| from S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2008) We
have seen that for 'conscous' workers in Russia and, to a lesser
extent, in China, reading was an activity that was central to
self-fashioning, constitutive of what it meant to be a cultured and
autonomous individual. By contrast, the relation of the newly
literate and semi-literate readers of the lower urban classes to new
forms of commercially produced mass literature, produced with an eye to
entertainment rather than education, was far less earnest. . . . p. 100
Indeed, without denying the real potental for tension between
individual autonomy and class-based collectivism, we may conclude that
genuine forms of collectivism and cooperative action are possible only
where class solidarity is grounded in autonomous individuals capable of
demanding the recognition due to them as thinking, feeling
persons. Without that, new forms of group coercion based on weak
individuality are likely to be the result . . . 110
*Frederick C. Beiser, "The Concept of Bildung in Early German Romanticism," in Beiser, The Romantic Imperative (Harvard, 2003), and Philippe-Joseph Salazar, "Reconnaissances of Marx", Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2015 |
| Recent
scholarship on the Civil War* brings the question of Bildung to the
fore, but, as far as I can tell, the term itself is not used. Yet
the overwhelming concern of the Evangelical revivals in New England and
the midwestern states settled by New Englanders involved questions of
character formation and self-discipline. I bring this up because
it is precisely such questions of self-formation that I confronted in
my interviews. These UAW organizers struck us all in this way: it
was not only their literacy and their cognitive capabilities; it was
their character that stood out. And when I read Nordic Paths to Modernity
(Bergham Books, 2012) I realized that my hunch that the
bildungsproletrians were north Europeans of Reformation descent seemed
at least to point in the right direction. Thus, Yankee, German, Scandinavian,
and Baltic socialists were the core of the bildungsproletarain component
of the Unity caucus. (Knights
of Labor**, Debsian Socialists, and Wobbles), ———————————————————————————————————————————— *Bruce Laurie, Rebels in Paradise: Sketches of Northampton Abolitionists (U. of Mass. Press, 2015) Bruce Laurie, Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform (Cambridge, 2005) John L. Brooke, "There is a North": Fugitive Slaves, Political Crisis, and Cultural Transformation in the Coming of the Civil War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2019) Zachary A. Fry, A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Republic (U. of N. Carolina Press, 2020) Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (Penguin, 2016) Jóhann Páll Árnsason and Björn Wittrock, eds., Nordic Paths to Modernity (Bergham Books, 2012) **Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2015) Richard White, The Republic for which it Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Guilded Agge, 1865-1896 (Oxford, 2017) |
b Nativist speech by Dick Frankenstein (Dodge Main) aug 31, 1935 Murray 1933 nativist strike (Frank Fagan interview) Pa. nativist strike Dec 1933 nativism in the press rooms of Fisher Body Flint and Fisher Body Pontiac c  the KKK in Flint (Detroit News, May2, 1937) the KKK in Packard: Preferment of Charges against Frank Buehrle by Kurt Murdock, President of PACKARD LOCAL U.A.W.-C.I.O. #190, held at the local Headquarters of the Local at 6100 Mt. Elliott Avenue, in the City of Detroit, Michigan. April 3rd, 1942, at 7:30 P.M. Amann, Peter H. “Vigilante Fascism: The Black Legion as an American Hybrid.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 3 (1983): 490–524. http://www.jstor.org/stable/178625. ccccc |
| There
are 7 photos, tables and charts in this row, as well as a cryptic
statement (bildungsproletarians and plebeian upstarts: think Chartists).
