The primacy of the racial question, 1931

The anti-imperialist national liberation revolution, [Frank Waldron] argued, must be taken out of the realm of abstract slogans and turned into a daily battle on “little issues” that determine the everyday lives of the people, “such as reduction of rent and taxes, resistance to evictions, seizures of food and seed supplies, defense of every democratic right to organize, strike, free speech and assembly that is violated.”

In South Africa, nearly a year later, the problems were different, but Gene’s approach was basically the same. The Communist Party was emerging from a prolonged factional fight in which the all-white leadership and predominantly white membership had been charged with racism. In 1931 the Comintern had intervened from Moscow and the leadership, headed by Rebecca Bunting and her husband, were expelled. Their influence remained, however, and the issues were still being debated. The Buntings had rejected the primacy of the racial and national questions for South Africa. They opposed the Comintern’s goal for an Independent Native Black Republic with “guarantees for the white minority.” They had argued this would “favor a black race dictatorship that would turn the exploited whites into a subjected race.” The Buntings claimed that not a national liberation struggle of the Native Black majority was the strategic goal, but the establishment of socialism by the proletariat–black and white.

As in the Philippines, Gene devoted the first months in South Africa to traveling, asking questions. … Then he applied himself to the problems still tearing the Party apart. he helped initiate methods of collective work to strengthen the ability of the Black comrades newly placed into responsible positions of leadership. He helped establish the concept that the Party had to become, in the first place, the Party of Native Black workers, reflecting the Black Nation character of the country. At the same time, he called for an end to the practice of using “administrative, punitive expulsions” against those whites still influenced by the Buntings’ ideas. He urged “the need to win over vacillators.” He exploded the bombast of those white comrades who refused to work inside the white workers’ trade unions under the guise that they were militantly opposing white chauvinism. “White chauvinism is fought where it exists, not in words from the outside,” Gene countered. He argued, too, against those comrades who refused to work in the reformist organizations, white or Black, under the guise they were protecting the independence and purity of the Party. At the same time, he combated tendencies to subordinate the Party’s policies to accommodation with the reformist leaders, “in the interest of unity.”

Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life 1925-1975.

The life of the expatriate

Scene: Eugene Dennis has been in Moscow for a while, and has begun to consider leaving the USSR to work for the Communist cause in other countries: the Philippines (“it is a US colony and we have a social responsibility”), South Africa (“so closely related to the Negro question at home”), and China (“the key to the whole Far East”).

He sat on the edge of my bed, his hands cupping his pipe bowl, elbows resting on his knees.

“You have a right to be angry, I should have given you the choice. But I was told that you could come even if you decided to go back when I leave. I wanted these couple of months together. You can go back or stay, after I leave. It’s up to you–but at least we’re together now.”

The admission of his love and need ordinarily would have satisfied me, but I pressed on.

“Why so soon? Wouldn’t a couple years here at the Comintern be good, and we’d be together.”

His words came slowly as he paced again. As always, now too he sought the precise words with which to convey his thoughts. He said a short stay in Moscow was beneficial. Exchanging ideas and experiences with comrades from other Parties was helpful. “But a long stay, the life of the expatriate, is not for me; it is not good for anyone.”

Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life 1925-1975.

Eugene Dennis decided to leave: he became the Comintern’s representative to the Communist Party of South Africa, and then of the Philippines, and then he went to Shanghai. After four years abroad, he and Peggy returned to America.

A Communist in Mecca

Scene: Peggy Dennis, a Communist activist, arrives in Moscow on Party orders to join her husband, who had fled there months before, also on Party orders, to escape a prison sentence in America.

Our train slowly crossed the border onto Soviet soil. With face pressed against the window, heart pounding, I hugged Tim tightly in my arms and my eyes blurred with tears. High above, the wooden arch through which our car moved proclaimed: “Workers of the World Unite.” I was in mecca.

When the uniformed border control with the Red Star insignia on their fur hats came to collect passports, I barely resisted giving them the clenched fist salute. I wanted to hand them my Party identification—a more fitting entry permit into the Land of Socialism.

Reunion with Gene, awaited so eagerly, was almost eclipsed by my excitement at being in Moscow. I wandered the streets at every opportunity. Every detail had special significance: the broken, cobblestoned sidewalks and boarded-up empty stores—symbols of a painful past; Red Army platoons marching down the street, lustily singing revolutionary songs—symbol of a land where the people’s army had triumphed. I smiled broadly at every beshawled peasant woman shuffling by in her knee-high, shapeless, stiff felt boots, the valenki I was soon to wear. I wanted to clasp the hand of each man and woman I passed. I wanted to shout “tovarich!” to all Moscow. Six thousand miles from home, I was Home. Here everything was truly “nahsh”—ours, everyone was “nahsh braht”—our brothers. After the last two years, the exhilaration at being one of the working class ruling majority was particularly gratifying.

