@tzimmer_history

Referring to reconstruction is apt. And its worth a revisit for most of us on the left.

I was just reading an essay by Noel Ignatiev "The American Blindspot", discussing the difference between W.E.B. Du Bois' perspective on reconstruction and that of Eric Foner.

"In the teaching of U.S. history, the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War occupies a position analogous to the Revolution in France or the Khyber Pass in military affairs: whoever controls it controls the terrain below."

In it he explains that Du Bois viewed the slave revolts and the subsequent seizing of power over local government (sp. in SC) by freedfolk and workers as revolutionary, as a dictatorship of the proletariat and as the beginning of our genuine second revolution but that it broke down on contact with northern white orgs and activists.

First those beneath the king revolted against feudalism, and now— 100yrs later, the workers on the bottom rung had revolted against the brutal dictatorship of capitalists and were moving that fight north. There the revolutionary momentum would be foiled by white leftwing organizers and organizations who couldn't see that revolution for what it was, didn't see the freedfolk as their comrades, and who wouldn't join forces with the freedfolk and local black ppl by welcoming them into their unions.

This perspective was mostly new to me and seems like it could use more engagement in this moment.

It strikes me, that today workers and the left are less-organized than they were then, and that we have our work cut out for us.

I hope that those of us who care are beginning to lay the groundwork for supporting and collaborating with whoever joins the cause in good faith.

I hope we can get out of our own way in time to see that in order to do get something we've never had, we'll have to do something we've never done.

Anyway, looks like I gotta read Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois now.

@pmpress

Just ordered 5!
Thank you for doing this work!