a study in red: virtue, terror, desire

persephone’s revolutionary theory & history blog

[shirk-ethic]

some studies in revolution

Hello! This is a sideblog dedicated to history and theory of revolutions: what they are, how they're made, what happens when they succeed and fail. It is probably going to be made up of analysis and quotes and is intended to kind of "keep me honest" about doing some actual intellectual work in the midst of life's drudgery. I also think that my grounding in revolutionary theory is personally inadequate and I want to correct that.

To start out, it's been a long time since I was actively reading academic history, and I learn history best from listening and taking notes; only reading makes it less "sticky" in my memory. So I'm initially going to use Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast as a means of marking my progress and giving some focus to the project, as well as providing a baseline to build notes on which can then be supplemented through more rigorous academic histories.

In tandem with each subject, I plan to read some primary and secondary sources, including relevant writings in revolutionary theory (both from revolutionaries, i.e. Lenin/Fanon/Robespierre/etc., and from academic sociologists or historians, i.e. Skocpol, Barrington Moore, Eric Wolf). Eventually I'll run out of Duncan, so if anyone has other similar podcasts or some lecture series that they think would be useful - especially for historical events after the Russian Revolution - please let me know! Reading recs are also always welcome.

As far as what I'm hoping to cover, I'm going to do something non-chronological and relatively free-form. I definitely want to cover the following:

English Civil War

French Revolution - COMPLETE

Haitian Revolution - COMPLETE

Mexican Revolution

Russian Revolution(s)

Chinese Revolution

Cuban Revolution

Algerian War of Independence

Iranian Revolution

This is definitely passing over some notable ones but I'm not foreclosing coverage of any particular thing by way of making this list, just kind of giving an indicator of where I'm at right now. I also have some historical interests I'd like to spend more time learning and talking about, like certain Roman revolts (Catiline did nothing wrong) and the German Peasants' War. So maybe after France or Haiti I'll get a wild hair to do a write-up on Thomas Muntzer, or Easter Rising, or Spanish anarchism. I want my focus to mainly be on the seizure of power, and what was done with power once seized, but I'd also like to explore failures, losses, and short-term experiments. I'm most likely going to start with the French Revolution and then possibly double back to the English Civil War when I have some time, and then we'll just see what happens. I will also probably not be doing a ton of military history though I won't avoid it where relevant; it's frequently just not enjoyable for me to talk about in detail. Very much approaching these things from the social/political history angle as much as I can.

If you choose to follow along with this personal project, please feel free to chime in as I hope this can lead to some interesting conversations with other people who care about topics like political radicalism, comparative history, political theory, etc. Who knows what life will bring, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep this going for a while.

I may also change the name but I needed something and I thought this was funny.

[estrellasrojas]

did feudalism happen?

Yes but when people talk about "the feudal mode of production" they're usually generalizing social structures that developed from the Norman Conquest and the alliance of Normans and Anglo-Saxon landed elites. "Feudalist" societies were much more economically diverse and market-dependent than the classical Marxist treatment would have people believe. This is demonstrated well by Georges Duby and Jairus Banaji. Some people, like John Haldon, have suggested "tributary mode of production" as a better way to conceive of this catch-all approach, but it can still have some issues by tending to treat the legal structure of polities as identical with their everyday relations of production. This sort of thing initially led Marx and Engels, following from Hegel, to take literally the common legal fiction that the Imperial sovereigns in Asia and Eastern Europe really did own and manage all the land in the polity's territory. In reality this was just what the political claim to sovereignty looked like in these societies and usually in practice the local elites of village communities were the ones who de facto owned and managed most of the land

[hamjensgar]

Hello! First of all I’d like to thank you for your time in reading this ask and I hope you’re doing well.

In reading about the Iranian revolution, something I’ve seen mentioned in texts I’ve read is how the revolution was spearheaded by socialists and Marxists but who were then pushed to the side in favour of religious figures. I have yet to be able to find a text that focuses on this aspect of the revolution, if that makes sense. I apologise if I did not explain well I struggle with English. Would you have any recommendations for texts that go into detail about this aspect? And I apologise as well if the information I have is wrong, and if it is if you have any texts that present a more correct version of events. Thank you once again!

hi! thank you for your question. im gonna take a stab at answering it myself, drawing on some texts that i will cite that you can use as further reading.

there are two components to this question:

what forces made the revolution? i.e. what forces caused the monarchy to lose legitimacy, the shah to abdicate, and the army to declare neutrality

what forces consolidated the islamic republic as the hegemonic political and military power?

i'll address each in turn

what forces made the revolution?

we can begin by addressing the first part of your ask

"did the Marxists/leftists spearhead the revolution?"

