Re: [Marxism] 'The Nation' and Reconstruction
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi Louis, We were in touch almost two years ago, you might recall, after you wrote me an email about my article on the film 'Lincoln,' Thaddeus Stevens, and *The Nation* http://www.thenation.com/article/171682/lincoln-thaddeus-stevens-and-continuing-need-radicals-american-politics. I've since learned a lot more than I could ever wish to share about the magazine's history--that which is regrettable and that which is admirable--as shortly after our exchange they hired me as archivist and general in-house historian. Next year will mark our 150th anniversary, and there will be plenty for you to pick over. I'm aware of the line you cite in Marxmail yesterday afternoon--I think it comes from an editorial at the end of reconstruction in 1877, correct?--and there are certainly more cringe-inducing lines than that. We will not be shying away from this aspect of the magazine's history next year. That said, I have to quibble with the notion that conservative or racist--even in the context of their own times--articles in the magazine from the first one-third of its existence, say, have much to do with problems you may have with the magazine today, or with problems that those to *The Nation*'s left may have had with it in the 1930s or the 1960s or the 1990s. *The Nation* has undergone a few dramatic transformations in its lifetime, most significantly in 1918 when Oswald Garrison Villard took control and steered it sharply to the left. It is not a continuous history--my job related to the anniversary would be a lot easier if it were. Also, there have been times where--from my view in 2014 at least--*The Nation *was doing great work on some themes but very poor work on others. I've found a piece about the massacre of General Custer, from around the same time as the piece you quote, written by the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, basically arguing that it was America's own chickens coming home to roost. I guess I'm just respectfully submitting that it is possibly not that interesting to cite evidence from the 1870s for a claim that *The Nation* has been problematic from its inception. Has any 150-year old institution been perfect? It's fair to simply not believe in institutions, but as far as they go, I think you would be hard-pressed to find one that has been putting out tens of thousands of words on politics and literature every week for a century and a half and has managed in all that time never to produce things that we, today, would call problematic. *The Nation* is fully aware of the blots on what I think any honest and leftist observer is obligated to recognize as a pretty good record indeed. To cite only late Godkin and Eric Alterman as evidence that *The Nation* has been problematic from its inception is not a serious reading of history. Richard Kreitner Message: 11 Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 13:55:09 -0400 From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism] When the Nation Magazine grew weary of Reconstruction Message-ID: 54284b7d.5080...@panix.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed A few days ago I had been consulting Douglas Blackmon?s ?Slavery by Another Name?, a very fine history of post-Civil War forced labor, as part of a long-term research project to rebut Charles Post?s thesis on slavery as ?precapitalist? when I came across a revealing reference to the Nation Magazine. As I have pointed out in the past, the magazine was a primary source of arguments on behalf of winding down Reconstruction. I had completely forgotten about the passage but was reminded of it today when a Facebook thread on Eric Alterman?s opposition to BDS prompted the query why the magazine puts up with him. In my view, the Nation has been problematic from its inception, lurching from abolitionism to articles attacking moves to make the KKK illegal. For a fuller discussion, I?d refer you to a piece I wrote in 2003: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/tainted_nation.htm Douglas Blackmon: A new national white consensus began to coalesce against African Americans with shocking force and speed. The general white public, the national leadership of the Republican Party, and the federal government on every level were arriving at the conclusion that African-Americans did not merit citizenship and that their freedom was not able enough to justify the conflicts they engendered among whites. A growing body of whites across the nation concluded that blacks were not worth the cost of imposing a racial morality that few in any region genuinely shared. As early as 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Union army of liberation, conceded to members of
Re: [Marxism] 'The Nation' and Reconstruction
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 9/29/14 9:40 AM, Richard Kreitner via Marxism wrote: To cite only late Godkin and Eric Alterman as evidence that*The Nation* has been problematic from its inception is not a serious reading of history. But it has been problematic from its inception, although not exclusively on the racism question. Early on, the magazine relied on financing from a railroad baron: On July 1, 1881, Villard returned to journalism, his first passion, and bought two NY publications with capital gained from his growing railroad empire: The New York Evening Post, a daily, and the Nation Magazine that had been instrumental in his rise to power. He put Carl Schurz, a former Radical Republican and Nation Magazine editor E.L. Godkin, in charge of the Post, while he gave his son Oliver Garrison Villard the job of running the Nation. By now Schurz, Godkin and the Nation were firmly in the camp of business as usual. Villard's fortunes increased with each passing year. In 1889 he teamed up with Thomas Edison and German bankers to form Edison General Electric. In 1892, close to the time of his death, Villard threw himself into politics once again. He sought the repeal of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which he viewed as an impediment to his fortune-building goals in railroad and electricity. He became an enthusiastic supporter of the Democratic Party candidate Grover Cleveland, who was the very symbol of the Gilded Age. Villard died in 1900 of what the doctors called an apoplectic stroke. Donations