and harder fighter against racial ideas.

This is a rather astounding book. At times it reads like a scientific thriller, as you will Darwin to publish his book and damn those establishment figures he's concerned about upsetting. At others, it is a clear and readable introduction to the ideas at the heart of Darwin's science. Above all though, this is a masterful explanation of why at a certain particular moment in history, Darwin (and to a certain extent other scientists) were able to make the intellectual leaps that meant that evolution could become a live scientific idea. Ideas cannot be separated from the society in which they develop. The world around Darwin was changing. Slavery had been morally repugnant, and then was in danger of becoming scientifically supported. Darwin's work was a result of that world and a response to it.

As I read this book, I was reminded of biography of another, similar figure that I recently read. Karl Marx's life shares many similarities with Charles Darwin. This is not to say I am trying to claim Darwin as a Marxist - that would be laughable. But both men were engaged in a struggle to better understand the world they lived in. They were also in different ways, trying to change it. Both engaged in bitter polemics and struggles with friends and people on the other side of the world. Both were driven to despair at their work and frustration at other thinkers. Karl Marx dedicated the first volume of Das Kapital to Darwin, in part because of his great respect for The Origin of the Species. While there is no evidence that Darwin read Das Kapital, he would have understood the blood, sweet and tears that went into producing it, because it mirrored in many ways his own life's work.

Adrian Desmond and James Moore have produced a fascinating, readable and passionate look at Darwin's life and ideas. For its clarity in explaining both his thought and its origin, it should be read by everyone who wants to better understand the world we live in, and evolutionary science today.

Related Reviews

Darwin - Voyage of the Beagle
Simons - Darwin Slept Here
Rediker - The Slave Ship - A Human History

Franz Mehring - Karl Marx: The Story of his Life

Unsurprisingly, Karl Marx is one of those figures in history who attracts biographers. Some of these are sympathetic, some are hagiographies, others are attempts to explore Marx's thought by understanding him as a man, and others are attempts to justify all sorts of contemporary ideas by appealing to the great man himself.

One of the most recent biographies was the 1999 book by Francis Wheen. It is certainly an accessible read, and in parts is a good introduction to Marx's life and times. Wheen is not a Marxist and he struggled here, and in a later book, to explain some of Marx's concepts. Wheen also was obsessed with Marx the man, portraying him as a grumpy old man, who spends lots of time in dark rooms, writing impenetrable texts, and forming lifelong feuds with former friends over minor points of doctrine.

Franz Mehring on the other hand, was a dedicated Marxist and one of the leading members of the German socialist movement in the run up to World War One. Along with his comrades, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, he fought to retain the genuine, revolutionary socialist tradition through the war years, when most of the socialist movement had capitulated to the needs of the German ruling class.

His biography is very important, because it is both a sympathetic account of Marx's life and an attempt to explain and reassert Marx's ideas. Unlike Wheen's book, Mehring does not dwell on Marx's private life. It is not that Mehring thinks it unimportant. Marx's lifelong friendship and collaboration with Frederich Engels clearly was extremely important to his ideas, and his ability to get them down on paper. 

Similarly, Mehring doesn't dismiss Marx's marriage. Jenny Marx shared in many of Marx's struggles through his life and the descriptions of their joint suffering when one of their children dies are deeply moving. Jenny Marx pre-deceased Karl by barely a year, and while Mehring doesn't dwell on this part of their lives in detail, it's heart-rending to realise that Marx was too ill to attend her funeral. His despair at her death remains with him in that dark final year.

For Mehring, far more important than the private tribulations of the Marx family, is Karl Marx the activist, the revolutionary fighter. Its difficult to reconcile this Marx with those critics who complain that the great socialist did not know workers, because he lived on donations from his rich friend. Marx and his family certainly knew poverty, but more important, Marx knew hard work. While he never turned a lathe or laid bricks, his life was one of constant writing, meetings and argument. His editorship of several newspapers during times of revolutionary upheavel were certainly difficult jobs, but essential to his life. Marx was not a revolutionary who sat back and commentated on events, he took part and actively engaged and tried to shape movements; often at risk of prison, or worse punishments.

Anyone who has been around the socialist movement for any length of time will recognise the debates and discussions that Marx and Engels engage in. In particular, the rows, polemics and arguments during the rise and fall of the First International seem eerily familiar. But again, this is Marx in his element, part of the struggle, trying to change the world.

Franz Mehring

Mehring takes time to explain Marx's developing thought through the book. In fact, placing his ideas at the core of the work makes the book far superior to other biographies. Marx's ideas developed and changed over time, as he learnt from the world outside and the experience of struggle. The first chapters on Marx's earlier philosophy are a little hard going as the explore the works of figures like Hegel, but Mehring shows how Marx breaks from these as he watches the struggle of workers, living and fighting in the real world. 

At each stage in Marx's life, Mehring examines his life and his work. So he takes us through the debates with other writers, the writing of the Communist Manifesto and Capital. The detail of the Paris Commune and Marx's brilliant polemic The Civil War in France is a fascinating chapter. Here we see Marx learning from the movement, but also actively engaging in solidarity. His home became a refuge for those fleeing the persecution of the Commune and his daughters married Communards.

Mehring describes some of the feuds Marx engaged in. Marx was no saint and like many socialists since, he was wrong occasionally and he was prone to believe false rumours about those he disagreed with or disliked. Mehring criticises his subject when describing the debates Marx had with Bakunin for instance, and has many good words to say about that class fighter, despite his critique of anarchism.

The Karl Marx in these pages is a fighter - a man angry at injustice, but thoughtful and inspiring. Someone prepared to fight his corner against all comers, but in no way monolithic in his thought. The author too comes through as deeply familiar with his source material and knowledgeable about obscure letters and newspapers. This is clearly the culmination of a lifetimes work. Like Marx, Mehring was a revolutionary who fought to change the world. If at times this book errs a little into the history of Germany and Prussia, it is in part because Mehring is engaged in debate and argument with his own comrades, as well as describing the background to Marx’s life. 

For those who want to know Karl Marx better, as well as understanding his ideas, I can think of no finer biography.

