Love or Rage: Revolution’s Face to the World
Posted by Mike E on May 5, 2010
Eldridge Cleaver proclaimed:
“This is a stickup motherfucker! We’re coming for what’s ours.”
Che said:
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”
How do we portray revolution and its motives? How do our images and tone reflect morality and goals?
Is the revolution a furnace of anger and payback? An act for a greater humanity, or as a long suppressed grab for “us and ours”?
Are we about identity or universality? Or both? And how do we convey that?
Is our hand extended or clenched? Or both? Is there an ecology of revolution with multiple streams, audiences, and modalities? And how do we convey that?
If stereotypical communist imagery is exhausted, what potent new symbolism do we now adopt (or invent)?
Is our banner “Serve the People” or “Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker”? Both? And in what mix? With what impact?
Who are we seeking to attract? Who are we willing to repel? What is the spirit we want to invoke and spread? What are impulses can marshaled to push on through to victory?
These issues are played out in many ways. In whether we have humor or not, in whether we can take criticism (even from enemies), in how we react when living revolutions portray themselves as patient and welcoming.
The following is part of an essay by the Black novelist Richard Wright, on the messages and difficulties of communist self-image. It was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 174, No 2 August 1944. (Thanks to Land who transcribed this for posting.)
* * * * * * * * * *
I Tried To Be A Communist (excerpt)
by Richard Wright
I went home full of reflection, probing the sincerity of the strange white people I had met, wondering how they really regarded Negroes. I lay on my bed and read the magazines and was amazed to find that there did exist in this world an organized search for the truth of the lives of the oppressed and the isolated. When I had begged bread from the officials, I had wondered dimly if the outcasts could become united in action, thought, and feeling. Now I knew. It was being done in one sixth of the earth already. The revolutionary words leaped from the printed page and struck me with tremendous force.
It was not the economics of Communism, nor the great power of the trade unions, nor the excitement of underground politics that claimed me; my attention was caught by the similarity of the experiences of workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a whole. It seemed to me that here at last, in the realm of revolutionary expression, Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role. Out of the magazines I read a passionate call for the experience s of the disinherited. And there was none of the lame lispings of the missionary in it. It did not say: “Be like us and we like you, maybe.” It said “If you possess enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find that you are not alone.” It urged life to believe in life.
I read into the night; then, toward dawn, I swung from the bed and inserted paper into typewriter. Feeling for the first time that I could speak to listening ears, I wrote a wild, crude poem in free verse, coining images of black hands playing, working, holding bayonets, stiffening finally in death. I felt that in a clumsy way it linked white life with black,, merged two streams of common experience.
I heard someone poking about the kitchen.
“Richard, are you ill?” my mother called.
“No. I’m reading.”
My mother opened the door and stared curiously at the pile of magazines that lay upon the pillow.
“You’re not throwing away money buying those magazines, are you?” she asked.
“No. They were given to me.”
She hobbled to the bed on her crippled legs and picked up a copy of the Masses that carried a lurid May Day cartoon. She adjusted her glasses and peered at it for a long time.
“My God in heaven,” she breathed in horror.
“What’s the matter, Mama?”
“What is this?” she asked, extending the magazine to me, pointing to the cover. “What’s wrong with that man?”
With my mother standing at my side, lending me her eyes, I stared at a cartoon drawn by a Communist artist; it was the figure of a worker clad in ragged overalls and holding aloft a red banner. The man’s eyes bulged; his mouth gaped as wide as his face; his teeth showed; the muscles of his neck were like ropes. Following the man was a horde of nondescript men, women, and children, waving clubs, stones, and pitchforks.
“What are those people going to do?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know,” I hedged.
“Are these Communist magazines?”
“Yes.”
“And do they want people to act like this?”
“Well…” I hesitated.
My mother’s face showed disgust and moral loathing. She was a gentle woman. Her ideal was Christ upon the cross. How could I tell her that the Communist Party wanted her to march in the streets, chanting, singing?
‘”What do Communist think people are?” she asked.
“They don’t quite mean what you see there,” I said, fumbling with my words.
“Then what do you mean?”
“This is symbolic,” I said.
“Then why don’t they speak out what they mean?”
“Maybe they don’t know how.”
“Then why do they print this stuff?”
“They don’t quite know how to appeal to people yet,” I admitted, wondering whom I could convince of this if I could not convince my mother.
“That picture’s enough to drive a body crazy,: she said, dropping the magazine, turning to leave, then pausing at the door. “You’re not getting mixed up with those people?”
