This begins an occasional series. Tomorrow’s post will feature The Other USC: Graduate Students on Food Stamps in South Carolina.
Thomas Boyd, In Time of Peace (1935). “Hicks’s voice was sharp as he swung around. ‘Except when I was in the army, people have tried to make me feel like that all of my life–that, if things went wrong, it wasn’t that there was something the matter with the system, but that there was something the matter with me. Well, I don’t fall for it any more. And I don’t want you to think that I’m just going to lie down and take it, either, because I’m not.’”
Veteran Hicks returns to a job at a metal lathe, acquiring conciousness of his expendability. Becomes a reporter for the labor newspaper. Disillusioned by opportunistic labor bureaucrats, joins a liberal tabloid and marries. Buys a home on rent-to-own terms. Begins an affair with a woman of the leisure class. Wife becomes an advertising writer, and they hire a nanny. Through his lover’s connections, he writes a lucrative column pimping a radio company. They build a nicer home, keeping the first as an investment. “Everyone” is making money in the stock market. Mortgage crisis and depression ensue. Their wages are cut and their home is repossessed. Hicks repudiates professional-managerial opportunism:
“I’m just not going to kid myself any more. Im sick of being jerked around like a monkey on a stick, dancin’ around on top of the workers’ shoulders till the shakedown comes and then trying to scramble up again. That’s what your father’s been doing all his life–and look at him! That’s what we’ll be doing, too, till we wake up and realize that the only way we’ll ever get anywhere is with the workers.”
Albert Maltz, The Underground Stream: An Historical Novel of a Moment in the American Winter (1940). A communist union organizer, an auto plant personnel manager, and a small businessman at the head of fascist cell meet fatefully over a three-day period in February 1936. Auto is not yet unionized, membership in the Communist Party is not illegal, and fascist terror is on the rise.
“‘…We know the power of capitalism in this country. When it comes to a test, the progressive forces in this country are going to be smashed. The trade union movement will be smashed. And the Communist Party will be smashed first of all, to pave way for the others.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Man, be serious! You don’t have to keep up face for me. I’m not someone you need to convert.’
Princey shrugged.
‘Fascism will take power here, and you know it.’
With no idea where this conversation was leading, he asked, ‘Suppose it does?’
Grebb reacted with astonishment. ‘Can a Communist ask that so casually? You know what it will mean: Generations of suffering, increasingly lower standards of living for the mass of people, a bleeding country, a stifled science, an idiotic art–finance and gangsterism in the saddle!’
‘Well?’ Princey managed.
‘I know the way to overthrow Fascism quickly!’
‘How?’
‘By working inside it! Listen to me, Princey. I beg you to listen seriously. This is a tragic time for the world. Those who hold back from new political paths will be judged by history to be as guilty as those who openly opposed the working-class movement. …It would have been so easy for me to leave my job, to denounce finance capital, to give every cent of money I have to the Communist Party. That’s what I should have liked to do. The harder thing is what I’ve decided to do: To remain within the ranks of capital. To gain power in the growing Fascist movement! …Then, when the time is ripe, you and I will be in command. We’ll be able to act for Socialism from within the camp of its enemies.‘”
In the next installment of this series I’ll feature Upton Sinclair, The Industrial Republic: A Study of the America of Ten Years Hence. (1907), including Sinclair on Brooks Adams’s The New Empire. Adams: “Institutions are good when they lead to success in competition, and bad when they hinder.”
Recently:
- 30 Seconds From Humiliation
- Certify, Re-Tool, or Stand and Fight
- Ivory Tower Inc, Coerce U, and other Recent Reviews
- ‘Adjuncts’ to the Barricades!
- Pushback
- I’ll be Watching You
- Ballad of the Dissertators
- The Churchill Case Goes To Trial
- AAUP and the Ward Churchill case
- AP Profile of Cary Nelson
