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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

LEAVES OF GRASSROOTS POLITICS: DEMOCRACY, THE
SWARM, AND THE LITERATURES OF THE AMERICAS

presented by

SCOTT HENKEL

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

Doctoral degree in English

 

 

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Date

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LEAVES OF GRASSROOTS POLITICS: DEMOCRACY, THE SWARM, AND
THE LITERATURES OF THE AMERICAS

BY

Scott Henkel

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

2007

ABSTRACT

LEAVES OF GRASSROOTS POLITICS: DEMOCRACY, THE SWARM, AND
THE LITERATURES OF THE AMERICAS

BY
Scott Henkel

When the phrase ”grassroots politics" is used in the
literature and scholarship of the Americas, it is meant to
imply a division between a class of people ”above" other
people who are ”at the grassroots level.” At best, this
division implies a hierarchy, and at worst, it reinforces
the idea that people "at the grassroots level" are
powerless compared to the people ”above" them. This project
challenges this traditional interpretation of grassroots
politics. Because to be concerned with the root or the
roots is to be radical, I argue that grassroots politics
should be reinterpreted as a synonym for radical democracy.

This reinterpretation helps to unpack the problems and
possibilities of deeper, more meaningful ideas of
democracy-—ideas that have motivated many writers in the
Americas. Walt Whitman writes in Democratic Vistas that
”democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps,
quite unawaken'd [...]. It is a great word, whose history,
I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet
to be enacted.” In response to how Thomas Carlyle mocks the

idea that the electoral franchise should be expanded to

include wha
“democracy
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include what Carlyle calls "the swarm," Whitman argues for
”democracy in all public and private life, and in the army
and the navy." What would the democratization of "all
public and private life" entail? What would it mean to
democratize schools, the workplace, and the community? What
political movements would it take to realize such a
proposal? Perhaps most importantly, how can literary study
contribute to these problems? This project considers some
of these problems, such as questions of free speech in
Herbert Biberman's suppressed film Salt of the Earth,
questions of free association in B. Traven's six novels of
the Mexican Revolution, and questions about how the
literature of the contemporary Zapatista movement in Mexico

can help to imagine new democratic vistas.

Copyright by
Scott Henkel
2007

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project would not have been possible without the
encouragement, advice, and generosity of many mentors and
friends. I would especially like to thank my director,
Scott Michaelsen, and the members of my committee, Ellen
McCallum, Salah Hassan, and Zarena Aslami. I would also
like to thank the members of my writing group, Connie Mick,
Anna Boyagoda, and Diane Persin. I owe a special debt of
gratitude to Kelly Kinney for her candor, patience, and

insight.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ..... .................. ....... ..... ........ .. 1

CHAPTER ONE
A SWARM ON THE HORIZON: WHITMAN, CARLYLE, AND THE

IMAGINATION OF DEMOCRATIC VISTAS ................. . ...... 35
Shooing the Swarm; or, One of Plato’s Epigones ..... 43
The Democratization of ”All Public and Private
Life"...... ......... ... .......... ............. ..... 59
Whitman’s ”Imposition" ......... ......... . ......... 75

CHAPTER TWO

THE EMBARGO ON SALT: FREE SPEECH AND SALT OF THE EARTH.. 87
Embargoes on the Marketplace of Ideas.............. 91
The Embargo on Salt............. ..... ............ 108
Resistance in Common ............................. . 117
Resistance on the Commons......................... 136

CHAPTER THREE
THE EMERGENCE OF THE SWARM IN B. TRAVEN’S JUNGLE

NOVELS..... ................................ ........... 142
Lions and Their Pride; Or, Plato' s Epigones
Redux...... ..... . ...... ........................... 149
The Emergence, Possibilities, and Limitations of the
Swarm... ..... ..................................... 173
Hierarchy Redux ................................... 192

CONCLUSION

THE SWARM'S DEMOCRATIC HORIZONS ........................ 199
The Beetle and the Guerrilla .......... . .......... . 202
A Novel Approach to Grassroots Politics ..... ...... 211

The Zapatistas' ”Specialty of the House" ......... 216

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................... ..... 223

VI

Introduction

This project is about grassroots politics and the
literatures of the Americas. It is also about conflict
between narratives, like the conflict exposed by competing
interpretations of the phrase ”grassroots politics," and
like the challenge posed by counternarratives to dominant
ideas. Because to be concerned with the root or the roots
is to be radical, grassroots politics should be interpreted
as a radical, horizontal politics. Whenever we see this
phrase in the literatures of the Americas-or in the pages
of the New YOrk Times, on anti—immigration websites, in the
titles of corporations, or in the literature of ”astroturf"
groups—a hierarchical interpretation attempts to
appropriate the phrase and to stunt its radicalism.1
Likewise, the phrase is often used in this traditional,
hierarchical way by a wide range of thinkers who would
otherwise be hostile to hierarchy—the best example of whom,
as we will see shortly, is Malcolm X. In these cases, the

language such thinkers use undermines the otherwise

 

lSee, respectively, Creswell, ”Mortgage Fraud Is Up, but Not in Their
Backyards"; the ”Grassroots Granny"; Grassroots Media, Inc., of South
Bend, Indiana; and former United States House of Representatives
majority leader Tom DeLay's "Grassroots Action/Information Network,"
which seeks to oppose “radical leftist agendas wherever they may be
found in the United States" (par. 2). As its name implies, "astroturf"
groups are front groups that give the false impression that their
members are common, ordinary people.

liberatory

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liberatory arguments they intend to make. What is needed,
therefore, is a new interpretation of grassroots politics,
an interpretation that can challenge this hierarchy and
mobilize the phrase in a more liberatory manner. I will
argue that grassroots politics should be interpreted as a
synonym for radical democracy, and over the course of these
pages, I will mobilize this new interpretation of
grassroots politics to unpack texts from the Americas that
present opportunities to investigate the problems and
possibilities of a radical democratic movement.

The promise of deeper, more meaningful ideas of
democracy has fascinated many writers in the Americas. In
each chapter of the project, we will meet protagonists who
are in the shadow cast by hierarchy and who, in their
various ways, try to step out of it. These protagonists and
their narratives form a literary history organized by two
research questions: first, how have the literatures of the
Americas articulated ideas about grassroots politics, and
second, how might the literatures of the Americas imagine
new democratic vistas? These questions combine inquiry with
advocacy: with the first, I hope to discover the trajectory
of this literary history, and with the second, I suggest
ways that the literatures of the Americas can help to

cultivate grassroots politics and the ways ideas about

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grassroots politics can help to interpret the literatures
of the Americas.

In this Introduction, I argue for a new interpretation
of the phrase grassroots politics. In order to do so, I
will show the deficiencies in how the phrase has
traditionally been used by thinkers such as Malcolm X,
Manning Marable, Carlos Villas, and Michael Kazin, and then
build a case for why grassroots politics should be
interpreted as a synonym for radical democracy. Although I
offer a new interpretation, the last section of this
Introduction charts the contours of an intellectual history
into which this new interpretation of grassroots politics
can be placed, an intellectual history that includes
thinkers such as Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldfia, Marina
Sitrin, Noam Chomsky, and Jacques Derrida. In the balance
of the project, I will mobilize the complexities of the
phrase to dig into the problems and possibilities of
grassroots politics as they are found in the debate about
democracy between Thomas Carlyle and Walt Whitman in the
pages of ”Shooting Niagaram And After?" and Democratic
Vistas; in Herbert Biberman’s suppressed film Salt of the
Earth; in B. Traven's Jungle Novels; and in ”Durito IV:
Neoliberalism and the Party-State System," one of the key

texts of the contemporary Zapatista movement. My readings

 

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of each of these texts are efforts to reinterpret
grassroots politics as a synonym for radical democracy and
to discover how the literatures of the Americas can help to

imagine new democratic vistas and horizons.

Some people who use the phrase grassroots politics
intend it to communicate a hierarchical idea, and this use
should be challenged when it happens. The greater problem
arises, perhaps, when the phrase is used in its traditional
interpretation by thinkers who would be uncomfortable with
its hierarchical implications. One of Malcolm X’s most
famous speeches, for example, is his ”Message to the
Grassroots" (emphasis mine), where he speaks to and
attempts to construct an agenda for ”our people at the
grassroots level" (par. 31). As his title suggests, Malcolm
X considers his audience to be ”the grassroots”; he begins
his speech by saying that "during the last few moments that
we have left, we want to have just an off-the-cuff chat
between you and me—us" (par. 1). Although Malcolm X tries
to include himself in that address, he is the agent in the
situation: he is the speaker, he is the addresser, he is
the one who is conveying his message ”to the grassroots.”

'While claiming the role of a speaker is a form of power,

becoming one
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separates hi;

becoming one who speaks and being aware of one's role as a
speaker are not, in and of themselves, problematic.

A problem arises, however, when Malcolm X uses
”grassroots" in a way that reinforces a hierarchy that
separates him from his audience; this hierarchical language
undercuts the solidarity he hopes to cultivate with them.
This use is unfortunate because it is clearly Malcolm X's
intent to communicate a liberatory message, a message about
”plotting a course that will make [his audience] appear
intelligent, instead of unintelligent” (par. 1). His
language belies his liberatory intent, however-when Malcolm
X observes that "our people at the grassroots level" had
been ”controlled" by ”Other Negro civil-rights leaders of
so-called national stature" (par. 31), he introduces a
distinction between the agency that his audience members
have and the power that these leaders—who are not “at the
grassroots level"—have over his audience. He introduces,
but does not challenge, the idea of control, the idea that
”our people at the grassroots level" need to be controlled.
Malcolm X suggests that leaders "of so-called national
stature” are inadequate, but that other, better leaders are

needed to control ”our people." Whether such control is

necessary is far from certain.

 

 

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Manning Marable builds upon how Malcolm X uses the
phrase in his book From the Grassroots: Essays waard Afro-
American Liberation. Marable writes that his text draws its
”inspiration from Malcolm X's critical search for a
grassroots agenda for black people in 1964 and early 1965”
(1), and this inspiration is palpable throughout. Marable’s
agenda-setting is a form of power, an expression of
intellectual labor done for people ”at" the grassroots.
Such is the case, for example, when he analyzes the
possibilities of a Black Political Party (41-50), or when
he considers the ”problems and prospects" of ”Black
Education/Black Struggle” (185-200). While it is
interesting that, as his title suggests, Marable
metaphorically adopts the identity of “the grassroots" and
responds to Malcolm X’s call, he likewise undercuts the
liberatory goals of his project and reinforces the
separation between himself and the people for whom he sets
an agenda.

There are many other examples of the phrase used in
this traditional way. Carlos Villas, when searching for
alternatives to neoliberal economic policies in ”Forward
Back: Capitalist Restructuring, the State, and the Working
Class in Latin America," writes that ”social movements

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but also as a method of self-training and grassroots
empowerment and of strengthening people's identities"
(Whither Marxism? 140). Villas links the idea of grassroots
politics directly together with the identity of its
participants, placing his conversation about grassroots
politics in the language of personal growth: ”grassroots
empowerment andm strengthening people’s identities" seem to
be the greatest benefits of his criticisms of neoliberal
economic perils.

When Robert Penn Warren's Huey Long-inspired character
Governor Willie Stark addresses his audience in All the
King’s.Mén from the courthouse steps, Warren places Stark’s
audience ”on the grassroots” (11). The divide could not be
more pronounced: Stark, one—man political machine and
benevolent dictator of Louisiana politics, stands on the
concrete symbol of juridical and institutional power, while
he looks down upon and speaks to the country folk who are
standing ”on the grassroots."

In a context not unlike Warren's, Michael Kazin uses
the phrase repeatedly in The Populist Persuasion: An
American History, referring to ”grassroots activists" (20,
54), "grassroots reformers" (31, 38, 81, 223), ”grassroots
dissidents" (72), the ”grassroots idiom" (228), and, like

Malcolm X, referring to ”African-Americans at the

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grassroots" (200). Kazin’s use of ”grassroots" as an
adjective modifying “activists," ”reformers," and
”dissidents" makes it clear that he is referring to a type
of people when he uses the phrase. As this and the rest of
the examples above suggest, ”grassroots politics" usually
refers to the demos- part of democracy, focusing on
questions of who participates, rather than how they
participate. This demos is usually defined quite loosely,
but most often it is meant to include ”ordinary people,"
the ”folk" who participate in immediate, local forms of
politics; this, quite clearly, is what Malcolm X means by
”our people at the grassroots level" (par. 31). It is also
meant to exclude people in positions of institutional power
like elected officials, party bureaucrats, corporate
officers, or the like.2

One could say that this traditional definition of
grassroots politics could also hold for the protagonists we
will meet in these pages—a poet who is one of the "roughs,"

miners and their spouses, peasants and campesinos,

 

2 For other uses of the phrase in this traditional way, see Tom Adams,
Grassroots: HOW Ordinary People are Changing America, Gustavo Esteva
and Madhu Suri Prakash, Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of
Cultures, Charles David Kleymeyer, ed. Cultural Expression and
Grassroots Development: Cases from Latin America and the Caribbean, C.
George Benello, From the Ground Up: Essays on Grassroots and WOrkplace
Democracy, Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, eds. Buidling Bridges: The
Emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community, Michael Kaufman
and Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, Community Power and Grassroots Democracy:
The Transformation of Social Life, and Linda Stout, Bridging the Class
Divide and Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing.

 

fictional bee
traditional i
a use would r
interpretatic

reinforces a

fictional beetles and guerrilla soldiers—but this
traditional interpretation is not sufficient. In fact, such
a use would repeat the mistake of the traditional
interpretation, a mistake in which the language we use
reinforces a hierarchy we seek to dismantle. Instead of
repeating this mistake, I will now begin to reinterpret the
phrase grassroots politics so that, in the balance of the
project, it can be mobilized to consider the problems of a

radical democratic movement.

As Temma Kaplan writes in Crazy for Democracy: WDmen
in Grassroots Mbvements, "[t]hough widely used, the term
grassroots does not have a commonly recognized meaning."
The phrase suggests, she continues, ”being outside the
control of any state, church, union, or political party,
[m] being responsible to no authority except [one's] own
group" (1-2, emphasis in original). Harry M. Cleaver, Jr.
sounds similar notes in his essay "The Zapatista Effect:
The Internet and the Rise of an Alternative Political
Fabric.” Cleaver writes that

[iJn this essay, the term ”grassroots" is used to
refer to member-funded efforts at self-
organization that remain autonomous of either the

state or corporate sectors. Such organization

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often includes independent NGOs [non-governmental
organizations], but is more broadly inclusive of
various informal networks of activists and
community organizations. The grassroots movements
catalyzed by the Zapatistas include a variety of
actors, including human rights advocates,
environmental NGOs, local community governments,
and loose networks of political, media, and labor
activists who have linked their movements to
those of the Zapatistas. (623)
Kaplan and Cleaver's definitions also focus on people
outside institutional positions of power, those who are
”responsible to no authority except their own group," and
who are ”autonomous of either the state or corporate
sectors." Cleaver prominently mentions the ”actors" in
grassroots movements and identifies various kinds of
activists who make up these movements. While Kaplan and
Cleaver's efforts to give intellectual rigor to the phrase
are important—Kaplan's connection between grassroots
politics and democracy is especially significantawhat is
needed is to break from the traditional interpretation of
grassroots politics, to step out of the hierarchical shadow

that it casts.

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An initial step toward a reinterpretation of
grassroots politics is to pay attention to the phrase’s
grammar: ”grassroots” is an adjective modifying a noun
”politics"; the phrase, then, should primarily refer to a
type of politics, not a type of people. Beyond the
grammatical rationale, however, there are two reasons why
it is necessary to reinterpret the phrase. First, the
traditional interpretation implies essentialist
categorization, a problem that is bound to restate the
representation problems that come with defining a group of
people. Who are the people ”at the grassroots level”? "The
people"? "The demos"? ”The proletariat"? Why should we
expect them to act cohesively (or to act at all)? Why are
they bound together by a set of characteristics? What are
those characteristics? While questions of identity are
vital to my argument, the traditional interpretation of
grassroots politics leads either to a codification of
identity or to a caricature, neither of which is helpful
here. What I reject is the way that the categorization of
people ”at the grassroots level" keeps those people in
suffocatingly described roles, and also the idea that
struggle against racism could be subordinated to struggle
against sexism or classism, or any combination thereof.

Therefore, when I collectively refer to characters I either

11

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autonomy.

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use the terms used in their texts, or I refer to them as
protagonists, a term that suggests a sense of agency and
autonomy.

The second reason why it is necessary to reinterpret
this traditional definition of grassroots politics is
because it reinforces a hierarchy. Even if we concede that
the identities of people ”at the grassroots level" could be
understood in non-essentialist ways, if we define a group
of people ”at the grassroots level,” we logically have to
assume that there will be people who are "above" them. If
we continue to think, like Malcolm X, Manning Marable,
Carlos Villas, and Michael Kazin, that people ”at the
grassroots level" are those who are outside positions of
power, then we will, at best, lend legitimacy to this
hierarchy or, at worst, concede the idea that such a
hierarchy is necessary. Either way, this traditional
definition reinforces a profound misconception: that the
people ”at the grassroots" need people “above" them to
speak for them. Because hierarchical approaches to
political movements are so pervasive, and because
challenging such hierarchies is vital to a reinterpretation
of grassroots politics, I will unpack these ideas now in
several examples and demonstrate why they should be

challenged.

12

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We can see these hierarchical ideas clearly, for
example, in The Populist Persuasion. Kazin's Introduction
is subtitled "Speaking for the People" (1, emphasis mine),
where he writes that his book is about ”images of conflict
between the powerful and the powerless" (1). Indeed,
Kazin's definition of populist language is a language that
is used by “those who claim to speak for the vast majority
of Americans who work hard and love their country" (1,
emphasis mine). These two ideas, of course, are
intertwined: if we assume that there are people who are
"powerless," then the ”powerful" will need to speak for
them, operating somewhere between nobless oblige and
political paternalism.

This is an old assumption, and it is, in part, what
motivates Plato to tell a ”noble lie" in The Republic,
which is a "convenient story" that justifies why leaders
lead and others follow (412a-415d). In The Republic, the
noble lie that Plato's Socrates tells is the "myth of the
metals." This myth holds that while all people are
“brothers,” the Rulers have gold in their bodies and the
farmers and workers have iron and bronze in theirs (415a-
c). This noble lie of biological difference is a vital
political tool for Plato’s Rulers-it is a fiction made up

to justify a hierarchical social order. It would take "a

13

 

 

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lot of persuasion to get people to believe" this
”convenient story," but the broader good of the state would
be served, Plato’s Socrates suggests, by having a strict
social order in which people are confined to their
positions (415c). With almost irresistible logic, Plato
argues that "those who govern must be the best of them,"
just like "the best farmers are those who have the greatest
skill at farming" (412c). For a moment, I will put aside
why this logic is, ultimately, resistible, in favor of a
more immediate observation: regardless of Plato's famous
hostility to poets and the stories they tell, Plato's noble
lie underscores the power of narrative.3 This "noble lie,"
this ”convenient story" has the power to structure a whole
society; it is the primary weapon that Plato’s followers
use to wield power over the people whom Plato believes
should be mislead for their own good.

As Daniel Dombrowski points out, the noble lie has
”always been one of the most controversial passages in
[Plato's] corpus" (566). The Greek phrase ”gennaion
pseudomenous" has been variously translated as "lordly lie"

by Karl Popper, ”pious lie [or] fiction" by Warner Fite,

 

3 I consider and challenge the logic of ”the best"—articulated by
Plato’s epigones in B. Traven’s Jungle Novels—at length in Chapter
Three. For an interesting exploration of Plato’s relationship to
censorship and how that censorship paradoxically results in more
literary production, see Ramona A. Naddaff, Exiling the Poets: The
Production of Censorship in Plato’s Republic.

14

“well-bred
Desmond Lee,
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”well-bred lie" by Sissela Bok, and ”magnificent myth" by
Desmond Lee, just to name a few examples. These various
translations are important, and they all influence the ways
in which we read The Republic. Furthermore, Dombrowski
reminds us of what Richard Rorty finds so compelling about
Plato, namely that it is difficult to know ”which passages
of the dialogues are jokes" (qtd. in Dombrowski, 570).
Regardless of any joking, however, my emphasis is on the
uses that Plato's epigones have found for the noble lie—
uses which, too frequently, have been wielded like weapons
in order to govern a population. As we will see, Plato’s
many epigones have given up on the myth of the metals as
the preferred version of the noble lie, but similar stories
persist. In their many permutations, these convenient
stories have become master narratives—not in the sense that
Frederic Jameson and others have used that phrase—but
rather in a sense that suggests a method of domination. As
I use the phrase here, a master narrative is a narrative
told by a master in order to reinforce a particular
hierarchical order.

Over the course of these pages, we will see these
master narratives told repeatedly. The ideas they express
have been so seductive to people in institutional positions

of power that versions of them proliferate in the most

15

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diverse set of contexts. In each chapter of the project, I
challenge one master narrative and provide a
counternarrative. In this Introduction, the master
narrative to challenge is the traditional, hierarchical
interpretation of grassroots politics. In Chapter One, the
master narrative is Thomas Carlyle's belief that what he
mockingly calls "the swarm" does not possess the capacity
for autonomy that democracy requires. In Chapter Two, it is
the idea that the metaphor of the marketplace promises the
greatest degree of free speech; in Chapter Three, it is the
idea that without a hierarchical organization and a
centralized, directing authority figure—a master—no
political or social organization is possible. In the
Conclusion, the master narrative to be challenged is the
idea that change can only occur through a hegemonic
struggle that results in replacing one hierarchy with a
better hierarchy. The border between master narrative and
counternarrative is often unstable, but each of these
master narratives is in some way opposed to the idea of a
radical democracy, and they should not go unchallenged.
Therefore, to paraphrase Nietzsche, this project is a
narrative against something that is also narrative: it is a
counternarrative meant to challenge the "noble lies" that

Plato's epigones tell.

16

 

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These master narratives have been compelling for many
political thinkers, but too frequently the problems
involved have ultimately been fences too high to climb.
Antonio Gramsci, for example, tries to subvert the need for
such master narratives, hoping that the abolition of class
society will make hierarchy unnecessary. Until such
conditions are abolished, however, he argues in his Prison
NOtebooks that the ”first element [of politics] is that
there really do exist rulers and ruled, leaders and led.
The entire science and art of politics are based on this
primordial, and (given certain general conditions)
irreducible fact" (Gramsci 144).‘ Gramsci does not hold this
position alone. An inability (or unwillingness) to move
past hierarchical ideas brings together what are otherwise
improbable groupings of thinkers. Hierarchical ideas bind
José Enrique Rodééwho denigrated the "caprices of the
masses” (58) and argued that ”democracy always includes an
indispensable element of aristocracy" (67)—together with
Che Guevera, who argued that the guerrilla fighter is “a
person conscious of the role of the vanguard of the
people," a person who ”must have a moral conduct that shows
him to be a true priest of the reform to which he aspires"

(39). It also binds James Madison together with Cornel

 

‘ The ”general conditions” Gramsci refers to here, as the footnote to
his text points out, are the conditions of ”class society" (144).

17

West. Madison argues in The Federalist Papers that it “may
well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the
representatives of the people, will be more consonant to
the public good than if pronounced by the people
themselves, convened for the purpose" (42). In The American
Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, West
similarly asserts that ”the pragmatists' preoccupation with
power, provocation, and personality—in contrast, say, to
grounding knowledge, regulating instruction, and promoting
tradition—signifies an intellectual calling to administer
to a confused populace caught in the whirlwinds of societal
crisis, the cross fires of ideological polemics, and the
storms of class, racial, and gender conflicts" (5). The
differences between these thinkers are not small, but for
their various reasons, they all have decided that hierarchy
is either necessary or unavoidable, at least for the
present, and they have dedicated their efforts to
organizing hierarchical systems in ways that suit their
various purposes. To what end, however, does such thinking
inevitably lead?

An answer to this question might be found in the
arguments made by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was perhaps
the most vocal advocate for such hierarchical approaches to

politics. Lenin's advocacy of a revolutionary vanguard was

18

predicated on the assumption that a relatively small,
educated, and skilled set of activists was required to lead
and speak for the population. Specifically, Lenin argues in
What is to be Done? that
Class political consciousness can be brought to
the workers only from without, that is, only from
outside the economic struggle, from outside the
sphere of relations between workers and
employers. [m] We must "go among all classes of
the population" as theoreticians, as
propagandists, as agitators, and as organizers.
[m] For it is not enough to call ourselves the
”vanguard,” the advanced contingent; we must act
in such a way that all the other contingents
recognize and are obliged to admit that we are
marching in the vanguard. (par. 28, emphasis in
original)
The process of education, agitation, and organization-the
process of revolution—Lenin asserts, can only take place
when a small group of trained revolutionaries speaks for
the population at large. Lenin seeks to ”bring political
knowledge to the workers" (par. 28) as if these workers
have no existing political knowledge at all, as if they

were a blank slate upon which Lenin can write his theories.

