Abram Leon - The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation

Abram Leon was a brilliant intellectual and socialist activist whose life was cut short when he was murdered in Auschwitz. Born in Warsaw in October 1918 his parents emigrated to Palestine when he was a schoolboy, but then moved to Belgium shortly afterward. From his parents Leon learnt Zionist politics. He quickly becoming an activist in the Zionist socialist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. He read avidly, as even a cursory glance at the extensive bibliography in this book shows. But he studied Marxism seriously and began to break with Zionism. Leon wrote for a Belgian Troskysist newspaper, and quickly became involved in the group behind it. During World War II Leon wrote a "Theses on the Jewish Question" which became the basis for this book. Through the war years Leon became a leading underground revolutionary, connecting activists in France and Belgium and his group was one of the few socialist organisations maintaining principled positions against imperialism. Tragically when the end of the war was in sight Leon was captured by the Nazis, tortured and eventually deported to Auschwitz where he was murdered.

The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation was his only book. It is a masterpiece of hisorical materialism, limited only by the conditions in which it was written. The editors and translators of the Pathfinder edition I read have done wonders to attempt to find all the source material that Leon used. Naturally he was unable to check all his sources, though this does not undermine the work at all. In the book Leon attempts to understand the position of Jewish people under capitalism and how they have become the victims of fascist and right-wing politics. To do this he explores the history of the Jews from ancient times through to the 20th century. He does because in his words:

We must not start with religion in order to explain Jewish history; on the contrary, the preservation of the Jewish religion or nationality can be explained only by the 'real Jew,' that is to say, by the Jew in his economic and social role.

Thus Leon argues that "the cause of ancient antisemitism is the same as for medieval antisemitism: the antagonism toward the merchant in every society based principally on the production of use values". The Jewish religion means that Jews in ancient and feudal society were forced to occupy particular roles within society, that of the merchant, trader and eventually money lender. These positions meant Jewish people become the victims of antisemitism because they are hated both by the ruling class and lower orders for their economic roles. Leon spends some time exploring the different roles of Jewish people in medieval times - particularly the way that the ruling class dominated their repression - stealing their money, initiating pogroms and expelling them from their lands. Its a fascinating account which sees monarchs and lords dependent on the Jewish people, and empowered to exile and imprison them. But as the economies developed, this was undermined as other people could take on the positions previously restricted to Jews:

The evolution in exchange of medieval economy proved fatal to the position of the Jews in trade. The Jewish merchant importing spices into Europe and exporting slaves, is displaced by respectable Christian traders to whom urban industry supplies the principal products for their trading.

This developement drives a further change which sees Jews become associated with "usury" in particular - though Leon is careful to avoid seeing "lending" as being seperate to "commerical capital". Instead he argues is that "the eviction of the Jews from commerce had as a consequence their entrenchment in one of the professions which they had already practiced previously." Again Leon explores in some fascinating detail historical examples of how Jewish people lived and worked in the period, and their social positions. Crucially Leon argues against common antisemitic lies:

The ideology and capacities of each class formed gradually as a function of its economic position. The same is true of the Jews. It is not their 'innate' predisposition for commerce which explains their economic position but it is their economic position which explains their predisposition to commerce. 

Leon continues by arguing that just as it is "infantile to see the economic position of Judaism as the result of the 'predispositions of the Jews'... it is puerile to consider it as the fruit of persectuions and of legan bans against exercising other profiession than commerce or usury." He documents the various roles, jobs and positions that Jewish people did hold in medieval society outside of trading and usury. It demonstrates that even in highly religious societies like medieval Europe, antisemitism was not a constant. But the association of usury with Jews drove new explosions of antisemitism among the rich as well as the peasants and artisans in cities. As Leon explains:

In the measure that usury became the principal occupation of the Jews, they enetered increasingly into relations with the popular masses and these relations worsened all the time... It was... direst distress which forced the peasant or the artisan to borrow from the Jewish usurer... It is easy to understand the hatred that the man of te people must hav efelt for the Hew in whom he saw the direct cause of his ruin, without perceiving the emperor, the prince, or the rich bourgeois, who had become richer thanks to the Jewish usurer. it is in Germany above all where Jewish usury took on its most "popular" form, pricipally in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries... a hatred which ended in anti-Jewish massacres and in the "burning" of Jews (Judenbrand).

This lays the basis for ongoing antisemitic tropes and racist beliefs about Jewish people, even into the capitalist era when Jews no longer played the social and economic role they had done under feudalism. As Leon writes:

On the one hand, capitalism favoured the economic assimilation of Judaism and consequently its cultural assimilation; on the other hand, by uprooting the Jewish masses, concentrating them in cities, provoking the rise of antisemitism, it stimulated the development of Jewish nationalism. 

The development of Zionism as a reflection of this nationalism however is unable to resolve the contradictions that arise from class society. As Leon says, "an evil cannot be suppressed without destroying its causes. But Zionism wishes to resolve the Jewish question without destroying capitalism, which is the principal source of the suffering of the Jews."