plainly, no. while some of these forces played important roles at key moments, the revolution as a whole is best characterized as a populist movement led by a multi class coalition spanning a range of ideologies (Foran categorizes it into "at least five distinct value orientations [...] Khomeini's militant Islam, Shari'ati's radical liberation theology, Bazargan's liberal-democratic Islam, the guerilla groups' socialism (with Islamic and secular variants), and secular nationalism (both socialist and democratic in form.)"[1])

in fact, not only did a single group not "spearhead" the revolution, the ideological actors themselves mainly reacted to and shaped the outcome of a dual-crisis resulting from decades of dependent development (specifically import substitution industrialization driven by and increasingly dependent on oil revenues) and political underdevelopment (the weakening of legitimacy that began with the coup/consolidation of the monarchy in 53 and continued through the next two decades as the shah relied mainly on the military/security state and oil revenues for political authority.) these factors culminated in the aforementioned dual-crisis: "an economic crisis in the form of acute inflation; and an institutional crisis produced by foreign pressures on the shah to relax police controls and observe the human rights of political dissenters" [2]

~

now, some (notably Khomeini himself) have downplayed or dismissed the role that leftists played altogether, insisting that the revolution must be viewed exclusively as an Islamic movement. this isn't quite right. ignoring secular nationalists, there are three roles the explicitly Marxist/communist groups played:

(1) participation in the earliest phase of protests and symbolic actions (letter writing, etc.), particularly among the students and intellegentsia (2) participation in the general strike waves, though not as a hegemonic force and by no means the driving force. as Bayat notes, "one of the main features of the strike movement was that its grassroots organizational leadership was within the workplace, and not from outside organizations such as political parties, unions or religious institutions […] whatever forms of struggle were waged, and whatever forms of consciousness were developed, almost all originated on the factory floors. Outside influences were felt in the later stages of the revolutionary process" [3] (3) arguably the most "decisive" contribution of the left, the guerilla groups' participation in delivering the final death knell* to the regime during the February 9-11 takeover at Doshan Tappeh Air Base, specifically "the Marxist-Leninist People’s Fadai and the Islamist-Marxist Mojahedin-e Khalq"[4] hang on, does that say "Islamist-Marxist"? that's right, all sources i can find on this indicate this was the remaining members of the original MEK, not the Marxist-Leninist split that became Peykar. that means the only prominent secular leftist group involved here was the Fadaian! the secular left*** cant even solely claim this one! so much for "spearheading". this leads us to the second part of the question

"[leftists] were then pushed to the side in favour of religious figures."

there is a hint of truth here that has been badly distorted, namely that Khomeini initially downplayed the role he would play in the revolutionary government**. but the process in which Khomeini's Revolutionary Council and the corresponding Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) consolidated power was a gradual one involving not just suppression of the left, but a struggle with many of the remaining Islamist factions as well as with the Provisional Government, struggles that were not decisively finished by the time Saddam launched his invasion into Khoramshahr- but im getting ahead of myself. first, i want to note: Islam was a significant part of the revolution from the beginning. im going to attempt to spell out some of the key roles it played, but this list is by no means exhaustive:

(1) providing a common language for much of the popular movement. again, not hegemonically, but in a way that cut across classes and unified a broad social base. while many looked to Khomeini as a leader, Islam was mobilized in support of many different and overlapping ideological currents (clericalism, populism, socialism, liberalism, etc.) (2) the 40 day cycle of mourning providing the structural and symbolic framework for the street protests (3) the ulama/bazaari coalition and its mobilization of the urban poor/lower strata (4) the organizing role of the mosque networks (5) organized Islamist groups like the MEK (who as i just mentioned, co-delivered the coup de grace to the shah's military, arguably the most decisive contribution from the left!) and many of the neighborhood revolutionary committees (komitehs), as well as the mosque-oriented militias (hezbollahis)

what forces consolidated the islamic republic as the hegemonic political and military power?

this question is really multiple questions. what factors led to the formation of the IRGC? which existing groups comprised it and which did it absorb? how did it relate to the Revolutionary Council and the Provisional Government? how did it crystallize into the effective military-security apparatus of the nascent state? why wasnt power seized by any other group? (not just internally but also external actors, i.e. why no foreign intervention?) now this is a topic thats so dense it deserves its own response and its also a topic im less read on. ill work on a more full fledged post on this some other time (when i have more energy), but for now ill just try to outline some of the main factors that need to be taken into consideration:

1) the weakness of the police and military, which were "near-paralyzed by the damage they incured during the revolution" [5] 2) the state of the organized left in the late 70s: weak from decades of repression, internally fragmented, and had relatively shallow social penetration. 3) corresponding to this, the failure of the working class to unify and coordinate the strike committees, including a lack of integration between the factory shoras and the neighborhood komitehs. 4) support for the Khomeini government among segments of the left, most notably the Tudeh which "despite criticism from other leftist and nationalist groups […] adopted a policy of almost unconditional support for the Islamic Republic, which it defined as revolutionary and anti-imperialist, [including] cooperation with the government on all kinds of political and security issues." this included a leaflet issued by the party central committee "in which it even encouraged members to report to the security authorities all information about groups and individuals opposing the regime" [6] culminating in the purging of said groups including the Tudeh 4) the aforementioned internal struggle between the Khomeinist RC and other Islamist factions as well as the Provisional Government, interrupted by 5) the Iran-Iraq war. this subject could span a volume in itself. ill leave this for another post, but let me finish by saying that whatever the balance of power before, the war definitively shaped not just the structure of the Iranian state but Iranian politics for decades to come

*various sources describe it as a death knell or a coup de grace, but it should be noted that this was after the shah had already fled the country and much of the military had already defected. still, given feb 11 is when the army officially declared neutrality, its fair to call this decisive ** at the same time, Khomeini's leadership was broadly popular and notably "approved by acclimation" during the mass rallies upon his return from exile. hardly a formal election, but not a coup either *** to be fair, you said left, not secular left, but this is exactly the problem with the way the question is framed, the assumption of a neat separation between "leftism" and Islam

citations:

[1] Foran, John. “The Iranian Revolution of 1977–79: A Challenge for Social Theory.” in A Century of Revolution: Social Movements in Iran (1994) p. 173. [2] Abrahamian, Ervand. "Iran Between Two Revolutions." (1982) p. 497. [3] Bayat, Asef. "Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control" (1987) p. 92 [4] Ostovar, Afshon. Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards" (2016) p. 41. [5] Ibid, p. 42 [6] Haqshenas, Torab. “COMMUNISM iii. In Persia after 1953.” Encyclopædia Iranica, vol. VI, fasc. 1 (1992)

additional reading:

Behrooz, Maziar. "Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran" (1999) Keddie, Nikki. "Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution" (2006)

[newhistorybooks]

This is a monumental and definitive biography. Through his expert knowledge and gripping, clear writing, Baker has developed a brilliant political portrait of one of the most important revolutionaries in modern history.

[bonebeautyart]

*sigh*

[bonebeautyart]

There 🫶

[fidaiaatsaddam]

So pretty....here are some more illustrations I liked from the link you shared, from same artist for the same book

[ghelgheli]

are there any books/articles/texts/authors you would recommend reading to understand/about 1979, the historical context leading up to it, and/or the modern day IRI? i only learned the bare-bones liberal history basics and i would like to understand the communist/materialist perspective of the events/the state. thank you and have a good day/night!

Absolutely! Note that while I've not personally read/watched all of these, the rest have been endorsed by people I trust. Note also that of course, none of these are uncritical recommendations.

For overviews of the past century, from the period of the Constitutional Revolution to the present:

The five episode podcast series by the Dig

The Political History of Modern Iran: Revolution, Reaction and Transformation, 1905 to the Present, Ali Rahnema

Regarding the 1953 coup in particular:

Coup 53, a documentary, dir. Taghi Amirani

Behind the 1953 Coup in Iran, Ali Rahnema

(supplementary) the chapter on the subject in Killing Hope by William Blum and the related CIA memo

On '79:

Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin, Ervand Abrahamian

Call to Arms: Iran's Marxist Revolutionaries, Ali Rahnema

Iran Between Two Revolutions, Ervand Abrahamian

The two foundational pamphlets of the urban guerilla movement: The Necessity of Armed Struggle and Refutation of the Theory of "Survival" by Amir-Parviz Pouyan + Armed Struggle; both a Strategy and Tactic by Masoud Ahmadzadeh, available on marxists dot org

(supplementary) The Little Black Fish, Samad Behrangi. Behrangi had connections to early members of the Fadayaan and was found drowned under circumstances of contested suspiciousness in 1968