19

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Lenin's project is intended to be a gift granted from a
benevolent revolutionary to a lucky worker, but it is more
like a consolation prize.

As John Holloway writes, the idea of a vanguard is
like ”a saviour, a deus ex machina." The vanguard party is
"a group of people who by virtue of their theoretical and
practical experience can see beyond the confines of
existing society and who, for that reason, can lead the
masses in a revolutionary break" (186). As Holloway points
out, however, there are several problems with this idea.
The idea that a representative or a revolutionary vanguard
can or should speak for or act on the behalf of the rest of
the population is dubious. Especially if we follow the
logic of Lenin's vanguardism into his revolution, the
repression of the Kronstadt sailors, the production of the
Soviet bureaucracy, and into the subsequent atrocities—
actions all done under the pretense of speaking for the
Russian people—it does not become too difficult to see how
what Gilles Deleuze calls “the indignity of speaking for
others" can slip into the domination of those others (qtd.

in May, 97).5 Like Alexander spoke for the people of Rome,

 

5 For an alternative view of the Russian Revolution and its inherent
authoritarianism, see Daniel Guérin’s Anarchism: From Theory to
Practice, especially the chapter “Anarchism in the Russian Revolution."
For an excellent exploration, in a different context, of how
authoritarian atrocities have been committed in the name of ”the
people," see Andrzej Wajda's film Danton, which focuses on the Reign of
Terror in post-revolutionary France, and the struggle between Georges

20

 

 

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Cleopatra for the people of Egypt, Captain Ahab for his
mariners, renegades, and castaways, and Governor Willy
Stark for the poor people of Louisiana, we can collect a
long line of literary and historical figures who have
adopted the violence of speaking for others, especially for
the people they claim to represent.

As these examples suggest, the idea that there must be
people ”above" those ”at the grassroots"—even if this
hierarchy is only necessary until some objective is
reached—is shared so widely that it might be possible to
believe that without some centralized authority to direct
or represent the larger community, no politics is possible.
The problem with this idea is that it not only requires a
hierarchy, but that it also requires a transfer of power
from the people ”at the grassroots level" to those ”above”
them. It is a master narrative that is very beneficial to
the masters, but for those from whom power is transferred,
it can be crippling—even in cases such as Gramsci
suggested, where such master narratives would be told until

they were no longer necessary.

R

Danton and Maximilien Robspierre, two of the central figures of the
French Revolution. In Danton, Robespierre, as a member of the Committee
for Public Safety, part of the new revolutionary government, argues
that mass executions and other acts of state terrorism need to be
carried out in the name of national security, and for the sake of
maintaining the French Revolution.

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Is such a transfer of power necessary, however, even
for temporary periods? Anyone who has been involved in
political movements would probably concede that when a
group grows to a certain size, the logistics of delegating
tasks or organizing effective discussions, for example, at
times require that the group transfer a certain degree of
power into an individual or smaller governing body, but it
does not follow that this transfer needs to be a
fundamental assumption, built into a movement’s orientation
a priori, nor does it follow that such a transfer of power
need to be done on anything but a temporary basis, and with
the understanding that the transfer of power could be
revoked at any time. Beyond these contingencies, however,
why would a radical theorist choose to sketch out a new
hierarchy if the goal is to abolish such hierarchies?
Instead of putting a veneer over a concept of leadership,
organic or otherwise, why not devote one’s efforts toward
theorizing a radical politics that does not require a
hierarchy?

These are difficult questions, ones that require new
thinking. As Holloway asks, "if the notion of a vanguard,"
to which we can add notions of political representation and
the idea that people ”at the grassroots level” need people

"above" them, "is discarded, and with it the notion of a

22

revolutionary programme, which depends on the existence of
such a vanguard, then what are we left with?" (186). Todd
May gives a tentative answer: ”in order for liberation to
occur, individuals and groups must retain their power; they
cannot cede it without risking the loss of the goal for
which all political struggles occur: empowerment" (48).
Holloway's question is important, and it allows others to
proliferate: to paraphrase Nietzsche once more, isn't it
time for literary study to renounce the faith in
representatives, vanguards, and the lot of Plato's
epigones? I argue that it is, and I intend this project to
be a challenge to such hierarchical ideologies. What we are
left with after a critique of representation and
vanguardism, I argue, is the opportunity to reinterpret
grassroots politics. This opportunity, however, raises
another question: if grassroots politics should refer to a
type of politics, if the phrase should be reinterpreted
without its hierarchical implications, what kind of

politics is under consideration?

Much like how Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
notice the etymology of the word in This Bridge Called.My
Back: writings by Radical women of Color (xxiv), I argue

that to be concerned with the root or the roots is to be

23

radical, and therefore, grassroots politics should be
interpreted as a synonym for a radical, horizontal
democracy. As Marina Sitrin suggests in HOrizontalism:
Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, new political
Imyvements need new vocabularies and new interpretations of
familiar words. One such word is ”horizontalism," which
"does not imply just a flat plane for organizing," Sitrin
argues,
or non-hierarchical relationships in which people
no longer make decisions for others. It is a
positive word that implies the use of direct
democracy and the striving for consensus,
processes in which everyone is heard and new
relationships are created. [m] As its name
suggests, horizontalidad implies democratic
communication on a level plane and involves—or at
least intentionally strives towards—non-
hierarchical and anti—authoritarian creation
rather than reaction. (vi, 3)
Rather than a dichotomy between those ”at the grassroots
level" and those ”above" them, my reading builds upon
Moraga, Anzaldfia, and Sitrin’s vocabularies and suggests a
new interpretation of grassroots politics: a network, like

similar, but separate green spaces in an urban landscape,

24

the overlapping, intersecting grasses in the wild; in
ort, an interpretation of grassroots politics as a

nonym for radical democracy. This interpretation does not
priori require a transfer of power from the represented

a representative, from the rearguard to the vanguard,

t is, rather, one that is more direct, and therefore more
aningful to more people. This grassroots politics is not
mited beneath capitol domes or by capital's control over
onomic relations, but is instead a type of democracy that
as common and diverse as leaves of grass.

While this is a new interpretation, my reading of
assroots politics can be placed into an intellectual
story. For reasons that will become evident in Chapter
e, Walt Whitman inspires my use of the phrase grassroots
litics; in a similar fashion, Noam Chomsky helps to
ticulate the type of democracy under consideration. "If
e present wave of repression can be beaten back," Chomsky
ites,

if the Left can overcome its more suicidal
tendencies and build upon what has been
accomplished [m], then the problem of how to
organize industrial society on truly democratic
lines, with democratic control in the work place

and in the community, should become a dominant

25

 

re:

intellectual issue for those who are alive to the
problems of contemporary society, and, as a mass
movement for libertarian socialism develops,
speculation should proceed to action. (FOr
Reasons of State 382)
As I will explore in the chapters below, this ”dominant
intellectual issue” suggests, at minimum, two facets:
first, a critique of various master narratives and second,
the articulation of counternarratives. There are many
complexities involved here; simple terms in these
narratives quickly become inadequate. Democracy, as Whitman
reminds us, is a word that can be defined only
contentiously (984). The commonplace words that make up
these narratives-words like grassroots politics, democracy,
and freedom are used in varying contexts in wildly
different, often contradictory ways. The complexity of our
interpretation of democracy is thankfully slippery, but its
understanding requires care because, as Jacques Derrida
reminds us in Rogues, enemies of democracy often cannot
help but pretend to be democrats: ”the alternative to
democracy," Derrida writes, ”can always be represented as a
democratic alternation” (30-1, emphasis in original). A

similar idea prompts Murray Bookchin to observe that

26

[s]eldom have socially important words been
subject to more confusion, or been divested of
their historic meaning, than they are at present.
Two centuries ago, democracy was depreciated by
monarchists and republicans alike as ”mob rule."
Today, democracy is hailed, but only in the sense
of "representative democracy," an oxymoronic
phrase that refers to little more than a
republican oligarchy of the chosen few who
ostensibly speak for the powerless many. (143)
There are many such examples of Bookchin's
observation, and among the most significant is Samuel
Huntington’s argument in The Crisis of Democracy. Because
of the global upheavals of the 19603 and 19705, Huntington
advocates for a return to the time when ”[President Harry]
Truman had been able to govern the country with the
cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street
lawyers and bankers" (98). Huntington argues that ”some of
the problems of governance in the United States today stem
from an excess of democracy," an excess that directly
challenged various forms of authority and hierarchy. What
is ”[n]eeded, instead,” Huntington suggests, "is a greater
degree of moderation in democracy," which "usually requires

some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of

27

 

 

 

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some individuals and groups” (Crozier et al. 113, 114). The
problem that Huntington sees is, in Chomsky's words, ”the
usual one: the rabble were trying to arrange their own
affairs, gaining control over their communities and
entering the political arena to press their demands. There
were organizing efforts among young people, ethnic
minorities, women, social activists, and others, encouraged
by the struggles of benighted masses elsewhere for freedom
and independence" (”Containing" 164).

As Huntington’s argument suggests, there are uses of
”socially important words" that bend the interpretation of
those words past the breaking point, uses which evoke an
Orwellian understanding. In her introduction to Chomsky's
book For Reasons of State, Arundhati Roy writes that she
admires Chomsky’s work because he

shows us how phrases like "free speech," the
"free market" and the ”free world" have little,
if anything to do with freedom. He shows us that,
among the myriad freedoms claimed by the 0.5.
government are the freedom to murder, annihilate,
and dominate other people. The freedom to finance
and sponsor despots and dictators around the
world. The freedom to train, arm, and shelter

terrorists. The freedom to topple democratically

28

hi».

 

elected governments. The freedom to amass and use
weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological,
and nuclear. The freedom to go to war against any
country whose government it disagrees with. And,
most terrible of all, the freedom to commit these
crimes against humanity in the name of ”justice,"
in the name of ”righteousness," in the name of
"freedom." (x)
We could also add ”in the name of ’democracy’" to the end
of Roy’s quote, and that addition would give us a good idea
of the stakes of this debate, and also the rationale for
spending time reinterpreting democracy and grinding down
the gears of the traditional definition of grassroots
politics. While an amount of plasticity is welcome in the
understanding of any ”socially important word," this
plasticity is what motivates Jacques Derrida to argue that
"the stakes have never been higher in the world today, and
they are new stakes, calling for a new philosophical
reflection on what democracy, and I insist on this, the
democracy to come, might mean and be" (Negotiations 340).
Additionally, Derrida writes in Specters of Marx that
at stake here is the very concept of democracy as
concept of a promisem That is why we always

propose to speak of a democracy to come, not of a

29

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n.“

BE

 

future democracy in the future present, not even
of a regulating idea, in the Kantian sense, or of
a utopia—at least to the extent that their
inaccessibility would still retain the temporal
form of a future present, of a future modality of
the living present. (64—5, emphasis in original)
It is not constitutional procedure that interests me or
Derrida, nor is it the process of social organization that
Jean-Luc Nancy calls ”order and administration" (xxxvi).
Rather, this promise that interests me is the promise of
something impossible to achieve, something that is not a
utopia or an ideal republic that we can define and then
work towards, but rather something that is always ”to
come.” Rather than aiming for a telos, an end goal for
which to strive, we can think of grassroots politics as an
organic, constantly evolving political movement. As Derrida
tells us, in this sense,
democracy is not just a mode of government,
social organization, or regime among others.
Let’s just say that there is an idea of democracy
with respect to which all of the determinations
that there have been of it since the

Enlightenment, the American and French

30

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Revolutions, different types of democracy have

all been inadequate. (Negotiations 179)
Like Derrida, many writers in the Americas have told
stories about new democratic vistas. In keeping with the
plasticity of ”socially important words" like grassroots
politics and democracy, I have chosen to frame the debate
of the project around a tension between those who interpret
democracy along hierarchical lines and those who favor a
radical, horizontal reinterpretation of democracy. This
tension is evident both in the narratives people tell and
the uses to which those narratives are put. It is also
evident in the impact these narratives have on how we view
political movements, how democracy is interpreted, and in
the degree to which protagonists believe that change is
possible.

Thinkers like Huntington might argue that my
reinterpretation of grassroots politics as a synonym for
radical democracy would render democracy unmanageable—and
they are correct. I would argue in response that
Huntington's interpretation of democracy shrinks its scope
to a degree that would render it much less meaningful, more
of a euphemism than a liberatory philosophy. This project,
therefore, is an attack on hierarchical interpretations of

democracy and an attempt to think about the ways the "non-

31

authoritarian foundations of democracy” can be imagined and
interpreted in the literatures of the Americas (Wagner and

Moreira 190).

The first chapter of the project frames the debate to
a more substantial degree by exploring this friction over
the interpretation of democracy as we find it in Thomas
Carlyle's essay "Shooting Niagaram And After?" and in Walt
Whitman's response to Carlyle, Democratic Vistas. While the
friction between hierarchy and horizontalism does not
originate with Carlyle and Whitman, it is explicit in their
texts. I will use an analysis of their texts, therefore, to
begin my intervention and to illustrate the broad points of
the debate of the project. Carlyle's master narrative
denigrates the political activity of what he calls ”the
swarm," those people who are ”cutting asunder [the] straps
and ties [m] of old regulations, fetters, and restrictions"
(9). Whitman's counternarrative in Democratic Vistas,
though flawed, points to the ways in which a grassroots
political project might be imagined. Furthermore, I use
Democratic Vistas because it is among the most significant
texts in the Americas to consider how the study of
literature and the use of literary tools can contribute to

imagining deeper, more meaningful ideas of democracy.

32

Democratic Vistas is the text that Roberto Mangabiera Unger
and Cornel West call "the secular bible of democracy,"
(11), and it is, therefore, the text that I will use to
produce questions for the broader project.

Chapters Two and Three focus on two of the most
significant problems of a grassroots political project:
problems of free speech and problems of free association.
Marx and Engels write that capital is "vampire-like" and it
”must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
connections everywhere" (Capital 233; Manifesto 12). The
master narrative about the marketplace of ideas, with its
commodification of language itself, is just one more effort
to put those sharp fangs wherever a vein can be found. In
Chapter Two, therefore, I consider problems of free speech
and sharpen a counternarrative of wooden stakes for this
vampire. Through a reading of Herbert Biberman’s suppressed
film Salt of the Earth, I consider how the marketplace of
ideas—the dominant metaphor used to describe the space in
which speech is shared—is itself a limitation on the
freedom of speech, and how Salt of the Earth suggests the
commons as an alternative metaphor.

Chapter Three considers problems of free association
in B. Traven’s Jungle Novels, a six-book narrative about

the emergence of a rebel swarm during the Mexican

33

Rmmflution. The Jungle Novels are a challenge to the master
mnrative that suggests that without a hierarchical
cuganization and a directing authority figure, no social or
political organization is possible. In contrast to how
Carlyle represents the swarm as dangerous and unthinking,
Traven's narrator reinterprets the identity of the swarm
and explores the limits of more horizontal models of
organization. The Jungle Novels end on a profoundly
ambivalent note, however, and perhaps for that reason, Bill
Weinberg begins his book Hemage to Chiapas: The New
Indigenous Struggles in Mexico, by drawing a parallel
between the Jungle Novels and the story of the current
Zapatista rebels. Weinberg writes that the ”Indians in
[General from the JUngle, the last of Traven's novels],
isualated in the jungle, didn't know that the Revolution was
ailready over and the dictator overthrown; the peasant army
uniich emerged from that jungle in 1994 claims that the
Revolution has been betrayed and dictatorship restored"

(15).

In the Conclusion, I argue that the contemporary

Zapatista movement in Mexico reinterprets the radical
democratic project of the swarm in their texts. I use the

Zapatista literature to challenge one final master

riaizzrative, the idea that the only options for political

34

struggle are variations on master narratives themselves,
that significant change can only come through hegemonic
struggle, the object of which is to replace one hierarchy
with a better hierarchy, one master with a new master.
Through a reading of ”Durito IV: Neoliberalism and the
Party-State System," one of the key Zapatista communiqués,
I explore how this movement uses its stories to imagine new
democratic horizons, and I pose questions about further

research on grassroots politics and the literatures of the

Americas.

35

Chapter One
A Swarm on the Horizon: Whitman, Carlyle, and the

Imagination of Democratic Vistas

"Democracy," Walt Whitman writes, ”is a word the real
of which still sleeps, quite unawaken’d,
rithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests
of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue.
is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains
ritten, because that history has yet to be enacted" (PW
93).l Whitman wrote these words in 1871 in his essay
iocratic Vistas, the text that Stephen John Mack calls
Ltman’s “most profound and sustained meditation on
nocratic life” (137). As the metaphor of the title makes
ear, Whitman is not interested in writing democracy's
.story; rather, he is interested in using his text to
magine new democratic vistas. More specifically, Whitman
3 interested in rebutting what is perhaps the most
renchant criticism of democracy, the master narrative that
.ells us that common people—whom Whitman calls ”the

mnamed, unknown, rank and file" (PW 2:377)—do not have the

 

‘All citations from Whitman’s works are from Floyd Stovall, ed., Walt
Whitman: Prose Works 1892, volumes I and II (New York: New York
University Press, 1964), hereafter cited as PW. Citations will be given
in the text, volume number followed by page number.

36

acity for autonomy that democracy requires. ”The purpose
democracy,” Whitman writes, is to cultivate the ”highest
edom” (966) so that “the unnamed, unknown, rank and

e” can ”become a law, and a series of laws unto”
:mselves (966). Democratic Vistas poetically expresses
-tman's complicated belief in autonomy; it is a text

ant to counter a master narrative about a supposed lack
autonomy, and it is the text I will use to begin my
tervention into the problems of grassroots politics in

e literatures of the Americas, as well as to frame the
:bate of the project.

Whitman wrote Democratic Vistas in response to
Shooting Niagara: And After?" a master narrative told in
367 by Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and
istorian. Because of Carlyle's status as one of the
reeminent literary figures of the Victorian period and
»ecause of his vocal belief in the need for masters and the
tarratives they tell, Whitman was fairly frequently
:oncerned with Carlyle’s writing. In the essay ”Carlyle
from American Points of View,” for example, Whitman writes
that "Carlyle's grim fate was cast to live and dwell in,
and largely embody, the parturition agony and qualms of the
old order, amid crowded accumulations of ghastly morbidity,

giving birth to the new" (PW 1:254). Whitman recognized in

37

 

 

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cLyle something quite useful: a voice for this "old
mar,” an order against which Whitman could imagine his
nocratic vistas.

According to Thomas F. Haddox, ”although specifically
response to [Benjamin] Disraeli's Reform Bill, which was
out to enfranchise most working class men in Britain,
hooting Niagara' is more generally a condemnation of
mocratic government as such" (11)} Haddox is correct, to
degree. Carlyle was no partisan of representative
mocracy, but his greater interest—and object of greater
rornawas what he called ”the swarm": those people who were
:utting asunder [the] straps and ties [m] of old
:gulations, fetters, and restrictions" (9). In Carlyle's
.nd, further democratization would not be wise: he argued
lat once allowed to rule itself, a task he sarcastically
illed ”improvement," the ”swarm" was ”likely to be
nproved off the face of the earth within a generation or
vo" (7-8). For Carlyle, to take the ”Niagara leap of
ampleted democracy" is to tempt fate in foolish ways (3).

nitman, on the other hand, writes that

 

In addition to the texts considered in this chapter, see, for example,
1e treatment that the Carlyle/Whitman debate is given in David Brooks,
that Whitman Knew," The Atlantic Menthly, 291.4 (2003): 32-3; Robert
aisbuch, Atlantic Double-Cross: American Literature and British
dfluence in the Age of Emerson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press:
986); Edward F. Grier, ”Walt Whitman, the Galaxy, and Democratic
istas," American Literature, 23:3 (1951); and Robert J. Scholnick,
'Culture' or Democracy: Whitman, Eugene Benson, and The Galaxy," welt
hitman Quarterly Review 13:4 (1996).

38

 

le:

SCE

Anything worthy to be call’d statesmanship in the
Old World, I should say, among the advanced
students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not
debate to-day whether to hold on, attempting to
lean back and monarchize, or to look forward and
democratize—but how, and in what degree and part,
most prudently to democratize. (PW 2:383)
n the debate between Carlyle and Whitman in the pages of
Shooting Niagara" and Democratic Vistas, we can find no
ess than a broad conversation about the theoretical
:affolding, and therefore the viability, of democracy
:self. While I am reminded of what Kenneth M. Price calls
litman's "signature expression"—"Be radical—be radical—be
>t too damned radical!” (126)—I will argue here that we
in find in Democratic Vistas the seeds of a political
:oject that I will call grassroots politics: Whitman’s
roposal for the radical democratization of ”all public and
rivate life" (389). Like Whitman believed that America in
ie 19th century needed a new conception of democracy to
.fferentiate it from the ”old order," so do we need a 21St
:ntury reinterpretation of democracy, one that can
.tivate a grassroots political movement. The debate
etween Carlyle and Whitman provides an opportunity to

‘ame just such a project.

39

 

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u‘

fi-hli
Hg
d

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It

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”‘L

5‘.

The friction between Carlyle and Whitman is about the
nterpretation of democracy: Carlyle's interpretation
avors less democracy—much less; Whitman's favors more
emocracy—much more. Carlyle sees himself as grasping,
rying to conserve an “old order" which he believes to be
cod and deserving; Whitman believes that such activity is
n attempt to ”lean back," a regression, an unwillingness
0 look into the democratic vistas. Whereas Carlyle mocks
he idea that the democratic franchise should be extended
0 the ”swarm," Whitman argues for ”democracy in all public
nd private life, and in the army and the navy" (PW 2:389).

Carlyle and Whitman's argument is over the degree to
‘hich they believe that common people—whom Carlyle calls
the swarm" and Whitman calls ”the unnamed, unknown, rank
nd file” (PW’2:377)—possess the capacity for autonomy that
emocracy requires. Carlyle and Whitman agree that this
apacity is the theoretical scaffolding of democracy, but
arlyle has great skepticism that the ”swarm" has such a
apacity. The master narrative that Carlyle tells holds
hat democracy is a fool’s hope because it requires from
ommon people the ability to rule themselves autonomously,
0 direct their own affairs without guidance from a master.
hitman addresses this skepticism directly, and although he

dmits that his ”mood" had been much like Carlyle’s (PW

40

 

2:3
the

C031

is.

:375), it is "[t]o him or her within whose thought rages
he battle, advancing, retreating, between democracy's
onvictions, aspirations, and the people’s crudeness, vice,
aprices, I mainly write this essay" (PW 2:363).

The autonomy of ”the unnamed, unknown, rank and file"
s important to Carlyle and Whitman because they reason
hat the metric used to determine if the people could rule
n a democracy is the degree to which the average people
an rule themselves. Much depends on this facet of the
ebate: if one believes in what C. L. R. James calls ”the
reative power of freedom and the capacity of the ordinary
an to govern,” (par. 43) as Whitman does, then democracy
tself rests on a sure foundation. The question for Whitman
ecame, then, ”how, and in what degree and part, most
rudently" to prepare “the unnamed, unknown, rank and file"
or democracy in ”all public and private life"? Such a
orizontal interpretation of democracy, as we will see,
tands in stark contrast to the hierarchy that Carlyle
avors.

Much of the scholarship on Democratic Vistas has given
he Carlyle/Whitman debate only a brief treatment and has,
herefore, not sufficiently unpacked the point that Whitman
hought was the task of "statesmen," ”advanced students,"

nd "men of any brains": to argue for ”a wider

41

muxxratizing of institutions" and to think about "how, and
i‘what degree and part, most prudently to democratize" (Pw
:383). Haddox, in particular, writes that ”Whitman can
Efer no political program in Democratic Vistas, merely a
:ofession of faith and a call for others to see" (14).

zen though Stephen John Mack writes in The Pragmatic
hitman: Reimagining American Democracy that ”Democratic
istas is a blueprint for a kind of literary criticism
esigned to promote social change" (142), Mack, too,
bridges his analysis and, furthermore, attempts to import
hitman’s political views, unaltered, into the present.
exts such as Betsy Erkkila's Whitman the Political Poet
ravel a good distance when they observe that in Democratic
istas Whitman offers ”a proposal for a radical
econstruction of literature as it had been traditionally
nderstood” (90), but even though texts such as these offer
ubstantial and lasting contributions to our understanding
f Whitman's political views, there does not yet exist a
'ork of scholarship that considers the debate between
iarlyle and Whitman with sufficient depth, nor is there a
Lcholarly study that sufficiently explicates Whitman's
radical democratic vistas. This chapter is, in part, one
effort to advance the scholarship on these points. This

:hapter will also use the argument between Carlyle and

42

3';

my.

3..

litman to frame the debate of the project, a debate
>tivated by a friction over competing interpretations of
emocracy.