“I’m just reading Mama,” I dodged.
My mother left and I brooded upon the fact that I had not been able to meet her simple challenge. I looked again at the cover of the Masses and I knew that the wild cartoon did not reflect the passions of the common people. I reread the magazine and was convinced that much of the expression embodied what the artists thought would appeal to others, what they thought would gain recruits. They had a program, an ideal, but they had not yet found a language.
Here, then, was something that I would do, reveal, say. The Communists, I felt had oversimplified the experience of those whom they sought to lead. In their efforts to recruit masses, they had missed the meaning of the lives of the masses, had conceived of people in too abstract a manner. I would try to put some of that meaning back. I would tell Communists how common people felt, and I would tell common people of the self-sacrifice of Communists who strove for unity among them.
The editor of Left Front accepted two of my crude poems for publication, sent two of them to Jack Conroy’s Anvil, and sent another to the New Masses, the successor of the Masses. Doubts still lingered in my mind.
“Don’t send them if you think they aren’t good enough,” I said to him.
“They’re good enough,” he said.
“Are you going to ask me to join up?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Your poems are crude, but good for us. You see, we’re all new in this. We write articles about Negroes, but we never see any Negroes. We need your stuff.”
observer said
is the other part of this article available somewhere?
Mike E said
Yes. It was published in a collection of essays by former communists called “The God that Failed.” It is available online. Wright’s essay starts on page 115. The other essays are worth reading too.
Andrei Kuznetsov said
…An intense look at how even at its “golden age”, the CP-USA still had a lot of serious contradictions that eventually paved the way to their revisionism.
I think that it shows how often communists get truly disconnected with the people, to the point that they build up this image of what they WANT the people to be, and then try to sell to a “people” that doesn’t really exist. Think of how almost every left group in the US works (especially Trotskyists).
The more I’ve been reading about the early Bolsheviks, it’s interesting to see how they connected to the people, in an organic ways, including in the world of writers and poets. Would the Bolshevik revolution been the same without Gorky or Mayakovsky? What about the wave of workers literature at the beginning of the Russian Civil War? Think also of how much local art and music is a part of the Irish Republican struggle (murals, folk songs, statues, POW-made flutes and drums).
How do we unleash the people to be artists?
Andrei Kuznetsov said
Oh, and nice use of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion. That just MADE my day.
Joseph Ball said
Come off it-no-one’s mother likes them becoming a communist. This is a life and death struggle with a system that kills millions every year. Communists have been trying to win support by toning down the class struggle rhetoric and putting out positive images of themselves for about the last 60 years. The result-complete capitulation. All this nonsense was the start of revisionism.
The reason most people aren’t interested in communism in America is that they are too bloody rich-they’re living a nice, soft life at the expense of all the people slaving away for them in the fields and sweatshops of the Third World. The way western leftists like Kasama go into denial mode about this is the source of their own revisionism.
Vivid Visionary said
Explain that a bit, Joseph. How does Kasama deny the first world privilege?
For all your goddam ranting about Kasama being revisionist, you come off as an asshole. Your dogmatism shines through and through. And MIM doesn’t exist.
celticfire said
Joseph,
Out of curiosity, is there anyone or any movement you *don’t* consider “revisionist”?
I mean this not out of sarcasm, but sincere curiosity.
You say Nepalese revolutionaries have gone revisionist, the American left, etc. etc.
What would a genuinely revolutionary people or movement look like to you?
I wonder if people that think this way would have considered Mao a “revisionist” for his important breaks with the Comintern and in fact, Stalin.
Mike E said
Well, Joseph has one answer: It is impossible to creatively present communism in imperialist countries, because people are not oppressed. And the implications of that are obvious (for someone like Joseph Ball, or many of us who are sitting in imperialist countries). I.e. it is a waste of time to even discuss how to reach the oppressed.
But let’s not drag our conversation down to discussing whether anyone is oppressed here — since on some level, that can be rather quickly disproven. Certainly there are tens of millions of people (in the U.S. for example) who are quite clearly oppressed.
The problem of how to present the revolution is also a question that is hardly limited or focused on imperialist countries. It is an issue in India. It is handled differently in Vietnam (where Ho projected a very specific image and content) than in say Kampuchea. And what Mao represented was (in many ways) different from how Peru’s Shining path presented their cause.
The issue here is how do we present communism, its goals and motives, to the people — not whether there are people oppressed enough to care.
