How is a man defined by the materials in which he possesses? How does a man’s physical labor become embodied in the objects he owns? On pages 278 and 279 of Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison examines how the material reality that surrounds his unnamed narrator and the characters around him upholds the ideas of an unchanging human nature that leads to the domination of racial and class hierarchies. Ellison explores the intricate relationship between a man’s labor and its products of physical materialism, dialectical struggles between the “law” and the “law abiding”, and the notion of dispossession. In context, the unnamed narrator is living on edge every single day in Harlem, New York. Not only for the color of his skin, but of his constant struggle dealing with expulsion from school and the struggles of finding identity within the concrete jungle of New York. He is dirt poor and spends his days working at a paint factory in which Ellison purposely structures it as a representation of class struggle confined within the floors of the building. This symbolic examination is as well present in the passage above. Ellison begins by establishing the role of the man in which he is the victim of a passive aggressive act of eviction in which a group of armed men, from the orders of a landlord, throws out a family’s belongings in the middle of the street, disturbing the surrounding scenery of the city. The local folks begin to grow discontent with the acts from the armed men and begin pleading for sympathy. Thus, the narrator jumps into the scene, eager to utilize his passion for speaking, and begins to rile up the crowd (unintentionally). The narrator begins by asking the male evictee of his employment status. He makes this decision because the narrator is attempting to humanize the man and give him an identity in which the crowd can define him, sympathize him, and emotionally connect with his situation. Therefore, by going a humanistic route, the narrator is successful in giving the random evictee recognition from the crowd as an active member of the community. The evictee responds by establishing himself as a “day laborer”. This ultimately gives an insight as to the shared conflict in which the evictee and the community as a whole go through together. By directly acknowledging the existing struggle of the evictee, the struggle of the people of Harlem becomes embodied by the evictee. The narrator then uses a simile in comparing “his stuff strewn like chitterlings in the snow?” and then metaphorically compares the evictee’s “stuff” to his “day labor” by exclaiming, “where has all his labor gone?” First, by comparing his “stuff” to “chitterlings in the snow”, the narrator gives the image of a literal interpretation of a “pigsty”, as the objects on the ground are scattered like trash. Also, the narrator being from the south, it is very interesting how he uses his southern identity in the use of figurative language. It allows an oddly specific comparison that only those within the community might understand (I myself had no idea what chitterlings were before researching). Given the status of his day labor, the accumulation of the hours of labor the man had put during his lifetime are symbolized by his objects scattered on the sidewalk. To have a marshal drop by the apartment and throw out one’s “labor” so effortlessly and uncourteously symbolizes the conflict of class and racial struggle of the day laborers of Harlem, and to that thought, the people in the crowd continue to identify with the struggle of the evictee. Continuing, the narrator then uses the age of the evictee, eighty-seven years, as a means of given his materials a reference of time in which they have been accumulated. “Look at his old blues records and her pots of plants, they’re down-home folks, and everything tossed out like junk whirled eighty-seven years in a cyclone. Eighty-seven years, and poof! Like a snort in a wind storm”. This accumulation of material possession reflects the labor and livelihoods of the people who possess them. Ellison portrays the action of the men’s carelessness in the materials of the evictees through simile and hyperbole. By comparing “everything tossed out like junk whirled eighty-seven years in a cyclone,” Ellison gives a hyperbolic sense of the scenery as if a cyclone had passed by and whirled the evictee’s “junk” around the proximity. Comparing the materials to junk is intriguing; as if the narrator is giving the idea that by which he first gives the objects a sense of humanity at first, giving the idea of the “pots of plants” that defines the evictee’s identity as “down-home folks”. However, this is contrasted when the evictors get their hands on them, instantly transforming them into “junk”. It is assumed that Ellison is attempting to define humans by the materials they possess; or could it be vice versa? By exploring this duality, Ellison is successful in drawing the questions as to the nature of the “day laborer’s” relationship with his material possessions. Therefore, it is inferred by Ellison that ideas cannot exist separate from their material conditions that exhibit such ideas. Next, Ellison tackles the internal contradictions between the “law” and the “law abiding”. The marshal, being metaphorically given the title, “law”, has been indicated by the narrator of being unjust. He infers that when the “law” acts lawless, it is permissible for the “law-abiding” to speak its language. “Remember it when you look up there in the doorway at that law standing there with his forty-five. Look at him, standing with his blue steel pistol and his blue serge suit, or one forty-five, you see ten for every one of us, ten guns and ten warm suits and ten fat bellies and ten million laws. Laws, that’s what we call them down South! Laws! And we’re wise, and law-abiding,”. Ellison also uses imagery and repetition of the color “blue” and the “forty-five” (referring to the pistol) to give an image as to whom the “law” is defined. Just as how the evictee was defined by the materials in which he possessed; the “law” is defined that way as well. Interestingly, Ellison develops the concept of the negation of the negation. In this circumstance, the evicted run into their opposites (the evictors) in the course of development. The evicted cannot fully develop in their bloomed potential as they have become ousted by those who possess the keys to their metaphorical “apartment”. Ellison also provides the negation of the negation within the relationship of the marshals and the African American community. The marshal disregards the “objects” (in this circumstance, the material possessions of the evictees. In the metaphorical sense, the development of culture and identity in which the materials were produced and influenced by) as junk, leaving the community continuing to struggle to objectify their identity. In this specific circumstance, the wife of the man, wants to pray in her home one last time. She possesses a Bible, and requests one last wish. She is in a sense, defined by her passion for the Bible, and vice versa. The narrator knows this and utilizes it to his advantage. By exclaiming the words of scripture, “blessed are the pure in heart”, the narrator then is able to ask the question, “what’s happened to them? They’re our people, your people and mine, your parents and mine. What’s happened to ‘em?”. By identifying the couple of evictees as part of the community, the narrator continues to allow the crowd to see themselves in the footsteps of those victimized. Their response, however, gives the reader an interesting word that clearly defines the interconnectedness of the material possessions, what they define, and what the couple represents- dispossessed. To dispossess means to deprive someone of land, property or other possessions. Intriguingly, an ambiguous question emerges- who is being disposed in this situation? The evictees? The materials? The community? In a sense, all of these assumptions are correct. A person in the crowd introduces the term “dispossessed” and the narrator then says, “Dispossessed, eighty-seven years and dispossessed of what? They ain’t got nothing, they can’t get nothing, they never had nothing. So who’s being disposed? Can it be us? These old ones are out in the snow, but we’re here with them. Look at their stuff, not a pit to hiss in, nor a window to shout the news and us right with them… They’re facing a gun and we’re facing it with them. They don’t’ want the world, but only Jesus… How about it, Mr. Law? Do we get our fifteen minutes worth of Jesus? You got the world, can we have our Jesus?” We have already examined the interconnected relationships between material possessions and those who possess them. Now it is next to examine how does one react when they have been dispossessed from their materials. The narrator infers that the evictees have already been dispossessed, and that they have handed their “world” into the hands of the marshal, who acts as an interpenetration of opposites. He becomes the facilitator that blurs the line between the evictors and the evictees. The people only want “fifteen minutes of Jesus” but the marshal cannot allow due to his “orders” and threatens to shoot anyone who approaches the apartment. The narrator then continues by referring back to the symbolism and imagery associated with the color “blue”, saying “with his blue steel pistol and his blue serge suit. You heard him. He’s the law. He says he’ll shoot us down because we’re a law-abiding people. So, we’ve been dispossessed, and what’s more, he thinks he’s God. Look up there backed against the post with a criminal on either side of him.” By again referring to the dialectical relationship of the “law” and the “law-abiding”, the narrator is able to then legitimize the calls for the people to respond to the lawlessness of the law in its own “language”. He has successfully riled up the crowd, and they begin the process of repossessing what had been stolen from them- identity. The narrator operates in an assertive and sincere tone. He is fed up with the “dispossession” and “displacement” of his people, and he utilizes his speaking ability to finally draw the final straw. By examining the relationships of a man’s labor and the materials he possesses, the dialectical relationships between the “law” and the “law abiding”, the “evicted” and the “evictor”, and the weight the word “dispossession” possesses in the circumstance of the evicted family and of the African American community, Ellison is able to whip up a narration that leaves those who listen with answers and motivates an act of reclaiming what is being taken away from you. We shall overcome our eviction by bringing consciousness to the evicted of their dispossession and displacement and bring about a synthesis of a new apparatus. Endnotes: (1) Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York :Vintage International, 1995. AuthorJacob Masterson is a looming political science major at an undecided college. He currently specializes in Marxist political philosophy, radical social movements, and American history. Archives August 2021
