Blue-eyed Child of Fortune: Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw: Russell Duncan-Paperback – Illustrated, November 30 1999

"Any negro taken in arms against the Confederacy will immediately be returned to a state of slavery. Any negro taken in Federal uniform will be summarily put to death. Any white officer taken in command of negro troops shall be deemed as inciting servile insurrection and shall likewise be put to death."

Proclamation by the Confederate President

"Fondly do we hope—and fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'"

Abraham Lincoln

"There they march, warm-blooded champions of a better day for man. On horseback among them, in the very habit as he lived, sits the blue-eyed child of fortune."

William James

"We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written."

Robert Gould Shaw

Like most people, I came to learn about the life of Robert Gould Shaw through the excellent film Glory.[1] The movie provides the viewer with a good introduction to the life of Robert Gould Shaw. It is the first feature film to show the role of black soldiers in the American Civil War. It has a degree of accuracy and historical worth that many other history-based films lack. It portrays black soldiers as courageous, along with their white officers.

Thanks to films like "Glory," people are becoming far more aware of the role played by black soldiers in the American Civil War. Close to 180,000 black soldiers served in the Union Army, and black soldiers fought bravely and knew what they were fighting for. Blue-eyed Child of Fortune: Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw is valuable in understanding why men fought and what ideals animated their actions.

In the introduction to the book, Duncan describes Shaw's letters as showing "the change wrought by battlefield casualties, camp life, commitment, and homesickness upon the sensibilities of youth. His soldiering experience was as common as it was distinctive. His prose is often eloquent, always articulate, intensely informative, amusing, heart-wrenching, and provocative more than a century after he described himself in letters to his family and friends. As interlopers to words never meant for us to ponder, we can enjoy him and gain insight into his times and ours."

During his military career, Shaw was a prolific letter writer. The letters in this book are intimate and give a deep insight into Shaw's thinking. Writing to his mother, Shaw laments, "It is very hard to go off without bidding you goodbye, and the only thing that upsets me, in the least, is the thought of how you will feel when you find me so unexpectedly gone. But I know, dearest Mother, that you wouldn't have me stay when it is so clearly my duty to go.… We all feel that if we can get into Washington before Virginia begins to make trouble, we shall not have much fighting…May God bless you all. When we are all at home together again, may peace & happiness be restored to the Country. The war has already done us good in making the North so united.”[2]

He wrote over two hundred letters, and they revealed a deeply divided and complex man. Despite being the pampered son of wealthy Boston abolitionists, Shaw was not a complete abolitionist at the beginning of the war. However, he later wrote, "We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written." Despite this sentiment, Shaw never fully reconciled his prejudices about black inferiority. Still, he respected his soldiers' spirit and fighting ability, and as the war proceeded, he stated, "There is not the least doubt that we shall leave the state, with as good a regiment, as any that has marched."

As Duncan writes, “One of the great pleasures of reading a collection of letters such as this is to witness the writer's development through a telescoping of time and events. The callow Rob Shaw who goes off to war is far different from the bloodied Colonel Robert Shaw, who prepares to lead his men into a desperate and doomed attack on Fort Wagner. The reader's foreknowledge that all of Shaw's choices and chances over three years will ultimately converge into this final massacre lends a true poignancy, but also a real irony, to the letters. For example, his life is saved in May 1862, when a bullet hits his pocket watch; later, he is hit in the neck by a bullet that already has passed through another soldier and fails to penetrate his own body.”[3]

In the same article, Duncan writes about the paradox of Shaw, saying, “ These letters challenge modern sensibility in a number of ways. Shaw was a true patriot, but he also was a victim of his—and his family's—patriotism. He never totally shared their abolitionist beliefs, and his attitude toward the black race could be as condescending as his initial feelings toward Southerners. When Sarah Shaw first published his letters, she removed the more offensive of her son's remarks on black people. Duncan, to his credit, has restored these lines and honestly examines Shaw's sometimes contradictory thoughts on the question of race. When offered the command of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, Shaw, who was not the first choice, turned it down, preferring to stay with his friends and fellow soldiers in Second Massachusetts. He wrote his fiancée, Annie Haggerty, "If I had taken it, it would only have been from a sense of duty; for it would have been anything but an agreeable task.… I am afraid Mother will think I am shirking my duty, but I had some good practical reasons for it." Within days, however, he had changed his mind.[4]

The war radicalised Shaw. His visit to the place where the radical preacher John Brown[5] fought his battles against slavery is significant. So too, was his meeting with Abraham Lincoln. He campaigned for his soldiers to have equal pay, as depicted in the film Glory. It is hard not to believe that Shaw would have been greatly inspired by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, correctly described as 'the greatest social and political revolution of the age.' The greatest authority on revolutions, Karl Marx, said 'Never has such a gigantic transformation taken place so rapidly.'"