And on that point, Joseph perceived the issue to be “toning down the class struggle rhetoric.” And perceives that as a short slide to abandoning radical change. Is that really the deal?
I suspect there has to be a harsh and sharp presentation of militancy and struggle — while also finding ways of conveying a love of humanity and people. A mix of negation and optimism.
Often people think “I wouldn’t want these guys near power.” Not because the communists they meet might be to “harsh” toward oppressors — but because it is too easy to imagine them punishing anyone (including those among the oppressed who disagree). People really thought Ho or Mao was “on their side” — that these guys were their partisans — in the sense that they were for the poor and for the nation.
And i’m curious how we present a partisan militant affinity to the oppressed (and a broader sense of generosity toward middle forces) in a complex and divided society like the U.S. (where sections of the people are hunkered down contrary to each other).
Nat W. said
Today in Greece it is reported that protestors stopped firemen from entering into a burning building resulting in the death of three bankers. Obviously the development of upheaval in Greece (again) is a welcome event, however there are middle forces in Greee (or imagine this happening in the US) that would be frightened by the violence of the masses (even while this event may indeed be an example of excess). I wonder about the relation between how we relate to the middle forces in times of stability and how this hardens or readys them for times when it is possible to stand up. I’m not sure you can portray one face (of militancy) to the oppressed; and one of generosity to the middle. There is still it seems to me, a need to prepare the middle forces that are friendly to you, for the time when the opressed rise up. It would seem to me that this takes firm leadership, one that takes responsibility for things like what is being reported in Greece, one that helps the middle stata to see the bigger picture of why excesses occur in the first place.
Still the question of how you appeal to the oppressed and to the middle has to do with looking at their own expressions in art, music, etc. and understanding the positives that come from even the less political stuff. Obviously you want to appreciate the more conscious expressions of art that take the side of the people and may actually come from the people. However you also want to do a little anthropology. What are the oppressed into? Why? What are the rebellious aspects of what they create and listen to? Often, I have seen revs look or listen to something and judge it just on the surface. They pass a verdict, and talk about the need to transform that type of thinking in these particular artistic expressions, but often they don’t get the culture, they don’t get the rebeliousness, even if directed in some backward directions. It seems to me you can’t win sections of the oppressed over by just poo-pooing on their culture when you really don’t even get it, and wont really get into it except with those forces who already have developed some radical ideas. I have in mind particularly what’s going on in hip-hop culture right now, but I’m sure you can find similar dynamics in rock or even country music in the middle of the country. There’s a need to do some ethnography and get deep into why the glorification of riches and crime, why the harshness toward women. There’s a balance to find between relating to the people who criticize this culture (who often times come from more middle sections of the oppressed), and relating to the mostly oppressed people whose culture this is and who love it and for whom it really is a way of life. But you can’t win people over by criticizing their culture from the outside, you have to find the ways to communicate with them.
Vida said
This was a great read-Thanks for posting it and for the link to the original collection…Love and Rage are perfectly compatible, since these are experiences natural to being human and since communism is in part about reclaiming our birthright humanity stolen by the criminal class. And Mike, your words say it perfectly, “I suspect there has to be a harsh and sharp presentation of militancy and struggle — while also finding ways of conveying a love of humanity and people. A mix of negation and optimism.” –>Because in the reclamation, whether it’s Nepal, or Vietnam, or Peru, or here, different contexts will call for different “presentations” –or tactics. As Wright wrote, “It urged life to believe in life.”, which I interpret to mean that the story unfolds at the same time our reclamation of our humanity takes the form of fighting, or nurturing, or cultivating, or….Doing what is called for in grabbing our own, our collective narratives from the hegemony of the state-run media trying to make us believe in IT instead…
And Andrei–Thank you for this beautiful question, “How do we unleash the people to be artists?”
I think that’s an essential question at the heart of revolution.
Joseph Ball said
Celticfire asks ‘What would a genuinely revolutionary people or movement look like to you?’. My answer is a struggle of the Third World peoples to liberate their nations from imperialism, politically and economically and then unite to destroy US imperialism, break down the borders between Third World and First World and thus end the division of the world working class that prevents socialism in the First World countries.
