RSS FeedRSS FeedYouTubeYouTubeTwitterTwitterFacebook GroupFacebook Group
You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Archive for author Chris Cutrone
HORKHEIMER’S REMARKABLE ESSAY “On the sociology of class relations” (1943) is continuous with Adorno’s contemporaneous “Reflections on class theory” (1942) as well as his own “The authoritarian state” (1940/42), which similarly mark the transformation of Marx and Engels’s famous injunction in the Communist Manifesto that “history is the history of class struggles.”
HERBERT SPENCER’S GRAVE faces Marx’s at Highgate Cemetery in London. At his memorial, Spencer was honored for his anti-imperialism by Indian national liberation advocate and anti-colonialist Shyamji Krishnavarma, who funded a lectureship at Oxford in Spencer’s name.

brodsky_leninsmolnypalace


II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism


Chicago: Mondays 6–9PM CST

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
112 S. Michigan Ave. room 818


• required / + recommended reading


Marx and Engels readings pp. from Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (Norton 2nd ed., 1978)


Recommended winter break preliminary readings:

+ Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)
+ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918–19 (1968)
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889–1914 (1966)
+ Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (1940), Part II. Ch. (1–4,) 5–10, 12–16; Part III. Ch. 1–6


Film screenings: January 2016

• 37 Days (2014) [Episode 1] [Episode 2] [Episode 3]
• Fall of Eagles (1974) episodes: "Absolute Beginners," "The Secret War," and "End Game"
• Rosa Luxemburg (1986)
• Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States (2012) Episodes A (1900-20) and B (1920-40)
• Reds (1981)


Winter 2016

I. What is the "Left?" -- What is "Marxism?"

Week 10. What is Marxism? V. Reification | Jan. 9, 2016

• Georg Lukács, “The phenomenon of reification” (Part I of “Reification and the consciousness of the proletariat,” History and Class Consciousness, 1923)

+ Commodity form chart of terms


Week 11. What is Marxism? VI. Class consciousness | Jan. 16, 2016

• Lukács, Original Preface (1922), “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919), “Class Consciousness” (1920), History and Class Consciousness (1923)
+ Marx, Preface to the First German Edition and Afterword to the Second German Edition (1873) of Capital (1867), pp. 294–298, 299–302


Week 12. What is Marxism? VII. Ends of philosophy | Jan. 23, 2016

• Korsch, “Marxism and philosophy” (1923)
+ Marx, To make the world philosophical (from Marx's dissertation, 1839–41), pp. 9–11
+ Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843), pp. 12–15
+ Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845), pp. 143–145


Winter–Spring 2016

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism

Week 13. Revolutionary leadership | Jan. 30, 2016

• Rosa Luxemburg, “The Crisis of German Social Democracy” Part 1 (1915)
• J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
• Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)


Week 14. Reform or revolution? | Feb. 6, 2016

• Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution? (1900/08)


Week 15. Lenin and the vanguard party | Feb. 13, 2016

• Spartacist League, Lenin and the Vanguard Party (1978)


Week 16. What is to be done? | Feb. 20, 2016

• V. I. Lenin, What is to be Done? (1902)
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)


Week 17. Mass strike and social democracy | Feb. 27, 2016

• Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)
+ Luxemburg, "Blanquism and Social Democracy" (1906)


Week 18. Permanent revolution | Mar. 5, 2016

• Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1906)
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)


Week 19. State and revolution | Mar. 12, 2016

• Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)


Week 20. Imperialism | Mar. 19, 2016

• Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)
+ Lenin, Socialism and War Ch. 1 The principles of socialism and the War of 1914–15 (1915)


Week 21. Mar. 26, 2016 (spring break)


Week 22. Apr. 2, 2016 [Platypus international convention]


Week 23. Failure of the revolution | Apr. 9, 2016

• Luxemburg, “What does the Spartacus League Want?” (1918)
• Luxemburg, “On the Spartacus Programme” (1918)
+ Luxemburg, "German Bolshevism" (AKA "The Socialisation of Society") (1918)
+ Luxemburg, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918)
+ Luxemburg, “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919)
+ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918–19 (1968)


