Jim Hurd, 1955-2006
It is a special peculiarity of our time that it is possible write an obituary for a friend that you have never met. I think I first heard about Jim Hurd, the Hoosier Socialist, from Jen Ray bitching about him (Hell, she bitched about everyone, so why not him?) ten years ago. Jim was a gadfly on the Socialists Unmoderated mailing list and a member of the Socialist Party. Jim quit the party over some stupid sectarian pronouncement of our National Committee and joined the CP, and he advanced – along with the internets – from listserves to blogs. He was an occasional commentator on this blarg (his most recent comment a quip in response to my “Being “Wrong” in the Socialist Party” piece that referenced Mark 6:4), and a gadfly blogger in his own right.
It’s a punch in the stomach to read that Jim Hurd died a week and a half ago after a long struggle with depression and alcoholism. With our tiny band of reds spread far and wide, it’s not unusual to meet a comrade through the internets. Eventually, you’ll meet at a conference or a rally. I never met Jim, though, even though he repeatedly reached out to me through e-mail and this website. And for that, I am truly sorry.
There will be a memorial for Jim at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bloomington, IN on Saturday, June 10th.
Fascist Rock
One of fascism’s most insidious tendencies is to warp history with revisionist interpretations. The National Review’s recent list of the 50 conservative rock songs of all time is a contemptible attempt to claim protest music for the forces of reaction. Freedom is, indeed, slavery and rock is Republican if you believe these pinheads. I see no more than twelve actually conservative rock songs here (and that’s being generous with Sammy Hagar’s weenie complaint about the “nanny state,” “I Can’t Drive 55”).
Some of the 50 are non-political songs given a right-wing spin by the magazine, like the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice?,” an innocent song about dopey teenagers daydreaming about living together which National Review interprets as a paean to marriage and abstinence. My filthy mind interprets it as a post-coital parting of two teenage lovers who would rather spend the night together than sneak back home. Similarly, where National Review hears a “law-and-order classic” in “I Fought the Law,” it sounds more like an anti-establishment classic when covered by the Clash and Dead Kennedys.
Context is crucial, but the National Review ignores and obscures context when reinterpreting these songs. Sure, the Band sang “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” from a Confederate perspective, but it’s storytelling. On the same record, they also sang from a pro-farmworkers union perspective on “King Harvest,” declaring “I’m a union man all the way!” And to declare Bowie’s “Heroes” as some kind of anti-Communist ballad is to ignore the prominent quotation marks around the song’s title, signaling Bowie’s ironic detachment (Jakob Dylan made the same grave error in his overly earnest cover).
Most galling is the usurpation of the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” as the #1 “conservative” rock song of all time. Pete Townshend’s “pox on both your houses” fury has been particularly misinterpreted since it became a staple of post-9/11 airplay. The context of the song is that it comes after the British elections of 1970, when the Conservatives defeated the Labour Party, whom Townshend had supported and in whose leadership he was disappointed for acting just like the Conservatives and squandering their opportunity. (“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”) A rank-and-file complaint about the Labour Party not being left-wing enough is a bit of a stretch as a “conservative” anthem.
Further stretching brings the Rolling Stones of the 1960’s into the conservative ranks. Nevermind that young Mick Jagger had a political conscience and compass and was mulling a run for Parliament as a Labour Party candidate at this time, because clearly his playing the role of the Devil is a clever use of moral relativism to to critique…um, er, Bolshevism! And “what you need” in “You Can’t Always get What You Want” is apparently neo-liberal hegemony, and not a break-up with your girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, the one with the bloodstained hands from her drug-induced miscarriage.
Bloody fetuses abound on this list. Graham Parker’s frankly gruesome “You Can’t Be Too Strong” (“Did they tear it out with talons of steel, and give you a shot so that you wouldn’t feel?”) is mistaken for a criticism of the right to choose. No, he’s just calling a spade a spade, much like his current labelmate, Jon Langford’s band the Mekons who exclaimed “Chop That Child in Half!” twenty years ago, before updating the song as the less ambiguously pro-choice “Born to Choose.”
The Sex Pistols’ anti-abortion anthem, “Bodies,” is one of the genuinely conservative songs on the list. What a pisser that the only explicitly political song of the flagship band of the punk era had to be reactionary. Blame Johnny Rotten’s Irish Catholic upbringing.
The Beatles’ “Taxman” is also pretty fucking reactionary. A bunch of pampered rockstars whining about too much of their vast fortune being taxed to pay for universal health care and social security? Boo-fucking-hoo.
Skynnard’s “Sweet Home Alabama” is undeniably reactionary. But who has the nerve to be proud of segregation and Gov. Wallace?
The one elegantly conservative song on the list is the Kinks’ “20th Century Man.” Ray Davies is a curmudgeon, the kind who can complain about the government razing bombed-out tenements to make room for inhabitable new homes, but he is still eloquent when he sings about tradition and history and fears or too much artificial change. He is a genuine conservative, not some lying, deceitful right-winger. If there were more of him, the National Review could fill out a proper list without stealing from the left.