Unsurprisingly it is the horror of the Nazis that shapes the conclusions of Leon's book. Though he remains hopeful. It is worth quoting in full these words, written as they were by a socialist revolutionary in the midst of the Nazi Germany's conquest of most of mainland Europe:

The very paroxysm, however, that the Jewish problem has reached today, also provides the key to its solution. The plight of the Jews has never been so tragic; but never has it been so close to ceasing to be that. In past centuries, hatred of the Jews had a real basis in the social antagonism which set them against other classes of the population. Today, the interest of the Jewish classes are closely bound up with the interests of the popular masses of the entire world. By persecuting the Jews as “capitalist,” capitalism makes them complete pariahs. The ferocious persecutions against Judaism render stark naked the stupid bestiality of anti-Semitism and destroy the remnants of prejudices that the working classes nurse against the Jews. The ghettos and the yellow badges do not prevent the workers from feeling a growing solidarity with those who suffer most from the afflictions all humanity is suffering.

Leon argues that the destruction of capitalism and the building of a socialist society would enable the Jewish people to live in peace and freedom precisely because it would allow "the possibility of assimilation as well as the possibility of having a special national life". Perceptively, several years before the establishment of the State of Israel he notes the potential for a socialist future to unite people, "when national barriers and prejudices begin to disappear in Palestine, who can doubt that a fruitful reconciliation will take place between the Arab and Jewish workers, the result of which will be their partial and total fusion". 

Socialism, by removing national barriers, class antagonism and the need to "divide and rule" will, through the joint struggle of people from different backgrounds, cultures and religions, create a society free of antisemitism forever. It is only socialism, Leon argues, that can offer hope and a safe future to Jewish people everywhere.

The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation is a remarkable book, both for the conditions of its writing and for the clarity of its argument. Inevitably there are some things that are dated, and it would have been interesting if Leon had been able to develop further his analysis of fascism and antisemitism. But in its clarity of historical analysis, Abram Leon's use of Marxism to understand how Jewish people's lives and social roles changed historically, and his utter commitment to the complete liberation of humanity, it remains an inspiring and educational work.

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Walter Mosley - What Next: A memoir toward world peace

Walter Mosley is best known for his crime novels, many of which feature Easy Rawlins, an American black detective working in Los Angeles. But Mosley is less well known for his political work. What Next: A memoir toward world peace is an essay he wrote in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001 in New York City. In it Mosley explores the reasons for the attacks and the dangers of a US led response. In doing so he interogates the racism, poverty, violence and class nature of the United States.

Reading What Next I was reminded about the radical politics of the era. September 11 happened in the midst of the merging and growing anti-capitalist movement, which then morphed into the anti-war protests. A strong sense of radical politics emerged within these movements that is very much reflected in Mosley's writing. He rights beautifully about how the Civil Liberties movement shaped contemporary America. But he is also painfully aware of the reality of US imperialism and how what is done to the rest of the world in the name of US power, impacts back on those who live in the US state, but are also victims. 

The "memoir" aspect of the title comes in part from Mosley's own memories of his father. He was a US soldier in World War Two, and Mosley remembers how when he asked his Dad if he was scared his father's answer shocked him. Mosley senior wasn't scared at first, because he thought the Germans only hated Americans, and as a black man, he had never been considered American. The Nazis however, didn't appreciate the sutbletiles of 20th century US racism and tried to shoot him. It was a defining moment for Mosley's father and thus for Walter.

As Mosley watched the burning Twin Towers, he say "in the column of smoke", the legacy of that system:

Every child wasting away under his mother's powerless gaze. Every Muslim burned by a Hindu. Every innocenet citizen blown up by a suicide bomber or crhsed by an onrushing, revenge-drunk tank. I know we are responsible because US dollars have found their way into, and out of, every battlefield, every hospital bed, and every pocket of every terrorist in the world. We - Black men and women in every stratum of American society - live in and are part of an eco-system of terror. We, descendents of human suffering, are living in a fine mansion at the edge of a precipice. And the ground is caving in under the weight of our wealth and privilege.

Much of this could be written about today not least in US imperialism's support for genocide in Gaza. But there is ambiguity in Mosley's assertion that everyone in the US is in someway responsible for it. He does understand that not all Americans, and certainly not all "people of color in this nation" are wealthy, successful or privileged. There are many who suffered in the US's rise to power: "Native Americans and Chinese Americas and millions of poor white Americans who suffered and died for the railroads and steel manufacturers in wars for land and economic control."

But it is, and was, unfair to right that "black men and women in every stratum" are living in a "fine mansion" in "wealth and privilege". Quite the opposite in fact. Mosley's polemic is contradictory. He understands that the poor, the oppressed and the exploited are victims, yet because they are part of "America" he portrays them as part of the machine. However, this sits at odds with his belief  that the enemy is the system itself, and that "we must redefine our notion of the The Enemy, taking into account the role and actions of our own political and economic systems".

