Issue 258 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published December 2001 Copyright © Socialist Review
Books |
Review |
9-11
Noam Chomsky
Seven Stories Press £6.99
Without Noam Chomsky the world would be a poorer place. 9-11 is based on a series of interviews given since the attack on the World Trade Centre. He shows how the policies of the great powers, and especially the US, have cynically moulded the world, creating 'terror' groups that have then turned on their benefactors. He shows the bloodiness of the casual actions of the US and, without detracting from the horror of 11 September, he shows how Bush and Blair's actions will lead to more deaths whose number will probably never be accurately counted or acknowledged.
Take the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. It was destroyed by Tomahawk cruise missiles as a 'terrorist' base in 1998. How many died in the attack? Wrong question, says Chomsky. Sudan is, like Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world. It was emerging from a civil war in which 1. 5 million had died. It had even offered to hand over suspected members and intelligence of the Bin Laden group. But all it got was cruise missiles. With them disappeared more than half the drugs for malaria, TB and other killer diseases as well as medicines for its depleted livestock herds. Relief agencies pulled out and factional warfare re-emerged as the buildings still smouldered. Deaths in the aftermath casually rose to levels similar to or in excess of those in New York and the price is still being paid today.
It is the same now. Many would have died in Afghanistan this winter. Many more have now died and many, many more will die as western leaders turn away to a new war in phase two. Yet we are supposed to see this as the 'collateral damage' of a just war. When Kabul fell, for a day or two, the B-52 liberals were exultant. They demanded that anti-war protesters recant. The facts were against them. Several times I heard Keynes quoted--'When the facts change I change my opinion. What do you do?' To which readers of Chomsky will be able to reply that it is time that the B-52 liberals had the courage to look the real facts in the face. It is not a pleasant sight.
There is what Chomsky calls a 'culture of terrorism' at the heart of western policy. This takes for granted the right of the US or Britain to do on a massive scale what they condemn others for doing on a more minor one. They engage in 'terror'--we engage in 'humanitarian interventions', 'low intensity warfare', 'coercive diplomacy' and so on. And if there is 'blow back' what 'we' have done is an irrelevance.
Both to do this and to justify it takes a particular kind of mind and a particular kind of culture. It is underpinned, says, Chomsky, by 'the profound impact of several hundred years of imperial violence on the intellectual and moral culture of the west', so that commentators 'regard our crimes against the world to be as normal as the air we breathe...allowing the terrible facts to be sunk in the memory hole'.
Take John Negroponte, the current US ambassador to the UN who mobilises support for the current war on terror. Could this be the same man who as a US diplomat in Honduras stood by while thousands of that country's citizens were slaughtered under the benign eye of US policy? And wasn't there a World Court which condemned this US policy as illegal and ordered compensation? The US still remains the only state condemned for internal terrorism before a world court. And in response didn't the US increase its attack, thumb its nose at the World Court and then even veto a UN resolution asking all states to obey international law?
Chomsky's pamphlet is not long. But this is not bad, for as Chomsky says, 'these facts have been completely removed from history. One has to practically shout them from the rooftops.' It's worth buying this
book and taking a few notes so that we never forget just how callous and cruel those who condemn us as they perpetuate their bloodshed abroad really are.
Mike Haynes
Senior Service
Carlo Feltrinelli
Granta £20
This is a biography of a father by his son. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli joined the anti-fascist Resistance movement in 1942 aged just 16, risking his life by writing 'Death to Fascism' on the walls of Milan. Three years later he joined the Italian Communist Party. He was arrested for flyposting, for demonstrating outside a bank, and in 1967 he was also arrested and deported from Bolivia. He died as a left wing terrorist in 1972, preparing a bombing attack. Yet throughout this period Feltrinelli was one of the richest men in Italy, head of one of the country's major book publishers, which he founded in 1955.
His son Carlo was just ten when his father died, and has made a brave attempt to tell the story of his fascinating but highly contradictory father. His dad probably wasn't the easiest person to get along with, as Carlo recalls--'Together with the songs of the Spartacists Sgt Pepper was my father's favourite record.'
Carlo also faced another difficulty--today he is the head of the family firm, and would probably have liked to only write about what Feltrinelli has published down the years. He indulges in this in 100 tedious pages, recounting the intricate details of his father's publication of Dr Zhivago in 1957.
Politically, though, the intense pressure Feltrinelli was put under by the Russian and Italian Communist Parties not to publish the book taught him a lot about Stalinism.
