The Well-Dressed Revolutionary: The Odyssey of Michel Pablo in an Age of Uprisings By Hall Greenland-London, Amsterdam: Resistance Books and International Institute for Research and Education, 2023, 376 pp

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Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:16-20 King James Version

“By your friends shall ye be known”

Proverb

“That, in a Europe blood-stained by more than four years of total war, crushed under the most hideous yoke of the imperialisms, whose prisons and concentration camps are gorged with the victims of the most savage and most systematic repression, our organization has been able to hold its European assembly, to work out and define its political line of struggle, of itself constitutes the most eloquent manifestation of its vitality, its internationalist spirit, and the revolutionary ardour by which it is animated.

Fourth International statement

“The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened,’ they have begun to get somewhat rotten.”

Leon Trotsky

Michel Pablo, a renegade from Trotskyism, died at the age of eighty-four in 1996. Pablo’s betrayal of his former political principles was aptly celebrated by the Greek ruling elite at the time. When he died, the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) government gave him a state funeral. As the proverb says, “By your friends shall ye be known”

Hall Greenland’s biography of Pablo is the first of its kind. Alex de Jong, writing for the Pabloite International Viewpoint, believes “He’s (Pablo) finally gotten the biography he deserves.”[1]De Jong is correct because this is a politically naive account and largely absolves Pablo of his treachery. Anyone expecting anything different from a member of the Green Party is going to be sadly disappointed.

However, Greenland’s book is not without some merit, tracing Pablo’s early political life. Pablo attended the founding conference of Leon Trotsky’s Fourth International and took part alongside fellow Trotskyists in the anti-Nazi resistance in wartime France. The book describes how many Trotskyists during the war years were living on borrowed time; not only were they hunted by the Gestapo, but they were murdered in droves by the Stalinists.

Many writers, including Greenland, imply that despite some heroics, Trotskyists played “little or no part in the struggle to project a revolutionary defeatist line,”

But as the Marxist David North points out, “ outside the Fourth International, there was no other tendency in the workers’ movement that opposed the imperialist war! The Trotskyists were hounded and persecuted by a “popular front” of fascists, “democratic” imperialists and Stalinists precisely because they upheld the banner of revolutionary defeatism and proletarian internationalism.

He continues, “The French Trotskyists Marc Bourhis and Pierre Gueguen were executed by the Nazis on October 22, 1941. Their comrade Jules Joffre was shot in 1942. In October 1943, the secretary of the French section, Marcel Hic, was arrested by the Gestapo, deported to Buchenwald and then to Dora, where he was murdered. Dozens of other French Trotskyists were arrested and also perished in the Nazi death camps. Despite the repression, the Trotskyist PCI published, starting in August 1940, seventy-three clandestine issues of its newspaper, La Verité, whose circulation was 15,000 copies.”[2]

Despite describing how the Stalinists murdered Trotskyists at will Greenland follows in the footsteps of every Stalinist, Pabloite and related middle-class radical organizations, and the intellectually corrupt academic milieu of pseudo-leftists who in the words of North “continue to ignore, deprecate and deny the overwhelming evidence that the penetration of the US Socialist Workers Party SWP by GPU agents played a critical role in the assassination of Trotsky. The role of Sylvia Callen (a.k.a. Sylvia Franklin, Sylvia Caldwell, Sylvia Doxsee), the personal secretary of James P. Cannon, as a GPU spy has been conclusively established. The same is true for Robert Sheldon Harte.”[3]

There are many problems with this book. The main one being is Greenland’s complete lack of understanding of the origins and nature of Pablo’s opportunism and subsequent betrayals caused by this opportunism. It is impossible to go into any great detail of Pabloite opportunism. For anyone interested, David North’s The Heritage We Defend is the best starting point.

As North points out in his book, the origins of Pablo’s opportunism began over the debate over the class nature of Yugoslavia and the Eastern European buffer states had become transformed, under the pressure of alien class forces, into a political platform for sweeping opportunist revisions of the basic Trotskyist program and its historical perspective. Pablo was the living embodiment of Trotsky’s sayings, “Without correct theory, there cannot be correct politics or more precisely, ‘every sociological definition is at the bottom a historical prognosis.”

North writes, “ The theories advanced by Pablo of ‘generations of deformed workers’ states” and “war-revolution” articulated the pessimism and demoralisation of broad layers of the Fourth International beneath the impact of unfavourable objective conditions. The political conceptions which were to become known as Pabloism emerged as an adaptation to the restabilization of capitalism, on the one hand, and to the apparent strengthening of the Stalinist bureaucracy, on the other.

Refracted through the political prism of the Cold War, the objective situation appeared to be dominated by the global conflict between the imperialist forces, spearheaded by the United States, and the Soviet Union and those labour and national revolutionary movements dominated by Stalinism. The real underlying conflict between the world bourgeoisie and the international proletariat—of which the Cold War was only a partial and distorted manifestation—receded from the political consciousness of those within the Fourth International who were reacting impressionistically to world events.[4]

Pablo’s capitulation to hostile class forces was not a pretty one to watch and had disastrous consequences for the working class. After he rejected revolutionary politics, Pablo, up to his death, was a supporter of ecology movements and women’s liberation. Along with his other renegades from Trotskyism, Ernest Mandel Pablo, he advocated not the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism but that workers should undertake a form of Self-Management to counteract capitalism’s attacks on them.

Pablo advocated ‘generalised self-management or direct democracy’. He utilised his friendship with the Algerian bourgeois nationalists to put this experiment into practice. As Peter Schwarz writes, “Pablo himself and other leading French Pabloites placed themselves unconditionally at the service of the Algerian Liberation Front (FLN), and took over organisational responsibilities, such as the printing of illegal newspapers, fake banknotes and counterfeit passports. They even set up a weapons factory in Morocco. After the victory of the FLN over the French colonial regime, Pablo entered into the service of the Algerian government. As special advisor to the head of state, Ben Bella, Pablo was responsible for the introduction in Algerian factories of the forms of “workers’ self-management” first initiated in post-war Yugoslavia.”[5]

In his book Self-management in the struggle for socialism, Pablo explains, “In the economic sphere, the purpose of the plan is to determine the general conditions under which the self-managed enterprises can act and coordinate their efforts for the ultimate interests of society as a whole. We use the term social rather than economic plan to stress the fact that the plan seeks the balanced overall evolution of the society towards socialism, and that this affects the determination of so-called economic aims; the real aim of the plan is to satisfy the real social needs of the working people and citizens, with decisions made democratically from the bottom up and vice-versa, in a process of interaction which is constantly readjusting the objectives sought, even while the plan is being executed.[6]

As the above quote shows, Pablo’s self-management plan would be introduced peacefully and with the full cooperation of the capitalists; at no stage did Pablo advocate, let alone attempt, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

Although Greenland’s book is the first and only biography of Pablo, it should not be the last. It is incumbent on the Trotskyist movement to write its biography of this renegade from Trotskyism to train and arm future revolutionaries as to the nature of Pablo’s opportunism and betrayals.

[1] The Revolutionary Life and Times of Michel Pablo-internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article8471

[2] The Fourth International in World War II-The Heritage we Defend-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/heritage/07.html

[3] The place of Security and the Fourth International in the history of the Trotskyist movement-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/08/14/dujg-a14.html

[4] The Nature of Pabloite Opportunism-The Heritage We Defend

[5] The politics of opportunism: the “radical left” in France-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/05/lft4-m22.html

[6] Self-management in the struggle for socialism-https://www.marxists.org/archive/pablo/1972/selfman/main.htm

The Library of Augusto Monterroso

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Posted bydantelianocuenta9 July, 2025Posted inArticles Tags:Dante Liano, Monterroso

Entering a writer’s library is like rummaging through the toolbox of a carpenter, a blacksmith, or a sculptor. Screwdrivers, hammers, saws, garlopa, chisel, drill, sandpaper, square and tape measure to work wood (oak, pine, walnut) with nails, screws, glue, varnish and lacquer, that concentrated universe where all the possibilities of manufacture and artefact reside. Only that in the extended world of bookcases, leaning against the wall as if they were going to fall, or as if they were going to tear down that wall, those other tools of the trade are lined up, nails and paper screws enclosed between the cardboard or leather spines. It would be an unbearable banality to say: “Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are”, because you read everything, regardless of interests and hobbies, obsessions and manias, obligations and duties. Despite everything, going through the books a writer has collected throughout their life can provide clues or coincidences, perhaps clarifications that help better enjoy their books.

Unless he is a travelling writer, one of those that Dr. Arévalo portrayed in his time: “Each country, a library.” All this comes to mind by reading Fragments of the Treasure Map, a beautiful title for a very special book. It was written by Leticia Sánchez Ruiz, a writer from Oviedo, after touring the library that Augusto Monterroso donated to the University of Oviedo. We are before a journey full of devotion and reverence, or, as the epigraph best recites: “with love, admiration and deep gratitude”. A curiosity: the author never met this admired author in person. He was about to meet him, he confesses, at the presentation of a volume in Salamanca. Only that he arrived late, when the event was over: it was the occasion when he was closest to Monterroso. In a way, the book is a way of establishing an implied, tacit, virtual relationship.

