Category: History

Don’t Call me a Millennial!: A Critique of “The Fourth Turning” by Neil Howe and William Strauss

For almost a week several outlets in my news feed had headlines highlighting “Steve Bannon’s book” for understanding the current American moment. Described as a seminal text in Bannon’s political philosophy and the foundation for his 2010 documentary, I was curious. I dug a little further and found out that one of the authors, Neil Howe, had been the person who coined the term Millennial. I’ve long heard and used the term Millennial and viewed it as a description of the generation of people born in the early eighties to the mid- nineties. Reading The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny made me realize how wrong I was about this and has brought me to the view that the widespread adoption of the term is highly problematic. So problematic, in fact, that I’m going to make a conscious effort not to use the word and attempt to raise awareness as to why it should not be be used.

When Glenn Beck Takes Something Seriously, That’s A Good Indication You Shouldn’t

Perhaps the quickest way to show how intellectually bankrupt the term is is to look at the level of excitement  Glenn Beck has when talking about The Fourth Turning. After viewing this clip, to me it seems that Beck does not just view their work as history, but as Revealed Truth!

Beck has multiple episodes devoted to detailing Howe and Strauss’ work that details as to the significance of the saecula – the average span of a human life – the archetypal cycles within them and the psycho-social impact of their interactions. I’ve not seen these videos, but I imagine it is a further delineation of the philosophy of history which opens the book.

The Historians Wear No Clothes

H&S begin with an intellectual history that highlights numerous people that have declaimed history to be generational and circular. Citing and updating Classical Greek ideas and terms, we soon learn that the four archetypes of American History – which all have their another iteration in other national borders – are Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist.

These archetypes emerge from periods of crisis, such as war or revolution, that changes the spirit of the people due to their experience. While the collective action problem inherent in the upheavals of massive social transformation is certain to impact people’s consciousness, the historic component of the dynamic which H&S describe is piecemeal, Metaphysical and Idealistic.

History Matters 

H&S, like many others, locate the origin of “linear history” in The Enlightenment, and associate it with modernity and the State. They continue to say that despite the works of a number of eminent thinkers having created the most “cogent body of generations writing ever,” (tellingly all non-Jacobins) that this mode of thought fell out of favor while the more directional form of historical consciousness became hegemonic (63).

They import this into their account of American history, which is quite unusual, but more so due to the the method that the bring to bear on their account.

Quite simply, in Howe and Strauss’ account of America, there are very few actual people accounted for. Though masses are named and given qualities, for the most part there is little attempt to connect the qualities of the Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist into the historic conditions of the saeculum they are describing. For the most part all that we’re treated to is analysis based on movies or well-known personages that “somehow define the ages”. What’s missing is any sort of genuine political economy.

No Race, No Class, No Immigration in Howe and Strauss’ America

In H&S’s account of American history, slavery’s inheritance on the personality of the body politic writ large is marginal. Other racial and ethnic tensions have also not played a significant role in the development of the American Identity. Instead, from Slavery through Reconstruction through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Era, the same four archetypes are in conflict over the direction of the political order – and yet racial conflict is largely glossed over.

Based on this “prophetic account of history” you would also never suspect  that over 59 million people have immigrated to the United States since 1965 alone from places very different from those that first settled. Since Howe and Strauss’ opening intellectual salvo is to connect the First Turning to the end of the Glorious Revolution, it’s worth noting that many millions of other immigrants have arrived from non-Anglo countries, an unmentioned fact in H&S account.

Social struggles for women’s rights, unions and the various repressions at home and oppressions abroad justified by the “Cold War” are other dynamics that apparently play a negligible role in the development of American Identity.

Why this is so is never clearly stated, instead we are presented with conflicts stemming solely from generational conflict. That they would not entertain other theories about the cycles of conflict is surprising given that a number of other historians and political economists support the basic notion of cycles in history…

Only Weak Thinkers Avoid Attacking Their Convictions

The idea of cyclical waves existing in human history is not solely the domain of those historians such as Ortega Y Gasset. Given that much of the first writings of man are economic in nature, receipts and double entry book-keeping, it should perhaps come as no surprise that it’s in this domain – political economy – that a similar trend has been noticed.

