|
Recent
Stories
May
16, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
May
10 / 11, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Rosenthal Faces the Music in Key
Med Marijuana Case
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Labor in the Dawn of Empire
Annie
C. Higgins
The Last Time I Saw Mus'ab
Ron Jacobs
The Devil in New England
William
Mandel
One on One with Sen. Joe McCarthy
Jason Leopold
Halliburton Still Flouts the Law as It Profits from Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Iraqi Quagmire
Larry Magnuson
William Bennett: Next Viceroy
of Iraq?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The Good Terrorists?
Anthony
Gancarski
Chalabi: Drowning in Ba'ath-water?
Steven
Sherman
A Letter to My European Friends
Khaled
El-Bizri
Mr. Bush Comes to Santa Clara
Bruce
Jackson
How Fear Curdles the Soul
Adam Engel
Flag in the Rain
Poets
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/10
Website
of the Weekend
Killing Again
May
9, 2003
Rahul
Mahajan
Don't Lift the Sanctions Yet
Wayne
Madsen
When Lying Pays Off: Neo-Con Fabricators
Chris
Floyd
The Karamazov Question
Don Monkerud
The Great Christian Schism: War or Peace?
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Drunk on Power: Bush, Power and the
Pathology of the Dry Drunk
Hammond
Guthrie
Bombastic Promise Keeping
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/09
May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kienthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"
April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
of the Iraq War
Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
Gancarski
Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
May
17, 2003
Historical Necessity
and Human Freedom
An
American Tribute to Christopher Hill
By PETER LINEBAUGH
Since the destruction of the twin towers of the
World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the rhetoric
of President Bush has drawn heavily on Winston Churchill's rhetoric
at the commencement of the Battle of Britain. With the Anglo-American
invasion of Iraq the Churchillian note is near deafening. Often
it is called, "their finest hour." What is meant? Anticipating
the Battle of Britain here is what Churchill said on 18 June
1940 as France fell.
Upon this battle depends the survival
of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life,
and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. ...
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves
that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand
years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
Christianity and empire are not freely
spoken of as goals of the invasion of Iraq, though they are for
some. Even if the Iraqi invasion in 2003 was not anybody's finest
hour, England being more or less alone in 1940, against the armed
might of the National Socialists, most of western Europe having
collapsed under their Blitzkrieg, actually did hang at the hinge
of fate, a fine moment. Churchill spoke for many besides Christians
and imperialists. What made it so fine?
Huge energy of fire and water and air
and earth was mobilized by war. Epochal consequences were released
in brief moments. A blitz is the lightening stroke, or a tremendous
discharge of electrical energy originating in rain clouds striking
through the atmosphere to the ground often igniting fires. It
has transforming effects. We most notice the destruction of cities
and peoples as it is memorialized. In contrast, generation, or
the birth of the new, tends to merge with living forms in the
epoch to come. Their beginnings however are no less part of the
blitz than the endings entailed by destruction. Seeds of the
future are born in the terrifying moment. Some seeds are airborne,
others survive even in salt water (as Darwin showed), certain
seeds need the great heat of the forest fire to open, and germination
requires earth for all.
Looking back at May 1940 particularly
and broadening our view generally to include all of 1940 (because
I don't know the calendar of composition of Christopher Hill's
essay) I would like to identify four seeds and their vectors.
One is anti-racism. A few months May
1940 C.L.R. James wrote "What we as Marxists have to see
is the tremendous role played by Negroes in the transformation
of Western civilization from feudalism to capitalism. It is only
from this vantage-ground that we shall be able to appreciate
(and prepare for) the still greater role they must of necessity
play in the transition from capitalism to socialism." The
historical side to this project, despite the expansion of university
research at the end of the 20th century, is incomplete. The political
aspect of the proposition is the failure of de-colonization against
the European and American empires. In May 1940 C.L.R. James reviewed
Richard Wright's Native
Son: "The great masses of negroes carry in their
hearts the heavy heritage of slavery, and their present degradation.
Such has been their past, it is their present, and, as far as
they can see, it is their future. It is the revolution which
will lift these millions from their knees. Nobody can do it for
them. Men, personalities, will be freed from the centuries of
chains and shame, as Bigger's personality was freed, by violent
action against their tyrants. It is on the evening after battle,
with smoking rifle and bloody bayonet, that the Negro will be
able to look all white men in the face, will be able to respect
himself and be respected." This is soldiering against empire
and racism; it was a seed germinated by fire.