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I recently wrote and presented to the people of Mount Desert Island on the delimitation of lighthouses and spaces islanded literally and physically from the “outside” world. The essential premise was on how lighthouses and more broadly spaces islanded from the rest of the world could represent existences that were more isolated by their own volition. Spaces, where we can ultimately see our own Covid19-dictated lives mirrored more satisfyingly. But this also presents a larger question on delimitation in Marxist Revolutions. Immediately we think of the island of Cuba, the relatively small country of Burkina Faso, or the big mass of the Soviet Union. How does an area’s delimitation affect its revolutionary aspirations? And if we look at this from a Marxist perspective we unquestionably have to include the legacy of imperialism. How do countries delimited by their physical boundaries in addition to their economic and social brutalization from imperialism shape out compared to a country not affected by this violence? To break this down let’s look at delimitation narrowed into two different categories. The first one being the physical, geographic delimitation of a place: its global location, if it is islanded, its indigenous history, and its ability for natural resources. The second form of delimitation that I want to look at is its delimitation in the eyes of imperialism: how a place’s boundaries and limits were forced by the imperialism of a western country. For the purpose of this examination I will not be looking at the Marxist Revolutions of all countries and places but rather focus on a few: Thomas Sankara’s work in Burkina Faso, the work of Castro and Guevara in Cuba, the huge impact of the Soviet Union, and more abstractly the Black Panthers in the United States. Thomas Sankara and Burkina Faso: Burkina Faso’s global location is important. Located in the western part of Africa, it has a dry and tropical climate. (Burkina Faso National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) Official Document (French) - November 2007) More broadly Burkina Faso’s legacy sits among the colonization of the African continent, along with being an example of US military intervention. Importantly, it is landlocked, with no access to the sea, although the country enjoys a rich history of farming which Sankara helped to expand among his vast reforms. The first people to settle in the area were the Mossi people in the 11th and 13th centuries. Their expansive kingdoms were important in the Sub-Saharan trade. In 1890, it was colonized by the French who would start their process of exploitation. (SAHO) Currently, the gold mining sector has colonized and exploited the country and its people in post-Sankara society. Much like other countries on the African content, Burkina Faso is extremely diverse in its peoples, languages, cultures, and traditions. The French forcibly created these non-contextual borders, languages, religions, and economies that had no relationship with the existence of the peoples on the land before. The brutalization of the people of Burkina Faso is a prime example of just how long-lasting the violence from imperialism reaches beyond its effects on people but on boundaries as well. We can see some inherent delimitations in the country. Its borders and resources make it vital for relationships with other nations; other nations who could (and did) choose to exploit and brutalize the country for its self-determination and bold commitment to liberation through Marxism. Those who took Sankara down were bribed by western interests (or the literal interests themselves), his demise can be seen as a product of the inherent and forced delimitation of the country. Sankara was not in the position to shut out the entirety of the world, erase the lasting effects and people from the nation’s origin in colonization, and/or refuse foreign aid. The natural delimitation of the country’s geographic position in West Africa also reveals delimitation through imperialism. The Western powers (France) that colonized the land were ultimately the ones that had control of the boundaries and foundations of the country. Yet in some ways, delimitation helped Burkina Faso even have some sort of Marxist revolution. Its smaller geographic area enabled Sankara to communicate better with the entirety of his people. The long tradition of farming and farmers in the area helped to push Sankara’s reforms. And lastly, if we see delimitation as the action of fixing a limit, we could say that Burkina Faso was more open to delimitation beyond borders and boundaries but among new ideas and political ideals. The historical legacy of imperialism created a need for a revolution in the first place, which is why we see examples of left-wing revolutions in countries brutalized by imperialism so often. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in Cuba: This leads us to another example of a smaller country whose people were forced to endure colonization and imperialism by Western powers. Cuba’s geographic delimitation though is a little different. In some ways its position as an island helped the country: one small reason why the Soviet Union allied with the country was the Soviet Union’s affinity for water access. Another element is the lasting effect the tourism industry would have on Cuba pre and post-revolution. Cuba was exploited by imperial powers for its warm climate through the tourism industry before Castro led the proletariat to fight against the imperial powers. Or even before in the climate’s ability to produce sugar. And tragically we can see how the physical delimitation of an island would be hurtful to a revolution unpopular by the global-capitalist powers: after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba would struggle to feed its people because of the inherent inability to be completely self-sufficient in its food production (which should not be, and is not, expected in any other countries). Yet any young Marxist first learns about Castro and Guevara who in the Sierra Maestras quite literally fought hand and tooth for Cuba’s independence. The ruralness of the island allowed the comrades to ally themselves with farmers spread out from the city center of Havana. We can see then how Cuba’s geographic delimitation first enabled its revolution to happen. Without the cover of the Sierra Maestra and that guerilla warfare, the revolution possibly wouldn’t have happened. But as I mentioned before, in a world where those who reject global capitalism are isolated, inhumanely ostracized, and invaded, an island’s inherent smallness and singular climate made the revolution hard to sustain. If our global picture wasn’t delimited by the constraints of capitalism perhaps Cuba wouldn’t have run into the problems that it was forced to confront in its extremely limited boundaries. (Map from Nations Online) The Soviet Union: Along with the vastness of the Soviet Union’s geographic territory comes even more delimited history; therefore only a few examples will be examined here. As I mentioned before: one of the favorite topics of any high school history teacher is undoubtedly the lack of sea access that the Soviets had. This forced the dynamic of many of its expansion efforts, policies, and relationships with other countries (oftentimes those countries had been brutalized by Western, capitalist powers). Water would also encourage boundaries to expand; the soviets used the power of natural water resources to further their industrial development. (Tolmazin). In fact, there is a longstanding history of the Soviet’s appropriation of natural water resources which unfortunately hurt a lot of natural water climates, although the Soviets have added invaluable scientific research in understanding the impact of harnessing water likewise. Water is not the only resource the Soviet Union used in its delimitation. I find it important to reflect on not only the geographic position but its size. Geographically its located centrally quite literally between two huge continents: Europe and Asia. Among conflicts and wars, its boundaries and borders were challenged physically, forcing the Soviet Union to henceforth physically respond. This also added to different cultural, social, and linguistic barriers. One specific tidbit that exemplifies this is that in 1914 Vladimir Lenin ruled against a compulsory or official state language after the October Revolution (Comrie, Bernard (1981). The Languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge University Press). Perhaps it is in understanding the delimitation (or lack thereof) of the Soviet Union where we can best observe these crowning moments. I will though say that a country with less delimitation in the form of extensive boundaries with less physical land area definitely helped the Soviets. Not to mention the Soviet Union’s legacy with imperialism and colonization is obviously way different than places such as Cuba or Burkina Faso. In this way, we can see that the legacy of delimitation from western imperialism in the form of colonizing an independent group of people is less evident and that undoubtedly helped the Revolution to at least exist on a bigger global scale. And lastly, the sheer amount of people under the Soviet Union is the biggest example of delimited space in a Revolution. Although countries like the United States were undoubtedly scared of the Marxist tendencies of mainly Cuba but also Burkina Faso, the threat the Soviet Union would pose in the neoliberal eyes of the Americans was enormously grand. (Map from Library of Congress) Black Panther Party in the United States: Lastly, I wanted to include the effects of delimited spaces in the Black Panther Party. Like the expanses of the Soviet Union, the United States is bigger than the two other countries we previously looked at. No matter how talented the revolutionary, the distance between say Fred Hampton in Chicago and the headquarters in Oakland was immense. This idea of delimitation was something Hampton