It all likely began with the awarding of the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature to Augusto Monterroso in the year 2000. That award was the most important one received by the Guatemalan author. His stay in Oviedo will have been very pleasant, and Monterroso will have been very well impressed. When he died in 2003, he left a legacy of volumes and manuscripts of great value. His wife, the writer Bárbara Jacobs, decided, in 2008, to donate most of these books to the University of Oviedo. These works travelled from the Chimalistac neighbourhood in Mexico City to Madrid by air. From Madrid, several trucks loaded the five tons of the legacy, and they were deposited in the Library of the El Milán Campus. There, in a vast wing of the enclosure, various shelves treasure years and years of shopping, reading, searching, entertainment, reflection, everything that an author’s library implies.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz leads us through a singular reading, the reading of several readings, especially those that Monterroso made, and only the title of a work would serve to make inferences. There are also annotated books that indicate Monterroso’s preferences, and there are manuscripts, letters, and photographs. Not for nothing, Sánchez Ruiz calls his adventure “fragments of the treasure map”, a quote that implies an evaluation. At the beginning, he relates that, once, that treasure ran the risk of dissolving into nothingness, as Tito relates in the story How I managed to get rid of five hundred books. That narrative contains a kind of joke, because the author says that one day, he decided to dismantle his collection of books. However, shortly after starting, he regretted it. The anecdote is invented, but it serves to exercise the sarcasm of the Guatemalan author. As far as is known, he never got rid of any book, but rather accumulated copies throughout his life.

Fragments tiptoe through the orderly shelves, which, despite this concert, form a labyrinth of symbols and signs, ready to be interpreted. The path between the volumes serves the author to weave a portrait of Tito Monterroso, which mixes biography, literary anecdotes and textual quotations, and tries to make that painting as faithful as possible to the original. One of the most interesting parts is found in the notes that Titus wrote on the pages of his favourite readings. It begins with a quote from Steiner: There are two types of people, those who read with a pencil in their hand and those who do not. “There’s nothing quite as fascinating as the marginal notes of great writers,” he says. Tito Monterroso was reading with a pencil in his hand. His stroke is shy, not very emphatic. Sánchez points out that the characteristic of Tito’s annotations is that, rather than commenting, he corrects. Who knows if that is the result of his first job in Mexico, proofreader at the Séneca publishing house. In any case, create a personal code: an X for translation errors; a question mark, like a raised eyebrow, in the face of the wrong or the incomprehensible; a bracket for what pleases him; a six-pointed star for the exceptional, and for phrases that mention flies, one of the Guatemalan author’s strange obsessions.

Monterroso points out, in Henry  James’s Notebook, the paragraphs in which the American complains about the excessive social life, which leaves him no time for writing, as it reflects, says Sánchez, something that Tito himself reflected on in the text Agenda de un escritor. In another book, Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes, Monterroso underlines the statement: “Flaubert did not have a very exact idea of what Emma Bovary’s eyes were like.” This leads him to seek, in the text, the verification of such an observation, and underlines the parts in which the protagonist’s eyes appear: “her black eyes seemed blacker”; “black in the shadow and from a dark blue to full light”; “although they were brown, they looked black.” This ambiguity would seem strange in an author who spent a week in search of the mot juste, but the doubt dissolves when one thinks that indeterminacy is one of the keys to literature. Monterroso also underlines the books of Borges and Cortázar, and one might think that the underlines, then, are exclamation marks, in the best sense of the term.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz points out, as an almost metaliterary curiosity, that in Tito’s library are the works of Arturo Monterroso and Porfirio Barba Jacob. He declares, with a certain astonishment, that Arturo Monterroso exists and that he is a Guatemalan writer. I can confirm that intuition: Arturo not only exists in reality, but he is an excellent writer, greatly admired by the countless students of his captivating literary workshops. His works are nothing like Tito’s, and that is very good, because it removes suspicions and exploitation of literary coincidences. De Barba Jacob indicates the almost coincidence with the name of Bárbara Jacobs, Monterroso’s wife. He completes the information by saying that Titus knew Barba Jacob, because he frequented his parents’ house, and that Titus admired him very much. There is much more. Porfirio Barba Jacob was a Colombian modernist who settled in Guatemala, was schooled there, was a friend and enemy of Rafael Arévalo Martínez, and deserved a biography written by Fernando Vallejo. Titus was right when he kept his books. Fragments of a Treasure Map contains much more information, and reading it reveals to us the world of Monterrosian and incites us to what would be the main activity: reading Tito’s work, or, what is almost the same, rereading it, because it is prose to be enjoyed over and over again.

La biblioteca de Tito

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Entrar en la biblioteca de un escritor asemeja a hurgar de escondidas en el bolsón de instrumentos de un carpintero, de un herrero, de un escultor. Destornilladores, martillos, serrucho, garlopa, formón, taladro, lija, escuadra y cinta métrica para trabajar madera (roble, pino, nogal) con clavos, tornillos, pegamento, barniz y laca, ese universo concentrado en donde residen todas las posibilidades de manufactura y artefacto. Solo que en el extendido mundo de las libreras, apoyadas en la pared como si se fueran a caer, o como si fueran a derribar ese muro, se alinean esas otras herramientas del oficio, clavos y tornillos de papel encerrados entre los lomos de cartón o piel. Sería una banalidad insoportable enunciar: “Dime qué lees y te diré quién eres”, porque se lee de todo, independientemente de los intereses y aficiones, de las obsesiones y manías, de las obligaciones y deberes. A pesar de todo, recorrer los libros que un escritor ha coleccionado en su vida puede proporcionar pistas o coincidencias, quizá esclarecimientos para gozar mejor la lectura de sus libros. A menos que sea un escritor viajero, de esos que el doctor Arévalo retrató en su tiempo: “Cada país, una biblioteca”.

Todo esto viene a cuento por la lectura de Fragmentos del mapa del tesoro, hermoso título para un libro muy especial. Lo escribió Leticia Sánchez Ruiz, escritora ovetense, luego de recorrer la biblioteca que Augusto Monterroso donó a la Universidad de Oviedo. Nos hallamos delante de un itinerario lleno de devoción y reverencia, o, como mejor recita el epígrafe: “con amor, admiración y profundo agradecimiento”. Una curiosidad: la autora nunca conoció en persona a ese autor tan admirado. Estuvo a punto de conocerlo, confiesa, en la presentación de un volumen en Salamanca. Solo que llegó tarde, cuando el acto había terminado: fue la ocasión en que estuvo más cerca de Monterroso. De alguna manera, el libro es una manera de establecer una relación sobreentendida, tácita, virtual.

Es probable que todo haya comenzado con la asignación del Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras a Augusto Monterroso, en el año 2000. Ese premio fue el más importante recibido por el autor guatemalteco. Su estancia en Oviedo habrá sido muy agradable y Monterroso habrá quedado muy bien impresionado. Cuando murió, en 2003, dejó un legado de volúmenes y manuscritos de gran valor. Su esposa, la escritora Bárbara Jacobs decidió, en 2008, donar la mayor parte de esos libros a la Universidad de Oviedo. Esas obras viajaron del barrio de Chimalistac, en la Ciudad de México, a Madrid, por vía aérea. De Madrid, varios camiones cargaron las cinco toneladas del legado y fueron depositados en la Biblioteca del Campus de El Milán. Allí, en una vasta ala del recinto, diversos estantes atesoran años y años de compras, de lecturas, de búsquedas, de entretenimiento, de reflexión, de todo aquello que implica la biblioteca de un autor.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz nos conduce por una lectura singular, la lectura de varias lecturas, sobre todo, las que Monterroso realizó, y solo el título de una obra serviría para hacer inferencias. Hay, además, libros anotados que nos indican las preferencias de Monterroso y hay manuscritos, cartas, fotografías. No por nada, Sánchez Ruiz denomina a su aventura “fragmentos del mapa del tesoro”, una cita que implica una evaluación. Al principio, relata que, alguna vez, ese tesoro corrió el riesgo de disolverse en la nada, según relata Tito en el cuento Cómo logré deshacerme de quinientos libros. Esa narración contiene una especie de broma, pues el autor dice que, un buen día, decidió desbaratar su colección de libros. Sin embargo, poco tiempo después de empezar, se arrepintió. La anécdota es inventada, pero sirve para ejercitar el sarcasmo del autor guatemalteco. Que se sepa, nunca se deshizo de ningún libro, sino más bien acumuló ejemplares a lo largo de su vida.

Fragmentos recorre, de puntillas, los estantes ordenados, que, no obstante ese concierto, forman un laberinto de símbolos y signos, listos para ser interpretados. El camino entre los rimeros de volúmenes sirve a la autora para tejer un retrato de Tito Monterroso, que mezcla biografía, anécdotas literarias y citas textuales, y trata de que esa pintura sea lo más fiel posible al original. Una de las partes más interesantes se encuentra en las anotaciones que Tito escribió en las páginas de sus lecturas favoritas.

Inicia con una cita de Steiner: hay dos tipos de personas, las que leen con un lápiz en la mano y las que no. “No hay nada tan fascinante como las notas marginales de los grandes escritores”, dice. Obviamente, Tito Monterroso leía con un lápiz en la mano. Su trazo es tímido, poco enfático. Sánchez señala que la característica de las anotaciones de Tito consiste en que más que comentar, corrige. Quién sabe si ese es el resultado de su primer trabajo en México, corrector de pruebas en la editorial Séneca. De todas formas, crea un código personal: una equis para los errores de traducción; un signo de interrogación, como una ceja levantada, ante lo erróneo o lo incomprensible; un corchete para lo que le agrada; una estrella de seis puntas para lo excepcional, y para las frases que mencionan a las moscas, una de las extrañas obsesiones del autor guatemalteco.

