Podcast #116 - Labor History vs. the Cold War

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Political Affairs #116 - Labor History vs. the Cold War

It's June 3rd, 2010. On this episode we talk with Political Affairs contributing editor Ben Sears about his new book, Generation of Resistance: The Electrical Unions and the Cold War, out now in paperback at Amazon.com. So stay with us.


Download the mp3 version of episode #116 here

I have in my possession (smug old me...) a life size photocopy of Marx's 3rd 1844 manuscripts. This was part of research I started around 1981 (I published an essay in Rethinking Marxism journal on this research in 2004). Long ago I backed each page together and stuck them, and then turned them all into a big booklet. They are large pages and the faces are divided by Marx into (generally) two columns on which he has scrawled his characteristic hard to decipher writing (with his strange descending characters). You must read the text landscape with the hand sewn binding at the top.

I used to handle this and stare at it. It is not as unusual in structure as the 1st MS, but it is still unusual. A while ago I noticed the ink blots. Marx's pen left quite a few pools of varying densities, as well as swipes where he has wiped them, usually by accident.

Sometimes the blots went completely through the page and stained the other side. These blotches proved to me something empirically which I also thought from the rationale of the subject matter. Marx wrote this text in this way as it was planned and not in a haphazard manner just adding columns one after the other. The columns were meant to meet up and be juxtaposed at certain points given what was being stated by the words in each of them.

This has become a moot point in scholarship on Marx. You might say it is even repressed. Marx's works are meant to be taken like Bibles, as a long story in conventional form (at least). So publishers prefer to ignore this aspect of the MS and repeatedly put the text into conventional pages. It is also difficult for them to do anything else logistically, of course.

But some comrades say that this is after all easier for 'practical political purposes'. I disagree. The 1844 manuscripts are not, after all, minor election pamphlets, they are works of profound insight into the fundamental workings of capital and society and its philosophical view of itself. They are also a 'working out' and contain a kind of 'eureka' moment. It is necessary to understand Marx especially at this crucial point. What's more, the 1844 MS maintain a mystique precisely because of their poetic and unusual nature. Why the effort to diminish this and render it 'practical political'? If being 'practical political' means to dissolve this radical and deep aspect into the sea of the ordinary? To hell with it! for it is not really very practical or very politically aware to do that, is it?

I will take this opportunity to point up that I have recently been rushed (a bit) by an upsurge of this attitude to bring out the hypertext EBook version of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts (which I made freely available on the web here years ago

http://home.freeuk.com/lemmaesthetics/index.htm

…). This new text reveals, probably in a better way, the columnar structure and pagination, but it can also be read conventionally, yet without prioritizing which column comes first (which is very important). EBooks have this capacity, which at least is a benefit for that mode of reading. It is available for the mobipocket reader but is best seen on a PC because it needs a wide screen. See here:

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/eBookDetails.asp?BookID=263810

A materialist philosophical position means that we ought to take more note of such cultural objects as, yes, material objects, not just as repositories of 'floating meanings'.

Marxists in Rearguard?

By joe sims

I recently spoke about the virtue of on-line publishing before a gathering of thoughtful, forward thinking revolutionary people and as I looked out into the audience, was startled at the doubtful stony faces at a table before me. I was making the point that a qualitative change has occurred with the coming together of several technologies: print, video, radio, tv, telephone etc, into one interactive platform that can be held in the palm of one’s hand: a veritable revolution in communication is at hand, a revolution in which the working-classes vanguard should lead the way. Clearly some in my audience were very unimpressed. A few days earlier, I received a note vigorously protesting PA’s plan to increase its on-line activity and eventually (sooner rather than later) go over to “treeless production,” that is, make a small contribution to stop killing forests. A dear friend and comrade wrote and said, “Say it aint so! Is the REAL PA going to disappear?

I was reminded of these incidents when reading this morning Newsweek magazine’s lead story on the future of books. I encourage everyone to read it (in print or online). Here again a revolution is occurring that has the potential to change the very nature of thought and action. In short, it appears that the book itself is being reinvented. According to the story, Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, says that the e-book is here and will soon be in everyone living room, bedroom and (yes) bathroom. The new e-book, enabled through a new handheld computer called “Kindle” (sorry but the story is well-done advertising puff piece for Amazon) brings together new technologies like E-ink to create an easily readable screen interface that closely resembles a book’s printed page. Not only that, but “Kindle” by utilizing new wireless technology used by cell phones, will have the advantage of being continuously online, allowing readers access to the internet and the possibility of engaging other readers, research materials and sources. This, combined with the rapid digitizing of books (Google is taking the lead with over 80,000 complete books online), is creating the conditions for the rapid transition of books from print to the internet and with it, completely new forms of thought, writing and interaction. And it will be extremely cheap, if not free. Even, the author suggests, the exalted place of the Author, as lonely autonomous isolated figure writing in isolation, is bound to undergo change, as writers and readers, interact on drafts and manuscripts through blogs, chats and other interactive features. New collective forms of intellectual and creative intercourse are emerging at starling speeds.

You would think that Marxists, advocates of “scientific” socialism as they are, would be on the cutting edge of these technologies and innovations. But somehow there seems to be an overwhelming Luddite weight on some, dragging the conversation down by alleging that somehow print (paper) is somehow more “material” and therefore more “working-class.” All manner of excuses are given: digital divide etc, for not wholly embracing and getting on board the digital train. This in spite of the fact that the majority of internet users are people with incomes of between $30,000 and $70,000.

I wonder what is the basis for such thinking? I’m worried that unless there is a change, the communist and socialist movement will end up like Tower Records, shuttered and boarded up, with a for sale sign blowing in the wind. But who will want to buy it? (For those who don’t know, New York’s famous Tower Record store went out of business, unable to compete with downloaded digitized music on the internet). What do readers think?