The problem is of course, the word "we". US politicians are adept at claiming that they speak for all. In fact all imperialists are. They justify actions by claiming to speak in our name. It is why so many placarsd on anti-war protests read "Not in Our Name". Mosley echoes this: "Even if we condone military actions, we might at least claim some culpability". And Mosley turns this into a critique of the general mainstream political narrative: "If we commit these murders, then we are also The Enemy of Civilisation" he concludes. Here he deploys "we" to force the reader to question who they are within the logic of imperialism.

It is safe to say that Mosley was not writing for me. His polemic was written specifically "as an address to African America", as a discussion on how black American history relates to the War on Terror. That's not to say there isn't plenty here for everyone though, even two decades after that failed war began. Running through the book is the question of class. I was enthralled by the clarity of his prose when it came to understanding the differences between the poor and the rich: Those who labour, and those who don't. Mosley uses this theme repeatedly, linking the war abroad with the war on working class Americans.

In vilifying the capitalist shell of our foreign policies, the victims also vilify the American people. This makes sense. Don't we always malign our enemies?... But... we Americans don't necessarily believe in the pracitvies of our corporate structures. Many of us feel the plundering effects of big business in our own work lives, bank accounts, energy bills and certainly at the hospital. Today many Americans have lost vast quantities of cash betting on the hollow promise of the stock market. College funds nad retirement accounts have been depleted and lost while the captains of capital remain well-heeled and unaffected.

In fact it is very notable that Mosley's definition of class is a Marxist one, linking it to the individual's relation to the means of production, rather than sociological nonsense like ones accent. 

So Mosley's conclusions are revolutionary. His calls to action are very much shaped by the preoccupation of the 2000s anti-capitalist movement: concern about the media, questions about organisation, fears about state security bodies and perhaps some naive illusions in state democrarcy. The movement still obsesses about some of these these questions today, which is why the book feels so contemporary. 

But it also feels contemporary, because the problems that Mosley refers to in the aftermath of 9/11 have only got worse. The US has been involved in endless wars. Imperialist crisis is spreading. Economic slump and crashes have reoccured and the environment has only got worse. The movements against racism that form the core of much of his essay have, however, exploded: Black Lives Matter saw the biggest days of protest in World History. These built on the movement against war and capitalism that inspired Mosley. They continue today - not least in the Palestinian solidarity movement. In this sense Walter Mosley's book speaks to a new generation.

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Vaillant - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

John Vaillant - Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

I write this review in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Milton's devastation of parts of Florida. Milton followed Helene, just a week or so earlier. Both hurricanes cut a swathe through parts of North America, leaving death and destruction in their paths. John Vaillant's recent book Fire Weather is subtitled a "true story from a hotter world" and the story of hurricanes Milton and Helene could have shared that subtitle. They were both made worse by the hotter world we now live on. Scientists and environmentalists have longed warned about the feedback mechanisms of a warmer planet. As the world gets warmer, climate change further encourages the warming of the world. This cycle accelerates the speed of warming. The catastrophes that accompany a hotter planet come thicker and faster.

Fire Weather deals with just one such catastrophe, but it is an emblematic and enlightening one, the destruction of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada in 2016. There's a grim feedback mechanism in play here, for McMurray is at the heart of fossil fuel capitalism. It was for many years a boomtown driven by the wealth of the region's tar sands. The bitumen deposits here are difficult to turn into profitable commodities. But when the price of oil is high enough there are bonanzas to be made. McMurray was a town built on bonanza. 

Vaillant traces the history of McMurray, and indeed, the history of industrial capitalism's obsession with oil. Its a fascinating story that shows the way that capitalism embedded nature, and its resources, into a global commodity system. McMurray started off as an isolated place where animal skins and fur were trapped and sold, before morphing into an (isolated) 21st century oil city. Weaved in with this history is a longer story of humanity's relationship with fire. Combustion, burning, fire are essential for humans. We need fire for travel, heating and food. But fire is also intrinsic to nature. The boreal forests that surround McMurray for tens of thousands of square miles need fire to renew and propagate. Humans think of such fires as a threat that needs to be fought - an invading army that has to be countered with traps, weapons and occasional retreat (the retreats are more common now). But the fires that engulf Alberta are part of that ecological system, its just that (unfortunately for humanity) they are more frequent, more intense and more common in a warming world.

Vaillant explains fire to us. But his use of metaphor is interesting. Describing how wildfires crossover ("when the ambient temperature in degrees Celsisus exceeds the relative humidity as a percentage") and become an exponentially faster, more agile, more dangerous fire, Vaillant says that "if unregulated free market cpaitalism were a chemical reaction, it would be a wildfire in crossover conditions". He continues "Alberta's bitumen industry follows a similar growth pattern, with market forces standing in for weather."

