Leftist Reading

Episode 39:

This week we’re continuing our reading of Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis.
The full book is available online here:
https://archive.org/details/WomenRaceClassAngelaDavis

[Part 1 - 2]
1. THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY: STANDARDS FOR A NEW WOMANHOOD

[Part 3 - This Week]
2. THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT AND THE BIRTH OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Reading – 00:28
Discussion – 33:10

[Part 4 - 5]
3. CLASS AND RACE IN THE EARLY WOMEN’S RIGHTS CAMPAIGN

[Part 6]
4. RACISM IN THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

[Part 7]
5. THE MEANING OF EMANCIPATION ACCORDING TO BLACK WOMEN

[Part 8]
6. EDUCATION AND LIBERATION: BLACK WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVE

[Part 9]
7. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY: THE RISING INFLUENCE OF RACISM

[Part 10]
8. BLACK WOMEN AND THE CLUB MOVEMENT

[Part 11]
9. WORKING WOMEN, BLACK WOMEN AND THE HISTORY OF THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

[Part 12 - 13]
10. COMMUNIST WOMEN

[Part 14 - 15]
11. RAPE, RACISM AND THE MYTH OF THE BLACK RAPIST

[Part 16 - 17]
12. RACISM, BIRTH CONTROL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

[Part 18-19]
13. THE APPROACHING OBSOLESCENCE OF HOUSEWORK: A WORKING-CLASS PERSPECTIVE

Footnotes:

1) – 00:48
Douglass, op. cit., p. 469.

2) – 01:01
Ibid., p. 472.

3) – 01:37
Ibid.

4) – 02:04
Ibid.

5) – 02:34
Stowe, op. cit. Frederick Douglass included the following comments in his autobiography: “In the midst of these fugitive slave troubles came the book known as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a work of marvelous depth and power. Nothing could have better suited the moral and human requirements of the hour. Its effect was amazing, instantaneous, and universal. No book on the subject of slavery had so generally and favorably touched the American heart. It combined all the power and pathos of preceding publications of the kind, and was hailed by many as an inspired production. Mrs. Stowe at once became an object of interest and admiration.” (Douglass, op. cit., p. 282)

6) – 03:17
Stowe, op. cit., p. 107.

7) – 05:07
See Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, “Microbes and the Manufacture of Housework,”Chapter 5 of For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978). Also Ann Oakley, Woman’s Work: The Housewife Past and Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1976).

8) – 06:19
See Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the U.S. (New York: Atheneum, 1973). Also Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975).

9) – 07:04
See Aptheker, Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion (New York: Humanities Press, 1966); Harriet H.Robinson, Loom and Spindle or Life Among the Early Mill Girls (Kailua, Hawaii: Press Pacifica, 1976). Also Wertheimer, op. cit., and Flexner, op. cit.

10) – 07:49
Robinson, op. cit., p. 51.

11) – 08:22
See discussion of this tendency to equate the institution of marriage with that of slavery in Pamela Allen, “Woman Suffrage: Feminism and White Supremacy,”Chapter V of Robert Allen, Reluctant Reformers (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974), pp. 1368.

12) – 09:28
Wertheimer, op. cit., p. 106.

13) – 10:07
See Flexner, op. cit., pp. 38–40. Also Samuel Sillen, Women Against Slavery (New York: Masses and Mainstream, Inc., 1955), pp. 11–16.

14) – 11:18
Sillen, op. cit., p. 13.

15) – 12:10
Ibid.

16) – 12:31
Ibid., p. 14.

17) – 14:15
Liberator, January 1, 1831. Quoted in William Z. Foster, The Negro People in American History (New York: International Publishers, 1970), p. 108.

18) – 16:10
Sillen, op. cit., p. 17.

19) – 16:53
Ibid.

20) – 17:04
The first woman to speak publicly in the United States was the Scottish-born lecturer and writer Frances Wright (see Flexner, op. cit., pp. 27–28). When the Black woman Maria W. Stewart delivered four lectures in Boston in 1832, she became the first native-born woman to speak publicly (see Lerner, op. cit., p. 83).