I begin my intervention with these texts because this
abate features two major literary figures whose ideas both
refigure and continue to shape our ideas about democracy.
1rthermore, although Whitman advocates many ideas that are
atter left to history, Democratic Vistas is among the most
:ofound examples of a text that uses literary tools to
1ltivate a democracy to come. Whitman writes that ”there
:e opposite sides to the great question of democracy, as
> every great question” (PW 2:363). In this chapter, I
-ll unpack these "opposite sides" of the ”great question
' democracy" in order to examine Carlyle's arguments for
xterpreting democracy in a way that will shrink its scope
ld Whitman's arguments for a radical reinterpretation of
emocracy. I will then provide a critique of one recent
fort to use Whitman’s ideas about democracy as a
untemporary political tool-Stephen John Mack's book The
'agmatic Whitman: Reimagining American Democracy—and
bilize that critique to suggest ways that Whitman might

lp us to imagine further democratic vistas.

.ooing the Swarm; or, One of Plato’s Epigones

43

 

 

”Shooting Niagaram And After?" appeared anonymously in
Macmillan’s Magazine in April 1867, and was edited and
expanded soon thereafter into a pamphlet.3 As James Anthony
Froude writes, "Shooting Niagara"
was Carlyle's last public utterance on English
politics. He thought but little of it, and was
aware how useless it would prove. In [Carlyle's]
Journal, August 3 [1867], he says:— ”An article
for Masson and Macmillan’s Magazine took up a
good deal of time. It came out mostly from
accident, little by volition, and is very fierce,
exaggerative, ragged, unkempt, and defective.
Nevertheless I am secretly rather glad than
otherwise that it is out, that the howling
doggeries (dead ditto and other) should have my
last word on their affairs and them, since it was
to be had." (352-3)

Carlyle knew that his ”last word" would be met with strong

resistance. The appeal for electoral reform at the time was

widespread, with support from the Reform League and Reform

Union, as well as the British labor movement. Subsequently,

 

3 The full version of ”Shooting Niagara" was republished in microform by
the Lost Cause Press of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1974. Abridged
versions of Carlyle's text can be found in several places, including in
William E. Buckler, ed., Prose of the Victorian Period (Boston:
Houghton, 1958), from which Mack cites.

44

the British parliament passed the Reform Act of 1867, known
as the Second Reform Act, mostly in an effort to stem the
popular uprising. The Second Reform Act was intended to
enfranchise sober, skilled men, and it had the effect of
enfranchising much of the male working class.4
The argument of Carlyle's essay is rather
straightforward: Carlyle mocks these efforts because he
believes that the "swarm” does not have the capacity for
autonomy that democracy requires. The "And After?" of his
title speaks volumes: if the democratic franchise were to
be expanded too widely, Carlyle argued, society as a whole
‘would suffer. He begins his argument by resisting what was
coming to be a forgone conclusion. Namely, Carlyle was
waiting for
Democracy to complete itself; to go the full
length of its course, towards the Bottomless or
into it, no power now extant to prevent it or
even considerably retard it,-till we have seen
where it will lead us to, and whether there will
then be any return possible, or none. Complete
“liberty" to all persons; Count of Heads to be
the Divine Court of Appeal on every question and

interest of mankind; Count of Heads to choose a

 

‘ See Erkkila, 247. For a fuller discussion of the British Reform Acts,
see Eric J. Evans, Parliamentary Reform in Britain, 0. 1770—1918.

45

 

Parliament according to its own heart at last,
and sit with Penny Newspapers zealously watching
the same said Parliament, so chosen and so
watched, to do what trifle of legislating and
administering may still be needed in such an
England, with its hundred and fifty millions
”free” more and more to follow each his own nose,
by way of guide-post in this intricate world. (1—
2)
Why underscore ”liberty” as Carlyle does? Why would Carlyle
be so vocal in his skepticism of the ”Penny Newspapers,”
those popular forces of commentary that would “watch" the
Parlianmmt? Carlyle evokes the anxiety of one who is about
to be scrutinized in a certain way: by those members of the
”swarm," those whom Carlyle feels are beneath this
Parliament. Liberty to all persons, voting on issues,
scrutiny of officials, freedom to autonomously determine
one's life’s direction—these are democracy's faults in
Carlyle’s eyes.

131 one of many interesting rhetorical constructions,
Carlyle writes that "Count of Heads [will] be the Divine
Cou11:<3f Appeal on every question and interest of mankind;
Count of Heads to choose a Parliament according to its own

heart at last” (1). Whereas a construction such as ”the

46

counting of headsm" would simply imply majoritarian rule,
kw writing ”Count of Heads," capitalized and acting as the
noun in his sentence, Carlyle is able to personify the
franchise with an aristocratic title. This particular
personification illustrates Carlyle's conservative impulse:
even the object of his critique is rendered in the language
of the "old order."

”Shooting Niagara" is a master narrative in the strict
sense that I use the phrase in this project: it is a story
told by a self—identified master in order to reinforce a
particular hierarchy. A more ideal republic, Carlyle
argues, would be a hierarchical system where governing
should be the sole purview of the educated and expert, who
presumably have the most skill at the task, and who need
not be ”interfered with":

Supposing the Commonwealth established, and
Democracy rampant, as in America, or in France by
fits for 70 odd years past, — it is a favourable
fact that our Aristocracy—in their essential
height of position, and capability (or
possibility) of doing good, are not at once
likely to be interfered with that they will be
continued farther on their trial, and only the

question somewhat more stringently put to them,

47

h It
an

 

"What are you good for, then? Show us, show us,

or else disappear!" (17)
Whitman is correct when he writes that Carlyle is the voice
of the "old order" (PW 1:254): Carlyle writes to defend
hierarchical institutions like the ”Aristocracy," which, in
their "essential height of position" are jeopardized by
democratization. Carlyle fears that once democratization
begins, one day the traditions that he holds dear will
eventually come under such scrutiny that they will be
forced to either justify their existence, or ”else
disappear!" Carlyle believes that the members of this
VAristocracy" are benevolent masters, and he rightly
notices that they are threatened by ”rampant” democracy.

In Carlyle's mind, he is making an ethical argument,
because he believes that people who lack the autonomy
required for democracy must be governed by others.
Fiurthermore, Carlyle argues that those who have the most
skjill at governing should govern, and those who do not have
tfluis skill should not be in the conversation. To put what
Carlyle calls ”the swarm" in control would be, in his mind,
against the best interests of ”the swarm" itself:

In our own country, too, Swarmery has played a
great part for many years past; and especially is

now playing, in these very days and months. [m]

48

Ask yourself about “Liberty," for example; what
you do really mean by it, what in any just and
rational soul is that Divine quality of liberty?
That a good man be ”free," as we call it, be
permitted to unfold himself in works of goodness
and nobleness, is surely a blessing to him,
immense and indispensable;—to him and to those
about him. But that a bad man be ”free,"—
permitted to unfold himself in his particular
way, is contrariwise, the fatallest curse you
could inflict on him; curse and nothing else, to
him and all his neighbours. Him the very Heavens
call upon you to persuade, to urge, induce,
compel, into something of well-doing; if you
absolutely cannot, if he will continue in ill—
doing, — then for him (I can assure you, though
you will be shocked to hear it), the one
”blessing" left is the speediest gallows you can
lead him to. (8-9)
Carlyle’s rhetorical style is verbose, but his point is
understood: he opposes democratization because, in his
Inirui, it is not in his nation's best interests. Liberty for
'thea ”bad man” is neither good for him nor for his

community. Liberty for ”bad men"—let alone for women, a

49

proposal that Carlyle does not broach—is in no one's best
interests, Carlyle argues, because if suffrage is extended
to ”bad" men, these "bad" men, given this liberty, will not
only continue to ”unfold themselves" in “bad" ways, but
after enfranchisement, they will also do bad things with
the vote. Who are these ”bad” men? What characteristics
identify them? Carlyle does not specify, so we are left to
assume, as in other areas of his ideal republic, that such
judgments are to be left to the ”aristocracy." The
Junishment for being "bad," however, is not in doubt: the
’speediest gallows."

When he argues that ”there is nothing but vulgarity in
>ur People's expectations" (22), Carlyle casts a deep
shadow of hierarchy, racism, and classism. Carlyle's
:kepticism of the autonomy of the average person is
;mplified in his continued comments about "the swarm.” “By
ar the notablest result of Swarmery, in these times,"
arlyle argues,

is that of the late American [Civil] War, with
Settlement of the Nigger Question for result.
Essentially the Nigger Question was one of the
smallest; and in itself did not much concern
mankind in the present time of struggles and

hurries. One always rather likes the Nigger;

50

Carlyle’s

classism:

evidently a poor blockhead with good
dispositions, with affections, attachments, —
with a turn for Nigger Melodies, and the like: —
he is the only Savage of all the coloured races
that doesn't die out on sight of the White Man;
but can actually live beside him, and work and
increase and be merry. The Almighty Maker has
appointed him to be a Servant. (5)

unabashed racism is matched only by his unabashed

Certain it is, there is nothing but vulgarity in
our People's expectations, resolutions or
desires, in this Epoch. It is all a peaceable
mouldering or tumbling down from mere rottenness
and decay; whether slowly mouldering or rapidly
tumbling, there will be nothing found of real or
true in the rubbish-heap, but a most true desire
of making money easily, and of eating it

pleasantly. (22)

vnxile Carlyle also has biting comments for ”the vulgar

IniliLionaire," who he believes to be a ”bloated specimen"

(35),

of its’4

Carlyle’s comments about the ”Trades Union, in quest

eights,’ with assassin pistol in its hand” (35—6)

are delivered with far more hostility. These ”4 eights,” a

51

reference to the labor movement's demand for ”eight hours
to work, eight hours to play, eight hours to sleep, and
eight shillings a day" (35), are indicative of the demands
that the swarm is placing on those at the top of the
British hierarchy.

To stem this democratization, and to end this ”cutting
asunder of straps and ties," (9) Carlyle advocates
“military drill” for the swarm:

[O]ne often wishes the entire Population could be
thoroughly drilled; into co-operative movement,
into individual behaviour, correct, precise, and
at once habitual and orderly as mathematics, in
all or in very many points, — and ultimately in
the point of actual Military Service, should such
be required of it! [m] This of outwardly combined
and plainly consociated Discipline, in
simultaneous movement and action, which may be
practical, symbolical, artistic, mechanical in
all degrees and modes, —»is one of the noblest
capabilities of man (most sadly undervalued
hitherto); and one he takes the greatest pleasure
in exercising and unfolding, not to mention at
all the invaluable benefit it would afford him if

unfolded. From correct marching in line, to

52

ugh
“J

 

rhythmic dancing in cotillon or minuet, — and to
infinitely higher degrees. [m] In man’s heaven-
born Docility, or power of being Educated, it is
estimable as perhaps the deepest and richest
element. (46, 48)
Carlyle argues that ”the entire Population" should learn
"Discipline"—ostensibly so that they can be obedient to the
aristocracy—and that they should learn this discipline
through military methods. Because he believes that the
"swarm" does not have the capacity for autonomy required by
democracy, the question for Carlyle about what to do with
the people becomes one of proper ”military drill." With no
capacity to rule themselves, Carlyle sees it as the
responsibility of the ”Aristocracy" to school the people
with methods that cultivate a ”behavior" that is ”correct,
precise, and at once habitual and orderly." This form of
education, in Carlyle's mind, would ultimately be most
beneficial to its students not only because they would take
”the greatest pleasure" in it, but also because drills,
.marching in line, and rhythmic dancing are the ”deepest and
richest element" of education, exercises from which people
would derive ”invaluable benefit." Nowhere in Carlyle's
educational philosophy do we find any value placed on

(nLLtivating the autonomy needed for democracy. Rather,

53

"discipline," "order," and "docility" are the main values
of Carlyle's proposal. Clearly, this form of education is
an effort by a self-described ”Aristocrat" to reinforce a
hierarchy: the backhand side of Carlyle's nobless oblige is
domination disguised as doing ”good" works.5
Carlyle is no determinist, however: he does not
believe that one's position at birth damns one to
continuous membership in the ”swarm." Carlyle makes
exceptions for those rare cases he calls ”heroes”—
individuals who can rise above the ”swarm" by virtue of
their exceptional nature:
[The] Industrial hero, here and there
recognisable, and known to me, as developing
himself, and as an opulent and dignified kind of
man, is already almost an Aristocrat by class.
[m] He cannot do better than unite with this
naturally noble kind of Aristocrat by title; the
Industrial noble and this one are brothers—born;
called and impelled to co-operate and go
together. Their united result is what we want

from both. And the Noble of the Future,—if there

 

5 We will see an example of these educational methods in Chapter III. In
Government, the first of B. Traven's novels of the Mexican Revolution,
the local jefe politico takes it upon himself to educate the local
children. His educational method is rote memorization, and the phrases
he makes the children memorize are patriotic slogans about the
greatness of General Porfirio Diaz, the dictator the revolution would

iepose.

54

be any such, as I believe there must;—will have

grown out of both. (34-5)
Carlyle's ideal republic would be guided by a meritocratic
representative system. This is not a representative
democracy, certainly. Even a representative democracy—what
Carlyle oxymoronically calls an "anarchic Parliament" (49)—
would go too far in its "Count of Heads" (1). A system of
representatives in which the ”industrial hero" and the
”naturally noble kind of Aristocrat” govern and speak for
the swarm would be ideal. While his criteria for this
stratification is meritocratic, that makes it no less
problematic.

Carlyle echoes an old idea, similar to the idea that
motivated Plato's "noble lie" in The Republic. We can place
what Betsy Erkkila describes as “Carlyle’s call for an
authoritarian state” (254) into an intellectual history,
but this history is not past. As C. L. R. James argues,
those who tell master narratives have always been hostile
to the idea that ”every cook can govern." As James writes,

we make a colossal mistake if we believe that
[these ideas] are past history. For Plato's best
known book, The Republic, is his description of
an ideal society to replace the democracy, and it

is a perfect example of a totalitarian state,

55

governed by an elite. And what is worse, Plato
started and brilliantly expounded a practice
which has lasted to this day among intellectuals—
a constant speculation about different and
possible methods of government, all based on a
refusal to accept the fact that the common man
can actually govern. (par. 51)
As James suggests, it is not difficult to find the tellers
of master narratives, one of whom is Carlyle, and another
of whom is Samuel P. Huntington, the Albert J. Weatherhead
III University Professor in the Department of Government at
Harvard University. In his section of The Crisis of
Democracy, Huntington argues that ”the vigor of democracy
in the United States in the 19605 [m] contributed to a
democratic distemper, involving the expansion of
governmental activity, on the one hand, and the reduction
of governmental authority, on the other" (102). What is
"[n]eeded,” Huntington continues, “is a greater degree of
moderation in democracy" (113). Huntington echoes Plato's
argument from The Republic about an ideal society where
"those who govern must be the best" (412c), when he
suggests that
democracy is only one way of constituting

authority, and it is not necessarily a

56

universally applicable one. In many situations
the claims of expertise, seniority, experience,
and special talents may override the claims of
democracy as a way of constituting authority. [m]
[T]he effective operation of a democratic
political system usually requires some measure of
apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some
individuals and groups. [m] Marginal social
groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now
becoming full participants in the political
system. Yet the danger of overloading the
political system with demands which extend its
functions and undermine its authority still
remains. Less marginality on the part of some
groups thus needs to be replaced by more self-

restraint on the part of all groups. (113-4)

One can hear the echoes of ”Shooting Niagara”: too much

enfranchisement leads to ”overloading"; democratic claims

to autonomy should be subordinated to authority. The

language Huntington uses in his argument is different than

the language that Carlyle uses in his, and, likewise, Plato

uses in his, but the goal is hauntingly similar—they all

favor a restriction of democracy because to reinforce a

hierarchy is to keep the ”swarm" subordinated to the

57

"aristocracy" and ”marginal groups" subordinated to
”authority." As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri point out
in.Mu1titude: war and Democracy in the Age of Empire,
Huntington's text is an ”antidemocratic gospel that
preaches the defense of sovereignty against the threats of
all social forces and social movements" (33). As Hardt and
Negri might argue, and we would agree, intelligence is not
a vice, technical knowledge is not inherently bad, and the
progress due to intellectual advances is vital. When
Plato’s epigones cross a bright line, however, is when they
use that intelligence as a tool to restrict democracy. When
what Huntington calls ”expertise, seniority, experience and
special talents"—all positive characteristics in their own
right—are used as a tools of domination, the power of the
intellect ceases to be liberatory, and serves to reinforce
a hierarchy. In various forms, proposals like Huntington's
can be traced through intellectual history to Carlyle, and
before that, to Plato, and these proposals continue to
shape the interpretations of democracy.

Perhaps because of his rabid racism and classism, most
scholars who have studied Whitman's Democratic Vistas have
treated Carlyle with little credibility. Carlyle is no
straw dog, however. He is a major figure in 19th century

literature, he was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s close friend (in

58

fact, Carlyle’s book On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the
Heroic in History and Emerson’s book Representative Men
could be volumes in a set), and most importantly, he
expresses ideas that are still in operation today. Whitman
and Emerson took Carlyle seriously, and so will we here.
While much of Carlyle’s argument is shocking to a
contemporary reader, as we can see from the parallel with
Huntington, that reader can still find Carlyle’s
assumptions manifested in contemporary arguments about
democracy. Carlyle's main objection to further
democratization is that he believes that the ”swarm" lacks
the autonomy required by democracy. Therefore, Carlyle
believes that further democratization would be like the
Niagara plunge: one chooses to take it, but it rarely has

good results.

The Democratization of ”All Public and Private Life"

In Whitman's mind, ”Shooting Niagara" is a return to
the past, a regression to an older, inferior form of
politics. In contrast, then, Whitman set out to write about
things yet to come, to help to enact democracy’s future (PW
2:392-3). Whitman believed that democracy was in its

"embryo condition" (PW 2:392), and therefore, he

59

”presume[d] to write, as it were, upon things that exist
not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank" (PW
2:391). Because ”Whitman worked from the premise that his
duty as the national bard was to put democratic theory, the
cultural lifeblood of nineteenth-century America, to verse”
(Mack 160), Carlyle’s essay must have seemed like an attack
on the principles that Whitman had spent most of his life
defending. Nevertheless, Whitman displays an immense
capacity to empathize with the arguments that Carlyle
makes. Whitman writes that Carlyle, an "eminent and
venerable person abroad” (PW 2:375) wrote an essay called
”SHOOTING NIAGARA."—I was at first roused to much
anger and abuse by this essay from Mr. Carlyle,
so insulting to the theory of America—but
happening to think afterwards how I had more than
once been in the like mood, during which his
essay was evidently cast, and seen persons and
things in the same light, (indeed some might say
there are signs of the same feeling in these
Vistas)—I have since read it again, not only as a
study, expressing as it does certain judgments
from the highest feudal point of View, but have
read it with respect as coming from an earnest

soul, and as contributing certain sharp-cutting

60

metallic grains, which, if not gold or silver,

may be good hard, honest iron. (PW 2:375-6)
Whitman recognizes that Carlyle’s arguments are not to be
dismissed quickly, but he wants his readers to know that
Carlyle writes from ”the highest feudal point of view":
Carlyle’s argument could be laudable, perhaps, if one can
see the value in defending what Whitman calls "feudalism."
Whitman's ”anger and abuse" abated when he realized exactly
what Carlyle was defending. Although the word “feudalism"
never appears in Carlyle’s essay—”aristocracy" is Carlyle's
favored word—Whitman chooses this word to define the set of
ideas that Carlyle espouses.6

Erkkila writes that while Democratic Vistas

”originated in an effort to 'counterblast’ Carlyle's
attack, Whitman quickly realized that he shared Carlyle's
diagnosis of the diseases of democracy" (247). We may be
tempted to think that Whitman is conceding to Carlyle when
Whitman writes that he has ”seen persons and things in the
same light" as Carlyle did, but like Erkkila does, we need
to deal in shades of nuance to recognize that Whitman's

empathy for Carlyle’s argument does not equal agreement

 

6 Carlyle and Whitman do not agree on the terms of the debate. What
Carlyle calls ”aristocracy,” Whitman calls "feudalism." Carlyle's term
evokes his heroic intentions, and Whitman’s term evokes his belief that
Carlyle is defending an “old order." Neither of these terms are
developed at length in either ”Shooting Niagara" or Democratic Vistas,
however. The varying vocabularies underscore the wildly disparate
interpretations each author brings to this debate.

61

 

with Ca:

63.1392:

with Carlyle's argument. Whitman writes that Carlyle, ”the
eminent person just mention’d, sneeringly asks whether we
expect to elevate and improve a nation's politics by
absorbing such morbid collections and qualities therein.
The point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless
always be numbers of solid and reflective citizens who will
never get over it" (PW 2:379). Whitman, however, is not one
of those citizens.

To Whitman, Carlyle's master narrative is just about
the best argument one can make in defending ”feudalism,"
but this does not mean that arguments defending ”feudalism"
are very persuasive to democrats. Whitman ultimately points
out that, though earnestly written, Carlyle's essay
contains ”certain sharp-cutting metallic grains, which, if
not gold or silver, may be good, hard, honest iron." The
"if not" is important here-”if not gold or silver" implies
that these are the metals that are most precious. ”[G]ood,
hard, honest iron" is not worthless, however, especially if
one considers the period in which these essays were
written. With the Industrial Revolution underway and
gaining steam, ”good, hard, honest iron” has no small
value. In pointing out that Carlyle’s arguments are more
like ”good, hard, honest iron" than like ”gold or silver,”

Whitman acknowledges the earnestness of Carlyle's argument,

62

 

.
LIL

but ultimately, Whitman is pointing out that although iron
is a valuable metal, democratic arguments, not ”feudal"
arguments, set the gold standard.

Whitman quickly confronts Carlyle's criticism of the
autonomy of what he calls ”the unnamed, unknown, rank and
file.” Having analyzed ”the full conception of these facts
and points, and all that they infer, pro and conawith yet
unshaken faith in the elements of the American masses, the
composites, of both sexes, and even consider'd as
individuals” (PW’2:372-3) in the opening paragraphs of
Democratic Vistas, Whitman proceeds to plant the seeds of
his grassroots political project. While Whitman recognizes
that people can be ”crude,” he does not think that this
crudeness is a sufficient basis for their continued
disenfranchisement. Whitman's comments about idiocracy—
which he spells ”idiocrasy”—most clearly separate Whitman’s
point of view from Carlyle's. Idiocracy, which literally
means personal-rule or government, is a loose synonym for
autonomy. Many have missed the connection between idiocracy
and autonomy, a connection which is underscored by the
reference Whitman makes to ”John Stuart Mill's profound
essay on Liberty in the future" (PW’2:362)3’Whitman is of

course referring to Mill's ”On Liberty," an essay in which

 

 

7 A good example of this is George Kateb's chapter ”Walt Whitman and the
Culture of Democracy,” Political Theory 18:4 (Nov. 1990), 545-71. Kateb
only mentions Mill briefly.

63

 

.‘ .
..;,,~-
fléb$nuc

Mill examines the tensions between authority and liberty,
ultimately arguing for a dramatically expanded conception
of liberty. Whitman, of course, would agree with Mill;
Carlyle would not.

One concrete example of Whitman’s belief in autonomy
is his support for women's suffrage. Approximately fifty
years before women won the right to vote in the 19th
Amendment, Whitman expressed his support for the suffrage
movement:

Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders
its own ideals, not of literature and art only—
not of men only, but of women. The idea of the
women of America, (extricated from this daze,
this fossil and unhealthy air which hangs about
the word lady,) develop’d, raised to become the
robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even
practical and political deciders with the men.
[m] Then there are mutterings, (we will not now
stop to heed them here, but they must be heeded,)
of something more revolutionary. The day is
coming when the deep questions of woman's
entrance amid the arenas of practical life,

politics, the suffrage, &c., will not only be

64

 

”.O‘Ie

where

Wk

"
“lie

Niagarl

argued all around us, but may be put to decision,

and real experiment. (PW 2:389, 401)
Whitman may not be a feminist by 21St century standards, but
for his time, these comments and others he makes regarding
women’s suffrage are evidence that he tries to imagine a
more horizontal interpretation of democracy. Simply put,
whereas Carlyle argues that the ”swarm" does not have the
capacity for autonomy required by democracy, and this
justified a hierarchy, Whitman disagreed, and therefore, he

argued for a radical reinterpretation of democracy.

Many scholars have noticed that Whitman favors further
democratic enfranchisement, but we have yet to fully
explore the leaves of grassroots politics that Whitman
proposes in Democratic Vistas. Haddox, for example, claims
that Whitman offers no project whatsoever in Democratic
Vistas (14) and Mack argues that Whitman advocated for a
project that Mack calls ”organic democracy" (160). Although
Haddox's essay contains several useful insights into
Democratic Vistas, and Mack's book does recognize that
Whitman has a project in mind, the limits of their
scholarship present opportunities for further research.
While much of Democratic Vistas is a response to ”Shooting

Niagara,” and Whitman does include statements like the one

65

CORCe‘I‘.

democr

grass:
democ:
and ej
being
0'0 wi

~ .
‘lfefl

advocating for suffrage above, Whitman does not limit
himself to a discussion of representative democracy. My
concern is Whitman's efforts to imagine more radical
democratic vistas.