Week 24. Retreat after revolution | Apr. 16, 2016

• Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)
+ Lenin, "Notes of a Publicist" (1922)


Week 25. Dialectic of reification | Apr. 23, 2016

• Lukács, “The Standpoint of the Proletariat” (Part III of “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” 1923). Available in three sections from marxists.org: section 1 section 2 section 3


Week 26. Lessons of October | Apr. 30, 2016

• Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924) [PDF] + Trotsky, "Stalinism and Bolshevism" (1937)


Week 27. Trotskyism | May 7, 2016

+ Trotsky, "To build communist parties and an international anew" (1933)
• Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (1938)
+ Trotsky, "Trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay" (1940)
+ Trotsky, Letter to James Cannon (September 12, 1939)


Week 28. The authoritarian state | May 14, 2016

• Friedrich Pollock, "State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations" (1941) (note 32 on USSR)
• Max Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State" (1942)


Week 29. On the concept of history | May 21, 2016

• epigraphs by Louis Menand (on Edmund Wilson) and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche) on the modern concept of history
+ Charles Baudelaire, from FusĂŠes [Rockets] (1867)
+ Bertolt Brecht, "To posterity" (1939)
+ Walter Benjamin, "To the planetarium" (from One-Way Street, 1928)
+ Benjamin, "Experience and poverty" (1933)
+ Benjamin, Theologico-political fragment (1921/39?)
• Benjamin, "On the Concept of History" (AKA "Theses on the Philosophy of History") (1940) [PDF] • Benjamin, Paralipomena to "On the Concept of History" (1940)


Week 30. Reflections on Marxism | May 28, 2016

• Theodor Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory” (1942)
• Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)
+ Adorno, Dedication, "Bequest", "Warning: Not to be Misused" and "Finale", Minima Moralia (1944–47)
+ Horkheimer and Adorno, "Discussion about Theory and Praxis" (AKA "Towards a New Manifesto?") [Deutsch] (1956)


Week 31. Theory and practice | Jun. 4, 2016

+ Adorno, “On Subject and Object” (1969)
• Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” (1969)
• Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)
+ Adorno, “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (AKA “Is Marx Obsolete?”) (1968)
+ Esther Leslie, Introduction to the 1969 Adorno-Marcuse correspondence (1999)
+ Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, correspondence on the German New Left (1969)


Recommended preliminary background reading

+ J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)


Week 1

Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle (1892)


Week 2

Kautsky, The Road to Power (1909)


Week 3

The Organisational Structure of the Communist Parties, the Methods and Content of Their Work: Theses

The 21 Conditions of Admission into the Communist International

Leon Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International (1924)
2 vols. [Volume I] [Volume II]

Recommended selections (*)

