The Trotsky

Another great essay, Dorothy. I saw The Trotsky this week, and, though I agree that the script was a bit of a mess, I have a soft spot for it (most likely because I spent my teens in a Trot sect, and, like Leon, led a walk-out from my high school).

I also wrestled with what the film was trying to say, whether it was mocking or diminishing the ideas of social change and even revolution. Though it was certainly having some fun with them, ultimately I don't think it was dismissing them -- the key scene, for me, was the once-cynical, now-inspired old Berkeley lawyer's exchange with the Stephen Lewis Foundation-working school board president.

His defense of the ridiculous in the age of the "post-post-modern" reminded me a lot of Zizek's injunction to reclaim Communism, or his idea that 'the true act creates the conditions of its own possibilities' -- I thought the film basically settled on the thesis that for someone to break out of the narrow political strictures of our dysfunctional world, it would involve risking looking (and even being) ridiculous by our cynical, irony-tempered sensibilities...

Yes, it was

The Trotsky.

Dorothy Woodend's quote from

Dorothy Woodend's quote from Trotsky's The USSR in War is taken out of context (see para 3 of the quote below, found at http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/09/ussr-war.htm):

'If this war provokes, as we firmly believe, a proletarian revolution, it must inevitably lead to the overthrow of the bureaucracy in the USSR and regeneration of Soviet democracy on a far higher economic and cultural basis than in 1918. In that case the question as to whether the Stalinist bureaucracy was a “class” or a growth on the workers’ state will be automatically solved. To every single person it will become clear that in the process of the development of the world revolution the Soviet bureaucracy was only an episodic relapse.

If, however, it is conceded that the present war will provoke not revolution but a decline of the proletariat, then there remains another alternative: the further decay of monopoly capitalism, its further fusion with the state and the replacement of democracy wherever it still remained by a totalitarian regime. The inability of the proletariat to take into its hands the leadership of society could actually lead under these conditions to the growth of a new exploiting class from the Bonapartist fascist bureaucracy. This would be, according to all indications, a regime of decline, signalizing the eclipse of civilization.

An analogous result might occur in the event that the proletariat of advanced capitalist countries, having conquered power, should prove incapable of holding it and surrender it, as in the USSR, to a privileged bureaucracy. Then we would be compelled to acknowledge that the reason for the bureaucratic relapse is rooted not in the backwardness of the country and not in the imperialist environment but in the congenital incapacity of the proletariat to become a ruling class. Then it would be necessary in retrospect to establish that in its fundamental traits the present USSR was the precursor of a new exploiting régime on an international scale.'

Our Dorothy

Ma'am, you are, without hesitation. the ever loving bomb.
What I love about Ms Woodend is that she will never and could never accept the myth that films exist in a cultural vacuum. There's no doubt she knows there are no art forms so calculated and monitored for consumption than films. Each cultural form (books, movies,music) must meet its intended market on those demographic terms, and all kowtow to its prevalence of opinion, prejudice of thought and satisfaction of belief. I love that Dorothy brings her own biases to a film and expects a complex and intelligent challenge to them at every turn... this woman's a treasure.

The working forces of evolution and revolution...

I enjoyed this article very much. Thank you very much for it, Dorothy.

As a lower working class person, the issue of class has of course been central to my life... even if much of my class brothers and sisters, at least to relatively recently, has much themselves sought to ignore it, along with the rest of society of course. (Even casual working class conversation on the issue however, has, much to my surprise, even if to be expected in the times, begun to open up on the subject of their "classness". Which, unless I'm making a total misread, is destined to have a big impact on status quo sensibilities again, very soon. For the genie, once out of the bottle, is extremely difficult to again restrain and contain.)

The elephant in the room is at least being "some" acknowledged by them again... though of course, it has been part of their lives all along, as much as mine. Though much of my class has still not yet gotten to what to do about it... for fear of still, the can of worms it will open up. No one is anymore thinking it will go away again anytime soon though, is my "feeling", though they might still wish it would.

As for the capacity of the working class to which I belong to rule itself, and over the affairs of the economy and state of society, as much as all doubts are understandable, even their own, and the historical record, with important exceptions, not often seeming to be positive, the species continues to evolve, and the common working masses along with it. And so long as the forces of species, economic and social evolution, which ever contain the possibility of profound revolution, as in radical and profound change, no less than do all the other aspects of material existence, what has not been may yet become possible.

