Category: History

And Yet Again, the U.S. Civil War

I’ve noticed more than once that fools and internet trolls can occasionally provide a useful service in that they can make us take a fresh look at our own arguments. Right now, someone on Facebook is pulling out the old, tired chestnut that the U.S. Civil War “wasn’t actually about slavery,” and in reading the replies from those naive enough to believe he can be reasoned with, I’ve noticed some things that are worth clarifying.

First of all, putting the question as it is usually put, “What was the Civil War about?” or, “Why was the Civil War fought?” introduces ambiguity right away. The question can mean any of four closely interrelated things: 1) what were the social, economic, and political pressures that led to secession? 2) What were the social, economic, and political pressures that led the North to resist secession? 3) Why did those on either side volunteer for military service? 4) Once there, what drove them to actually charge into those horrific killing fields, willing to die or to take life?

For 3) and 4) in particular, I strongly recommend For Cause and Comrades by James McPherson. For the moment, I’ll just say that, in general, in 1861, Northerners did not enlist to fight slavery, nor Southerners to defend it. This is far from absolute–certain Southern officers certainly thought of slavery as a noble cause and enlisted to defend it, and some thousands of Northern enlisted men, particularly from the New England states, did join to fight for Abolition. But these were a small minority on both sides.

However, I think 1) and 2) are the more significant questions. And the point I want to make is that the North (in particular, Northeastern capitalism) did not need an end to slavery, it needed to break the power of the slaveocracy. This is an important distinction. Since the founding of the country, it was the slaveholders who controlled the Federal government, and the building conflict was over control of that government, which the slaveholders simply could not give up without economically destroying themselves. So far in history, no ruling class has ever voluntarily destroyed itself, or failed to fight to defend its privileges when it could.

And this fact–that the North and South went to war over conflicting economic interests–does not make the Northern cause one whit less progressive, nor the Southern cause one whit less reactionary.

Those who look back into history and want to find purity of motive (whatever that even means) in the actions of social classes, and then wag a finger and say tsk tsk when they fail to find it, are utterly unscientific and contribute nothing to our understanding of history. The North was on the side of increased equality and advancing human freedom–not because Northern capitalists were good people who thought those were good things to do, but because in order to continue to develop the productive forces, capitalism required free labor, and free labor, though still oppressive, is a significant improvement over chattel slavery! When we call an economic system “progressive” at a given time and place, such as U.S. capitalism in the 19th Century, that’s what it means: not that a bunch of saints are in charge of it, but that it moves society in the direction of more equality, greater freedom, toward plenty. If we call an economic system “reactionary” in a given time and place, such as  U.S. capitalism in the 21st Century, it means that it is holding back advances in equality, freedom, and plenty.

All of which leads us back to points 3) and 4) above: as Professor MacPherson makes clear, it was the progressive character of the war against secession, and the Northern enlisted man’s understanding of this character, that provide much of the answer to these questions. To a Marxist, one of the things that defines a revolution is the conscious participation of the masses in making history–the key word being conscious. The most cursory study of Civil War letters and diaries will convince an impartial observer that the Northern soldier knew very well what he was fighting for. Those who have a vested interest in seeing the masses as ignorant tools to be led by the nose will have to have their ideological blinders on especially tight if they study this question.

Today, those who want to deny the progressive character of the North in the U.S. Civil War, fall generally into two camps: Those on the Right who overtly oppose human freedom, who feel shame before the courage and determination of their capitalist forebears and, now that capitalism is reactionary, fear mass movements as a fundamentalist Christian fears hell.  And those who call themselves Leftists, who are so desperate to protect their middle class privileges that they will do anything to deny the progressive force of the masses, and must find a way to interpret history in light of their narrow, petty, individualistic concerns.

What these two groups have in common is fear and hatred of the oppressed fighting in their own name. It is no longer 1861. It is not even 1980. It is 2015, and we are beginning to see the stirring of the masses: the Greek working class is not done; we’ve seen mass movements in Egypt; London and Glasgow just saw tens of thousands demonstrate against austerity; and there are signs of renewed labor struggles in the United States, for example among refinery workers. The study of history in general, and the U.S. Civil War in particular, will help arm the working class with the understanding necessary to carry matters through to a successful end of the next Civil War.

ETA 2021: I’ve learned a great deal since making this post. For the most part, I stand behind it, but I need to add, first, that anti-slavery sentiment among Northern soldiers was considerably greater than I’d thought, and, second, thanks to work by such historians as Victoria Bynum, I’ve learned that there was a great deal of anti-slavery sentiment—to the point of picking up arms—in the South, as well.