Commodity prices like the ones above, for instance, have been shown via the work of Nikolai Kondratiev and others to follow a secular, recurring cycle of peaks, recessions and crashes. Given that American’s live within a capitalist mode of social relations to produce their means of subsistence, these “economic” indicators have huge anthropological and political effects, hence why it is so surprising that labor and economic exchange is barely mentioned in this account of America’s past. The structural constraints imposed on the working class have actual corporeality, eight hours daily in economic relations limited by varying degrees of political agency – unlike Howe and Strauss’s idealist account. New technologies and new relations of political power cause massive social disorder and economic dislocation, however these don’t play a factor in the creation of “generational identities” such as Millennials, Baby Boomers, etc.

Contending Schools of Thought: Materialism vs. Idealism 

That the authors of The Fourth Turning don’t quote any of these “cyclical” schools that have recognized cycles of life within societies that have political economies informed by capitalist property relations is perhaps unsurprisingly, for reasons that should already becoming clear.

This is because for Howe and Strauss, the current generations of Baby Boomers, The Silent Generation, Generation X, Millennial are trans-historic substantive categories that subsumes all America’s class, racial, sexual, sexual preference, and many other differences. According to their use of the term, those born within certain date border inherently, all have the same experience.

When Are You Getting To The Part about Millennials?

With all of this in mind it becomes easier to understand how problematic Howe and Strauss’s term Millennials and why their “prophecy” should be seen as bullshit and those that cite them as inspiration should be resisted.

For one, it literally emerges from the entire web of bullshit that I described above.

Secondly that prognostication isn’t so good. And by this I don’t mean Howe’s Book Millennial’s Rising: The Next Great Generation, about which one Amazon reviewer wrote the following: “The book was written BEFORE any of the predictions advanced could have happened and MISSED many of the things. I thought it was a real up-date and it was not.”

According to The Fourth Turning, Millennials are on track from which there is no escape to be a generation that sacrifices under the auspices for austerity. The way that we prepare is not as a class of people recognizing and acting upon their material interests, but to revert to tribalism. Return to classic virtues, expect for the collapse of public support mechanisms. Look to your family for support. Etc.

More than just focusing on increasing one’s self-reliance and forgetting about the “others”, “millennials” as a class ought to approach the crisis period by just  “going with it” and “prepare ourselves for it” – a message with some really weird echoes across history. Considering that most of the issues that “millennials” face all stem from historical capitalist relations, this is a big point to miss.

Wait, So Millennials Is A Crypto-Facist Term?! 

Indeed it is.

“The Fourth Turning” is a prophecy that a mythic, inner- conflictless country during a time of some outside conflict, generalized economic depression, massive natural catastrophe, or some other “panic” inducing behavior that prods changes in the normal acceptance of the status quo.

That said – I appreciated their prose. And found their brief remarks against Fukuyama to be insightful. Despite being risible epistemological sophistry, it was compelling! Furthermore, as someone that has training in the theory behind and therapeutic practice of Hellinger Constellations I found their writings on the inter-general interaction to be genuinely insightful and aligned with my own training in that field. Yet in the end the book is a rallying call for American Facism Lite™. The parts of American that it silences in its Prophecy is indeed the very foundation of Americanness. And it’s only through realizing this, that such cycles become less something that individuals must personally buttress themselves against or and instead something that we account for and address as a species-level.

Review of “Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History”

One section of Master’s Thesis research included legal analysis with politically chilling effects upon anti-lynching and leftist movements in The United States of America from Harper’s Ferry to the late 1960’s. The way in which the law laid force upon the bodies that broke with expected behavior and the means by which police facilitated “corrective” behavior for these violations differs drastically. And dialectically. To suppress suppress either labor, racial and leftist political struggles is to repress the three progressive aspects of society that have been driving emancipatory ideas and practiced encased in institutions. Because of this, of course I read Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History by Rebecca N. Hill.

Hill’s history has a pleasantly journalistic feel to it. The main characters are of course detailed – the defendant – whomever she’s describing in that section – and the plaintiff – the State in the place that they were arrested – are both described and all their relationships therein. Who were those involved with the crime, what brought them to where they were right before they just were arrested, arraigned, transported, processed, jailed, for days, jailed, for months, jailed, for years, then brought to court, etc.etc.

It combines this description of their time and those around them with legal exegesis of the components of the case. This combined with local socio-political factors involved in such cases, such as the manner in which popular movements sought to impress their influence upon the courts, had a number of legal implications on social movements involved with race, class and/or labor struggles. While Sacco and Vanzetti are name dropped in the highly underrated, very funny movie War On Everyone with Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Pena. Anyway…

 

The book is organized around several dramatic cases, starting with John Brown’s trial. From this heavily police involved form of repressive behavior the the narrative goes to where the law played a less involved roll. Lynching throughout the south in the United States was a true horror that kills thousands of African Americans. Police slowed their roll on the road towards justice and would often falsify or forge documentary information, not intervene while militant bigots exercised their force upon them and, well, all around oppressed them.