[o-fantasma]

any specific recs you'd give for geurilla writings? tags on that post sounded rly interesting

i’ll skip the obvious for now - che mao fanon - i never actually got round to marighella’s mini-manual tho it was the BIG one for lots of the 70s era euro-american insurgents attempting to bring third worldism home as it were…

i read régis debray’s revolution in the revolution as one of the like first leftist theory texts i really read as an adult (my family were weird so i read chomsky when i was like 10-11 but i didnt rlly read much else of substance politically til i left home) just cos i found it for cheap by chance in a bookshop. debray consulted closely with che and castro and its a p good write-up of debates on guerrilla strategy from the period tho hes a bit rosie on ‘the cuban method’ - ironic given his own critiques of uncritical adoption of chinese communist practices elsewhere but anyway

there are some other similarly optimistic but enjoyable journalistic accounts of some guerrilla wars - edgar snow’s red star over china is ofc a classic and basil davidson’s eye of the storm on angola might be a good synthesis of a whole pile of different books ive read on the liberation wars in portuguese africa at one time or another

maría josefina salfaña-portillo’s the revolutionary imagination in the americas in the age of development is a really good account of a few different guerrilla projects - cuba nicaragua guetamala chiapas… - and she frames them within the gendered and imperial constructs of economic development as laid out by its US architects. i cant remember if i read subcommandante marcos before or after that but it def led me to rigoberta menchú who i read just last month - both give u some very different angles on these struggles than the strict military efficiency of so much of the classic writing; marcos is just the most delightful storyteller and gives u a whole different vantage on what insurgent writing could mean and menchú offers a very distinct perspective carrying her stress on indigenous traditions thru both marxist organisational histories and liberation theology (of particular interest to me ofc). theres a lot of writing produced alongside these forms that gets excluded by militarist angles - i once read a volume of poems or lyrics from the kenya land and freedom army (better known as the mau mau) called thunder on the mountain eg

armed joy by alfredo bonanno is the classic critique of this sorta efficient and teleological leftist organisational logic as the bathwater people keep along with the baby of insurgent violence (‘armed joy’ is a deliberate riff on the idea of ‘armed struggle’ a sorta anarchist rejoinder to the wave of groups like the red brigades in postwar italy)

frank wilderson iii’s memoir incognegro is also rlly great and threads together student anti war protesters picking up threads from the vietnam war early US black power insurgents and his time in uMkhonto weSizwe which was the armed wing of the anc in south africa. ppl forget afropessimism’s origins in the collapse of global black armed struggle its a real loss to the discourse really

ive also found personally interesting and formative the influence of global guerrilla practices on the early politics of gay liberation with these insurgent formations suggesting modes of relation other than the family the couple etc. monique wittig’s les guerilleres and jean genet’s prisoner of love (on palestine and the bpp) are two exemplary works both with major issues - been too long since i read wittig to say much except it struck me v deeply at the time and genet i find deeply beautiful and compelling even if troublingly so.

that should be enough to be getting on with for now i think lmao but guerrilla warfare is about as old as war itself and u can find shit about it in anti colonial struggles all over the world all the way back to the 1400s. maybe shop around see what u can find. hope u have fun!

[transmutationisms]

hi! :) can you recommend any books on the french revolution

if you are just looking for the bare-bones, 101 introduction to what events happened:

A Short History of the French Revolution, Jeremy Popkin (this has gone through many editions but i think anything from 2019 onward is fine. it's not exciting)

The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution, ed. David Andress (2013: Oxford University Press) (<-not cutting-edge nor particularly daring. just useful if you need background on a particular chapter. skip around as much as you like)

two recent-ish edited volumes that serve as good introductions to scholars working in the 21st century, the french revolution as global event, the importance of colonial/imperial expansion, and some economic analysis that nuances the classic marxian interpretation but also rejects furot et al's idealist approach:

The French Revolution in Global Perspective, ed. Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, & William Max Nelson (2013: Cornell University Press) (<-esp pay attention to kwass, nelson, spieler imo)

Life in Revolutionary France, ed. Mette Harder & Jennifer Ngaire Heuer (2020: Bloomsbury)

some monographs i like:

The Death of the French Atlantic: Trade, War, and Slavery in the Age of Revolution, Alan Forrest (2020: Oxford University Press)

Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution, Emma Spary (2000: University of Chicago Press)

Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France, Sean Quinlan (2021: Cornell University Press)

The Citizen-Patient in Revolutionary and Imperial Paris, Dora Weiner (2002: Johns Hopkins University Press) (<-really bad and facile take on foucault that flies blatantly in the face of the actual evidence she presents in the book itself lol)

The French Revolution: Faith, Desire and Politics, Noah Shusterman (2014) (<-does not discuss the haitian revolution or colonial developments at all, which is very lmao, but useful text if you want to know about politics and religion w/in the metropole / church-state relations)

[shirk-ethic]

Ada Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror:

In November 1795, [Havana governor Luis de] Las Casas had extensive discussions with both the Real Consulado and the Havana city council. He conveyed his sense of impending danger, reminding both bodies of the proximity and example of the Saint-Domingue revolution and of growing unrest in Jamaica. The problem, said Las Casas, was not just the example, but the fact that there existed an “excess of communication” with these troubled islands.