21) – 17:49
Flexner, op. cit., p. 42. See the text of the constitution of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in Judith Papachristou, editor, Women Together: A History in Documents of the Women’s Movement in the United States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., A Ms. Book, 1976), pp. 4–5.

22) – 18:21
Sillen, op. cit., p. 20.

23) – 18:45
Ibid., pp. 21–22.

24) – 19:22
Ibid., p. 25.

25) – 21:29
Flexner, op. cit., p. 51.

26) – 22:46
Ibid.

27) – 23:53
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage, History of Woman Suffrage,Vol. 1 (1848–1861) (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), p. 52.

28) – 24:51
Quoted in Papachristou, op. cit., p. 12. See Gerda Lerner’s analysis of the pastoral letter in her work The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women’s Rights and Abolition (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 189.

29) – 25:03
Quoted in Papachristou, op. cit., p. 12.

30) – 25:42
Ibid.

31) – 26:57
Sarah Grimke began publishing her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes in July, 1837. They appeared in the New England Spectator and were reprinted in the Liberator. See Lerner, The Grimke Sisters, p. 187.

32) – 27:31
Quoted in Alice Rossi, editor, The Feminist Papers (New York: Bantam Books, 1974), p. 308.

33) – 27:46
Ibid.

34) – 28:58
34. Quoted in Flexner, op. cit., p. 48. Also quoted and discussed in Lerner, The Grimke Sisters, p. 201.

35) – 30:49
Angelina Grimke, Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States. Issued by an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women and Held by Adjournment from the 9th to the 12th of May, 1837 (New York: W. S. Dorr, 1838), pp. 13–14.

36) – 31:17
Ibid., p. 21.

37) – 31:34
Flexner, op. cit., p. 47.

38) – 32:43
Lerner, The Grimke Sisters, p. 353.

Episode 38:
This week we’re continuing Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis.

The full book is available online here:
https://archive.org/details/WomenRaceClassAngelaDavis

Content warnings for this episode as a whole (new CW in bold):
Killing of children
Slavery
Pregnancy
Rape
Death
Torture
Racism
Blood
And abuse related to multiple of the above topics.

[Part 1]
1. THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY: STANDARDS FOR A NEW WOMANHOOD (first half)

[Part 2 – This Week]
1. THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY: STANDARDS FOR A NEW WOMANHOOD
Second half – 01:20
Discussion – 28:00

[Part 3]
2. THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT AND THE BIRTH OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

[Part 4 - 5]
3. CLASS AND RACE IN THE EARLY WOMEN’S RIGHTS CAMPAIGN

[Part 6]
4. RACISM IN THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

[Part 7]
5. THE MEANING OF EMANCIPATION ACCORDING TO BLACK WOMEN

[Part 8]
6. EDUCATION AND LIBERATION: BLACK WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVE

[Part 9]
7. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY: THE RISING INFLUENCE OF RACISM

[Part 10]
8. BLACK WOMEN AND THE CLUB MOVEMENT

[Part 11]
9. WORKING WOMEN, BLACK WOMEN AND THE HISTORY OF THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

[Part 12 - 13]
10. COMMUNIST WOMEN

[Part 14 - 15]
11. RAPE, RACISM AND THE MYTH OF THE BLACK RAPIST

[Part 16 - 17]
12. RACISM, BIRTH CONTROL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

[Part 18-19]
13. THE APPROACHING OBSOLESCENCE OF HOUSEWORK: A WORKING-CLASS PERSPECTIVE

Footnotes:
40) – 01:23
Angela Y. Davis, “The Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,”Black Scholar, Vol. Ill, No. 4 (December, 1971).

41) – 03:27
Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll. See Part II, especially the sections entitled “Husbands and Fathers” and “Wives and Mothers.”

42) – 05:02
Ibid., p. 500.

43) – 05:29
Ibid.

44) – 06:03
Ibid.

45) – 06:36
Aptheker, op. cit. See pages 145, 169, 173, 181, 182, 201, 207, 215, 239, 241–242, 251, 259, 277, 281, 287.