Being an outsider, I sentimentalized the harsh realities of daily life. Life was tough and elemental that winter of 1931. Each day was a struggle to survive–personally, economically, politically. Stalin had declared: “We are fifty to one hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must cover this distance in ten years or we shall be crushed.” The socialist countries which were to follow could afford a slower pace; the first socialist state could not.

The First Five Year Plan to rapidly industrialize a backward, underdeveloped giant was being compressed into four years. The rest of the world, floundering in economic crisis, scoffed at this mad dream. Even more unrealistic, they said, was Moscow’s insistence that socialism would achieve this miracle of industrial growth without private foreign capital investment. There were no Italian Fiat plants in 1931, only the first Soviet AMO auto plant. There were no U.S. banks with branch offices in Moscow. Capital investment was squeezed out of a Soviet people who for many years were ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed—building for the future.

Yet even in those lean years there existed the concept of social benefits as an individual right. Free medical clinics, child care centers in factories, free education, rest homes, infinitesimally low rents—these were available to all. Back in the States twenty million were out of work, millions more were hungry and homeless, social security was a revolutionary demand being fought for in the streets.

Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life 1925-1975.

Private foreign capital investment is one matter; private foreign capital support, in the manner of Olof Aschberg, is another. (Speaking of Olof Aschberg, Peggy Dennis isn’t the only Communist to have inherited the cause from her parents—here’s what Aschberg’s grandson is up to these days.)

But that’s beside the point.

Read the excerpt closely. Take note of all the social dynamics at work.

Aren’t humans interesting?

As for her claim that she was “one of the working class ruling majority”, she later writes:

Exhilarated at living in this international milieu, I was slow to realize that we were completely isolated from ordinary Soviet life. We did not even know any Soviet persons, except for Boris and Bob who lived in the Luxe and worked in the Comintern with Gene. All of the comrades living there and working at the Comintern were divorced from Soviet life. We were living in Moscow, but were not a part of it. No one could give me a plausible reason why this was so; no one I knew seemed to really care that it was so. …

Boris and [his wife] Musa had recently returned from Comintern assignment in China and Bob and [his wife] Valerie had been to India. The discussions in our room ranged from their experiences abroad to our asking them questions about Soviet life. But they were not typical Soviet citizens and our isolation was not lessened by them.

Upon our return to Moscow in 1937, we could find no trace of them. No one would or could tell us anything. During my third return trip in 1941, I saw Valerie walking towards me on Gorky Street. I started to greet her warmly, but she passed me with a slight flicker of recognition. Insisting upon answers from comrades, I was told that Bob had been executed and Valerie, only recently released from prison, carefully stayed away from all foreign comrades. I was told for her sake to leave her alone. We never heard anything at all about Boris and Musa. In the purges of the Comintern in 1937 and 1938, the very international activity and foreign travel demanded by the Comintern became the basis of charges of “foreign agent” that sent hundreds of Soviet and European Comintern workers to labor camps and firing squads.

Twentieth-century Americanism

Scene: Eugene Dennis (Frank Waldron), a Communist activist, is arrested during a protest and brought to trial.

Of the many arrested March 6, seventeen went on trial in April and for eleven days Judge Bogue, in a state of bewilderment, kept muttering from his bench, “Incredible! Absolutely astonishing!”

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Leo Gallagher, a deceptively mild-looking, grey-haired, wiry fighter, exploded the first shock for the startled Judge when he challenged the entire jury panel. Gallagher charged the defendants would have a better trial if the Commissioner would “stop passers-by on the street and take them into court for jury service”.

The Judge spluttered at Gene and Party organizer Carl Sklar who were acting as their own attorneys:

“You can’t make Communist speeches to prospective jurors. You can’t tell them there are different standards of law for the rich and the poor.”

On any given day now some fifty people were either in jail, in court, or beaten by police on the outside. Physical and legal self defense became simultaneous weapons of the local unionization and unemployed struggles. A delegated conference of local organizations set up a “general self defense organization” whose purpose was “the physical protection and defense of all militant struggles, organizations and demonstrations of the working class, to protect them from the reactionary attacks of the fascists and the state apparatus.”

On the legal front the International Labor Defense conducted orientation sessions throughout the city enabling arrested workers to defend themselves in court. Frank Spector, Southern California head of that organization, and one of the seventeen before Judge Bogue, told the court:

“When the laws are against the interests of the working class and the courts are essentially an instrument in the hands of the employer class, we advise workers that the laws be violated and the court decisions be ignored.”

In its summation, the prosecution intimidated the jury: “If you will not convict them, then you will show that you too are against our government.”