invariably battled with before he was murdered: how can one focus so closely on the dynamics and lives of their community while also fighting for country-wide, revolutionary change? Malcolm X in much of his autobiography talks extensively about the travel required in his work, and how that changed his overall message. He would assign positions to specific leaders already embedded in their communities because he understood the importance of that local understanding. Tyner writes in “Defend the Ghetto”: Space and the Urban Politics of the Black Panther Party: “Black communities in the North, far from being in disarray and plagued by dysfunction, waged a protracted fight for justice and equity but constantly had to contend with theories and policies that blamed them for their condition (Theoharis 2003, 7). Theoharis explains that rural, southern African Americans were seen as emblematic of long-suffering struggles, whereas the urban-based African Americans were portrayed- in the media, in academia- as pathological…” So then not only the delimitation of state-created geography is important to acknowledge but the actual cultural differences between our cardinal directions. The Black Panthers had to contend with not only the systemic racism under capitalism that they were fighting against but the geographic and boundary-based realities of that same system: capitalism. It is hard for me to see how the inherent delimitation of the United States helped the Panthers. I guess the beauty of unique and niche communities comes from their ability to grow optimistic revolutionaries: not yet scarred from the realities of far-reaching suppression. Perhaps then, that was the one way in which delimitation helped the Panthers: it created the ability for sanguine leaders to at least, attempt to rise void of the suffocating reality that a state with all the power and money in the world would simply continue to suppress through every means necessary. (Map from Black Panther Party History and Geography) There are a vast array of other countries with left-wing revolutions that we could talk about in terms of the role of delimitation in their fight. Equally, there are heaps of small lessons we can see in those countries: is Uruguay’s current left-leaning government more successful because of the lack of indigenous people to be exploited; the country couldn’t be built on that original sin of exploitation and is therefore built on a system of less bloodshed? How has the exploitation of the global south by Nordic countries created systems less pure in their supposed left-leaning morality? How has the legacy of the United States-caused wars created the ability for socialist continuations in the Vietnamese government? The point of course is that we can see moments where delimited spaces gravely impacted Marxist Revolutions on all global levels. So much like how we analyze small spaces of urban planning in our cities and communities, I wonder what the impact of looking at the role of delimitation in larger and more abstract processes of Marxist Revolutions could reveal. From Graduate Hospital, Kensington, and Fairmount in my local Philly, to these larger spaces such as Cuba and Burkina Faso that I analyzed before, the role of white supremacy, neoliberalism, and global capitalism is ginormous. From gentrification to lack of land to farm, the space, boundaries, and borders of an area can divulge telling lessons on some of the biggest Marxist Revolutions. Bibliography: Black Panther Party History and Geography - Mapping American Social Movements. https://depts.washington.edu/moves/BPP_intro.shtml. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021. Burkina Faso | South African History Online. https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/burkina-faso. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021. Burkina Faso | UNDP Climate Change Adaptation. https://www.adaptation-undp.org/explore/western-africa/burkina-faso. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021. “Republics of the Soviet Union.” Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, https://www.loc.gov/resource/g7001f.ct001610/. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021. “---.” Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, https://www.loc.gov/item/2005626536/. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021. The Languages of the Soviet Union (Cambridge Language Surveys) by Bernard Comrie: Very Good Paperback (1981) | Fireside Bookshop. https://www.abebooks.com/Languages-Soviet-Union-Cambridge-Language-Surveys/30368345240/bd. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021. Tolmazin, David. “Trends in the USSR Water Resources Development Policies.” GeoJournal, vol. 17, no. 3, Springer, 1988, pp. 389–400. Tyner, James A. “‘Defend the Ghetto’: Space and the Urban Politics of the Black Panther Party.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 96, no. 1, [Association of American Geographers, Taylor & Francis, Ltd.], 2006, pp. 105–18. Your Guide to the World :: Nations Online Project. https://www.nationsonline.org/index.html. Accessed 18 Aug. 2021. AuthorElla Kotsen is an undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr College. She is majoring in English and double minoring in History and Growth & Structure of Cities. She plays Division III women’s basketball and has received Centennial Conference Academic Honors. Her main subject of interest is in geopolitics and understanding the historical implications of colonization in Latin American countries. She is interested in Marxist literary theory and enjoys the work of Fanon, Eagleton, and Althusser. Ella also writes for her own independent blog where she produces opinion pieces, book reviews, and audio-based interviews. Archives August 2021 “Why I am an Atheist” is one of the paramount revolutionary and rational texts written in the Indian subcontinent. It’s a 24-page essay that Bhagat Singh wrote in 1934 when he was in Lahore Central Jail. He was detained for being involved in the assassination of Deputy Superintendent of Police John Saunders in retaliation to Lala Lajpat Rai’s death. In the prison, he met Baba Randhir Singh, a religious man and member of the Ghader Party who was convicted in the first Lahore conspiracy case. Baba Randhir Singh wanted to teach him about God and his beliefs, but Bhagat Singh maintained his atheistic stand. Reacting to his atheistic attitude, Randhir Singh said, "You are giddy with fame and have developed an ego which is standing like a black curtain between you and the God". As a reply to Randhir Singh, he wrote this essay on October 5th-6th, 1930. Bhagat Singh was an Indian Marxist revolutionary who was a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. He was heavily impelled by the works of Vladimir Lenin and called himself a staunch Leninist. His two revolutionary acts against the colonial British Raj led to his hanging in 1931 at the age of 23 which gave him an Olympian status in Indian revolutionary history. He is today remembered as a figure who not just wanted a political revolution but a social revolution to break the age-old discriminatory practices. Bhagat Singh has written many articles on untouchability in Indian society and communalism. “Why I am an Atheist” is his magnum opus. He begins the essay by elucidating that vanity is not the cause behind his atheist views. He rebuffs the existence of the almighty God from his experience of what he witnessed around himself and in society. He further explains that vanity cannot lead to atheism that these two are in contradiction to each other. When someone is lead by vanity he either reckons himself to be in possession of godly qualities or declares himself a god. According to Comrade Bhagat Singh, none of these two individuals are atheists. They are theists who believe in supernatural powers that are controlling the universe. Bhagat Singh says that he has not turned atheist after he received acclamation after the constituent assembly bombing. He has been an atheist for a long time. Initially, he too like most Indians was a staunch believer. He used to recite the Gayatri Mantra in school for hours. However, eventually, he came to question his belief and started believing in disbelief. When he joined the revolutionary party, and came to know his comrades well, he was surprised to find them having no sense of impiety. The members were neither here nor there in matters of belief and some were closet atheists. There were Comrades who according to Bhagat Singh were well-read on socialism and communism but yet they couldn’t suppress their desires to recite Geeta. There was one who Comrade was not involved in such practices as he considered religion to be the outcome of human weakness or the limitation of human knowledge, but yet he was not critical of the existence of the omnipresent almighty god. When he joined the party, he had the desire to study more so that he could challenge other Comrades during debates. He writes: The romance of the militancy dominated our predecessors; now serious ideas ousted this way of thinking. No more mysticism! No more blind faith! Now realism was our way of thinking. He first studied mysticism and blind faith and next he replaced them with the cult of realism. He studied the works of Bakunin, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Nirlammba Swami. He roved into the mysteries of the world, studied them, and found no direct proofs for them. Instead, what he found were several religions that were mutually incompatible with each other - Hinduism is very different from Islam, and Buddhism and Jainism with Brahmanism. All faiths differ on the rudimentary questions but each of them claims to be the only true religion. Bhagat Singh calls this the “root of the evil” as instead of instigating the ideas of ancient thinkers and thus dispensing ourselves with the ideological weapon for future struggle, we cling to orthodox religion and in this way reduce human awakening to a stagnant pool. This very dissertation is very important to understand the religions such as Buddhism which started as the struggle against Brahmanism in India but after some years it became a regressive religion that was supported on the foundation of serfdom, especially in Pre-China Tibet. Therefore, the lack of a single universal faith in this world was proof that there was no God. By the end of 1926 when he was 19 he was convinced that the existence of an almighty God is a façade. Bhagat Singh elaborates on Karl Marx “Religion is the opium of the masses" quote by saying; Beliefs make it easier to go through