Quoted Without Comment

There is a passage in John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World–his account of the Bolshevik revolution–that has always had a special place in my heart.  I reproduce it here, because I feel like it:

 

 

We sallied out into the town. Just at the door of the station stood two soldiers with rifles and bayonets fixed. They were surrounded by about a hundred business men, Government officials and students, who attacked them with passionate argument and epithet. The soldiers were uncomfortable and hurt, like children unjustly scolded.

A tall young man with a supercilious expression, dressed in the uniform of a student, was leading the attack.

“You realise, I presume,” he said insolently, “that by taking up arms against your brothers you are making yourselves the tools of murderers and traitors?”

“Now brother,” answered the soldier earnestly, “you don’t understand. There are two classes, don’t you see, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We—”

“Oh, I know that silly talk!” broke in the student rudely. “A bunch of ignorant peasants like you hear somebody bawling a few catch-words. You don’t understand what they mean. You just echo them like a lot of parrots.” The crowd laughed. “I’m a Marxian student. And I tell you that this isn’t Socialism you are fighting for. It’s just plain pro-German anarchy!”

“Oh, yes, I know,” answered the soldier, with sweat dripping from his brow. “You are an educated man, that is easy to see, and I am only a simple man. But it seems to me—”

“I suppose,” interrupted the other contemptuously, “that you believe Lenin is a real friend of the proletariat?”

“Yes, I do,” answered the soldier, suffering.

“Well, my friend, do you know that Lenin was sent through Germany in a closed car? Do you know that Lenin took money from the Germans?”

“Well, I don’t know much about that,” answered the soldier stubbornly, “but it seems to me that what he says is what I want to hear, and all the simple men like me. Now there are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—”

“You are a fool! Why, my friend, I spent two years in Schlüsselburg for revolutionary activity, when you were still shooting down revolutionists and singing ‘God Save the Tsar!’ My name is Vasili Georgevitch Panyin. Didn’t you ever hear of me?”

“I’m sorry to say I never did,” answered the soldier with humility.  “But then, I am not an educated man. You are probably a great hero.”

“I am,” said the student with conviction. “And I am opposed to the Bolsheviki, who are destroying our Russia, our free Revolution. Now how do you account for that?”

The soldier scratched his head. “I can’t account for it at all,” he said, grimacing with the pain of his intellectual processes. “To me it seems perfectly simple—but then, I’m not well educated. It seems like there are only two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—”

“There you go again with your silly formula!” cried the student.

“—only two classes,” went on the soldier, doggedly. “And whoever isn’t on one side is on the other…”

We wandered on up the street….

Revolution: A few disjointed thoughts

I’ve been rereading Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution. I do that every now and then, because it makes me think, and because, like all good narrative history, it feels like an adventure story. A few random thoughts have popped up that I want to jot down here.

One thing that hit me is that the February Revolution began on International Women’s Day. This is something I’d been aware of, but never thought about. In fact, there was nothing random about it. Hungry, tired of the war, appalled by the brutality of the Czar’s police, and doubly oppressed, the women textile workers of Petrograd called a protest strike to mark the day. They sent to the metal workers for support, which support was promptly given. This led to additional repression by the police, and the strike grew into mass strikes, demonstrations, and, ultimately, the end of the monarchy. I wish I’d remembered this a few days ago, on International Women’s Day.

In any revolution, the key question is: will the army side with the people, or the ruling class? There are many factors that decide this question: the determination of the revolutionary class probably being the most significant. But what struck me in this reading is that the biggest factor to bring the St. Petersburg working class and the army together was a shared hatred of the police—even, at critical moments, the Cossacks, the most reactionary section of the army, attacked the police on behalf of the workers. And then I remembered this video clip.

The ruling class is caught in an impossible position. As income disparity grows, so will opposition from the oppressed. As opposition grows, the police are required to more and more reveal their true nature as the iron fist of capital. And the more this is revealed, the more the army will come to hate the police, and to side with the masses. This is why sections of the ruling class are openly talking about income disparity as the biggest problem. But that problem too, is systemic; the very forces of the market economy, that was at one time so progressive, are now operating like a juggernaut. “Progressive” capitalist politicians want to find ways to slow the beast down and postpone the confrontation, or else are operating under the illusion that it can be avoided—somehow. Reactionary politicians are aware that the confrontation is coming, and want to have it now, the way a bad poker player makes what he knows is a bad decision because he just wants to get it over with. Progressives and reactionaries will continue to make bad decisions, because no good decisions are left to them (and, yes, various people on both sides will come up with all sorts of brilliant ideas on how to solve the problem, ideas whose only problem is that they cannot be implemented; but we can ignore them.)