He argued that the principal source of this communication was a badly policed slave trade. After having worked so hard to encourage and expand that trade, Las Casas came face to face with the possibility that the slave trade itself increased the risk of subversion. He suspected that in order to make money and to rid themselves of problems, foreigners were using the trade to send to his island those slaves whom they could not control. The king had already prohibited the entry of French slaves. But this restriction and its imperfect implementation were now severely insufficient to the task at hand. Though he could not (and surely did not want to) alter the king’s orders on the “free trade” in captive Africans, he saw the urgent necessity of adopting new measures locally to restrict more severely and punitively the entry of Caribbean slaves. Importantly, he also sought for the first time to evict the ones already there.Since the two groups he addressed – the city council and the Real Consulado – were among the principal advocates for and architects of the expansion of slavery and the slave trade, Las Casas gave them warning and asked for advice on how to proceed. These notable residents of the city – most of them slaveholders – agreed with the general thrust of the governor’s arguments, but they were reluctant to condone the expulsion of slaves without a clearer sense of the gravity and numbers involved.

Nonetheless, the governor acted, and on February 25, 1796, he issued a new decree, ordering (yet again) that the slave trade to Cuba be strictly limited to Africans directly purchased in Africa, again prohibiting the introduction of any slaves who had lived in any foreign country (outside of Africa) in whatever capacity for whatever duration. Every trader entering Cuban ports with slaves to sell would now be required to sign a sworn statement that none of the captives on board were “illegal.”

Same as it ever was!

[shirk-ethic]

Okay, blog updates: I wrapped up the French Rev study back in late Jan/early Feb I believe. I just wrapped up listening to the Revolutions season on the Haitian Revolution and am working through Ada Ferrer's book "Freedom's Mirror" as my major monograph to associate with that. my vision is that I might kinda skim through some other books too.

as far as what's next, the world is my oyster. the next season of Revolutions is the Spanish-American wars for independence. I did skip over the English Civil War because I'd listened to that season in full before, so I don't have any notes for it, so I may double back and read Chris Hill's book on social/religious movements. alternatively it would be an opportune moment to just leap ahead by a century and start digging into Russia and China since those will have a lot of material to cover. and then I still have my idea of like doing smaller "sidequests," looking at unsuccessful or more contained revolts like the German Peasants' War. decisions!

[shirk-ethic]

I think what I will do is:

keep flipping through various Haitian and French Rev books.

go back and do the English Civil War and then move onto the "Glorious Revolution" which I think will sync up nicely with other projects of mine right now.

when I have some disposable cash, order a copy of Lyndal Roper's Summer of Blood and Fire and do some German Peasant's War study.

Once I've done all that maybe then I'll either just go onto the next season of the podcast (Bolivar), or start up the Russian Rev.

[shirk-ethic]

if I were to give like a very broad, not very detailed survey of the FRev's class dynamics: intra-elite conflict sees the various factions competing over who can rally mass support when state bankruptcy makes the long-standing disputes break into open political crisis; in the process this enables the masses (or a certain section of them) to finally articulate themselves politically, much to the chagrin of the elites that were really just trying to harness them as a blunt instrument to their own ends

[shirk-ethic]

Okay, blog updates: I wrapped up the French Rev study back in late Jan/early Feb I believe. I just wrapped up listening to the Revolutions season on the Haitian Revolution and am working through Ada Ferrer's book "Freedom's Mirror" as my major monograph to associate with that. my vision is that I might kinda skim through some other books too.

as far as what's next, the world is my oyster. the next season of Revolutions is the Spanish-American wars for independence. I did skip over the English Civil War because I'd listened to that season in full before, so I don't have any notes for it, so I may double back and read Chris Hill's book on social/religious movements. alternatively it would be an opportune moment to just leap ahead by a century and start digging into Russia and China since those will have a lot of material to cover. and then I still have my idea of like doing smaller "sidequests," looking at unsuccessful or more contained revolts like the German Peasants' War. decisions!

[shirk-ethic]

Ada Ferrer, Freedom's Mirror:

Part of what distinguished the second from the first modern wave of slavery is that it developed in an age of ascendant antislavery. Together, the Haitian Revolution and the growing hegemony of British abolitionism constituted a commanding challenge to the institution of slavery. In the latter case, the most powerful country in the globe committed itself to the gradual erosion and eventual elimination of the institution. In the former, the hemisphere’s newest and least powerful government stood as an example of the ability of slaves themselves to achieve liberation. Thus, in the second wave of slavery, freedom was always already present. Perhaps that had always been true, for the enslaved did not require prompting from British abolitionist William Wilberforce or even from Toussaint Louverture to see themselves as something other than slaves. But now freedom was present more systematically, not as a desired state for an individual or family or community, but as a possible legal status for all members of society. Everyone – slaves, masters, free people of color, authorities – now understood that a post-slavery society was possible, perhaps in their lifetimes, perhaps in their children’s.