Capitalism is the problem here. It drives an endless accumulation of wealth for the sake of accumulation, based on an insastiable burning of natural resources. It is a wildfire of production, and as it grows it sucks in more nature, more humanity and expels material that pollutes and destroys. The irony of McMurray is that it was destroyed by its own forces of production, or rather the consequences of the usage of the use-values it produced. In fact Vaillant's book is really about the intersection of urban fossil fuel capitalism and wildfire. As he writes:

Combustive energy had drawn people to For McMurray in steadily increasing numbers over the course of a century, and combustive energy was driving them out again, en masse, in a single afternoon... the exodus of May 3 [2016] was the largest, most rapid displacement of people due to fire in North American history. It took the form of an unbroken ribbon of vehicles crawling in ranks, like army ants, northward and southward out of the city while fire raged along the highway, in some cases right up to the breakdown lanes.

With Hurricane Milton in mind, as well as Vaillants accounts of the escape from McMurray, it might be that the defining images of 21st century global warming in the Global North will be endless streams of SUVs and trucks driving away from environmental disasters. Climate refugees from the Global South are met with barbed wires and closed borders. In the Global North the Ford F-150s were given a much friendlier welcome. In one way the Fort McMurray fire was a very unusual climate disaster. Unusual circumstances combined with a rare urban environment: 

Hundredth-percentile fire weather conditions during the hottest, driest May in recorded history, following a two-year drought in a sudden city filled with twenty-five thousands petroleum-infused boxes and surrounded by millions of dessicated trees.

But as Vaillant points out, "this is the nature of twenty-first-century WUI [Wildland Urban Interface] fire." Once in a lifetime events are becoming once in a decade events. Soon they'll be more common. 

If Vaillant had only written the story of McMurray and the urban-wildfire environment it would have been a fine book. But at the heart of the story is that of McMurray's population. His account of the desperate evacuation, the struggle of the authorities to adjust to rapidly changing and unprecedented fire condition and the battle of the firefighters itself is a remarkable account of the reality of disaster in modern neoliberal society.

It is the story of a city that is really unable to deal with the disaster, not because of incompetence, or lack of training, or even lack of resources (something that most people in the world facing disaster will not have), but because there was no real understanding that a disaster on this scale could even happen. In many ways McMurray was better prepared than most cities for fire, because it could draw on the resources and fire-fighting experience provided by the oil industry itself. But the failure to control the fire happened because it was on a scale far beyond imagination. In fact clear is that traditional fire fighting doesn't work in the in the 21st century WUI, and new methods of fire control need to be learnt. Interestingly it seems that allowing firefighters and workers to make decisions based on events and knowledge, rather than centralied leadership, is one lesson to be learnt from these massive fires.

Reading Vaillant's account of the breakdown of control I was reminded of those highly popular 1970s brick sized novels epitomised by Arthur Hailey. In those wonderful disaster stories, tiny mistakes and failures would accumulate into a giant failure. In McMurray there were plenty of such failures that combined to help the fire reach epidemic proprtions, but there was no lack of bravery. In fact the stories of the firefighters and indeed ordinary workers who fought day after day to save their city are inspiring. One wonders what is left for them. Vaillant quotes one Radio director who said afterward, "imagine a city - thousands of people - all living in everyday harmony, each and every one with some aspect of PTSD."

There's going to be more. Vaillant writes that "hotter and drier now, the atmosphere has been tilted in fire's favour". As the hammer of global warming drives more and more hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves and floods against the anvil of capitalism's fractured and divided society, there will be endless death and destruction. There will also be plenty of PTSD for the survivors. But the bravery, industry and inventiveness of the workers who fought the fire in McMurray, and who rebuilt the town, are the potential force for change. John Vaillant concludes his superb book, by arguing for a different vision to that offered by fossil fuel capitalism - "devoting our energy and creativity to regeneration and renewal, rather than combustion and consumption". Let's hope that these are the lessons of Fort McMurray, and hurricanes Helene and Milton.

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John Grisham - The Runaway Jury

It has been many years since I read a John Grisham novel. But back in the late 1990s and early 2000s I had several favourites. I was a particular fan of The Runaway Jury which I read several times. It is the story of a jury in a case where the widow of a smoker who died from cancer is suing a large tobacco corporation. It is a high stakes trial. If the plaintiff wins, there'll be immediate damages of millions of dollars. The risks for the multinationals though are much bigger - the potential for tens of thousands of further lawsuits.

In order to try and best skew the jury towards a favourable verdict, both sides of lawyers have teams trying to understand who the jurors are. The most unfavourable came be removed at jury selection - the most likely to give big monetary damages for instance. The others might be swayed by more nefarious and illegal means. Bribes, pressure on family members, or other acts. Its highly illegal, though possibly quite realistic, and Grisham has a brilliant cast of utterly amoral and immoral characters trying to win the case for big tobacco, and having access to huge slush funds to make it happen. 

But then there's Nick and Marlee. Nick is on the jury, and no one seems to know anything about him. But he seems to be able to steer the jury. Influencing them to get proper food and cutlry. To get day trips to break the monotony of sequestration and to even act collectively seemingly at random. How is he doing this? Marlee approaches Fitch, an unpleasant fixer for the tobacco companies, with a generous offer. For plenty of renumeration she'll ensure Nick delivers the verdict.