the hardships, even make them pleasant. Man can find strong support in god and an encouraging consolation in his name. If you have no belief in him, then there is no alternative but to depend on yourself. Marx when he said "religion is the opium of the masses" believed that religion had certain practical obligations in society that were similar to the function of opium in a sick or injured person: it reduced people's immediate suffering and provided them with pleasant illusions which gave them the strength to carry on. In this sense, while Marx may have no sympathy for religion itself, he has deep sympathy for those proletariats who put their trust in it. Bhagat Singh discussing vanity tells us that in difficult times, vanity evaporates and man cannot defy the beliefs held by the general public. He wrote this in the most difficult phase of his life and still had not given up his rationalism as he had no hope of afterlife like religious people; instead, he stressed moving to nothingness after death. He draws a fine line between the morality among theist and atheist, that atheist conduct moral acts without any selfish motive of the reward in this life or afterlife. An eternal reward and damnation is the basic premise on which religion thrives. Atheist wages war on oppressors, tyrants or exploiters not to become a king or for a bounty, but to cast off the yoke of slavery and establish liberty and peace. This reason explains why morality has been hijacked by religion, one of the biggest scams of mankind, namely, many people believe that you cannot effectuate moral acts without the fear of almighty and eternal damnation. Bhagat Singh apprises us by saying that it is incumbent for every person who stands for progress to lambast every doctrine of the old belief. This is a common thing in many revolutionaries and is also found in the writings of Mao Tse-tung. He says that faith is appreciated in any theory if it has been subjected to rigorous reasoning as reason is the guiding principle that shatters blind belief which is hazardous as it makes a person reactionary by depriving his understanding power. Bhagat Singh says in a way that it is not enough that only atheists have to explicate their ideas, theist should be held liable in this debate as well to explain why they believe in something that they cannot see. He asks a simple question that why God created this world that is full of misery and plight, where no one lives in peace. He says that the concept of an ‘omnipotent god’ is not sound as he is held by a law that prohibits from ending melancholy or maybe it’s his pleasure to torture humans. He compares him with Roman Emperor Nero who burnt Rome, killed many but still a limited number for his leisure and enjoyment. History remembers him as a psycho and mass murderer who enjoyed torturing. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning Nero: the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked. He also takes the example of Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan who slaughtered thousands and asks that why almighty created such a world where the majority of his creations are slaughtered and oppressed by the few. Millions are dying of hunger and living grim lives. Labourers are leading an awful life while the rich vampires are sucking their blood. Hindus believe in the concept of reincarnation, that one gets reborn after death and that his next life is determined by the deeds of the present life. So if anyone is suffering and is oppressed in this life, then he must have been a sinner in the previous one and the one who is oppressing others in this life were godly people in their previous life. This provides legitimacy to their oppression. Lenin also in his works on religion illustrated this. In ‘Socialism and Religion’ Lenin explained how capitalists use religion as a tool for their profits and to justify their actions and they assure the workers who work in terrible conditions of getting an astounding afterlife by obeying their employers conscientiously. Lenin believed that religion is a historical phenomenon tied with feudalism and capitalism. Bhagat Singh thereon talks about the philosophy of jurisprudence. He says that the punishment can be of three types. These are revenge, reform, and deterrence. Out of these, reformative has significant scope but Hinduism gives no room for reformation. As no one remembers one’s past, one is denied the opportunity to reform. One continues to suffer blindly without knowing the causes or effects. Bhagat Singh does not seem to consider the possibility that remembering all of one’s past will place an unbearable burden on one’s soul, and hence one is allowed to reform with a clean slate and redemption through suffering. That’s why he called poverty the capacious punishment and called it a sin. Bhagat Singh raises the question of why an all-loving almighty god cannot stop someone from transgressing. Why he cannot see the plight of millions and learns the truth only after millions had undergone untold tribulations and penury. What is the fate of a person who by no sin of his, born into a low caste family, is shunned and hated by the upper caste all his life. He cannot go to school and hence remains ignorant. Why are lower caste kept illiterate by Brahmins. If they heard a few words from the Vedas, Brahmins would pour molten lead into their ears. Bhagat Singh asks that if someone commits a sin, who is responsible, the person or the god who, according to various scriptures, is responsible for anything happening in this universe. These are few questions he asks the theist to justify their imaginary lord. Bhagat Singh exposes religion as follows: My dear friends, these theories have been coined by the privileged classes. They try to justify the power they have usurped and the riches they have robbed with the help of such theories. Yes! It was perhaps Upton Sinclair that wrote at some place that just makes a man a believer in immortality and then rob him of all his riches and possessions. He shall help you even in that ungrudgingly. The dirty alliance between religious preachers and possessors of power brought the boon of prisons, gallos, knouts and above all such theories for the mankind. The above quote reveals why religion is a pertinent tool of capitalism. It justifies the authority. In early times, monarchies were buttressed based on ‘Divine rights of the king,’ that is, the king dictated to the population because he is the figure most adjacent to god, and it was the god who entrusted him to rule over people. With the advent of capitalism, a similar approach was taken by the bourgeois to preserve an unequal status quo and pacify the proletariat. The working class needs to abandon religion, only then only they would be able to rise against the bourgeoisie and gain control of the means of production. Bhagat Singh says that people rebut socialism on the pretext of implementation even though common people understand the merits and the welfare of people under socialism. So he asks theist that if an almighty God is so loving and filled with love and compassion then he must step up and fill the hearts of people with altruistic humanism that forces them to give means of production to the working class and free them from the shackles of money. He casts aspersions on the other freedom fighters as he says that the British is not ruling from God's consent, but the reason, rather, is that we lack the courage to oppose it. British are commanding us at the point of gun and coercion through police and militia. He asks that where is God when one nation oppresses the other for imperialist goals, which according to him is "the most deplorable sin". Bhagat Singh instructs the readers to read Darwin’s Origin of Species, which is a stalwart book against religion as it offers a logical explanation of the creation of everything in our surroundings, including that the progress of mankind is due to man’s constant conflict with nature and his efforts to deploy it for his own well being. He further says that God was invented by man in his imagination when he realized his weaknesses and limitations. This gave him the courage to face impediments and also to circumscribe his outburst in prosperity and affluence. He in the end coaxed the readers to be rational and oppose every regressive narrow concept of religion and face adversaries with valour. It is more salutary to face dilemmas in a realistic and judicious manner instead of anticipating for them to solve themselves with prayers. Thus, his atheism is not the outcome of vanity. Religion enslaves people; it makes a mockery of human potential by curbing people from expanding their knowledge and understanding of the world. It makes us slaves of an imaginary being and makes us bow in front of the figurines just like how it was during serfdom days, except in this case there is no one on the other side who can be held culpable. We have to spend our entire lives on our knees thanking him for saving us from his wrath yet all of us face tragedies. He ends the essay with a heavy message: Let us see how steadfast I am. One of my friends asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, during your last days you will begin to believe! I said, No, dear Sir, it shall not be. I consider it an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For such a selfish motive, I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, "Is this vanity"? If it is, I stand for it. As said before, the biggest tragedy of humankind's history remains that religion has hijacked morality. This makes people fall for various religions as many assume that you cannot be morally upright and conduct righteous acts without being religious. AuthorHarsh Yadav is from India and has just recently graduated from Banaras Hindu University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry. Harsh is a Marxist Leninist who is intrigued by different Marxist Schools of Thought, Political Philosophies, Feminism, Foreign Policy and International Relations, and History. He also maintains a bookstagram account (https://www.instagram.com/epigrammatic_bibliophile/?hl=en) where he posts book reviews, writes about historical impact, socialism, and social and political issues. Archives6/24/2021 The Crest of the High Wave: Radical Students and the Underground Press at UNI. By: Ty KralRead Now“History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened...You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” The story of UNI’s underground press and its student staff stands as a microcosm of the burgeoning political and