Related Reviews

Patterson - Karl Marx; Anthropologist

Hunt - The Frock Coated Communist; The Revolutionary Life of Frederich Engels

Gonzalez - A Rebel's Guide to Karl Marx

Allen - Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism

Swain - Alienation: An Introduction to Marx's Theory

Kapp - Eleanor Marx

Gitta Sereny - Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth

Gitta Sereny's detailed and scholarly examination of one of the key figures in Hitler's leadership is also extremely readable and powerful, two qualities rare in biography. At times it is terrible to read, the subject matter by necessity must examine details of the Holocaust and the use of slave labour that is repugnant. There is a compelling fascination though. For anyone who has ever wondered how the Holocaust could happen, how fairly ordinary men and women could be complicit in the mass murder of six million Jews, and millions of communists, socialists, trade unionists, Gypsies, gays and lesbians and countless other "undesirables" there is a desire to try and understand the reality of life under German Fascism.

There is meticulous research behind this book. Sereny seems to have spent a lifetime in archives, reading documents and interviewing every conceivable participant who knew the individual she was writing about. From his secretaries and servants in Hitler's bunker, to his wife and prison guards. But most of all, she interviewed Speer himself.

Following his trial at Nuremberg for his involvement in war-crimes, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Even before the trial itself he was undergoing a transformation. By the time of his release, he seemed obsessed with expressing his own repentance. Many of his existing circle of friends disowned him - they could not understand his desire to distance himself from Hitler, nor criticise the former Fuhrer. This process had begun, at least publicly, for Speer in the dock, when he'd attacked the man to whom he owed so much. Even in Spandau prison, several of his co-defendants could not forgive him for this.

Sereny's biography beings with Speer's childhood. Given the realities of German life in the early twentieth century, Speer was lucky to be the son of a prosperous, if unloving architect. The stilted and cool atmosphere of the middle class upbringing shaped Speer's own inability to display warmth. No doubt, his later relationship with Hitler carried echoes of the relationship that Speer would have liked to have had with his own father. However, to reduce their complex friendship to this would make nonsense of the other factors and realities of Speers' life.

By chance Speer found himself the favoured architect of Hitler. Speer had never been a party man, though he rapidly found himself at the heart of the Nazi organisation, joining formally in the early 1930s. However his rise was startling, and by the time of the war, he had moved on from designing homes to prominent Nazis, to heading up some of the most important industries of the German war economy. He proved extremely able. Even during the height of the bombing campaigns Speer helped ensure that the German economy continued to produce munitions and equipment for the armed forces. Central to this was the question of slave labour, labour that originated in the concentration camps, from Jew's exiled from their homes and from captured prisoners.

At the heart of the book, and indeed most articles about Speer is the question of his knowledge. To what extent was he aware of the mass murder taking place? Sereny's answer is couched in riders. Firstly she argues that it wasn't true that everyone in Germany was aware of the mechanised slaughter taking place at death-camps in Poland. This is not to say that people didn't think killing was taking place, or that something was going on. She includes Speer in this - he must have been aware that large numbers of people were being transported away from their homes, just has he must have known that hundreds of thousands of labourers were coming from somewhere.

Central to this debate, is whether or not Speer was present at an infamous speech that Himmler made to leading members of the SS. The text of Himmler's speech, which mentioned the slaughter and what needed to be done to solve the Jewish question, refers to Speer on several occasions, as if Speer himself was in the hall. Speer admits that he was there in an earlier session, speaking on questions of wartime production, but claims to have left. When the speech was made public, Speer spent many long hours trying to prove that he wasn't there, by sitting in the archives looking for evidence.

It is worth at this point noting Sereny's own brilliance as a researcher and historian. She examines Speer's life day by day, sometimes hour by hour, trying to tease out exactly where he was and when. What could he have known, who else was with him, what might he have heard. The detail is almost overwhelming, but builds up her central thesis, that Speer knew far more than he let on. This level of detail is important for Sereny too, because Speer spent many many ours creating his own story in an attempt to free himself of suspicion.

This desire to clear his name shaped Speer's later life. His defence at Nuremberg, was to denounce Hitler and his actions, accepting his responsibilities, but not his guilt. However once his imprisonment began, he seems to have begun to construct a careful web of stories that highlight his independence and criticism of Hitler as well as ignore his links to the aspects of the regime that would have acknowledged his awareness of the Holocaust. One example of this, is in the description of his final meeting with Hitler. Speer claims in his book, Inside the Third Reich, that he re-afirmed his personal loyalty, but admitting to working to countermand Hitler's final scorched earth policies. In a famous paragraph, Sereny points out that:

"Psychologically, it is possible that this is the way he remembered the occasion, because it was how he would have liked to behave, and the way he would have liked Hitler to react. But the fact is that none of it happened; our witness to this is Speer himself." [529]

Speer's original draft manuscript for the book, written in prison, contained no such story - surely something that would have been at the forefront of his mind. In fact the opposite is then claimed, Speer saying that he did not confess to Hitler. Similar examples abound in Sereny's book, as she uncovers the detailed process that Speer went through, before presenting his carefully selected story to the world. Speer makes much of his break with Hitler - his desire to protect the German people. So much so, that Speer claimed to have made plans to kill the Fuhrer.

After reading over 700 pages of Sereny's detailed account, its difficult to believe anything that Speer says. Not necessarily because he deliberately lied all the time, but because he was keen to portray himself in a particular way. He was after all, one of the last remaining figures from Hitler's inner circle and few could contradict him.

Sereny doesn't limit herself simply to telling, or criticising Speer's story. She spends time examining other aspects to the story of Nazi Germany. Some of the powerful parts are the tales of those that did know about the Holocaust and sought to alert the world. Some of these tales are tragic, as the fairly to be believed or listened to, drove individuals to despair and suicide. Sereny highlights these tales, to argue that some people were brave enough to stand up, or at least find out what was going on. Those who argue that the only chance to survive the dictatorship was to keep ones head down, may have been accurate, but they took a particular moral path.

Speer did not do this. He feigned ignorance and enjoyed his privileged life as long as he could. That said, he did clearly break with Hitler. He seemed to be one of the few who could challenge Hitler's madness, though Speer was not brave enough to break completely. There is an element, at least in how SEreny describes it, of love between the two men. Or perhaps hero worship by Speer. His return to Berlin to see Hitler one last time, smacks vaguely of the behaviour of a lover who cannot quite bring themself to say a final goodbye.

Sereny shows that many of those who knew Speer, during the war, during his imprisonment and after his release seem to have fallen into a kind of spell. Speer was clever, articulate, handsome and dashing. But she reminds us, he worked closely with people who had inspected concentration camps. Drank champagne with men who organised the Holocaust and had visited the slave labour camps. Even if the experience here shocked him enough to demand improved conditions for the workers.