46) – 07:06
Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (New York: Collier; London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd., 1962). Reprinted from the revised edition of 1892. See especially Chapters 5 and 6.

47) – 07:19
Ibid., p. 46. “One of the first circumstances that opened my eyes to the cruelties and wickedness of slavery and its hardening influences upon; my old master was his refusal to interpose his authority to protect and shield a young woman, a cousin of mine, who had been most cruelly abused and beaten by his overseer in Tuckahoe. This overseer, a Mr. Plummer, was, like most of his class, little less than a human brute, and, in addition to his general profligacy and repulsive coarseness, he was a miserable drunkard, a man not fit to have the management of a drove of mules. In one of his moments of drunken madness he committed the outrage which brought the young woman in question down to my old master’s for protection.... Her neck and shoulders were covered with scars, newly made, and, not content with marring her neck and shoulders with a cowhide, the cowardly wretch had dealt her a blow on the head with a hickory club, which cut a horrible gash, and left her face literally covered with blood.

48) – 07:29
Ibid., pp. 48–49.

49) – 08:23
Ibid., p. 52

50) – 09:01
Wertheimer, op. cit., pp. 113–114. Gerda Lerner’s version of this escape is slightly different: “On Christmas Eve, 1855, six young slaves, availing themselves of a holiday and their master’s horses and carriage, left Loudoun Co, Virginia, and traveling day and night through snow and cold, arrived in Columbia two days later. Barnaby Grigby was a twenty-six year old mulatto; his wife, Elizabeth, who had had a different owner than her husband, was twenty-four years old. Her sister, Ann Wood, was engaged to the leader of the group, Frank Wanzer. Ann was twenty-two, good-looking and smart. Frank was trying to escape from a particularly bad master. There were two more young men in the group.” Lerner, op. cit., p. 57.

51) – 09:21
Sarah M. Grimke’s testimony in Theodore D. Weld, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839). Quoted in Lerner, op. cit., p. 19

52) – 10:05
Ibid.

53) – 10:20
Aptheker, “The Negro Woman,”p. 11

54) – 11:03
Ibid., pp. 11–12

55) – 11:27
Aptheker, “Slave Guerilla Warfare,” in To Be Free, p. 11

56) – 11:52
Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, p. 259.

57) – 12:05
Ibid., p. 280.

58) – 12:30
Lerner, op. cit., pp. 32–33: “[In Natchez, Louisiana, there were] two schools taught by colored teachers. One of these was a slave woman who had taught a midnight school for a year. It was opened at eleven or twelve o’clock at night, and closed at two o’clock a.m.... Milla Granson, the teacher, learned to read and write from the children of her indulgent master in her old Kentucky home. Her number of scholars was twelve at a time, and when she had taught these to read and write she dismissed them, and again took her apostolic number and brought them up to the extent of her ability, until she had graduated hundreds. A number of them wrote their own passes and started for Canada.” Quoted from Laura S. Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, Labors and Experiences (Chicago: Publishing Association of Friends, 1889), pp. 300–301.

59) – 12:40
Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co.,1976). See Chapters 66 and 67.

60) – 13:13
Sarah Bradford, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (New York: Corinth Books, 1961.Reprinted from the 1886 edition) Ann Petry, Harriet Tubman, Conductor on the Underground Railroad(New York: Pocket Books, 1971. First edition: 1955).

61) – 16:02
Arlene Eisen-Bergman, Women in Vietnam (San Francisco: People’s Press, 1975), p. 63.

62) – 16:13
Ibid., p. 62. “When we went through the villages and searched people, the women would have all their clothes taken off and the men would use their penises to probe them to make sure they didn’t have anything hidden anywhere; and this was raping, but it was done as searching.” Quoted from Sgt. Scott Camil, First Marine Division, in VVAW, Winter Soldier Investigation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), p. 13.

63) – 17:09
Ibid., p. 71. Quoted from Winter Soldier Investigation, p. 14.

64) – 18:11
Blassingame, op. cit., p. 83.