Monterroso señala, en Cuaderno de notas, de Henry James, los párrafos en los que el norteamericano se queja de la excesiva vida social, que no le deja tiempo para la escritura, en cuanto refleja, dice Sánchez, algo que el mismo Tito reflexionaba en el texto Agenda de un escritor. En otro libro, El loro de Flaubert, de Julian Barnes, Monterroso subraya la afirmación: “Flaubert no tenía una idea muy exacta de cómo eran los ojos de Emma Bovary”. Esto lo lleva a buscar, en el texto, la comprobación de tal observación, y subraya las partes en las que aparecen los ojos de la protagonista: “sus ojos negros parecían más negros”; “negros en la sombra y de un azul oscuro a plena luz”; “aunque eran pardos parecían negros”. Parecería extraña esta ambigüedad en un autor que se pasaba una semana a la búsqueda de la mot juste, mas la duda se disuelve cuando se piensa que la indeterminación es una de las claves de la literatura. Monterroso también subraya los libros de Borges y de Cortázar y uno podría pensar que los subrayados, entonces, son signos de admiración, en el mejor sentido del término.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz señala, como una curiosidad casi metaliteraria, que en la biblioteca de Tito se encuentran las obras de Arturo Monterroso y de Porfirio Barba Jacob. Declara, con un cierto asombro, que Arturo Monterroso existe realmente y que se trata de un escritor guatemalteco. Puedo confirmar esa intuición: Arturo no solo existe en la realidad, sino que es un excelente escritor, muy admirado por los innumerables alumnos de sus cautivadores talleres literarios. Sus obras no se parecen en nada a las de Tito, y eso está muy bien, porque aleja sospechas y aprovechamientos de literarias casualidades. De Barba Jacob indica la casi coincidencia con el nombre de Bárbara Jacobs, la esposa de Monterroso. Completa la información diciendo que Tito conoció a Barba Jacob, porque este frecuentaba la casa de sus padres, y que Tito lo admiraba mucho. Hay mucho más. Porfirio Barba Jacob fue un modernista colombiano que se estableció en Guatemala, hizo escuela allí, fue amigo y enemigo de Rafael Arévalo Martínez, y mereció una biografía escrita por Fernando Vallejo. Tenía razón Tito cuando guardaba sus libros. Fragmentos de un mapa del tesoro contiene mucha más información, y su lectura nos revela el mundo monterrosiano y nos incita a lo que sería la actividad principal: leer la obra de Tito, o, lo que es casi lo mismo, releerla, porque es prosa para degustar una y otra vez.

The Fiery Spirits: Popular Protest, Parliament and the English Revolution by John Rees, Hardcover – 22 April 2025, Verso publication

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 “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Tom Paine

“The sensible way to proceed — I think this is how Marx and Engels proceeded — is to develop a methodological view: historical materialism or dialectical materialism, whatever you want to call it. Then, you approach any material with that framework in mind, but you have to be able to go where the material leads you. Engels warned that you cannot start forcing the historical material into a ready-made format. I took that approach with my book. Of course, I had read a great deal of secondary material, but I wanted to go where the historical archives and contemporary material would take me. I did not wish to influence my work, nor did I intend to engage in debates with other Marxists or currents, in order to determine where history would go. After you have done that, you can demarcate it and illuminate it by — in a relatively minor way — dealing with other currents and approaches. What makes something Marxist is that it is the application of that method. “

John Rees

John Rees’s Fiery Spirits offers a new perspective on the English Revolution.  Fiery Spirits establishes Rees as the leading contemporary continuator of the Marxist tradition, initiated by Christopher Hill and Brian Manning in writing the history of the 17th-century English revolution.

The latest book complements both Rees’s PhD thesis and his The Leveller Revolution, as well as his most recent publication, Marxism and the English Revolution. Rees is a gifted historian, and his latest book is well-written and thoroughly researched. It neither downplays nor overplays the Fiery Spirits, presenting a relatively objective assessment of their role in the English Revolution.[1]

Like the great historian Christopher Hill, Rees is sensitive enough to his historical sources to detect the social currents that brought people of diverse social backgrounds into struggle against the king, and well-grounded enough in history to identify new and revolutionary ideas in the curious and archaic guise in which they appeared. The Fiery Spirits, who were some of the revolution’s ideologues, ransacked the Bible and half-understood historical precedent to justify some theory that explained their actions.

Rees’s new perspective centres on a small group of highly influential MPs. These “fiery spirits” played a significant role in shaping the course of the English bourgeois revolution, which ultimately led to the establishment of an English republic. Through their radical parliamentarianism, combined with mass protest, these revolutionaries pushed the revolution forward to its conclusion.

Rees is careful not to elevate these Fiery Spirits above the role played by Oliver Cromwell, who was, after all, the leader of the English revolution. As the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky once wrote, “ Cromwell was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding back at anything. This must be learnt from him, and the dead lion of the seventeenth century is, in this sense, immeasurably greater than many living dogs.”[2]

One of the main tasks Rees had was to rescue these “Fiery Spirits” from what E.P. Thompson once wrote was the “condensation of history”. They have been buried under a large number of dead dogs, and it is to Rees’s credit that he has rescued them. Henry Marten, Peter Wentworth, Alexander Rigby, and others deserve their place in history, and this work traces the radicalism of these Fiery Spirits in some cases back to the reign of Elizabeth I.

Dominic Alexander makes an interesting point in his review of Rees’s book: He writes, “In one sense, this partial continuity is evidence of how deeply the causative factors of the English Revolution were ingrained in the nation’s history. The conflict was not, as many revisionist historians have tended to argue, a mere accidental product of contingent events and personalities. The Fiery Spirits is, however, not so much a riposte to that vein of argument as it is a response to a more interesting one about the autonomy of the political sphere in the unfolding of the Revolution. The long pre-history of the parliamentary opposition faction is one proof that even granting the relative independence of the political sphere, causation there also runs deep into the history of early modern England”.[3]

Rees’s book presents a relatively orthodox Marxist understanding of the English bourgeois revolution and its leading actors. It is therefore perhaps surprising how little Rees uses the work of Leon Trotsky; there is no direct quote of Trotsky in any of Rees’s latest books. For any Marxist, Trotsky should be the basic starting point for any analysis of revolutions and their actors.

Trotsky writes, “The English revolution of the seventeenth century, precisely because it was a great revolution shattering the nation to the bottom, affords a clear example of this alternating dual power, with sharp transitions in the form of civil war. The English Revolution of the seventeenth century, precisely because it was a profound revolution that shook the nation to its core, affords a clear example of this alternating dual power, with sharp transitions in the form of civil war. Initially, the royal power, resting on the privileged classes or the upper echelons of these classes – the aristocrats and bishops – is opposed by the bourgeoisie and the circles of the squirearchy that are closely associated with it. The government of the bourgeoisie is the Presbyterian Parliament supported by the City of London.” [4]For Rees, this “dual Power began in the very early part of the 17th century.

The hallmark of a good book is that even seasoned readers who have studied this period for ages can learn something new. Rees presents new material that highlights the extraordinary level of factionalism and revolt that preceded the outbreak of revolution. From an early period, the Fiery Spirits led this rebellion. As Alexander writes, “The connections between the activities of the radicals in the Commons and the popular movement became, as Rees shows, the key dynamic driving events in the years 1640-1. The fiery spirits were indeed a minority in the Commons. Still, the weight of popular support behind their moves, such as Henry Marten’s during the struggle over the attainder of the King’s chief advisor Earl Strafford, meant that, as in this instance, ‘the course of events proceeded on the path that Marten advocated, not that which Pym still trod’ (pp.163-4). Indeed, during this confrontation, which led to Strafford’s execution, Pym lost control of parliament. Popular mobilisations against Strafford made the difference; one MP wrote, ‘unless this Earl be sacrificed to public discontentment I see not what hopes we have of peace’ (p.165).[5]

The Great historian E. H Carr was fond of saying, “Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.” This maxim should be applied to Rees. The Fiery Spirits is, without doubt, a significant addition to our understanding of the English bourgeois revolution. It contains new detailed research and reinterprets significant episodes and stages of events. Rees recalibrates our understanding of the revolution from a historical materialist standpoint. However, to what extent you could describe Rees as a revisionist is open to conjecture.

When I asked AI this question, its reply was “while John Rees engages with historical revisionism to some extent, his primary framework is that of Marxist historiography, which is distinct from the broader category of revisionist historians who challenge traditional interpretations.”  Not much help.

There is something Jesuitical about Rees’s ability to write history from a relatively orthodox Marxist perspective while retaining the political outlook of a pseudo-left. He appears to retain the ability to compartmentalise his mind and pursue a scientific Marxist approach to history, up to the point where his radical politics, to some extent, draw the line. He is perhaps aided by an approach that was further encouraged by the extreme specialisation of academic life, which enables him to concentrate on very narrow areas of history that never bring him into direct conflict with his political organisation, Counterfire, on political questions.