It is a fantastic, if unbelievable, setup. Grisham tells it well though, and creates a real tension by the end. The reader must know which way the results going to go, but how will Nick and Marlee get away with it. There's a fantastic tension between Fitch and Marlee that Grisham nicely develops. It borders on lust on Fitch's part. Not in a sexual way, but because Marlee offers something that he, a veteran of dozens of such trials, can only dream of - the ability to dictate the outcome of a jury's decision.

The Runaway Jury has everything. A humiliated multinational. A cast of unpleasant characters who usually get their comupance, and a nice win for the underdogs. Despite it feeling dated in places - not least because the technological references are now very dated - this is a fun, satisfying read. Particularly for those of us whose lives have been blighted in one way or the other by the tobacco companies.

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Len Deighton - The Ipcress File

Len Deighton's The Ipcress File came out in 1962, the first in a series about an anonymous spy who was to be christened Harry Palmer in the films made of the books. Palmer is an interesting character, a direct reposte to James Bond. Spycraft in these novels is not glamorous or sexy, its dirty, dull and bureaucratic. Deighton's version of the British spy system is stuffed full of upper-class ex-servicemen who are well out of their depth, fighting paperwork battles for funding and obsessing over expenditure. His anonymous hero is a working class former soldier who invades their world, delights in insubordination, and has a "to hell with it" attitude to spying and paperwork. It makes for a fun mix.

Expectations of Deighton's book might depend on whether or not you have seen the film. If you have, then it is difficult to shake off Michael Caine's role. If you haven't then you are treated to a first person view of a Cold War London that is emerging from its era of rationing and austerity. The Dockers are always on strike. The coffee is always cold and inadequate and everything is glum and a bit seedy. It is the depiction of this that makes the film of Ipcress File so entertaining. But the book lays it on much harder.

If I have one criticism it is that the first person structure of the novel makes it quite hard to follow an intricate plot. Despite it's relatively short length, this is not a novel to rush through. The sparcity of prose means that missing a line means plot points can be lost quite quickly. Rather like some of Raymond Chandler's work, I am still a little unsure of the fate of one of the characters!

The Ipcress File is a fantastic 1960s story full of double-crosses, betrayal and international machinations. Combined with frustrations about spies who haven't filled in their expense forms. Highly enjoyable!

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Verlaine Stoner McDonald - The Red Corner: The Rise & Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana

If you think of the politics of rural America, you probably think of it in terms of conservativism. A mixture of rugged individualistic politics, cynicism about government and conservative political leanings. There's a lot of truth to this. In 2016, 62 percent of the US rural electorate voted for Trump. This reflected the way that Trump's political movement had become the outlet for general discontent at the way small town America had been systematically undermined by successive governments, both Democrat and Republican, and forgotten by an economic system that fails ordinary people in the interest of profits for the rich. In my review of Robert Wuthnow's book The Left Behind, I noted that addressing the concerns of rural working Americans meant developing social movements "whose starting point is that working people, in rural areas and cities, have more in common than their differences."

So on a recent trip to Montana in the US, I was enormously interested to discover, that there is very much a radical tradition in rural America. The radicalism of Montana's urban areas is well known. The insurgent trade union movement of Butte remains a source of pride for working people in that town, and is well documented. But I was particularly excited to learn of Montana's "Red Corner", Sheridan County, which in the early decades of the 20th century, had an extensive radical movement which in the later part of the era, saw Communist candidates being elected to important positions in the County and significant support for left, and communist, politics.

This is a surprising revelation and Verlaine Stoner McDonald's book on the subject The Red Corner, is worth digging out for those who want to know more. McDonald begins with the context. Sheridan County, a remote part of the world even by Montana's standards is buttressed on one edge by Canada and on another by North Dakota. In the late 1800s it was settled by European farmers, many of whom came from Scandinavia, and brought with them left ideas and traditions. McDonald describes the "unforgiving climate", the lawlessness and the difficulties in living on the plains, and argues that this made the population "especially receptive" to the growing "farmers' movement of the 1910s and 1920s":

The movements' message, grounded in the persuasive strategies of other farming and mining organisations in America, would be skilfully manipulated by local political leaders, setting the stage for the astonishing rise of Communism in Sheridan County.

I will return to this comment later. But it is worth dwelling for a moment on the ideas that underpinned the support for such a movement. McDonald explains the,

northeastern Montana farmers' movement, the culture in which it arose, and the types of rhetorical appeals it would use were well grounded in traditional and very widely helf beliefs about the role of farmers in American life. Additionally, the Sheridan County Communists had the advantage of building on a foundation of home-grown populism and labour activism that had been established elsewhere on the Great Plains in the nineteenth century... In the early days of the Republic, American culture was rife with notions about what it meant to farm and to be a farmer, expressed in images that would undergird and enliven the message of the Communist Party in Montana a century and a half later.