65) – 18:59
Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, p. 415

66) – 19:16
Ibid., p. 419.

67) – 20:11
Gayl Jones, Corregidora (New York: Random House, 1975)

68) – 20:45
Frazier, op. cit., p. 69.

69) – 21:07
Ibid., p. 53.

70) – 21:39
Ibid., p. 70.

71) – 24:14
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York: New American Library, Signet Books, 1968), p. 27.

72) – 25:11
Ibid., p. 61.

73) – 25:58
Ibid., p. 72.

This week is our first reading of Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis.

The full book is available online here:
https://archive.org/details/WomenRaceClassAngelaDavis

Content warnings for this episode as a whole:
Slavery
Pregnancy
Rape
Death
Torture
Racism
Blood
And abuse related to multiple of the above topics. 

[Part 1 – This Week]

1. THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY: STANDARDS FOR A NEW WOMANHOOD

First half – 01:32

[Part 2]
1. THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY: STANDARDS FOR A NEW WOMANHOOD (Second half)

[Part 3]
2. THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT AND THE BIRTH OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

[Part 4 - 5]
3. CLASS AND RACE IN THE EARLY WOMEN’S RIGHTS CAMPAIGN

[Part 6]
4. RACISM IN THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT 

[Part 7]
5. THE MEANING OF EMANCIPATION ACCORDING TO BLACK WOMEN 

[Part 8]
6. EDUCATION AND LIBERATION: BLACK WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVE

[Part 9]
7. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY: THE RISING INFLUENCE OF RACISM

[Part 10]
8. BLACK WOMEN AND THE CLUB MOVEMENT

[Part 11]
9. WORKING WOMEN, BLACK WOMEN AND THE HISTORY OF THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

[Part 12 - 13]
10. COMMUNIST WOMEN

[Part 14 - 15]
11. RAPE, RACISM AND THE MYTH OF THE BLACK RAPIST

 [Part 16 - 17]
12. RACISM, BIRTH CONTROL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

 [Part 18-19]
13. THE APPROACHING OBSOLESCENCE OF HOUSEWORK: A WORKING-CLASS PERSPECTIVE

Footnotes:

1) – 01:54
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime (New York and London: D. Appleton, 1918). See also Phillips’ article “The Plantation as a Civilizing Factor,” Sewanee Review, XII (July, 1904), reprinted in Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, The Slave Economy of the Old South: Selected Essays in Economic and Social History, edited by Eugene D. Genovese (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968). The following passage is included in this article:

The conditions of our problem are as follows:

1. A century or two ago the negroes were savages in the wilds of Africa. 2. Those who were brought to America, and their descendants, have acquired a certain amount of civilization, and are now in some degree fitted for life in modern civilized society. 3. This progress of the negroes has been in very large measure the result of their association with civilized white people. 4. An immense mass of the negroes is sure to remain for an indefinite period in the midst of a civilized white nation. The problem is, How can we best provide for their peaceful residence and their further progress in this nation of white men and how can we best guard against their lapsing back into barbarism? As a possible solution for a large part of the problem, I suggest the plantation system. (p. 83)

2) – 02:41
Observations on the special predicament of Black women slaves can be found in numerous books, articles and anthologies authored and edited by Herbert Aptheker, including American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: International Publishers, 1970. First edition: 1948); To Be Free: Studies in American Negro History (New York: International Publishers, 1969. First edition: 1948); A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, Vol. 1 (New York: The Citadel Press, 1969. First edition: 1951). In February, 1948, Aptheker published an article entitled “The Negro Woman” in Masses and Mainstream, Vol. 11, No. 2.

3) – 02:54
Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books,1974). 

4) – 02:59
John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South(London and NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1972). 

5) – 03:06
Robert  W.  Fogel  and  Stanley  Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum South, 2 volumes. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1974.)

6) – 03:12
Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976) 

7) – 03:23
Stanley Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, third edition, revised (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1976)

8) – 04:16
See Daniel P. Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Washington, D.C.: U.S.Department of Labor, 1965. Reprinted in Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967).