Racial, Labor and Leftist social justice warriors – a term that ought be associated with esteem – sought to impress their demands that the state more justly apply it’s purported universalism, an inherently conservative position. The other says the state is unjust and wants to replace it along democratic, centralist lines rather than plutocratic ones – the preconditions for the most active ire. Labor wants the state to join its side in demanding more benefits but are not connected to the Leftists either because of lack of class conscious or lack of practical use value in linkage, a serious consideration to make considering the effect that associating with Reds could have on your work life.

While John Brown clearly engaged in the behavior he was charged with, the obverse is true of the Haymarket Martyrs. Their case spawned a holiday celebrated nearly everywhere in the world except the USA – May Day. If you’re not familiar with the case, you should look it up. What I found interesting as though Hill does not spend much time on the material evidence, of which there is none, and instead writes about the majority-immigrant leftist responses. Of course every people has a culture, but that of Chicago – the Second City, was unlike many others due to the habitus brought over from the German revolutionaries. Gymnastic, parading, militant Anarchist culture practiced by Germans and a number of other stocks from across the shore shocked the sensibilities of the local bourgeoisie.

After an incident that was, essentially, the pretext for the public execution of the Opposition Leadership Anarchist newspapers fought not just to save members but leaders. Newspapers which shared workers stories about their conditions, pay, bosses and other things now started to include writing from those inside. Rather than becoming devotional, religious character associated with sublimity their writings subverted the abolitionist martyrs sharing stories and expressions of romantic, sexual love. Anarchist newspapers published the love letters of the Chicago anarchists and their wives and girlfriends, another practice that was taken up by most socialist defense campaigns.

Hill’s history ends with the equally tragic tale of the Black Panther’s Party. With an emphasis on the Party’s organized defense apparatus raised to support George Jackson, Hill shows a man imprisoned due to political caprice rather than justice. Like The Haymarket Martyrs and Sacco and Vanzetti, his writings behind bars and public adoration of Assata were used as gristle to further help people find sympathy in their story. Having recently read their published letters and accounts – I get it!

All these and more arrests and trials forms responses with historically dependent forms of action. Organizations along class and/or racial/ethnic alliances were highly limited by place, history and the interests and powers of the state and local elite. In some cases the popular struggles were able to save the subject of their organization. Other’s no.

Hill’s history shows radicals creating interconnected networks of protest and resistance activity as well as volunteering time and donating money for massive fundraising undertakings that spanned the globe. Success in obtaining government guaranteed rights often depended on how loud and disruptive supporters could be to the normal functioning of government.

Mixed in is to this journalistic, documentary history are comments pulling together some of the themes evident in today’s world:

“Once admired as the heritage of manly individual freedom, Puritanism in the 1920s became associated with the Ku Klux Klan, along with fundamentalism, racism, capitalism, and prohibition.”

The heritage of many organizations racism persist in various ways. And yet to point this out is to become a public persona non grata. Example K:

Example on the opposite side? Trump the tee-totaller and Sacrosanct “States Rights” Sessions just did a 180 on over over a decade of federal drug enforcement policy.

These broader points build and intersperse Rebecca Hill’s account. Along with the legal proceedings, are a few interesting asides as well – such as The Red and the Black being George Jackson’s favorite novel.

Her conclusion does not lay out a platform upon which a group might be able to exercise their collective social power in order to achieve this, nor should she have to. The conditions by which that they would need to be changed would always depend upon the locals activities. What she does, however, is provide a powerful ethical imperative:

“The capacity to imagine a different world might begin with the ability to refuse to accept the characterizations of people who were willing to recklessly go against the rules of the society in which they live as wicked, misguided, wrong, foolish, or criminal. It is much harder to see the face of the “handsome sailor” on an imperfect human than it is to accept the underlying message of the modern-day nation-state that the only real heroes are the cops and soldiers who protect “us” from the rest of the world”

Review of “October: The Story of the Russian Revolution”

 

Based on a number of recommendations and awareness of his political bent, for quite some time I’ve been intending to read the science fiction writings of China Midvale. I’d yet, however, to get around to doing so when I saw that Verso Press was holding a contest to promote his new book  October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. I submitted an entry and sure enough was one of the lucky winners of a free signed copy of this work of non-fiction.