So repression increases, the hatred of the police by the masses increases, and this works its way into all facets of our society—the army most definitely not excepted.

I make no pretense of knowing when this confrontation will come, or what form it will take. Indeed, the one thing I can guarantee is that I’ll be as taken by surprise as everyone else. But it can’t be avoided.

Rant: The Study of History

Not long ago, someone I know made a remark that perfectly captures an attitude I have run into a thousand times:  “Something[‘s] been on my mind. History is essentially a fiction, a creative retelling at best. We shouldn’t judge our history on its accuracy but more on whether it leaves us empowered enough to have better lives. This idea has been abused, though.”

Been abused? Similarly, the Bush and then the Obama administrations decided the NSA could spy on US citizens, but this power has been abused. In case you missed it, that was irony; of course it was bloody abused, because its fundamental nature is abusive. The idea that the study of history is fiction starts off as rubbish and then gets worse.

Let me make one distinction right off, because it often seems to be a point of confusion:  there is a difference between history (what happened in the past) and the study of history (our understanding and opinions about what happened in the past). It seems trivially obvious that the object of the latter is to come as close as possible to the former, but, in any case, they aren’t the same.

There is more to the study of history than accuracy, but it must start there, with the struggle to find out what actually happened. It isn’t easy, and obviously any historian is coming at it from a particular viewpoint–the best of them make clear what this viewpoint is. But after we have determined what happened (yes, six million Jews were murdered, even if you feel more empowered believing otherwise; yes, the slaughter of the American Indian and the near destruction of his culture actually happened; yes, Bush really did sanction torture and Obama really is committing murder without due process, no matter how empowering it is to you to deny these things), we need to understand why. Once we have committed ourselves to the ongoing (and very difficult) task of determining what actually happened, we have only begun. Because the point of the study of history goes beyond, “it is good to know what happened.” The point is to be able to generalize–to understand the working of historical laws in order to make them work for us in the same way that we learned about the General Theory of Relativity and now use it in our GPS devices. Of course Einstein’s work was very difficult; and yet, one rarely hears a physicist say, “determining the laws of the motion of matter on the subatomic level is very difficult, so I think I’ll just conclude there are no laws.”

Ah, what is that I hear? Grinding teeth? What is that I see? Rolling eyes? Yes, I said historical laws–the laws of motion that apply to the actions of socially organized human beings over time. The absurdity of those who deny such laws exist is usually self-evident. What is theory? It is merely generalized experience. So let me put it this way:  If you are going to say there is no such thing as historical law, then be aware you are contradicting yourself every time you wave your arms in frustration at the American voter and say, “Didn’t they learn anything the last time we had a <fill in the blank> in office?” That thing you just did was complaining that other people are failing to make the correct generalizations about history. (A note in passing:  I believe that, if you are saying that, you are failing to make the correct generalizations about history, but that is another discussion.)

We know about the law of combined development (that the technology base of a culture can leapfrog, taking what it learned from another culture and, not just catching up, but surpassing it with entirely new technology). We know that economic systems that were an advance at one time–as landlord-based feudalism was an advance over a society built on slave labor–will at some point begin taking society backward and need to be replaced, as capitalism replaced the feudal-monarchical system. We know that there has been a trend, over the vast scope of history, for more personal liberty and greater democracy. Knowing these things permits us to draw important conclusions about what is happening now, and what needs to be done about it. When we see widespread attacks on democratic rights, we need to be able to draw conclusions about whether this is a fluke because some individuals happen to be not nice, or if it is part of a broader, more systemic problem. The study of history is invaluable in making this determination, and this study has nothing whatever to do with how “empowered” we want to feel.

In my opinion, the study of history is in its infancy. We are still, on many levels, postulating the existence of the ether for describing how light travels. We need to understand better. But of one thing I am very certain: this understanding will not come from people who believe that history is fiction.