9) – 05:53
See W. E. B. DuBois, “The Damnation of Women,” Chapter VII of Darkwater (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920).

10) – 06:44
Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York: VintageBooks, 1956), p. 343. 

11) – 07:57
Ibid., p. 31; p. 49; p. 50; p. 60. 

12) – 08:55
Mel Watkins and Jay David, editors, To Be a Black Woman: Portraits in Fact and Fiction (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1970), p. 16. Quoted from Benjamin A. Botkin, editor, Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945).

13) – 11:30
Barbara  Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story of  Working Women in America (New  York: Pantheon Books, 1977), p. 109. 

14) – 13:21
Ibid., p. 111. Quoted from Lewis Clarke, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, Sons ofa Soldier of the Revolution (Boston: 1846), p. 127. 

15) – 13:49
Stampp, op. cit., p. 57.

16) – 14:44
Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man (Lewistown, Pa.: J. W. Shugert, 1836), pp. 150–151. Quoted in Gerda Lerner, editor, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 48. 

17) – 15:30
Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy: Late a Slave in the United States of America (Boston: 1844), p. 18. Quoted in E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. First edition: 1939).

18) – 16:19
Ibid. 

19) – 17:00
Robert  S. Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (London, Oxford, New York:  Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 165ff. 

20) – 17:26
Ibid., pp. 164–165 

21) – 17:43
Ibid., p. 165. 

22) – 17:54
Ibid., pp. 165–166.

23) – 18:02
“Iron works and mines also directed slave women and children to lug trams and to push lumps ofore into crushers and furnaces.” Ibid., p. 166. 

24) – 18:32
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Erster Band (Berlin, D.D.R.: Dietz Verlag, 1965), pp. 415–416: “In England werden gelegentlich statt der Pferde immer noch Weiber zum Ziehnusw. bei den Kanalbooten verwandt, weil die zur Produktion von Pferden und Maschinen erheischte Arbeit ein mathematisch gegebenes Quantum, die zur Erhaltung von Weibern der Surplus-populationdagegen unter aller Berechnung steht.”  Translation: Capital, Vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1968), p. 391. 

25) – 18:53
Starobin, op. cit., p. 166: “Slaveowners used women and children in several ways in order to increase the competitiveness of southern products. First, slave women and children cost less to capitalize and to maintain than prime males. John Ewing Calhoun, a South Carolina textile manufacturer, estimated that slave children cost two-thirds as much to maintain as adult slave cottonmillers. Another Carolinian estimated that the difference in cost between female and male slave labor was even greater than that between slave and free labor. Evidence from businesses using slave womenand children supports the conclusion that they could reduce labor costs substantially.”

26) – 19:49
Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: 1860), pp. 14–15. Quoted in Stampp, op. cit., p. 34. 

27) – 20:15
Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin, D.D.R.: Dietz Verlag, 1953), p.266. “Die Arbeit ist das lebendige, gestaltende Feuer; die Vergänglichkeit der Dinge, ihre Zeitlichkeit,als ihre Formung durch die lebendige Zeit.”

28) – 23:48
Quoted in Robert Staples, editor, The Black Family: Essays and Studies (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1971), p. 37. See also John Bracey, Jr., August Meier, Elliott Rudwick,

editors, Black Matriarchy: Myth or Reality (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1971),p. 140.

29) – 24:30
Bracey et al., op. cit., p. 81. Lee Rainwater’s article “Crucible of Identity: The Negro Lower-Class Family” was originally published in Daedalus, Vol. XCV (Winter, 1966), pp. 172–216.

30) – 25:05
Ibid., p. 98. 

31) – 25:31
Ibid

32) – 25:50
Frazier, op. Cit.

33) – 25:31
Ibid., p. 102 

34) – 26:50
Gutman, op. Cit.