Excepting events in America, the buildup to and aftermath of the Russian Revolution is probably my most read about world historical event. I’ve read books solely on the subject written by those that were present, such as John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World or Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution as well as essays by Emma Goldman and Victor Serge and, of course, Lenin’s Essential Works. I’ve read a few left and right wing histories published after the 1990s as well. I share this to establish if not a specialization of knowledge on the issue, than at least an above average familiarity with the events one would expect on such a subject. Anyway, to the book…

As a whole October is a very different creature from most of the texts that I mentioned above. This, however, is not necessarily bad. Trotsky’s writing on this period is simply magisterial and Reed’s journalistic descriptions of the sundry meetings unrest are at times nail-biting. These men had clear agendas that were intimately tied to the events that they were describing. Mieville, it seems to me, is writing this as a means of popularizing knowledge about the events in Russia and trying to do so at a distance. Because of this, as well as what I believe is a desire to avoid getting caught up in the debates of that time through extended focus on particular persons/issues it lacks some of the same passion. And yet no matter what side of the political spectrum one is on, I feel that this could be appealing to even those that aren’t Reds. I expected some sort of propagandistic asides peppered throughout the book prior to reading it, but none were there.

I could see myself assigning this book for a history class as not only does he do such an even handed job, but also as there is a glossary of terms in the back that would assist those not versed with the terms of the revolution. After a very brief historical context, Mieville begins the Story of the Russian Revolution in February, following the first revolution. It closes eight months later, in October.

Instead of highlighting an identified-with hero (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin,etc.), Mieville focuses on the sufferings of the soldiers being ground up by the Kaiser’s troops, the unrest of the peasants, the plight of the industrial workers in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the incompetence of the Kerensky government, the rifts between the socialist parties and within the armed services. In this Mieville does a great job and consistently uses the words of those he’s writing about. As a means for creating tension, however, this is not a great technique. Since the only real character development is that of the people of the city that once paid little heed to the Bolsheviks to then viewing them as representative of their political will – I found this somewhat disappointing as well. Not that the anecdotes aren’t fascinating or the style of writing isn’t good, however my familiarity with it all made me hope for something that this wasn’t. As such I’d say that this was more for those that were unfamiliar with the topic.

Review of “A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory”

A permutation of the research project I’d designed for myself in hopes of getting a year-long grant to study at the University of Havana, A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory by Steve Cushion focuses on the factions within the trade union movements and their relationship to the Batista regime. Its publication came at a perfect time, as I learned of its existence shortly after the new criteria for the IB History Period and Theme focuses were released.

Cushion’s primary research documents were the union, official and underground newspapers, student and radical journals and letters of participants that could lead to arrest, assault and increasingly in murder by beating. Given the need to keep documentation of participation in these subterannean movements against the current government, there are gaps in ability to give full accounts in all regions of Cuba from this alone. In order to make up for this dearth of material he also includes the recorded speeches and published positions of the union leadership. Government documents stemming from police documentation of the lives of those ran for office, which were often those “approved” by Batista functionaries. Despite whatever de-facto official positions propounded by the leadership, internal factions of ideologically oriented groups competed for control. It is the groups within these unions would come to create make connections with MR-26 and facilitate the martial overthrow of the Batista Regime through concerted community support.

Cuba’s political and economic turmoil stemmed from advances in processes of transportation, production and financial pressures wrought by secular, cyclical capitalist crisis. During this period of an employer offensive against wages, workers rights and and the work done there was a general rebellion against the conditions proffered as the new status quo. The Batista regime became an adjudicator of industrial struggles and so consistently sided with the “non-Cuban” international investors that the came to be correctly seen as the enforcer for the needs of American capital. That such a belief was held by workers, students, radicals, farmers and revolutionaries alike should be seen as no surprise given that Cuba was the primary producer of sugar on the global market by weight by far and by 1958 U.S. capital owned 42% of the production capacity of the sugar industry. As large as that sounds this says nothing else of their other investments in railroads, docks, public transportation busses manufactured from Detroit, banks, clothes, medicine, etc.

Cushion’s analysis of regional leadership pockets of the MR- 26 showed how they were at times at odds with the political aspirations of their erstwhile supporters. A number of the subterranean leaders of organizing activity in the coastal shipping regions were Trotskyists and Communists. The fighting force of MR-26 was a distinctively nationalistic based organization. Cushion documents the change in their published positions from making populist style appeals for land redistribution and other programs to generalities that merely state that devastating effects that advances in capitalist production and transportation of raw materials had on the population must be addressed and that the current government had no legitimacy and should be ousted.