social changes seen in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. At the University of Northern Iowa, small-town Iowa students and working-class youth became the messengers of the era’s radical politics and student action. At the national level, the United States of the 1960s and early-1970s was a time of massive social upheaval marked by the conflict in Vietnam, social/political movements, and the rise of the “freaks” and the New-Left. We have no shortage of books seeking to explain why so many American youths grew restless and dissatisfied with their country, and why so many turned to left-wing politics throughout the decade. Whether they’re viewed through a liberal, conservative, or socialist lens, the Sixties (the all encompassed decade) is a topic that is still fiercely debated today. Depending on the researcher or daytime television wonk, the Sixties stands as a watershed moment in American culture. But the counterculture of these youth rebels and “freaks” is most often attributed to the coastal cities and major universities in the USA. Areas such as the Midwest are often forgotten about or brushed aside by the more “exciting” locations such as San Francisco and Berkeley. So, it is my goal with this article to nullify those notions and discuss the radicalism that was present at UNI. The counterculture of the Sixties was a diverse and expansive list of comedy, music, drugs, and writing. One facet of this massive ocean of movements was the rise of the so-called underground press in cities such as New York and San Francisco, especially at the universities. For those on the New-Left, underground newspapers were the alternative to the dismissive critiques of the mainstream media and provided their readership with a vulgar, passionate look into the cultures in which they lived. In 1965, the New Left could only claim 5 such newspapers, mostly in big cities, but within a few years, several hundred newspapers were in circulation with a combined readership in the millions.[1] Underground newspapers, according to Abbie Hoffman, were the “... most important institution in our lives... It keeps tuned in on what's going on in the community and around the world. Values, myths, symbols, and all the trappings of our culture are determined to a large extent by the underground press.”[2] The story of the underground press at the University of Northern Iowa begins with a newspaper called the Campus Underground in 1968. The Campus Underground was conceived by a publisher named Doug Warrington who aspired to make it a nationally syndicated newspaper. Its office was located 401-⅓ Main Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa, presently the location of the Voodoo Club Bar. In the beginning, the paper had 30 representatives from colleges and universities across the state who contributed articles and tips. The paper’s editor, Bruce “Bruno” Niceswanger, was a master’s student at UNI who was recruited by Doug Warrington after a search at all three state universities in Iowa.[3] The first issue was released on October 21, 1968, In this issue, they discussed segregation at Loras College, draft board protests across the state, and a feature-length editorial from David Quegg on his experiences among the protesting and riots at the Chicago DNC Convention of 1968 that previous summer. But after a few issues, a lack of resources and communication led to less participation from other campuses, and Cedar Falls became its primary audience.[4] While not a major success on campus, the paper gained a dedicated following as it grew more progressive and bolder with each issue. That was until the late fall of 1968, in which a review of Norman Mailer’s “Fall of Miami and the Siege of Chicago” by Carl Childress, a controversial UNI English professor, used a quote that contained a certain four-letter word. After this, the local printers refused to print any further issues unless the obscenity was removed, especially as the pressure of printing an underground newspaper grew.[5] The staff of Campus Underground was then forced to build their own light tables and lay out the paper themselves. After this, the paper began to face financial woes as the costs were just barely met from each issue to the next. By the spring of 1969, the staff began to print notices informing the readers about their financial situation while asking for donations.[6] According to a 1971 article from the Northern Iowan, at one point the staff was short $100 of the printer’s fee and frantically rushed around the Hub looking for donations until they finally received the necessary funds.[7] The last Campus Underground came out on March 10, 1969, due to a combination of financial problems, student disinterest in politics, and everyone going home for the summer. But this was far from the end of the underground presses run at UNI. The summer of 1969 saw Woodstock and the birth of Abbie Hoffman’s “Woodstock Nation”. This saw the blossoming of the cliché Sixties counterculture that we know today. By that fall, scores of “freaks”, or hippies, began to arrive at UNI, and with them came the rise of more radical elements such as members of the New Left. With this new wave came the arrival of the rebranded Campus Underground, now named the New Prairie Primer. Edited again by Bruno Niceswanger, the paper was assisted by the dedicated core group of Dave Quegg, Peg Wherry, Jean Seeland, and Gary Hoff. The New Prairie Primer, which I’ll refer to as the Primer from here on out, served as the epitome of this new spirit on campus. The first volume of the Primer Released on October 4, 1969, with a several page long expose by Bruno on his and David Quegg’s experiences at Woodstock titled “Going Up to Meat County.” This article proved to be very popular among UNI students, and it helped set the mood for future iterations of the paper with its quick wit, vulgarity and Hunter S. Thompson style prose and reporting. Following the success of their first issue, the Primer had received enough donations to print thousands of copies for their second edition, a free issue about the Vietnam War to coincide with the events of the STOP Vietnam War Moratorium across the state.[8] This issue contained stories from draft dodgers across the state, including a UNI student named Dick Simpson who explained why he refused induction into the armed services. It was also the first publication anywhere in Iowa to list all the state’s war dead.[9] This issue also showed a great deal of cooperation among various statewide church ministries with the radical left and anti-war hippies in the anti-war movement. But this seemingly unlikely coalition produced results unlike that seen anywhere else in Cedar Falls. The previous 1968 moratorium had brought out only 300 marchers, but by the moratorium on October 15, 1969, nearly 2,000 marchers flooded the UNI campus.[10] But this relationship also drew some ire from the community at large, especially as the Primer’s office was in the Bethany House on College Hill, where the Primer had special arrangements with the United Christian Ministry to use their property.[11] One chief critic of this relationship was a cantankerous, editor of the Waterloo Daily Courier named Bill Severin, also known as the Iron Duke. On the front page of the October 12th issue, the Iron Duke stated, “I have no quarrel with Niceswanger, Quegg, et all, or their right to publish a radical leftwing newspaper. But they and the United Christian Ministry would seem to make strange bedfellows.”[12] In response, the Primer blew the incident out of proportion with a smug, tongue-in-cheek center spread titled, “Primer Staff Bewildered, Hurt”, featuring their high school pictures and squeaky clean, cliché records as small-town Iowan youth along with their own reactions to the Iron Duke’s accusations.[13] This incident was a boon to the Primer’s sales and cemented the Primer’s tone for the rest of the year as a humorous, yet informative publication on campus counterculture. The Primer’s first run was an array of everything from local music reviews and interviews with Waterloo civil rights activists. Having shifted their focus from national news in the Campus Underground to local coverage, the contents of the Primer give an interesting look into the culture of the Cedar Valley during this time. Of course, one of the most important issues on campus at the time was that of drugs. The Primer featured tongue in cheek critiques of the local CFPD “Narcs” and the pearl-clutching of the more conservative Cedar Falls residents. In one such issue the Primer covered a community symposium on the issue of recreational drug use in the Cedar Valley. In response to the symposium, the Primer printed tutorials on how to make your own joints and listed the local street prices of dope, hash, and LSD at the time.[14] One informative, and fascinating article from this period was an interview conducted by the Primer’s own Bruno Nicewanger and their secretary Marsha Petersen titled “3 Viet Vets Rap on the War”.[15] Released with the fourth issue in November 1969, the Primer spoke with three UNI students that had served in Vietnam about why they became involved with the anti-war movement after their time overseas. In retrospect, what made this article fascinating is that the interviewees represent what I deem to be a decent overall representation of Iowan’s backgrounds at the time. Tony Ogden was a 24-year-old white male from Sanborn, Iowa, a town in Northwestern, Iowa. Dave Sessions was a 28-year-old white male from the medium-sized industrial town of Mason City, Iowa. Sam Dell was a 22-year-old African American male who was born in Phillip, Mississippi, but had grown up in Waterloo, in eastern Iowa. While not a full cross section of Iowa’s socioeconomic makeup, these three men represent facets of Iowa’s urban and rural population who converged on Iowa’s campuses during this period of cultural and political turmoil. In summary, all three guys described their experiences overseas, their backgrounds, and their journey towards realizing the atrocities and injustices happening in Vietnam. Tony described the brutality he saw unleashed upon the Vietnamese people he came close to, Sam talked of the racism that followed the military overseas, and Sessions spoke of the bureaucratic apathy towards the death and destruction being perpetuated by armed forces. As such, each man's experiences caused them to question their values and ideological frameworks, driving them towards becoming radically against a system they saw as needlessly unjust and cruel. A passage that stood out when reading this