Socialism 2011: Day 1

Socialism 2011: Revolution In The Air, Day 1

Friday, July 1, 2011

Drove down on my own, stopping three times to stretch my poor back, and once to eat.  While I was feeding the corporate belly of KFC and a potentially inhumane poultry industry, those extra-crispy strips do taste good.  I will have to make my own using properly raised chickens.  At some point.

After checking in to the hotel, I walked next door and checked in to the conference.  There was only one talk tonight, followed by a reception in the concourses and bar of the hotel.  I wanted to stay at the reception and talk to people, but I know no one here, and while I can teach a roomful of strangers, I have trouble striking up conversation with a bunch of people I would find very interesting and have a lot in common with.  I am sure there is some psychological explanation, but that is for some other time, when I have had more to drink.  (This Glenfiddich 12 year I am sipping may put me on my way.)

The first talk I attended was "The Civil War: America's Second Revolution," presented by Donny Schraffenberger, a UPS employee and Teamster.  My first reaction to his credentials was "What?  This guy isn't a teacher or historian?  What are we in for?"  However, I collected myself, and remembered why we are here.  Socialism is about regular people taking responsibility not just for their actions, but for the betterment of society.  Important issues should not just be the playground of experts, teachers and professionals, but for everyone.  Listening to the research he did, and the conclusions drawn from the material sent more than a few currents up and down my spine.  

Howard Zinn gave a talk about artists who spoke up about politics in times of war.  In the following media coverage, those artists were criticized for opening their mouths in public about things that were not their "specialty." (Think about the Dixie Chicks when they said to a London crowd, "We want y'all to know, we're ashamed the President is from Texas."  Remember the steamrolling of their albums in parking lots of country radio stations?  Also, the documentary called "Shut Up and Sing?"  Such tolerant people we are.)  Anyway, in a brilliant statement, Zinn said something like, "Do you really want experts and politicians to be the people in charge of running the country?  How stupid can you be?"

I cringe to think of the scholarship and ideas we have lost when the contributions of those who do not fit some profile make most people in the media at best pull away, and at worst discourage those who are trying to make a worthwhile contribution.  

I know many of the events and stories in the context of how they are written in textbooks and general histories.  I don't think I have run into the idea of the Civil War being a part of the progression of capitalism in the sense that the industrial development of the north was so important and inevitable that a conflict with the undeveloped south was always on the horizon.  In other words, capitalism always has to expand, or it begins to die, whether we need the products and services it provides or not.  It naturally follows that when the northeastern U.S. was industrialized, there were people looking to bring factories, railroads and other technological developments to the south.  But, many of those plantations didn't need any of those things, because their raw materials and goods going out, as well as the supplies they needed to buy were picked up or delivered to private docks.  Southern plantations were self-sustaining, and it drove northern capitalists crazy that they couldn't expand as they pleased. It makes sense, I just hadn't heard this before.

The idea of the Civil War being a revolution is interesting. In Marxist/socialist terms, white working people could never be free until black people were free. Marx organized meetings in England demanding that textile companies not use cotton picked by American slaves. Especially in the city of Manchester, a huge textile manufacturing town, this was a tough sell.

Another idea brought up is that Lincoln had to continually be pushed to oppose slavery. The original 13th Amendment would have kept the federal government out of the issue of slavery. It was only when the people were leaving Lincoln behind that he decided to catch up. It was said that "Lincoln was not controlling events. Events were controlling him from below." 92% of the Union army were volunteers. That number, to me, says those volunteers were fighting for the cause of freedom, not as a reaction, or not for any kind of romantic notion. Also, there were people in confederate states who fought on the Union side. Some in the north of Kentucky and Tennessee fought for the Union.

The last few paragraphs are not terribly clear, but I want to post something, so I can write better stuff later. (Other things had to deal with the number of slaves who had run away, slaves who fought for the Union, abolitionism and abolitionists being attacked, and the notion that this was about sovereignty and states rights is nonsense, not to mention racist.)

In conclusion, I was fascinated by some of these ideas because the idea or information was new to me. We usually think of Lincoln as having great foresight and was the man that freed the slaves. In truth, he was reacting to the pressures of his constituents to take bold steps. Also, that the Civil War was the last progressive action of the American capitalist class. (See above about northern capitalists wanting to expand their influence.) In the end, the Civil War was a great example of the majority of people in the United States fighting oppression and winning.