Gene told them:

“A verdict of guilty will mean you approve the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist government. It will mean you approve police brutality and that you agree with Police Commissioner Thorpe that we ought to be deported. But even if you put us in jail now, you can’t break our Movement. Hundreds, thousands of others will take our place and carry on the struggle until this system will be abolished and the dictatorship of the proletariat, as in the Soviet Union, will be established.”

Our comrades in the courtroom were no less startled than was Judge Bogue and the reporters to hear Gene tell the jury:

“It is because I love my country and the American people from which I spring that I fight today and will always fight in the interest of the people. It is our country, it is our Bill of Rights, it is our American way of life that you would betray here today.”

Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life 1925-1975.

The result:

The grand jury indicted seventeen T.U.U.L. [Trade Union Unity League] and [Communist Party activists on “conspiracy to foment revolution during the cantaloupe season”. This was later changed to the more stylized charge, “suspicion of criminal syndicalism” involving charges to overthrow the government on a number of separate counts that could total 42 years in prison for each defendant. Of the seventeen, fourteen were arrested, but the police could not find [Frank] Spector, [Carl] Sklar, and Gene. They had disappeared from sight after leaving the courtroom that April 14.

Spector, Sklar, and Gene “hid in friendly strangers’ homes, moving every few days to a new place. They stayed in contact with activity and decision-making processes through complicated courier systems. We were all waiting for a higher Party decision in New York as to whether they should or should not surrender to the Valley arrest warrants.” The Party voted to have Spector and Sklar surrender; Eugene Dennis remained a fugitive, under the alias “Tim Ryan”, and the Party eventually decided to have him flee to Moscow. His wife Peggy joined him there later with their son, although she had to fight her Party organizer, a new arrival from New York, to be allowed to do so: the organizer said, “We cannot handle this request routinely. We would be guilty of rank male chauvinism if we agreed to transfer this leading young woman comrade merely so she may join her husband.” About this, she wrote:

I had some heavy thinking to do. I was uncomfortable with my Party organizer’s defense of me as a leading woman comrade. The more I hassled with the feeling that something was wrong, the more I disliked the context in which the question had been placed. I felt like I was being subjected, with praise, to a subtle male chauvinism which rejected the possibility that a woman can be a wife and leading activist. Under the guise of upholding my rights, I was being told I had to choose between being a housewife at the beck and call of her man or becoming the classic version of an unencumbered male. … All I knew was that I wanted to join him. The framework for my activity would have to be found within that context, always.

Her parents disapproved.

Linguistic identity in Vanikoro

In sum, the three languages of Vanikoro can be characterised by two contradictory properties. On the one hand, their fundamental genetic relatedness is blurred by a high degree of dissimilarity in the phonological forms of words, whether in the lexicon or in the morphology. But on the other hand, their grammatical categories and semantic structures show no equivalent to this formal diversity: instead, the three languages reveal perfect isomorphism, in each and every corner of their system. To paraphrase a formula by Sasse (see fn.19 below), they could ultimately be described as “a single language with different vocabularies”.

The question arises of what historical scenario would best explain this paradox, where divergence goes along with convergence. A simple explanation that comes to mind when accounting for the lexical diversification of cognate languages, might focus on the physical separation between language communities. The absence, still today, of any land path relating villages across Vanikoro island, and the stories of ongoing fierce territorial fights between its three tribes, would then be understood as genuine evidence for geographical or social isolation, and thus as a possible key for the high degree of formal divergence between Teanu, Lovono and Tanema. However, several facts seem to contradict this diagnostic. First, the relatively small size of the island is at odds with the notion of a neat separation between the three tribes. And more crucially, their extreme degree of structural isomorphism is likely to reflect not only cases of shared retentions from a common ancestor, but also later linguistic convergence induced by language contact. In other words, the explanation resorting to the mere physical separation between communities does not tell the whole story.

The solution to the puzzle will probably have to be found not in the factual features of geography, but in the more subtle dimension of sociolinguistic behaviour. Indeed, a conspicuous characteristic of cultures in certain parts of Melanesia – in comparison, for example, with the Polynesian world (see Pawley 1981) – seems to be a social preference for small-scale social communities with no marked hierarchy between them, as well as a strong emphasis put on whichever anthropological or linguistic features may differ from one community to the other. Heterogeneity between villages or village groups tends to be socially valued as a way to construct a world of diversity, where each community is endowed with its own identity. In this framework, a local innovation in cultural and linguistic forms will tend to be perceived, and eventually retained, as emblematic of a specific group. Over time, this behaviour favours the emergence of cultural and linguistic divergence between erstwhile homogeneous communities. Interestingly, some language groups can be said to have only gone down this track to the point when the languages began to lose mutual intelligibility; but what is conspicuous in the case of Vanikoro languages, is that they seem to have pushed the process of differentiation far beyond that point, as though they were to keep diverging for ever.