interview was from its final page, which saw all three men ruminating on the meaning of the “American tradition” and the contradictions they saw during their service. As Tony put it, “Seeing marines kneeling within sight of a pile of bodies having a chaplain cram wafers down their throats, under a cross.” While there are plenty of sections one could discuss from these interviews in the Primer, I see this insight into these three young men as a poignant look into the mindset of the emerging student radicals in the United States. But I have also not yet been so clear as what constitutes a student radical currently. And in sincerest sense I have struggled to find a definition insofar as who “they” were. In 2019, even as much then, the term “student radical” has many different connotations depending on who you ask. For the most part, a “student radical” is usually considered to be someone who holds left wing values and belongs to various flavors along the left-wing spectrum. To the politically illiterate, this would mean anyone to the left of the center right or is a “liberal”, but I digress. While a whole paper can be made on the distinction, a radical can be most definitely defined as an individual who opposes the status-quo and calls for a new system of governance and the distribution of resources. In the era of the Primer, as Vietnam raged and COINTELPRO lurked in the shadows, “student radicals” were a hodge podge of nondenominational leftists, middle-class liberals, and the “flower power” freaks. Much like discourse in the vague progressive leanings of today, the ‘60s were a ripe era of barraging liberals and infighting amongst different leftist ideological sects. However, for the most part, UNI’s left-wing and liberals found somewhat common ground in the anti-war movement and demands for more succinct student rights on campus. As is, the Primer got an uptick in sales due to the pearl-clutching of local Cedar-Loo residents after allying with the United Campus Ministries in October of ‘69. And as further articles prove within the Primer, Cedar-Loo was not that far off from the rest of the United States. Labor disputes, gentrification, environmental pollution, and racial tensions were proliferating in Waterloo. Like Joker's duality of man in Full Metal Jacket, Waterloo, Iowa, has had a tumultuous history with segregation. In the fall of 1968 these issues, and industry layoffs, led to instances of rioting in select areas of Waterloo.[16] Other concerns at the time included pollution being released by the John Deere Company and Chamberlain Manufacturing Co. that was potentially contaminating the Cedar River. The Primer then served as a repository, or even a messenger, of these causes that were not often covered by the mainstream media in the community. In a special issue about ecology, the Primer advertised events from an environmental group called SOMETHING, deriding the local tv station for passing environmental pollution onto the individuals during a special sponsored by John Deere and Chamberlain Co.[17] The Primer also teamed up with the Grinnell based-paper the High and Mighty to co-author the so-titled “Military-Industrial Complex” and Iowa’s role in the US war machine, in which they listed the major Iowa companies with defense contracts, including the amount of the contract and what products they produced for the military. Chamberlain Co. of Waterloo was a company that was directly targeted by the Primer due to their production of ammunition for the war movement. But of course, the Primer did not neglect campus issues, especially as they covered the Spring 1970 student government elections in which the Primer backed Students Rights Party participated. However, after suffering a defeat, the Primer declared a so-called “revolutionary student government” on campus which was coordinated by UNI students Al Woods, Sam Dell, and Tony Ogden.[18] By this time, Bruno stepped down as editor to form a collective editorship with everyone on the staff, in which the Primer did its part to become a forum for those who wanted to organize on campus. Among other issues, the Primer waged an aggressive campaign against the Dean Voldseth, Dean of Students, in the leadup to the potential referendum of 1970. The Primer, for several issues, was inscribed with the back-page message of “Dean Voldseth is alive and well in Cedar Falls--Still.” This campaign fizzled out once the student senate was unable to override Student President Mike Conlee’s veto against the referendum. However, that following spring UNI would face one of the largest events to happen on the campus during its history, the UNI 7. Throughout 1969 and 1970, the Afro-American Society, led by UNI students Palmer Byrd and Sam Dell, had been working with the administration at UNI to establish a minority culture house on campus. The process, however, was arduous and the prospect of minority students having their own cultural house drew flak from administrators and parents of students alike. So, in March 1970, 10 African-American students at UNI visited President Maucker’s home late at night to have a discussion with him to take more concrete action on the request for a minority culture house before the board of regents. However, the discussion became visibly heated as the hours went on and President Maucker repeated that he would not sign a document for a specific house and demanded that they leave. The students refused and Maucker returned with his wife to bed while a night guard sat with the youth in the living room as they decided to sit still until some action was taken. By the next morning, rumors began to fly around campus and students began to clamor around the President’s House to view the commotion. By then the sit-in had grown to 40 individuals as radical elements and sympathetic liberals showed their support to the Afro-American students against the slowness of “the system”[19] But after a few more hours, the arrival of the press, and an incoming injunction, the sit-in students elected to move to an administrative building to continue their sit-in, but decided to end the sit-in with no press release which might rile up the administration and media. By the end of the week, Dean Eddie Voldseth announced that seven students were to be suspended pending an investigation by the student conduct board. By the March 31, 1970 issue, the Primer had begun to cover the case and the subsequent student hearings. The staff also worked with other students to storm the hearings and helped solidify a growing campus movement that fed off the growing student dissatisfaction of the administration with the 7.[20] Then with the coming of the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State killings, the campus grew more divided as there were those who wanted to act and those who did not. But by then another summer was on the way and most students at UNI had packed up to go home. That summer was predicted to be the summer of “Ohio”, or the summer in which the radicals and progressives alike take extreme action in honor of the dead at Kent State. However, this prediction never came to pass. Once students returned to UNI in in the fall of 1970, the political fervor and calls for radical change had seemingly disappeared overnight. While the Primer did return that fall, almost all the papers veterans and staff had either graduated or lost interest. The paper was then edited collectively by John O’Connor, Dick Faust, Bill Yates, and Diana Morgan with a shifting focus away from the “freak” audience that had been its base. John O’Connor thought that while the counterculture and drugs had been useful in radicalizing people, it was coming to the point where it was becoming counterproductive. O’Connor instead sought to change the Primer from being an entertaining, informative magazine for the counterculture to being like that of a classical, educational journal that sought to discuss theory and ideology. In O’Connor’s own words, “We’d like to think people would rather read about a problem and make up their own minds than go to a Speak-Out and find out what happens to be in the wind that day. It is unfortunate that people around here seem to think they need a leader for solutions. They should come to their own conclusions. But this is not to say that they shouldn’t unite, once those conclusions have been reached. We hope that the articles we’re printing now will help people to become better informed, so that the eventual decisions reached will be the right ones.”[21] In this stripped down format the Primer hoped that by losing the “freak” edge they would be better able to reach liberals and workers alike. But this third edition of the New Prairie Primer lasted for only 8 issues from June of 1970 to December of 1970. The Primer finally floundered in December 1970 after a lack of money prevented them from printing any more issues. Considered the longest running underground paper in the history of the state of Iowa, the New Prairie Primer had only lasted for two-and-a-half years. As such, the New Prairie Primer was the first and last of its kind on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa. While this wouldn’t spell the end of student action on campus, far from it, the end of the Primer marked the end of a short but explosive era of student politicization at the University of Northern Iowa. Dozens of committed students and volunteers spent countless hours working to create the Primer in their dorms and in the streets. But one thing is clear, we will never again see anything like the underground press of the Sixties. The technology that spawned the underground press is practically obsolete and it is simply no longer exciting or cost-efficient to transfer inked images to paper. And as John McMilian says in his book “Smoking Typewriters”, “...The movement that fueled the growth of underground newspapers is likewise extinct. Of course, the Sixties remain а force in American popular culture; so momentous were that decade's events that even subsequent generations have come of age in its afterglow. But the underground press had а specific raison d'erre: it was created to bring tidings of the youth rebellion to cities and campuses across America and to help build а mass movement. And for all its shortcomings -- intellectual, and even sometimes moral-- this is something it did remarkably well.”