In response to “Shooting Niagara," Whitman proposed a
grassroots political project, a radical reinterpretation of
democracy that would expand it beyond issues of governing
and elections. Whitman’s radicalism has less to do with
being outside mainstream political opinion, and has more to
do with critiquing the roots of ”all public and private
life"—the assumptions upon which democratic institutions
are founded. Mack's book The Pragmatic Whitman comes quite
close to understanding Whitman's project when it cites the
first sentences of the following quote, but the sentences
contain a meaning that has yet to be unpacked. Whitman's
proposal in Democratic Vistas is for the radical
democratization of civil society—of literature, churches,
schools, and even the armed forces:

Did you, too, 0 friend, suppose democracy was
only for elections, for politics, and for a party
name? I say democracy is only of use there that
it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits
in manners, in the highest forms of interaction

between men, and their beliefs—in religion,

66

literature, colleges, and schools-democracy in

all public and private life, and in the army and

navy. (PW 2:389)
The radicalism of Whitman's proposal is palpable: he wants
to democratize even the armed forces, the institutions that
one might think would be most hostile to democratic rule.
We would not know of the extent of this project by reading
Mack's book, however. Mack abridges the quote after ”their
beliefs," deleting the spheres and spaces that Whitman
proposes be brought under democratic control. The deleted
text is vital to advancing the scholarship on Democratic
Vistas, however. Whitman's radical idea is to democratize
"all public and private life," an idea that is far-reaching
in its implications, and has not yet been satisfactorily
explored.

To abridge the quote is also problematic because
Whitman underscores the proposal to democratize ”religion,
literature, colleges, [m] schools, [m] all public and
private live, and [m] the army and the navy." A proposal
for the democratization of the armed services may seem well
beyond the pale, but Whitman chooses this example
Purposefully, and confronts it directly:

The whole present system of the officering and

personnel of the army and navy of these States,

67

90v:
Civ
he);

\

file

fc

and the spirit and letter of their trebly-
aristocratic rules and regulations, is a
monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt, and
belong here just as much as orders of nobility,
or the Pope’s council of cardinals. I say if the
present theory of our army and navy is sensible
and true, then the rest of America is an
unmitigated fraud. (PW 2:389-90)
The problem Whitman saw was that the various institutions
of American civil society were founded upon non-democratic
assumptions. ”The spirit and letter" of the rules that
govern the military, like other institutions in American
civil society, are "aristocratic," and are therefore
”exotic": they are not autochthonic, not rooted in
America’s grass, but rather are borrowed from a country
with "feudal" foundations. Whitman’s proposal to
democratize "all public and private life" would seem to
Carlyle to be unwise, impractical, or impossible, but,
again, this is because, in Whitman’s opinion, Carlyle
writes from ”the highest feudal point of view" (PW 2:375).
Carlyle simply operates with a different frame of
reference, one that has been shaped by a civil society and
a government that had been built upon a non-democratic

foundation. Whitman felt that a democratic frame of

68

:eferenc
reinterp
this de:

democrac

‘ .
01' :L'HEI'l

20 polit
professi
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were no:
Whitman
needed 1

was to 1

reference and a democratic ideology would be needed to
reinterpret all aspects of American civil society, and that
this democratization was a test to America itself: either
democracy would take root in "all public and private life"
or America would be ”an unmitigated fraud" (PW 2:390).
As we can see, Haddox's claim that ”Whitman can offer

no political program in Democratic Vistas, merely a
profession of faith and a call for others to see" (14) is
not correct.”While we might wish that Whitman's project
were more fully developed or savvier, in Democratic Vistas,
Whitman even goes so far as to speculate on the steps
needed for democratization. The first step, Whitman writes,
was to lay democratic foundations in guiding texts, the
second step was to insure for material stability and to
build infrastructure, and the third step, which had yet to
be taken, was to democratize “all public and private life."
Because much of the scholarship on Democratic Vistas has
not treated this point, the steps of Whitman's process of
democratization are worth quoting at length:

For the New World, indeed, after two grand stages

of preparation-strata, I perceive that now a

third stage, being ready for, (and without which

 

8 Perhaps Haddox seeks to downplay the importance of Democratic Vistas

because of recent efforts by conservative thinkers such as David
Brooks-whom Haddox mentions in his text—to appropriate Democratic
Vistas for their political purposes (16).

69

the other two were useless,) with unmistakable
signs appears. The First stage was the planning
and putting on record the political foundation
rights of immense masses of people—indeed all
people—in the organization of republican
National, State, and municipal governments, all
constructed with reference to each, and each to
all. This is the American programme, not for
classes, but for universal man, and is embodied
in the compacts of the Declaration of
Independence, and, as it began and has now grown,
with its amendments, the Federal Constitution—and
in the State governments, with all their
interiors, and with general suffrage; those
having the sense not only of what is in
themselves, but that their certain several things
started, planted, hundreds of others in the same
direction duly arise and follow. The Second stage
relates to material prosperity, wealth, produce,
labor-saving machines, iron, cotton, local, State
and continental railways, intercommunication and
trade with all lands, steamships, mining, general
employment, organization of great cities, cheap

appliances for comfort, numberless technical

70

Whitman
here. Se
“genera l
emPIOYme

A

schools, books, newspapers, a currency for money
circulation, &c. The Third stage, rising out of
the previous ones, to make them and all
illustrious, I, now, for one, promulge,
announcing a native expression-spirit, getting
into form, adult, and through mentality, for
these States, self-contain'd, different from
others, more expansive, more rich and free, to be
evidenced by original authors and poets to come,
by American personalities, plenty of them, male
and female, traversing the States, none excepted—
and by native superber tableaux and growths of
language, songs, operas, orations, lectures,
architecture—and by a sublime and serious
Religious Democracy sternly taking command,
dissolving the old, sloughing off surfaces, and
from its own interior and vital principles,
reconstructing, democratizing society. (PW 2:409-

10, emphasis mine)

Whitman is naive, overly assuming, and overly simplistic

here. Several of the assumptions that he makes—about

”general suffrage," equitable infrastructure, and ”general

employment," all of which having been rendered with the

universal male pronoun—display his prejudices and

71

RC

5:

de

de

limitations. After reading this passage, however, it
becomes impossible to argue that Whitman had no project in
mind whatsoever. Contrary to Haddox's argument in
"Whitman's End of History," Whitman advocated for a
grassroots political project of "dissolving the old,
sloughing off surfaces, and from its own interior and vital
principles, reconstructing, democratizing society” (PW
2:410). Because even the ”unnamed, unknown, rank and file"
(PW 2:377) possess the capacity for autonomy, Whitman sees
no reason why “all public and private life” should not be
brought under democratic control.

In a certain sense, Whitman is espousing a type of
deconstruction with this project: he is not just critiquing
”public and private life" as it is, but he is also
critiquing their ideological foundations: those "interior
and vital principles" are the theoretical scaffolding for
democracy; if those foundations are antithetical to
democracy then, like the army and the navy, American
democracy would be an ”unmitigated fraud.” Whitman looks at
American civil society and finds that much of it is founded
upon a ”feudal" ideology, not a democratic ideology:

We see the sons and daughters of the New World,
ignorant of its genius, not yet inaugurating the

native, the universal, and the near, still

72

0‘. a
demc
time
He 9
abc

he

importing the distant, the partial, and the dead.
We see London, Paris, Italy—not original, superb,
as where they belong—but second-hand here, where
they do not belong. We see the shreds of Hebrews,
Romans, Greeks; but where, on her own soil, do we
see, in any faithful, highest, proud expression,
America herself? I sometimes question whether she
has a corner in her own house. (PW 2:411)
A democratic nation, in Whitman's mind, cannot remain
divided for long between a democratic ideal and a reality
of a civil society that is still operating with non-
democratic foundations. As Erkkila points out (248), at the
time Whitman wrote Democratic Vistas, he was influenced by
Hegel's philosophy, which would explain Whitman's thinking
about the difference between what he calls feudalism and
democracy. Whitman is not completely clear on this point,
but it does seem as if he thinks that, in Hegelian fashion,
a feudal stage of history has been supplanted by a
democratic stage of history. This, too, is in keeping with
Whitman's characterization of Carlyle's defense of an ”old
order."
In order to move away from that ”old order" and to
democratize ”all public and private life," Whitman called

for a ”deeper, higher progress":

73

Suffrag
ConCept
Preject
rathEr,

COnque

demOCrac

For America, type of progress, and of essential
faith in man, above all his errors and
wickedness—few suspect how deep, how deep it
really strikes. The world evidently supposes, and
we have evidently supposed so too, that the
States are merely to achieve the equal franchise,
an elective government—to inaugurate the
respectability of labor, and become a nation of
practical operatives, law-abiding, orderly and
well off. Yes, those are indeed parts of the task
of America; but they not only do not exhaust the
progressive conception, but rather arise, teeming
with it, as the mediums of deeper, higher
progress. Daughter of a physical revolution—other
of the true revolutions, which are of the
interior life, and of the arts. For so long as
the spirit is not changed, any change of

appearance is of no avail. (PW 2:410)

Suffrage alone does not ”exhaust the progressive

conception," in Whitman’s words. This, too, for his radical

Project: voting is not the conclusion of democracy, but is,

rather, one of its tools. As Whitman did not, we should not

confuse voting rights with democracy. For Whitman,

democracy was a more expansive ideal: the ”true

74

revoluti
art .”

W“

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0

oemocra
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Other t
shift:

demOCra
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dEbate

revolutions" belong to the ”interior life, and [to] the
arts.”

Whitman therefore outlines his three-stage plan to
democratize American civil society, quoted at length above,
the first two stages of which are conveniently completed.
Beyond this, Democratic Vistas does not include any simple
statement about the exact parameters of democratization
other than the fact that it will entail an ideological
shift: this leads one to believe that in Whitman's mind,
democratization entails deconstructing the ”feudal"
principles of American ”public and private life” and
reconstructing them on democratic principles. Whitman
suggests a debate about ”how, and in what degree and part,
most prudently to democratize,” and I will continue that

debate here.

Whitman’s "Imposition”

In The Pragmatic Whitman: Reimagining.American
Democracy, Mack writes that ”Democratic Vistas is a
blueprint for a kind of literary criticism designed to
promote social change" (142). The idea is a good one, but
the metaphor that Mack uses undercuts it—why might we need

a "blueprint" for social change? Why should we see Whitman

75

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underSta

as an architect of the social change to come? What designs
would Whitman's "blueprint" impose upon us? Mack takes us a
good distance in his text, but the conclusion that he
reaches illustrates that we still need to look farther into
these vistas. Mack does grasp the broad parameters of the
debate between Carlyle and Whitman, even though, at just
about four pages of text, his treatment of the debate is
sparse. Mack treats the debate between Carlyle and Whitman
as a critique of and defense of what most people think of
as 19th century American democracy: representative,
republican, and laissez-faire. Indeed, he places a great
deal of importance on laissez faire doctrine. Mack writes
that “there is no dispute that in both Jeffersonian and
Jacksonian democracy, laissez-faire was economic orthodoxy;
indeed, as [Sidney] Fine notes, until the post-Civil War
period there was no competing economic doctrine. It would
have been quite extraordinary if Whitman had even been able
to conceive of a vision of freedom that was not also, in
some sense, a laissez-faire vision" (71). This assertion is
no doubt correct.

This importance placed on laissez faire doctrine,
however, becomes one of the key elements of how Mack

understands Whitman's political project because, as Mack

76

notes, 1

US:

v

Situat
t0 laj
of the

fOrm’

Whitmi
Resis
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gover;
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appre‘

notes, the residue of laissez faire doctrine is still with
us:
The idea of individual freedom did not die as a
political ideal, supplanted by notions of the
regulated state. To be sure, both live on as the
great antinomies of the American democratic
tradition. The particular virtue of Whitman's
vision is that it strives to bring these
philosophical antagonists into relation [m] As
Whitman sees it, all public debate in a
democratic society is necessarily structured by
the opposing ideals of liberty and governance.
(xxii)
Mack correctly points out that Whitman is historically
situated, and that he would have seen democracy in relation
to laissez faire doctrine. While I share Mack's skepticism
of the idea that democracy can only exist in the state-
form, I would take a different tack with Whitman's ideas.
Whitman did agree with Henry David Thoreau when, in
Resistance to Civil Government, he echoed Thomas
Jefferson’s line about "[t]hat government is best which
governs least" (226). Mack is also correct, for example,
when he observes that Whitman "demonstrates an intuitive

appreciation for the intricate ways that art and material

77

society
to unde
when he
profour
a comp:
afibltit
culturl
(137).
are co
Propos
life,"
how Ma
extant

bEEn ]

society create each other” (142). Finally, Mack comes close
to understanding Whitman’s grassroots political project
when he writes that Democratic Vistas is Whitman’s ”most
profound and sustained meditation on democratic life; it is
a comprehensive theory of democratic culture and also an
ambitious program [m] for the re—mediation of American
culture and the full democratization of American society"
(137). Unfortunately, however, even though these statements
are correct, they stop short of articulating Whitman's
proposal for the democratization of ”all public and private
life," and this is no surprise, especially when we remember
how Mack abridged Whitman's clearest statement about the
extent of his radical democratic project. It would have
been helpful if Mack had elaborated upon this ”ambitious
program [m] for the re-mediation of American culture and
the full democratization of American society,” because it
is the aspect of Democratic Vistas that begs for further
investigation.

Beyond this abridging, Mack's conclusion, ”Toward an
Organic Democracy," includes a brief interpretation of what
he believes Whitman’s political project to be—a project
that he calls ”organic democracy." Mack then uses that
interpretation to comment on current issues in American

politics. Mack’s conception of “organic democracy" is a

78

version
19“ cer
mistake
when he
democra
observe
cont m;
Whitma:
Preset
demand
begin

than t
COW-IKE ff

democ;

preSe

version of presentism in reverse: rather than viewing the
19th century through the eyes of the 21”, as some scholars
mistakenly do, Mack makes the equal and opposite mistake
when he interprets what he believes Whitman’s views on
democracy to be and when he ”conclud[s] with some
observations on its moral and political implications for
contemporary America” (xix). Mack's technique is to import
Whitman's ideas about democracy, unaltered, into the
present. Mack writes that ”to understand the scope of the
demands that Whitman’s vision imposes on us, we should
begin by recalling that democracy, for Whitman, is more
than the political process" (160). The last part of Mack's
comment is correct: Whitman does clearly argue that
democracy is not just ”for elections, for politics, and for
a party name" (PW 2:389); the first part of Mack's
assertion is problematic, however, and it is on the point
of Whitman's supposed "imposition" where we must part ways
with Mack. Why must ”Whitman's vision" be ”impos[ed]" upon
us? While we may have a debt to pay to Whitman for raising
a voice in this conversation, this debt does not mean that
we must import Whitman's ideas, without critique, into the
present. This imposing approach treats Whitman as the
author of a master narrative. Rather than a radical

democracy for protagonists, Mack suggests an organic

79

prc

St"
t

0H

po

democracy in which we would grow into a mold that Whitman
provides. The motivation for Mack’s wish to let Whitman
supply a blueprint for social change now seems clearer. It
is less clear why an organic democracy would need an
architect's blueprint, however.

In an example that illustrates the limits of this
approach, Mack articulates what he believes Whitman's views
on democracy to be and then he chooses an area of public
policy to which he applies those views:

Whitman's organic democracy does [m] place
complex demands on the ways we attempt to fashion
a meaningful associative life. To cite just one
example, consider its implications for the way we
approach the problem of economic privation and
the distribution of wealth. [m] Paternalistic and
dehumanizing policies such as welfare are,
however nobly intentioned, almost as odious as
official indifference. Just as it would be absurd
for a society to offer the ballot as a substitute
for food, so, too, would it be unthinkable to
design a policy that assists the poor by
crippling their capacity for engaged democratic
living—by dismantling the psychological equipment

a citizen needs for self-government while

80

Altho
under
the c
one t

faire

iRd:
thas
Chm
the

"th.

simultaneously undermining the high value

democratic culture places on self-reliance. (164)
Although ”organic democracy" is a concept that is
underdeveloped—the vast majority of Mack’s explanation of
the concept comes in a six page conclusion—this quote leads
one to believe that Mack advocates a return to the laissez—
faire kind of government of the 19th century. Even though
Mack refers at one point to ”the shackles of a laissez-
faire democratic theory" (99), a metaphor that suggests
Mack finds little value in laissez-faire doctrine, what
details he does give in his explanation of ”organic
democracy” seem to fit squarely in a laissez faire
tradition: the main characteristics of what Mack calls
“organic democracy" are the importance of bootstrap-style
self-reliance and the absence of ”paternalistic and
dehumanizing policies such as welfare [that] are, however
nobly intentioned, almost as odious as official
indifference" (164). Put another way, Mack tries to argue
that Whitman would not support welfare. If we were to
choose to do so, we could point out that Mack fails to see
the value that Whitman placed on equality (PW 2:396) and
“the great word solidarity" (PW 2:382) which, if it were

the job of this essay, could mitigate the claims that Mack

81

makes

makes about Whitman's supposed opposition to humane federal
programs.

It is only speculation, however, to think about which
welfare programs Whitman would or would not support.
Perhaps if Whitman had lived through the Great Depression
rather than the Civil War, he would have recognized the
dangers of capitalism, and written poems about President
Roosevelt rather than President Lincoln, but we will never
know. These speculations can only remain speculations, but
more importantly, they are answers to the wrong questions:
we cannot say with any certainty whether Whitman would
support welfare, but we do know that Whitman's focus was on
democratizing ”all public and private life" (PW 2:389)—a
point which he makes explicitly in Democratic Vistas, and
which is unfortunately abridged in Mack's book. Therefore,
rather than imposing Whitman's ideas upon the present, we
might ask similar questions to the ones Whitman asked in
Democratic Vistas and see what our answers might provoke.
Rather than imposing architects, in other words, we might

hope for radical democrats with green thumbs.9

 

9 As his title suggests, Mack attempts to marshal Whitman into the
pragmatic tradition, writing that ”[o]ne of my intentions in this study
is to demonstrate, more thoroughly than other authors have previously
tried, how Whitman participates in [the pragmatic] tradition and how
the insights of other pragmatist thinkers can help to produce
worthwhile readings of his poetry, and, by extension, his democratic
poetics" (xix). Whitman can undoubtedly be placed into the pragmatist
tradition. Any author who is large and contains multitudes, so to
speak, can provide fodder for the pragmatist, the liberal, the

82

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Much of Whitman's democratic project should remain in
the 19th century—for example, his explicit support for
Manifest Destiny, his phrases that have a dark
nationalistic overtone, and his belief in American
exceptionalism—but his proposal to democratize ”all public
and private life” is an idea that merits further
investigation. What is ”all public and private life,"
exactly? The workplace? The community? Whitman does not
specify what he means by ”all public and private life,"
other than mentioning religion, literature, colleges,
schools, the army, and the navy, nor does he provide much
detail about how we might begin this project. We should not
import Whitman's grassroots political project, unaltered,
into the 21*”t century, as Mack does, but we might ask
questions that are similar to the ones that Whitman asked
in Democratic Vistas. Like Whitman, we might ask ”how, and
in what degree and part, most prudently to democratize”

(974).

 

anarchist, the communist, or the conservative. Mack wants to claim
Whitman for the pragmatic tradition, and he finds plenty of evidence;
scholars of those other colors could do the same. It should be noted
that the wish to appropriate Whitman is not a new phenomenon. Michel
Fabre, writing in 1966, pointed out that a ”critical reading of
Democratic Vistas and Leaves of Grass reveals that [Whitman's]
political views stopped far short of what socialism meant in the
[nineteen-] thirties. But it is irrelevant whether radicals had a right
to claim him. He had often been claimed, even before his death, by
minority groups, political or otherwise, eager to promote their own
ideals or interests. At the beginning of the century, Emma Goldman had
somewhat popularized him in her lectures; Eugene Debs was a great
admirer of his poetry; and throughout the twenties when Whitman's
influence was strongest, radicals began to regard him as an apostle of
the coming democratic revolution" (88).

83

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The scope of this project will be wider than the scope
of Whitman’s project in Democratic Vistas, because although
Whitman was content staying within the borders of the
United States, if we are to reinterpret grassroots politics
in the 21St century, we will have to dispense with a
nationalistic point of view. Therefore, this dissertation
will examine the literatures of the Americas, especially
drawing upon the literatures of the United States and
Mexico. In addition to changes in scope, there are also
changes in purpose between Whitman’s project and my own:
Whitman consciously wrote Democratic Vistas as a
contribution to defining a relatively young nation's
political and cultural identity; this was an important task
in Whitman's mind (indeed, much of the last section of
Democratic Vistas is preoccupied with this task), but it is
not an important task for this project. In fact, the type
of radical democracy under consideration here has little,
if anything, to do with questions of nation and nationhood.

The broad parameters of the debate between Carlyle and
Whitman are only the tip of the iceberg, and we can
continue by complicating the questions that Whitman raised
and the vistas he imagined. Once framed in this manner, the
ambiguities, details and nuances of the argument multiply.

Once the decision to reinterpret democracy has been made,

84

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equally difficult decisions follow: ”how, and in what
degree and part, most prudently to democratize” are
questions that have to be addressed from many perspectives,
and answering all the questions will require a great deal
more research. How to democratize? How to democratize
prudently? How have other writers in the Americas
articulated ideas about radical democracy? How might these
other literatures help us to imagine and to interpret new
democratic vistas?

We can stand upon Whitman’s shoulders, looking further
into those democratic vistas, but ultimately, even the view
from the vantage point of those large shoulders will be too
limited, so we must seek further vistas and horizons. This
is a point Whitman recognizes—he writes that ”while many
were supposing things established and completed, really the
grandest things remain" (1017). Grand and difficult things
do remain: Carlyle's criticisms are a good preview of the
counterarguments to a project of radical democracy, but
this debate changes in given contexts and historical
moments. The tension brought to the surface in the debate
between Carlyle and Whitman, however—a friction over the
interpretation of democracy itself—has animated many
writers in the Americas. This radical democratic project is

worthy of further exploration, but, to paraphrase Whitman,

85

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the full parameters of the project contain too many
multitudes for us to consider in a single project. What I
propose to do in the following chapters, then, is to dig
into some of the problems of grassroots politics in the
literatures of the Americas by examining questions of free
speech in Herbert Biberman's suppressed film Salt of the
Earth, questions of free association in B. Traven's Jungle
Novels, and questions of how the Zapatista literature might

help us to imagine further democratic vistas and horizons.

86

 

 

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Chapter Two

The Embargo on Salt: Free Speech and Salt of the Earth

It is difficult to imagine either literary study or
democracy without a clear fidelity to the freedom of
speech. Because the freedom of speech undergirds many of
the vital functions of literary study and democracy—reading
and writing, debating, making free choices among
alternatives, dissenting, protesting, finding common
ground, and the like—it is necessary for a project that
seeks to reinterpret grassroots politics as a synonym for
radical democracy to search for ways to expand the freedom
of speech. In this chapter, I will continue to dig into
some of the problems of grassroots politics. Here I
consider questions about free speech; in the chapter that
follows, I consider questions of free association.

Few would deny that a commitment to free speech is a
basic requirement of democracy, but it would not be correct
to assume that this commitment has never been challenged.
Among the best examples of such a challenge is the 1954
film Salt of the Earth, directed by Herbert Biberman, one
of the infamous "Hollywood Ten" blacklistees. In June 1951,
Chicano miners on strike in New Mexico were served with a

Taft-Hartley injunction, a legal tactic by the mine owners

87

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aimed at ending the strike, which at that point had been in
process for eight monthsJ'This injunction forced a crisis:
either the miners could end the strike, or they could
continue to picket and be arrested. Either way, the strike
seemed lost. What happened next is a remarkable episode in
labor history: the spouses and sisters of the miners took
over the strike, eventually seeing it to a successful
conclusion. These Chicanas challenged the sexism of their
time and their community, and they eventually became the
protagonists in Biberman's fictionalized retelling of these
events. Salt of the Earth unapologetically portrays a
radical message of horizontalism along gender, race, and
class lines, narrated by its main character, Esperanza
Quintero. As Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt writes in her
commentary on the film's screenplay, Salt shows a ”rarity,
a female hero who not only struggles and suffers but grows
and wins” (93).

Rosenfelt also writes that "the making of Salt of the
Earth was a deliberate act of resistance against the
repressive climate of the era, or at least an act of

determination not to succumb to it” (97). This deliberate

 

1 The strike lasted from 17 October 1950 to 24 January 1952 (Rosenfelt
117). The Taft-Hartley injunction takes its name from the 1947 Taft-
Hartley Act, which modified the 1935 Wagner Act, the basis for much of
United States labor law. The Taft-Hartley Act was widely seen as a
regression for labor rights, a view that is reinforced by the events in
Salt of the Earth.