[shirk-ethic]

Ada Ferrer, Freedom's Mirror:

With Spain now formally committed to the slave trade as a foundation for tropical commercial agriculture in its empire, and with the island on its way to becoming a slave society, slavery itself – and not just the slave trade – appeared to require some thought. Just three months after the free slave trade decree of February 1789, the king approved a second decree designed to regulate the treatment of slaves in his dominions. Predicting that the slave trade decree would result in a “considerable increase in the number of slaves,” the state found it imperative to lay down regulations to be “promptly observed by all the owners of slaves.” Existing regulations governing the treatment and education of slaves, said the new decree’s preamble, were scattered across many pieces of legislation, often dating from centuries earlier. Most contemporary masters and overseers therefore had little knowledge of the Spanish law of slavery and inadvertently committed abuses that violated existing legal principles. The imminent arrival of an unprecedented number of slaves urgently required the formulation of a coherent black code to clarify the obligations and rights of slaves, masters, and the state. The decree approved by the king reiterated provisions already in effect, at least on paper: the prohibition of work on Sundays, the master’s obligation to feed and clothe his bondspeople; the fostering of marriage among the enslaved; and cumulative fines on masters who neglected the provisions of the laws. The law stated, of course, the slave’s obligation to obey and respect the master as a father, and it authorized punishment – by “imprisonment, shackles, chains, clubs, or stocks” – when he or she failed in that obligation. But the 1789 law also specified new and stringent limits on what that punishment could entail, expressly forbidding that the slave be placed upside down when receiving the punishment and specifying that whippings could not cause bleeding nor exceed twenty-five lashes with a soft instrument. Finally, the new law gave the town councils, its syndics, and members of the clergy the right to inspect and report on potential abuses of masters and overseers, and it protected the right of anonymity for denouncers of abuse. The regulation represented, opined its framers, a balance among the imperative to protect the minimum rights of slaves, to allow the expansion of agriculture, and to preserve public order and the security of the state.

Once the new law was issued, the engines of state circulated several hundred copies in Spain’s American colonies. Even before its arrival on the other side of the Atlantic, however, rumors of its drafting produced panic and resistance among slaveholders. In Santo Domingo and Louisiana, planters joined forces to resist its implementation. In Caracas, planters persuaded local authorities to suspend its application even before they had received or read it. Despite that, after it arrived, enslaved people apparently attempted to take advantage of its provisions, taking masters to court for infractions of the rules it prescribed. In Havana, the arrival of the decree prompted emergency meetings of the city council. In January, the city’s planters – identifying themselves as the “body of sugar planters of Havana” – wrote to the king to persuade him of the “sad consequences and irreparable harm” that would result from the application of the new slave regulations. The brunt of their outrage was directed at the provisions that limited punishment. They objected, they said, not because they wished to exceed the limits established, but because knowledge of the provisions would lessen the fear and subordination of the enslaved, who would abandon their plantations and complain incessantly to the government. They continued, apocalyptically: “We see already our farms ruined, our families miserable, his Majesty’s treasury in incalculable arrears, the income from tithes destroyed, the commerce of our port annihilated, our countryside abandoned, the island overrun with calamities, and our slaves in rebellion.” The danger produced by its implementation, they argued, overshadowed any individual instances of abuse, for the majority of masters, they insisted, treated their slaves humanely.

same as it ever was!

[estrellasrojas]

Do you know of good books on tracking the lineage of Hegelianism to Marxism and/or things external and not immanent to Marxism in and of themselevs which have had influence on it in general?

Hegelianism is definitely immanent to Marxism for better or worse. I think generally that to understand the intellectual background of Marx and Engels that Marxists should read more about Young Hegelianism and the First International as the two major episodes in their political-intellectual development. For the Young Hegelians, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx by David McLellan is a good start. For the First International, The Emancipation of Labor by Henryk Katz.

I would also recommend reading things from the early Young Hegelian communists that Marx and Engels hung out with, like Moses Hess, Wilhelm Weitling, and August Willich. You’ll recognize a lot of things that have carried over to modern communism, even elements that Marx and Engels criticized have been carried over into Marxism (this was mostly via Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, who I also recommend reading). You can find some things on Marxists Internet Archive, sometimes untranslated so you’ll have to use Yandex or Google Translate if you don’t have DeepL

[tlatollotl]

Introduction to Mesoamerica reading material

This list is drawn from old school syllabi, what I’ve read, and what I’ve seen others recommend. I will try to update this periodically with more books, journal articles, book chapters, and even documentaries. I’ll try and provide an open access (or limited access like a free JSTOR account) for the journal articles and book chapters.