and bequests in Villard's name still go to Harvard, Columbia, the American Museum of History, the Metropolitan Museum and many other august institutions. full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins/villard.htm --- Then, fast-forwarding, I found the Nation Magazine's reporting on trouble spots most troublesome: In 1952, shortly after Mossadegh had been voted into power in Iran, the Nation took it upon itself to persuade the secular nationalist to pay proper respect to Western powers. In the aptly titled A New Deal for the Middle East (the magazine was an institutional pillar of FDR's 4 term presidency), long-time editor Freda Kirchwey describes the Godfather like deal being put forward by London and Washington. The US would grant a $10 million loan and Britain would withdraw the economic sanctions imposed a year earlier in exchange for a favorable deal involving Shell and all the other gangsters. But, Kirchwey wrote, reports from Teheran give little reason for optimism. He might be better advised in fact to cut a deal where he gets part of the pie rather than the whole thing. Missing entirely from this equation is the right of the Iranian people to decide to do with their own resources. Within a year Mossadegh, whom the Nation would eventually dub a dictator, would be overthrown by a young leader they characterized as well-meaning and progressive. His name? Reza Shah Pahlevi. On June 25, 1955, Sam Jaffe, their roving correspondent in Southeast Asia, filed a report on Dilemma in Saigon: Which Way Democracy that is filled with the kinds of self-flattering illusions satirized in Graham Greene's The Quiet American as well as fulsome praise for the dictator Ngo Dinh Diem: In Saigon there is one man with a solution. But he admits it must be put into effect quickly or all will be lost. I am not permitted to give his name, but he is an American official who works around the clock attempting to whip the Diem government into shape. He has a deep belief in America and its great past, which, he reminds you, was the result of its success in throwing off colonial rule. He also has a deep belief in the Asians. He feels strongly that our Asian foreign policy should not be to support any one group or government but the will of the Asian peoples. He speaks of concrete plans now under way in Vietnam for the reconstruction of the country. These include the resettling of over 800,000 refugees. Land will be granted them and money given them to build new homes—if needed, more money can be obtained through a low-interest loan. He speaks with enthusiasm, of the work being done by TRIM, the American Training Relations and Instructions Mission under the able command of Lieutenant General John W. O'Daniel, in helping the Vietnamese build and maintain a strong military force. He hopes for much from the teams of Americans under USMO, the United States Operations Mission, who go into the Vietnamese countryside to ascertain the wants of the people. Their reports are filled with the need for schools, bridges, communications, hospitals, sanitation, and the many other necessities of life that might stem the tide of communism. Perhaps it would be too much to expect the Nation
Re: [Marxism] 'The Nation' and Reconstruction
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == You sure have found some impeachable pieces. I wish I could have the comfort of shoring up confidence in my current convictions by identifying with the best of the past and eschewing the worst--by pretending I would have known just what to think in 1877, 1938, 1955, 1966, and so on. I deny myself this comfort. *The Nation* published dozens upon dozens of articles arguing against American involvement in Vietnam between 1954 and 1966. In 1934 it published Emma Goldman's The Tragedy of Political Exiles--not exactly cozying up to Stalin. (It is always amusing when people assume that in the 1930s they--and their favored magazines--would have been neither prematurely nor belatedly anti-Stalinist, but would have got it just on time.) Freda Kirchwey began writing for *The Nation* in 1918; you cite an editorial from 1952 that is not even especially egregious for its time. (This is assuming we're not using knowledge learned later to criticize historical actors, which would require some chutzpah.) But I don't even concede that if you find five or ten more in which Kirchwey doesn't get a question exactly right according to your standards of September 2014 that you would have sealed up an argument about the magazine being problematic from its inception. I did not argue that after 1918 *The Nation* never again published something with which we all might now disagree. Your argument is premised on a definition of problematic that is meaningless and boring. I agree that it is fun to dig into an archive looking only for those pieces that can be identified today as troublesome; I just don't think it is very interesting. On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: On 9/29/14 9:40 AM, Richard Kreitner via Marxism wrote: To cite only late Godkin and Eric Alterman as evidence that*The Nation* has been problematic from its inception is not a serious reading of history. But it has been problematic from its inception, although not exclusively on the racism question. Early on, the magazine relied on financing from a railroad baron: On July 1, 1881, Villard returned to journalism, his first passion, and bought two NY publications with capital gained from his growing railroad empire: The New York Evening Post, a daily, and the Nation Magazine that had been instrumental in his rise to power. He put Carl Schurz, a former Radical Republican and Nation Magazine editor E.L. Godkin, in charge of the Post, while he gave his son Oliver Garrison Villard the job of running the Nation. By now Schurz, Godkin and the Nation were firmly in the camp of business as usual. Villard's fortunes increased with each passing year. In 1889 he teamed up with Thomas Edison and German bankers to form Edison General Electric. In 1892, close to the time of his death, Villard threw himself into politics once again. He sought the repeal of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which he viewed as an impediment to his fortune-building goals in railroad and electricity. He became an enthusiastic supporter of the Democratic Party candidate Grover Cleveland, who was the