A second seed is anti-patriarchy. On
27 April 1940 Virginia Woolf gave a lecture at the Women's Institute
in Brighton; in May she gave it again to the WEA. Although it
was the worst week of her experience, the lecture she offered
raised hopes. It was called "The Leaning Tower." In
it she spoke as an outsider and a commoner ("are we not
commoners, outsiders?"). In the 19th century human life
"looked like a landscape cut up into separate fields."
After the war, however, there will be "no more classes and
shall we stand, without hedges between us, on the common ground?"
She quoted her father, the eminent Victorian, "Whenever
you see a board up with 'Trespassers will be prosecuted,' trespass
at once." She recommended the practice. It is this vision
of commoning which she applied in her critique of the Leftist
generation of writers who became apostates or emigrants to America.
Striding on the Sussex Downs, she contemplated "the subconscious
Hitlerism in the hearts of men." The end of class society,
the cutting down of hedges, had to become the basis of that compensation
of the man's loss of his machine, the loss of his gun, his imprisonment
within patriarchy. Against the RAF-Luftwaffe fights in the sky
above her, she clasped her hands over her head and flung herself
to the ground. Owing to the bombing the River Ouse flooded. Her
great project, though derided at the time, is still alive, flowing
in the world-wide peace marches against the Iraqi war. This is
water.
A third seed which was to bloom quickly
and bear fruit rapidly was provided by Aneurin Bevan (himself
the cultivator of cabbages on Brimpton Common) who immediately
went after Churchill, "Sometimes the Prime Minister's ear
is too sensitively attuned to the bugle notes of Blenheim for
him to hear the whisperings in the streets." Bevan wrote
in January, "social problems thrust themselves upon the
minds of the most obtuse and compel an interest, grudging at
first, but which often afterwards grows into an eager thirst
for new knowledge. War opens minds that were sealed, stimulates
dormant intelligences, and recruits into political controversy
thousands who otherwise would remain in the political hinterland."
He wrote "Britain is still controlled by those who think,
consciously or unconsciously, that ordinary men and women are
there to be governed and not to govern." Mankind has progressed
in arts, crafts, dignity, and learning "just to the extent
that ordinary men and women won freedom and pushed their way
into the central citadels of power." Speaking in the House
of Commons or the BBC, these whispering seeds were airborne.
Christopher Hill's essay The English
Revolution 1640 is a fourth seed. It was written for the soldiers
going into battle and the civilians who suffered the Blitz. It
is brief, it is lucid, and it does not weigh heavily in a soldier's
kit. Its address was to a class excluded from academia or the
ruling elite. He quoted Oliver Cromwell on his soldiery, they
"knew what they fought for and loved what they knew."
He explained how revolution was made, and the Communist Party
leadership of 1940 did not like what he said. He introduced the
idea of the "bourgeois revolution." Getting it published
was "a victory for politics as well as theory," wrote
Dona Torr. The victory was a lasting one---we see it in the formation
of the postwar Communist Party History Group, we see it in the
introduction to the first issue of Past & Present (1952)
quoting Ibn Khaldoun, the 14th century Islamic scholar, that
history includes the "transformations that society undergoes
by its very nature," and we see it in "the living line
of Marx's analysis of British history" (as Thompson put
it). It put the past into the present and into the future.
Christopher Hill's counselor within the
Party was Dona Torr of whom he (with John Savile and E.P. Thompson)
would write, "She made us feel history on our pulses. History
was not words on a page, not the goings-on of kings and prime
ministers, not mere events. History was the sweat, blood, tears,
and triumphs of the common people, our people." See how
they changed Churchill's words which included sweat, blood, and
tears among his offerings as prime minister in May 1940, but
also toil. Christopher Hill and the historians of the common
people, added triumphs instead.
Hill balanced historical necessity with
human freedom. Voluntarism and determinism were placed in equilibrium,
not of theory nor of politics, but in the actuality of the English
civil war. Thus, "Winstanley's communist idea was in one
sense backward-looking, since it arose from the village community
which capitalism was already disintegrating...," yet Winstanley
did not only look to the past; he also had glimpses of a future
in which "wheresoever there is a people united by common
community of livelihood into oneness it will be the strongest
land in the world, for there they will be as one man to defend
their inheritance.'" He wrote of both 1640 and 1940. "When
the earth becomes a common treasury again, as it must ... then
this enmity in all lands will cease." We still have much
to learn from the seventeenth century," Hill concluded.
These then were four seeds from the Blitz---fiery
anti-racism, fluid anti-patriarchy, airborne broadcasting of
social welfare, and these three requiring groundings in the earthly
commons of past, present, and future found it in the scholarly
husbandry of Christopher Hill. Seeds in 1940, they bloomed in
different futures. At an ignominious hour in Anglo-American history,
Christopher Hill reminds us of a fine one.
Yesterday's
Features
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaioui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|