Sereny concludes by quoting an exchange with Speer. An article she'd written quoted some word's of Speer's, written in 1977:

"However to this day I still consider my main guilt to be my tacit acceptance [Billigung] of the persecution and the murder of millions of Jews."

After he had checked this with her, and added a clarifying footnote which, if anything, strengthens the statement, Sereny asks why he was saying this now after denying it for so long. The article he had written was in response to a Holocaust denial book and Speer explained that he could no longer "hedge" the question, "for this purpose". Sereny comments that had Speer said this at Nuremberg, he would have hung with the other Nazis.

Sereny's book leaves little doubt that Speer knew far more than he admitted. His survival at Nuremberg and the second career he carved out as a writer stem from his ability to selectively tell a horrific story. But it is also clear that Speer was himself horrified by what had been done. The Holocaust was the outcome of the coming to power of a powerful political force that had been moulded by Hitler. The fascist bands that made Germany safe from socialist revolution relied on racism and prejudice to cement the street gangs together. They broke the communists and the trade unions, but they also opened the door to mass murder. Speer, and many of the industrialists that he came to work closely with during the war, found the world of Hitler one that they could do business with. A tiny number turned their backs and walked away, Speer and many others did not.

Related Reviews

Sereny - Into that Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder
Paxton - The Anatomy of Fascism
Guerin - Fascism and Big Business
Lipstadt - Denying the Holocaust, the Growing Assault on Truth and History

Sally Campbell - A Rebel's Guide to Rosa Luxemburg

In this latest addition to the Rebel's Guide series, Sally Campbell points out that many aspects of the modern world would be instantly recognisable to the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. We live in an era of revolution and war, repeated mass strikes have taken place in many countries in the last year. Here in the UK a public sector strike of up to 3 million workers at the end of November may well signal a new period of working class struggle.

Sally Campbell also points out, that the stark choice that Luxemburg offered, between "Socialism and Barbarism" remains even more true. The failure of the German revolution in the early 1920s led to the further isolation of Russia's revolution. This in turn helped entrench Stalin in power. In Germany the defeat of the revolutionary left, led to the rise of the Nazis, and in turn, the barbarism of the Holocaust and World War Two.

Rosa Luxemburg is one of the more misunderstood revolutionaries. Her incredibly important contributions to Marxist theory and revolutionary practice are often ignored in favour of detailing her polemics against the Bolsheviks. She is, as Campbell points out, many things to many people, tending to be a pawn in wider political arguments. Possibly the worst example of this that I have ever seen, is Joel Kovel's argument in The Enemy of Nature, where he declares that Rosa Luxemburg was more concerned that other male revolutionaries about questions of nature and ecology, because of her gender.

This makes Campbell's short book very important. Luxemburg's revolutionary life deserves to be celebrated, not simply for her dedication, nor to mark her horrific death, but because her contributions to the wider movement were so important. Her polemics with Lenin over questions of party organisation or the nature of Imperialism, which Campbell ably details, are not ones that are the result of cynicism towards revolution, rather they are the thoughts and writings of someone determined to play a part in the working classes' victory over capitalism.

The author of this book deserves congratulations for fitting so much into so few pages. The book never reads as superficial, though I wished it was longer. The section on Luxemburg's pamphlet The Mass Strike will, I hope, encourage many more people to read this important work themselves. Similarly I hope that people might go on to read her Junius Pamphlet, one of the most powerful polemics against war and imperialism I've ever read.

As Campbell celebrates Luxemburg's life, she also critiques her. Luxemburg made many mistakes, as do all revolutionaries. Perhaps her greatest mistake was remaining part of a broader socialist organisation for far to long, before she broke and formed the group that eventually became the German Communist Party. As Campbell points out there were reasons for this, and the debates were long and detailed as German socialists weighed up the pros and cons of their actions. Sadly they got it wrong and this mistake was a major factor in the failure of the German Revolution and Luxemburg's own death. Today, as a new generation of socialists face the challenges thrown up by a decaying capitalism - war and economic crisis, we must relearn the lessons from our own history. Sally Campbell has produced a great introduction to a forgotten but important part of that history. I urge comrades, old and new to read it.

Related Reviews

Orr - Sexism and the System; A Rebel's Guide to Women's Liberation
Choonara - A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky
Bambery - A Rebel's Guide to Gramsci
Birchall - A Rebel's Guide to Lenin
Gonzalez - A Rebel's Guide to Marx

George MacDonald Fraser - Quartered Safe Out Here

George MacDonald Fraser is most famous for his highly entertaining Flashman novels. At the centre of those stories, which follow the adventures of Flashman through various battles and conflicts of the Victorian era, is a deep sympathy and understanding of the life of a soldier.

Fraser's knowledge of soldiering is based on his own active surface in the forgotten war in Burma during World War II. Here, Fraser as a young man took a minor part in some of the major battles with the Japanese as they retreated from India towards Japan. Most of this book deals with Fraser's time leading a small group of British soldiers from Cumbria. The Cumberland dialect is so unlike modern written English that the author provides a note on translation and a glossary to help the reader.

Much of the book, as with other accounts of war, is of boredom and waiting. Fraser actually takes very little part in some of the most important battles, his small troop being on the periphery. What action he does see, takes place in a seeming flash, such as the time he is nearly killed by a wounded Japanese soldier who almost fails to see in a ruined bunker. There is a brilliantly funny section towards the end of the book, when Fraser, about to leave for officer training school is sent to train a strange and slightly crazed officer to use a particularly unusual anti-tank weapon. The officer wants to use it against the boats that the Japanese are trying to use to escape and Fraser gets involved in a firefight led by the half mad British soldier. There are shades of Apocalypse Now here, but more laughs.

Fraser is very good at putting across the life of the solider. The petty complaints, the worries and the personal feuds. However what annoyed me mostly about the book is that it wasn't really about the war, but about Fraser's reflections on life, soldiering in general and modern society. Fraser perhaps tries a little too much to be like the lofty arrogant character that is at the centre of his best read novels. But writing at the time of the First Gulf War, he has nothing but disdain for modern soldiering methods and equipment. He seems bemused at those who needed Post-Traumatic counselling following the Falklands and Gulf War and certainly seems to see it as part of the namby-pamby state.