Speaking of which, in a previous article, I wrote this: “Rees was a member of the SWP before leaving to found the Counterfire group in 2010, as a significant split from the SWP. Counterfire specialises in providing a platform for the remnants and detritus of pseudo-left politics. The group is thoroughly convinced of the power and longevity of capitalism and is hostile to the working class and genuine socialism. Counterfire and Rees’s occasional use of Marxist phrases, and even rarer references to the Russian revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, are for the sole purpose of opposing the independent political mobilisation of the working class on a revolutionary and internationalist programme. Counterfire’s self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” are bitterly opposed to the orthodox Marxism represented by the World Socialist Web Site, the Socialist Equality Parties, and the International Committee of the Fourth International. “[6]

While I do not personally subscribe to Rees’s political outlook, I can nonetheless recommend this book as highly as his previous work. Rees is a historian well worth reading, and it should be interesting to see what he is working on next. As Ann Talbot wrote about Hill which equally applies to Rees “A historian that stands head and shoulders above his detractors and his books deserve to be read and reread, and if with a critical eye, it should always be with the knowledge that his limitations and faults as much as his great historical insights and innovations are the product of his time. He may be bettered, but never dismissed, and only bettered by those who have studied him closely.[7]

[1] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/10465/1/HIS_thesis_Rees_Thesis_2014.pdf

[2] Two traditions: the seventeenth-century revolution and Chartism-https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch06.htm

[3] https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-fiery-spirits-popular-protest-parliament-and-the-english-revolution-book-review/

[4] Chapter 11 of The History of the Russian Revolution (1931)

[5] https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-fiery-spirits-popular-protest-parliament-and-the-english-revolution-book-review/

[6] https://atrumpetofsedition.org/2024/09/18/marxism-and-the-english-revolution-john-rees-whalebone-press-2024-15-00/

[7] “These the times … this the man”: an appraisal of historian Christopher Hill-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/03/hill-m25.html

The Holocaust: A New History Paperback – 1 Jun. 2009 by Doris Bergen – The History Press

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In the opinion, not of evil men, but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can be helpful to. . .

John Stuart Mill

“Palestine appears a tragic mirage, Biro-bidjan a bureaucratic farce. The Kremlin refuses to accept refugees. The “anti-fascist” congresses of old ladies and young careerists do not have the slightest importance. Now more than ever, the fate of the Jewish people—not only their political but also their physical fate—is indissolubly linked with the emancipating struggle of the international proletariat. Only audacious mobilization of the workers against reaction, creation of workers’ militia, direct physical resistance to the fascist gangs, increasing self-confidence, activity and audacity on the part of all the oppressed can provoke a change in the relation of forces, stop the world wave of fascism, and open a new chapter in the history of humanity.”

Leon Trotsky

“Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.”

― Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question

This book is not without merit. Her study is well-researched using new sources which draw on the testimonies of both survivors and eyewitnesses, as well as rare photographs, to reveal the global nature of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis.

Bergen’s book adds to an already very crowded market. In his excellent review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, the Marxist writer David North made the following perceptive point: “For all that has been said and written about the Holocaust, it remains a strangely obscure event. It is true that a vast amount of empirical data about the Holocaust has been collected. We possess detailed information about how the Nazis organised and executed their “Final Solution,” the murder of six million European Jews. And yet the issues that are central to an understanding of the Holocaust—its historical origins, political causes and, finally, its place in the history of the twentieth century—have, with very few exceptions, been dealt with poorly. This is, really, an intolerable state of affairs. The one basic question raised by the Holocaust, “Why did it happen?” is precisely that to which it is most difficult to obtain an answer.”[1]

I want to say that Bergen attempts to answer the question “Why did it happen posed by North, but she does not even come close. Bergen’s work is strong on empirical data and incorporates the ‘voices’ of the Holocaust, but light on analysis. She says next to nothing about the betrayals of the leadership of both the Stalinist German Communist Party and the German Social Democratic Party, which allowed not only Hitler to come to power without a shot being fired and led to the crushing of the workers’ movement, which was a prerequisite for the Nazis to murder 6 million jews.

Given the extent of her research and the fact that she makes little attempt to examine the betrayals of Stalinism and Social Democracy, it is not surprising that Bergen claims that there was little resistance to the rise of the Nazis to power. Daniel Goldhagen, who praises the book on its back cover, makes a similar point in his book.

Goldhagen writes: The Nazi German revolution … was an unusual revolution in that, domestically, it was being realised—the repression of the political left in the first few years notwithstanding—without massive coercion and violence. … By and large, it was a peaceful revolution willingly acquiesced to by the German people. Domestically, the Nazi German revolution was, on the whole, consensual.

David North replies, “Until I read those words, I had been inclined to look upon Goldhagen as a rather sad and somewhat pathetic figure, a young man whose study of the fate of European Jewry had left him intellectually, if not emotionally, traumatised. However, in this paragraph, something alarming emerges. Except for its treatment of the Jews, the Nazi “revolution”—Goldhagen does not use the word “counterrevolution”—was a rather benign affair. His reference to the “repression of the political left” is inserted between hyphens, suggesting that it was not all too big a deal. The claim that the Nazi conquest of power was “a peaceful revolution willingly acquiesced to by the German people” is a despicable falsification. What Goldhagen refers to as the “repression of the political left” consisted, in fact, of the physical destruction of mass socialist parties that represented the hopes and aspirations of millions of workers and the best elements of the German intelligentsia for a just and decent world. German socialism was not only a political movement: it was, for all its internal contradictions, both the inspirer and expression of a flowering of human intellect and culture. Its destruction required the barbaric methods in which the Nazis excelled.”[2]

Given the right-wing nature of Goldhagen’s work, if this were my book, I would not have him anywhere near it. There is no need for me to examine Goldhagen’s previous historiography on the matter of Genocide, as this has been more than ably covered by others, such as David North and Daniel Finkelstein.[3] It would, however, be remiss of me not to discuss recent pronouncements by several historians, including Goldhagen, on the ongoing Genocide carried out by the fascist Israeli government in Gaza.

In a recent well-written and thoughtful article, the historian Shira Klein wrote, “A chasm has formed between Holocaust scholars concerning Israel/Palestine, deepening immeasurably since 7 October 2023. Unlike previous controversies in the field, the divide is not just historical or methodological; it revolves around academics’ role in the world today, particularly the public stand they choose to take on Palestine/Israel and Zionism. Two main camps have formed. Put reductively, one camp defends Israel, while the other defends Palestinians, although differences between individual scholars within each camp make for more of a spectrum than a clear-cut divide. How, despite a diversity of ideas and foci within each camp, did two academic-political antipodes solidify over several decades, and how has 7 October and the ensuing war widened the rift between them?[4]

Klein makes the point that scholars supporting Israeli war aggression is nothing new and dates back to the illegal formation of the Israeli state.  What is a relatively new phenomenon is the equating of criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza with anti-Semitism.  One of the leaders of this new movement is Daniel Goldhagen. Goldhagen, following the 11 September 2001 attack, wrote that “the internet and television’s biased stories and inflammatory images of Palestinian suffering” were nothing but “globalised antisemitism.” According to Goldhagen. Europe had exported its classical racist and Nazi anti-semitism.to Arab countries, which they applied to Israel and Jews in general.” Then the Arab countries re-exported the new hybrid demonology back to Europe and, using the United Nations and other international institutions, to different countries around the world.”15 In 2006, while Israel was curtailing Palestinians’ movement with a massive separation barrier, Goldhagen contended that “hostility to Israel is not, and never was, based on Israel’s policies.”[5]

In his book The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide, David North opposes vehemently the slander that opposition to Israel’s genocide is antisemitic, saying this claim is absurd, given the significant participation of so many Jewish people in the anti-genocide protests—including, one could add, a developing movement within Israel itself.

He also points out the brazen hypocrisy of the howls of “antisemitism” given the “open alliance of the imperialist powers with the regime in Ukraine, whose principal national hero, Stepan Bandera, was a vicious fascist and antisemite, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews of Ukraine. The establishment of the Zionist state was not only a tragedy for the Palestinians; it was, and is, a tragedy for the Jewish people as well. Zionism never was, and is not today, a solution to the historic oppression and persecution of the Jewish people.”

He quotes the assessment of Leon Trotsky, who warned in 1938 that the Jews faced the threat of “physical extermination” in the coming war, and declared in July 1940, one year after World War II had begun: “ The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it was: a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. … Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system”.[6]

Given that Bergen has not elaborated her position openly in the press as regards the Israeli genocide, it is perhaps not surprising that she has not distanced herself from Goldhagen’s blatant right-wing stance.

She did, however, sign The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which, according to its website, “ Is a tool to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism as it manifests in countries around the world today. It includes a preamble, definition, and a set of 15 guidelines that provide detailed guidance for those seeking to recognise antisemitism to craft responses. It was developed by a group of scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to address a growing challenge: providing clear guidance on how to identify and combat antisemitism while protecting free expression. Initially signed by 210 scholars, it now has around 370 signatories.[7]

[1] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[2] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[3] https://newleftreview.org/issues/i224/articles/norman-finkelstein-daniel-jonah-goldhagen-s-crazy-thesis-a-critique-of-hitler-s-willing-executioners.pdf

[4]  The Growing Rift between Holocaust Scholars over Israel/

Palestine http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14623528.2024.2448061

[5] Daniel Goldhagen, “The Radical Politics of Islamic Fundamentalism,” SPME, 13 March 2006, https://spme.org/

[6] The Only Salvation for the Jews (July 1940) The Militant, Vol. X No. 35, 31 August 1946, p.www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1946/v10n35/trotsky.htm

[7] https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/

Diary Of A Nobody

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The last three months have been significant in the life of the Blog, particularly in terms of the massive increase in hits the blog has received. For the first time in its history, it has had over 20,000 hits per month for the last three months, with one day last week reaching 2,500 hits.

