[Marxism] F.I.F.S.T. - the film

[Paddy Apling <e.c.apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The 1978 film F.I.S.T. starring Sylvester Stallone and Rod Steiger
was shown on digital ITV3 this afternoon - just listed in Radio Times
as: "3.15 F.I.F.T. *** 5.55" without review or any other mention - so
I caught it almost by accident, as it were. - but it was announced
(sponsored by Cobra - some bottled soft-drink?) as a TV premiere.

However,  it caught my attention as an extremely unusual American
film with apparently real-life working-class characters.

I suspect it can be viewed from two angles, depending on one's
political position - either as a realistic presentation of trades
union struggles in from mid-30s to 1960s America - or as an
indictment of trades unions as inevitably "corrupt" and in
Thatcherite terms "the enemy within".

However, without leaving much necessity of guessing which attitude I
took, it seems to me as a good illustration of the necessity of
pragmatism in working-class leadership in the class struggle - based
on an understanding that "our enemy's enemies may need to be treated
as our friends pro-tem - though such friendship may come back to
haunt us" if the enemy's propaganda machine can make the opportunity
- demonstrated in the film by Rod Steiger's role as a McCarthyite (or
simply "moralistic" ?) Senate committee chairman.

The portrayal, obviously to some extent based on the history of the
Jimmy Hoffa story, seems to me to be asking to be considered deeply
as a good example of the problems created by so many on the left who
take a "moralistic" view of "mistakes" in the Communist movement
across the world - all episodes in a extremely complex (and violent)
class struggle.

.Paddy
http://apling.freeservers.com





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