88

act of resistance was met with a prodigious effort to
suppress the film. James J. Lorence writes in The
Suppression of Salt of the Earth: HOW HOllywood, Big Labor,
and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold war America,
that
when Bayard (New Mexico) Local 890 of the
International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter
Workers [m] challenged the Empire Zinc
Corporation over wages and working conditions—
and, beyond that, over the distribution of power
in the postwar corporate state—it wrote the first
page in a saga that was to test severely the
freedom of expression guaranteed by the Bill of
Rights. (1)
This chapter seeks to add some pages to that saga. While
the making of Salt of the Earth was a deliberate act of
resistance, its making is not the only such act we can find
in conversations about the film. As Biberman wrote in his
book Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film, "it appeared
to me that we were fighting for the civil liberties of free
enterprise—a free market for every American, and without
exception” (237). It is not surprising that Biberman would
adopt the language of the marketplace to defend his film.

Choosing an economic metaphor might buffer him from critics

89

 

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‘who charge that his film is hostile to capitalism, but
beyond that, the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas has
such a wide currency in conversations about the freedom of
speech that it might be possible to believe that a
different metaphor does not exist. To what degree, however,
is the marketplace metaphor adequate to understand the
problems of free speech in Salt of the Earth? What if the
marketplace of ideas—the dominant metaphor used to describe
the space in which speech is shared—is itself a limitation
on the freedom of speech? It would, first, be necessary to
show that this is the case, that the metaphor is in fact a
limitation. Second, it would be necessary to construct a
counternarrative that suggests an alternative metaphor.

A master narrative is frequently told which holds that
the marketplace is the metaphor best suited to describe the
ideal space in which speech is shared freely. This
narrative also tells us that the market is free, and, by
extension, that the market is liberatory—free markets lead
to free people, as the rusty cliché goes. Furthermore, this
master narrative pushes us to believe that, as Nietzsche
writes in The Twilight of the Idols, ”nothing great or
beautiful could ever be common property" (189). In this,
Nietzsche was right, but in the wrong way: ideas, art, and

literature are not comparable to property or commodities.

90

Perhaps nothing great could be a commodity, but many great
things can be common, and can be held in common. As this
chapter will demonstrate, the logic of the marketplace
metaphor limits the freedom of speech by attempting to
commodify it and by allowing ”embargoes" on both ”pure
speech"—verbal communication—and non-verbal speech like
picketing and protesting. Furthermore, I will argue that
Salt of the Earth provides both a critique of and an
alternative to the marketplace. An interpretation of the
story of the film—both context and content—shows acts of
resistance to the master narrative of the marketplace, as
well as a counternarrative, a "new way,” that provides an
alternative metaphor for the space in which speech can be

freely shared: the commons.

Embargoes on the Marketplace of Ideas

There may be instances where limitations on the
freedom of speech are justified—moments when physical harm
is the direct result of speech, for example. As Stanley
Fish notes in ”There's No Such Thing As Free Speech, and
It’s a Good Thing, Too," ”the question of whether or not to
regulate [speech] will always be a local one, and we cannot

rely on abstractions that are either empty of content or

91

filled with the content of some partisan agenda to generate
a ’principled’ answer” (111). Fish is right to notice that
speech cannot be disconnected from its content—the
limitations on speech we find on and in Salt of the Earth
cannot be separated from the content of Esperanza's speech,
for example, or from the fact that Cold War hysteria and
entrenched racist and sexist attitudes were the motivating
factors for those limitations—but Fish frames his inquiry
in such a way that lays the theoretical groundwork for
restrictions on speechJZThis mistaken orientation evolves
from the premise with which Fish begins his essay, namely
that because the concept of free speech has “been
appropriated by the forces of neoconservatism," those of us
who identify with leftist politics should challenge whether
free speech exists in order to deny these neoconservatives
their claim to it (102).

Unlike Fish, I see no reason to cede the right to free
speech in a forfeit. An unwillingness to claim and defend
an idea of free speech seems like a writerly way to
dismantle the tools that could dismantle the masters’

house. It escapes me, as it escaped Orwell, why a writer

 

2 Fish would contest this observation. He writes that the ”truth is not
that the freedom of speech should be abridged, but that freedom of
speech is a conceptual impossibility because the condition of speech's
being free is in the first place unrealizable" (115). I am not
persuaded by this caveat, however: the space Fish devotes in his essay
to laying the theoretical groundwork for restrictions on speech belies
his assertion, or, at least, it points the way to such restrictions.

92

would argue against the idea of free speech as such. Orwell
wrote that anyone ”can demonstrate with the greatest of
ease that 'bourgeois’ liberty of thought is an illusion.
But when he has finished his demonstration there remains
the psychological fact that without this 'bourgeois’
liberty the creative powers wither away" (Essays 239,
emphasis in original). Orwell puts the word ”bourgeois" in
quotes to challenge the idea that free speech exclusively
belongs to that group—or any other, for that matter. The
better questions for the analysis of Salt and for our
understanding of free speech, therefore, are not the ones
Fish asked, but rather about recognizing unjust limitations
on speech so that they can be resisted. More specifically,
I intend to argue that the marketplace metaphor is itself a
limitation on speech. How can this specific limitation be
challenged and overcome?

The marketplace metaphor was famously articulated by
United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr. during the first Red Scare, an era when radical ideas

and the people who held them were actively persecuted.3 Even

 

3 For more information on the first Red Scare repression of free speech,
see David M. Rabban, Free Speech in its Forgotten Years, 1870-1920 and
William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of
Radicals, 1903-1933. See also two texts written by Theodore Schroeder,
the administrator of and scholar for the Free Speech League, Free
Speech for Radicals and The Fight for Free Speech: A Supplement to
”Law-Breaking by the Police” as well as the essays and lectures by
Schroeder's most famous associate, Emma Goldman, who was repeatedly
arrested during this period for speaking and writing, and who was

93

though the freedom of speech figures prominently in United
States jurisprudence, this prominence meant relatively
little in the face of state suppression in the form of the
1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, the 1918 Sedition Act and the
1917 Espionage Act, which, for example, made it illegal
during wartime for anyone to
willfully utter, print, write, or publish [m] any
disloyalm scurrilous, or abusive language about
the form of government of the United States, [m
or] any language intended to incite, provoke, or
encourage resistance to the United States [m or]
willfully by utterance, writing, printing,
publicationm urge, incite, or advocate any
curtailment of production in this country of any
thing or things, product or products, [m]
ordnance and ammunition necessary or essential to
the prosecution of the war in which the United
States may be engaged [m], with intent by such

curtailment to cripple or hinder the united

 

eventually deported for violating the Alien Act. Goldman's essays and
speeches can be found in several places, including the collection
edited by Alix Kates Schulman, Red Emma Speaks, and the volumes edited
by Candace Falk, including Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the
American Years, vol. two, Making Speech Free, 1902-1909.

94

States in the prosecution of the war. (Chafee

113-4, italics and insertions in original)4
Such overbroad language resulted in tangible chilling
effects, but it also resulted in vigorous fights about the
scope of free speech. Zechariah Chafee, a professor in the
Harvard University Law School at the time, writes that ”the
Espionage Act must have been more frequently violated in
Wall Street than in Harlem" (115), but it was not the Wall
Street violators who were prosecuted.

In Abrams v. united States (250 U.S. 616 [1919]), the
Supreme Court considered whether five ”rebels,
revolutionists, [and] anarchists" had violated the
Espionage Act by writing and distributing two sets of
leaflets that urged a general strike in response to
President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to send the military to
Russia. These leaflets are excellent examples of sedition:
speech that criticizes authority or seeks to incite
rebellion—in this case, against the state itself, and
President Wilson specifically. The second set of leaflets,
titled “Workers—Wake Up," argued that

America and her Allies have betrayed (the

workers). Their robberish aims are clear to all

‘

4 The 1918 Sedition Act updated the 1917 Espionage Act, which was itself
Separately updated in 1918. Abrams and his associates were tried under
the Conspiracy section of the updated Espionage Act. For more
information, see Chafee, Chapter Three.

95

men. The destruction of the Russian Revolution,
that is the politics of the march to Russia.
Workers, our reply to the barbaric intervention
has to be a general strike! An open challenge
only will let the government know that not only
the Russian Worker fights for Freedom, but also
here in America lives the spirit of revolution.
[m] Woe unto those who will be in the way of
progress. Let solidarity live!" (Chafee 111)

The majority on the court found that the seditious
speech of the five defendants was a violation of the
Espionage Act, and the defendants were sentenced to twenty
years in prison. In a dissenting opinion, Holmes defends
the speech in these leaflets and in doing so, famously
articulates the marketplace metaphor. Holmes writes,

[i]n this case sentences of twenty years
imprisonment have been imposed for the publishing
of two leaflets that I believe the defendants had
as much right to publish as the Government has to
publish the Constitution of the United States now
vainly invoked by them. [m] Persecution for the
expression of opinions seems to me perfectly
logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or

your power and want a certain result with all

96

your heart you naturally express your wishes in
law and sweep away all opposition. To allow
opposition by speech seems to indicate that you
think the speech impotent, as when a man says
that he has squared the circle, or that you do
not care whole heartedly for the result, or that
you doubt either your power or your premises. But
when men have realized that time has upset many
fighting faiths, they may come to believe even
more than they believe the very foundations of
their own conduct that the ultimate good desired
is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the
best test of truth is the power of the thought to
get itself accepted in the competition of the
market, and that truth is the only ground upon
which their wishes safely can be carried out.
(Abrams)
As one writer of a recent unsigned note in the Harvard Law
Review put it, the ”conception of a marketplace where ideas
compete for dominance and acceptance by the American public
resonates throughout Supreme Court jurisprudence to this
day. It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of

Justice Holmes' dissent in shaping American law and

97

society” (1314).5 There is much to be discussed in Holmes'
dissent, but in order to challenge the dominance of his
metaphor and to engage the problems of free speech in Salt
of the Earth, it is necessary to unpack the metaphor’s
logic.

Holmes’ intent is to foster a certain kind of space
where the freedom of speech can thrive because he believes
that this ”free trade in ideas" serves ”the ultimate good."
As the author of the Harvard Law Review unsigned note
points out, in United States jurisprudence this idea
approaches the level of a truism: few would debate the idea
that it is in the best interests of any democratic
community to have as free a space as possible for sharing
speech, because without this space, democracy cannot fully
function. This is Holmes’ basic idea: this space should be

fostered because the freest exchange of ideas is a

 

5 See ”The Impermeable Life: Unsolicited Communications in the
Marketplace of Ideas” Harvard Law Review (118) 1314-1338. In addition
to this unsigned note, two valuable sources for understanding the
context and details of the Abrams case are Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Free
Speech in the United States and Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The
Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech. Chafee's text is
important because the debates that he had with Justice Holmes shaped
Holmes' views on free speech to a great degree. Polenberg's text is
important because it draws on a significant amount of primary source
material, notably from the personal papers of the defendants in Abrams.
It is quite difficult to overstate the importance of the marketplace
metaphor, a difficulty that is underscored by citing even a brief list
of scholars who make use of the phrase, such as Stanley Fish in the
essay cited above and Fredric Jameson in The Political unconscious:
Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. For more information, see Louis
Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic,
Mast we Defend Nazis? Hate Speech, Pornography, and the New First
Amendment, and Douglas M. Fraleigh and Joseph S. Truman, Freedom of
Speech in the Marketplace of Ideas.

98

Ixrerequisite for progress. Without a metaphorical space for
E1 wide discussion of problems, there can be little hope for
finding solutions to those problems.

Holmes believes that the marketplace is the metaphor
that most adequately describes this space, and he intends
it to be all-encompassing, free to enter, and where all are
free to speak, listen, and debate. Holmes would argue that
we may find some speech to be offensive or dangerous, but
it is in the best interest of a democracy to allow that

speech into the marketplace.6

Because many ”fighting faiths"
have been upset by the free trade of ideas over time, it is
in the pursuit of the ”ultimate good" to ensure that there
are as few limits as possible to the freedom of speech. In
this way, Holmes argues, the best ideas will win out in an
open competition.

On its surface, the marketplace seems to be adequate
to the task of describing the metaphorical space in which
speech is shared freely: a marketplace is where commodities
are bought and sold, where people meet and interact—

sometimes in relationships that are similar in terms of

advantage or power, sometimes not. The marketplace can

 

6 Holmes would agree that the marketplace of ideas is not unlimited
however. Evidence of this can be found in Schenck v. united States, the
Supreme Court case about free speech that immediately preceded Abrams,
in which Holmes argued that if a ”clear and present danger" to national
security is present, that danger could be used to justify a limit on
Speech. See Schenck v. united States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919).

99

either refer to the exchanges at a c00perative farmer’s
market or to the competition between Wal-Mart and a small
downtown merchant; to an open, noisy bazaar or to an
isolated, quiet shop. Also, anyone with an idea to sell or
the willingness to buy might be free to enter the market.
The interpretation of the metaphor is quite elastic: it can
be stretched to cover a wide variety of people who make
exchanges and a wide variety of instances where those
commodities are exchanged.

The marketplace metaphor also implies a logical
comparison: the goods that are exchanged in this
marketplace are ideas; the direct comparison, then, is
between speech and commodities. The comparison between
speech and commodities is an interesting one, and it is on
this point that the metaphor needs to be examined further.
If the metaphor is a good one, it would hold that speech is
similar to a commodity—speech could be bought and sold.
These ideas constitute the allure of the metaphor: the
marketplace tries to commodify speech, to make it tangible;
it promises not just freedom, but also equal opportunity;
it hints at the allure of an ideal space without gates or
borders, where anyone with an idea to sell or a willingness

to buy is accepted.

100

This allure leads to shady places, however. The
“competition of the market" is explicitly hierarchical: in
such a competition, some win, some lose; some ideas end up
on top, and some on the bottom. Such is the way of the
literal marketplace, too, through the machinery of which a
few feast and a great many starve. It is no surprise to see
Holmes, speaking from a position of institutional power,
use an economic metaphor to describe speech. By framing his
metaphor in this way, Holmes insulates himself from charges
that a defense of the seditious speech in Abrams' leaflets
is no different than defending Abrams’ thesis, but he also
affirms Marx's comment about the continual need for
capitalist expansion: by forcing an economic metaphor into
a conversation about free speech, Holmes opens up a vein
for the vampire's fangs, a vein from which many others
still suck.

Fish makes an important initial point when he cites
the ”entry" problem with the marketplace of ideas: it is
not a ”protected forum of public discourse" (118). The
”workings of the marketplace," Fish writes, ”will not be
free in the sense required, that is be uninflected by
governmental action” or, I should add, by capitalist
practices (118—9). Arundhati Roy puts a finer point on the

idea when she writes that ”while, legally and

101

constitutionally, speech may be free, the space in which
that freedom can be exercised has been snatched from us and
auctioned to the highest bidders. [m] [P]hrases like free
speech, the free market, and the free world have little, if
anything to do with freedom" (vii, x, emphasis in
original). Roy's comments are underscored if we extend the
analogy above just a bit further: if speech is a commodity,
then censorship or suppression of speech is an embargo. An
embargo on speech works much like an actual embargo: it
stops certain commodities from entering the marketplace.
Even though the presence of censorship undercuts the
so-called freedom of the marketplace, the possibility of
embargoed speech does not, in any way, contradict the logic
of the metaphor: embargoes fit quite easily into this
economic framework. In fact, because the logic of the
metaphor can be expanded to cover the reality of
censorship, it proves to be an apt description.’ The
question, then, is about the degree to which the
marketplace metaphor is adequate. Do we want a metaphorical

space in which some commodities are welcome and others are

 

7 One can only imagine that the irony of this situation did not escape
Holmes. Even though his metaphor eventually came to enjoy wide
popularity, Holmes' argument was also a minority, dissenting opinion.
His argument in Abrams certainly was allowed into the marketplace of
ideas that was the Supreme Court, but his idea was rejected by all but
one other member of that particular marketplace—only Justice Louis
Brandeis joined Holmes' dissent. And because Holmes' argument was
rejected, the embargo on the type of speech in Abrams' leaflets was
continued.

102

not, where some speech is welcome and other speech is not?

Furthermore, should we compare speech to a commodity? Do we
want what Noam Chomsky calls a ”well-functioning capitalist
society, [where] everything becomes a commodity, including

freedom” (Necessary Illusions 349)?

Even if the answer to Chomsky's question were
affirmative, is the commodification of ideas possible—can
speech be bought and sold? One could argue that when a book
is sold, the ideas it contains are sold as well. One could
also argue that when a book is sold, the price pays for the
intellectual and physical labor involved in its production,
and likewise the paper, ink, and glue used to manufacture
the book. Is there a difference between the book and the
ideas it contains? If so, what price could be put on the
ideas themselves? If those same ideas were delivered as a
lecture, would the admission price be the same as the
book's price? What about two members of that lecture’s
audience, one of whom can remember most of the ideas from
the lecture and one of whom can only remember a few ideas—
should the admission charged to these people differ? More
to the point, can ideas be owned?

Ideas cannot be owned—speech and ideas are not
analogous to commodities unless put into some tangible form

(a book, a CD, etc.). The phrase Holmes uses is a

103

marketplace of ideas, however, not of books. While the
commodification of books is theoretically possible, the
commodification of ideas and speech is not. The crucial
difference between the commodification of books and of
speech is between what Lawrence Lessig, a professor of Law
at Stanford University and director of the Center for
Internet and Society, calls rivalrous and nonrivalrous
resources (20). As he argues in The Future of Ideas: The
Fate of the Commons in a Connected Wbrld, a rivalrous
resource can be exhausted; a nonrivalrous resource cannot.
As in his lecture ”The Comedy of the Commons," the anecdote
that Lessig uses to illustrate this point is about apples:
apples are rivalrous resources because if a person eats an
apple, one less apple is available for someone else to eat.
The same does not hold with ideas: if a person possesses an
idea, it does not restrict whether others can possess that

8

same idea. As Lessig writes, ”[t]he Boston Commons is a

 

3 The legal effort to commodify the tangible speech of books, films, or
other media is through copyright law, the ”distinctive feature" of
which, Lessig writes, ”is its almost limitless bloating—its expansion
both in scope and duration" (106). At its best, copyright serves to
protect intellectual innovation; at its worst, it is used to maximize
profit at the expense of a wide sharing of ideas. At its inception, for
example, American copyright lasted fourteen years, renewable once,
after which the work went into the public domain to be free for all to
use, revise, and build upon. Current copyright law protects a work for
seventy years after an author's death (Lessig 107). In the United
States, where corporations have the same legal rights as persons, this
means that the Walt Disney Corporation, for example, can take a story
like Cinderella from the public domain, produce a film about it, and
then claim copyright over that film—theoretically, at least—
indefinitely.

104

commons, though its resource is rivalrous (my use of it
competes with your use of it). Language is a commons,
though its resource is nonrivalrous (my use of it does not
inhibit yours)" (The Future of Ideas 21). To illustrate the
point, Lessig quotes Thomas Jefferson, who writes that
"[h]e who received an idea from me, receives instruction
himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper
at mine, receives light without darkening me" (94). We will
see the same idea in Salt of the Earth: when Esperanza, the
film's narrator and protagonist, breaks the embargo on her
speech, that does not mean that Ramon, her spouse, has any
less of a right to speak. Because speech is nonrivalrous,
it cannot be compared—it should not be compared—to a

commodity.

 

In response to efforts by a diverse range of authors and
entities—from Mark Twain to the Walt Disney Corporation—to control
certain kinds of speech in perpetuity, a movement for ”copyleft" has
developed. The proponents of copyleft, such as the developers of the
Creative Commons license, argue that copyleft is ”a non-profit
alternative to copyright." For more information, see
<http://creativecommons.org/>.

While I wish that Salt of the Earth had enjoyed an initial period
of success that would have allowed Biberman to make additional films,
the copyright on Salt of the Earth has lapsed, and its current use is a
model for how a robust public domain could operate. The film is
available as a free download at the Internet Archive
<http://www.archive.org/details/salt_of_the_earth>. Because it is in
the public domain, anyone can download it, view it, remix it, and make
derivative works from it, enabling a great degree of freedom and
opportunities for the use of the film.

Lessig's lecture ”The Comedy of the Commons" is available at
<http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail349.html> for free
download. Lessig begins his argument by critiquing Garret Hardin's
essay ”The Tragedy of the Commons." Hardin's essay, while explicitly
about problems of overpopulation, has been widely cited as evidence for
the privatization of rivalrous resources.

105

Even if we were to reach past the point of
believability and suggest that nonrivalrous resources could
be commodified, it would still be a bad idea: speech should
be free, both in terms of liberty and in terms of cost. The
logic of the marketplace itself constitutes an unjust
limitation on free speech. Dispensing with the marketplace
metaphor, therefore, would expand the freedom of speech and
contribute significantly to a reinterpretation of
grassroots politics. The task, then, is to illustrate these

flaws and to articulate a better metaphor.

Recent scholarship has begun to imagine an alternative
to the marketplace. The metaphor of the commons has been
suggested by Lessig and by Naomi Klein, who writes that
much recent activism has been organized around the
resistance to "what might broadly be described as the
privatization of every aspect of life, and the
transformation of every activity and value into a
commodity” (82). Klein helps us to understand why the
commons is an attractive alternative when she writes that
what the various forms of opposition to commodification
share

is a radical reclaiming of the commons. As our

communal spaces—town squares, streets, schools,

106

farms, plants—are displaced by the ballooning
marketplace, a spirit of resistance is taking
hold around the world. People are reclaiming bits
of nature and of culture, and saying ”this is
going to be public space." [m] [This fight] has
morphed into a struggle against corporatization
and, for some, against capitalism itself. It has
also become a fight for democracy. (82, 83)
This reclamation of space—both literal and metaphorical—has
its limitations and possibilities, and its problems should
motivate further research. Could "roadblocks,” for example,
be placed on the routes to the commons? Certainly, but even
though the metaphor of the commons has faults, it is
superior to the metaphor of the marketplace. Its main
advantage, the one that I am most interested in here, is
that the commons is a democratic, not an economic metaphor,
and therefore, using the metaphor of the commons dispenses
with the comparison between speech and commodities. The
item shared in the metaphorical commons is speech itself—
there is no need for an analogy, especially one that
requires that speech be commodified in the process. The
(:ommons is also a more horizontal metaphor because it
relies on cooperation rather than competition, on what we

Share rather than how we dominate others.

107

But the marketplace metaphor will not go away just
because we wish it to do so. As Lessig writes in The Future
of Ideas, “in a free society, the burden of justification
should fall on him who would defend systems of control"
(14). Would that such a free society exists, however.
Systems of control, like the ones we find in Salt of the
Earth, frequently rely on institutional force to sustain
their embargoes. When unjustified limits are placed upon
speech, as is the case with Salt of the Earth, the speaker
often must resort to various other acts of resistance.

I now turn to an analysis of how Salt of the Earth
represents just such an act of resistance to the
marketplace metaphor, its embargoes, and its attempted
commodification of speech. In the story of Salt of the
Earth, we find three embargoes on speech: the embargo on
the film itself, the Taft-Hartley injunction's embargo on
the miners' protesting and picketing, and those miners’
embargo on the speech of their spouses and sisters. Salt of
the Earth shows why I argue that the metaphor of the
commons is an alternative to the metaphor of the

marketplace.

The Embargo on Salt

108

The effort to suppress Salt of the Earth was
complicated. The people who worked to suppress the film did
not have a command and control center, nor did they form a
named organization, but nevertheless, the effort to
suppress the film was very effective. The scholarship by
Rosenfelt and Lorence delves into the film’s context, but a
brief synopsis is necessary here. Even the main points of
this story paint a chilling picture.

Much has been written about the context of the 19505
Red Scare,9 but in order to understand how Salt was
embargoed from the marketplace of ideas, one text is
particularly insightful. During the height of the McCarthy
period, Ayn Rand wrote a pamphlet titled "Screen Guide for
Americans" which was produced for the Motion Picture
Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. After a
brief introduction, the pamphlet lists thirteen injunctions
for filmmakers, including ”Don’t Take Politics Lightly"
(1), ”Don’t Smear the Free Enterprise System" (2), ”Don't
Smear the Profit Motive" (4), and ”Don't Glorify the
Collective" (8). After the list of thirteen prohibitions is
finished, Rand closes by writing

a word of warning about the question of free

speech. The principle of free speech requires

 

9 For example, see Ellen Schrecker's scholarship, especially Many Are
the Crimes: MCCarthyism in America.

109

that we do not use police force to forbid the
Communists the expression of their ideas—which
means that we do not pass laws forbidding them to
speak. But the principle of free speech does not
require that we furnish the Communists with the
means to preach their ideas, and does not imply
that we owe them jobs and support to advocate our
own destruction at our own expense. The
Constitutional guaranty of free speech reads:
"Congress shall pass no laws—" It does not
require employers to be suckers. (12, bold in the
original)
Rand implies that filmmakers simply should not cooperate
with ”Communists.” A careful examination of terms brings
clarity to Rand’s argument: she implies that the First
Amendment protects against government censorship (which, as
we have seen from Abrams, is a debatable claim), but
noncooperation, she argues, is different. Censorship
implies that a government or other institutional authority
actively outlaws a text’s production or distribution. No
law was passed condemning or outlawing Salt of the Earth,
nor was any law passed that forbade any theater owner from
showing the film; technically speaking, then, the film was

not censored. Passive noncooperation is not what caused

110

Salt’s difficulties, however. The film’s suppression was
caused by affirmative acts—actions of politicians, film
industry operatives, and union officials who were
determined to stop its production and distribution.