In the row below a Detroit News story of May 2, 1937 about the Ku Klux Klan in Flint, and a Febuary 15, 1942 United Auto Worker (Packard Edition) story about the Ku Klux Klan in Packard,
and below that three tables of UAW local 410 members who either held or ran for
office. The tables and charts provide an ontological sense of the situation in the auto plants of southeast Michigan. First, the flow chart of automobile production helps us to focus on the socio-technical structure of production. The stronghold of opposition to industrial unionism was the skilled trades (German, Irish, Kashub, and French Canadian Catholics). The stronghold of the Unity Caucus was in the trim and body-in-white departments. The major occuptional classifications in body-in-white were metal finishing and welding. These were the semi-skilled occupational classifications.* (For more on this question of skill and classification, click here.) The “masses,” if I may use that politically charged but intellectually vacuous term, were the unskilled laborers and production workers, comprised of blacks, Poles, and hillbillies. * I am just now (Jan 19-20, 2023) going over the Frank Fagan interviews (welder, Murray Body). On tape 1, side B there is a detailed discussion of metal finishing, and of the body-in-white more generally. There is also an extraordinary, extremely detailed account of the IWW "strike" at Murray Body in September 1933. When read together with (1) the Leon Pody account of that strike, (2) the materials on the Edgewater strike, (3) the account given by Sidney Fine in the Automobile under the Blue Eagle, and (4) the newspaper account of the tar-dipping party in Fisher Body Pontiac that occured on June 10, 1937. "Unionists Linked to Tar-Party" Detroit Times 6-11-37 (short article, (blurred). Results of hearing reported: "Tar-dipping is Laid to Five" Detroit News, 12-10-37. Superficially read, these sources contradict each other. Read dialectically, however, they provide a picture of the elusive “white man” (or, as Frank Fagan, a welder at Murray Body, referred to them with disdain, the “Americans”). |
1. Traditional (patrimonial) vs. Modern (republican) Note the outstanding feature of the AFL faction: it was dominated by skilled trades Catholics. This hegemony is illustrated by the apparent exceptions to this generalization. There were three workers on the AFL list from the transportation department; three from the press room; and two from assembly. The two crane operators from transportation were Irish and German Catholics; the tractor driver was black. The three press operators were central European Catholics; and the two workers from assembly were a black Hannifin operator and an Irish Catholic welder. Culture (patrimonial power) trumps class (Richard White, The Republic for Which it Stands . . . Note the outstanding feature of the CIO faction: leading up to the sitdown strike-- non-Catholic north Europeans of Reformation descent, in alliance with non-Polish east Europeans; and after the sitdown strike, the addition of 2nd generation Poles and 2nd generation blacks from Assembly. These configurations--"old" catholics on the one side, north Europeans of Reformation descent on the other--are fundamental. Yankees (mostly if not entirely "free thinkers") on the other--continue the pattern northern divisions over slavery and the civil was. Irish and Geman Catholics associated with the Copperheads in the north, and the CIO leadership of Yankee and German republicans. the fction fight in the UAW, in other words, was a coninuation of the divisions over the civil war in the north. I came to this realiation in th following long and tortuous rout. *2nd generation blacks: born into or, as youngsters, assimilated into the urban industrial world. |
| The
Murray Body minutes must be read carefully and borne in mind
henceforth: they are to be use as a benchmark. The same goes for
FDR's speeches. These speeches
are addressed to an audience and are written by members of the
President's
staff. The organic context of their production can be seen here. Part of the audience for FDR's speeches can be seen by scrolling down and looking at the photos of auto workers. The excerpts from Nietzsche and Lyons (above row), and the excerpts below, focused on language and literacy, are intended to raise the stakes in the study of critical discursive events in American history. Thus the "New Deal" as an interlocking set of language-mediated action networks can be grasped through a close analysis of these two sets of documents (Murray body minutes and FDR speeches). To do this one must enter into the conceptual framework provided by The Social Origins of Language. (Brief summary here. Longer excerpts here.) That is why it is necessary to place the excerpts below as close as possible to the links to the right. |
|
There are three levels to a first order catastrophe: 1. The death of a public sphere based on print literacy and embodying modern thought scientific: Covid (the public sphere from Progressivism to the New Deal.). This has already happened. See Semiotic Regimes: a geneology of the two-paty system. 2. The end of popular print literacy. In vast swathes of America this has already happened. (Wolf; Roth): the disintegration of the biocultural niche of modernity. 3. the disintegration of language itself. This remains to be seen. There is already a name associated with and emblematic of these three levels of a first order catastrophe: Donald Trump. The
Enlightenment did not deny the existence of all manner of evils but
denied that these were a consequence of human nature. It held
that people are by nature reasonable and capable of good but had been
corrupted by their institutions and environment. Its rationalism
assumed the universal existence of human reason and applied the
criterion of social utility to all institutions, policies, and
actions. Transform or abolish corrupt institutions, improve the
human environment, and human behavior would likewise improve.
Human beings were by nature rational and therefore capable of creating
a rational and humane socal order.
This was the intellectual ethos of Progressivism, whose radical wing included the socialists and communists. It is this ethos which now lies in ruins. One does not simply pick up the pieces and hope for a better day. One can no longer yearn for that "class with radical chains," that phantom of the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, a stunning reversal has occured, most evident in the United States, where the deterioration of discursive and cognitive performativity is now the hallmark of our times. Is it possible that literacy is dying even as we speak? You bet! And right before our eyes. Watch MSNBC and see for yourself. |
x
x
x
x
related stuff (this site is a rhizome)
| Masatomo Ayabe, "Ku
Kluxers in a Coal Mining Community: A Study of the Ku Klux Klan Movement in Williamson County, Illinois, 1923-1926." (Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 102, No. 1, Spring, 2009) Donald Holley, "A Look Behind the Masks: The 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Monticello, Arkansas" (The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer, 2001) James H. Madison, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland (Indiana U. Press, 2020) Mich grand jury investigation into black legion on racism, black legion, klan, Homer Martin Bud Simons, interview (Skeels): on grifters, Press room Flint Fisher Body Cliff Williams interview (PF) on Bert Harris; phone call (Neighborhood Improvement Association) Bill Jenkins on Pontiac "Tar-dipping" party Pontiac Fisher Body Kraus interview on Bert Harris Norm Bully on the "Americans" (PF) Frank Fagan on the "Americans" Harry Kujawsky Tiedermann Reuther on Anderson, Indiana Simons on Saginaw, Michigan The Elder report |
Thermidor: What Happened to the New Deal?