Deep within the bowels of Greek and Roman slavery and later feudalism, what is in current bourgeois society must have looked no less impossible. And yet...

So too for the working class masses of our time. Indeed, I'm counting on it... and is why I yet consider myself a libertarian communist, of a crude and unpolished sort :-), to whom all working class and revolutionary experience is still an important reservoir upon which to draw.

The revolution is still on. :-) And evolving, no doubt as it should.

coyoteman

And I thought that "libertarian communist" was an oxymoron. My apologies, sir!
http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/libcom.html

Well put, coyoteman!

Well put, coyoteman!

A working class person...

Apology, of course, accepted my friend Rick. The concept of libertarian communism is certainly not well known or understood, in at least this part of the world.

And the link you posted was interesting. I will leave it to those with an interest, to seek out for themselves and consider what is actually a great wealth of historical and other information about "libertarian communism" out there, even just on the net.

And thank you as well, Robert Verdon. I appreciate your comment.

Revolutionaries, including those few left of us who call themselves "communist" :-), are not unlike Christians, or even Jews etc in at least one broad a way. :-) Which will raise some hackles, I appreciate. But as there are christians etc., and then there are christians. Likewise there are socialists and there are socialists, ditto communists and communists, or even anarchists and anarchists. :-)

The really important point is, that we have to resolve the problem of current capitalist society together, collectively (as opposed to individually). And to do that, we will have to work it out together, regardless of what we may choose to call ourselves in other regards.

I am first and foremost a working class person. That is my paramount loyalty. (Groups and parties etc, per se, may as they do, come and go.)

Those Who Call Themselves Libertarians....

....must be peeing their pantaloons.

The way I see it, "libertarianism" is the "all for one", whereas "libertarian communism" is the "one for all" (this part of the equation being completely foreign to those who profess to be libertarians).
Here is what I consider a practical example of libertarianism at work:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100525/ZNYT03/5253013/2055/NEWS?Title=Shaky-Rule-in-Madagascar-Threatens-Trees
"God gave us the forest so that we could take what we need. My ancestors are not angry. There are still many trees in the forest."

movies that deal with class successfully

To start another thread: what are some movies that deal with social class effectively? Off the top of my head:

- Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep"
- "Matewan," "Lone Star," really any John Sayles film;
- in a strange way, Whit Stilman's "Metropolitan"
- a recent great example: Lucrecia Martel's "The Headless Woman"

Others?

Again, a New Man/Woman...

I agree with barney re Grapes of Wrath, which would be my choice. It's been a long time since I saw that one though. Didn't Jane Fonda's dad, Henry Fonda, play a leading role in that?

I didn't see Wall Street in the original, but must see the latest, if for no other reason than to be able to critique it. :-)

But speaking to a point raised by Rick, it is to expected, I think, that there would be a different "aware" working class concept of "libertarianism", as much as there is a different notion of "liberty" and/or what constitutes "freedom". Though Rick gets it about right with his "all for one" and " one for all" comparison.

I think we are looking for something closer to what was "presumably" the more ancient understanding of the relationship of the individual to the group, before the evolution of class society out of the chieftain/warrior practises of same. We are, at least at some point, in my view, going to have to stand it all back on its feet again.

It's part of the struggle to create the new man/woman that must and is going on, with a different understanding of what class and freedom is, and social responsibility. And what it is not, as it has become distorted by capitalism.

Perhaps Something Approaching This, Coyoteman?

http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/encyclopedia/IroquoisConfederacy.htm
Apart from the fact that the Iroquois had passed from the purely nomadic stage, and were agricultural, their chief distinction lay in their political organization. This was based on the idea of kinship; and kinship was traced through the female line. The family was composed essentially of the progeny of a woman and her female descendants; though, by a legal fiction, even those of alien blood might be adopted into the family. Families were organized in clans; clans in tribes; and tribes in a confederation. In each case the smaller units surrendered part of their autonomy to the larger in such wise that the whole was closely interdependent and cohesive. The establishment of the higher unit created new rights, privileges, and duties. In each unit, legislative, executive, and judicial functions were exercised by chiefs, who were organized into councils, and of whom there were three grades. In the simpler political units, the chiefs were hereditary; but in the higher grades the chief was nominated by the suffrages of the child-bearing women, and the nomination was confirmed by the tribal and federal councils. The government of the Iroquois confederation was thus only a development of the government of its component tribes, clans, and families; and in it the women exercised an influence greater than that exercised by the women of any other Indian tribes.