Volume I
* Author’s 1924 Introduction *
I. The First World Congress
* 1. Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World *
2. Report on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Red Army
3. Order of the Day Number 83 to the Red Army and Navy
II. From the First to the Second World Congress
* 4. To Comrades of the Spartacus League *
* 5. A Creeping Revolution *
6. Great Days
7. En Route: Thoughts on the Progress of the Proletarian Revolution
8. French Socialism on the Eve of Revolution
9. Jean Longuet
10. On the Coming Congress of the Comintern
III. The Second World Congress
* 11. Speech on Comrade Zinoviev’s Report on the Role of the Party *
* 12. Manifesto of the Second World Congress *
* Part I *
* Part II *
IV. From the Second to the Third World Congress
13. On the Policy of the KAPD (Communist Workers Party of Germany)
14. Speech Delivered at the Second World Conference of Communist Women
15. Letter to Comrade Monatte
16. Letter to Comrades Cachin and Frossard
17. On L’Humanité, the Central Organ of the French Party
V. The Third World Congress
18. The Red Army to the General Staff of the Revolution
* 19. Report on the World Economic Crisis and the New Tasks of the Communist International *
* Part I *
* Part II *
20. Summary Speech
* 21. Theses of the Third World Congress on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Comintern *
22. Speech on the Italian Question at the Third Congress of the Communist International
23. Speech on Comrade Radek’s Report on “Tactics of the Comintern” at the Third Congress
24. Speech on Comrade Lenin’s Report: “Tactics of the Russian Communist Party”
VI. From the Third to the Fourth World Congress
25. The Main Lesson of the Third Congress
26. Report on “The Balance Sheet” of the Third Congress of the Communist International
27. Summary Speech
Appendix
Towards the First World Congress
1. May Day and the International
* 2. To the Spartacus League of Germany and the Communist Party of German Austria *
* 3. Order Out of Chaos *
The First World Congress
4. Invitation to the First World Congress
From the First to the Second World Congress
5. A Letter to Our French Comrades
From the Second to the Third World Congress
6. A Letter to a French Syndicalist About the Communist Party
7. Vergeat, Lepetit and Lefebvre
8. The March Movement in Germany
9. The March Revolutionary Movement in Germany (Personal Notes)
10. May Day Manifesto of the ECCI
* 11. The Unemployed and the Trade Unions *
Volume II
From the Third to the Fourth World Congress
* 1. A School of Revolutionary Strategy (July 1921) *
* Part I *
* Part II *
2. From the ECCI to the Central Committee of the French Communist Party (June 25, 1921)
3. From the ECCI to the Marseilles Convention of the French Communist Party (December 1921)
4. Speech on Comrade Zinoviev’s Report “The Tactics of the Comintern” at the Eleventh Party Conference (December 1921)
* 5. Summary Speech at the Eleventh Party Conference (December 1921) *
* 6. Flood-tide (December 25, 1921) *
* 7. Paul Levi and Some ‘Lefts’ (January 6, 1922) *
* 8. On the United Front (March 2, 1922) *
9. Resolution of the ECCI on the French Communist Party (March 2, 1922)
10. The Communists and the Peasantry in France (April 29, 1922)
11. The Lessons of May Day (May 10, 1922)
12. From the ECCI to the Central Committee of the French Communist Party (May 12, 1922)
13. French Communism and the Position of Comrade Rappoport (May 23, 1922)
14. To Comrade Ker (June 6, 1922)
15. Resolution of the ECCI on the French Communist Party (June 11, 1922)
16. To Comrade Treint (July 28, 1922)
17. From the ECCI to the Seine Federation of the French Communist Party (Summer 1922)
18. From the ECCI to the Paris Convention of the French Communist Party (September 13, 1922)
19. From the ECCI to the Paris Convention of the French Communist Party (October 6, 1922)
The Fourth World Congress
* 20. The Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolution and the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International (October 20, 1922) *
21. Speech in Honour of the Communist International (November 7, 1922)
* 22. The New Economic Policy of Soviet Russia and the Perspectives of the World Revolution (November 14, 1922) *
* Part I *
* Part II *
* 23. The Economic Situation of Soviet Russia From the Standpoint of the Socialist Revolution (theses) (December 1, 1922) *
24. Resolution on the French Question (December 2, 1922)
25. A Militant Labour Program for the French Communist Party(December 5, 1922)
26. Resolution of the French Commission (December 2, 1922)
After the Fourth Congress
* 27. Political Perspectives (November 1922) *
28. Report on the Fourth World Congress (December 28, 1922)
29. Preface to The Communist Movement in France (March 25, 1923)
30. Is the Slogan of ’The United States of Europe’ a Timely One? (June 30, 1923)
31. Can a Counter-Revolution or a Revolution be Made on Schedule? (September 23, 1923)
* 32. To Comrade McKay (March 13, 1923) *


Week 4

Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin (1928)


Week 5

C.L.R. James, The World Revolution 1917-36 (1937)

"The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the French Revolution. Yet we are blind and led by the blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement; no part of our industrial triumph; no part of our religious experience. Before the dumb eyes of ten generations of ten million children, it is made mockery of and spit upon; a degradation of the eternal mother; a sneer at human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted. And why? Because in a day when the human mind aspired to a science of human action, a history and psychology of the mighty effort of the mightiest century, we fell under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future."
— W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)

A series of four films on American revolutionary history 1776–1876

1873 / 1784–89 Jefferson in Paris (1995)