While other nationalist groups published broadsides against the government that similarly documented abuses, they differed in that they also combined jeremiad’s with political platforms to raise awareness of what members in the organization were seeking to accomplish by overthrowing the government. It’s in this, and not in the military fighting, that working class socialists played a large role – helping to get enough people to resist the brutality of a government that would force strikers to work at gunpoint and would beat to death students and organizers for their activity.

It’s because of all their work, documented here by industry, region and organizations with operational strength, that the great strike which paralyzed the entire island of Cuba came into fruition. It’s as a result of their alliance building, political development, organizational structures that the barbudos were so easily able to come in a conquer a much larger, better equipped army. It’s because of them that the romantic ideal of the revolutionaries have been so fawned upon in revolutionary circles – for if they’d have to spend multiple months fighting over key city control points than they’d seem dirtier on a moral level rather than just a jungle living level.

Review of “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation”

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a history of the cultural and political forces that have shaped the African-American experience.

What sets Taylor’s book apart from others on the subject, however, is how far she goes beyond simply documenting the seemingly endless dimensions of racial oppression in the United States. Instead of just describing its dynamics, she also includes a class based method so that activists may contest it – a recurrent theme of Haymarket Press’s publications. Taylor starts her overview in the 1930s, when blacks were not given the same treatment as white workers during the New Deal. After a sufficient period of education, agitation and organization, however, blacks were able to so disrupt the normal functioning of governance that Lyndon Johnson had to address their grievances.

Taylor’s understanding of the manner in which capitalism operates in America is tied explicitly to racist ideology. Though only beginning in the 1960s, she points out how racist ideologies which use the “culture of poverty” argument to explain relative deprivation of the black community have a dual function in political discourse: not only do they serve to scapegoat African Americans for their conditions rather than lack of a full Reconstruction program, but, by racializing poverty, it also conceals white poverty. This designation of workers in the lowest income sectors as disposable thus obfuscates the structural dynamics of American capitalism.

Rather than merely focusing criticism just on whites, Taylor shows through a number of examples how the class differentiation which has taken place in the Black community since the Civil Rights Movement has mean that liberal black politicians who have come to power on the hopes of ameliorating problems in the black community have taken over the task of disciplining blacks. In addition to this she points out how black capitalism boosters going back to Garvey fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the economy that they were working in. Rather than upward mobility through this means, she endorses Liberation.

Taylor emphasizes the need for working class unity and then explains how “colorblind” language and politics in the US operates to stoke racial tensions and mystify historical relations. The language of colorblindness was first used by Richard Nixon and the Republicans. While a good means of mobilizing sentiment against racial discrimination, as the black civil rights movement became compromised and co-opted by capital, it came to replicate the same effects as the racial justifications of policy thru class-based discrimination.

If this seems removed from the present as there was a black president, it’s worth pointing out that during the tenure of Barack Obama African-American’s were disproportionately unaffected by the steps taken to bolster sections of the struggling economy, that Obama distanced himself from the needs and grievances of the black community, the Supreme Court has struck down sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as no longer relevant and that in a number of NGOs point out that in historically racist places it is now increasingly difficult for people of color to vote or live without harassment.

While the hash tag first shared by Alicia Garza, #blacklivesmatter, has certainly been useful as an organizing medium – Taylor shows through historic examples of how such organizations have become co-opted and rendered a form of palliative care for the black community. In order to ameliorate these conditions, Taylor states, black and white (and brown) class based unity is the answer. BLM has moved in that direction – their most recent platform contains a number of planks that speak to the condition of the working poor. However spreading solidarity has been a historically difficult task in America and given the wont of crypto-racists to tar and declaim BLM as a racist organization hints at the difficulties they face as they are currently composed.

*

Interviews with Taylor below:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35103-achieving-black-liberation-a-conversation-with-keeanga-yamahtta-taylor

https://roarmag.org/magazine/black-awakening-class-rebellion/

 

Noam Chomsky’s Love Poem to His Wife

That desire felt by imperialist Europeans when
First discovering a resource rich region
With a population still primarily organized along tribal lines
And no modern military apparatus
Is nothing next what I felt when I first laid eyes upon you.

My heart burns hotter for you
Than the napalm dropped
On civilian non-combatants and crops
Of Vietnamese and Cambodians
So that the U.S. could maintain
Military and economic influence
Near the regional centers
between with the world’s largest populaces.

Oh so unlike the hundreds of bodies
Of indigenous Guatemalan villagers
Tortured, killed and dumped in mass graves
By soldiers trained
At the School of the Americas
In order to protect U.S. investments
And overthrow yet another democratically elected
Avowedly socialist government,
I’ve never tried to hide my feelings for you.