Why hasn’t this been a reality in the past 30 years (at least not a reality led by Maoists?) Well, Mike mentions Kampuchea and I think Mike’s own work is very interesting in this regard. Mike wrote of Kampuchea in 1997:
‘The Khmer Rouge was driven back into rural base areas in western Cambodia–where they still exist as an armed force. At the time, a section of the population clearly fought to defend the Democratic Kampuchean government–and for years a sizable section of the population supported Pol Pot for his incorruptible reputation, his identification with the peasants and his relentless fight against foreign domination…Pol Pot kicked the U.S. imperialists out of Cambodia. And that’s why they hate him. By vilifying Pol Pot, the U.S. is pressing ahead with their attempts to slam the door on all dreams of social change–to declare that communist revolution and even national independence for oppressed countries must be rejected and denounced. They cannot be allowed to get away with this.’
(see: http://www.rwor.org/a/v19/910-19/918/polpot.htm)
I first read this a few years ago when I was getting into the Maoist line. I was impressed by Mike’s courage in defending someone generally regarded as indefensible but at the same time I believed Mike’s line was incorrect. To some extent I could see what Mike was trying to do. Before the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea western leftists had been gravitating towards the idea of the Third World as the ‘storm centre’ of world revolution and this notion was generally associated with Maoism. After the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, this line tended to disintegrate. Marxists started to disavow the ideas of Third World national liberation and economic self-sufficiency for Third World countries. The death toll of Democratic Kampuchea was blamed on ‘nationalism’ and these attempts at economic self-sufficiency. Mike was trying to fight a rear-guard action to defend these notions by partially defending Pol Pot. ( I’d be interested to know Mike’s opinion of Pol Pot these days. )
My subsequent reading has demonstrated to me that despite serious errors, Democratic Kampuchea was socialist up until late 1976. After that point, it became revisionist, as Pol Pot came under the wing of Deng Xiaoping. Deng, Pol Pot and the US then came up with a tacit agreement that Kampuchea and China would make war on Vietnam to as part of an effort to further the aims of the US imperialist bloc to which they both now belonged to. Preparation for war led to mass killings and starvation in Kampuchea, much worse than anything that had happened in the first 2 years.
The fact was that there was a chance for a Third World based anti-imperialist movement to encircle and strangle US imperialism in the second half of the twentieth century. It was undermined by revisionism and the Three Worlds Theory, which provided the ideological underpinning for Pol Pot’s revisionism. The correct verdict is not turning away from the idea of the Third World proletariat as the vanguard or the idea of national liberation and neither is it an effort to rehabilitate Pol Pot’s line-Democratic Kampuchea in 1977-8 was firmly imbeded in the imperialist system, it was not a ‘liberated’ country. What we should accept is that revisionism and capitulation to the West temporarily side-lined a project, that with more ideological coherence, could lead to the liberation of humanity.
The Fish said
Gotta say, I always like an article that begins with questions, supplies some food for thought and then people hash it out in the comments section. In Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison the main character has an interesting “otherized” experience with the CP of his time (I think around the same time as Wright?). It’s pretty extensive and much more complicated than just calling white CP leaders racist.
On another note, if people’s moms will never be down with the Communism then we’re screwed because moms are central, especially in highly oppressed sections of the proletariat where they more often do double-shift and intense amounts of reproductive labor while also captaining the family unit. Fortunately moms have often been down with radicalism in the US, see CP, IWW, Debs, Panthers etc…..if the point you’re making is that most people are ignorant/afraid of communism right now then, uh, yeah. For sure. But hopefully we all already know that.
I almost got trolled by Joseph Ball but then I didn’t. Thanks to Kasama for consistently posting food for thought and Nepal reporting!
CPSA said
We know we’ve exited reality when we start seeing apologies for the Khmer Rouge. It’d be nice if Maoist parties or those sympathetic to the ideology would say that now and then.
Avery Ray Colter said
I don’t see love and rage as either-or. Rage is often a direct result of denial-of-love attacks. What more certain way to turn someone to rage then to impose social relations which render them, in their estimation, shut out from love?
As for Khmer Rouge… my understanding from all I have heard, and from more recent reading of Maoist Economics, was that the Khmer Rouge departed from Maoist conceptions of national development from the start by killing everyone with a higher education, leaving their society incapable of the first step of Maoist industrial development, developing tools for agriculture. Mike’s RWOR writing itself says that Pol Pot tried to abolish money and wage systems immediately for instance. And while it doesn’t say whether these stories of targeting everyone with a technical education are true or not, it certainly mentions the well-known toxin of nationalism which I believe is incompatible with socialism by definition and results in an internecine contest in which either nationalism or socialism prevails and wipes out the other, leaving an organization like the Nazis with the word “socialist” in its name which functionally is nothing of the sort, but which makes a convenient talking point for every critic of socialism.