the legacy of John Brown

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

What do people think about the idea of modern socialists promoting "John Brownism" in the same sort of way the EZLN promotes "Zapatismo" ? That is, as a "homegrown" folk hero whose -ism doesn't constitute a coherent historic ideology but rather invokes the idea of militancy against (wage) slavery.

[Prairie Fire]

Well, when I was younger I thought of doing something similar with Louis Riel in Canada. After witnessing how the Venezuelan PCV tacked Bolivar onto their Marxism-Leninism (:rolleyes:), I thought that we could do the same thing in Canada, and I went to work trying to create "Marxism-Leninism-Rielism" :rolleyes:.

I know that communist parties around the world like to find any revolutionary hero from the past and tie them into the make up of their party...

In Peru, it was Tupac Amaru,

In Venezuela it was Bolivar,

Mexico, Zapata,

Even revolutionary Albania had a fondness for Skanderbeg.

The Canadian international brigades during the Spanish civil war were called "Mackenzie-Papineau" after the leaders of the (failed) national-democratic/bourgeois revolutions in Upper and Lower Canada in 1837-1838.


There is nothing wrong with upholding these national democratic heros, no. The current communist organizations in Canada uphold Louis Riel, uphold the Quebec Patriotes, uphold the various pre-Marxist revolutionaries of Canada and the gains that they made as well as their finer points.

The problem with this is that, in the end, if they are not a Marxist, you can only uphold them so far.

Louis Riel fought against annexation by Canada, and upheld the national soveriegnty of th Metis, French and various peoples of the plains (in what is now Canada), but to the best of my knowledge, there was no talk of class struggle.

National-democratic revolutionaries, while often admirable and worthy of our support,
have their limitations.

John Brown, while certainly he was one of the more admirable historical persyns that the US has produced in their time, and certainly he was the cream of the crop of the abolitionist movement (who later took an interest in some workers politics), was a deeply religious man with no scientific analysis of class struggle, and hence he had his limitations.

All of Browns objections to slavery and to exploitation, to the best of my knowledge, were based on moral reasons rather than anything that could be materially substantiated.

The modern working class has allready recieved their share of bourgeois moralism and church sermons. To be mobilized in a revolutionary direction, they recquire a sober analysis of the situation, not the scriptural passages and gut-feelings of historical revolutionaries like Americas John Brown and Canadas (or, more accurately,Red rivers) Louis Riel.

It is fine to uphold the historical example of these figures, but I wouldn't try and make a latin-american style "theory" out of the historical persynality and actions of these figures. The working class needs an actual revolutionary theory more than it needs heroic persynalities to look back on.

Che Guevera is widely known and upheld in Latin America, but how much has that really helped in terms of advancing revolution in these regions?


A fondness for Wayne Gretzky doesn't necesarilly lead a persyn to take up hockey, you dig?