In order to account for similar facts in other parts of Papua New Guinea, Thurston (1989), and later Ross (1996; 2001:155), have used the term “ESOTEROGENY”:

Esoterogeny is a process that adds structural complexity to a language and makes it more efficient as a medium of communication among people of the same social group, while making it more difficult for outsiders to learn to speak well. (Thurston 1989)

Esoterogeny arises through a group’s desire for exclusiveness. (Ross 1996:184)

If the members of a community have few ties with other communities and their emblematic lect is not usually known to outsiders, then they may use it as an ‘in-group’ code, an ‘esoteric’ lect from which outsiders are consciously excluded. Innovations leading to increased complexity and to differences from neighbouring lects will be favoured. (Ross 1997:239)

One could probably discuss the degree to which such sociolinguistic processes are “conscious”, and also how they interfere with motivations of various kinds (semantic, structural, pragmatic) in bringing about change. This being said, one can probably accept the general idea behind Thurston’s concept, that language differentiation in Melanesia, far from being just an accident of geographical isolation, is largely influenced by a certain social attitude whereby each group tends to produce – whether consciously or not – its own distinctive speech tradition.

Now, while this hypothesis may help explain the high amount of lexical innovation and formal divergence that took place between Vanikoro languages, it seems at odds with the remarkable stability that we’ve observed among their structures. I would suggest this mismatch can be explained by the different nature of the linguistic components involved here. For one thing, the phonological form of the words (Saussure’s “signifiant”, Grace’s “lexification”), whether lexical or grammatical, is the component most salient and conspicuous to the speakers’ conscience, and therefore most likely to be preempted by motivations based on social emblematicity. Conversely, the structural and semantic dimension of language (Saussure’s “signifié”, Grace’s “content form”) would fall out of reach of the speakers’ immediate linguistic awareness, in a way that would make it exempt of the sociolinguistic force of esoterogeny. Instead, structures tend to obey a totally contrary force, typical of language-contact situations, that leads them to diffuse and converge: this is when multilingual speakers feel the “pressure towards word-for-word translatable codes” (Gumperz 1971). The structural isomorphism that can be observed today among Vanikoro languages has the considerable advantage, for the bilingual speaker, of reducing any translation loss, thereby increasing the efficiency of cross-linguistic communication, and facilitating the cognitive processing of speech. …

The comparison of Teanu, Lovono and Tanema reveals the intricacies of the island’s local history. The strong isomorphism found between the structures of these languages betrays their remote common ancestry, as much as it points to a history of intense language contact which the three tribes, nolens volens, have lived through over the centuries. On the other hand, the actual word forms found in their vocabularies and morphology have tended to follow a powerful tendency towards diversification, in accordance with the speakers’ tacit perceptions that the three communities, often caught in conflict and territorial hostilities, should sound and feel to be distinct social groups.

Overall, the paradox observed among the three modern languages of Vanikoro – dissimilar forms, similar structures – results from the interplay between these two contradictory forces: a socially driven push to increase language differences vs a functionally grounded tendency to minimise them.

(source)

Relevant.

The Trade Union Unity League

Four weeks after our return from Seattle, Gene wrote in the national Daily Worker of the 90,000 jobless in our city. From official statistics he noted that the majority of Mexican workers in the country were unemployed. He concluded, “with ninety percent of the working class outside the organized labor movement, our burning need is to organize the unorganized, militant industrial trade unionism and class struggle versus class collaborationism.”

Gene was now Southern California head of the Trade Union Unity League, a militant Left center organized first in 1922 as a rank and file movement inside the craft union, almost lily-white A.F.L. Now it was shifting, as was the Party, to greater emphasis on independent organization of the unorganized and the formation of new industrial unions outside the A.F.L.

A citywide general strike in the needle trades was Gene’s first initiation into his new work. The strike symbolized graphically the multi-aims of T.U.U.L., for it contained four fronts of struggle: the action against the employers; rank and file opposition to the old A.F.L. and Socialist Party leadership within the union; conflicts between the skilled, mainly male, dominantly Jewish craftsmen who were oldtime unionists and the young, unskilled, Mexican women workers new to the union and in their first strike; and the building of the T.U.U.L.’s Needle Trades Industrial Union.

—Autobiography of an American Communist, Peggy Dennis.

Dennis doesn’t see fit to mention it in her book, but the T.U.U.L. was part of the CPUSA. She doesn’t avoid the topic of the CPUSA in general—how could she, when she was married to Eugene Dennis, who became the General Secretary of that party after Moscow removed Earl Browder? I suppose I’ll find out soon whether she bothers to mention the favor she and her husband must have had in the eyes of the Soviets. Anyway, here’s her obituary in the New York Times.