Bernie
Still clearing out my archives, I found this picture of Bernie Sanders speaking at the Socialist Party’s National Convention in 1983.
At the time, Bernie was the newly elected independent Mayor of Burlington, VT. He had been a notorious left-wing activist and political gadfly, but he launched a serious populist campaign against corporate power and inequality and was rewarded by the support of the people of Vermont. After a successful stint as Mayor, Bernie ran for Congress and won as an Independent. This year, he’s running for Senate and seems quite likely to win.
The Socialist Party is unlikely to endorse his candidacy this year, which speaks more to the puritanism and narrow-mindedness of many of our activists. The fact is that Bernie Sanders is a strong advocate for working people, and his successful independent campaigns point to the way that we can articulate a clear anti-corporate message while accepting and expanding the limitations of the masses (rather than remaining aloof and critical) and topple the two-party oligarchy. He deserves your financial support.
Being “Wrong” in the Socialist Party
I recently quit as editor of The Socialist, the magazine of the Socialist Party. After just two issues, I found the intolerance and general stupidity of many of the Editorial Board members that I had to work with too frustrating to continue. There’s real work that has to be done for the movement, and I am no longer willing to waste my time on fruitless endeavors.
I’m thinking about leaving the party altogether, but that’s a much tougher decision to make, as I have been a member for nearly ten years – since I was 17 years old.
Clearing out my archives, I find an article that I wrote for the journal of the party’s 100th anniversary conference in 2001. At the time, I was being hounded out of office by a caucus of pinheads. I could still find virtue in the party back then. I post it now for a strange sense of reassurance.
Among the Socialist Party’s many virtues over the last one hundred years has been its ability, and the ability of its members, to be wrong. Multi-tendency before there was even a word for such a thing, the party has always been home to wildly divergent opinions and the occasional faction fight. With so many different factions and tendencies, somebody has to be wrong at any given moment. I find this so reassuring.
The party’s early right-wing, made up of Social Democratic politicians in the modern European sense, over-emphasized voting and cynically limited their union activity to cajoling striking workers to “Vote Socialist!” Too often they embraced mainstream racism and xenophobia. Most curiously, they aggressively opposed the Industrial Workers of the World and led a crusade to expel from the party Wobblies who advocated “direct action” (then more confused with violent terrorism than today). Still, they couldn’t be all wrong. They won office and enacted legislation. Clearly, masses of people supported them.
One of my greatest heroes is “Big Bill” Haywood, the most prominent Wobbly to be expelled, precisely because of his wrong decisions. In the SP, he exacerbated the rightwing with vague and irresponsible talk of “direct action” that hinted at violence, precisely the type that he eschewed within the IWW. It was almost as though he wanted to be martyred rather than face a frustrating faction fight, or maybe he was just a natural contrarian (Our party’s had plenty of them, too). On strike, Haywood counseled a crude sort of pre-Gandhian civil disobedience. It’s his greatest legacy.
His worst legacy is that he fled to Russia to avoid a long prison term for opposing the war. This is why I sympathize with “Big Bill.” Disillusioned by his government, which had usually vindicated him when he was innocent (at least until whatever “crisis” that put him in jail had been averted), and by his own IWW, which had rejected him, Haywood went to the one place where he would be least appreciated: Bolshevik Russia! It was the sort of stupid mistake that comes from wounded pride and that any one of us can and does make.
Sam Friedman, who died six years too soon for me to meet him, is another SP character that I enjoy. Maybe it’s because he did so many things that I have done (Chaired the New York local, edited the NY Call – at a time when it was actually impressive to do such things) or would like to do (He organized a mutual aid society that helped bail party activists out of jail and pay legal bills). Maybe it was because he was such a set-in-his-ways pain in the ass. He stuck with Social Democrats, USA in the 1973 split because he did not believe in splits and they technically won the final vote. He hated their politics and stayed close to the SP so he could be around people who still used the “S” word. He telegrammed the party’s 1983 convention: “DEEPLY REGRET INABILITY TO ATTEND. DISAGREEING WITH SOME OF YOUR JUDGEMENTS AND CONCLUSIONS, I STILL ADMIRE AND LOVE YOUR TENACITY, COURAGE AND DEVOTION TO SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES. MORE POWER TO YOU.”
It’s a great encouragement to read in Rob Tucker’s brief history that Eugene V. Debs had such personal animosity towards Daniel Deleon and mistrusted anyone recently associated with him. Debs, too, is a hero, but in history books he comes across as too perfect. Saints belong in the Bible, not the Socialist Party. It’s the Eugene Debs who said, “While there is a lower class I, am in it; While there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison I am not free” that inspired me to join the Socialist Party, but it’s the Eugene Debs who called Daniel Deleon a “black-hearted scoundrel” that I can relate to.