When he was called in front of the House Un-American
Activities Committee, Biberman considered pleading the
First Amendment, rather than the Fifth, but was counseled
otherwise, and he was subsequently jailed for six months
(Biberman 9—10, 14-15). After being released from prison
but not from the Hollywood blacklist, he, Paul Jarrico, and
Michael Wilson formed the Independent Picture Corporation
in order to make work for blacklistees (Biberman 31).
Biberman writes that when shooting began on Salt of the
Earth, ”a neighborly, democratic way of life began to shine
through a community of many cultures, races, classes and
conditions of living. The community was moving toward peace
and security. It was actually on the verge of becoming a
community. And for that sin it was punished!" (83).

Punishment began on 24 February 1953, when Congressman
Donald L. Jackson gave a speech on the floor of the House
of Representatives about ”a picture now being made under
Communist auspices in Silver City, New Mexico” (1371). As
Rosenfelt writes in her commentary on the film's

screenplay, Congressman Jackson's ”fury can be understood

111

only if one recognizes how unprecedented it was for manual
workers and cultural workers of our country to collaborate,
and what promise for a more truly democratic future such a
collaboration holds" (172). Though Jackson conceded that
”the name of this picture [was] unknown to [him] at [that]
time" (1371), implying that he had little knowledge of the
film’s content, he denounced it and pledged that he would
”do everything in [his] power to prevent the showing of
this Communist-made film in the theaters of America”
(1372). He closed his speech by saying that he was
”confident that millions of Americans [would] join in that

effort” (1372).”

 

w In general, a weakness of arguments advocating limits on speech is
that the people who make such arguments are often unwilling to read or
view the texts they demand to be censored or suppressed. In a recent
example, a parent in Texas called for the censorship of Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451—a book about burning books—in his daughter’s school
during the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. “’It’s
just all kinds of filth,’ said [the parent], adding that he had not
read Fahrenheit 451" (Micek).

In his book about Salt of the Earth, Biberman narrates a similar
episode. ”At the beginning of the second week of the run," Biberman
writes, “a man called Mr. [Philip] Steinberg [one of few theater owners
who agreed to show Salt] on the telephone. He had believed Mr.
Steinberg to be a fine, patriotic citizen, he said. But now he had to
change his opinion. If ’that picture' were not canceled; if that
’subversive, un-American propaganda' were not thrown out of his
theater, picketing would begin at once by the American Legion and the
Catholic War Veterans. Mr. Steinberg asked the man if he had seen the
film. He said he didn't have to see the film. Mr. Steinberg agreed—he
certainly did not have to see it—unless he wished to speak about it in
the way he had to Mr. Steinberg: Then he did have to see it, or keep
quiet. Would the gentleman come to the theater that evening as his
guest? If he wanted to say just what he had said, after he had seen the
film, Mr. Steinberg would listen to him with respect and attention. At
the conclusion of the first evening show a gentleman walked into Philip
Steinberg's office. He sat down. He spoke: ’I want you to know that I
have just had a very good time. They told me this picture was anti—
church. I have never seen the church treated more respectfully. They
told me it was Socialistic and Communistic. The only ”istic" I found in

112

Jackson’s confidence was well-founded. Local radio
stations repeatedly broadcast his speech, and the local
newspapers reprinted it (Lorence 80—82, 84). People living
in the area took Jackson’s speech to heart: vigilante
action against the film’s set and crew began soon after the
speech was broadcast and printed. The film’s cast and crew
endured attacks on their physical safety. Vigilantes burned
the union hall during the film's production (Biberman 129),
”assaulted [Mine-Mill organizer Clifton] Jencks and union
officer Floyd Bostick[,] and warned the [Independent
Production Company] staff and crew to leave town ’or be
carried out in black boxes’" (Lorence 84). When the
shooting of the film was almost finished, Rosaura
Revueltas, who played Esperanza, was deported to Mexico
(Lorence 83-4).

Once the crew had finished shooting the film, the
suppression effort changed its character, but not its
intensity. In a letter in which he responds to an inquiry
from Jackson, Howard Hughes provides a plan to stop the
remaining work on the film. Hughes writes,

Dear Congressman Jackson: In your telegram you
asked the question, ”Is there any action that

industry and labor in motion picture field can

 

the film was ”feministic." And I never heard that was against the law.
After all, what is this film? It's a story of poor people trying to
solve their problems, and solving them, in America’” (173-4).

113

take to stop completion and release of picture
and to prevent showing of film here and abroad?"
My answer is ”Yes.” There is action which the
industry can take to stop completion of this
motion picture in the United States. And if the
Government will act immediately to prevent the
export of the film to some other country where it
can be completed, then this picture will not be
completed and disseminated throughout the world
where the United States will be judged by its
content. (Lorence 205)
Hughes’ letter details the phases that films must go
through in order to be completed, all of which require
technical skills that Biberman and his associates did not
possess. If these technicians could be made to refuse their
participation in the film's production, Hughes writes, the
film could not be completed. Most of these jobs were
controlled by the International Alliance of Theatrical and
Stage Employees (IATSE), whose international president, Roy
Brewer, was famous for his role in establishing and
enforcing the blacklist. As Biberman writes, "To oppose the
[IATSE] union brass, in a union not celebrated for its
democracy, was at least as difficult for a rank and file

union member as it was for the heads of departments of the

114

government of the United States to oppose [Senator Joseph]
McCarthy. To oppose either was tantamount, in their eyes,
to supporting a subversion" (152). Brewer vigorously saw
that his decree to stop the film’s production was carried
out. Union technicians were ordered not to work on the
film, and even those technicians who were inclined to help
Biberman were scared to be found out, for fear that they,
too, would be put on a blacklist and therefore be put out
of work (Biberman 132).

It was equally difficult to find a theater owner who
was willing to show the finished film. The stigma of the
film was so pervasive that few theater owners would even
talk to Biberman, and those who did were under tremendous
pressure to push him away. The few theaters that did show
the film were threatened with picketing by groups like the
American Legion (Lorence 125—7). Even in the theaters whose
owners did agree to show the film, the workers who
projected the film were, in most cases, IATSE union
members, and, much like the technicians, they were told not
to show the film, or else risk being put on the blacklist
(Biberman 113). Though Salt did eventually play in overseas
theaters, Congressman Jackson communicated with the
Treasury and State Departments in an effort to block the

film from being exported (Biberman 122-6). In short, the

115

film was not embargoed by any law; it was, rather,
embargoed by state and public coercion. The film was
branded as ”Communist" by a loud chorus of politicians,
film industry operatives, union officials, and their

allies.11

This brand was the mark of a tainted commodity,
and it was how the gatekeepers of the marketplace knew to
embargo the film. The Communist brand was sufficient to
hold the embargo: by the time Biberman and his associates
quit trying to get the film shown, it had played on a total
of thirteen movie screens (Lorence 168).

The story of Salt of the Earth did not die on those
thirteen screens, however. The suppression of speech often,
but not always, proves futile because this suppression must
articulate the speech it wants suppressed. Judith Butler
calls this the "paradoxical production of speech by
censorship," by which she means that censorship “states

what it does not want stated [and therefore] thwarts its

own desire" (130).12 We now turn to the ways that the film

 

" The film's makers were aware that this branding iron was pointed at
them. In the film, during the height of the strike, the company
representatives drive up to the picket line. The strikers take notice,
and Ramon asks them, ”now why don't you let these gentlemen pass? Don’t
you know who’s in that car?" and Antonio responds, ”It’s the paymaster
from Moscow—with our gold" (Wilson 32).

n We can extend this idea and wonder if this chapter would have been
written if Salt of the Earth had not faced such severe suppression. A
case that illustrates Butler’s paradox to an extreme degree is Mark
Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: when the Concord, Massachusetts
public library banned the book, Twain wrote to his publisher, Charles
L. Webster, that "those idiots" "have given us a rattling tip-top puff
which will go into every paper in the country. That will sell 25,000
copies for us sure" (Whitfield 357).

116

actively thwarts efforts to commodify speech and suggests
an alternative metaphor for the space in which speech could

be freely shared.

Resistance in Common

From its start, Salt of the Earth registers its
resistance to commodification. The film begins with
Esperanza, the main character and narrator, asking “how
shall I begin my story that has no beginning?" (Wilson 2).
After she introduces herself, she introduces the setting:
"This is our home. The house is not ours. But the flowersm
the flowers are ours. [m] This is my village. When I was a
child, it was called San Marcos. [m] The Anglos changed the
name to Zinc Town. Zinc Town, New Mexico, U.S.A.” (Wilson
2). Zinc Town is a company town: the Delaware Zinc company
owns everything—the land, the homes, the grocery, and of
course the mine and the zinc that comes out of it. From the
outset, Esperanza underscores the idea that her community
has been almost entirely commodified. Only the flowers are
hers, and the company probably has a legal claim to those,
too. This commodification is so thorough that the identity
of the town itself no longer reflects its patron saint, but

rather its material resources.

117

Because Esperanza is both its main protagonist and
narrator, her voice resonates throughout the film. She
narrates the film in the past tense, and as she puts it,
the point where she begins her narration is ”the beginning
of an end" (Wilson 3). As we will see, her struggle in the
events she narrates gives her the voice needed for that
narration; her struggle is what overcomes the embargo on
her speech. Through the events she narrates, she finds the
validity of what John Stuart Mill argues, namely, that
”[h]istory teems with instances of truth put down by
persecution. [m] Persecution has always succeeded, save
when the heretics were too strong a party to be effectually
persecuted” (31). "The truth"—however one chooses to define
it—does not always win out just because it has a claim on
being the truth. Mill’s idea, unfortunate though it is,
aptly describes the problems of free speech in Salt of the
Earth.

What Esperanza will discover is that the suppression
of speech, as Mill suggests, must be actively resisted. As
Noam Chomsky suggests,

[f]reedom of speech is an interesting case [m],
where popular struggles over hundreds of years
have finally managed to expand a domain of

freedom to the point where it’s pretty good [m].

118

But it didn’t just happen: it happened through
the struggles of the labor movement, and the
Civil Rights Movement, and the women’s movement,
and everything else. It's the popular movements
which expanded the domain of freedom of speech
until it began to be meaningful—if those popular
movements hadn’t taken place, we’d still be where
we were, say, in 1920, when there wasn't even a
theoretical right of freedom of speech. The
history of this is remarkable; it’s not very well
known. (understanding Power 268-9, italics in
original)
Chomsky’s range of dates points back to the era in which
Holmes ineffectually defended Abrams’ seditious speech, but
his idea points forward to the struggle that we find in
Salt of the Earth. It is what we call grassroots politics—
the Chicana’s agitation for a more radical democracy—that

overcomes the embargo on their speech.

The events that Esperanza narrates detail the
beginning of the end of two intertwined speech embargoes in
the film's content. From the start of Salt of the Earth, it
is as clear that the voices of the Chicano workers never

reach the eardrums of their bosses as it is that the voices

119

of the miners’ spouses never reach the eardrums of their
husbands. While inequalities on the job are evident in the
film, so are inequalities in the home. As Esperanza
delivers her opening narration, she is doing chores:
laundry, chopping wood, taking care of her children. A
similar scene is repeated not long after. The second time
Esperanza is shown doing chores, other women approach her
and start a conversation about their living and working
conditions, and what their spouses’ union might do to
improve them. One of them says to Esperanza, "the Anglo
miners have bathrooms and hot running water [m] why
shouldn’t we?" Esperanza responds by saying, ”I know, I
spoke to Ramon [Quintero, her spouse] about it—only a week
ago."
RUTH. And what did he say?
ESPERANZA. They dropped it from their demands.
CONSUELO. (sighs) Es lo de siempre. [It’s the
same as always.]
TERESA. (the militant) We got to make them
understand—make the men face up to it. (To
Ruth) Show her the sign. ([m] Ruth lifts up a
placard, hitherto unseen, which she has been
holding at her side. It reads: WE WANT

SANITATION NOT DISCRIMINATION)

120

CONSUELO. We’ll make a lot of signs like this.
Then we'll get all the wives together and go
right up to the mine.

ESPERANZA. To the mine?

TERESA. Sure. Where they’re negotiating. In the
company office. We’ll go up there and picket
the place.

CONSUELO. Then both sides will see we mean
business.

ESPERANZA. (thunderstruck) A picket line? Ofm of
ladies?

RUTH. Sure. Why not? (Luz flings a pair of damp
pants on the clothes line without hanging them
up.)

LUZ. You can count me in.

ESPERANZA. (scandalized) Luz!

LUZ. Listen, we ought to be in the wood choppers’
union. Chop wood for breakfast. Chop wood to
wash his clothes. Chop wood, heat the iron.
Chop wood, scrub the floor. Chop wood, cook his
dinner. And you know what he’ll say when he
gets homem (Mimics Antonio) ”What you been
doing all day? Reading the funny papers?"

(Wilson 16-7)

121

This must not be the first time that Esperanza is aware of
the sexism that embargoes her rights to speak and to
protest, but it is the first moment in the film where she
is challenged to resist. A long legacy of sexist hierarchy
causes Esperanza to be ”thunderstruck" by the suggestion
that she join a picket line. At this point, the idea is
very far outside her realm of possibility. This moment
hints at the struggle to come, however: rather than a
petition to spouses, it is an invitation to resistance, a
proposal for struggling in common. These plans to picket
are sidetracked, however, after a series of explosions in
the mine cause the men to strike spontaneously. As the men
begin the strike, the women appear on a hilltop, placards
in hand, looking down on the men, ”silent and grave. The
women’s skirts billow in the wind, like unfurled flags,
like the tattered banners of a guerilla band that has come
to offer its services to the regular army" (Wilson 23).

At a subsequent union meeting where a vote reaffirms
the strike, the full range of grievances comes to the
forefront. The audience learns that there are several mines
in the area owned by the Delaware Zinc Corporation, some of
which employ Anglo miners at higher wages. In addition to
pay and housing inequality, the audience also learns of

another significant inequality between the Anglo miners and

122

the Chicano miners: the Anglo miners always work in pairs
to insure their safety, whereas the Chicano miners are
forced to work alone. "[W]e have many complaints, brothers,
and many demands," union miner Charley Vidal argues, ”but
they all add up to one word: Equality!" (Wilson 24). The
irony, of course, is that inequality can be defined in
multiple ways. It is easy for the men to see the embargoes
that are placed on them, but it is difficult for them to
see the embargoes that they have placed on their spouses
and sisters.

In the meeting, the men sit in the chairs in the hall,
full participants in the work of the union, while several
women sit quietly along the wall. Near the conclusion of
the meeting, eager to struggle alongside the men, the women
propose a motion to form a Ladies Auxiliary. As Consuelo
Ruis "haltingly" makes this suggestion, some men ”appear
resentful of the women’s intrusion; others seem amused"
(Wilson 25). In a moment that shows how a gender hierarchy
embargos the women’s speech, the men quickly dismiss the
suggestion.

The women eventually form an auxiliary despite the way
the men mock the idea, however, and this auxiliary will

have an important role to play in resisting these embargos.

123

Rosenfelt’s comment about this moment is instructive. She
writes that the
phrase "ladies’ auxiliary" today conjures up
images of women subordinate to their wage-earning
husbands, gathering to extend in harmless
sociable ways the home's domestic functions and
women’s supportive roles. There is some truth in
the image. Like most auxiliaries, Bayard No. 209
first emerged as a support group for the men.
Still, the auxiliary meant that for the first
time the women had an organization that was
theirs, a time and a place for meeting, and a
structure for participating in an organized way
in issues and struggles of concern to the
community as a whole. (137)
There is more than some truth to the image—the Chicanas’
speech has been embargoed so forcefully that even the idea
of forming a ”harmless" auxiliary so that they can struggle
in common is beyond the realm of possibility to their
husbands and brothers. Rosenfelt is correct, however: the
Auxiliary does provide an organization of their own which

the Chicanas use in significant ways.13 After the Taft—

 

” For two important studies about analogous forms of organization, see
Temma Kaplan, Taking Back the Streets: WOmen, Youth, and Direct
Democracy and Martha Ackelsberg, Free Wbmen of Spain: Anarchism and the
Struggle for the Emancipation of WOmen.

124

Hartley injunction is served, it becomes quite fortuitous
that the Auxiliary exists because this body will become the
committee that runs the strike.

In a subsequent meeting called to discuss the Taft-
Hartley injunction, Frank Barnes, the representative from
the international union, sums up the situation:

If we obey the court, the strike will be lostm
the scabs would move in as soon as the pickets
disappear. If we defy the court, the pickets will
be arrested and the strike will be lost anyway.
[m] The bosses have us coming and going. I just
want to say this—no matter which way you decide,
the International will back you up—as it's always
backed you up. This is a democratic union. The
decision’s up to you. (Wilson 49)
The Taft-Hartley injunction is not an embargo on written or
verbal communication, but it is an embargo on the strikers’
dissent and their ability to register that dissent in a
picket line. This speech is no less important than if it
were written or spoken and, in this context, its
performance is vital. This Taft-Hartley embargo jeopardizes
the success of the strike, but also—in an important twist—
it jeopardizes the strength of the embargo that the men

have placed on their spouses’ and sisters’ speech.

125

During the debate, some women are seated together with
the men, although most are seated at the back of the hall.
The women are allowed to voice opinions, but it becomes
clear that the embargo on their speech is as strong as
ever. Although the men have no viable solution to the
problem posed by the Taft-Hartly injunction, the women do:
Teresa proposes that the women take over the picket line,
because, as she argues, the Taft-Hartley injunction ”only
prohibits striking miners from picketing. [m] We women are
not striking miners. We will take over your picket line." A
"raucous male laugh" is heard, then Teresa continues:
”Don’t laugh. We have a solution. You have none. Brother
Quintero was right when he said we’ll lose fifty years of
gains if we lose this strike. Your wives and children too.
But this we promise—if the women take your places on the
picket line, the strike will not be broken, and no scabs
will take your jobs" (Wilson 52). The men are forced to
choose: they can either continue the embargo on their
spouses’ and sisters’ speech, or they can lift that embargo
and begin a common struggle. Luz Morales puts a fine point
on the situation when she asks, ”which [is] worse, to hide
behind a woman’s skirt, or [for the men] to go down on

[their] knees before the boss"? (Wilson 53).

126

The idea of the women taking over the picket line is
argued forcefully, however, and when a vote is called, the
gender hierarchy comes into plain view. This is a union
meeting, and although the women have the ability to express
themselves to a point, the men possess a greater degree of
speech because the union’s constitution only gives union
members—not their spouses—the right to vote. This
realization of the limits to their free speech causes an
uproar among the women. In a remarkable exchange, Esperanza
expresses the contradiction inherent in the situation:

ESPERANZA. I don’t know anythingm about these
questions of parliament. But you men are voting
on something the women are to do, or not to do.
So I think it’s only fair the women be allowed
to vote—especially if they have to do the job.
(We hear cries of approval from the women’s
section, intermingled with shouted objections
from some men. [m] Sal [Ruis, the chair of the
meeting] has to make a ruling, but he seems
undecided. He glances at Charley [Vidal].
Charley winks, nods. He glances at Frank
[Barnes, the international union
representative]. Frank grins and nods. He

clears his throat.)

127

SAL. Brothersm and sisters. It would be
unconstitutional to permit women to vote at a
union meeting. (Male applause.) If there’s no
objection, we could adjourn this meeting...
(There are cries of protest from men and women
alike. He holds up his hand.)

SAL. No, wait, waitm and reconvene this meeting
as a community mass meeting with every adult
entitled to a vote!

VOICE. I so move!

SECOND VOICE. Second!

SAL. All those in favor will raise their hands.
(Most of the hands are raised.) Now those
opposedm (Only a few hands are raised.) The
ayes have it! (Wilson 54)

With this vote, the community takes a step toward lifting
the embargo on the women’s speech and toward becoming a
more horizontal space. But this vote, though it is a
significant step forward, did not completely lift the
embargo on the women’s speech, nor did it grant them full
equality in their husband’s eyes. Though the vote passes
and the women do take over the picket line, several men
forbid their wives from taking part, including Ramon,

Esperanza’s husband. Esperanza points out this hypocrisy by

128

saying that ”the motion passed. It’s... it’s not democratic

“ Ramon

[for Ramon] to" stop her from participating.
responds by saying that ”the union don’t run my house"
(Wilson 57).

It is only through defying Ramon that Esperanza begins
to crack the embargo on her speech: as Mill and Chomsky
argue, rights like free speech are won through struggle,
and Esperanza’s case is no different. When the sheriffs
assault the women on the picket line, Esperanza watches
from the sidelines. In an attempt to provoke the men into a
fight, and therefore into being arrested, the sheriffs
speed their cars into the women's picket line, injuring

several of them.15

When the women stop the cars, the
sheriffs get out and fight with them. When the sheriffs
attack, the women simultaneously repel both the sheriffs
and their own husbands, who rush to join the fight. In the
course of the fight, Esperanza cannot sit idly by any
longer. When the deputies ”lash out viciously at any woman

who confronts them (61), Esperanza hoists her baby into

Ramon’s arms and enters the struggle. As Esperanza “comes

 

“ There is a difference here between the dialogue of the screenplay and
the dialogue of the film. In the film, Esperanza says that ”it’s not
fair [for Ramon] to" stop her from participating (emphasis mine).

5 This scene of the film is largely taken verbatim from the real events
of the strike. The difference is that during the actual strike, the car
was driven by scabs, and during the film, the car was driven by
sheriffs. For a detailed description of the incident and a photograph
of Consuelo Martinez directly after she was hit by the car, see
Lorence, 33.

129

running up" to the fight, "[s]he stops for a second, slips
off her right shoe." A deputy ”pulls his revolver from his
holster. Esperanza whacks him over the wrist with her shoe,
knocking the weapon out of his hand" (61). From this moment
onward, Esperanza is a full participant in the strike,
though the embargo on her speech in her own home has yet to

be overcome.

The sheriff and his deputies are not commodities of
the Delaware Zinc Company, exactly, but they are used like
the company’s other tools. The women’s success on the
picket line frustrates the company's representatives,
prompting them to order the sheriff to arrest some of the
”ring leaders. The fire-eaters" (Wilson 65). Such an act
shows that the Taft—Hartley injunction was successful in
what it set out to do: it kept the striking miners from
picketing. It also shows that when the women took over the
line, the company could not extend the injunction to cover
them, so they needed to resort to extralegal tactics. No
charge against the women is explicitly mentioned in the
film, but the intended result is the same—to clamp down on
the picketing, to embargo this specific form of speech.
This intent is a complete failure however. The sheriff

expects the women to accept defeat in the jail cell; the

130

resulting scene could not have turned out worse for the
law.

The women utilize their voices to get released: they
cause such a ”racket" by repeatedly and methodically
chanting ”Queremos comidasm Queremos camasm Queremos bafiosm
Queremos comidam" (70). As their chant reverberates
throughout the jailhouse, one of the deputies says "I can’t
shut them dames up" (72), and he's right: he cannot. The
degree to which the womens' voices becomes hoarse is more
or less the same degree to which their speech becomes
strong. This is what resistance looks like: an unflinching,
unrelenting hostility to being in jail, that very concrete
manifestation of a limitation on liberty. This is a
limitation on one type of the women’s speech—they cannot,
at this moment, walk a picket line—but is it a reminder of
the intangible nature of speech. The women’s bodies are
embargoed in the cell, but their speech itself, by virtue
of its intangibility, cannot be taken away. The women
exploit this weakness in their embargo to a significant
degree. They shout continuously, repetitively, loudly, to
the point where, in Esperanza's words, they drive the
sheriff crazy (77). After three days of hoarse-voiced

chanting, the sheriff lets the women go.16

 

“ This is reminiscent of another episode where labor activism and free
speech activism intersect: the Industrial Workers of the World free

131

As the strike wears on, and the women keep it alive,
the men, dejected and despondent, are having increasing
difficulties with the idea of struggling in common with
their spouses and sisters. This tension comes to a boiling
point between Esperanza and Ramon near the conclusion of
the film:

RAMON. We can’t go on this way. I just can’tm go
on living with you. Not this way.

ESPERANZA. (softly) No. We can’t go on this way.
We can't go back to the old way either. (Ramon
sips his coffee, glares at her.)