[22] Whether they advanced the hard-nosed analysis of SDS and its offshoots, or the likes of Huey Newton and Noam Chomsky, or championed the new liberated lifestyles seen with the Woodstock Summer, radical newspapers became the medium through which the youth transmitted their arguments and ideas to try and popularize their rebellions. And because of the underground newspapers’ extraordinary inclusiveness, they helped frame the decentralized operations and diverse social relation within the New Left. But as we saw with the Primer, this did not come easily. For many papers like the Primer, their staff were often deluged with bills they couldn’t pay, lack of time, and coordinating a group made producing an underground paper a nightmare. But this didn’t discourage thousands of youth radicals to create their own papers across the United States. After reading something like the Primer, one can see it was a finished product of love-labor that tried to communicate with kindred minds and maybe had converted a few minds along the way. The Primer’s demise is but a small example of this short, yet manic era in American history. As the Sixties ended and gave rise to the Seventies, the passionate campaigns of American radicals and their youth following had seemed to fall on deaf ears. Vietnam still lumbered on in the background for five years, Nixon and Kissinger performed their own dirty backroom deals, the enthusiasm on the campuses seemed to wane. Thus, we had entered the era of Taxi Driver and Deep Throat, the forces of evil had seemingly won as the far-right gathered momentum and prepared for the launch of Reagan and Bush less than a decade later. But the democratic sensibilities that Sixties youth had brought to journalism not only persist, but have also taken on a life of their own. And they are still likely to endure in some fashion or another. For radicals today, the internet holds tremendous promise and opportunity with the rise of online forums, social media, and internet podcasts. But much of what the 2000s blogosphere and left-wing YouTube, referred to as “BreadTube,” have accomplished today with building communities and democratizing the media was accomplished more than 40 years ago by the frank, vulgar, and threadbare papers of the underground press. While there may be little evidence left of the Primer’s impact on the University of Northern Iowa, the culture of student activism hasn’t completely died out. While it lies mostly nascent, the vigor and passion of the 1960s still emerges for a moment every decade or so. Whether that be the Iraq War protests of the 2000s or the Racial and Ethnic Coalition of 2019, and statewide campaigns by Iowa Student Action. In conclusion, the story of UNI’s underground press and its student staff stands as an example of the burgeoning political and social changes seen in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. At UNI, small-town Iowa students and working-class youth became the messengers of radical politics and student action during their time. The culture the Primer spread to the masses persists today with the new generation of radicalized youth. Notes [1] McMillian, James. Smoking Typewriters (New York; Oxford University Press, 2011), 4. [2] Hoffman, Abbie. Steal This Book (Pirate Editions, Grove Press, 1971), 92. [3] Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 1.” Northern Iowan, February 12, 1971. [4] Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 1.” Northern Iowan, February 12, 1971 [5] Niceswanger, Bruno. “Editor’s Note.” New Prairie Primer, December 9, 1968. [6] Niceswanger, Bruno. “Editor’s Note.” New Prairie Primer, January 27, 1969. [7] Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 1.” Northern Iowan, February 12, 1971 [8] Quegg, David. “In This Issue.” New Prairie Primer, October 4, 1969. [9] Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 1.” Northern Iowan, February 12, 1971 [10] “Scenes from the Revolution: Iowa #1.” New Prairie Primer, October 25, 1969. [11] Wherry, Peg. “Underground Newspaper In Circulation Under New Name.” Northern Iowan, October 7, 1969. [12] Severin, Bill. “Bill Severin, the Iron Duke.” Waterloo Daily Courier, October 12, 1969. [13] Bruno Niceswanger, et all. “Duke Blasts Bedfellows!!!” New Prairie Primer, October 25, 1969. [14] “Primer Special Drug Supplement.” New Prairie Primer, March 3, 1970. [15] Bruno Niceswanger, et all. “3 Viet Vets Rap on the War.” New Prairie Primer, November 13, 1969. [16] Nelson, Thomas. “This week marks 50 years since the 1968 riot in Waterloo. We look back.” The Courier, September 9, 2018. [17] “.” New Prairie Primer, April 27, 1970. [18] “Revolutionary Student Government Declared.” New Prairie Primer, March 31, 1970. [19] Ogden, Tony. “UNI 7.” New Prairie Primer, March 31, 1970. [20] Niceswanger, Bruno. “The UNI Struggle: What It Means.” New Prairie Primer, April 27, 1970. [21] Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 3.” Northern Iowan, February 19, 1971 [22] McMillian, James. Smoking Typewriters (New York; Oxford University Press, 2011), 188. Bibliography Hoffman, Abbie. Steal This Book (Pirate Editions, Grove Press, 1971) McMillian, James. Smoking Typewriters (New York; Oxford University Press, 2011) Nelson, Thomas. “This Week Marks 50 Years since the 1968 Riot in Waterloo. We Look Back.” The Courier. September 9, 2018. https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/this-week-marks-years-since-the-riot-in-waterloo-we/article_761a2ea4-3bdb-5ea9-89f7-e90172d41a82.html. Niceswanger, Bruno, et all. “3 Viet Vets Rap on the War.” New Prairie Primer, November 13, 1969. Niceswanger, Bruno, et all. “Duke Blasts Bedfellows!!!” New Prairie Primer, October 25, 1969. Niceswanger, Bruno. “Editor’s Note.” New Prairie Primer, December 9, 1968. Niceswanger, Bruno. “Editor’s Note.” New Prairie Primer, January 27, 1969. Niceswanger, Bruno. “The UNI Struggle: What It Means.” New Prairie Primer, April 27, 1970. Ogden, Tony. “UNI 7.” New Prairie Primer, March 31, 1970. Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 1.” Northern Iowan, February 12, 1971. Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 2.” Northern Iowan, February 15, 1971. Pedersen, Steve. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Primer Pt. 3.” Northern Iowan, February 19, 1971. Quegg, David. “In This Issue.” New Prairie Primer, October 4, 1969. Severin, Bill. “Bill Severin, the Iron Duke.” Waterloo Daily Courier, October 12, 1969. Shackelford, Christopher J., "A Midwestern culture of civility: Student activism at the University of Northern Iowa during the Maucker years (1967-1970)" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 29 Wherry, Peg. “Underground Newspaper In Circulation Under New Name.” Northern Iowan, October 7, 1969. “Primer Special Drug Supplement.” New Prairie Primer, March 3, 1970. “Revolutionary Student Government Declared.” New Prairie Primer, March 31, 1970. “Scenes from the Revolution: Iowa #1.” New Prairie Primer, October 25, 1969. “Special Edition on Life” New Prairie Primer, April 27, 1970. AuthorTy Kral is an undergraduate student of History at the University of Northern Iowa, with a primary focus on public history and museum studies. Ty is a socialist obsessed with the study of history and is particularly interested in Marxist thought, Iowa history, and the history of the Soviet Union. He has been a member of the UNI YDSA for over two years. After school, Ty hopes to find work in museums or archives and eventually go to graduate school. The cries to be intersectional echo from every corner of the woke left. Those who are deemed to be not “intersectional” are shamed as TERFs, class reductionists, brocialists, or even fascists and right-wingers. Of course as leftists we should condemn bigotry wherever it may occur, even within our own movements and organizations. But that does not mean we should uncritically support all ideas that arise within the left. Especially something like intersectionality which arose out of the academic new left, which was propped up and funded by bourgeois elements like the CIA. Nothing must be left unchallenged or uncriticized, intersectionality included. Intersectionality is commonly defined as the intersection of multiple oppressions typically caused by identities such as race, class, sex, gender, etc, resulting in the creation of overlapping and interdependent forms of oppression. Intersectionalists call that no form of oppression be thought of and treated separately. An example of this is with abortion laws, how they don’t exclusively affect women negatively, but disproportionately harm women of color and working class communities. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this explanation, that’s all it is. Rarely is there a coherent solution that intersectionalists offer. Additionally, Marxists have long recognized this fact that oppressions can overlap and intersect. Engels recognized the intersection of class and gender in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, as did Marx, Lenin, Kollontai, Hampton, etc. The only difference however, is that this pattern wasn’t called intersectionality, people weren’t called to be “intersectional” rather the word intersectional was replaced with the word solidarity. However, there are many issues amongst the supporters and theoreticians of intersectionality, the main issue being that identities such as race, sex, and gender are seen as these abstract isolated floating bodies, there is very little material analysis within intersectional analysis. Intersectionalists call for a comprehensive and inclusive approach to help the marginalized groups but what is an intersectional solution? Many of the marginalized peoples that intersectionality advocate for are in the working class. Women are more likely to live in poverty than men. According to the Center for American Progress of the 38 million people in poverty 21 million of them are women. In 2019, using data from the Census Bureau, poverty rates for Black and Hispanic people were at 18.8 percent and 15.7 percent, almost ten points greater than Non-Hispanic White people. And according to the Williams Institute 22% of LGBTQ people live in poverty compared to 16% for cisgendered people. Transgender and bisexual cis women have a povety rate at about 29%. People of marginalized identities (PMI) face significantly higher poverty rates than the national average. Poverty and class based oppression is a major issue in many marginalized communities, yet in many discussions about intersectionality rarely does class get brought up, or it is seen as a secondary subject. Additionally, in many “progressive” circles the working class, especially the rural working class is dismissed as a monolith of white people in the Midwest who hold reactionary views. This view is not only incredibly wrong, it’s classist and