These "Agrarian Myth" behind these politics, which celebrated the central role of the farmer to humanity, and specifically the United States, was taken up by a series of farmers' organisations in Montana, and the Plains, "devoted to education, reform, and protest in the rural Midwest and West". There was plenty to protest about and organise around; the cost of living, the price of crops and the realities of farming life on the prairie. The National Grange, one of a number of such organisations, founded in 1867, promoted 

an image of farmers as important and knowledgeable (or at least educable) members of the economic system who were standing up to assert their rights. Grangers also would not hesitate to identify those who would deprive farmers of their rights. In this effort the Grange made occasional use of appeals that would become commonplace in farmer activism, that is, pitting the producers against nonproducers. As banners in an 1873 Grange Independence Day parade asserted: "This organisation is opposed to railroad steals, salary steals, bank steals, and every other form of thieving by which the farmers and laboring classes are robbed of the legitimate fruits of their labour."

It is easy to see how politics like these could evolve into the socialist politics of the 20th century. McDonald notes how the growth of global radical politics in the early years of the new century was mirrored in the United States and Montana. Anti-war, left and socialist politics grew massively in the years before World War One, and mushroomed following the Russian Revolution in 1917. These had their echo in rural Montana where it became focused around the radical farmers' newspaper The Producers News, edited by Charles E. Taylor.

Taylor is a central figure in McDonald's book and this is not the place to retell the whole story. His newspaper became enormously influential, connected as it was to the farmers' movement the Nonpartisan League. The League was accomplished at linking political concerns to mass agitation. Organising meetings, parades and even picnics. It drew in large numbers to its events, and some of its speakers became incredibly well known. Taylor however, developed The Producers News into something more than the mouthpiece of the movement. He filled it with popular columns and editorials, injected plenty of gossip and satire, and was not afraid of mocking and insulting almost everyone else. It was a potent mix and as Taylor's own politics developed, the newspaper carried him with it. As the League morphed into the Farmer-Labour Party, Taylor was twice elected to the Montana senate.

The influence of the left, and the Communists, in Sheridan was extraordinary. As McDonald summarises, at one point 

"Reds" occupied every elected office in the county and had sent a covert Communist to Helena as their state senator for two terms. Local youths could attend camps where they were actively indoctrinated with Communist ideals, and the radicals' newspaper flourished... In [1932], former sheriff Rodney Salisbury was on the ballot in an attempt to become the nation's first Communist governor.

Taylor seems like a fascinating figure, hardworking and exuberant, with a talent for seizing the moment. He was also a socialist, and eventual member of the Communist Party. The US Communist Party had grown, in difficult conditions, out of a complicated merger from a number of different socialist organisations. It was very much a Party that was reliant on its links to the Soviet Union, and while its activists where principled and talented, its limited cadre and the hostile conditions of US politics doomed it. The CPUSA was crude and lacked nuance - it's vision of socialism was far from the emancipatory project that celebrated activism and rebellion from below. This is particularly obvious in its treatment of The Producers News. As the Russian Revolution receded into memory and revolution failed to break through in Western Europe, the leaders of the Soviet Union switched to an isolationist, State Capitalist approach to politics. This was far from the mass radical involvement that characterised Russian socialism in the era of Lenin, and it had its impact in the USA. The Producers News became increasingly a tool to celebrate the Soviet Union and its alleged achievements. Rightwing critics of the News in its rival the Plentywood Herald "acknowledging that farmers in northeastern Montana were enduring difficult times, noted that their suffering was small in comparison with that of Russian workers." 

Increasingly it seems the News was not articulating the anger of its readers, and especially while being edited by official CPUSA members while Taylor was engaged in other projects, becoming a mouthpiece of crude Soviet dogma. It was not a winning combination. The near libelous satire of Taylors' newspaper worked because it could combine local news and gossip, with frustration and anger from below. It connected to the masses, even in the absence of mass movements. The CPs model could not achieve this, and the newspaper went into decline - even when it was converted into the CPs national farmers' newspaper. Along with the decline of the Producers News went the decline of Communist influence in Sheridan County.

This is the extraordinary story that McDonald tells of the rise and fall of Sheridan's Communists. In it, she very much argues that it was the result of a some very specific circumstances. In particular she argues that without leaders like Charles Taylor and the skilled manipulation by left leaders, the movement would never have taken off. I found myself a little unconvinced by these arguments. 

It seemed to me that there was (and is) plenty for farmers in Montana to be angry about, and the left was able to articulate this in a way that was relatively unprecedented in Sheridan County. This shouldn't surprise, after all the question of crop prices, rent, taxes and evictions were screwing many workers and farmers into the ground. Unfortunately what The Red Corner doesn't really give the reader a sense of is the social movements around these issues. McDonald tends to focus on the internecine conflicts between Charles Taylor and his rivals, the arguments between the newspapers that so gripped many Montana readers or the debates within the Communist Party leadership. But there are only hints about the movements against evictions, protests and strikes. It seems to me that there is much more to this story. Radical politics can only take a hold if there is a basis for it, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more given over to the experience of farmers and workers in Sheridan County in the period. 