---

One page later, in March 1929, Dennis gets pregnant:

Basking in Gene’s excited pleasure, I nervously prepared to break the news to Mama, but made Gene promise to support my claim that it was an “accident.” With abortion completely out of our awareness at the time, the act was irrevocable. All I had to contend with was Mama’s displeasure. I carefully chose the moment as we rode the Brooklyn Avenue streetcar, so she could not make the scene I expected.

Mama was an intense feminist. She was more the protagonist for woman’s unshackled spirit than a sign-toting activist for equal rights. She believed the two to be inseparable, that individually women could live the first while fighting for the second. Frustrated by ill-health and transplanted to a foreign land and alien culture she refused to adapt to, Mama did not personally act on her beliefs, but she was determined that her two modern daughters would.

My sister and I were willing pupils, and we early absorbed Mama’s special pride in being female, destined for greater things than merely being some man’s wife. We acquired the conviction that personal love was not a sufficient singular purpose in life; that for women, no less thaan for men, there must be much more to an enriched life. Conventional marriage was the deadly trap and motherhood was the snaplock to that trap door.

Mama scorned housekeeping and cooking; they were unavoidable chores to be disposed of with minimum effort. She knitted, crocheted, and sewed beautifully, but she refused to teach us, saying we had more important things to do with our time and abilities—like studying, writing stories, making speeches, attending meetings, planning the revolution.

Papa had been a quiet supportive influence in all this. Slight of build and height, he was gentle and sensitive and there seemed to be no female/male roleplaying in our family. He often buffered with good humor and with dance and song Mama’s tense moodiness. He washed supprt dishes and scrubbed kitchen floors, urging us to go to the library or write the composition due at school. …

When Bill began staying overnight in my bed, Mama kept the fact secret from his parents, for his sake. When we were legally married to mollify his mother, Mama was furious. In joining Gene, a year later, I was exercising my courage to go my own way, as they had taught me. Now I was pregnant and I had betrayed twenty years of revolutionary and feminist conditioning.

I could not define to Mama or to myself the changes in me. I was torn with the contradictions between my emotions and my theory. With Gene I had become the classic handmaiden to love, a role blatantly contrary to what I believed in, and yet I was revelling in it.

Nothing ever changes: Comstockery for communists

Boston had a very different reputation before the ’60s:

Boston was founded by the censorious Puritans in the early 17th century. Boston’s second major wave of immigrants, Irish Catholics, began arriving in the 1820s and also held conservative moral beliefs, particularly regarding sex.^[2] The phrase “banned in Boston”, however, originated in the late 19th century at a time when American“moral crusader” Anthony Comstock began a campaign to suppress vice.^[3] He found widespread support in Boston, particularly among socially-prominent and influential officials.^[2][3] Comstock was also known as the proponent of the Comstock Act, which prevented “obscene” materials from being delivered by the U.S. mail.^[4]

Following Comstock’s lead, Boston’s city officials took it upon themselves to ban anything that they found to be salacious, inappropriate, or offensive. Aiding them in their efforts was a group of private citizens, the Boston Watch and Ward Society.^[2] Theatrical shows were run out of town, books were confiscated, and motion pictures were prevented from being shown; sometimes movies were stopped mid-showing, after an official had “seen enough”. In 1935, for example, during the opening performance of Clifford Odets‘ play Waiting for Lefty four cast members were placed under arrest.^[2]

And what did the international community think? When George Bernard Shaw was asked what he thought of his books being removed from library shelves in New York, the next city down on the Corridor from Boston, here’s how he replied:

Nobody outside of America is likely to be in the least surprised; Comstockery is the world’s standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all.

Personally I do not take the matter so lightly. American civilization is enormously interesting and important to me, if only as a colossal social experiment, and I shall make no pretense of treating a public and official insult from the American people with indifference.

It is true I shall not suffer either in reputation or pocket. Everybody knows I know better than your public library officials what is proper for people to read whether they are young or old. Everybody also knows that if I had the misfortune to be a citizen of the United States I should probably have my property confiscated by some postal official and be myself imprisoned as a writer of ‘obscene’ literature.

But as I live in a comparatively free country and my word goes further than that of mere officialdom, these things do not matter. What does matter is that this incident is only a symptom of what is really a moral horror both in America and elsewhere, and that is the secret and intense resolve of the petty domesticity of the world to tolerate no criticism and suffer no invasion.