Sadly Fraser's political interventions ruin what is an interesting book. His accounts of the discussion on how his troops would vote in the 1945 election is fascinating (most of them for Labour) as is his discussion on the use of nuclear weapons. Despite his view that Japan wasn't on the brink of surrender, and the pleasure he gets from his description of challenging a lecturer in the 1980s who thought it was a mistake to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he points out that most of his comrades would have opposed the use of the weapon had they known what the consequences were.

The war in Burma was one that most people seemed happy to ignore. Long after VE Day, men were dying in jungles and rivers far from home. Fraser's book is a useful introduction to the war, and Burma itself probably deserves being a larger part of British history. But Fraser's heavy handed politics and contemporary polemic, as well as his seeming desire to be come across as a grumpy old colonel ruin what should be a fascinating read.

Related Reviews

Fraser - Flashman on the March
Fraser - Flashman and the Tiger

Nicholas Monsarrat - Three Corvettes

Detailing his time in the Royal Navy during World War II, Three Corvettes is actually Monsarrat's embellished diaries. The Corvettes were a small escort ship, used to bolster the limited number of destroyers as fast, offensive ships to help counter the threat from submarines. First published during the war, this is more than a war story. In fact for much of it, we feel the tedium of days at sea, long watches were nothing happens, yet crew members are constantly alert - for a change in the weather, for enemy aircraft, or the sound of something on the sonar.

There are of course moments of horror. Monsarrat details the crews they rescue from the sea after their ships are destroyed and those they cannot find. His stories are personal, emotional and powerful. They are also tragically painful. I'm fascinated that they were published during the war itself. Many of those depicted in these pages bought copies of the first volumes and read them during voyages that Monsarrat helped command. But my mind is fascinated by the reaction from those on shore who would have read them and perhaps understood for the first time what their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers were going through.

There is humour, Monsarrat has the eye for a good yarn, and in particular I enjoyed the messages flashed between ships, turning the vessels themselves into characters in a story. Describing the minesweepers looking for mines he writes that:

"you hear a 'WHOOMF!' You look round, and there is a small surprised ship scuttling away from a patch of boiling foam.... We once saw one of them almost overwhelmed by a gigantic explosion close astern of it: a huge column of water shot into the air, hiding the ship from us. When she emerged we called her up (feeling rather shaken ourselves) and said, a trifle patronizingly: 'That was a big one.' Her reply: 'What was?' put us in out place exactly."

The book tells the story of Monsarrat rise to captain his own ship. I suspect for many readers, myself included the sequence of stories and anecdotes will chiefly be of interest because it makes you realise how much of Monsarrat's most famous book, The Cruel Sea, is actually based on real experiences. In fact, some of the more horrific, or perhaps less believable parts of that work turn out to be based on the authors own time at sea. Reading this short biography makes The Cruel Sea an even more impressive novel.

Related Reviews

Monsarrat - The Cruel Sea

Donny Gluckstein - The Tragedy of Bukharin

I first developed an interest in the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin after I read an account of his show trial by Fitzroy Maclean in his autobiography Eastern Approaches. There, Maclean describes how Bukharin runs rings around his prosecutors, who have tried to portray him as an enemy of the revolution, who plotted to assassinate Lenin and Stalin.

These accusations were based on nothing. Bukharin was a loyal revolutionary. Someone who had spent time in the prisons of Europe as he attempted to build the organisations that could overthrow capitalism. Lenin thought Bukharin "Bolshevism's biggest theoretician". He was a leading figure, popular for his speeches and ideas. Some of Bukharin's early writings were particularly important. His work on Imperialism for instance, is still of great use today, and was recently republished.

But following the isolation and defeat of the revolution, the growth of the internal bureaucracy meant that the Soviet Union travelled increasingly further from the workers state that Lenin, Bukharin and the other Bolshevik's fought for.

Donny Gluckstein's political biography then looks at Bukharin's life in the context of this changing role. In particular he examines key debates in the years following 1917, and how Bukharin's ideas and arguments shaped those debates. Bukharin comes across very much as someone who is constantly fighting for the revolution and for a socialist society. However he often seems to lack the ability to know when to retreat or step back, or to put it more crudely, he sometimes "can't see the wood for the trees".

For example the disappearance of money is something that would happen, it was argued, as socialism developed. But that doesn't mean that when money goes, socialism has been created. Economic collapse, the hoarding of wealth, the lack of availability of things to buy can also cause this. Bukharin was too busy arguing that this was a good thing, to be able to provide a coherent way out of the mess.

The problem was, that the isolation of the revolution had created an almost impossible situation. At best, what could be hoped for was survival for a time when revolutions elsewhere would rescue Russia. This had been a real hope in the years immediately after World War One, when revolutions swept Europe. By the mid-1920s this was no longer on the cards. With the death of Lenin and the degeneration of the revolution, Bukharin lost the best influences upon him. All revolutionaries make mistakes, but their collective organisation helps correct and challenge this. Left to his own devices, Bukharin increasingly comes to represent the growing influence of other forces in society - in particular the rising bureaucracy and the richer peasants.

In the great battle between Trotsky and Stalin, Bukharin becomes the best weapon Stalin has. His ability to articulate an argument, and his position as an old-bureaucracy, makes him a formidable weapon. Gluckstein traces the contradictions of Bukharin's position and shows how, as his use as the "hammer of Trotskyism" disappears, then he is next in the firing line.

This is not an easy book. It assumes a good deal of knowledge of the inner dynamics of the Russian Revolution as well as the debates and discussions. Some sections of it are very dated. Bukharin is no longer lauded by many as the "third way" between Stalin and Trotsky, because of his perceived pro-market ideas. This was, it seems the case as an aging Soviet Union's internal contradictions started to come out.

But Gluckstein does argue that Bukharin wasn't the enemy of the revolution that Stalin was. Bukharin's lack of theoretical clarity and, as Lenin argued, his lack of dialectical thinking meant that his mistakes could appear accurate but did not stand up to the test of events. But for all this, Gluckstein rescues Bukharin the revolutionary - a flawed revolutionary, but a man committed to fighting for a better world.

Siegfried Sassoon - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Part two of Sassoon's fictionalised autobiographical account of his early life reads much more lifelike than his earlier account of hunting and riding in the English countryside. At the end of his fox hunting memoirs, we left him in the early years of trench warfare on the Western Front. Several of his friends and acquaintances had already died.

Volume two begins slightly after the end of the first book. We find the author in the Army School, learning or relearning the art of open warfare that the military top brass keep expecting will appear soon, after the infantry in the trenches have broken through the German lines and more conventional war returns. Time and again we find this theme returns, as the soldiers prepare for a "big push" we learn how the cavalry is in reserve, ready to exploit the gaps that never open up.