RAMON. The old way? What’s your "new way"? What’s

it mean? (Wilson 80)

 

speech fights, which took place in several cities in the early part of
the 20th century. One of the earliest free speech fights took place in
Missoula, Montana, in 1909. When the first Wobblies, as they were
called, were arrested for violating a ban on public speaking, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn and others sent out a call for others to come to Missoula
and purposefully violate the law. Subsequent Wobblies filled the jail-
many were arrested for reading aloud from the Declaration of
Independence and the Bill of Rights—and continued to raise a ruckus in
jail, which was within earshot from the city’s main hotel. As Clemens
P. Work writes, "[w]ith three days to go before the Western Montana
Apple Show opened, with five hundred more Wobblies about to descend on
Missoula, and with the growing realization that law enforcement tactics
weren’t working, the city council capitulated" and “declared that the
IWW orators might speak where and when they pleased on the streets of
Missoula, provided only that they do not impede traffic" (23). For more
information, see Work, Darkest Before Dawn: Sedition and Free Speech in
the American west; Dubovsky, we Shall be All: A History of the
Industrial werkers of the werld, especially Chapter Eight, ”The Fight
for Free Speech, 1909-1912; Paul Buhle and Nicole Scholman, eds.
Wbbbliesl: A Graphic History of the Industrial werkers of the werld;
and Joyce L. Kornbluh, ed., Rebel voices: An IWW Anthology.

132

Ramon asks an exasperated but honest question: his life has
been drastically changed, but he is not the agent of that
change—Esperanza is. For Esperanza, the new way is
liberating, moving from hierarchical submission to a more
horizontal relationship. Esperanza intends her ”new way" to
express the new equality between herself and Ramon, but it
also has broader implications for her freedom of speech.
Esperanza has chipped away at the embargo that Ramon has
placed upon her, but, as the embargo is about to break,
Ramon reacts violently. The moment Esperanza breaks the
embargo on her speech is worth quoting at length: she asks
Ramon if he is ”ready to give up," to which he responds,
"[w]ho said anything about giving up? I’ll never go back to
the company on my knees. Never. (He pulls back the bolt of
the rifle [that he has been cleaning, preparing to hunt the
next day], inserts a cartridge, tests the bolt.)" (81).
ESPERANZA. You want to go down fighting, is that
it? (He shrugs.) I don’t want to go down
fighting. I want to win. (No response. She
walks over to him [m].)
ESPERANZA. Ramon we’re not getting weaker. We’re
stronger than ever before. (He snorts with
disgust.) They’re getting weaker. They thought

they could break our picket line. And they

133

failed. And now they can’t win unless they pull
off something big, and pull it off fast.

RAMON. Like what?

ESPERANZA. I don’t know. But I can feel it
coming. It’s likem like a lull before the
storm. Charley Vidal says...

RAMON. (exploding) Charley Vidal says! (He rises,
flinging rifle aside.) Don’t throw Charley
Vidal up to me!

ESPERANZA. Charley's my friend. I need friends.
(She looks at him strangely.) Why are you
afraid to have me as your friend?

RAMON. I don’t know what you're talking about.

ESPERANZA. No, you don’t. Have you learned
nothing from this strike? Why are you afraid to
have me at your side? Do you still think you
can have dignity only if I have none?

RAMON. You talk of dignity? After what you’ve
been doing?

ESPERANZA. Yes. I talk of dignity. The Anglo
bosses look down on you, and you hate them for
it. "Stay in your place, you dirty Mexican"—

that’s what they tell you. But why must you say

134

to me, "Stay in your place." Do you feel better
having someone lower than you?

RAMON. Shut up, you're talking crazy. (But
Esperanza moves right up to him, speaking now
with great passion.)

ESPERANZA. Whose neck shall I stand on, to make
me feel superior? And what will I get out of
it? I don’t want anything lower than I am. I’m
low enough already. I want to rise. And push
everything up with me as I go...

RAMON. (fiercely) Will you be still?

ESPERANZA. (shouting) And if you can’t understand
this you’re a fool—because you can’t win this
strike without me! You can’t win anything
without me! (He seizes her shoulder with one
hand, half raises the other to slap her.
Esperanza's body goes rigid. She stares
straight at him, defiant and unflinching. Ramén
drops his hand.)

ESPERANZA. That would be the old way. Never try
it on me again—never. (81-2)

Esperanza pushes against this embargo until it begins to
crack. Ramdn tries to limit Esperanza’s speech, demanding

that she ”be still," that she "shut up." When she refuses,

135

and he senses that the embargo on her speech is about to
crack wide open, Ramon resorts to the threat of violence.
In articulating her “new way," Esperanza makes a profound
statement of resistance to the way Ramon treats her, to the
gender hierarchy that subordinates her, and against the
embargo that he has placed on her speech. Ramon is ”fierce"
in his effort to retain the embargo on Esperanza’s speech:
he tries to reinforce this embargo through force, but she
has broken through. Her resistance has made her strong: her
solidarity with her fellow picketers and her determination
to “to rise[,] [a]nd push everything up with" her has made
it possible for her to break through the embargo on her

speech.

Resistance on the Commons

When she says that she wants "to rise. And push
everything up with me as I go" (82), Esperanza rejects the
competition of the marketplace, and suggests the
cooperation of the commons instead. While competition might
not be inherently bad, when it comes to the question of
free speech, cooperation holds more promise. In a
competition, there are winners and losers; a competition

can suggest a zero sum game in which a winning idea is

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accepted and a losing idea rejected. Such an approach to
speech would be disastrous—it would jettison any sense of
nuance in favor of simple binaries. Cooperation on the
commons has a far greater potential for speech precisely
because this metaphor is far more accepting of dissent,
unpopular speech, or the additions, nuances, or
reformulations that are beyond the binaries of simple
competition. In a competitive marketplace, our option is to
subtract one idea in favor of another; on a cooperative
commons, the sharing of speech might be greater than the
sum of its parts.17

In the exchange with Ramon in which she articulates
her ”new way,” Esperanza senses that the company is going
to ”pull off something big, and pull it off fast" (Wilson
82). By saying this, Esperanza foreshadows the film's
dénouement: in a final attempt to break the strike, the
company tries to evict Esperanza and Ramon from their home.
Once Esperanza and Ramon have been evicted, the company’s
representative reasons, evicting ”the rest will be easy"
(84).

As the deputies move in, the cry of ”Eviction!
Eviction!" rings through Zinc Town, and a swarm of people

appears: the women, the men, the children, and truckloads

 

n Cooperative ideas are reflected in the way Salt of the Earth was made:
both Wilson's script and Biberman's film were vetted by the
participants in the strike (Rosenfelt 127).

137

of people from surrounding communities form a ”compact
mass" in the space in front of the Quintero’s home (88). In
a scene that would make Thomas Carlyle cringe, these people
appear "on the surrounding hills, on every side" (88).
These ”other miners, other women, other kids [are] massed,
impassive" (89). When he sees this mass of people, Ramon
smiles and says, ”this is what we've been waiting for.”
ESPERANZA. (anxious, puzzled) What are you
saying?
RAMON. This means they’ve given up trying to

break the picket line. (A pause.) Now we can

all fight together—all of us. (Wilson 86)
At this late point, Ramon discovers that he and Esperanza
can share resistance in common. In the film’s final scene,
the whole community—women, men, children, and allies—stand
in solidarity on what, in the eyes of the Delaware Zinc
Company, should be commodified space. When the deputies
begin to unpack the Quintero’s home and pile their
belongings on the lawn, the women pick these belongings up
and put them back in the house. The men, together with the
crowd, stand and watch, militant expressions on their
faces, communicating the idea that this mass of people,
struggling in common, will resist the eviction, whether the

sheriffs like it or not.

138

For a fleeting moment, Esperanza, Ramén, and their
allies reclaim this space. What was San Marcos, what was
Zinctown, is, at least momentarily, a space shared in
common; a space where the company and its sheriffs have
little authority and less ability to exercise that
authority. At this moment, the memory of the women chanting
in the jailhouse must come reverberating through the
sheriff’s memory. This resistance to the eviction makes one
of the deputies stand ”in slack-jawed bafflement” (87). The
sheriff is similarly speechless, and he "wheels right and
left in helpless exasperation" (87). The sheriff
understands the strength of "the massed power against him"
(89), but the importance of the scene goes beyond a
thwarted eviction. This scene is a symbolic reclaiming of
the commons. Esperanza and Ramon refuse to be evicted, but
more importantly, they refuse a larger assertion: that this
space can be completely commodified. Some of its aspects
are beyond even the company’s control.

The scene is both symbolically significant and ironic.
This ”mass" of Chicanas, miners, and fellow workers are
assembled on the commons, but they are silent. The silence
is deafening, however, especially because of the symbolism
of their gesture. What is important here is not only the

message-a threat that demands an end to the company’s

139

eviction and commodification—but also the setting: fellow
workers from other mines and towns have not been embargoed,
but rather have been welcomed to this commons, and their
cooperation only makes this resistance stronger. The moment
is one of resistance through gender solidarity, resistance
to gender, racial, and economic hierarchies, and, above
all, resistance by inspiring the idea that this common
space cannot be completely commodified.

The importance of this last scene is underscored when
we remember the film’s first scene: in her opening
narration, Esperanza tells the audience that the identity
of Zinc Town itself has been commodified by its owners.
This mass of people is assembled in a company town, a space
where everything (except, perhaps the flowers) is owned by
the Delaware Zinc company. The company has usurped the
space: it has been purchased, renamed, repackaged, and then
sold back (at an intolerably high price) to its previous
owners, people who are still its inhabitants. This mass
swarms into the commons, standing on it, demanding with
their threatening silence that the Quinteros not be
evicted. The scene is proof that Esperanza and the Chicana
protagonists in Salt of the Earth have expanded a space for

their speech, and in the process, they have transformed the

140

exclusionary marketplace of Zinc Town into a more
democratic commons.

This reclamation of the commons, although largely
silent, is the performance of the swarm’s speech. This
swarm stands together—the men can no longer embargo the
women, just like the company can no longer embargo the
miner’s protests. This reclamation makes one wonder,
however, how such common space could be made common for
more than temporary periods. How could the commons come to
more directly and frequently challenge the commodification
of the marketplace? Esperanza states in the film's opening
narration that the story she tells is ”the beginning of an
end" (Wilson 3), but the act of reclaiming the commons can
also be read as the end of a beginning: this symbolic
reclamation might be the first step onto the commons, but
in order to make this and other spaces more common, many

more voices are needed.

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Chapter Three

The Emergence of the Swarm in B. Traven’s Jungle Novels

The swarm on the commons at the end of Salt of the
Earth would make Thomas Carlyle cringe, but B. Traven’s
Jungle Novels narrate his nightmare. Traven’s six novels—
Government, The Carreta, March to the.Monteria, Trozas, The
Rebellion of the Hanged, and General from the JUngle—take
their collective title from their setting: the jungles of
Chiapas, Mexico during the Revolution. These jungles are
home to the monterias, debt slavery plantations that
produce tons of dark, rich mahogany. Over the course of the
novels, the monterias also produce a revolutionary
consciousness: like the rough mahogany that is made into
beautiful furniture, the raw material of disorganized
discontent is shaped into organized rebellion. The rebels
in these novels explicitly organize themselves into what
Carlyle mockingly calls a ”swarm," and they prove that he
was right to be worried. In this chapter, I continue to dig
into some of the problems of grassroots politics, focusing
here on questions of free association.

A master narrative told in the Jungle Novels holds
that without a hierarchical, centralized authority to

direct the larger group, no social or political

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organization is possible. In the Jungle Novels, the
dictator, the federal army general, the monteria operators,
and the local jefes politicos tell this master narrative
because it keeps them in power and keeps the peasants in
their places. The peasant rebellion in the Jungle Novels
tells a counternarrative about how a swarm emerges, a swarm
that is organized horizontally. This swarm's
counternarrative ends in ambivalence, however: a story with
liberatory intentions becomes, by its end, a new master
narrative. By telling this story, however, Traven’s
narrator reinterprets the identity of the swarm and
presents us with an opportunity to analyze its limitations
and possibilities for collective action and collective
intelligence.

Many critics share Carlyle’s skepticism of
horizontalism, especially when it implies the radicalism of
the democracy intended in this project. In literature and
philosophy, swarms, crowds, and mobs have been condemned as
antithetical to the peaceful operation of organizations and
communities. Atomistic individuals supposedly have a
monopoly on intelligence; when characters assemble, they
are routinely portrayed as a dangerous herd: Achilles’
myrmidons are a good example, as is the army in Mariano

Azuela’s novel The Underdogs, members of which question

143

whether their acts are moral but carry those acts out
anyway. The same could be said about the vigilance
committee in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
the lynch mob in William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust,
or the bugs in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. All of
these examples might be summed up by one of the key
aphorisms in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: ”Madness is
rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and
ages it is the rule" (90).

The Jungle Novels, however, present a contrary view.
As the rebels attempt to dismantle the dictatorship and all
the forms of hierarchy that go with it, they are
consistently represented as a swarm, but this
representation is meant to be positive—even liberating.
Rather than Achilles’ unthinking follower-ants, when
Traven's rebels attack a finca, a large farm that holds
their fellow peasants in a form of brutal servitude, the
narrator writes that ”[1]ike ants, the muchachos swarmed
through the rooms in the buildings” (General 64). Likewise,
when they began their assault on Achlumal, the town that
holds their debt records, "the muchachos were swarming [m]
from all directions" (General 147). Other characters in the
novels also describe the rebels as a swarm, as when Gabino

Villalava remarks about the ”bandit gangs that are swarming

144

about here reducing all the fingueros to desperation"
(General 275). In each of these instances, the sympathies
of Traven's narrator are with the swarm.
As we will see, the tension between hierarchy and
horizontalism is on full display in the Jungle Novels. In
fact, the swarm’s horizontalism is explicitly meant to be
an alternative to the hierarchical forms of organization
the rebels seek to dismantle. Martin Trinidad, the rebel
nicknamed "Professor," who had been driven from several
positions for teaching and agitating against the
dictatorship, states that individuals who rebel are simply
drowned in blood, but
when we work together in a mass, things are
different. Then a thousand heads and two thousand
vigorous arms make up a superior force. That is
why I’ve been telling you that freedom can evade
us easily if we don't form a large mass and if we
don’t all arrive at the same time. The strongest
lion is helpless in the face of ten thousand
ants, who can force him to abandon his prey. We
are the ants, and the owners are the lions.
(Rebellion 231)

The authority figures in the Jungle Novels laugh at the

idea that they should take these tiny ants seriously

145

(General 217). They believe that this swarm is chaotic and
weak, but a threat needing a response nevertheless.
Lieutenant Bailleres, a spy for the Federal army, says that
”how [Juan Mendez] can be their general, I can’t
understand. [m] No one respects him. They all address him
as an equal. Eats like the rest of the gang with his
fingers. Sleeps on a mat like the other swine. We can
finish off that collection of animals in three hours”
(General 182-3). One can understand Bailleres’ confidence:
the Jungle Novels are haunted with stories about how the
Federal army and the elite Rurales repress strikes and
mutinies, doling out severe retribution for even small acts
of resistance to the authorities. One can also understand
why Professor advocates adopting the identity of the swarm,
however, especially because Bailleres' confidence
eventually seems more like hubris: the complacency and
rigidity of the Federal army ultimately leads to its
defeat. The rebel victories are not without ambiguity, but
the Jungle Novels show that Professor is right: ”a thousand
heads and two thousand vigorous arms make up a superior
force" (Rebellion 231).

Readers may be drawn to the conflicts of force that
play out across the novels, and for good reason: in

painstaking ways, Traven's novels narrate the brutal

146

repression of Mexican society under the dictatorship and
the "crescendo of violence and brutality" that completes
the novels (Stone 57). When one considers that the Jungle
Novels are works of historical fiction, and that conditions
and characters—such as Porfirio Diaz, the dictator that the
Mexican Revolution deposed—are represented with all the
brutality that hierarchy can bring, it may be easy to focus
on the ”two thousand vigorous arms" and therefore miss the
very complicated suggestion that Traven's narrator makes
about this swarm’s “thousand heads.”

That the swarm of rebels in the Jungle Novels
possesses ”a superior force" is not in question. In
addition to being strong, however, is the swarm also smart?
The narrator writes that "No one had taught [the rebels]
self-discipline, how to work without being told and
supervised. [m] No one had taught them how to organize
their work, in order to be able to form themselves into a
cooperative society" (General 19). Nevertheless, this rebel
swarm organizes itself and completes tasks that require
high levels of cooperation—not the least of which is the
defeat of the better-trained, better-equipped Federal
troops. How is it that the swarm in the Jungle Novels,
comprised of ”common people" (General 7) who ”had been so

long whipped and hanged, so long humiliated and robbed of

147

free speech," (General 20) comes to form an organization of
such impressive complexity, especially when the rebels
explicitly argue that they "have no chiefs or officers,"
(Rebellion 171) and that ”no one any longer is superior or
inferior” (General 59)? The narrator shows that individual
actors inside the swarm are smart—the rebel General, for
example, ”had been, without knowing it himself, born with
the gifts and talents of a great general" (General 85)—but
is the swarm itself smart?

The evidence we find in the Jungle Novels contradicts
Carlyle, Nietzsche, and others who are convinced of the
shapelessness and madness that comes when people associate
freely. The Jungle Novels display the tension between
hierarchy and horizontalism in more detail than any of the
other texts I consider in this project; over the course of
these novels, Traven’s narrator makes several complicated
suggestions about this tension, and the capacity that both
forms of organization have for collective intelligence. I
will argue that Traven’s narrator reinterprets the swarm in
ways that show important possibilities for grassroots
politics, and more specifically, that the Jungle Novels
suggest that horizontal organization is not only
liberatory, but that it also unleashes the capacity of

collective intelligence.

148

I begin this chapter with an analysis of the mechanics
of hierarchy in the Jungle Novels, considering the
arguments that authority figures use to justify these
hierarchies and analyzing how these hierarchies operate.
Next, I chart the emergence of the swarm in order to
consider its possibilities and limitations as a form of
horizontal organization. Finally, I will unpack the
ambivalent stance that Traven’s narrator takes at the end
of the novels. Traven’s narrator leaves little doubt that
dismantling hierarchical systems is a justified act, but
when the rebels resuscitate hierarchical ideas, they leave
us looking for other contexts in which to experiment with

horizontal forms of organization.

Lions and Their Pride; Or, Plato’s Epigones Redux

"Laws for the common good are all very well," B.
Traven’s narrator writes in Government, the first of the
Jungle Novels, ”[b]ut there must always be officials strong
enough in their own sphere to go beyond or to alter or to
tighten up the laws just as they see fit. Otherwise there
would be no sense in a dictatorship and you might just as
well have a democracy" (16). As Steven Johnson suggests in

Emergence: the Cbnnected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and

149

Software, when we see organization, we frequently think in
terms of rules and laws, and also in terms of rulers and
lawmakers—"pacemakers," in Johnson’s terms (14-5). This
master narrative is so pervasive that we might assume that
any organization must have a centralized authority that
sets the pace or directs the larger group. This assumption
is on display in the Jungle Novels: there are laws, set by
the dictatorship and set by traditions of race, class, and
gender hierarchies, but there are also people in various
positions of authority that interpret, shape, and stretch
those laws just as they see fit.

There also is a contrary view in the Jungle Novels,
however. The representations of the swarm are consistent
with Marina Sitrin's argument that horizontalism does not
just imply a flat plane, but also democratic organization
(vi). Likewise, emergence, in the technical sense of that
term, is the study of the complexity of organizations—ant
colonies, for example—that seem chaotic because they are
not organized hierarchically. As Johnson argues, the
”movement from low-level rules to higher-level
sophistication is what we call emergence. [m] The
intelligence of ant colonies may be the animal kingdom’s
most compelling argument for the power of the collective,

and you can think of ’local knowledge’ as another way of

150

talking about grassroots struggle" (18, 224). While the
rebels insist that they ”have no chiefs or officers"
(Rebellion 171)—a claim that, as we will see, is more
complex than the rebels’ insistence-they do have a set of
low—level rules. The basic ideas of their revolution,
symbolized in their battle cry iTierra y LibertadL—land and
liberty—lead the rebels to organize in ways that display
the higher-level sophistication that Johnson calls
emergence. These ideas also lead them to reject the need
for masters and to construct a counternarrative.

What we have, then, are two competing ideas about
organization. Traven does not present the conflict between
subordinating the individual to the group or vice versa—his
novels move beyond this rusty binary and make us ask
completely different questions. The questions Traven’s
novels raise are about what forms of organization are fit
for free people, about how members’ intelligence can
develop freely, and how this intelligence can be aggregated
in ways that allow the organization itself to be smarter.
In order to explore these questions, in this section I
consider the ways in which the Jungle Novels represent
hierarchical forms of organization. In the next section I
consider how the swarm emerges as a more horizontal form of

organization.

151

The authorities in the Jungle Novels believe that
organization requires hierarchy, and these lions justify
their rule as being in the best interests of their pride.
The dictator Porfirio Diaz, the Federal Army General, and
the monteria owners, for example, see themselves on the top
of a hierarchy that is, they believe, beneficial to all
involved. Furthermore, they believe that they have found
themselves in their lofty positions because of what they
see as innately superior characteristics: light skin,
Spanish heritage, wealth, male genitalia, or military
cunning. They see this society as worth defending, a
profitable and prosperous order that is fundamentally good.

This is an echo of an argument we have already
encountered. Plato argues, like Thomas Carlyle and Samuel
Huntington, that the governance of organizations as complex
as nations, corporations, or communities must be left to
those who have the intelligence and technical skill for
such tasks. As Huntington writes, ”democracy is only one
way of constituting authority, and it is not necessarily a
universally applicable one. In many situations the claims
of expertise, seniority, experience, and special talents
may override the claims of democracy as a way of

constituting authority" (113). Thus, hierarchy based on

152

authority is believed to be in the best interests of the
community.

This order requires a high degree of paternalism—a
nobless oblige that requires the authorities to direct the
lives of those beneath them. This paternalism is of a piece
with the race, class, and gender hierarchies in the Jungle
Novels. Paternal domination leads to degradation of the
peasants, a state that deprives those peasants of their
liberty. This situation of mental, physical, and economic
poverty becomes another reason the authorities use to
justify their paternalism. Thus the peasants find
themselves in a vicious cycle.1

The dictator in the Jungle Novels appeals to hierarchy
explicitly: ”the dictator thought himself the best Mexican
alive and the only Mexican whose life was of consequence"
(Government 27). The General of the Federal troops holds a
similar idea: through his "training he was gradually set
apart from the common race of men and had climbed a fair
number of steps nearer to the gods” (General 210). The
General suggests that if the rebels ”had been reasoning men

they would never have rebelled. Uprisings, mutinies,

 

‘ The characters that eventually form the swarm are variously referred
to as peasants, peons, workers, proletarians, agriculturists, and other
names over the course of the novels. Most come from the various Mayan
communities—Tzotzil, Tseltal, Bachajontec, Huasteca, and Chol are ones
Traven mentions specifically—in Chiapas and neighboring states. For the
sake of consistency, I use the word ”peasant” to describe these
characters previous to the emergence of the swarm and ”rebels” to
describe them afterwards.

153

revolutions, are always irrational in themselves, because
they come to disturb the agreeable somnolence that goes by
the names of peace and order" (Rebellion 213). These
"louse-infested, filthy Indians," the Federal General
reasons, ”could not think for themselves, and that was why
they needed dictators and tyrants to relieve them of the
burden of thinking” (General 47). The general's language
belies the extent to which he will go to reinforce “peace
and order"—a goal in the name of which he would unleash
near total destruction. As we will see, the Federal General
would rather massacre scores of rebels instead of letting
their resistance to hierarchy upset this "peace and order."
Even violent paternalism, then, is justified by a seeming
care for the best interests of those ”below" him.
The owners of the monterias, the debt slavery mahogany
plantations, express this idea most clearly:
[i]t is all so clear, so simple, so logical, so
reasonable, that one has only to wonder why the
proletariat won’t understand it when they are
dictated to. Once they understand for the first
time and fully accept that everything done is
done only for their good, that no dictator, no
shareholder, thinks or has ever thought of

impinging on the value of the worker or making

154

him into a beast of burden, once they begin to
see that people only want their good, even their
best, then the time will at last be ripe when
they may be counted among the reasonable, and
every single proletarian will have the prospect
of actually becoming a factory manager and
chairman of the board of directors. (Trozas 37)
Therefore, we see how hierarchy and authority are conflated
with rationality and ”peace and order" (Rebellion 213). The
assumption made by these authorities is that any deviation
from this system is a sign of irrationality and chaos. If
any peasant can work their way out of poverty, if they
would just see how rationality can point the way to a
better future, these masters believe, the peasants could
give up their ideas of rebellion and work to climb the
ladder of hierarchy rather than seeking to dismantle it.
As we will see shortly, this master narrative is told
in order to conceal exactly how rigid hierarchies are in
pre-Revolutionary Mexico. Traven’s narrator presents a
complex mix of racial, class, and gender domination, but
the thread that unites all these systems of domination is
the idea of hierarchy itself. Plato’s epigones in the
Jungle Novels like to think of themselves as benevolent

fathers, not as masters, but these ”fathers [would be]

155

transformed into monsters as soon as their paternal
domination and the authority that went with it were
threatened" (General 107). Lions sometimes need to be
brutal to their pride, they believe, but these lions
justify this brutality because any challenge to hierarchy
or authority, no matter how small, is considered to be a
challenge to ”peace and order." This is why any challenge
to hierarchy and authority in the Jungle Novels is treated
as a capital offense. Traven’s narrator writes that ”the
death penalty is inflicted on anyone endangering the life
of any person representing authority. That includes not
only El Caudillo [the dictator], but all officers,
soldiers, and police forces. Even an attempt on the life of
a man in authority, be it no more than a threat, is
punishable with shooting or hanging" (General 208). The
notion of hierarchy itself is jeopardized when authority is
resisted, and this is why punishment is so severe. This is
also why the rebel swarm emerges as an alternative to these

hierarchical forms of organization.