Books

General

*  Mann, Charles C. 1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus. Alfred a Knopf Incorporated, 2005.

*  Coe, Michael D., and Rex Koontz. Mexico: from the Olmecs to the Aztecs. Vol. 29. Thames & Hudson, 2008.

*  Evans, Susan Toby. Ancient Mexico and Central America: archaeology and culture history. Thames & hudson, 2013.

*  Coe, Sophie D. America’s first cuisines. University of Texas Press, 1994.

*  Matthew, Laura E., and Michel R. Oudijk.  Indian conquistadors: Indigenous allies in the conquest of Mesoamerica. University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.

*  Restall, Matthew. Seven myths of the Spanish conquest. Oxford University Press, 2004.

*  Miller, Mary Ellen, and Karl Taube. An illustrated dictionary of the gods and symbols of ancient Mexico and the Maya. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

*  Tiesler, Vera, and Andrea Cucina, eds. New perspectives on human sacrifice and ritual body treatments in ancient Maya society. Springer Science & Business Media, 2007.

Aztec

*  Smith, Michael E. The Aztecs. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

*  Hassig, Ross. Aztec warfare: Imperial expansion and political control. Vol. 188. University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

*  Soustelle, Jacques. Daily life of the Aztecs. Courier Corporation, 2002.

*  Lêaon-Portilla, Miguel. Aztec Thought and Culture. University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.

*  Anderson, Arthur JO, and Charles E. Dibble. Florentine Codex. School of American Research and University of Utah, Sante Fe, New Mexico, II(1950).

*  Portilla, Miguel León. The broken spears: The Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico. Beacon Press, 2006.

Maya

*  Houston, Stephen D., and Takeshi Inomata. The Classic Maya. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

*  Freidel, David, and Linda Schele. A forest of kings: The untold story of the ancient Maya. Harper Collins, 1992.

*  Freidel, David A., Linda Schele, and Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path. (1993).

*  Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. Chronicle of the Maya kings and queens: Deciphering the dynasties of the ancient Maya. Thames & Hudson, 2008.

*  Coe, Michael D. “Breaking the Maya Code, rev. ed.” London and NewYork(1999).

*  American Anthropological Association. Ancient Maya Commoners. Eds. Jon C. Lohse, and Fred Valdez Jr. University of Texas Press, 2004.

*  Demarest, Arthur. Ancient Maya: the rise and fall of a rainforest civilization. Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

*  Sharer, Robert J., and Loa P. Traxler. The ancient maya. Stanford University Press, 2006.

*  Iannone, Gyles, and Samuel V. Connell. Perspectives on Ancient Maya Rural Complexity. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2003.

*  Scarborough, Vernon L., Fred Valdez, and Nicholas P. Dunning, eds. Heterarchy, Political Economy, and the Ancient Maya: The Three Rivers Region of the East-central Yucatˆn Peninsula. University of Arizona Press, 2003. 

*  Houston, Stephen, David Stuart, and Karl Taube. The memory of bones: Body, being, and experience among the Classic Maya. University of Texas Press, 2013.

*  Jones, Grant D. The conquest of the last Maya kingdom. Stanford University Press, 1998.

Olmec

*  Pool, Christopher. Olmec archaeology and early Mesoamerica. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Teotihuacan

*  Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos. Teotihuacan. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.

*  Sugiyama, Saburo. Human sacrifice, militarism, and rulership: materialization of state ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

* Manzanilla, Linda. Teotihuacan, ciudad excepcional de Mesoamérica.  El Colegio Nacional, 2017.

*  Headrick, Annabeth. The Teotihuacan trinity: the sociopolitical structure of an ancient Mesoamerican city, 2007.

West Mexico

*  Pollard, Helen Perlstein. Tariacuri’s Legacy: The Prehispanic Tarascan State. University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

*  Warren, Joseph Benedict. The conquest of Michoacan: the Spanish domination of the Tarascan kingdom in western Mexico, 1521-1530. University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.

*  Von Winning, Hasso, and Olga Hammer. Anecdotal sculpture of ancient West Mexico. Ethnic Arts Council of Los Angeles, 1972.

*  Von Winning, Hasso. The shaft tomb figures of West Mexico. No. 24. Southwest Museum, 1974.