Given the overtly political nature of the blog, the significance of this development is not just due to the Marxist nature of the articles or the increase in the number of articles posted; it reflects a massive radicalisation that is taking place in the working class and sections of the middle class.

Currently, aside from writing about contemporary developments, I am working on two projects. Firstly, it involves rewriting previously posted articles. Given that there are over 500 articles on the blog, spanning approximately 15 years, this will take some time. The second project is to undertake substantial work on the Raphael Samuel book.  The book project was a byproduct of my decision to abandon a proposed Master’s in History at Birkbeck University. Aside from the prohibited cost, spending a year on a so-called expensive foundation course would not have significantly raised the level I had already achieved by writing the blog.

Books Purchased

1.   Enemy feminism- Sophie Lewis

2.   Scam- Mark Bo

3.   The Class Struggle in Greece – G E M de Ste Croix

4.   The British Marxist Historians-Harvey Kaye

5.   A People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League-Geoff Brown

6.   Strangers and Intimates-Tiffany Jenkins

7.   A Bright Cold Day-Nathan Waddell

Articles

1.   Vote No to CWU leaders’ pact with Kretinsky: a blueprint for brutal restructuring-https:www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/07/25/jxvd-j25.html

Canceled Lives: My Father, My Scandal, and Me by Blake Bailey-Skyhorse- April 2025-192 Pages

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“Canceled Lives tells the whole sad story and the personal pain Bailey suffered. His publisher had no right to do what they did to him. This book, about accusations of terrible behaviour and their effect on a book and its author, goes beyond memoir and reveals the profound harm such assertions can cause. It deserves a wide and discerning audience.”

Martin Garbus, Prominent First Amendment Lawyer

“I heed the cry of the women insulted and injured. However, I am also anxious about the nature of the tribunal that is adjudicating these charges. As a civil libertarian, I am anxious because there doesn’t seem to be a tribunal. What I see instead is a publicised accusation instantly followed by peremptory punishment.

Philip Roth

“The history of my discontent, as I remember it”

Philip Roth

“The purging of Bailey’s book sets a sinister example, intended to intimidate artists, biographers and scholars alike. The message being sent is clear: any influential figure who rubs up against establishment public opinion can be denounced and dismissed in like manner.”

David Walsh

When Blake Bailey’s excellent 900-page biography of the writer Philip Roth was published in 2021, it should have been the standard work on Roth’s life for some time to come. Unfortunately for Bailey, we were already amidst the #MeToo movement’s vilification of Roth, his work and worldview. Roth was cognisant of the fact that some women had been abused, saying, “I heed the cry of the women insulted and injured. But I am also made anxious by the nature of the tribunal that is adjudicating these charges. I am made anxious, as a civil libertarian, because there doesn’t seem to be a tribunal. What I see instead is a publicised accusation instantly followed by peremptory punishment.”[1]

Bailey became a casualty in this war against Roth for essentially defending Roth’s right to his worldview. Bailey fell afoul of his publishers’ “morals charge” after accusations of sexual abuse were levelled at him via social media. Some of Bailey’s former eighth-grade students at Lusher High School in New Orleans came forward with allegations that he had groomed them for sex. Two women, including one of his former students at Lusher, subsequently accused him of rape.

Although no formal charges were made against Bailey, it did not stop his so-called friends in the literary scene, who “fell over one another”, disassociating themselves from Bailey. His biography was then pulped by his publisher, W.W.Norton, an act that is akin to book burning carried out by the Nazis in the 1930s.

As David Walsh wrote, “ In a significant act of censorship, with chilling implications for democratic rights, publisher W.W. Norton has announced its decision to “permanently” remove Blake Bailey’s biography of American novelist Philip Roth (1933–2018) from print. Several individuals have accused Bailey of sexual wrongdoing, including rape, dating back to 2003. None of them has come forward with any evidence to back up the claims. Bailey’s 880-page book, well-received critically and considered one of the essential works of the year in its field, will be pulped. Norton also reported its dropping of Bailey’s 2014 memoir. In a statement dripping with hypocrisy, Norton’s president, Julia A. Reidhead, asserted that “Mr Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses.” Overnight, Bailey has become a “non-person.” he has ceased to exist.[2]

Most of Bailey’s friends and fellow writers stayed silent when he was made a “non-person. It was not until the World Socialist Website marshalled some resistance that people started to speak out. Several prominent writers, historians, and film people contacted by the WSWS condemned W. W. Norton’s treatment of Bailey. Novelist, memoirist and short-story writer James Morrison wrote, “Even if Blake Bailey were charged, tried, and convicted of a crime, it would still be indefensible for W. W. Norton to pulp his book. Can American readers not have the option to think for themselves? The “#MeToo movement” might have accomplished something if it had facilitated the prosecution of cases involving harassment or assault. Still, it has resulted in something like its opposite: a bizarre spectacle of social panic, moral shaming, and public burning, based on unfounded accusations in the media. Norton’s cancellation of Bailey’s book is not the action of a free institution in a democratic society. It is the procedure of craven functionaries deep in a politburo.[3]

Author, editor and blogger Kathleen Spaltro said, “Thomas Aquinas clarified that the aesthetic value of art has nothing whatever to do with whether the artist is a good person. The artist may be a good person, or not, but that is the moral question faced by the artist as a person, not as an artist.

Film critic, film historian and author Jonathan Rosenbaum: Cancel culture, perhaps the most poisonous and befuddled offshoot of “political correctness,” is a totalitarian expression of impotence, not any real exercise of political power. It’s a way of saying that because one can’t defeat racism or misogyny or abuse in the real world, at its sources, one can pretend to defeat it symbolically, by canceling words, sounds, images and other forms of communication, thus pretending that the people and communicators one disapproves of can be “canceled” (i.e., ignored and suppressed). It’s an insult to the principles of free expression that can only be practised by defeated bigots who’ve given up on free expression and democratic processes, and by gamblers who prefer to cheat.”

It took a while for Bailey to understand what had happened to him. Canceled Lives is his attempt to process and collect his thoughts and to answer his detractors. Patrick Mullins describes the new book’s journey: “Originally titled Repellent, it was scheduled to be published in April 2023. Speaking circumspectly, Bailey has explained that the executors of Roth’s estate, Andrew Wylie and Julia Golier, objected to the inclusion of Bailey’s conversations with Roth in the manuscript, arguing that the publication of these exchanges, which supposedly made up the bulk of the book, would violate the agreement Bailey signed as Roth’s authorised biographer. And so Repellent was reworked, becoming Cancelled Lives, and Bailey’s dealings with Roth were transformed into an account of his father’s death braided with chapters narrating Bailey’s disgrace.”[4]

There are many themes running through Canceled Lives. One being Bailey’s sexual activity. Bailey was no angel, and some of his relationships were questionable at best. There seems to be a period in his life where his penis did most of the thinking, but this does not mean he deserved what happened to him.

He writes, “The worst of what I was accused of wasn’t true. I did nothing illegal and nothing vicious. I’m not a rapist, I did not deliberately groom anybody; these were long-time friends. You have enterprising reporters calling hundreds of your former students, hundreds of the people you’ve mentioned in your acknowledgements. People, for various reasons, are eager to get their shots”.

A strong theme of the book is death. Bailey discusses the life and early death of his older brother, Scott, who committed suicide in his early thirties after a life of drug addiction and crime. Bailey harshly describes Scott’s suicide as doing “himself and his loved ones a favour ”. Bailey spent a significant amount of time researching his book on Roth, so much so that he must have ended up with deep feelings for Roth.

He tells how he witnessed Roth’s final moments alongside Roth’s former lovers and closest friends surrounding his hospital deathbed. It is not surprising that the book provides little information about his relationship with Roth. Given how much he had to process in his own life and to come to terms with so many devastating attacks on him. Perhaps it is just as well, as he was while Roth was still alive, unable due to disclosure limitations imposed by the Roth estate on Bailey.

As Walsh intimates in his work on Bailey, most of the attacks on Bailey are less about his sexual proclivities and more to do with the fact that he wrote a perceptively objective biography of Roth and, in the end, defended both Roth and his political worldview against his detractors in the #MeToo movement.

In a recent video call, David Walsh spoke with Bailey about his new book, “The Sexual Witch Hunt,” and democratic rights, as well as briefly discussing the subject matter of his various biographies. Bailey thanked the World Socialist Website for its support, saying, “You could be speaking for me, and you did, after everything blew up. I was enormously grateful for the courage of it. Very few people spoke up. People wrote me private notes expressing their outrage, or at least chagrin, about how viciously and relentlessly I was attacked. But I can’t think of anyone offhand who was as outspoken publicly as you were. And if I didn’t say it emphatically enough before, let me say now that I was very grateful for that.[5]

It is striking that the Trotskyist movement has been left to lead the defence of Bailey and his democratic rights in the pages of the World Socialist Website. The campaign to defend Bailey has cut across the right-wing attack on him led by the #MeToo movement. It is worth noting that the movement has been ably assisted by numerous pseudo-left media organisations that have joined the attacks on both Roth and Bailey. These so-called leftists have shown their support for banning books and removing them from bookshelves. The next logical step for these organisations will be to join the book burning.