1839–41 Amistad (1997)

1863 Glory (1989)

1865 Lincoln (2012)


 

jeffersoninparis


Jefferson in Paris (1995) | 1873 / 1784–89

1873: Reconstruction-era Ohio: A reporter interviews Madison Hemings, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, telling their story. 1784–89: Leading up to the French Revolution, Jefferson is the U.S. ambassador to France, whose intellectuals, such as American Revolutionary War veteran Lafayette, join the revolt of the Third Estate, hoping to follow the American example. Jefferson helps them compose the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, discussing his frustration at the American failure to abolish slavery. Jefferson begins a relationship and fathers a child with his slave Sally Hemings, sister of his deceased wife, promising to free her and her children.
Directed by James Ivory. Starring Nick Nolte, Thandie Newton, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Greta Scacchi. Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Music by Richard Robbins.

“The panic of 1873 brought sudden disillusion in business enterprise, economic organization, religious belief and political standards. A flood of appeal from the white South re-enforced this reaction — appeal with no longer the arrogant bluster of slave oligarchy, but the simple moving annals of the plight of a conquered people. The resulting emotional and intellectual rebound of the nation made it nearly inconceivable in 1876 that ten years earlier most men had believed in human equality.”
— W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."
— Thomas Jefferson, original draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776)

"I go right back to the equality clause. It is 'all men are created equal.' I think that's the key one. And that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of happiness — it's difficult to know. It's not quite — he isn't a pleasure-seeker. And yet he knows that freedom is happiness too. That liberty will enable you to pursue happiness. And how grand it is that in a capitalistic country like this, that he did not follow Locke and have life, liberty and property. And that mystery of the pursuit of happiness suits me just fine. If the equality clause will trouble us a thousand years, as [Robert] Frost said [in North of Boston, 'The Black Cottage' (1915)], if it'll trouble us, then the pursuit of happiness will mystify us forever. And I like the trouble and I like the mystery. And that suits me just fine about Jefferson."
— James Cox in Ken Burns's PBS documentary Thomas Jefferson (1997)

"Whatever else the Civil War was for
It wasn’t just to keep the States together,
Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both.
She wouldn’t have believed those ends enough
To have given outright for them all she gave.
Her giving somehow touched the principle
That all men are created free and equal.
And to hear her quaint phrases — so removed
From the world’s view to-day of all those things.
That’s a hard mystery of Jefferson’s.
What did he mean? Of course the easy way
Is to decide it simply isn’t true.
It may not be. I heard a fellow say so.
But never mind, the Welshman got it planted
Where it will trouble us a thousand years.
Each age will have to reconsider it."
— Robert Frost, "The Black Cottage" (1915)

"The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. . . . And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
— Jefferson, Paris, November 13, 1787

"The tone of your letters had for some time given me pain, on account of the extreme warmth with which they censured the proceedings of the Jacobins of France. . . . In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as any body, and shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It was necessary to use the arm of the people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain degree. A few of their cordial friends met at their hands, the fate of enemies. But time and truth will rescue and embalm their memories, while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer up their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is."
— Jefferson, Secretary of State, letter to William Short, U.S. Ambassador to France, January 3, 1793

"I do not permit myself to take part in any new enterprises, even for bettering the condition of man, not even in the great one which is the subject of your letter [the abolition of slavery], and which has been thro' life that of my greatest anxieties. the march of events has not been such as to render it’s completion practicable within the limits of time alloted to me; and I leave it's accomplishment as the work of another generation. and I am cheared when I see that on which it is devolved, taking it up with so much good will, and such mind engaged in it’s encoragement. the abolition of the evil is not impossible: it ought never therefore to be despaired of. every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which may do something towards the ultimate object. that which you propose is well worthy of tryal. it has succeeded with certain portions of our white brethren, under the care of a [Christian communist George] Rapp and an [Utopian Socialist Robert] Owen; and why may it not succeed with the man of colour?"
— Jefferson to Frances Wright, August 7, 1825


 

amistad

Amistad (1997) | 1839–41

1839-41: Two decades before the outbreak of the Civil War, a slave ship on course to the east coast of the United States is overtaken by a mutiny led by one of the slaves, CinquĂŠ. CinquĂŠ and his crew land in Connecticut, where they face trial in a courtroom and a country full of tensions. Former President John Quincy Adams representing CinquĂŠ before the Supreme Court argues that a coming civil war over slavery will be the "last battle of the American Revolution."
Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew McConaughey. Music by John Williams.