The revolution in Cuba in 1959 radicalised Feltrinelli further. The books he was now publishing had distinctly left wing connotations--Louis Althusser, James Baldwin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Feltrinelli became increasingly interested in guerrilla warfare, yet continued to live the life of a millionaire, detached from day to day involvement with the working class.
This detachment reached a fateful moment in 1969, when the fascist 'strategy of tension' began. Police were arresting anarchists and other leftists, several of whom were dying 'accidentally' or being framed. Feltrinelli, by now a hate figure for the right, decided to go on the run rather than being taken into custody for questioning. As he wrote to his son Carlo on his eighth birthday, 'since your dad is on the workers' side, even though he has money, and in fact he uses that money to print and publish books that defend the cause of the workers, the bosses, the wealthy people, have organised a violent campaign against him.'
Feltrinelli had detached himself even further by going into hiding. He became obsessed that Italy was on the verge of a military coup. While this was a possibility, there were mass strikes and demonstrations every week. But this mass movement didn't affect Feltrinelli because he had decided to cut himself off from it. So rather than trying to build these mass actions even further, Feltrinelli thought it best to prepare military resistance to a coup.
Carlo spells out in detail that his father created a rudimentary terrorist network, which the Red Brigades developed with disastrous consequences for the left during the 1970s. In a tradition which still finds echoes on the Italian left today, Latin American guerrilla struggles were seen as being more relevant than workers' struggles. Yet Italy was an urban jungle in the 1970s, not a tropical jungle-the world's sixth largest economy with a mass and militant working class. Such was Feltrinelli's detachment from reality that nobody is really sure why his group wanted to blow up electricity pylons in Milan in 1972.
Despite all his faults, tens of thousands of people turned out for his funeral. Such was his popularity, even a traffic policeman gave a clenched fist salute as his coffin passed. It is hard not to agree with Carlo when he says that his father's life was 'the most radical of fairy tales'.
Tom Behan
The Paymaster
Tom Bower
Simon and Schuster £7.99
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Trade minister Steven Byers doesn't want you to read this book--Byers' lawyers wrote to Bower's publishers demanding the pulping of all copies. Byers' threatened court case evaporated, but his denunciation is a recommendation for the book. Bower sniffs at the smells surrounding Geoffrey Robinson, and traces the stench to the bowels of New Labour. Usefully, he also shows the continuities from Old Labour. Bower researches well, but readers need to be aware this was originally written as a tie-in with the Daily Mail. While the facts are uncovered, well presented and well ordered, an apparently Tory critique of Robinson occasionally mars the tale. Bower traces the intricacies of Robinson's relentless blundering into self promoting financial schemes. However, he doesn't really draw out the relationship between the corruption of ministers' personal involvement with big money, and the wider corruption of Labour's corporate love-in. The impression is instead of Tony and his cronies having weak personal moral fibre, although most readers of this journal will be able to join the dots for themselves.
The Geoffrey Robinson story reads like a pantomime version of Labour's degradation, with all characters appropriately named. A Labour backroom boy, Robinson was elevated to the world of the rich through a friendship with a millionairess called Joskia Bourgeois. He later introduced Mandelson, Blair and Brown to the discreet charms of the bourgeoisie by entertaining them in his suite at the Grosvenor House Hotel. Gordon Brown's entourage became knows as 'the Hotel Group' because Robinson's rooms became their base. This group met to betray their few remaining principles as the pro-business Labour regime was plotted. Robinson was given the post of Paymaster General in the new government, presumably because he paid for Mandelson's mortgage, Blair's holidays and Brown's political research. His political and business careers were in the doldrums when Blair and Brown rose in the Labour party but Robinson's unearned fortune drew Labour's new stars to his door.
Oddly, while Bower unpicks new Labour's new sleaze--with Robinson at the centre, he is much less sure on Geoffrey's biggest and worst contribution to British politics: It was Robinson who engineered the rejuvenation of the Private Finance Initiative. Bower's apparently Tory sympathies mean he focuses more on the ministers' role in the entirely justified windfall tax on the privatised utilities. In his own autobiography, Unconventional Minister, Robinson is disarmingly honest about the corners he cut to get PFI moving. Robinson made sure two of the men who invented Railtrack--civil servant Steve Robson and lawyer Adrian Montague--were in charge of Labour's privatisation drive. He also put Malcolm Bates, an executive in the Balfour Beatty group of companies, into the PFI machinery. Bower mentions none of this, preferring to concentrate on Robinson's drinking, and the odd accident with shotguns and dogs. The book is a good analysis of Robinson's motivation, but only a description of Labour's degradation.