35) – 27:45
The first chapter of his book is entitled “Send Me Some of the Children’s Hair,” a plea made by a slave husband in a letter to his wife from whom he had been forcibly separated by sale: “Send me some of the children’s hair in a separate paper with their names on the paper.... The woman is not born that feels as near to me as you do. You feel this day like myself. Tell them they must remember they have a good father and one that cares for them and one that thinks about them every day.... Laura I do love you the same. My love to you never have failed. Laura, truly, I have got another wife, and I am very sorry, that I am. You feels and seems to me as much like my dear loving wife, as you ever did Laura.You know my treatment to a wife and you know how I am about my children. You know I am one man that do love my children.” (pp. 6–7) 

36) – 28:16
Ibid. See Chapters 3 and 4. 

37) – 29:20
Ibid., pp. 356–357. 

38) – 30:31
Elkins, op. cit., p. 130. 

39) – 31:22
Stampp, op. cit., p. 344.

This week’s reading is the second half of “Authoritarian Leftists: Kill the Cop in Your Head” by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin.

The article is available online here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-authoritarian-leftists

Authoritarian Leftists: Kill the Cop in Your Head

[Last Week]

I. A fundamentally incorrect analysis of the role of the white left in the last thirty years of civil rights to Black liberation struggle...

II. The white left’s concept of “the vanguard party”...

[This Week]

III. Zero (0) support of non-white left factions by the white left. - 01:31

IV. Bourgeois pseudo-analysis of race and class. - 05:20

V. The bottom line is this: Self-determination! - 23:17

Post Reading Discussion - 26:26

Footnotes:

1 – 13:35

Zinn, pg.90

2 – 14:39

Zinn, pg.222

3 – 15:43

Zinn

4 – 26:22

Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), Black Power; Vintage Press, 1965.

The Further Reading list from the end of the article

“Black Autonomy, A Newspaper of Anarchism and Black Revolution” Vol. #1, issues #1-#5; Vol. #2, issues #1-#3. 1994–1996.

Bookchin, Murray “Post-Scarcity Anarchism” Ramparts Press, 1971.

Ervin, Lorenzo Kom’boa “Anarchism and the Black Revolution and Other Essays” Monkeywrench Press, 1994

Jackson, Greg “Mythology of A White-Led ‘Vanguard’: A Critical Look at the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA” Black Autonomy staff, 1996.

Mohammed, Kimathi “Organization and Spontaneity: The Theory of the Vanguard Party and its Application to the Black Movement in the US Today” Marcus Garvey Institute, 1974.

Sakai, J. “Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat”

Zhenhua, Zhai “Red Flower of China” Soho Press, 1992.

Zinn, Howard “A People’s History of the United States” Harper- Perrenial, Revised 1995.

This week’s reading is the first half of “Authoritarian Leftists: Kill the Cop in Your Head” by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin.

The article is available online here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-authoritarian-leftists

[This Week]

Authoritarian Leftists: Kill the Cop in Your Head

1:23

I. A fundamentally incorrect analysis of the role of the white left in the last thirty years of civil rights to Black liberation struggle...

4:14

II. The white left’s concept of “the vanguard party”...

6:44

[Next Week]

III. Zero (0) support of non-white left factions by the white left.

IV. Bourgeois pseudo-analysis of race and class.

V. The bottom line is this: Self-determination!

Post Reading Discussion

The Further Reading list from the end of the article

“Black Autonomy, A Newspaper of Anarchism and Black Revolution” Vol. #1, issues #1-#5; Vol. #2, issues #1-#3. 1994–1996.

Bookchin, Murray “Post-Scarcity Anarchism” Ramparts Press, 1971.

Ervin, Lorenzo Kom’boa “Anarchism and the Black Revolution and Other Essays” Monkeywrench Press, 1994

Jackson, Greg “Mythology of A White-Led ‘Vanguard’: A Critical Look at the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA” Black Autonomy staff, 1996.

Mohammed, Kimathi “Organization and Spontaneity: The Theory of the Vanguard Party and its Application to the Black Movement in the US Today” Marcus Garvey Institute, 1974.

Sakai, J. “Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat”

Zhenhua, Zhai “Red Flower of China” Soho Press, 1992.

Zinn, Howard “A People’s History of the United States” Harper- Perrenial, Revised 1995.