Most of the book though, is the tale of Sassoon's gradual awakening to the "wrongness" of the war and his growing desire to "do something about it". Sassoon is an officer, from a relatively privileged background. He believes, perhaps rightly, that if he speaks out, it'll count for more than the complaints of the ordinary infantry. What's fascinating though, is the way Sassoon is motivated by the apparent lack of understanding from ordinary citizens back home. Like many accounts of soldiers returning from home on leave, he finds himself unable to describe his experiences, or find comprehension amongst even military veterans.

On the other hand, he cannot bring himself to talk about the reality of war. Even amongst other veterans or wounded in the hospital, there seems to be little discussion about the grim realities of the conflict, just long lists of the dead and wounded.

Sassoon describes how he gradually decides to speak out. In part he can do this because, as an officer, when wounded his convalescence is far superior to that of ordinary soldiers. Staying in good hospitals and then country houses, he has time to read an think. He certainly feels little pressure to return, and when he overstays his sick-leave he is simply asked by telegram where he is.

His eventual letter, speaking out against the war, is written by someone convinced he is speaking on "behalf of soldiers" everywhere. If this had been from an ordinary infantryman, I suspect that court martial would rapidly follow. Instead, with his rank and class background, Sassoon is argued with by friendly senior officers to withdraw, then he is offered a trip to a medical enquiry to check he is of sound mind. Eventually he agrees to this, as he finds that no one really wants to risk the embarrassment of a court martial.

Sassoon's rebellion is influenced in a minor way by some anti-war activists and thinkers. But what really convinces him is the reality of conflict and the tremendous waste of the pointless conflict. It is clear that he is the tip of a much larger iceberg - around him it is common to complain about those sitting out the war, or profiteering from it, or enjoying it from afar.

In other countries, notably Russia and Germany, these sentiments combined with growing lack of food and supplies to create a situation of mass rebellion and revolution. This didn't happen in Britain, though there were some major struggles. But its clear from Sassoon's account that the feelings of those at the bottom of the army were not differing greatly from those of the troops in the trenches a few yeards away.

Related Reviews

Sassoon - Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man

Siegfried Sassoon - Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man

This is a book that really shouldn't work for me. My only experience of horse-riding was one of abject terror followed by a vow to never to get in close proximity to a mule again. I despise the very notion of fox-hunting, mostly because it is a classic case of the ruling class in society thinking they should be allowed to ride rough-shod (literarily in the case) over everyone else and kill out of pleasure.

So Siegfried Sassoon's fictionalised biography of his early life in the countryside should not really have much in it for me. Its a detailed account of his time learning to ride, to enjoy the company of other riders and ultimately to take part in long fox hunts and country races. But I found myself enjoying every page, even the ones with the complex discussions about horses.
Sassoon's brilliant writing is the first pleasure. He's not above the odd joke at his own expense, but his descriptions and his passion shine through. He manages to capture a society on the wane - rural communities that were remote enough to be effectively independent from the rest of the world. The rich of course make the occasional trips to the capital or other places (mostly to take part in hunts) but most people never leave their place of birth. You get a sense of this when Sassoon talks about the distances travelled during some hunts - 15 miles was considered a long long way.

But of course the reader in one sense, knows what happens. For Sassoon the coming war is barely noticeable. He lives a life of leisure - his income of £600 a year is enough for a gentleman's life, though he needs more to full enjoy his hobbies. Few of his friends seem to work. Certainly there doesn't seem to be much debate and discussion about the war clouds that gather. Then Sassoon simply joins up, apparently on a whim, but you get a sense of his boredom and desire for excitement. Eventually he's at the Western Front, though his fox-hunting career and his prowess with a horse ensure that he's welcomed by the right people all along the way.

You start to get a sense at the end of this volume of the coming horror. He loses friends early in the war and the growing clash of the classes behind the lines is very apparent. Sassoon is on the wrong side of this (who on earth brings smoked salmon back from home leave), though to his credit, he seems to know it. Volume two of this book deals with later stages of the war, but the scene is set for a major crisis in Sassoon's thoughts. In a very real way, he reflects the major shocks that the entire political and social system would start to feel as the war went on.

Related Reviews

Sassoon - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Robert Roberts - A Ragged Schooling

Robert Roberts wrote one of the all time great studies of working class life, The Classic Slum, but this short book is a truly wonderful account of his boyhood growing up in the slums of Salford in the early years of the 20th Century.

Salford then was a city dominated by industry. Roberts' father works in a light engineering factory, where it turns out he is a leading trade unionist. He also drinks to deal with the pain and poverty of working class life. Very early on in his life he persuades his wife that they should purchase and run a small grocery shop.

Roberts' life is difficult. There are moments of real pain and suffering. Schooling was minimal and even then what they had was driven by his mother's desire for them to become educated - this passion makes her the real hero of the tale. She is the one that dresses their wounds and helps them with the problems of everyday childhood. But she slaves and works to make this possible.

One of the interesting points raised, is that the shop enables Robert's family to have a better life than most of those on the estates around them. But it still requires backbreaking work. One Christmas day, Robert's mother lies in till 10am. Because it is the only whole day a year that the shop is closed. She then gets up and makes a Christmas dinner for eight.

As the children grow older, the tensions between his parents grow - on Robert's journey to the world of adulthood and work, he tells us of the theatres and the music, the children's games, their explorations (I'd love to know more about the history of Salford's "poisoned wood" that they try and find), sexual awakenings. There are stories of strikes and protests against the Duke of Wellington, the burning out of a Jewish shopkeeper by a local man, the dreams of Roberts' father who buys a second rate piano for his children.

These fascinating tales make for fine reading. But Robert's lyrical writing is also beautiful. The poignant suicide of a woman who can't take one more day in the mill is particularly moving, but the description of the river Irwell then will stick with me, every time I cross the local bridges, there

"tumbled a river on whose purling waters the very rainbows appeared, at times to melt, though basically it ran the colour of plain chocolate. But catch the stream in happy mood and under one's eyes brown would dissolve into Mediterranean blue, azure slide into rich crimson.... standing entranced upon a bridge, we threw quantities of rubbish over to mix the creeping palettes".

Stories that bricks would float near Victoria station are dismissed by the author as "libel", but the output of the dye factories around the river meant that Roberts thought it would be 2040 before salmon swam the Irwell again.