Bailey’s new book, Cancelled Lives—My Father, My Scandal, and Me, is a stunning response to his detractors and slanderers, and it deserves a broad audience. Unlike too many of the #MeToo victims, Bailey has decided to fight and set the record straight. This is an entirely welcome and healthy development, a contribution to the cleansing of the cultural atmosphere. Bailey has the right to see the world as he sees fit.

[1] www.the-tls.com/lives/autobiography/canceled-lives-blake-bailey-book-review-nat-segnit

[2] Book-burning comes to America-https:ww.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/04/29/bail-a29.html

[3] Writers, biographers protest W.W. Norton’s decision to “permanently” remove Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth from print-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/04/bail-m04.html

[4] Okay, you’re hired-insidestory.org.au/okay-youre-hired/

[5] A conversation with Blake Bailey, Philip Roth biographer and author of Cancelled Lives: My Father, My Scandal, and Me: “I said … I’m not going to take this lying down”

Hiroshima by John Hersey – Penguin Modern Classics 208 pages 2001

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“Such clouds had risen that there was a sort of twilight around … The day grew darker and darker,”

John Hersey 

“In two calculated blows, with two atomic bombs, American imperialism killed or injured half a million human beings. The young and the old, the child in the cradle and the aged and infirm, the newly married, the well and the sick, men, women, and children—they all had to die in two blows because of a quarrel between the imperialists of Wall Street and a similar gang in Japan.”

James P Cannon[1]

The appearance of people was … well, they all had skin blackened by burns. … They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance, you couldn’t tell whether you were looking at them from in front or back. … Many of them died along the road—I can still picture them in my mind, like walking ghosts. … They didn’t look like people of this world.

An eyewitness

“The question now being asked, quietly but nervously, in capitals around the world is, where will this end? The once-unthinkable outcome—actual armed conflict between the United States and China—now appears possible for the first time since the end of the Korean War. In other words, we are confronting the prospect of not just a new Cold War, but a hot one as well.”

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

The 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima will be commemorated on August 6, 2025. This deliberate act of imperialist genocide will be forever etched in the memory of hundreds of millions of people as a war crime and a day that will live in infamy. However, despite the significant passage of time, the threat of global annihilation has stayed with us, and it is now openly talked about amongst the ruling elites around the world.[2]

Hiroshima is an extraordinarily well-written and vivid account of the complete and total annihilation of the city of Hiroshima. Hersey’s stunning piece of journalism reads like a novel. It is not surprising that it was voted the most important piece of American journalism of the 20th Century and deserves a wide readership as we come up to this 80th anniversary. Hersey was a pioneer of “New Journalism”, a movement that included the use of literary techniques in complex pieces in journalism. With the destruction from the bomb so complete, it must have crossed Hersey’s mind if there were any stories left to tell? Hersey answers in the affirmative. It is far from an easy read.

As Will Hersey (no relation) testifies, “It took me until this January, three-and-a-half decades later, to steel myself to find out. Hersey’s 30,000-word account of what happened to six survivors from moments just before 8.15 am on 5 August 1945 when the US Air Force B-29 Superfortress bomber “Enola Gay” dropped its 9,700lb uranium bomb — somewhat grotesquely nicknamed “Little Boy” — is told almost entirely through their eyes: “Dr Fujii hardly had time to think that he was dying before he realised that he was alive, squeezed tightly by two long timbers across his chest, like a morsel suspended between two huge chopsticks.”[3]

Most of these stories were never told straight away. In the aftermath of the dropping of the bombs, the U.S ruling elite was mindful of the international reaction. Newspaper Editors and columnists throughout America denounced the silence and secrecy that had shrouded the aftermath of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One editorial in the Monterey Peninsula Herald in Northern California called the US government “amoral fools”.

The government issued a complete media blackout and cover-up that even the Nazis would have approved of. No photographs or details of the murderous casualties were allowed to be published. Any reports had to be filed through the War Department. When enquiries were made as to whether the American bourgeoisie had dropped two atom bombs on unarmed civilians, the bomb was downplayed as a “labour-saving device” to speed up the end of the war. When reports came in that people were dying from radiation, they were dismissed as “Tokyo tales”.

This suppression of what happened in Hiroshima could not last for long, and as Hersey’s article came out, it made a massive impact. Newsstands quickly sold out. Excerpts ran in newspapers around the world. Hersey only allowed the serialisation on the condition that newspapers make contributions to the American Red Cross after publication. The article was read on the radio, in its entirety, over four consecutive nights. Albert Einstein is said to have ordered 1,000 copies for distribution.

As Steve Rothman writes, “The direct effect of ‘Hiroshima’ on the American public is difficult to gauge. No mass movement formed as a result of the article, no laws were passed, and the reaction to the piece probably didn’t have any specific impact on U. S. military strategy or foreign policy. But certainly the vivid depictions in the book must have been a strong contributor to a pervasive sense of dread (and guilt) about nuclear weaponry felt by many Americans ever since August 1945.”

The only real opposition to the war crime came from the Marxists with James P Cannon, leader of the American Socialist Workers Party, writing, “In two calculated blows, with two atomic bombs, American imperialism killed or injured half a million human beings. The young and the old, the child in the cradle and the aged and infirm, the newly married, the well and the sick, men, women and children—they all had to die in two blows because of a quarrel between the imperialists of Wall Street and a similar gang in Japan… What an unspeakable atrocity! What a shame has come to America, the America that once placed in New York harbour a Statue of Liberty, enlightening the world. Now the world recoils in horror from her name. Long ago, the revolutionary Marxists said that the alternative facing humanity was either socialism or a new barbarism, that capitalism threatens to go down in ruins and drag civilisation with it. But in the light of what has been developed in this war and is projected for the future, I think we can say now that the alternative can be made even more precise: The alternative facing humanity is socialism or annihilation!.

Hersey was working for Time magazine during his first visit to Japan to get first-hand reports and interviews. Given the dangers involved, it was a courageous thing to do. Over 50 people were interviewed for the article, which was later turned into a book.[4] Hersey’s talent as a writer is evident in the book. Still, his intelligence and kindness lay in letting people speak for themselves or describing what they witnessed shine through in comments like this, he writes, “Mrs Nakamura stood watching her neighbour, everything flashed whiter than any white she had ever seen … the reflex of a mother set her in motion towards her children. She had taken a single step … when something picked her up and she seemed to fly into the next room, over the raised sleeping platform, pursued by parts of her house.

Hersey does not sanitised what happened when the bomb was dropped as this quote shows “He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in huge, glove like pieces”; “their eye sockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks”; “abandoned and helpless… beside the woman who had lost a breast and the man whose burned face was scarcely a face anymore”

According to The National WWII Museum, the bomb “engulfed the city in a blinding flash of heat and light. The temperature at ground level reached 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a second. The bomb vaporised people half a mile away from ground zero. Bronze statues melted, roof tiles fused, and the exposed skin of people miles away burned from the intense infrared energy unleashed. At least 80,000 people died instantly. The bomb destroyed 70 per cent of all buildings in Hiroshima, and an estimated 140,000 people had been killed by the end of 1945. Survivors suffered from increased rates of cancer and chronic disease”.

The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History explained the aftermath of the explosion. “One man left only a dark shadow on the steps of a bank as he sat. … Many others in Hiroshima, farther from the Little Boy epicentre, survived the initial explosion but were severely wounded, including injuries from and burns across much of their body. Among these people, panic and chaos were rampant as they struggled to find food and water, medical assistance, friends and relatives and to flee the firestorms that engulfed many residential areas.”

There is only one weakness in the book, and unfortunately, it is a significant one. At no point does Hersey explain the reasons behind the dropping of the bombs or the geopolitical reasons behind the war crimes.

As the Marxist writer David Walsh explains, “The more profound motives behind the bombings involved American imperialism’s goal of terrorising the Soviet Union as part of the already unfolding Cold War. As the recent film Oppenheimer has made clear, “Trinity,” the code name for the first test of a nuclear weapon, was scheduled for July 16, 1945, so that Truman could hold the existence of the bomb over the heads of Stalin and the Soviet delegation at the Potsdam Conference, which opened the following day. According to this line of thinking, the US would not need to make concessions and could force the Soviet leadership to submit to its demands.

When the bomb was developed as part of the Manhattan Project, the Truman administration imagined that its supposed nuclear monopoly would ensure the hegemonic role of the US for years to come. This notion was considered delusional by scientists, who understood that it was only a matter of time before the USSR would develop the bomb. Truman was ignorant enough to assert that “those Asiatics” (in the Soviet Union) could never build so complicated a weapon.”[5]

It must be said that most of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project supported the use of the Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was only later that some regretted what they had done. A Manhattan Project scientist wrote to a friend, “I wept as I read John Hersey’s New Yorker account of what has happened during the past year to six who were lucky enough to survive Hiroshima. I am filled with shame to recall the whoopee spirit … when we came back from lunch to find others who had returned with the first extras announcing the bombing of Hiroshima. That evening we had a hastily arranged champagne dinner, some forty of us; … [we felt] relief at the relaxation of security, pride in our part in ending the war, and even pride in the effectiveness of the weapon. And at the exact moment, the bomb’s victims were living through an indescribable horror we didn’t realise. I wonder if we do yet.[6]

Robert Oppenheimer, who led the bomb project, was disquieted at what he had done, but he never apologised or expressed regret. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan was a war crime in which he fully participated. He did have blood on his hands.