CW: This episode primarily deals directly with the covid-19 pandemic throughout.

This week’s reading is “Anarchy and the Coronavirus” by Iain McKay.

The article is available online here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarcho-anarchy-and-the-coronavirus

The Anarchist FAQ referenced during the text is found here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq

Reading – 01:15

Discussion – 19:58

Footnote – 14:03

Modern Science and Anarchy, Peter Kropotkin, p164-5

This week is a discussion about The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin.

The full book is available online here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm

There is also a reading from an excerpt of a book by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin.

The excerpt that I read from is here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-komboa-ervin-why-i-am-an-anarchist

The full original source is here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution

This Week:

Discussion of the Conquest of Bread – 0:54

Reading “Why I Am An Anarchist” What I Believe – 15:57

[Part 1]

I. Our Riches

[Part 2]

II. Well-Being for All

[Part 3]

III. Anarchist Communism

[Part 4]

IV. Expropriation

[Part 5]

V. Food: i - iii

[Part 6]

V. Food: iv - vii

[Part 7]

VI. Dwellings

VII. Clothing

[Part 8]

VIII. Ways and Means

IX. The Need for Luxury: i. - iii.

[Part 9]

IX. The Need for Luxury: iv - v

X. Agreeable Work

[Part 10]

XI. Free Agreement

[Part 11]

XII. Objections: i. - iii

[Part 12]

XII. Objections: iv.

XIII. The Collectivist Wages System: i. - iii.

[Part 13]

XIII. The Collectivist Wages System: iv.

XIV. Consumption and Production: i. - ii.

[Part 14]

XV. The Division of Labour

XVI. The Decentralization of Industry: i – iii.

[Part 15]

XVII. Agriculture: i - iii.

[Part 16]

XVII. Agriculture: iv – vi.

This week’s reading is the last reading of The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin.

The full book is available online here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm

[Part 1]
I.  Our Riches

[Part 2]

II.  Well-Being for All

[Part 3]

III.  Anarchist Communism

[Part 4]

IV.  Expropriation

[Part 5]

V.  Food: i - iii

[Part 6]

V.  Food: iv - vii

[Part 7]

VI.  Dwellings

VII.  Clothing

[Part 8]

VIII.  Ways and Means

IX.  The Need for Luxury: i. - iii.

[Part 9]

IX.  The Need for Luxury: iv. - v.

X.  Agreeable Work

[Part 10]

XI.  Free Agreement

[Part 11]

XII.  Objections: i. - iii.

[Part 12]

XII. Objections: iv.

XIII.  The Collectivist Wages System: i. - iii.

[Part 13]

XIII.  The Collectivist Wages System: iv.

XIV.  Consumption and Production: i. - ii.

[Part 14]

XV.  The Division of Labour

XVI.  The Decentralization of Industry i-iii.

[Part 15]

XVII.  Agriculture: i. - iii.

[Part 16 – This Week]

XVII. Agriculture

            iv. - 00:41

            v. - 06:16

            vi. - 14:13

Footnote – 13:52

Summing up the figures given on agriculture, figures proving that the inhabitants of the two departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise can live perfectly well on their own territory by employing very little time annually to obtain food, we have:

Departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise

Number of inhabitants in 1889: 3,900,000
Area in acres: 1,507,300
Average number of inhabitants per acre: 2.6

Areas to be cultivated to feed the inhabitants (in acres):—
Corn and Cereals: 494,000
Natural and artificial meadows: 494,000
Vegetables and fruit: from 17,300 to 25,000
Leaving a balance for houses, roads, parks, forests: 494,000

Quantity of annual work necessary to improve and cultivate the above surfaces in five-hour workdays:—
Cereals (culture and crop): 15,000,000
Meadows, milk, rearing of cattle: 10,000,000
Market-gardening culture, high-class fruit: 33,000,000
Extras: 12,000,000