This is a lovely little book for anyone who wants to understand working class life in Salford 100 years ago. There are still those around who will recognise from their parents the place names and descriptions, but it is a vanishing world, and every time they erect another block of identity kit yuppie flats that will remain empty for years, they wipe away an important bit of history that should not be forgotten - the struggle of ordinary people simply to live in dignity in the face of the ever hungry capitalist system.

Tim O'Brien - If I Die In A Combat Zone

This Vietnam memoir follows Tim O'Brien from his basic training to his time on the front line in Vietnam. It finishes with his time in a safer post, behind the lines working in the administration. By the time he got there, he'd seen several friends killed and injured and dodged sniper fire in the places that became infamous for the massacre at Mai Lai.

While the storyline has become a fairly standard structure for the Vietnam film or novel (or indeed many other war stories), here it works because of the authors brutal honesty. He documents his plans to run to Sweden - researched in detail and planned in depth, because of his terror at going. He talks about the ineptness of one of his commanders and he admits to barely seeing the enemy during his tour of duty.

The power of the book, apart from its honesty, is the way in which we see reflected the greater struggles that take place. Hindsight gives us a particular set of images when we hear the name Mai Lai, but for Tim as he moved around there it was simply another place.

Definitely one of the classics that came out of that war, it'll help clarify the fears and emotions of those soldiers who went to Vietnam but also fueled the struggles against the war and against Imperialism.

Related Reviews

Marlantes - Matterhorn

Hassan Mahamdallie - Crossing The River Of Fire: The Socialism Of William Morris

One of the central arguments of Hassan Mahamdallie's introduction to the life and politics of William Morris, is that all to often he is reduced to an artist, a poet, or simply a lover of nice things. Even when Morris' politics are considered, they are described as a strange mix of abstract socialism with a hoped for return to some sort of medieval utopia. This no doubt lies behind Tony Blair's declaration that William Morris had been a "inspiration" while he was a student. Morris' socialism isn't seen as being challenging today, indeed it can be used to give a red veneer to those who want to be on the right, but need to look left.

Hassan Mahamdallie smashes this nonsense. For him, William Morris was a dedicated revolutionist who spent his life fighting for a better world and dreaming of a time when the workers would seize power. In perhaps his most famous work, News from Nowhere, one of Morris' characters describes the social change that lead to the creation of the future socialist society. "Did the change... come peacefully?" he is asked;

"Peacefully?"..."What peace was there amongst those poor confused wretches of the 19th century? It was war from beginning to end: bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it."

Mahamdallie traces William Morris' development as a political activist and Marxist. From his earliest days in the radical movements, his disillusionment with the parliamentary activity he saw around him and the formation of the Socialist League that Morris remained loyal to for most of his life. Morris spent much of his life touring the country, lecturing, speaking and inspiring workers. News from Nowhere was apparently written on the train to and from meetings. He published huge numbers of articles in the League's newspaper Commonweal, even when the newspaper was no longer representative of Morris' own socialist ideas.

One of the best parts of this short book is the section where the author looks at Morris' environmental outlook. Many have argued that Marx and his followers have shown little interest in this subject, but as John Bellamy Foster writes, William Morris' ecology is very much "in the spirit of Marx". Morris understood that people's "alienation from the earth" was the "ultimate foundation/pre-condition for capitalism".

It's for this reason that the sections of his writings that mention the natural world - especially News from Nowhere - are so important - the belief that socialism wouldn't simply be an economic change, but would involve a fundamental change in human relationships with the natural world.

Morris wasn't without fault. Many of his errors and in particular his sectarianism towards parliamentary struggles and the Leagues refusal to be involved in many of the mass industrial struggles stem from the weaknesses of the earliest socialist movements in Britain. But Mahamdallie points out that rather than Morris stepping back from revolution towards the end of his life, his Marxist understanding was developing and growing.

Unfortunately it was too late for Morris to be part of those later struggles that shaped the early part of the 20th Century. His death in 1893 was the occasion for outpourings of grief from the working class movement. But already his socialism was being denigrated and denied in the obituaries. The simpler and easier story of Morris the Middle Class wallpaper designer was being written. Hassan Mahamdallie's book rescues the far greater and more inspiring story of the all-round socialist who wanted to see beauty and art for everyone, in a society that was free of oppression and exploitation.

Related Reviews

Behrman -  Shostakovich: Socialism, Stalin & Symphonies

Margaret Dewar - The Quiet Revolutionary

People make history but the people who do so are often forgotten. Everyone learns the names of generals or kings in history, or even those of dictators. But their soldiers, subjects and victims remain anonymous.

Margaret Dewar played barely a small role in history, yet her life charts some of the greatest events of the 20th century. If it wasn't for this autobiography, she would literally remain a footnote in a book. Yet her life was shaped by the forces of history and her documentation of them is worthy of re-reading. Born early in the 20th century in Russia, she came of a well to do German family. The first chapters are a fascinating story of a forgotten life in rural Russia - the warm memories of Christmas and Easter, the old traditions that seem quaint, yet have resonances today.

But there were great events on the horizon. Margaret lives through the Russian Revolution, moving to Moscow in the aftermath of the Civil War that was launched against the early Soviet power. Her recollections of hunger and rationing are her chief memories of those times. But she wasn't particularly political, though discussions about contemporary events were part of her life. She was more interested in music and learning the piano. What is fascinating are how the little events of life illuminate the wider situation - how trains would delay for days, or passengers would have to get off to cut firewood for fuel.

Seeking a better life, her stepfather flies with his family to Berlin in the early 1920s. With the hindsight we have, this is folly, but it must have seen an opportunity to good to miss, given their German nationality. Of course Germany in those years was seething with revolutionary struggle and the growth of counter-revolutionary fascist forces. Again concentrating on her dancing and music, most events are a backdrop, yet Margaret cannot avoid the politics - she comes across the Communist Party and becomes an activist. Admitting to finding it hard, she finds herself leading meetings and demonstrations.

Those of us active in left wing politics will recognise much of what she describes of those years - the meetings and debates, though she paints a picture of an organisation already stale with the grip of Stalinism. Members rarely read anything beyond official communist papers for instance and she doesn't feel she really can understand what is going on in the world, limited as her view is by the constraints of the needs of the party. There doesn't seem anything in the way of independent thought and action, rather the slavish following of a line. She and her comrades learn by rote to argue against Leon Trotsky's politics, even though none have them have read a word by him.