Whereas newspapers
Such as the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post and New York Times
All publish to serve the interests of the capitalists that
Control the world’s countries through their political cronies –
I have never said a word that could be construed as a lie
So when I say that I love you until the end of my life
You know that this is true.

Whenever I am around you
I feel like I am glowing –
A sensation similarly reported by those children
That have spent time playing on and around
The Russian tanks destroyed by the US’s
Depleted uranium shells in Iraq during
The first Gulf War –
And my life anxieties disappear
Like environmental activists in
South and Central America and Africa trying
To bring attention to the dispossession of indigenous peoples
And the destruction of their means of subsistence
For the benefit of foreign oil and mineral corporations.

Though you’ll never depend on me
In the same way that many
Third world satraps of US interest do –
For I cannot provide you with loans, guns, tanks, bombs
Computers, training, helicopters to throw dissidents out of,
Lists of people to be dealt with and other such spook stuff –
I hope you know that should things ever get rough
I will be the rock on which you can rely upon.

**

If you enjoyed reading this poem consider purchasing my first collection of love poetry or the first part of my serial novel.

**

Review of “Angela Davis: an Autobiography”

 

When you read an account of how someone describes the highs and lows of their existence in their early 20s it tells a lot about their character. Most people are trapped in the pursuit of selfish interests, a good job, obtaining good housing and a lover to share their time with. There is nothing wrong per se with such pursuits, however often there is no balance and actions to promote community development is ignored.

Angela Davis: An Autobiography is the inverse of this typical selfish pursuit of happiness, one informed by an insightful political and philosophical recognition that as long as historically repressed and exploited communities in the U.S. were politically and economically marginalized that she, as a black woman, would always be a second class citizen if not de jure but de facto. The personal narrative that frames it makes this book something beyond a jeremiad against American Society. Instead she describes how her hopes, dreams, and aspirations along with most others with dark skins were unable to follow through on them due to the oppressive ignorance of numerous Whites.

For many years Angela Davis studied under the German Marxist Philosopher Herbert Marcuse in Europe and in California. Distinguishing herself as a serious scholar in her field, she obtained entry into prestigious study abroad programs that placed her in the center of radical student life in Europe – an important connection for subsequent speaking engagement in support of legal defense fees – while also studying historical materialism. Her engagement with historical materialism, or the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, combined with her desire for a practical outlet for her education besides being a professor is what drew her to become a member of the Communist Party USA.

Davis likes to conclude some of her anecdotes with a “lesson learned” message advocating steps to increase political awareness, make cadres function better, etc. There’s not enough of them where it reads like anecdotes mixed with catechism, but they do open up what I thought was a number of ambiguities and contradictions. In her description of working with SNCC and other parties, for instance, she claims that certain Black Nationalist groups are overly fixated upon the nationalist question, are unduly critical of socialism as a “white man’s thing” and the need for working with like-minded people. However these criticisms are said in such passing that they offer little in the way of political education to those uninitiated in the debates surrounding these and other topics.

One of the recurrent narrative elements of all of the Black Panthers stories is their arrest by police and being charged with crimes that courts of law subsequently are determine to not have been committed by them. Huey, Assata, the Panther 21, many others. Escaping with years of their lives in jails makes them a lucky one. George Jackson, for example, was killed while serving time. The prison guards staged a riot and shot him down. His death greatly affected Angela. They had formed a romantic relationship through their letters. While not able to make their affections physical, I found the connection evident from reading his letters mentioning her and her reactions here to be very compelling.

Marxist Paul Saba published a highly critical review of the autobiography in the first issue of Class Struggle magazine, stating that class which Davis praises the most and adopts is that of “…the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, with firm reliance, not on the working class, but on the liberals, the intellectuals, lawyers and professors. This is combined with the condemnation of any movements among the people which base themselves on class struggle rather than the capitulation of the revisionists.” Considering the large amount of the book which is devoted to praising legal professionals and uncritically describing her academic studies with Herbert Marcuse, that the CPUSA has largely foregone working class and African-American struggles I think that this is a fair assessment. I think the criticism is, however, unduly harsh. While I’d agree to an extent with Saba’s claim that there’s a fair degree of distance between her and African-Americans generally – a result of her education and class privilege stemming from her profession – I think the book does great service to showing the traps and barriers faced by radical activists. One can certainly think that more should be done while still respecting the effort. Rather than performing the same old song and dance about the correctness of one’s foundation of political action, as Saba does, in order to claim theoretical superiority – I think it’s better to praise the exemplary courage and determination to better the world despite the risks inherent to one’s life and liberty. This perspective, critical but also respectful, seems to me to be on display in Shepard Fairey’s poster below.