While books such as Duncan’s are important in the sense they reestablish the role of black soldiers in their emancipation but is also important to place the struggle against slavery in the wider social and political context. This was done in an essay by the distinguished historian James M Macpherson who wrote, “If we were to go out on the streets of almost any town in America and ask the question posed by the title of this essay, probably nine out of ten respondents would answer unhesitatingly, “Lincoln.” In recent years, though, this answer has been challenged as another example of elitist history, focusing only on the actions of great white males and ignoring the actions of the overwhelming majority of the people who also make history. If we were to ask our question of professional historians, the reply would be quite different. They would speak of ambivalence, ambiguity, nuances, paradox, and irony. They would point to Lincoln's gradualism, his slow and apparently reluctant decision for emancipation, his revocation of emancipation orders by Generals John C. Frémont and David Hunter, his exemption of border states and parts of the Confederacy from the Emancipation Proclamation, his statements seemingly endorsing white supremacy. They would say that the whole issue is more complex than it appears—in other words, many historians, as is their wont, would not give a straight answer to the question”.[6]

The serious historian plays an objectively significant role in social life as the embodiment of historical memory. One has to congratulate the historian Russell Duncan for this impressive job of bringing together the letters of Robert Gould Shaw for the wider general public.

 

 

 

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_(1989_film)

[2] North Shore S.I. [Staten Island]Thursday, April 18, 1861

[3] Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune- https://www.enotes.com/topics/blue-eyed-child-fortune

[4] Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune- https://www.enotes.com/topics/blue-eyed-child-fortune

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)

[6] James McPherson,

“Who Freed the Slaves?” (1997

CWU Bureaucrats attack the SEP's Postal Workers Rank and File Committee

The formation of the postal workers' rank and file committee marks a qualitative turning point in the relationship between the UK Socialist Equality Party(SEP) and rank-and-file postal workers.

This is publically recognised by even the most boneheaded and reactionary CWU bureaucrat. The right-wing attack on the World Socialist Website(see article Communication Workers Union attack on WSWS and UK Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee backfires) is a backhanded compliment. It acknowledges that the CWU leadership has a viable and resolute opposition to its current betrayal of postal workers' struggle.

Postal workers are fed up with the open betrayal of the CWU bureaucracy and are looking for alternatives, as a recent WSWS article pointed out. It quotes one worker: "Is it time we started looking at alternatives?"

This threw the CWU into a frenzy. Its media attacked the World Socialist Web Site and the newly formed Postal Workers Rank and File Committee. The CWU said, "That website is ran by absolute cranks that have zero interest in the welfare of postal workers (or any other workers). Stick with the union. It's your voice. Solidarity."

As Robert Stevens replied for the WSWS, "This piece of red-baiting would not have been out of place in right-wing Tory rags such as the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph. The CWU is attacking not only socialist opposition to its betrayals but the many CWU members who have written to the WSWS over the last month. The WSWS's interest in the welfare of postal workers" is clear over eight articles, from March 16-26, containing over 10,500 words directly from posties. In their comments, they explain in detail the atrocious situation they face, with many denouncing the CWU leadership for allowing such backbreaking conditions and the unachievable targets set by Royal Mail. The slander on the WSWS and Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee backfired on the CWU, with tens of thousands of postal workers reading the Twitter threads, with most comments posted pulling no punches in denouncing the CWU apparatus."[1]

The WSWS does not need to apologise over its stance, and its "interest in the welfare of postal workers" is clear over eight articles, from March 16-26, containing over 10,500 words directly from postal workers.

Postal workers, send a message to rmpw.rfc@gmail.com to contact and join the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Communication Workers Union attack on WSWS and UK Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee backfires-Robert Stevens- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/04/17/ktme-a17.html

Postal Workers at UK’s Royal Mail establish a rank-and-file committee

The decision by postal workers, with the support of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), to found a rank-and-file committee is, by any stretch of the imagination, a truly historical event.

It is a welcome development despite taking 36 years (the anniversary of my last set to with the CWU bureaucracy). It now offers postal workers a way to fight against the CWU Bureaucracy without one hand tied behind their backs.

I urge all postal workers to join it and prevent what will be a huge betrayal by the current CWU leadership. As was said in an article posted on the World Socialist Website, “The committee will aim to mobilise workers against Royal Mail’s attacks and lead a fight for an inflation-busting pay rise, a defence of terms and conditions, an end to all job cuts and the overturning of victimisations.”