With the coming to power of Hitler the Communist Party melts away almost overnight. Margaret by then has visited Russia again as part of a delegation and has started to see through some of the rose-tinted images that have been painted. Eventually, questioned by the Gestapo, she flees overland (skiing some of the way) to the Czech Republic where she becomes deeper involved Trotskyist movement. From then, she travels to France and eventually Britain, meeting and marrying the Trotskyist activist Hugo Dewar (who wrote a history of the British Communist Party that I reviewed here). For the rest of her long life she and him work tirelessly to rebuild revolutionary organisation, becoming involved in the organisation that eventually becomes today's SWP.

Margaret Dewar's life is fascinating, not least because of the people she met - Clara Zetkin and Jan Frankel (Trotsky's secretary) for instance. But also for her descriptions of radical organisations and underground work. But mostly it is inspiring because it is the story of an ordinary woman caught up in extraordinary events who continues to struggle for a better world for her whole life.

Tony Cliff - Trotsky, The Sword of the Revolution, 1917 - 1923

This, the second part of Tony Cliff's four volume biography of  Leon Trotsky deals with the period that would be most disputed perhaps by Joseph Stalin and his followers at home and abroad. This is the aftermath of the October revolution - the workers and soldiers have seized power in Russia. Soviet power is a reality across a huge swathe of the globe. The seizure of power itself had be masterminded in many ways by Trotsky, and the book starts with the discussions that took place immediately - how to form a government and so on.

But the meat of this book deals with the fallout of the revolution. Russia was an immensely backward nation, dominated by a peasantry which had only recently broken from its serfdom. The working class, though powerful, was small. It had lead a mass revolution that had the loyalty and backing of the majority of the population, but no-body believed that Soviet Russia, alone could survive.

Of course, the seizure of power by the working class wasn't something that could be allowed to go unchecked - almost immediately the foreign nations intervened. Invading armies from those nations that had being battering each other months before in the trenches of World War One, were turned on the new revolutionary nation.

Trotsky was, perhaps after Lenin, one of the most well known and respected revolutionaries. He was at the heart of the debates, and indeed the action that took place in the aftermath of October 1917. He wasn't always right, and despite the authors obvious respect for Trotsky, he isn't afraid to criticise and disagree. This is most obvious with the political battles that took place immediately after Lenin's death when Trotsky could and should have moved to isolate and remove Stalin and his clique from power. This is what he had agreed he would do with Lenin, and Cliff sees Trotsky as betraying that agreement;

"That Trotsky was later very embarrassed by his behaviour at the Twelfth Congress is clear from the fact that no reference at all to the congress can be found in his autobiography, while four pages are devoted to describing duck hunting in precisely the place where a description of the congress would be expected."

Perhaps the most important and inspiring parts of the book are those that deal with Trotsky's forging of the Red Army. One of the central planks of the revolution had been the desire for peace. To have to create a new army from scratch, when the old Tsarist one had melted away during the revolutionary year of 1917 was difficult enough. To inspire and lead this army to defeat first the counter-revolutionary "white" armies and then the invading imperialist ones, was nothing short of miraculous.

But because the army was motivated by more than conscription or mercenary interests, it was far better than its opponents. Time and again they won battles (at least once with Trotsky leading on horseback) they should have lost. As Cliff says, "The Red Army men knew what they were fighting for, and believed in it passionately". Something that couldn't be said of those they were fighting.

But the gradual degeneration of working class power is always there in this story. The Red Army is part of this. The most able workers, the best communists joined the civil war, undermining the very heart of Bolshevik power in the factories of Petrograd and Moscow. Alongside this, the growing bureaucracy starts to become a force for itself. Interestingly, Cliff argues that Trotsky's success in forming the Red Army helped to undermine himself as it created a bloc of individuals who had their own interests and ideas. Debates on tactics helped this process:

"The strong influence of guerrillaism among the party cadres led to the formation of a Military Opposition, which continued throughout the civil war and which later became the core of the Stalinist faction."

Trotsky's preoccupation with the civil war, meant that he was absent for some of the most important post-revolution debates, though an enormous outpouring of writings from the period show that he was constantly thinking, reading and writing. The debates on the role of Trade Unions, military strategy, international questions are important, and show that even as the revolution declined the spirit of discussion and debate still existed at its core.

But it is with the final fight with Stalin that the book ends. Trotsky comes across as naive about the factional fight that he must fight. He is Lenin's favoured successor, yet seems unwilling to use this to defeat Stalin. Yet I was left with the feeling that even had Trotsky won this factional battle there would seem to have been little that could have been done to turn the tide of revolutionary degeneration. Russia was isolated, the expected international revolution hadn't occurred. Industry was decimated, and the working class tired, exhausted and far reduced.

Cliff understands though that hindsight is important and sums up by arguing;

"Lack of theoretical and political clarity led Trotsky to make a number of concessions and compromises, above all to Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were to become his new allies in the United Opposition of 1926-7. Nothing was more alien to Trotsky’s character than hesitation and fudging. When by 1927 he grasped the enormity of Stalin’s crimes, and called Stalin ‘the gravedigger of the revolution’, he became completely uncompromising."

When the next stage of the fight was on, Trotsky carried the flame of international socialism and helped to keep it alive. That he had played such a central role in the revolution was something that Stalin tried to write from history, yet couldn't quite destroy.

If you can't get hold of a copy of this volume second hand, you can find it at the Marxist Internet Archive here.

Related Reviews

Cliff - Trotsky; Towards October. Volume one of this biography.
Choonara - A Rebel's Guide to Trotsky
Hallas - Trotsky's Marxism

Roland Chambers - The Last Englishman, The double life of Arthur Ransome

Those who know Arthur Ransome as the writer of the excellent childrens novels in the Swallows and Amazon's series are often amazed to learn that he had a rather more exciting life than you might imagine from someone whose most famous works concentrate on sailing, fishing and camping.

In reality, Ransome's life was dominated by much bigger events, which is why only a few chapters towards the end of this excellent book deal with the later stages of his life when he became famous as the author of children's novels. The vast bulk of the book deals with his times in Russia - particularly the period of the Russian revolution.

Ransome travelled to Russia looking for, it might be said, himself. Escaping from a marriage and a fatherhood that he clearly loathed, he arrived into a country seething with political discontent. He was there, to locate and translate Russian fairy tales. He found himself caught up in the greatest working class revolution that has ever taken place. Ransome was clearly bowled over by events. He was inspired and fascinated by the involvement of ordinary people in the organs of democracy - the Soviets.