Final note: Those preferring to read the book digitally can find a free copy here.

Review of “The Autobiography of Assata Shakur”

A former Black Liberation Army member that has obtained political asylum in Cuba for perceived lack of evidence for crimes connected to the murder of two police officers, Assata Shakur is a polarizing figure. She is still wanted by the FBI and talk of her possible return to America was discussed between respective nations bilateral trade meetings leading to online talk of her spiking to numbers not seen since legal defense committees received donations in her name for other sham trials in the late 1960s. Assata was one of many black political and cultural activists that were falsely imprisoned for hours to years based upon the whims of the judicial system. The Autobiography of Assata Shakur memoirs describes the evidence against her, the conditions of her trial, penetrating and poetic social insights, her treatment in the prison as well as her socialization with white communities under Jim Crow, her work with the Black Panther Party, etc. It is, another word, wonderful for touching on so many of the important issues of that epoch.

At a young age Assata describes herself as being very sensitive to the Jim Crow conditions which she grew up under. She tells of the isolations of being unable to play with neighborhood children because of her families purchase of a home in a white community. She describes how the low level of intellectual abilities that her classmates first had for her.  Later she will also describe in detail her close relationship to two of the five young girls killed in a church bombing that happened a short distance from her childhood home.

Yet her anger is not without a certain sense of revolutionary irony. Revolutionary as while recognizing the seriousness of the situation – racially informed class oppression – she is also able to recognize the base absurdity of its claims and the essential precariousness of the various power allegiances keeping it together. For example she describes going into a shoe shop in Montgomery with her friend as a young teen. A white clerk and overweight customer look at her in red-faced anger and terror quickly take on a tone of deference granted as they speak with a French affectation and claim to be from the Martinique. They are Caribbean, the social thought of the day went, therefore exotic and ergo not black. They are conversed with by the staff as they try on shoes.  Assata, at the time named Josephine, speaks in her best accent and finally breaks character. The initial angry attitudes return, however the girls can’t stop laughing. Now speaking in plain English, as they leave the store, she calls the people present out for their bigotry. There are many poetic turns of phrase and local color captured in these and other exchanges, all of which is to sound please but be immoral. Given these exclusionary experiences it is no wonder that she begins to have increased involvement in black nationalist cultural and political networks and organizations.

What makes this such a compelling book is not just the everyday heroics that comes to be displayed but also it’s structure. After childhood and arrest are covered the structure shifts to a back and forth between a horrifying depiction of what life is like in jail and narrative of her work as an activist. First one starts to become painfully aware of the cruelties of the treatment afforded her because she was a political prisoner, such as being forced to live in an isolation room for 21 months on end – a practice which was only stopped after a long struggle to get an independent investigator of the court to verify Assata’s claims. Following this Assata describes her work at a Black Panther Party breakfast program for children. She would wake up at 4am in the morning and cook for all of the children and come up with various educational programs for them to help get in the learning mood before going to school. She describes the paranoia and fears of briefly having to live an underground life as she’s just discovered that she’s again being promoted in the media as responsible for a crime that she’s not committed. And what helped her face such COINTELPRO actions? Her good skill set was recognized and she was promoted to New York to help the Party be more efficient.

Assata’s autobiography is good not only for the above, but she also reminds the reader that there were many others targeted for assassination, observation, infiltration, and social subversion through ruses, rumors, and other sorts of intelligence campaigns designed to delegitimize and destroy trust. She names three people that were connected to high ranking members of the Party that were used in FBI conceived plots to entrap or bring harm to Members. She is not, however, wholly uncritical of the Party. Some of the members are upbraided for their misogyny when she first arrives in New York. She eventually left the group as she found Newton’s ideology to be incompatible with her own, as she thought they needed to have less of a focus on the thoughts of a greater leader and more information on black history. Certainly anyone seeking to learn about black history is well served by reading this story and her other writings.

Afro-American Political Economy and History Syllabus

Lest we forget, the American government only illegalized chattel slavery and it’s attendant horrors out of economic and military necessity, and even then reluctantly. Following Emancipation, white supremacy did not end, but merely took new forms. Here’s a basic reading list related to that history and questions of tactics.