The betrayal being organised by the CWU bureaucracy marks a new stage in its development into an arm of corporate management. How long before Messrs Furey and Ward become members of the board? Their betrayal is not down to being bad people or weak this is the nature of the trade union bureaucracy worldwide.

Workers are trapped inside “trade union” organisations, which have assumed the character of corporatist entities controlled by petty-bourgeois functionaries like (Ward and Furey) whose own interests are in no way connected to even a residual defence of the rank and file’s share of the national income. The union leadership and apparatus act as an industrial police force for Royal Mail management.

The article Growing support for UK Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee, states “The formation of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee shows that Royal Mail workers can break out of the confines of the CWU’s pro-company agenda and mount a direct challenge to the profits diktats of the company. It is an example others must follow. As the Committee’s founding resolution states, “Millions of workers in the UK are waging the same fight in a strike wave ongoing since last summer. This is part of an international struggle against global corporations and governments seeking to impose the immense cost of pandemic corporate bailouts and rampant inflation on the working class.”

Email rmpw.rfc@gmail.com to contact and join the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee.

 

Becoming Frida Kahlo March 10- BBC2 and BBC iPlayer

"Most of my friends grew up slowly. I grew up in an instant,"

Frida Kahlo

"A ribbon around a bomb."

Andre Breton on Kahlo's art

"I have suffered two big accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar ran over me. The other was Diego,"

Frida Kahlo

"Do you wish to see with your own eyes the hidden springs of the social revolution? Look at the frescoes of Rivera. Do you wish to know what revolutionary art is like? Look at the frescoes of Rivera. Come a little closer, and you will see clearly enough gashes and spots made by vandals: Catholics and other reactionaries, including, of course, Stalinists. These cuts and gashes give even greater life to the frescoes. You have before you not simply a 'painting,' an object of passive aesthetic contemplation, but a living part of the class struggle. And it is at the same time a masterpiece!"

Leon Trotsky

There is a lot to commend in this visually stunning and serious three-part series on the life and politics of Frida Kahlo. I say serious because previous documentaries or books about Kahlo have been pretentious and flippant. The complex nature of Kahlo's life deserves a serious approach. But having said that, there are several serious political weaknesses in the programs.

The first of a three-part series on the legendary Mexican painter, The Making and Breaking, manages to squeeze so much information into one episode that it nearly ruins the next two parts. Despite much being known about Kahlo and her work selling for obscene amounts( (Her 1949 painting Diego Y Yo sold for almost $35m in 2021), the program still manages to inform and enlighten.

There is no single narrator. There are interviews with biographers, art historians from Mexico and the US, and miraculously surviving family members. Kahlo's great-niece Cristina Kahlo and Diego Rivera's grandson.

Like programs two and three, the first program is divided into mini-chapters, each with its heading. "Everything goes wrong" details graphically the bus crash that almost killed Kahlo, causing her terrible injuries and ending her plan of becoming a doctor. She turned to art instead. "Most of my friends grew up slowly. I grew up in an instant." She was helped by her mother, who built her an adapted easel. Her first self-portrait and one of my favourite paintings was the stunning Self-Portrait in a Velvet Dress.

She was an exceptional child born in 1907. Kahlo contracted polio in 1912. She later told people she was born in 1910 to ally herself with the new, post-revolution Mexico. She was born at The Blue House in Coyoacán on the outskirts of Mexico City. Kahlo was a fervent socialist at an early age, and in 1927, she joined the Mexican Communist Party, where she met Diego Rivera.

Rivera supported the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Trotskyist Fourth International for some time. You would not have known the latter watching this program. Also, when historical figures such as Tina Modotti are mentioned, they are treated largely superficially. The Italian photographer Tina Modotti was a fellow radical along with Kahlo. Her lover was the notorious GPU assassin Vittorio Vidali, alias Carlos Contreras. Another lover was the Mexican painter David Siqueiros. Both had connections to Stalinism, and their murderous gangsterism was never mentioned. The BBC film ignores that Siqueiros played a central role in the unsuccessful attempt on Trotsky's life in May 1940.