History and Objectivity

Sometimes I feel the need to mount my white charger, pick up my sturdy lance, and ride off in defense of some poor, abused word.  Often, it is a word that has been mugged and robbed of its precision, like hopefully.  Sometimes, it is a word that has been enslaved and required to labor under a burden of meaning it was never meant to carry, like, relationship.  The fact that these one-man campaigns are hopeless does nothing to discourage me; on the contrary, it just makes me feel more heroic, noble, and self-sacrificing.  Please do not disabuse me of this illusion; my self-love might not be able to stand the truth.

Today, we fight for the defense of a word that has been framed for a crime it didn’t commit.  I refer, as you are already aware from the title, to the word objectivity.  Somewhere along the line, objectivity, particularly in discussions of history, came to be used by some to mean something like, not having an agenda, or, not being a part of what one is examining, or, pretending to have a perspective that is uninfluenced by one’s knowledge or experience.  Naturally, with definitions such as this, poor objectivity finds itself convicted of uselessness without due process, and ends up in solitary confinement in some ideological prison where it must endure of hours of people taunting it with comments like, “there is no such thing as objectivity in history.”  Cruel and unusual, I say.  We will call this the casual definition, because calling it sloppy is a bit more confrontational than I’m ready for just yet. Now, where did I put that lance?

Let us begin with the dictionary, because I like to know dictionary definitions before I ignore them.  The American Heritage Dictionary, 1981, has this for definition 1 of objective: “Of or having to do with a material object as distinguished from a mental concept, idea, or belief.  Compare subjective.”  Definition 2 goes on, “Having actual existence or reality.”  It is not until we get to definition 3a that we find, “Uninfluenced by emotion, surmise, or personal prejudice,” which at least waves at the definition to which I refer in the previous paragraph.  And then 3b merrily goes on, “Based on observable phenomena; presented factually: an objective appraisal.”

We often hear, “No one can be objective regarding history.”  I beg to submit the following: 1. Generally, when someone says that, it is the casual definition that is being used.  2. By the casual definition, not only can no one be objective, but those who claim to be are usually being disingenuous, and working very hard to conceal their agenda.  3. Using the casual definition, objectivity is not only impossible, but also unnecessary, and not even a goal worth striving for; on the contrary, a good historian makes not the least effort to be objective in that sense, knowing that such an effort can only lead to distortion.

But when we go with the dictionary definition, we have an entirely different approach and result.  When I say a work of history is objective, I mean that it bases itself on real, material events and relationships.  Right now, I’m studying the history of Kansas, 1856-60, and the formation of the Republican Party.  I neither expect nor desire the historian to pretend to display events as if devoid of prejudice, belief, or agenda.  What I do demand is that conclusions be based on facts that are clearly laid out, that the historian’s beliefs and programs be either clearly stated or easily deduced, that “inconvenient facts” not be omitted, and that the internal consistency of the narrative, built on verifiable facts, be laid out.  In other words, “show your work.”

My two favorite historical works are James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom and Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution.  McPherson makes no secret of his antipathy for the slave power, and Trotsky, of course, is quite clear and open about his support for the insurrection of which he was one of the principal architects and the primary organizer.  What makes these works so profoundly convincing is the revelations of the general historical laws at work effectively explain the events; the logic holds together.  In both cases, it becomes very difficult to dispute the conclusions without taking the position that the author is out-and-out lying about facts (which is problematic in both cases, given how easily verifiable the facts are).

When I refer to a work or a method as subjective, I mean that it bases itself on the particular, individual, personal.  A work is subjective insofar as “I feel” is the starting point, as opposed to, “this happened.”  Even more so if, “this is how you should feel about it,” as opposed to, “this is why it happened,” comes slithering through the subtext.  Individual, personal experience can be vital in helping us empathize with another human being, but it is not how we come to a scientific understanding of the processes of history which, though inevitably happening to individuals, are nevertheless fundamentally impersonal: they are what happened whether I like it or not.

To be sure, no one can have a complete, perfect, total understanding of an historical event any more than one can have a complete, perfect, total understanding of, for example, the formation of Earth’s crust.  But we do not find hoards of pseudo-intellectuals telling us how geology cannot be studied objectively.  To achieve a scientific understanding of the formation of the Earth’s crust, a geologist does not base his work on how he feels about it, but rather endeavors, as well as possible, to determine what really happened and why.  And then we test that understanding by making predictions, and so modify our theories as needed.  To apply this same method to the study of history is, without doubt, more difficult: the effects of prejudice and social pressures generated by class society are much more immediate.  But that is no excuse for applying different standards. So, yes, I reject the notion that there can be no objectivity in historical studies.  Those who support this notion are, in my opinion, abusing the poor word, and ought to stop.