*  Hosler, Dorothy. The sounds and colors of power: The sacred metallurgical technology of ancient west Mexico. MIT Press, 1994.

*  Townsend, Richard F. Ancient West Mexico: Art and archaeology of the unknown past. Thames and Hudson, 1998.

* Beekman, Christopher S. and Robert B. Pickering. Shaft Tombs and Figurines in West Mexican Society: A Reassessment. Gilcrease Museum, 2016.

*  Altman, Ida. The War for Mexico’s West: Indians and Spaniards in New Galicia, 1524-1550. University of New Mexico Press, 2010.

* Williams, Eduardo. Ancient West Mexico in the Mesoamerican Ecumene. Archaeopress, 2020. 

Oaxaca

*  Flannery, Kent V. The cloud people: Divergent evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations. Percheron Pr, 2003.

*  Byland, Bruce, and John MD Pohl. In the Realm of Eight Deer. (1994).

*  Joyce, Arthur A. Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Chatinos. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell (2010).

*  Winter, Marcus. Oaxaca: the archaeological record. Editorial Minutiae Mexicana, 1989.

*  Joyce, Arthur A., ed. Polity and ecology in Formative period coastal Oaxaca. University Press of Colorado, 2013.

*  Spores, Ronald, and Andrew K. Balkansky. The Mixtecs of Oaxaca: Ancient Times to the Present. Vol. 267. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.

*  Terraciano, Kevin. The Mixtecs of colonial Oaxaca: Ñudzahui history, sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Stanford University Press, 2004.

Film

* The Dawn of the Maya

* Edgewalker: A Conversation with Linda Schele

*  Glyphers: Deciphering Mayan Society

* The Popol Vuh - English / Español

[tlatollotl]

Updated with the Williams book I reviewed this year

[estrellasrojas]

Thoughts on Materialism and Empirio Criticism?

Lenin’s worst crime (exaggerating obviously) was writing this book and promoting it against Bogdanov, who at least understood the idealist implications of mechanical materialism and followed them, and then still promoting it in curriculum under the Soviet Union even after he had realized how wrong most of it was while studying Hegel in 1915.

Most of the Marxists who adopt it as the gospel truth don’t even know what the polemic is about. It’s explicitly Lenin arguing that Marxism has direct and unbroken continuity with French revolutionary bourgeois materialism. That’s why MEC takes far more from the Encyclopedists and Engels’ late attempts at a dialectics of nature (which are very close to Schelling’s idealist Philosophy of Nature lol) than from Marx’s critique of philosophy.

Lenin also openly defended this continuity with bourgeois materialism, like in On the Significance of Militant Materialism. It’s the entire context for his concept of a specific (Encyclopedist) interpretation of atheism as necessary for someone to be a consistent communist, which was inherited from the French bourgeoisie’s idea of consistent citizenship and humanism. Pannekoek’s Lenin as Philosopher goes into more detail about this as well and critiques the political implications of this thinking.

Lenin’s best work wasn’t when he was just repeating shit from the Social-Democrats and French Revolutionary bourgeois intelligentsia. It was when he was figuring things out for himself and letting his thought follow its own implications instead of trying to formulate an eternal and uncompromising truth as a pre-established thing. This is where I’m more interested in his dual critique of the Narodniki and Legal Marxists, his study of Hegel (which influenced his work on imperialism, opportunism, and the state), and his late attempts to work out a transition from a semi-Tsarist state capitalist mode of development to self-governance and the maximum reduction of the bureaucracy

I like this early comment he made on philosophy as well, which I think undermines many of the bourgeois materialist assumptions he later took up in MEC:

The objectivist speaks of the necessity of a given historical process; the materialist gives an exact picture of the given social-economic formation and of the antagonistic relations to which it gives rise. When demonstrating the necessity for a given series of facts, the objectivist always runs the risk of becoming an apologist for these facts: the materialist discloses the class contradictions and in so doing defines his standpoint. The objectivist speaks of “insurmountable historical tendencies”; the materialist speaks of the class which “directs” the given economic system, giving rise to such and such forms of counteraction by other classes. Thus, on the one hand, the materialist is more consistent than the objectivist, and gives profounder and fuller effect to his objectivism. He does not limit himself to speaking of the necessity of a process, but ascertains exactly what social-economic formation gives the process its content, exactly what class determines this necessity. In the present case, for example, the materialist would not content himself with stating the “insurmountable historical tendencies,” but would point to the existence of certain classes, which determine the content of the given system and preclude the possibility of any solution except by the action of the producers themselves. On the other hand, materialism includes partisanship, so to speak, and enjoins the direct and open adoption of the standpoint of a definite social group in any assessment of events.