And:

Because I have been striving all my public life to awaken public conscience to this, while Comstock has been examining and destroying ninety-three tons of  indecent postcards, it is concluded that I am a corrupt blackguard and Comstock’s mind is in such a condition of crystal purity that any American who reads, sees, writes, or says anything of which he disapproves or which he is ‘doggoned if he understands’ must be put in prison.

Well, far be it from me to question the right of American to manage its affairs its own way. Every country has the Government it deserves, and I presume Comstock couldn’t govern America without America’s consent. He will not lack supporters.

I cannot fight Comstock with the American Nation at his back and the New York police in his van. Neither can Daly. I have advised Daly to run no risks.When this news reached me I had already cabled both Daly and my agent, Miss Marbury, to countermand the performance, because I think New York has had enough of me for one season. Now I am bound to leave Daly free to accept the challenge and throw himself on the good-sense of people who want to have the traffic in women stopped instead of driven underground for its better protection.

He is young and bold; I am elderly and thoroughly intimidated by my knowledge of the appalling weight of stupidity and prejudice, of the unavowed money interest, direct or indirect, in the exploitation of womanhood, which lies behind his opponent. I cannot save Daly. If these forces are too strong for his supporters, I am afraid he will be uncomfortable in prison. But I also have a presentment that Comstock will not be quite comfortable out of it.

When a man begins to value himself, not on the number of decent postcards he puts in circulation, but on the number of indecent ones he throws out of it, he is on the high road to a condition of mania in which he is apt to seize every postcard he sees and declare it indecent. An Indian who counts the scalps he has torn from his enemies is under heavy temptation to get up quarrels with his friends in order to have an excuse for scalping them.

Comstock’s reputation grows with every blackguard he imprisons. A man in that position generally ends by seizing respectable citizens by the collar, raising the cry of blackguardism against them, and throwing them into prison.

For Comstock’s part, here’s what he thought of Shaw:

“Shaw?” said Mr Comstock reflectively, “I never heard of him in my life. Never saw one of his books, so he can’t be much.” The reporter had in his pocket a copy of The New York Times in which appeared the letter written by Mr Shaw, the author and playwright, after he had learned that his books had been removed from the ‘open shelves’ in the New York Free Libraries. This order of removal Mr Shaw characterized as a piece of “American Comstockery.” The reporter submitted the letter, and Mr Comstock read it carefully.

“Everybody knows,” wrote Mr Shaw, “that I know better than your public library officials what is proper for people to read, whether they are young or old.” When Mr Comstock read that, he literally grew pale with indignation. “Did you ever see such egotism?” he commented angrily. “I had nothing to do with removing this Irish smut dealer’s books from the public library shelves, but I will take a hand in the matter now.” …

“This very morning,” said Mr Comstock, “I confiscated for destruction 23,600 pictures and had the man convicted in the Special Sessions. Last week I confiscated 100,000 such pictures from a German in Brooklyn. For a third of a century I have battled in the ranks of the society with which I have the honor to be affiliated — battled for the morality of the young people of this country. I have done work in Canada, in Paris, in London, and in most of the civilized countries of the world. The society has made over 23,000 arrests; it has destroyed 98 tons of unfit matter.

It matters little if the literary style is of a high order if the subject matter is bad. I had a man convicted who was printing and selling pictures of paintings hung in the Paris Salon and in the art hall at our Centennial Exposition. The only question is, Can this book or picture or play hurt any one morally, even the weak? All else is of minor consequence.”

The Comstocks of our day are, like Mr. Hundred Thousand Pictures himself, interested in choking off a new platform for the dissemination of information — all for the good of the weak, of course — but that’s not all they want. The communist slogan is not “no platform for fascism”, but “no platform for fascists”. Not only should Shaw’s books be banned — so should Shaw himself. #指鹿為馬

.@mark_t_tomczak no platform for fascists

— 410 Gone (@steveklabnik) June 3, 2015

This Comstock heads his blog with a quote from Emma Goldman:

Not so very long ago I attended a meeting addressed by Anthony Comstock, who has for forty years been the guardian of American morals. A more incoherent, ignorant ramble I have never heard from any platform.

The question that presented itself to me, listening to the commonplace, bigoted talk of the man, was, how could anyone so limited and unintelligent wield the power of censor and dictator over a supposedly democratic nation? True, Comstock has the law to back him. Forty years ago, when Puritanism was even more rampant than to-day, completely shutting out the light of reason and progress, Comstock succeeded, through shady machination and political wire pulling, to introduce a bill which gave him complete control over the Post Office Department — a control which has proved disastrous to the freedom of the press, as well as the right of privacy of the American citizen.

Since then, Comstock has broken into the private chambers of people, has confiscated personal correspondence, as well as works of art, and has established a system of espionage and graft which would put Russia to shame. Yet the law does not explain the power of Anthony Comstock. There is something else, more terrible than the law. It is the narrow puritanic spirit, as represented in the sterile minds of the Young-Men-and-Old-Maid’s Christian Union, Temperance Union, Sabbath Union, Purity League, etc. A spirit which is absolutely blind to the simplest manifestations of life; hence stands for stagnation and decay. As in anti-bellum days, these old fossils lament the terrible immorality of our time. Science, art, literature, the drama, are at the mercy of bigoted censorship and legal procedure, with the result that America, with all her boastful claims to progress and liberty is still steeped in the densest provincialism.

The smallest dominion in Europe can boast of an art free from the fetters of morality, an art that has the courage to portray the great social problems of our time. With the sharp edge of critical analysis, it cuts into every social ulcer, every wrong, demanding fundamental changes and the transvaluation of accepted values. Satire, wit, humor, as well as the most intensely serious modes of expression, are being employed to lay bare our conventional social and moral lies. In America we would seek in vain for such a medium, since even the attempt at it is made impossible by the rigid régime, by the moral dictator and his clique.

Your fave is problematic, Klabnik. And Urbit is banned in Boston^WSt. Louis.

This movement had several consequences. One was that Boston, a cultural center since its founding, was perceived as less sophisticated than many cities without stringent censorship practices.^[2] Another was that the phrase “banned in Boston” became associated, in the popular mind, with something lurid, sexy, and naughty. Commercial distributors were often pleased when their works were banned in Boston—it gave them more appeal elsewhere.^[2]

The making of a Communist

When Mama and Papa came to America they were not seeking the legended golden mecca. As young Jewish revolutionaries, they knew they were coming to a capitalist America, but at least it was not tyrannical, monarchistic Old Russia. …

The 1905 revolution in Russia raised jubilant hopes among the young emigrés, and Mama, pregnant with my sister, made plans to go home. The revolution failed; going-home talk slowly receded, but Mama and Papa and the aunts and uncles did not assimilate into the new country. They rejected the mores of capitalist America. They were critical of those among their emigré circles who adjusted and tried to make it by the exploitative measures needed to succeed. Their goals remained alienated from those of this country. They wore their poverty like a badge of honor, continued to meet in small groups which at least now were no longer illegal as in Old Russia, and talked about the needed revolution. …

Through it all we children grew and played in this self-contained, foreign-born, radical community. We were enrolled in the Socialist Party sunday school at the Labor Temple at the time we started public school kindergarten, and the former was more important than the latter. Among my early memories are those of being lifted each week onto a table in stark meeting halls and lisping my way through recitations of revolutionary poems by Yiddish writers my parents and their comrades loved so passionately. Papa coached me at home, explaining the pathos and courage and hope of the words I was to recite. …

In 1922, at the age of sixteen, my sister Mini, already a Young Communist League member, organized the first Communist children’s group in Southern California. I was her first recruit and rapidly became that organization’s public spokesperson—a fiery, tense thirteen-year-old. In school I was selected to recite James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphan Annie” poems at PTA meetings; out of school I made eloquent speeches at Communist mass meetings, denouncing the Rockefeller and Morgan warmakers and urging support of the new children’s revolutionary movement.

Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life 1925-1975

Dealing with abnormality

The following paragraphs describe a certain country. As you read, try to guess which country it is.

[T]here were people whose gender identity was hard to figure out. There was this one particular person living in the neighborhood next to mine that people were always busy gossiping about. I wasn’t sure whether I should refer to this person as “aunt” or “uncle” (in [redacted], you don’t call older people by their first names; you should call them “aunt,” “uncle,” “grandma” or “grandpa”).

This person was married to a man and had two kids. Still, this person cheated on their husband with a woman and thus was always on people’s lips. When you met this person for the first time you would think she was a man. Although this person was voluptuous, with boobs bigger than any other woman in the neighborhood, everyone thought this person was a man. …

She was friendly and nice to everyone, so I always liked her. My mom’s friend had been a widow for a long time and fell in love with her. That’s why I became a close friend to her.

She took care of all the house chores typically performed by men in the house. She maintained a good relationship with her husband and she was a good mother to her children and, most importantly, she was the breadwinner in the family.

…

People probably wanted to gossip about her not because of her bisexuality. They probably gossiped about her because of jealousy that she made lots of money while having a good family.

Since leaving [redacted], I have learned more about LGBT issues in the women’s studies class I took. When I was in [redacted], I hadn’t heard the terms “gay” and “lesbian.” All I thought was that they had different sexual preference. As long as they were good people, we didn’t have any problem being friends with them regardless of their sexual preference.

Of course, people would gossip from time to time because they didn’t have anything else to do in their free time. People didn’t treat them with contempt and the LGBTs were never shunned or excluded from the society.

After arriving in [elsewhere], I saw that the LGBTs were a social issue and often found in public discussion. I tried to take an interest in the issue but I never paid much attention to it since it wasn’t directly of interest.

A very progressive country, no?

Here’s the paragraph I cut:

Women are not supposed to ride bicycles in [redacted], but she could ride a bicycle. That’s because even the traffic police couldn’t figure out the gender of this person. They couldn’t stop her from riding the bike. Before they could figure out the gender, she was already gone.

So maybe it isn’t progressive.

Have you made your guess?

---

The country is North Korea.

How can this happen? Here’s one possible reason:

[A] tolerant attitude … can be had towards any minority – whether it be a lifestyle minority, an ethnic minority, a religious minority, or a political minority – when it is below a certain level of prominence in that society.

… [T]hose of baroque sexuality have often, in sneering and pushy voices, asked “Are you threatened by my sexuality?”. Or at least they used to – now, of course, we know that that question was, in itself, a threat – the fulness of it, including the unspoken portion, would go something like: “Are you threatened by my sexuality? Well if not, just you wait. You’ll be paying astronomical fines for not wanting to bake a cake for my wedding or losing your job for daring to oppose my pet political causes soon enough, chump”.

And yet in Japan, and certainly in the world of anime, things are different. Anime homosexuals are carefully portrayed as not representing a threat to the prevailing cisheteronormist order. … Sailor Uranus does not wish to upend the society around her in order to gain the validation involved in having her lifestyle redefined as normal; she only desires to be left in peace to discreetly live as she wishes. She doesn’t want to change marriage laws, get you fired for saying that you don’t like her, or tear down the faith of the polis.

And it is because of this that she can safely be left alone by the larger society around her.

Setting the frame

The first work is Clifford Geertz’s article ‘“Internal conversion” in contemporary Bali’ (1973). Here he describes and analyses social transitions relating to changes in attitudes of different social groups of Indonesian Balinese society towards a local Hinduism. Those changes took place in the 1950s and early 1960s. Geertz talks about three main aspects of that process – ‘the intensified religious questioning, the spread of religious literacy, and the attempt to reorganize religious institutions’ (Geertz 1973: 189). I think it is worth adding some specific traits of this process – attempts ‘to segregate religion from social life in general’ (ibid.: 184), the systematization and interpretation of sacred texts (i.e. the creation of dogma and creed), the unification of ritual activity, and the organization of institutional control over local religious life (the local ‘Ministry of Religion’, qualifying examinations for priests, and a religious school). To include those processes into a more general conceptual scheme, Geertz uses Max Weber’s dichotomy of ‘traditional religion vs. rational religion’ and names the transformation he writes about ‘the rationalization of Balinese religion’ (ibid.: 181).

Why did the rationalizers of Balinese religion choose those particular ways for their activity? Geertz did not give us a clear answer to this question. He seems to think about this issue in terms of general laws of religious rationalization, as when he writes about some ‘social and intellectual processes which gave rise to the fundamental religious transformations of world history’ (ibid.: 189) and compares indirectly the case of Bali with ancient China and Greece. However, I think that we have no need to look for some general laws and remote parallels for understanding modern and post-modern religious transformations. Probably, the Balinese know what they have to do to reform their religion because they have a bright and obliging model of a ‘proper religion’ not so far from them. I mean Islam.

Geertz notes that the Balinese are ‘a people, intensely conscious and painfully proud of being a Hindu island in a Muslim sea, and their attitude toward Islam is that of the duchess to the bug’ (ibid.: 181). But Muslims are a powerful majority in Indonesia, and they control all state institutions including the state Ministry of religion. The Balinese do not want to convert to Islam and they do not want their religion to be considered by the majority as a local and ‘wild’ one. They try to make their religion respectable in the eyes of their neighbours (and in their own eyes). In this context the outer model determines their activity and the Balinese have to accept the majority’s rules of the game and communicate with that majority to achieve their aims. Geertz provides an example of such communication:

The Muslims say, you have no book, how can you be a world religion? The Balinese reply, we have manuscripts and inscriptions dating before Mohammed. The Muslims say, you believe in many gods and worship stones; The Balinese say, god is One but has many names and the ‘stone’ is the vehicle of God, not God himself. (Geertz 1973: 188)

I would like to note that in these circumstances the Balinese have no opportunity to reply: ‘So what? There are many religions without any holy scripture and there are many polytheistic religions.’ It would break the rules of the dialogue and destroy it. But the dialogue is very significant for them. Through it arise Balinese Holy Writ, dogmatics, theology, unified rituals, and religious institutions. Such conversation does not necessarily take place in the form of direct contacts: religious reformers can imagine this discussion, but they have to imagine it quite correctly.

(source)