To give two examples. In 1918, six thousand farmers and their families came to a rally, picnic and festival, in part to hear Jeannette Rankin speak, the first woman to serve in Congress. In 1921 socialist and anti-war activist Kate Richard O'Hare, spoke to "thousands... in a cow pasture under the 'burning hot sun for two hours and ten minutes'." The venue forced on the audience because the assembly all was cancelled. If thousands of people were coming to hear radical parliamentarians and anti-war activists speak, there must have been more of a groundswell radical movement. But we read little of it here.

Verlaine Stoner McDonald's research focuses on "communication" and how activists used communication to connect with voters and the masses. There is no doubt that the role of The Producers News was significant, perhaps exemplary, in this regard. But there is a danger in framing the growth of Communism in Sheridan County, Montana solely through the lens of communication. It means that we focus on the activities of a few individuals, and ignore or downplay the activities of the people at the bottom. It would have been fascinating to learn more about what the angry Sheridan farmers and workers' were actually doing. Nonetheless this is a worthwhile read that gives a real sense of how working people everywhere can become engaged with radical ideas. Trump need not be triumphant again in rural America!

One final point that might only be of interest to fellow Trotskyist readers of this blog. Many of Sheridan's activists did carry on the struggle. A few of them ended up breaking with the Communist Party, and becoming activists in the American Socialist Workers' Party. It seems that the experience of the CPUSA, even in rural Montana, meant that some activists were prepared to carry on the struggle for a genuine socialist politics.

Related Reviews

Tyer - Opportunity, Montana
Punke - Fire and Brimstone
Carlisle - Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America
Doig - Bucking the Sun
Holleman - Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics & the Injustice of 'Green' Capitalism
LeCain - Mass Destruction: The men and giant mines that wired America & scarred the planet

NoViolet Bulawayo - Glory

What a remarkable work Glory is. A brilliant satrical novel about post-colonial struggles, the way that the hopes and dreams of liberation struggles can be diverted and destroyed, and how that despair can turn into revolution. But perhaps most remarkable is how NoViolet Bulawayo tells the story.

George Orwell's famous political satire on the Russian Revolution, Animal Farm, tells the story using animals in a human world. Bulawayo tells her account of post-colonial Jidada with a cast of animals. Jidada is a fictional country, but the story is based on the struggles in Zimbabwe, where a movement to overthrow British rule was turned into the dictatorship of Mugabe. Glory focuses on a coup that overthrows the aged Old Horse ruler which, instead of bringing the freedom and hope the animals long for, delivers another brutal dictatorship. It is a parable of the 2017 Zimbabwe coup which saw the Old Horse Mugabe overthrown and Emmerson Mnangagwa installed as the new President.

Bulawayo tells the story through her animals. Their personalities in part dictated by the animals they are. The brave exile Destiny returning to Jidada is a goat, the vicious paramilitary regime enforcers are all nasty dogs. The masses range from chickens and kittens to pigs and sheep. It is two donkeys who raise a banner "Sisters of the Disappeared" at a government rally before the regime disappears them. 

But the novel is much more than the adult fairy tale that this setup suggests. Bulawayo experiments with different methods of telling the story. There are twitter threads, songs and chants. It is a briliant way to capture the atmosphere of both Zimbabwe and the mood on the streets. I was particularly struck by the snippets of conversation from the food queues. They range from sullen acceptance of the situation, to naive hope in the regime to growing radicalism. Like any developing revolution there's a mix of contradicatory moods and ideas. Bulawayo captures this better than any contemporary novel I've read.

It is no surprise that Bulawayo acknowledges all the "Jidadas of the world, clamouring for freedom" and says "A luta continua". While the novel finishes on the glory of the successful revolution, its climax is the revolution itself, as the dogs tear off their uniforms, throw down their weapons and break from the regime. The voices from the police, as they realise they are outnumbered by a combatative and confident mass movement, is perhaps the best depiction of the state's armed bodies of men being broken in the midst of revolution I have ever read. The fact that NoViolet Bulawayo makes this book simultaneously achingly beautiful and painfully sad is a tribute to a fantastic novelist. It is a revolutionary classic.

John Bellamy Foster - The Dialectics of Ecology

What can philosophical preoccupations such as dialectics offer a world in the grip of a existential environmental crisis? For most commentators, indeed for most people concerned about the environment, the crisis is a technological one. Humans, the argument goes, use the wrong technologies, the wrong energy sources or use too much natural resources leading to depletion, exhaustion and pollution. The solution then is to change energy source, or use less. In this view, philosophical approaches have nothing to offer. 