At the moment, Penguin has made no plans to release a new edition of the book to coincide with the 80th anniversary. This is surprising given that the threat of a new world war and nuclear annihilation is greater today than at any time since the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The fractious nature of world politics as seen in when Trump facetiously traded remarks with Kim Jong Un about the size of his nuclear button highlights that the very existence of these weapons of mass destruction pose a grave danger that at some point, in a time of intense crisis, they would be used against foreign foes or even domestic opposition.

As the historian Gabriel Jackson perceptively wrote, “… the use of the atom bomb showed that a psychologically very normal and democratically elected chief executive could use the weapon just as the Nazi dictator would have used it. In this way, the United States—for anyone concerned with moral distinctions in the different types of government—blurred the difference between fascism and democracy.”

The recent release of the film Oppenheimer, which has struck a disturbing chord with audiences, shows there is a growing disquiet amongst people regarding the dangers of Nuclear war. The choice between Socialism and Barbarism could not be made starker.[7]

Notes

James P. Cannon-A: A Statement on the War(22 December 1941)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/dec/21.htm

The Publication of “Hiroshima” in The New Yorker-Steve Rothman http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/hiro.php

[1] James P. Cannon on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “An unspeakable atrocity”https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/07/cann-a07.html

[2] How to Survive the New Nuclear Age National Security in a World of Proliferating Risks and Eroding Constraints Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi-Foreign Affairs July/August 2025

[3] John Hersey’s Hiroshima Is Still Essential Reading, 75 Years Later-www.esquire.com 23 April 2021

[4] www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31

[5] 78th anniversary of US atomic bombing of Hiroshima http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/08/07/fniq-a07.html

[6] The Publication of “Hiroshima” in The New Yorker-Steve Rothman http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/hiro.php

[7] Oppenheimer: A drama about “the father of the atomic bomb”https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/27/znjf-j27.html

A Complete Unknown: A Film about singer Bob Dylan’s rise to fame

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“I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs, or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.

Pete Seeger

Even if everyone didn’t admit it, we all knew that he [Dylan] was the most talented of us.

Dave Van Ronk

where “nobody liked rock ‘n’ roll, blues or country” and where “you couldn’t be a rebel—it was too cold.”

Bob Dylan

“In those days, artistic success was not dollar-driven; it was about having something to say.

Bob Neuwith

“If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he [the poet] knows how to arouse it… he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him; he masters it. The attitude of great poets is to cheer up enslaved people and horrify despots. The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other.”

Walt Whitman

Having sat through numerous Bob Dylan documentaries and films of varying quality, including spending eight hours watching Renaldo and Clara, I think it qualifies me to review this latest film about the life of Bob Dylan. A Complete Unknown was the subject of a barrage of publicity, both on television talk shows and in social media. It is well-acted, with Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Dylan especially noteworthy in its remarkably accurate impersonation of Dylan’s singing and speaking voice. It is visually stunning and audacious in its authenticity, but it is ultimately a triumph of style over substance. Despite some excellent performances, each actor had to learn the instrument and voice of their character, which they did remarkably well. The performances, however, remain at the level of skilful impersonation, rather than a profound understanding of the different personalities.

The story traces Dylan’s early entry into New York City in early 1961, up until 1964 when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. Trying to cram into two hours four years of the life of such a critical musician naturally will bring about “evasions and elisions”.

As Richard Broody writes “The details that get sheared off matter, not least because they embody the spirit of the age: how a young musician without a day job finds a place to live in the Village is even more of an emblem of the times than the overwrought precision of the movie’s costumes, hair styles, and simulacra of street life. Without the anchor of material reality, the life of the artist is reduced to a just-so story of soaring above banalities and complications—one that parses easily into its few dramatic through lines as if the stars were aligned from the start. What’s lost is the way a colossal spirit such as Dylan confronts everyday challenges with a heightened sense of style and daring.”[1]

The film is a fictional account of Dylan’s early career, loosely based on Elijah Wald’s book, Dylan Goes Electric!, as well as on James Mangold’s conversations with Dylan. It appears that little to no research has been conducted at the Bob Dylan archive.[2] The director Mangold said that the film is “not a Wikipedia entry”, and that he did not “feel a fealty to a documentary level of facts”.Mangold’s film does little to examine the political and ideological intricacies of the time. There is no “coherent theory” of the time; it often relies on clichés to move the film along. Mangold’s attempt to portray the events of 1962 through news broadcasts is clumsy and borders on the melodramatic, which forces him to invent things that did not happen.

Mangold spends a significant amount of time in the film examining Dylan’s relationship with Pete Seeger. Alongside Woody Guthrie, Seeger was a considerable influence on the young Dylan. Seeger quickly recognised that Dylan was unlike anything or anyone that had gone before, saying, “I always knew that sooner or later there would come somebody like Woody Guthrie who could make a great song every week. Dylan certainly had a social agenda, but he was such a good poet that most of his attempts were head and shoulders above things that I and others were trying to do.”

According to Wald Seeger and his followers “believed they were working for the good of humanity … but were intensely aware of the forces marshalled against them: the capitalist system and the moneyed interests that upheld it” Seeger was sentenced to one year 1961 for contempt of Congress when he refuses to name names of associates with connections to the Communist Party. Seeger, “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs, or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.”

The early Dylan was like a musical sponge. As the writer Paul Bond noted, “Dylan was listening to all sorts of music—country, the blues of Muddy Waters, and, eventually, folk. The latter, which had grown in part out of ethnomusicological research into traditional songs as “music of the people,” had been promoted by the Stalinist Communist Party and other left circles as a means of tackling contemporary issues and espousing a broadly progressive political outlook in popular song. In contrast to the banality of such contemporary songs as “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window. At the same time, the American folk scene offered a wide range of performance models, accepting the high-art theatricality of a John Jacob Niles alongside Guthrie’s more “home-spun” performances. In the American scene, there was not the same emphasis on formal “authenticity” as there was to be in the English folk revival. Alongside the content of the music, therefore (“Folk music delivered something I felt about life, people, institutions and ideology”), Dylan was also receptive to its forms, describing it as “traditional music that sounded new.”

A Complete Unknown, while telling Dylan’s story chronologically, bizarrely leaves out certain aspects of Dylan’s personality and musical background, shedding very little light on Dylan’s artistic development, and even less on his social and political development. What light it does shed on his inner life seems distorted, concentrating on the singer’s “psychological vicissitudes”. During this period, Dylan’s most crucial relationship, both musically and politically, was with Joan Baez. Dylan was clearly in love with Baez at the time, with Baez frequently calling Dylan on stage, a move that came at a time when she was still more famous than he. Their relationship at this point, in 1964, appears to be a happy and productive one. “We were kids together” for a short time.

The four years covered by the film were marked by significant political turmoil. Mangold’s treatment of them is pedestrian at best. As the Marxist writer David Walsh writes, ‘In 1961, the British Trotskyists pointed to signs of a break in the American ice block in several key layers of society.’ ‘” Among the youth, there has been growing criticism of the American way of life and an audience for various trends which reflect its cultural barrenness.” (The World Prospect of Socialism) In the end, this discontent pointed toward the unresolved contradictions of American capitalism, the dominant world power and “leader of the free world,” and foreshadowed significant social upheavals.”

The songs Dylan wrote at the time, such as Masters of War, Only a Pawn in Their Game, and Hard Rain reflected his awareness of the falsity of the picture of American life presented in the bourgeois media at the time. For a short time, Dylan became acutely aware of the reality of postwar America, including widespread racism and segregated neighbourhoods, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, social inequality, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the pervasive anxiety bound up with the Cold War. These events were the source of the discontent and restlessness that gave rise to his protest songs. James  Brewer writes that Dylan, for a period, personified that unease and dissatisfaction artistically and intriguingly.

During the years covered by A Complete Unknown, Dylan was not the only one moving left; significant numbers of young people began to shift left. However, their radicalism was inevitably confused. As James Brewer writes, “The musical protest circles were still primarily dominated by the Stalinist politics of the Communist Party or its intellectual vestiges, along with a witches’ brew of Maoism, Castroism and the New Left. What had once been the Trotskyist movement in the US, the Socialist Workers Party, led by James P. Cannon, essentially broke with Marxism in 1963 and set out on a wretched, anti-revolutionary course.  The circumstances, in other words, for the artist seeking a genuinely anti-establishment, anti-capitalist path, free from Stalinist and other malign influences, were challenging ”[3]

Suffice it to say the British Communist Party were less than enamoured with Dylan. It saw Dylan as threatening their control of “ British Music”.  In 1951, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) published a pamphlet titled “The American Threat to British Culture.” The pamphlet outlined the British CP’s hostility to young American folk music. The CP followed that pamphlet with its infamously and thoroughly nationalist British Road to Socialism, a reformist and complete refutation of Marxism, swapping the world revolution with the Stalinist theory of ‘socialism in one country’. The British CP were hostile to any outside influence that would cut across its nationalist path, and that included the American folk scene.