"What of the Declaration of Independence? What are we to do with that embarrassing, annoying document? What of its conceits, 'all men created equal, inalienable rights, life, liberty,' and so on and so forth? . . . The Mende believe that if they can summon the spirit of one's ancestors, then they have never left. James Madison. Alexander Hamilton. Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson. George Washington. John Adams. We have long feared asking you for guidance. Perhaps in doing so, we have feared that our individuality, which we so, so revere, is not entirely our own. We’ve been made to understand, and embrace the understanding, that who we are, is who we were. We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And let it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution."
— Anthony Hopkins playing former President John Quincy Adams, closing argument before the U.S. Supreme Court


 

glory

Glory (1989) | 1863

1863: After the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln orders the Emancipation Proclamation. Robert Gould Shaw, the son of an influential Abolitionist, is promoted to Colonel and given command of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first all-black regiment of Union soldiers, organized by Frederick Douglass.
Directed by Edward Zwick. Starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Cary Elwes. Music by James Horner.

Glory is based on the letters of Robert Gould Shaw, son of New England Abolitionists, chosen to lead the first black regiment in the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War. After the 1960s, revisionist historiography questioned the nature of the Civil War in the fight to overcome slavery. Post-Reconstruction anti-black racism seemed to belie the struggle for social equality and freedom exemplified by Abolitionism, but, as Robert Lowell wrote in his poem during the Civil Rights era, this history continued to demand redemption.

Robert Gould Shaw by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1903)

Why was it that the thunder voice of Fate
Should call thee, studious, from the classic groves,
Where calm-eyed Pallas with still footstep roves,
And charge thee seek the turmoil of the state?
What bade thee hear the voice and rise elate,
Leave home and kindred and thy spicy loaves,
To lead th' unlettered and despised droves
To manhood's home and thunder at the gate?
Far better the slow blaze of Learning's light,
The cool and quiet of her dearer fane,
Than this hot terror of a hopeless fight,
This cold endurance of the final pain, —
Since thou and those who with thee died for right
Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!

For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell (1960)

Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.
("They give up everything to serve the Republic.")

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes
breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die —
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year —
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble.
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.


 

lincoln

Lincoln (2012) | 1865

1865: As the Civil War rages on, the President struggles with continuing carnage on the battlefield as he fights with many inside his own cabinet as well as in Congress over the passage of a Constitutional amendment to permanently abolish slavery.
Directed by Steven Spielberg. Staring Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, and David Strathairn. Written by Tony Kushner. Music by John Williams.

THADDEUS STEVENS: When the war ends, I intend to push for full equality, the Negro vote and much more. Congress shall mandate the seizure of every foot of rebel land and every dollar of their property. We'll use their confiscated wealth to establish hundreds of thousands of free Negro farmers, and at their side soldiers armed to occupy and transform the heritage of traitors. We'll build up a land down there of free men and free women and free children and freedom. The nation needs to know that we have such plans.
LINCOLN: That's the untempered version of reconstruction. It's not exactly what I intend, but we shall oppose one another in the course of time. Now we're working together, and I'm asking you —
THADDEUS STEVENS: For patience, I expect.
LINCOLN: When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow till they're ready to make up —
THADDEUS STEVENS: Ah, shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for! I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want! This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of `em. And I look a lot worse without the wig. The people elected me! To represent them! To lead them! And I lead! You ought to try it!
LINCOLN: I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I'd listened to you, I'd've declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter; then the border states would've gone over to the confederacy, the war would've been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do, in two weeks, we'd be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.
THADDEUS STEVENS: Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them — but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, north and south, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country's infinite abundance with Negroes.
LINCOLN: A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing True North?