John Bellamy Foster has been a leading figure in ecological Marxism for a quarter of a century. In those years he has helped reevaluate Marx's approach to nature - fostering the idea of enviornmental crisis being the inevitable consequence of a capitalist system based on capital accumulation. In his latest book Foster makes the case that dialectical thinking is a crucial insight that we inheret from thinkers like Marx and Engels, precisely because it explains why a technocratic approach is incorrect. Indeed, why such simple answers have failed to even slow the rate of environmental degradation. As he writes in the preface to this new work:

It is the method of materialist dialectics that is Marx and Engels's chief legacy to us today as we confront the twenty-first-century planetary emergency... the theoretical critique of our alienated world takes on practical significance as transformative praxis only by means of the concrete struggles carried out in relation to ever-changing historical conditions.

Foster explains that this is the point of The Dialectics of Ecology, "aimed at the integration of the ecological and political-economic critiques of capitalism with the conditions of the global struggle conceived in the broadest terms."

This reassertion of the importance of dialectics is crucial for Marxists and non-Marxists. As Foster explains Western Marxism greatest failure was to break from an understanding that placed nature's dialectics as a core part of its thinking. As he says, "Historical materialism was then robbed of any connection to nature as a force in itself, reducing the notion of materialism within Western Marxism simply to denaturalised political-economic relations". It is a poison that continues to plague some thinkers. One of the best things about this book, which develops further the theses that Foster wrote about in his Deutscher Prize winning book The Return of Nature, is the notion that Marxism after Marx and Engels was developed and explored by later thinkers. The chapter here on Engels and the Second Foundation of Marxism is an important restatement of this - exploring as it does how various thinkers fought to establish a genuine Marxism far from the promethean Stalinised version we are used to. But, as Foster points out, this is also important because it highlights how Marx and Engels' work was a collaborative and developing set of ideas - countering those, such as Kohei Saito, who argue for a fundamental break between the two thinkers. A genuine dialectics of ecology must recognise this rather than repeat the mistakes of the past.

Restating Marx's contribution to ecological thinking is worthwhile. To summarise Foster. Marx's materialist view of nature was in three parts, the universal metabolism of nature, the social metabolism of nature though human labour and the metabolic rigt that takes place when the social metabolism of nature is shattered by the dominant means of production. It is these insights, combined with Marx's understanding of the dynamic of the capitalist economy that makes his thoughts so important. 

It is a far clearer, and more useful dynamic, than that inhabited by too many "post Marxist" and "post Humanist" thinkers, who decouple economics from nature, from humanity and much more, "anything by a conception of material-senuous human beings, production, and practice".

Foster's clarity on these theoretical concepts is refreshing. Much of the book is an exploration of the importance of these core ideas to both a theoretical understanding of the society-nature relationship and to practical questions within ecological thinking. One of these, the capitalisation of nature, so called "Natural Capital" is exposed as the trick it is, further subordinating the natural world to the accumulation of wealth. 

Key chapters in the book look at China and its historical development. Foster argues that in China today, "ecological Marxism has contributed to the development not only of a powerful critique of contemporary environmental devastation but also to the promotion of ecological civilisation as an answer". Foster continues, "[t]he concept of ecological civilisation being implemented in China today is seen as representting a new, revolutionary, and transformative model of civilisation". 

The development of such a critique of capitalism and such a vision, should of course be welcomed. But the Chinese state will not be the force that can push through and implement the required change. I think Marxists should see China as being a form of capitalist economic organisation whose accumulation of wealth is driven primarily by the needs of its ruling class to grow, in the context of wider, global, imperialist relations. It is only this that can explain China's repression of internal dissent (including environmental protest) and the state's close work with multinational corporations to faciliate the exploitation of Chinese workers. 

This is not to disagree with Foster's point that Chinese philosophy and history have contributed to a greater awareness of ecological ideas in the context of materialist thinking.

As Foster has repeatedly made clear, the creation of a revolutionary socialist sustainable future will require a break with past social and economic organisation. A society based on the collective interests and activity of the "associated producers" can only be that if it is based on the maximum amount of democracy and workers' control of production from the bottom of society. Creating such as society remains the key task of Marxists today and requires the building, or rebuilding of revolutionary socialist organisation.

Key to developing an adequate transformative thinking for such organisations will be clarity of Marxist ideas. Once again John Bellamy Foster's book is an important contribution to such a task.

Related Reviews

Foster - Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature
Foster & Clark - The Robbery of Nature
Foster & Burkett - Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique
Foster, Clark & York - Critique of Intelligent Design
Foster - The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet
Foster - The Vulnerable Planet
Foster - Ecology Against Capitalism
Foster - The Return of Nature

Sophie Yeo - Nature's Ghosts: The world we lost and how to bring it back

Nature's Ghosts is an excellent study of the way that ecological systems are inseparable from human influence, which means that re-wilding cannot be a return to some imaginary, historic pristine nature. It's a great study and a recommended read. I am reviewing Sophie Yeo's book for another publication and I'll publish the link here when it's complete. In the meantime check out some of my related reviews below.

Related Reviews

Pearce - The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Nature's Salvation
Lymbery - Dead Zone: Where the Wild Things Were
Kolbert - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Rawlence - The Treeline: The last forest and the future of life on earth
Malm - Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the 21st Century