Allen Ginsberg, "America" (was Re: Patriotism)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Feb 24 01:23:31 PST 2000


Justin:


>However, while I myself am something of a "rootless cosmopolitan," I don't
>see the point of being antipatriotic in the ostentatious way that some
>leftists are. One time when I was speaking against the coming Gulf War at OSU
>in the fall of 90 to a pretty decent sized audience, I had a young ROTC type
>attack my patriotism. I said, if I didn't care about my country, why would I
>be doing this? He allowed as I had a point and apologized.

I hear you, but the same rhetoric doesn't work for me. I'm still Japanese by citizenship.


>I _do_ care about my country, and I _am_ proud of many of its traditions and
>accomplishments. One constructs a usable past, but it's there in America--Tom
>Paine, the Abolitionists, John Brown, Debs and Knight, the Haymarket Martyrs,
> Frederick Douglass and the Suffragists, Emma Goldman, the IWW and the CIO,
>Rosa Parks and Dr. King. And--because I am not as left as some of you, I have
>establishment heros too--I think the Constitution, for all its flaws, is a
>great achievement; not least because of the 14th Amendment; I am a great
>admirer of John Marshall and OW Holmes, Learned Hand, Hugo Black and
>Thurgood Marshall.. Towering over our landscape is the shadow of Lincoln.
>
>The CP tried to appropriate a form of patriotism during the pop front era,
>Communism is 20th century Americanism, the Jefferson Clubs, the WWII moviues
>with integrated fighting units fighting fascism--all written by commies
>shortly to be blacklisted, "The House I Live In," etc. But it sort
>appropriated them.

Michael Denning's _The Cultural Front_ is a fine study of the Popular Front efforts to expand the content of American culture & create a left-wing tradition. BTW, I wrote on this question on another list:

***** Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 01:14:29 -0500 To: marxism at lists.panix.com From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> Subject: Re: nostalgia for McCarthyism?

Carrol:
>Yes. And I was one of the people who made it then -- and I might make
>it again in a forum which I controlled. (I mean this fairly literally: if I am
>sitting at the speakers' table and control access to the mike). But it's a
>dangerous claim for reasons I gave.

The CP during the Popular Front days came closest to having a lasting impact on inflecting Americanism a wee bit leftward, or at least making American culture more inclusively liberal & populist, though at the cost of being unable to defend Japanese-Americans. But the CPers failed nonetheless, and when the political winds changed, their Americanness got called into question anyhow, and their fellow Americans were too cowed to stand up. Isn't communism always "foreign," so to speak, from the point of view of the ruling ideas? Agitators are always "outsiders" during Red Scares. Besides, not going along with imperialism is always un-American, regardless of the self-definitions of anti-imperialists. I might even go so far as to say, risking a cruelly flippant hindsight, that the CP got hoisted by its own petard, by raising the ideological stock of patriotism and Americanism during the war time.

with due respect for all the important work done by the American CPers,

Yoshie *****

I still haven't changed my mind.


>A big exception was Woody Guthriie, who had a real deep and very left wing
>patriotism, wrote the great patrioric song of the 20th century, this Land is
>Your Land, nothing artificial OR alienated-Jeremiad about. He didn't have
>appropriate patriotism, unlike the CP, he simply loved this country, from
>California to the New York island. And he was never alienated. He was often
>angry--or he wouldn't have been on the left, in fact, a comsymp fellow
>traveller. But there's never a sour note about America in his writing and
>singing. Unfortunately his attitude seems not to have taken root among the
>radical left in this country. You can see echoes of it in, for example, EL
>Doctorow.
>
>This is rather disjointed, and I am not sure I have a point, certainly I
>don't have a thesis. But it may stimulate discussion.

I like Woody Guthrie, but the problem is that the American history is a history of settler colonialism, imperial expansion, etc. So, "This Land Is Your Land" may not resonate in the same way outside the white working class. For instance, _Salt of the Earth_ begins with the voice-over narration by Esperanza (played by Rosaura Revueltas, a Mexican, not a Mexican-American actress):

***** Esperanza's voice: How shall I begin my story that has no beginning? My name is Esperanza, Esperanza Quintero. I am a miner's wife. This is our home. The house is not ours. But the flowers...the flowers are ours. This is my village. When I was a child, it was called San Marcos. The Anglos changed the name to Zinc Town. Zinc Town, New Mexico, U.S.A. Our roots go deep in this place, deeper than the pines, deeper than the mine shaft. In these arroyos my great-grandfather raised cattle before the Anglos ever came. The land where the mine stands -- that was owned by my husband's own grandfather. Now it belongs to the company. Eighteen years my husband has given to that mine. Living half his life with dynamite and darkness. Who can say where it began, my story? I do not know. But this day I remember as the beginning of an end. *****

The land question is a complicated one that evokes a many-layered history, and depending on whether you are an Anglo, a Mexican-American, a Native American, a non-Anglo immigrant (legal or illegal), etc., "This Land Is Your Land" conveys a different meaning to you.

BTW, before _Salt of the Earth_ was finished, Rosaura Revueltas was ordered to return to Mexico. After her return, she found herself persona non grata in the Mexican film industry, too, so she had to teach ballet instead. There's no home for Communists and fellow travellers in hard times.

looking forward to the beginning of an end,

Yoshie



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