Re: [Marxism] End of Black Reconstruction and the Paris Commune

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Given the observations already made by Yoshie and me, it might not come
as a big surpise to discover that the Nation Magazine conflated Radical
Republicanism and the Paris Commune in an October 5, 1871 Editorial.
The editorial is a stinging attack on abolitionist Wendell Phillips and
Civil War leader General Benjamin Butler, who are depicted as stirring
up the working class in Massachusetts to no good end. I especially
appreciated the Nation's worried reference to possible outbursts by
"those who crowd the tenement-houses and workshops of manufacturing
cities."

I should mention one other thing. After Jim Farmelant crossposted my
original write-up answering Nathan Newman on Henwood's list, it
unleashed a frenzy of name-calling over one casual observation I made
rather than prompt any discussion of the historical questions, aside
from Nathan Newman's reply. Namely, my observation that Henwood's list
is a pole of attraction for the anticommunist left provoked him to say
that there *were* communists on lbo-talk, but "not LNP's kind of
people." You'll notice that the question has evolved into one of social
acceptance rather than political differentiation.

Frankly, I fail to see why this is such a big deal. When I say
communist, I mean communist in the sense of Marxist *parties*, like the
ISO, the WWP and most of all the sort of nonsectarian and nondogmatic
party for which I have been proselytizing for the past 23 years or so,
around the time I hooked up with Peter Camejo. I strongly advocate the
construction of a revolutionary party and salute the efforts of groups
like the ISO, even when I sharply disagree with the way they are going
about things. Now, clearly this has nothing to do with Michael Hardt's
blather about Spinozan communism or any of the other malarkey that gets
raised at the Rethinking Marxism conferences in the name of communism.
Perhaps I should have been clearer and stated that the leftist
anticommunism on Henwood's list is directed against Marxist parties, but
then again I wasn't try to have a conversation with anybody there--a
lost cause by all indications of the nearly daily verbal assaults on
Yoshie and Carrol Cox who hang out there.

---

The Nation:

The good people of Massachusetts, however, no less than the motley crowd
of blatherskite reformers [a reference to the labor movement and the
suffragists], may draw a very significant, though somewhat alarming,
lesson from the singular canvass they have just witnessed. They have had
a very great deliverance, it is true, and may well be very thankful for
it; but, at the same time, they had best look at the danger carefully,
even if for the time it has ceased to threaten. What was the
significance of this strange conflict? Was it, after all, anything less
than the bold attempt of a thoroughly bad demagogue to take possession
of the whole politics of the State, through the agency of its
discontented factions? Was it not the organization, prematurely and
under false colors, but still the organization of such a COMMUNE [this
word appeared in italics in the Nation editorial] as America could now
supply? While the citizens of Massachusetts, therefore, may well take
pride in the good courage and prudent conduct which at the eleventh hour
saved the good courage and prudent conduct which at the eleventh hour
saved them from a wry grave peril, it yet behooves them very seriously
to consider the deplorably low condition of political morality which the
events of the last two months have unmistakably revealed as existing
throughout what is soon to be their controlling class. Having maturely
considered this subject, they had best, while there is yet time,
energetically bestir themselves in regard to it. Should they fail to do
so, some demagogue bolder than Butler, and as unscrupulous, will yet
illustrate to them the great difference which exists between popular
institutions emanating from those who follow the sea and till the soil,
and the same institutions in the hands of those who crowd the
tenement-houses and workshops of manufacturing cities.


--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism