I launched a YouTube channel called My Syllabus this week. While I have no idea what I’m doing I want to figure out this medium and hopefully you’ll provide feedback as well so it gets better and more useful. To start I’m planning it to be an exploration of ideas that interest me, from poetry to politics, motorbikes to mischief.
Each topic I cover will include an essay I’ve written along with a collection of additional readings and links to online resources for you to explore, if you care to – in other words this is My Syllabus.
Thanks for your attention and participation.
Episode 1 Essay
My curiosity about international struggles is based around what it takes for the working class citizenry to finally say enough is enough and demand equality and justice. My interest is born out of how many tragedies of violence and disparity we’ve witnessed in the U.S. over recent years. Most spectacularly being those of primarily black males murdered by the police, and how even with overwhelming evidence and outrage not only was justice denied, but a general malaise seems to have beset people across all class and color lines. So much so that not only has neither a racial nor a class based movement swept the leaders who have upheld inequality and injustice, but ultimately we elected a white-nationalist huckster with fascist tendencies as our next President.
So here are a few things I’ve been consuming over recent months that deal with the question – what drives a people to finally take action on their own behalf?
To start is the Voline tome The Unknown Revolution.
Voline adds a third dimension to the argument over what the Russian Revolution was and why it failed to bring about a true workers’ society. After spending years of reading capitalist denigration of Marxism and communism, particularly as it related to the October Revolution, and counterpointing that with Trotsky’s own writings, I found it interesting to get the viewpoint of anarchist Voline who’s neither capitalist nor Bolshevik. His argument of the mistakes made under the Lenin/Trotsky leadership and deepened by Stalinism are compelling, and gave me some pause regarding my allegiance to Trotskyism. Voline makes clear the argument that the working class had surpassed their limit of hunger and despair; similar to Trostsky’s view. The difference was the implementation of something to replace the Tsar. Both believed in a democratically run workers “state” – with that word being in dispute – but one resulted in a government while the other was left to believe in the best of human nature. Both men fought bravely for that goal until history made them enemies; ultimately Stalin exiled both and called for their assassinations – successfully murdering Trotsky in Mexico. I’ll be interested to see what this year’s 100th anniversary of the 1917 revolution brings back into the limelight.
Another powerful work I read is from author Angela Davis. I could say this about pretty much any of Davis’ work, but for today I’ll focus on Women, Race, & Class. Using source text from suffragettes, abolitionists, unionists, and politicians Davis tells the story of how many opportunities were missed in the struggle against gender and race based oppression due to a lack of unity.
No hero of equality is left unstained in this work as Davis makes clear that even the likes of celebrated abolitionists and suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton suffered from sometimes shortsighted, racially segregated strategies during the struggles for both abolition and women’s suffrage. As Davis works her way forward through history she argues very successfully against the systemic human rights violations relied upon by capitalism for its function, how the system is setup to cause divisions and distractions, renewing her anti-capitalist stance that played a role in her imprisonment as a member of the Black Panther Party.
Davis singles out the original radical labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World, as one of the only labor organizations to have maintained its credibility throughout its 100 plus year history in its devotion to class warfare, equal rights and human dignity. I mention this primarily because I’m a card-carrying member of the IWW. Our struggles continue to be documented each year in the quarterly publication the Industrial Worker, which is a great resource for a look at contemporary class struggles.
Noam Chomsky, a fellow member of the IWW, released his documentary film Requiem for the American Dream this past year and provides an exploration of our nations imperialist movements, growing domestic dramas, and what we might do to alter that course.
Speaking of film, two films I’ve recently enjoyed that capture two different perspectives of the divisions experienced during the Spanish Civil War that broke the alliance between the proletariat fighters of the Communist party and the Anarchists.
In the film Land and Freedom, an English Communist joins the struggle against Franco’s fascist regime until the Stalinist backed communist effort uses it’s power to try and coerce the Spanish Anarchist and Trotskyist fighters; while the film Libertarias focuses on a group of feminist CNT anarchists fighting not only to defeat Franco but also for their own gender-based liberation. Of the two, Libertarias is the one I’ve returned to on several occasions.
The films Che: Part 1 & 2 document struggles in Central and South America through Che Guevara’s role in the Cuban June 26 revolutionary party and the failed Bolivian revolution. After the successful revolution in Cuba, the CIA acted swiftly to stifle that change in Bolivia through both armament and propaganda.
Colonia was another recent film dealing with the CIA and South American politics, in this case the CIA backed coup that overthrew democratically elected socialist President Allende installing the dictator Pinochet. Colonia captures the brutality of Pinochet particularly highlighting the secret death camps he operated.
Speaking of Chile, a former professor of mine and one of my former classmates completed an amazing translation of Chilean poet Christian Formoso’s The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile that captures the history and associated folklore of the original Spanish conquest of Terra Del Fuego 500 years ago. Formoso uses these themes to remark upon more contemporary times including the punishing era of Pinochet and the hope that had been Allende. This is a vibrant poetic history of Chile that feels akin to the romantics without shying away from inclusion of modern ideals and technologies.
Chile has produced some of my favorite authors and I’ll probably cover more of that in another episode, but one last thing to mention is that a new film about Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet and Allende era socialist, will be in the theaters soon.
I found myself spending a lot of time in 2016 reading The Africa Trilogy by Danish writer Jakob Ejersbo. These books center around the 1970s-80s European-ex-pat community in Tanzania – a life the author himself had lived – focused on the personal struggles of the children of empire builders in a newly socialist society, while doling out plenty of commentary on the struggles of these societies in opposition. Between the individual stories are attempts at capitalizing on the Tanzanians not yet matured socialism and some of the ex-pats specifically attempting armed revolution against the socialists for control over resources. The trilogy is an amazing well written reminder of who the real savages often are in this world, and the greed that fuels the savagery.
Author Masande Ntshanga picked up where Ejersbo left off with his book The Reactive, which outlines the struggles of HIV infected youth in South Africa entering the late 80s-90s post-apartheid era highlighting many similar issues inflicted by colonialism and hyper-capitalism on a population struggling to liberate themselves from western influence.
Below is my complimentary syllabus of the reading and other media associated with this episode, please consider supporting your local indie book store or radical infoshop where possible. If you’re using Amazon as your source for some of these materials, please consider using the Amazon Smile feature to donate a portion of your purchase to a pro-worker, pro-education, and pro-equal rights organization.
Obviously there are even more relevant materials than I’ve listed below. I would recommend using a Google search or similar on all of these pieces as they’ll turn up innumerable critical essays worth reading for even further context – something my brief videos can only scratch the surface of. Finally, my books and more of my writing can be found at Andrew-Miller.com.
Angela Davis: https://smile.amazon.com/Angela-Y.-Davis/e/B000APW3CI/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1483379720&sr=8-2-ent
Bookspace Columbus: http://www.bookspacecolumbus.com/
Che: Part One: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892255/
Che: Part Two: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374569/
Christian Formoso: https://www.amazon.com/Most-Beautiful-Cemetery-Chile/dp/0692560572
Colonia: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4005402/
Industrial Workers of the World: http://iww.org/
Jakob Ejersbo: https://www.amazon.com/Jakob-Ejersbo/e/B0058UB196/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
Land and Freedom: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114671/
Leon Trotsky: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/
Libertarias: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113649/
Mapping Police Violence: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
Masande Ntshanga: http://twodollarradio.com/collections/all-books/products/the-reactive?variant=3225459905
Snowpiercer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/
Spore Infoshop: https://www.facebook.com/sporeprintinfoshop/
The Thirteenth: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5895028/
Voline: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voline-the-unknown-revolution-1917-1921-book-one-birth-growth-and-triumph-of-the-revolution