——————

Total:  70,000,000

If we suppose that only half of the able-bodied adults (men and women) are willing to work at agriculture, we see that 70 million work-days must be divided among 1,200,000 individuals, which gives us fifty-eight work-days of 5 hours for each of these workers. With that the population of the two departments would have all necessary bread, meat, milk, vegetables, and fruit, both for ordinary and even luxurious consumption. To-day a workman spends for the necessary food of his family (generally less than what is necessary) at least one-third of his 300 work-days a year, about 1,000 hours be it, instead of 290. That is, he thus gives about 700 hours too much to fatten the idle and the would-be administrators, because he does not produce his own food, but buys it of middlemen, who in their turn buy it of peasants who exhaust themselves by working with bad tools, because, being robbed by the landowners and the State, they cannot procure better ones.

This week’s reading is The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin.

The full book is available online here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm

[Part 1]

I. Our Riches

[Part 2]

II. Well-Being for All

[Part 3]

III. Anarchist Communism

[Part 4]

IV. Expropriation

[Part 5]

V. Food: i - iii

[Part 6]

V. Food: iv - vii

[Part 7]

VI. Dwellings

VII. Clothing

[Part 8]

VIII. Ways and Means

IX. The Need for Luxury: i. - iii.

[Part 9]

IX. The Need for Luxury: iv. - v.

X. Agreeable Work

[Part 10]

XI. Free Agreement

[Part 11]

XII. Objections: i. - iii.

[Part 12]

XII. Objections: iv.

XIII. The Collectivist Wages System: i. - iii.

[Part 13]

XIII. The Collectivist Wages System: iv.

XIV. Consumption and Production: i. - ii.

[Part 14]

XV. The Division of Labour

XVI. The Decentralization of Industry i-iii.

[Part 15 – This Week]

XVII. Agriculture

i. - 01:35

ii. - 10:15

iii. - 22:16

[Part 16]

XVII. Agriculture: iv. - vi.

Footnotes:

1 – 10:34

A new enlarged edition of it has been published by Thomas Nelson and Sons in their "Shilling Library."

2 – 10:49

Consult "La Répartition métrique des impôts," by A. Toubeau, two vols., published by Guillaumin in 1880. (We do not in the least agree with Toubeau's conclusions, but it is a real encyclopædia, indicating the sources which prove what can be obtained from the soil.) "La Culture maraîchere," by M. Ponce, Paris, 1869. "Le Potager Gressent," Paris, 1885, an excellent practical work. "Physiologie et culture du blé," by Risler, Paris, 1881. "Le blé, sa culture intensive et extensive," by Lecouteux, Paris, 1883. "La Cité Chinoise," by Eugène Simon. "Le dictionnaire d'agriculture," by Barral (Hachette, editor). "The Rothamstead Experiments," by Wm. Fream, London, 1888—culture without manure, etc. (the "Field" office, editor). "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," by the author. (Thomas Nelson & Sons.)

This week’s reading is The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin.

The full book is available online here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm

[Part 1]

I. Our Riches

[Part 2]

II. Well-Being for All

[Part 3]

III. Anarchist Communism

[Part 4]

IV. Expropriation

[Part 5]

V. Food: i - iii

[Part 6]

V. Food: iv - vii

[Part 7]

VI. Dwellings

VII. Clothing

[Part 8]

VIII. Ways and Means

IX. The Need for Luxury: i. - iii.

[Part 9]

IX. The Need for Luxury: iv - v

X. Agreeable Work

[Part 10]

XI. Free Agreement

[Part 11]

XII. Objections: i. - iii

[Part 12]

XII. Objections: iv.

XIII. The Collectivist Wages System: i. - iii.

[Part 13]

XIII. The Collectivist Wages System: iv.

XIV. Consumption and Production: i. - ii.

[Part 14 – This Week]

XV. The Division of Labour – 0:19

XVI. The Decentralization of Industry

i. – 8:00

ii. – 19:03

iii. – 23:26

[Part 15-16?]

XVII. Agriculture

Footnote – 7:58

A fuller development of these ideas will be found in my book, Fields, Factories, and Workshops,

published by Messrs. Thomas Nelson and Sons in their popular series in 1912.