Jesse Olsen points out in his article, "Modotti is an example of how the Mexican and Russian revolutions inspired young artists. However, she is also a tragic example of the many artists who came under the sway of Stalinism and paid a terrible price. Modotti worked for Stalin's KGB (the Soviet secret service) from the mid-1930s and was associated with the Italian Stalinist functionary Vittorio Vidali, who, as early as 1927, had been a Stalinist operative in the Mexican party. Together with the muralist Siqueiros, he tried to murder Trotsky in 1940. Siqueiros, the former communist, and artist—like the Communist Party of Mexico itself—had become part of Stalin's apparatus."[1]

While Kahlo is the program's central figure, her long-time lover and fellow artist Diego Rivera looms large in the films(no pun intended). Their relationship was stormy, but they both understood the beauty and importance of their artistic work. Kahlo described Rivera as "an architect in his paintings, in his thinking process, and in his passionate desire to build a functional, solid and harmonious society... He fights at every moment to overcome mankind's fear and stupidity." Rivera spoke highly and perceptively of Kahlo, saying, "It is not tragedy that rules Frida's work... The darkness of her pain is just a velvet background for the marvellous light of her physical strength, her delicate sensibility, her bright intelligence, and her invincible strength as she struggles to live and show her fellow humans how to resist hostile forces and come out triumphant."

As mentioned in the film Rivera came under sustained attack(primarily from the Stalinists) for taking commissions from American capitalists. The Communist Party smeared Rivera as an "agent of North American imperialism and the millionaire, Morrow".

Rivera was expelled from the Mexican Communist Party after receiving several commissions from the government and accepting an assignment from the US ambassador to Mexico, Dwight W. Morrow, to paint a mural in the former Cortéz Palace of Cuernavaca. In 1933 Rivera was commissioned to paint a mural entitled Man at the Crossroads by John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller objected when Rivera added the great Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to the mural, and Rockefeller had the mural destroyed.[2]

Rivera defended the mural saying the portrait of Lenin was "the only correct painting to be made in the building [as] an exact and concrete expression of the situation of society under capitalism at present, and an indication of the road that man must follow to liquidate hunger, oppression, disorder and war."

Kahlo and Rivera came around the Trotskyist movement and briefly had a close relationship with Trotsky. In 1938, Rivera collaborated with Trotsky and Andre Breton in writing the Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art[3] , which called  for "a complete and radical reconstruction of society."

For a while Trotsky held Rivera in very high regard, saying, "Do you wish to see with your own eyes the hidden springs of the social revolution? Look at the frescoes of Rivera. Do you wish to know what revolutionary art is like? Look at the frescoes of Rivera. Come a little closer, and you will see clearly enough gashes and spots made by vandals: Catholics and other reactionaries, including, of course, Stalinists. These cuts and gashes give even greater life to the frescoes. You have before you not simply a 'painting,' an object of passive aesthetic contemplation, but a living part of the class struggle. And it is, at the same time, a masterpiece! In the field of painting, the October Revolution has found her greatest interpreter not in the USSR but in faraway Mexico… Nurtured in the artistic cultures of all peoples, all epochs, Diego Rivera has remained Mexican in the most profound fibres of his genius. But that which inspired him in these magnificent frescoes, which lifted him up above the artistic tradition, above contemporary art, in a certain sense, above himself, is the mighty blast of the proletarian revolution. Without October, his power of creative penetration into the epic of work, oppression and insurrection would never have attained such breadth and profundity."[4]

Despite Trotsky's glowing tribute, he was aware of the political inadequacies of both Kahlo and Rivera. As Joanne Laurier perceptively writes, "It seems safe to suggest that neither Rivera nor Kahlo—remarkable artists and not first and foremost political thinkers—ever understood the essence of Trotsky's struggle with the Stalinist bureaucracy, including the theory of permanent revolution, and remained to one extent or another under the influence of Mexican nationalism and  that primarily accounts for both of them ending up, chastened and demoralized, in the camp of Stalinism."[5]

While this three-part documentary has much to like and commend, there are some serious political flaws. For instance, trying to cram the last and most important fifteen years of Kahlo's life into 15 minutes is madness and politically unforgivable. There is also a tendency to concentrate on Kahlo's feelings without putting them in a wider political context. That context is the world-historical struggle between Stalinism and Trotskyism. The fact that this struggle was at the center of Kahlo's and Rivera's lives is deliberately missing from the film.

The film is too preoccupied with Rivera's infidelities and Kahlo's "bisexuality", which is an adaptation to the current intellectual environment. The #MeToo movement has adopted Kahlo as one of their own. These layers of the so-called intelligentsia have become affluent and have moved far to the right. They ignore Kahlo's revolutionary politics and are hostile to the working class. Despite this, the films are worth seeing.

 

Further reading

My Art, My Life: An Autobiography by Diego Rivera (Author)

 

 

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[1] Frida Kahlo retrospective in Berlin—Part 2: Frida Kahlo and communism- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/09/kah2-s11.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_at_the_Crossroads

[3] https://www.marxists.org/archive/bland/x01/towards-progressive-art.pdf

[4] Art and Politics in Our Epoch-https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm

[5] What made Frida Kahlo remarkable?- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/11/kahl-n07.html