very symbol of the Gilded Age. Villard died in 1900 of what the doctors called an apoplectic stroke. Donations and bequests in Villard's name still go to Harvard, Columbia, the American Museum of History, the Metropolitan Museum and many other august institutions. full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins/villard.htm --- Then, fast-forwarding, I found the Nation Magazine's reporting on trouble spots most troublesome: In 1952, shortly after Mossadegh had been voted into power in Iran, the Nation took it upon itself to persuade the secular nationalist to pay proper respect to Western powers. In the aptly titled A New Deal for the Middle East (the magazine was an institutional pillar of FDR's 4 term presidency), long-time editor Freda Kirchwey describes the Godfather like deal being put forward by London and Washington. The US would grant a $10 million loan and Britain would withdraw the economic sanctions imposed a year earlier in exchange for a favorable deal involving Shell and all the other gangsters. But, Kirchwey wrote, reports from Teheran give little reason for optimism. He might be better advised in fact to cut a deal where he gets part of the pie rather than the whole thing. Missing entirely from this equation is the right of the Iranian people to decide to do with their own resources. Within a year Mossadegh, whom the Nation would eventually dub a dictator, would be overthrown by a young leader they characterized as well-meaning and progressive. His name? Reza Shah Pahlevi. On June 25, 1955, Sam Jaffe, their roving correspondent in Southeast Asia, filed a report on Dilemma in Saigon: Which Way
Re: [Marxism] 'The Nation' and Reconstruction
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There was plenty of debate in *The Nation*'s pages in the 1930s on the merits of Rooseveltian liberalism, as there was in the 1990s on Clintonism. And to state unequivocally that *The Nation* has been hostile to third-party bids is to ignore powerful arguments against lesser-evilism published in its pages in 1932, 1948, 1956, 1980, not to mention more recent years. *The Nation* has long considered itself a venue for conversation between radicals and liberals--or rather, among them. Hitchens, in his last column, argued that the magazine itself took a position in that argument and is becoming the voice and the echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden. Others, of course, think the magazine throws its weight in the other direction. The conversation exists. On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: On 9/29/14 10:38 AM, Richard Kreitner wrote: You sure have found some impeachable pieces. I wish I could have the comfort of shoring up confidence in my current convictions by identifying with the best of the past and eschewing the worst--by pretending I would have known just what to think in 1877, 1938, 1955, 1966, and so on. I deny myself this comfort. /The Nation/ published dozens upon dozens of articles arguing against American involvement in Vietnam between 1954 and 1966. In 1934 it published Emma Goldman's The Tragedy of Political Exiles--not exactly cozying up to Stalin. (It is always amusing when people assume that in the 1930s they--and their favored magazines--would have been neither prematurely nor belatedly anti-Stalinist, but would have got it just on time.) Freda Kirchwey began writing for /The Nation/ in 1918; you cite an editorial from 1952 that is not even especially egregious for its time. (This is assuming we're not using knowledge learned later to criticize historical actors, which would require some chutzpah.) But I don't even concede that if you find five or ten more in which Kirchwey doesn't get a question exactly right according to your standards of September 2014 that you would have sealed up an argument about the magazine being problematic from its inception. I did not argue that after 1918 /The Nation/ never again published something with which we all might now disagree. Your argument is premised on a definition of problematic that is meaningless and boring. I agree that it is fun to dig into an archive looking only for those pieces that can be identified today as troublesome; I just don't think it is very interesting. Of course most Nation Magazine articles are unobjectionable if not praiseworthy. However, the overarching problem is its commitment to liberalism. In Godkin's day, it was the original liberalism of the Victorian epoch. This is what explained the opposition to Reconstruction--in line with a growing fear of Paris Commune type contagion. In the 1930s, the FDR liberalism that was hegemonic on the left probably had more to do with the magazine's support for the Moscow Trials than any real ideological commitment to Stalinism. However, I decided to bail ship in the 1990s when the magazine backed Bill Clinton, just as it backed Obama in both elections. Keep in mind that the Nation has been hostile to 3rd party bids, a factor no doubt in the persistence of lesser evil politics. The only thing I would take back in this is my potshot at Alexander Cockburn, who was right on Indian gaming casinos. http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/the_nation.htm Why I am cancelling my Nation magazine subscription Since this is being circulated on the Internet, where there are many non-USA participants, a word or two about the Nation would be helpful. The Nation was established in 1865 by a group of abolitionists and is the authoritative voice of left-liberalism in the US. During the 1930s and 40s, it was sympathetic to the views of the CPUSA and has often included Marxist contributors and editors. Doug Henwood, for example, is on the editorial board. Long-time editor Victor Navasky was being interviewed on public television's Open Mind a month or so ago and was explaining why long-term subscribers were important to the magazine. When you consider that a year's subscription to the weekly costs $52, somebody who has been subscribing for five years, let's say, has put up over $250 for the production costs of the magazine, which actually runs a deficit on a regular basis (no tobacco ads, etc.). Since I have been reading the magazine every week since early 1980 either on the newsstand or through subscription as is currently the case, this qualifies me as a long-term subscriber. In addition, I was responsible for first