One of the strengths of this book, is that the author quotes at length Ransome's reportage from Russia. It gives both a sense of the period and the man himself.

"It is impossible for people who have not lived here to known with what joy we write of the new Russian Government. Only those who know how things were but a week ago can understand the enthusiasm of us who have seen the miracle take place before our eyes." he wrote on the front page of the Daily News in the aftermath of the February revolution which overthrew the Tsar.

Ransome was an unlikely supporter of revolution. As Chambers puts it, "in terms of his family background and education, he belong to the class which dominated and was protected by the Provisional Government [i.e. that which was in opposition to Soviet power throughout 1917]"

Ransome certainly wasn't a revolutionary, though he was a socialist when he went to Russia. His politics seemed to be those of the Fabian movement in the British Labour Party which certainly was no friend of Bolshevism. But he found himself utterly convinced by the realities of revolutionary power - a power that I think explains his enthusiasm far more than Chambers' argument that Ransome's failure at Rugby. Rather than having some sort of chip on his shoulder, I think that Ransome's excitement had more to do with the fact he was prepared to make an honest assessment of the revolution's highs.

Later this changed - in his excitement and desire to bring the truth about Russia to a wider audience, Ransome tended to gloss over some aspects of it. I don't think this is because Ransome was blind to reality - more that he understood that the revolution had to be defended and fought for. This enthusiasm and lack of criticism meant that he was viewed with distrust and suspicion in the higher echelons of the British establishment.

Media discussion of Ransome in Russia often centres on whether he was a British Spy or not. The problem is, that I don't think it is as black and white as this. Ransome clearly did intelligence work for the British government - he also propagandised and helped the Bolsheviks. Lenin clearly saw him as someone valuable enough to trust with writing accounts for the western media. But for all his enthusiasm for revolution, I don't think that Ransome really broke with capitalism - perhaps he saw the new democracy but could conveniently believe that things were different back home.

Becoming personal friends with leading Bolsheviks, marrying Trotsky's secretary and propagandising for the revolution was one thing. But his final return to Britain meant an abrupt end to his experiments with socialism. On one occasion he was shadowed by the police and interviewed. Chambers reports Ransome's answer to the question "what are your politics?" as "fishing". Ransome never finished his history of the Russian revolution, though his two books on Russia remain important works for those interested in studying the reality of the events of 1917 and afterwards. The police noted with relief that he didn't (despite lots of invitations) speak at socialist or radical meetings about his experiences - something that Ransome's friend and colleague, Morgan Phillips Price certainly was happy too.

Oddly enough, I finished this book not liking Ransome as a person. His revolutionary excitement for the idea of workers taking power, never seems matched with his own relationships. His abandonment of revolutionary politics may be due in part for his concerns for his new wife's family under Stalin, but Chambers portrays him as a man who was only really after personal stability - the right wife, the perfect boat, the best home and a career that would see him lauded for something, anything. His relationship with his daughter is arrogant and uncaring, his lack of emotional engagement with the death on the Western Front of his brother is odd from a man who seemed to put such emphasis on sibling relationships in his novels.

Ransome's fame eventually brought him wealth and some sort of happiness. But this later stage of his life is the least interesting part of this great biography. The importance of which is that it puts Ransome's strange and contradictory life squarely into the context of a changing world, shaped by the great struggles of the early 20th century - war and revolution.

Related Reviews

Hardyment - Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk
Ransome - We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea
Ransome - Peter Duck
Cliff - All Power To The Soviets

CLR James - Beyond A Boundary

Rare is the detailed book on sport written by an avowed Marxist. Still less are books about, cricket, perhaps seen as the most establishment of sports - at least here in the UK. But the central tenet of CLR James book is summed up with the famous line, "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know" - you can't understand the sport, without understanding its context.

In this sense, the book is a very interesting piece of work. The descriptions of James' childhood, with cricket a central part of his life are fascinating in and of themselves. But the way in which he shows the sport as being part and parcel of shaping a cultural identity is also fascinating. As is the descriptions of race and class that flow from this. The battle that CLR James was part of, to make a black man the captain of the West Indies cricket team sums up the way that colonial people's had to struggle every inch of the way for their own right to nationhood.

But if I am honest, I was disappointed with James' take on sport. For someone who sees the importance of sport's cultural, political and historical context, I think he becomes inflexible with his own ideas. He dismisses out of hand the way that "Trotsky had said that the workers were deflected from politics by sports". He misses of course that it can do that, and it can be an instrument of their anger and radicalism. Trotsky was writing in particular of the effect of football on the working class in Britain - the use of sport here was a concious attempt by the ruling class to divert people's attention from their own suffering. But move several thousands of miles away and the situation is reversed. Part of the problem is no doubt James' own experiences, and perhaps his own political break with Trotsky.

But the problem gets worse I think when James begins to draw links between sports and culture. He writes that the "spontaneous outburst of thousands at a fierce hook or a dazzling slip-catch, the ripple of reognition at a long-awaited leg-glance, are as genuine and deeply felt expressions of artistic emotion as any I know".

Now of course, people enjoy watching good sportsman ship (though they are as likely to cheer a lucky shot or a badly played one, if their team gets some more runs), but I think that James is projecting his own deep love for the game of cricket onto others here. Particularly when he goes on to describe the lines made by cricketers limbs almost as an art form.

But James is better than this. Here he sums up the difference between what the sport means for different peoples (and I think, in part contradicts his earlier sentiments).

"West Indians crowding to Tests bring with them the whole past history and future hope if the islands. English people... have a conception of themselves breathed from birth. Drake and mighty Nelson, Shakespeare, Waterloo, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the few who did so much for so many, the success of parliamentary democracy those and such of those constitue a national tradition. Underdeveloped countries have to go back centuries to rebuild one. We of th West Indies have none at all, none that we know of. To such people the three W's, Ram and Val wrecking English batting, help to fill a huge gap in their consciousness and in their needs."

Leaving aside the decidedidly dodgy idea that parliamentary democracy is a success for everyone, it is a useful summing up the role of the sport in the development of West Indian cultural identity. James' understanding of class and how racism was used to divide and rule makes his take on sport particularly interesting, but his attempts to put cricket at the heart or on a par with everything else, culturally, historically and politically felt simplistic and unsatisfying to me.

Related Reviews

James - The Black Jacobins