Solomon Hughes
Fearless Jones
Walter Mosley
Serpent's Tail £10.00
Walter Mosley made his name with the Easy Rawlins series of detective novels, set in the US after the Second World War, which combine great crime stories with a real insight into the social conditions that black people lived under at the time. These novels, including Devil in a Blue Dress, are innovative and exciting crime fiction, earning Mosley the dubious honour of being hailed as Bill Clinton's favourite writer.
Since then he has branched out--very rewardingly for his wide readership--to writing about jazz, and most recently, a devastating anti-capitalist critique of US globalisation and racism, Workin' on the Chain Gang. Fearless Jones is a return to the crime novel format. Set in the black community in the same period as the Easy Rawlins books, in Watts in LA, Mosley's new leading character is an ex-soldier whose story is told through the narration of his friend, Paris Minton. Paris owns his own bookstore and is trying to live a normal life in pre civil rights LA--which is easier said than done for a black small businessman, especially after his bookstore is burned to the ground right after a beautiful woman walks in to ask for his help.
So far, so noir. But Mosley manages to pay homage to the genre without being crassly derivative, and indeed makes it feel fresh and relevant. The plot cracks along. Mosley is descriptively concise and, most importantly, writes superb dialogue. The pared down language is a joy to read--expressing the desperation of poverty and racism without cliche, and with plenty of humour.
Paris enlists the help of his friend Fearless Jones, getting him out of jail first, to find the arsonists and to get out of the instant trouble he finds himself in. Paris is smart, but considers himself a coward, and Fearless is everything he is not--strong, attractive and named for his incapacity to be afraid in any situation. He is loyal, hot tempered and unpredictable, and his presence heats things up considerably.
Mosley's treatment of the two key characters is interesting, and their relationship is a central feature of the novel. Paris feels indebted to Fearless, but is afraid to have him in his life exposing him to danger from bad guys in and out of uniform.The ever-present strain of being black in LA and facing police harassment and prejudice adds menace to the proceedings, as Paris and Fearless try to get to the bottom of a series of murders connected with the woman in the bookshop, and involving a black church, the Israeli state and the Nazis.
Much as I love Mosley's writing, there is something forced about Fearless Jones. It may be that it depends too much on the same territory covered in the Easy Rawlins books--or that as the first in a new series the characters are less familiar. But I think it is more that much of it has been said before and rather better--Easy Rawlins's relationship with his dangerous sidekick Mouse is much more dynamic and realistic, and his anger at the racism he faces is more powerful than is the case here. Also the plot is slightly too worthy (and unlikely) to be fully convincing, although it is as gloriously convoluted as a good crime novel should be.
Small criticisms aside, for fans, this is thoroughly enjoyable crime fiction with some lovely touches. For newcomers to Mosley's work, however, the best place to start is with the Easy Rawlins books--modern classics.
Megan Trudell
Inessa: Lenin's Mistress
Michael Pearson
Duckworth £20
The memory of the Russian revolutionary Inessa Armand has suffered an injustice at the hands of historians and others who have used her famous affair with Lenin in order to try and discredit Lenin and the revolutionary movement. Unfortunately this new biography by Michael Pearson is no different--it is a travesty of Inessa Armand's life and politics.
She was a revolutionary in her own right, who played a leading role in the revolutionary movement in Russia from the early 1900s onwards. She worked tirelessly for the revolutionary cause, both in the tumultuous struggles in Russia in 1905 and after 1917, and also when the movement was forced underground and many revolutionaries driven into exile.
Instead of taking her commitment to revolutionary change seriously, Pearson dismisses it as 'like a religion'. Even worse is Pearson's reactionary take on the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik Party. He describes the Russian revolution as a 'coup' and the new workers' state as a 'rule of terror'. There is no understanding of how working class revolt developed or the role of the Bolshevik party in leading the revolution.
There is no insight at all into the debates on theory, strategy and tactics in the Marxist movement. Equally bad is the way Pearson describes Inessa as a 'feminist', yet one 'who obeyed Lenin's orders' and the Bolsheviks as a sect which 'believed a woman's place was in the home'. Pearson dismisses Lenin's writings and speeches on women's liberation 'as a sop' that would appeal to Inessa and other feminists.
The truth is very different. Inessa Armand was not a feminist, manipulated by a ruthless Lenin. She was a revolutionary socialist who was serious about her ideas and commitment. Inessa said that it was reading Lenin's book (long before she met him), The Development of Capitalism in Russia, which convinced her of the need for socialist revolution.
She was imprisoned three times for her role in organising Marxist discussion groups and opposition to the Tsarist regime. In exile she worked as a translator and organiser for the Bolsheviks, often representing Lenin at international debates and conferences.
Pearson's biography offers no insight into any aspect of Inessa's political involvement. It is a dreadful book, which is written in a gossipy style that tells you more about the author's prejudices than it does about Inessa Armand. She deserves much better.
Hazel Croft
The Irish Story
R F Foster
Penguin £20
This book, by leading Irish revisionist historian Roy Foster, provides a strange combination of revisionist history and 'literary criticism' as revisionist history.
Revisionism has been a project of the Southern Irish ruling class for the past 30 years. They have been anxious to create a respectable Southern Irish nationalism, bathed in sporting heroes, megastar pop icons, multinational millionaires and academic achievement--the economy of the Celtic Tiger wrapped up in 'Celtic Cool'.
Traditionally the ideological baggage of the state was very much mixed up with its revolutionary foundation. All politicians wrapped the Green Flag around themselves, and claimed personal or family involvement in the great events that gave birth to their state. In this Ireland everyone was meant to be a Republican, but in the best bar room tradition--we may not fight the fight any more, but we know all the words to the songs.
Then of course Northern Ireland exploded, and the fight that everybody was urged to sing about became real. The unity of the country, for so long a mantra, became a live political issue. The state was now encumbered with an ideology which seemed to give legitimacy to the emerging struggle of the Provisional IRA. As Foster admits in this book, one of the key motivations behind the revisionists was to remove all legitimacy from that struggle.
Foster seeks to debunk what he calls 'theme park history', and attempts to use literary criticism to continue his polemic about 'modern Ireland'. His theme park criticisms relate to famine commemoration, and the bi-centenary celebrations of the United Irishmen rebellion.
Some of his criticisms are right--there can be a mawkishness and simplicity to such events that belittle the historic process. Nevertheless this is hardly unique to Ireland, and one wonders whether Foster has the same loathing for Remembrance Day events, let alone the sectarian festivals which dominate Northern Ireland throughout each summer and about which he is strangely silent. In reality Foster's distaste is for the commemoration of such events at all, at least as they are understood in popular consciousness.
As for his literary criticism, there is a sort of pompous elitism to them which makes them hard to take. Much of his book is a polemic claiming for Ireland the Anglo-Irish writers that he feels traditional views of Irishness exclude. In particular he writes about W B Yeats, but also Elizabeth Bowen, Anthony Trollope and Hubert Butler. All these writers are well worth reading, but they lived that very rarefied existence of the big house Anglo-Irish gentry. Their experience and view of the majority of Irish people were certainly from the outside looking in. Each, at least for a time, fell in love with a version of Irish nationalism, although some, like Trollope, ended up thinking the famine a blessing in disguise and came to loath the 'natives'. Yeats too fell out of love with Nationalist Ireland, for many good reasons, yet ended up flirting with fascism.
None of this means they were not writers of worth, but it is Foster's apparent willingness to forgive them that irks, particularly when contrasted with his treatment of two present day authors. That one should be Gerry Adams seems on the face of it strange. Adams has written an autobiography of sorts and some short stories, yet 'writer' is hardly the term that comes to mind. Foster, however, has axes to grind and so attacks Adams's shortcomings as an artist. Actually the criticism seems to be rather odd--that Adams doesn't tell us enough about his love life, that he isn't frank about his military involvement, and that some of the autobiography is chronologically flawed and perhaps less than totally honest.
But of course the real axe is political. 'Can Adams really believe', he asks, 'that the shootings of civilians by panicky and trigger happy paratroopers during the Bloody Sunday demonstrations was a deliberate military operation, planned in advance, at the highest political level?' I suppose we should be grateful that Foster acknowledges that British soldiers were trigger happy--harsh words indeed for the British establishment.
The second author he tears into is Frank McCourt who wrote Angela's Ashes. Here Foster is at his most pompous. The great unwashed may have liked McCourt's book, but not the great historian. The Irish American riff raff may have fallen for it, but not the sophisticated Irish academics in England. Again, as with Adams, he attacks McCourt for lack of chronological accuracy, and for bits of biography he deems to be invented.
Most of all though he seems to be saying don't bother us modern Irish sophisticates with your tales of poverty, slums, dirt, enforced emigration and religious abuse--we've moved on. We would rather revisit Trollope at the hunt, in civilised pre-independence Ireland, than the dirt of the pre-Celtic cool days of post-independence. As with history, it seems our literature must be re-written if we are to bury our uncool past.
Pat Stack