|
Fascism in Flint, 1937
click here for full text for fascism at Ford and Packard, click here. Draft of Telegram Sent to John L. Lewis
New York Times, August 30, 1971  |
|
The catastrophe now unfolding is very different from this economic
catastrophe of the 1930s. Dasein itself is at stake. This
catastrophe can only be grasped within the framework proved by
SOOL. From the reformation to the New Deal has two dimensions. First, and most obvious, political institutions on the right have tapped into and intensified primate violence. (Just to be clear: this is not biological reductionism.) Hence the quotes above. Second, and most difficult, is the task of understanding the cognitive dimensions of our present catastrophe. Nietzsche comes in handy here, especially 1. his concept of nihiism; and 2. his comments on language from 1971 To repeat: The Social Origins of Language: primate-style dominance is
periodically overthrown and then restored, only to be overthrown and
restored again and again.
Lachmann: Patrimonialism, until fairly recently, seemed an archaic social form, largely replaced by bureaucratic rationalism. That confident view of modernity, in the histories that Max Weber and his followers wrote, deserves to be challenged as patrimonial regimes reappear in states and firms throughout the world. Roper: fantasies, extravagent in their evocation of demonic lovers and Satanic revels. These fantasies shared, for the most part, a standard structure and a similar set of primary themes. With Roper's help we can think about QAnon, and put some real teeth into Nietzsche's concept of eternal return. What is the sado-sexual eigenvector of GOP performativity but an illustration of the power of eternal return as a provocation to thought?* from Lionel B. Steiman, Paths to Genocide: Antisemitism in Western History (Macmillan Press, 1998), p. 93-95 The
Enlightenment did not deny the existence of all manner of evils but
denied that these were a consequence of human nature. It held
that people are by nature reasonable and capable of good but had been
corrupted by their institutions and environment. Its rationalism
assumed the universal existence of human reason and applied the
criterion of social utility to all institutions, policies, and
actions. Transform or abolish corrupt institutions, improve the
human environment, and human behavior would likewise improve.
Human beings were by nature rational and therefore capable of creating
a rational and humane socal order.
This was the intellectual ethos of Progressivism, whose radical wing included the socialists and communists. It is this ethos which now lies in ruins. One does not simply pick up the pieces and hope for a better day. One can no longer yearn for that "class with radical chains," that phantom of the 19th and 20th centuries. Indeed, a stunning reversal has occured, most evident in the United States, where the deterioration of discursive and cognitive performativity is now the hallmark of our times. Is it possible that literacy is dying even as we speak? You bet! And right before our eyes. Watch MSNBC and see for yourself. *Anindya Bhattacharyya, "Notes on Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence." Daniel Chapelle, Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis (State University of New York Press, 1993) |
| The
textual materials above, except for the Philip Roth interview, get us
into the subjective experience of becoming literate at critical
historical junctures. The Roth interview is about the death of
the book and the end of print literacy. The heading for this box, Dasein: Bildung, Ressentiment, and Nihilism is something so contrary to current media and most scholarly discourse on the state of the nation, that I am driven to the main concept of fascism's greatest philosopher, Martin Heidegger.* The question of languge and cognitive development is of greatest importance, and also the most difficult to approach. It is the contention of this site that Figure 0 is required of we are to understand Trump. And not only Trump. When Maryanne Wolf, in Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (Harper Collins, 2018, p. 179) writes that "The seriousness of the current reality means that at the present rate, the majority of eighth-grade children could be classified as functionally illiterate in a few years' time," she is writing about Dasein. When "Alfred Russell Wallace [Darwin's contemporary and peer] ended his 1864 article by saying 'the higher—the more intellectual and moral—must displace the lower and more degraded races'”,** he was talking about Dasein. After all, the problematic of racism is cognition and character--and what could be more Daseinish than that. Thus, when David A. Graham writes in The Atlantic*** that . . . like
many of the tendencies described in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury,
Trump’s indifference to the printed word has been apparent for some
time, the depth and implications of Trump’s strong preference for oral
communication**** over the written word demand closer
examination. “He didn’t process information in any conventional
sense,” Wolff writes. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some
believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than
semi-literate,”
he is writing about Dasein. There is an exquisite irony here. Graham's description of Trump places the latter among "the lower and more degraded races." And not only Trump. The GOP in its entirety is the party of . . . * Wolfram Eilenberger, Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy (Penguin, 2020) **Hunt Hawkins, “Heart of Darkness and Racism” in Heart of Darkness: Authoritative Texts--Backgrounds, and Contexts--Criticism, Paul B. Armstrong, ed. (Norton Critical Editions) pp. 373-4. ***David A. Graham, "The President Who Doesn't Read," The Atlantic, January 5, 2018 ****Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (1982/2012) |
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