As Frank Riley writes, “ A debate about ‘purity’ and ‘workers’ songs’ raged in the British folk world, with Ewan MacColl being a leading protagonist. He eventually reached the absurd position that if a singer was from England, the song had to be English; if American, the song had to be American, and so on. There were also detailed definitions of ‘traditional’, ‘commercial’, ‘ethnic’, ‘amateur’, etc. This was adopted as policy in those folk clubs (a majority) where MacColl and his supporters held sway. Enter Bob Dylan into this minefield. In 1962, Dylan came to Britain. After some difficulty getting into the Singer’s Club, based in the Pindar of Wakefield pub in London, he was allowed to sing three songs, two of them his own. Contemporary accounts say MacColl and Peggy Seeger, who ran the club, were hostile. As Dylan was little known, one interpretation could be that Alan Lomax had talked to them about him. Dylan did not get on well with Carla Rotolo – a relationship immortalised in Dylan’s Ballad in Plain D: “For her parasite sister I had no respect” – so this may explain it. Or it may be that they did not regard his self-written songs as ‘valid’ folk. Later, when Dylan was pronounced anathema by the CP, MacColl went one step further and announced that all of Dylan’s previous work in the folk idiom had not been actual folk music.”

A Complete Unknown hints at Dylan’s career ambitions and his increasing “bitterness and paranoia”. After his most productive period from 1965 to 1968, Dylan seemed to suffer from a catastrophic social indifference. He was no longer the spokesman of a generation. Mangold’s narrative ends with Dylan returning to revisit Guthrie, as Brewer states that Mangold was trying to tie Dylan’s loose ends in a neat bow. However, as Brewer correctly notes, “Unfortunately, the world is never so tidy.”

It is staggering to see how far the modern-day Dylan is removed from that political and cultural ferment of the early sixties. As Dylan admitted, “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written,“ he told CBS. In his memoir, Dylan said, “You must get power and dominion over the spirits. I had it once, and once was enough.” The musician Randy Newman concurs, saying, “Dylan knows he doesn’t write like he did on those first two records.“ That’s not just a quip regarding the quality; he quite literally doesn’t write the way he used to.

As David Walsh perceptively writes, “Bob Dylan was neither the first nor the last American popular artist, or artist of any kind, to imagine he could outwit historical and social processes, which threatened to ‘slow down’ or even block his rise, by avoiding their most vexing questions and problems. What he didn’t realise was that in turning his back on social life and softening his attitude toward the existing order, he was at the same time cutting himself off from the source of artistic inspiration, that he was surrendering forever what was best in him.”

[1] www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/a-complete-unknown-shears-off-vital-bo

[2] bdylancenter.com.

[3] www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/01/03/kxvr-j03.html

Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback – 29 Nov. 2018

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“I’ve been told that no one sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do. Or the word ‘love’.”

Billie holiday

 “Holiday’s voice, no matter how the Dufty/Holiday interviewing process went, is as real as rain.

David Ritz

The government has failed us; you can’t deny that. Anytime you live in the twentieth century, 1964, and you’re walking around here singing We Shall Overcome, the government has failed us. This is part of what’s wrong with you — you do too much singing. Today, it’s time to stop singing and start swinging. You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn’t help him become the heavyweight champion of the world; swinging helped him achieve that title.

Malcom X[1]

“If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise.”

Samuel Grafton[2] On the song Strange Fruit

Lady Sings the Blues is a brutally honest warts-and-all autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz singer. Holiday died on July 17, 1959, at the Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem, New York City, due to complications of chronic drug abuse. Holiday had an unbelievably difficult childhood. Born on April 17, 1915, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her mother, Sadie Fagan, was 13 years old, and her father, Clarence “Pop” Holiday, was just 15. Her birth name was Eleonora, which she later changed to Billie.

Holiday grew up fast, surviving an abusive childhood; her mother did loads of different jobs, including prostitution. She grew up in Baltimore and Harlem brothels. It has been said that she had a limited vocal range but went on to be a unique singer with an “unsettling emotional wallop”. While it is tempting to see Holiday as a victim, that is not how she saw things. Her memoir was written with help from William Dufty, and according to David Ritz, “Holiday’s voice, no matter how the Dufty/Holiday interviewing process went, is as real as rain. She is open about her sexual abuse, her forced imprisonment, her heroin addiction, and in a minimal way, her struggles of being African American before the development of the Civil Rights Movement.

Some facts in the book have been disputed.[3] John Szwed argues in his 2015 study, Holiday, Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth, that most of the book is accurate; however, Holiday’s co-writer, William Dufty, was allegedly pressured to suppress material due to the threat of legal action. Writing in the New Yorker Richard Brody said “In particular, Szwed traces the stories of two important relationships that are missing from the book—with Charles Laughton, in the nineteen-thirties, and with Tallulah Bankhead, in the late nineteen-forties—and of one relationship that’s sharply diminished in the book, her affair with Orson Welles around the time of Citizen Kane.”[4]

Her untimely death at the age of just 44 ended the career of one of the most important jazz vocalists of the 20th century. While the re-release of her autobiography by Penguin in 2018 went some way in reestablishing her importance. However, the release of the 2015 film by Lee Daniels, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, was a significant misrepresentation of Holiday. According to John Andrews, writing in the World Socialist Website, the film “dishonoured” her work and was a “seriously misguided effort”.

He writes, “The film was populated with historical and entirely fictional characters, blended haphazardly with actual and fabricated historical events, replete with sloppy mistakes and anachronisms too numerous to catalogue. One prominent example from the film: methadone was not used to treat heroin addiction until some years after Holiday died.”[5]

Naturally, Holiday’s autobiography suffers from a substantial fixation on race; this is not surprising given how much racial abuse she suffered, but it is largely divorced from the social struggles of postwar America, as expressed in both the growing civil rights movement and official, state-sponsored anti-communism. Given Holidays’ limited political understanding, she cannot place her life struggle within the broader aesthetic developments of that tumultuous period, not only in jazz, but also in film, literature, and art.

“Strange Fruit”

One of those broader aesthetic developments is Holiday’s relationship with the song Strange Fruit. In her 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday suggests that she worked on the song together with Abel Meeropol. Holiday’s economy with the truth has circulated for decades, with Holiday even claiming that the song was written for her and that she had a hand in writing it herself. Meeropol always denied this claim. David Margolick and Hilton Als, in their work Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, said that her account “may set a record for most misinformation per column inch”. Even stranger was Holidays’ response when challenged about the song in her ghost-written book; she said, “I ain’t never read that book.” 

“Strange Fruit” is not an easy song to listen to and requires several listens to appreciate its complexity.  Peter Daniels, in his article “Strange Fruit, believed it was the original protest song. “It is simple, spare, but effective poetry. At a time when political protest was not often expressed in musical form, the song depicted lynching in all of its brutality. The three short verses are all the more potent for their understated and ironic language. The juxtaposition of a beautiful landscape with the scene of lynching, the smell of magnolias with that of burning flesh, the blossoms more typically associated with the Southern climate with the “strange fruit” produced by racial oppression—this imagery conjures up the essence of racist reaction. Racism in America stands indicted and exposed by these lines, with no need at all for a more didactic or agitational message.[6]

Meeropol was a member of the American Communist Party from 1932 to 1947. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage, he and his wife adopted their two sons; both children took the surname “Meeropol” In 1937, he published “Bitter Fruit” in the New York teachers’ union journal. The song was Meeropol’s response to seeing a photo of a lynching. Like many of his generation, he was radicalised by the Russian Revolution, the threat of fascism, and the Great Depression.

Holiday cannot be faulted for not undertaking a more detailed examination of the issues surrounding “Strange Fruit”. Holiday does not even begin to understand why the poorest section of the white working class would turn their desperation into racist atrocities. The book does not probe the class roots of racism as a means of dividing the working class. Any limited gains made by the black working class were made possible by the militancy of millions of black workers in the industrial struggles of the 1930s.

Also absent from the book is Holiday’s comprehension of the role played by the American Communist Party and its Popular Front politics. The holiday does not mention that socialists and communists were on the front line of the struggle for racial equality.

As Daniels points out, “There was a tremendous contradiction inherent in the work of artists, writers and intellectuals who the CP influenced in the 1930s and ’40s. On the one hand, as part of a leftward-moving working class and intelligentsia, they were attracted by the promise of the Russian Revolution. They articulated, to one degree or another, anger at capitalist exploitation and oppression, as well as hopes for social equality and socialism. Most of this layer, however, identified the Russian Revolution with the regime in the Kremlin. Only a minority agreed with the socialist opposition to Stalinism articulated by Leon Trotsky. Meeropol was one of the majority on the left who aligned with the CP during this period. The creative work of these individuals could not help but be influenced by their blind obedience to the Soviet bureaucracy and its reactionary political stance.[7]

Since the release of the 2018 Penguin version of Lady Sings the Blues, interest in Holiday seems to have waned a little. It is hoped that, with the current protests against the fascist Trump administration, interest in the holiday and the song “Strange Fruit” will begin to take hold. There has already been a limited revival of interest in the music, as evidenced by the many more recent recordings. Her autobiography has significant weaknesses, but it is worth reading, and Holiday, after all, was one of a kind.

[1] library.gayhomeland.org/0008/EN/malcolmx_speech_1964.htm

[2] www.theguardian.com/music/2011/feb/16/protest-songs-billie-holiday-strange-fruit

[3] www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Billie-Holiday-s-bio-Lady-Sings-the-Blues-may-2469428.php

[4] The Art of Billie Holiday’s Life-www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-art-of-billie-holidays-life

[5]Great jazz vocalist dishonoured by The United States vs. Billie Holiday—Can’t we do better? http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/06/unit-j06.html

[6] “Strange Fruit”: the story of a song-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/02/frut-f08.html

[7] “Strange Fruit”: the story of a song-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/02/frut-f08.html