bigoted, as it’s marginalized people who suffer poverty at higher rates, especially if they live in rural areas. That’s not to forget of course that much of the language surrounding intersectionality and the woke left is incredibly alienating to the working class, including PMI working class. According to a Yale study people responded more favorably to policy proposals emphasizing class. The people tested were given policy proposals ,advocating for the Green New Deal, affordable housing, weed decriminalization, increasing the minimum wage, and forgiving $50,000 of student debt, framed in class, race, and race + class lens. The policy proposals framed with class did the best. What this shows is that even if you care about racial justice the best way to help minorities is to frame your policies in a way that emphasizes class. People care about bread and butter issues, and we don’t need a Yale study to back this up, we can look at the Sanders campaign. The Sanders campaign for a long time polled incredibly well among minorities. In California, he had an approval rate of 49 percent among Latinos, and 39 percent in Texas. Sanders also did incredibly well among young black people and LGBT (4 in 10 LGBT voters supported Sanders). Sanders championed a platform of class based issues, most notably Medicare for All and Free College, issues that are explicitly class centered but benefit minorities greatly. The elites did everything they could to sabotage his campaign and threw all of their known insults towards him and his supporters, including that of “class reductionist”, “brocialist”, and “bernie bro”, never mind that Sanders had overwhelming support among women and minorities. Of course Sanders is a social democrat and many of his proposals would have been unlikely to pass due to the political system being created to serve the interests of capitalists. However, the fact that minorities and women overwhelmingly supported Sanders who is straight, white, and male over other candidates like Harris, Buttigieg, and Warren shows us that people care more about actual policy that actually helps them over symbolic gestures of wokeness. Speaking of which race/identity neutral class based policies championed by Marxists and other socialists but often sneered at or dismissed by the wokeists have helped minorities and women the most. Take social security for example which was heavily championed by Marxists and labor activists, women are the majority beneficiaries of social security, making up 56% of beneficiaries 65 and older, and 66% of beneficiaries 85 and older according to the National Academy of Social Insurance. Social security is a lifeline for many women in older age against poverty. Wokeists constantly shrill about being intersectional, and to account for all forms of oppression in one’s activism, yet they themselves rarely take into account class and how closely tied it is to the oppression of the minorities they so claim to stand with. Class is often the last issue to be brought up in woke and intersectional circles, whereas individual identities such as sex, race, and gender are raised onto a pedastal. They are seen as essential to one’s identity, regardless of one’s class position or their role to the means of production, a person becomes an amalgamation of their identities. What is more essentialist and individualistic than that? As Eve Mitchel, a marxist feminist, writes in critiquing bell hooks, “Similarly, theories of an ‘interlocking matrix of oppressions,’ simply create a list of naturalized identities, abstracted from their material and historical context. This methodology is just as ahistorical and antisocial as Betty Friedan’s” Wokeists often fail to take into account the historical and material context of identity. They claim that racism and sexism existed before capitalism therefore, so called “class reductionism” is bad (even though most accusations of class reductionism are brought up when someone starts talking about class). Yes racism and sexism existed before capitalism, but capitalism compounded the oppressions and created new ones. Additionally, capitalists have used racism and bigotry to distract from solidarity amongst the working and colonized peoples. For example, in Rwanda the Belgians favored the Tutsi minority over the Hutu majority, allowing the Tutsis to oppress the Hutus leading to resentment among the Hutus, eventually leading to the Rwandan genocide. This can also be seen even in America where the media stokes up racial fear and hatred of Black, Asian, Latino, and Middles Eastern people to prevent the white working class from recognizing that it’s not immigrants or people of color who are stealing their jobs, but rather it’s the capitalists who are exploiting them and making them replaceable. The isms and phobias don’t exist in a vacuum; they are enforced by class society. It has always been the upper classes who have stoked racial and xenophobic tensions. It wasn’t the people of Rome who decided randomly to go fight the Goths but the patricians who commanded the people of Rome to fight against the Germanic tribes to protect and expand the borders of Rome. The same can be said today in America and in the imperial cores. It is the upper classes, the bourgeoisie who stoke racial tensions through the media, education, popular and high culture and combined with a loss of jobs and lack of prospects create resentment amongst the white working class. The saying “It’s a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight” describing the draft on both ends that was supposed to be applied to all men of combat age but ended up being dodged by the wealthy can be applied today. The military is largely composed of underprivileged people of various ethnic origins, it’s poor schools that recruiters target not the wealthy ones, yet the wokeists rarely acknowledge that, heck they don’t even seem to acknowledge imperialism or even question the imperialist narrative at all! If anything they’d rather make it “intersectional” as seen with the recent military and CIA ads featuring women and people of color. This is nothing new as imperialists have historically used progressive cases to further imperialism and even more insidiously they have been absorbed without question by the social democrats and many so called “intersectional” leftists who believe the imperialist narrative about many anti-imperialist countries such as Syria, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, China, the former USSR, etc. The intersectionalists fail to recognize that class society is at the root of racism and sexism, or that people of color, women, and lgbtq people make up a large portion of the working class. If they truly want to eradicate racism and sexism they would focus their attention on the bourgeoisie, the bankers, financiers, and landlords who contribute nothing while leeching off of the hard work of workers (often of marginalized identities themselves) rather than sowing division and preventing solidarity! History is a class struggle not an identity struggle. It is through class struggle that has paved the way for social progress and our conceptions and ideas of identity are based in the mode of production. However, intersectionalists fail to recognize that, rather they see identity and bigotry as abstract floating bodies in space. They see oppression as signs of individual hate rather than a way for capitalists to more ruthlessly exploit one section of the population, driving the working conditions down for all workers and preventing solidarity. Intersectionality has failed to recognize this, rather the ideology’s followers fail to recognize how entrenched class society, particularly capitalism, in every facet of our lives. They see identities as lines that are intersecting with each other forming unique and individual experiences of oppression, yet they fail to see the class nature behind the oppression, and often any critique of their philosophy is often dismissed as reductionist or right wing. However, no mode of thought is immune to criticism, especially one that makes claims as outlandish as intersectionality. Links https://libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.14361/9783839441602-006/pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vnLzfRqPS8&ab_channel=sev_k https://www.lfks.net/en/content/fred-hampton-its-class-struggle-goddammit-november-1969 https://www.marxist.com/marxism-vs-intersectionality.htm https://claudepeppercenter.fsu.edu/the-myth-of-class-reductionism/ https://newrepublic.com/article/154996/myth-class-reductionism?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gEHVZQLPLk&ab_channel=PeterCoffin https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/articles/intersectionality-and-marxism https://osf.io/tdkf3/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020/08/03/488536/basic-facts-women-poverty/ https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-poverty-us/ https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/21164235/latino-vote-texas-california-bernie-sanders-super-tuesday https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/485877-nbc-exit-poll-shows-sanders-with-most-support-from-lgbtq-voters?rl=1 https://www.nasi.org/education/womens-stake-in-social-security/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnUqrF9mAA8&t=1642s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovIW4JG2nVI&ab_channel=SecularTalk AuthorN.C. Cai is a Chinese American Marxist Feminist. She is interested in socialist feminism, Western imperialism, history, and domestic policy, specifically in regards to drug laws, reproductive justice, and healthcare. |
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About the Midwestern Marx Youth LeagueThe Midwestern Marx Youth League (MMYL) was created to allow comrades in undergraduate or below to publish their work as they continue to develop both writing skills and knowledge of socialist and communist studies. Due to our unexpected popularity on Tik Tok, many young authors have approached us hoping to publish their work. We believe the most productive way to use this platform in a youth inclusive manner would be to form the youth league. This will give our young writers a platform to develop their writing and to discuss theory, history, and campus organizational affairs. The youth league will also be working with the editorial board to ensure theoretical development. If you are interested in joining the youth league please visit the submissions section for more information on how to contact us!
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