The Long History of White Resistance to Black Freedom

The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne

The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist

Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W. E. B. DuBois

Reconstruction Updated Edition: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression by Robin D. G. Kelley

We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement by Akinyele Omowale Umoja

Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward

American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton

Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 2nd Edition by Doug McAdam

Sunbelt Revolution: The Historical Progression of Civil Rights in the Gulf South by Samuel C. Hyde

The Tallahassee Bus Boycott by Gregory D. Padgett *PDF*

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance – A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire

It Was Like All of Us Had Been Raped: Sexual Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle by Danielle L. McGuire *PDF*

A World More Concrete: Real Estate and The Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida by N. D. B. Connolly

From Sit-in to Race Riot: Businessmen, Blacks, and the Pursuit of Moderation in Tampa, 1960–1967 by Steven F. Lawson *PDF*

The Success of the Unruly by William A. Gamson *PDF*

The Use of Terrorism by Ernest Evans *PDF*

The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement by Lance Hill

This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb Jr.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Black Panther Party

Soledad Brother

Revolutionary Suicide

Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver

Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E . Martin

The Huey P. Newton Reader by Huey P. Newton *PDF*

To Die for the People by Huey P. Newton *Foreward PDF*

Philosophical and Sociological Reflections and Historical Case Studies on Violence

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan

Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America by Ward Churchill *PDF*

The Success of the Unruly by William A. Gamson *PDF*

The Use of Terrorism by Ernest Evans *PDF*

The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Terrorism by Colin J. Beck *PDF*

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Review of “Malcolm X Speaks”

While a sophomore in college I’d read, of my own volition, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and was incredibly impressed with his intransigence will towards combatting cultural white supremacy and political/economic Jim Crowism. There were poetic qualities not only in the language recorded by Alex Haley and also in the courage Malcolm displayed in his decision to readjust his perspective from personal amelioration of systemic injustice through petty crime to Human Rights leader. I decided to read Malcolm X Speaks as it’s highly praised in George Jackson and Huey P. Newton’s autobiographies as an ur-text in their political development.

The speeches, letters and interviews contained in this collection all were made during the last eight months of his life. They follow his break with the Nation of Islam, his adoption of “True Islam” and the founding of his own organization, the Organization of African-American Unity. This group diverged radically from the Nation of Islam, was considered extremely dangerous by the FBI – which is no surprise as following his trip to Mecca and Africa, a continent heady from the number of anti-colonial nationalist revolutions which had recently transpired, Malcolm X transition from Black Nationalist to an Internationalist. In these speeches you can see the hopes that Malcolm had for the OAAU and how the Black Panther Party was in many ways an attempt to incarnate the political perspective described in these collected thoughts.

The historical materialist analysis contained within as well as the program to obtain it have deep overlaps with Marxist-Leninist modes of thought. This is not that surprising since Communists and Socialists have traditionally been the allies of those fighting for black liberation from white oppression, and also explains why he was frequently invited to speak at Socialist Clubs, was published in the Socialist press and why, following his death, the Socialist Workers Party’s Pathfinders press has published several book by and about Malcolm X.

Malcolm’s analysis recognized that there were direct connections between oppression of blacks in Mississippi and Alabama with imperialist military action by the United States in Africa. He makes a compelling case that Black people in America were analogous to native people in a colonial setting and went so far as to encourage the development of domestic insurgency to obtain political equity with whites in a manner akin to the Mau Mau’s should they meet resistance in obtaining it equally. Malcolm is incredibly dismissive of liberals and Democrats, pointing out how the Southern Wing of the Democratic Party, pilloried in public by their northern counterparts, were the privately acquiescent to their racism as it meant their maintenance of political power. Malcolm shows how a number of politicians are two-faced and manage to perpetuate a racist, imperialist agenda all while projecting the image of the White Savior. LBJ and JFK are singled out for excessive vitriol for their pseudo-progressivism.

As one can tell from reading the speeches and letters contained within Malcolm’s political rhetoric also shifted from Civil to Human rights. In this period. The stated purpose for this was so that more people would be willing to back proceedings against the United States in the UN International Court of Justice for Systemic Violation of Human Rights. While it’s debatable how effective this would be given that even today the politicians in the Federal Government are entirely dismissive of this body’s policy prescriptions, images and analogies he uses to explain this perspective are so incredibly powerful that it’s likely were he to have lived he’d have been able to create an organization that the U.S. Government would have to recognize and dialogue with.

Lastly, I want to point out that in here there is some amazing cultural analysis that is very much aligned with the tenor of the Frankfurt school but is done, IMHO, in a much more effective way due to the lack of obtuse language. Highly recommend this book to everyone!