These arguments justifying hierarchical rule are a
very thin veneer, however. In painstaking detail over the
course of more than a thousand pages, the Jungle Novels

narrate the conditions that agitate the Mexican Revolution-

156

the domination of a dictator, pervasive debt slavery,
military repression of strikes, rigid racial, gender, and
class hierarchies—and the subsequent revolt. Jonah Raskin
writes that the Jungle Novels "are among the very finest
novels in any language to describe the genesis, growth, and
triumph of a revolution" (226). In the Mexico that Traven
describes, elections were held, but the outcome was certain
(The Carreta 150); business flourished, but conditions for
workers were reprehensible (General from the JUngle 142);
slavery was outlawed, but a system of debt slavery cropped
up in its place (Government 126-7). To the outside world,
however, Mexico was a model of democratic peace and
prosperity:
The dictator, Don Porfirio, had astonished the
world by showing in a brief space of time that
the bankrupt Republic of Mexico was so
flourishing that other countries could only envy
its bursting treasury. It was proved by the
statistics, which proved also that a great
statesman had brought the Mexican people to a
level of civilization and prosperity which no one
would have thought possible. [m] The treasury
grew richer and richer, the national debt, on

paper, smaller and smaller; the poverty of the

157

people, ignorance, corruption, and shameless
injustice were, on the other hand, more and more
widely diffused. (Government 71)
This democratic facade is helpful, Traven's narrator
suggests, to those who prospered under Porfirio Diaz; to
the rest, it is horrifying42.As Colin Ward argues,
”authoritarian institutions are organized as pyramids
[withm] a small group of decision-makers at the top and a

broad base of people whose decisions are.made for them at

 

2 Traven hints at the facets of Diaz’s propaganda. An example of this is
José F. Godoy’s book Porfirio Diaz: President of Mexico, Master Builder
of a Great Commonwealth. Godoy’s book was published, in English, in
1910, on the eve of the Mexican Revolution. The book has several
prominent photographs of Diaz, including one set next to a photograph
of the American president at the time, William Howard Taft. The book
has fold-out maps and multi-colored charts that attest to the health of
the Mexican state and economy—clearly it is an expensively-made book,
the affluent audience of which might help to sway the English-reading
public in Diaz's favor. Godoy writes in his preface that the “wonderful
career of this great man, both owing to his military achievements and
to his great success as a statesman cannot fail, and has not failed up
to now, to claim the attention not only of his countrymen, but also of
the whole civilized world. In the English speaking countries, the
desire to have a thorough knowledge of the past deeds and present
achievements of General Porfirio Diaz, is frequently manifested. The
writer of this work, therefore, thinks that a book prepared like the
present one and based upon accurate information, a great deal of which
has been obtained through personal observation, will prove interesting
to the reading public of the United States and England. It may be here
stated that, in order to present the facts, as they really happened,
and with preciseness and accuracy as to dates and some other
circumstances, the President himself, some members of his family and
his chief advisers and many of his friends, have been consulted:
thereby correcting any misstatement, that unintentionally might have
crept into the narrative" (iii-iv). Godoy writes that from 1904-10,
”local campaigns against the Yaqui Indians in Sonora and against the
Maya Indians in the new Territory of Quintana Roo were successfully
terminated, and the same thing occurred with reference to the strikes
in Orizaba, State of Vera Cruz, and in the Cananea Mines, State of
Sonora, due to economic causes and labor agitation, but not having any
political character whatever, and which were similar in effect to the
strikes that have taken place in the United States during the past
years; these events, however, in no way altered or disturbed the peace
prevailing throughout the Republic" (93—4).

158

the bottom" (22, emphasis in original). This is generally
true for the various hierarchical organizations in the
Jungle Novels, but the situation is not quite so simple.
Rather, as Traven’s narrator points out, ”[w]here there is
a dictator at the top of the ladder, you find nothing but
dictators on every other rung. The only difference is that
some are higher up and others lower down" (Cavernment 12).
A dictator ruled the government, in collusion with business
owners, intellectuals like Diaz’s cientificos, and foreign
backers, but there is no simple chain of command43'These
systems are diffuse and overlapping, but they all share the
idea that hierarchy is natural and proper. The narrator
suggests that the rebels do not fully grasp the systems
that dominate them, but they certainly know that they want
to dismantle them. Because the hierarchical systems in the
Jungle Novels are so complex, it is worth quoting Traven at
length to get a sense of them:

The power which determined the fate of [the

peasants] was invisible and intangible. It was

impossible for them to comprehend that their fate

 

3 As their name implies, the ”cientificos" brought their special talents
and expertise to the ”science" of government in Porfirio Diaz’s
dictatorship. As Frank McLynn writes in Villa and Zapata: A History of
the Mexican Revolution, ”[d]uring the Porfiriato, Diaz's most
influential advisers were the so-called cientificos or Mexican
positivists, who believed in capitalism, industrialism, and modern
technology; the despised Mexico’s colonial past and Indian heritage.
Most of the Mexican elite—politicians, bankers, editors, businessmen,
generals—subscribed to cientifico ideals” (10).

159

was determined not by the agents or the
contratistas of the monterias but by the
dictator, whose actions, in turn, were influenced
by the idea that the welfare of the Republic was
guaranteed only if native and foreign capital was
granted unlimited freedom and if the peon had no
other object in this world than to obey and to
believe that which he was ordered to believe by
the authorities of the State and Church. [m] This
anonymous power was intrinsically interwoven with
all other powers in existence. The import-export
companies in New York were not sovereign in their
might or influence. Their power, in turn,
depended upon the good will of the hardwood
import companies in London, in Liverpool, in Le
Havre, in Hamburg, in Rotterdam, in Genoa, in
Barcelona, in Amsterdam and in Copenhagen. And
the power of all these companies again depended
upon the good will of the thousands of hardwood-
consuming companies and individuals which in
their ramifications and branches could, in
hundreds of instances, be followed to village
carpenters in the smallest countries. [m]

[F]undamental power was so dispersed, so

160

ramified, so branched out and so interlaced with

all the activities of human production and human

consumption" (March 159, 160-61).
Therefore, these systems of domination take on a mystical
quality: if no one person is to blame, there is no
accountability. If a person is taken out of any given
hierarchy, people just shift positions, and little change
is made in the pyramid itself. In this way, resistance to
such tyranny is seen to be useless.

From the start, Traven’s narrator attempts to convey
the complexity of the systems of domination, how diffuse
and pervasive they are, and the many ways that they impact
the peasants. The first paragraph of Government, the first
of the six novels, sets the scene and describes one way in
which the dictatorship entices its local proxies, and
extends ideas of hierarchical organization down to local
communities:

The government was represented in the eastern
district by Don Casimiro Azcona. Like every other
jefe politico, Don Casimiro thought first of his
own interests. He served his country not for his
country’s good, but in order to profit at its
expense. He worked better on those terms and,

above all, he lived better. If a man can earn no

161

more as a servant of the State than he can by
running a snack bar, there is no reason whatever
why he should aspire to devote his energies to
his country’s service. (1)
The dictatorship does not discourage these activities, but
rather it promotes them. Nor is this practice isolated to
any one jefe politico: a ”dictatorship that has existed for
more than thirty years had suckled too many good-for-
nothings ready to defend not only the dictatorship but
their bellies as well," Traven writes. ”And when it’s a
question of defending bellies, the going is a good deal
tougher than when only a superannuated dictator is trying
to stick to his throne” (General from the JUngle 79). These
proxies and beneficiaries of government largess defend the
dictatorship because in doing so, they also defend their
interests. Thus, over time, these systems of economic and
political domination become interwoven.

Like the local government proxies, the Mexican
business owners are also mindful of their place in these
hierarchical systems. The amount of money at stake in the
monterias is a powerful motivation to keep their workers in
their places and to trump any concern those owners might

have for the peasants who work in those monterias:

162

Mahogany, when landed at New York, sold for
seventy to a hundred dollars a ton, depending on
the market. At such a price it was impossible to
take the so-called rights of Indians literally,
or any of those phrases about comradeship and
respect for humanity. In the proper conduct of
any business that is to show a profit there is no
time for dealing with phrases and ideas of world
betterment. [m] You cannot have cheap mahogany
and at the same time save all those innocent
Indians who perish by the thousands in the jungle
to get it for you. It must be either one or the
other. Either cheap mahogany or respect for the
humanity of the Indian. The civilization of the
present day cannot run to both, because
competition, the idol of our civilization, cannot
tolerate it. Pity? Yes—with joyfulness and a
Christian heart. But the dollar must not be

imperiled. (Government 228-9)

In this competition between profit and concern for the

workers, profit easily wins. The monteria owners find

reasons to justify their atrocities, and these reasons are

directly linked to the ways that the dictatorship operates

in order to maintain its power. ”It was [m] a highly

163

patriotic activity to supply the coffee plantations and the
monterias with labor and to keep the supply constant; it
was just as important as dying gloriously and miserably for
the honor of your country" (Government 128). Whenever the
monteria owners were questioned about the reasons for their
domination, they ”had only one line of defense—patriotism:
nothing they did was done for business reasons, still less
from greed, but simply from genuine and unalloyed
patriotism” (Government 133). This patriotism has a strong
allure, and it suggests that deception and pathetic
manipulation contribute to the complexity of the attempts
to dominate the peasants and to maintain positions of
power.

The people in positions of authority are not
homogenous, nor is there a single hierarchy that unites
them. As Traven’s narrator shows, the situation is far more
complex:

It was not only the dictator who ruled. The big
industrialists, the bankers, the feudal lords,
and landowners had the well-defined duty of
assuring the dictator’s domination. But these
lofty personages at times also had something to
decree on their own account. They did not do it

themselves, but forced their leader, the

164

dictator, to decide in their favor. In this way
they could enchain the people, supporting their
acts with laws. If they had taken it on
themselves to make decisions openly, the people
would have soon seen that the leader served only
to fill the pockets of the powerful. Dictating to
the dictator what he should decree, however, they
had their wishes published as being in the
interests of the State, and thus they deceived
many sincere patriots. (The Rebellion of the
Hanged 200)
When financial interests become indistinguishable from the
”public interest," this becomes a potent weapon for
deception and domination. Those nearer the top of this
hierarchy clearly profit from confusing public interests
and property interests, so they have a clear incentive to
maintain the current state of affairs and the collusion

between business and the dictatorship.

This hierarchy is aimed at keeping profits unchecked,
but it is also aimed at keeping the population in its
subordinate position. We can see why the rebels would adopt
a more horizontal organization as an alternative to this

hierarchy, but the methods of domination in the Jungle

165

Novels—which range from subtle ideological coercion to
overtly violent means—illustrate the point even better.
These methods take various forms: few children go to school
in the Jungle Novels, but when they do, they find that the
curriculum is designed to reinforce racial, class, and
gender hierarchies. A system of debt slavery is used to
produce a constant stream of cheap labor for the monterias.
The military is used to keep the population pacified.
Torture is used as a means to make sure that the workers
submit to the orders of their overseers.

In Government, the local jefe politico, Don Gabriel,
takes it upon himself to teach the children of his village.
His main method of instruction is rote memorization, and
the basic facts that he drills into his students reinforce
patriotic myths. When the students were able to recite the
few lines he made them memorize, phrases like ”The governor
rules the state uprightly and well" and ”the president of
the country is a general and a good and wise man,"
(Government 41), Don Gabriel

would take it as a compliment to himself and

recognize that the boys were being brought up to
respect his authority. The dictator would have no
need to fear that when they grew up they would be

rebellious and demand their rights, if the

166

machinery worked so well at a simple word of
command. Once this was drilled into them in their
youthful years, the dictator or the archbishop
had only to shout ’Atencion!’ and they would all
forget that they had come to claim their rights
and liberties. (Government 34)
This type of education paid great dividends to the
authorities over the course of the novels. Schools and
churches are institutions of ideological coercion in the
Jungle Novels, where patriotism and submission are the
curriculum and the dogma.

This mental domination fulfils its goals to a
significant degree, but it is not sufficient by itself to
dominate the public. Economic coercion is, perhaps, the
most potent tool the authorities wield to keep ”peace and
order." While ”slavery was strictly forbidden and severely
punished,"

debt was not slavery. A man, any man, was as free
to contract debt as not to contract it; and if a
debt was forced upon him, under threat of death
or by torture, then it was not accounted a debt
by law. [m] There was no reason to call Mexico
uncivilized because the dictatorship recognized

debt and supported the creditor in exacting

167

payments. He who has contracted a debt must pay
it—that was good old Roman justice, respected by
every country which called itself civilized. If
the debtor could not pay in money he had to pay
with whatever else he had. If he had nothing but
his labor he had to pay with his labor.
(Government 126-7)
At best, workers took on debt for the necessities of life,
and when a parent would die, their debts were passed on to
their children (March to the Menteria 198); at worst,
peasants would be tricked and cheated into debt. Contrary
to ”good old Roman justice," forced debt is pervasive in
the Jungle Novels. Wages, of course, were far below a
workers' expenses: the "hard workers, the fellers and
boyeros, earned [m] four or five reales a day, but for that
they also had higher advances and debts, and moreover
higher deductions for inadequate production and higher
payment to the kitchen. It was all so fair, every one of
them needed between six thousand and ten thousand years to
be absolved of his debts through his work" (Trozas 165).
The narrator frequently hints at how far the dictator
and the monteria owners will go to dominate the public.
When workers or peasants would rebel or strike, the

dictator, in collusion with the monteria owners, would not

168

hesitate to send in federal troops or the rurales to put
the strike down. The rurales "were the instrument of
terror, by which [the dictator] mercilessly and ruthlessly
repressed the slightest resistance or criticism of his

authority" (General from the Jungle 5).‘

In the Jungle
Novels, the rurales are a specter, always present in the
minds of the peasants, and always ready to be called up by
the dictator. Traven’s narrator tells the story of one such
episode:
When, as happened in several of the textile
workers' strikes, the officers of the army
refused to undertake—after the suppression of the
strike—a bestial slaughter of the now humbled and
conquered men and women workers, as ordered by El
Caudillo, [the dictator,] a troop of Rurales was
marched at top speed to the region. And there
what the army officers had refused to do the
Rurales carried out with such brutality that in
the general massacre no one was spared who had

the misfortune to find himself in that quarter of

the workers’ town which had been cordoned off by

 

4 The rurales in the Jungle Novels are represented as terror
personified. Historians have taken a more complex view, however. The
rurales were brutal in their repression of strikes and mutinies, but
they were also highly symbolic with their new weapons and sharp
uniforms. They were also frequently less than an efficient fighting
force—Frank McLynn calls the rurales ”corrupt and incompetent," and as
such, they ”were a fitting symbol of a lazy, corrupt and unpopular
regime” (22, 23).

169

the Rurales. Workers and non-workers, women,
children, old people, the sick—no distinction was
made between them. And that happened, not during
a strike, but days, often weeks, after the strike
had ended, when the workers had returned to the
factories and the whole district was entirely
quiet. It was the law of retribution and
vengeance which the dictator invoked as a warning
to all those who disagreed with him as to the
benefits of the glorious, golden age which he, El
Caudillo, had brought to his people. (General
from the JUngle 5-6)
Juan Méndez, the monteria worker who would become the rebel
general, confirms this, saying that when he was a sergeant
in the federal army he ”saw [the rurales] take part in
suppressing strikes and punishing runaway peons" (The

Rebellion of the Hanged 195).5

 

5 One of these ”textile workers’ strikes" is probably the strike at Rio
Blanco near Veracruz in January 1909 which, in his book Barbarous
Mexico, John Kenneth Turner calls ”the bloodiest strike in the labor
history of Mexico" (167). After the strikers had lost, they dejectedly
appealed to the mill’s company story to advance them food until their
next pay came. When they were refused, the starving workers burned the
company store to the ground. Fighting erupted between the workers and
the army, and by the end of the conflict, as John Mason Hart writes in
Revolutionary Mexico: the Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution,
”the army killed almost two hundred workers, and the number of wounded
defies estimate. Four hundred workers were taken prisoner. Armed
workers killed approximately twenty-five soldiers in just over twenty—
four hours of fighting. They wounded between thirty and forty soldiers"
(71). The stories of the strike and subsequent fighting spread quickly—
as well as into Traven's novel—and they fomented both worker revolt and
revolutionary ideas.

170

This violence is ominous, looming throughout the
novels. The narrator writes that anyone ”who had other
ideas concerning human rights was whipped or otherwise
tortured until he changed his opinion, or was, with the
blessing of the Church, shot if he spread such ideas"
(March to the Monteria 159). Such violence is not only
shown in whispers of past events. The Jungle Novels are
filled with vivid scenes of torture, such as the hanging of
monteria workers. The workers are not hanged by their
necks, but rather by their limbs, and sometimes by their
ears and noses. Kenneth Payne, one of the few scholars who
has written on Traven’s fiction comments on this moment.6 In
his essay ”The Rebellion of the Hanged: B. Traven’s Anti-
Fascist Novel of the Mexican Revolution" Payne writes that

The worker found "guilty" of not readhing his

quota [of four tons of mahogany per day] is taken

 

6 Traven's Jungle Novels have received relatively little scholarly
attention, but more attention has been devoted to assembling the
details of Traven's enigmatic biography. Richard E. Mezo, in one of the
few book-length works to treat Traven’s fiction, writes that ”an
enormous amount of effort has been expended upon the biographical
questions concerning Traven, but surprisingly little has been devoted
to his work" (xiv). Unfortunately, at this point, Mezo’s words are
still correct. For more information about the efforts to understand
Traven’s biography, see the two articles by Judy Stone in Ramparts, and
her subsequent book, The.Mystery of B. Traven. Other notable titles in
this area are Michael L. Baumann’s B. Traven: An Introduction, Karl S.
Guthke’s B. Traven: The Life Behind the Legends, and Will Wyatt’s The
Secret of the Sierra Madre. Traven kept his identity so secret that one
imagines that a contemporary audience may not know of Traven at all,
had it not been for the 1948 film version of Traven’s novel The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by John Huston and starring
Humphrey Bogart. The most relevant aspect of Traven's biography to my
argument is the author’s professed anarchism—a philosophy that is
consistent with the critique of hierarchy that we find in the Jungle
Novels.

171

out into the forest at night and hung from a tree
by his four limbs. This is the [monteria owners’]
own ”new invention," says one of the cutters,
Santiago, and another of the men explains how the
victim’s nostrils and ears are smeared with fat
in order to attract insects—a refinement
introduced to ensure that an uncooperative victim
will c00perate fully in his own punishment on
future occasions. (101)
This torture is designed to coerce the workers into
submission, but it is also designed in such a way that it
would not do permanent damage to the workers. “These
hangings were all the more terrifying and destructive of
any resistance” Traven’s narrator writes, ”because they
were not deadly. Had they caused death they would have been
less impressive. The coyotes never hanged anyone with the
intention of killing them. A dead man would not have
brought them any money. Only the live brought returns"
(March to the Monteria 72—3). Any challenge to the
authority of the monteria owners or managers is met with a
torturous response, and the point of hanging is to
cultivate a high degree of submissive behavior in the

workers. This domination is very effective, but even this

172

method of coercion, extreme though it may be, has its
limitations.

Santiago, one of the monteria workers, says that
”human beings can become like oxen or donkeys and remain
impassive when they're beaten or goaded, but only if
they’ve succeeded in suppressing all their natural instinct
to rebel” (Rebellion 64-5). This ”natural instinct to
rebel” is not suppressed completely. As we will see, when
these peasants begin to associate freely, they find that,
as Santiago says in The Rebellion of the Hanged, ”[t]he day
will come when we too will be hanging and unhanging. And
when we approach them it will be not to accept blows, but
to give them" (72). When hanged and smeared with fat, the
peasants fight against the ants. When the peasants become

rebels, the insects will switch sides.

The Emergence, Possibilities, and Limitations of the Swarm

Noam Chomsky echoes Santiago’s idea when he writes
that, in response to conditions like those in the Jungle
Novels, "it only makes sense to seek out and identify
structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every
aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a

justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate,

173

and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human
freedom" (”Hope" 178). As the preceding pages show, there
can be little justification found for such brutal
hierarchies; the question for us then, is to examine how
the rebels in the Jungle Novels go about this task, and how
Traven’s narrator reinterprets the swarm in the process.

As Payne writes, ”Traven’s novel[s] spoke loudest as a
statement of revolutionary inevitability, albeit grounded
in the actualities of Latin-American history. In the words
of Martin Trinidad, Traven’s Professor, the novel[s]
demonstrate that ’the Dictatorship and tyranny are neither
invulnerable nor invincible’” (106). As we will see, the
swarm emerges as an alternative to the more hierarchical
systems that dominate the rebels. This emergence is slow,
and at the end of the novels the rebels resuscitate
hierarchical ideas, but Traven's narrator suggests that
horizontal forms of organization show important
possibilities for grassroots politics.

While Government, the first of the Jungle Novels,
outlines the complex ways that the various Mayan
communities are governed, the hierarchies beyond those
communities continually seek to impose themselves. The
early Jungle Novels illustrate a dystopian society, where

resistance is present, but limited. Traven’s narrator

174

writes that, in the early novels, ”whatever the men
undertook or thought of undertaking was done individually,
everyone for himself and everyone in his own personal way.
[m] There was no link of comradeship or any inclination for
mutual assistance" (March to the Menteria 109, 111). As is
painfully shown in several examples, like single ants
against a lion, individual resistance is weak when compared
to the power and resources of the monteria owners or the
dictator. These ”link[s] of comradeship" and
”inclination[s] for mutual aid" are learned slowly
throughout the Jungle Novels, but when these lessons are
finally learned, the rebels discover that they possess a
remarkable degree of power and intelligence.

This slow emergence begs a question: how is it that a
group of protagonists, each of whom are limited in terms of
intelligence and ability (and alas, this does not only
apply to peasants and rebels) are able to display
complexity in their group behavior? Traven’s narrator
repeatedly says that the rebels’ ”idea of the rebellion was
limited to the simple thoughts: ’Down with the
dictatorship!’ ’Down with tyrants and oppressors!'"
(General 67). While several ”pacemakers” are present in the
swarm—namely General, Professor and other leaders like

Celso—the very limited and abstract ideas about ”iTierra y

175

Libertad!" serve as organizing principles to a far greater
degree than these pacemakers do. It is these ideas about
”iTierra y Libertad!" then, that are the low—level rules
that aggregate to form high-level organization.7 Although
each rebel had different, sometimes contrasting
interpretations of these ideas, these ideas provide an
intellectual scaffolding upon which to build something much
larger. Furthermore, it is precisely because the ideas of
"iTierra y Libertad!" are vaguely defined that these low—
level ideas result in high-level organization. If the ideas
were rigid they would bind the rebels’ actions rather than
offering the parameters without which any organization
could be possible. Rather than an idea given from above and
enforced, the ideas symbolized by ”iTierra y Libertad!" are
plastic enough to allow the rebels to operate in a very
broad framework. In other words, while some orders flow
from the top down in this particular swarm, its greater

pacemaker is a set of ideas, not a set of leaders.8

 

7 The rebels in the Jungle Novels, like Emiliano Zapata and many of the
Mexican Revolutionaries, adopt the phrase ”lTierra y Libertad!" as
coined by Ricardo Flores Magdn, a radical journalist and activist for
the Mexican Liberal Party. For more information, see the collections of
Flores Magon's writings, especially Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores
Magon Reader and Land and Liberty: Anarchist Influences in the Mexican
Revolution. For a scholarly study of Flores Magon’s influence on the
Mexican Revolution and his subsequent persecution, see Colin M.
MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials
of Ricardo Flores Magon in the united States.

3 Actual ants go much further than Traven’s rebels do with emergent
organization. Ant colonies have no centralized, directing authority
figure, but they do have a complex set of relatively low-level rules—
about food gathering, reproduction, tending for the dead, and the like—

176

One of the earliest moments where we can see swarm
intelligence begin to emerge is in March to the Mbnteria,
the third novel in the series. At this point, an overseer,
Don Anselmo, is driving a ”large group" of Indians to the
monteria known as ”La Harmonia"—”harmony" (Trozas 87). Don
Anselmo's mind begins to wander when some in the group
begin to shout at him. At this point,

Don Anselmo was afraid. Suddenly it dawned upon
him that he had placed himself in a most
dangerous situation. [m] For the first time he
fully realized that he was alone in the depths of
the jungle with a large group of Bachajon Indians
who, because of their rebellious nature, had the
worst reputation in the whole state. They
certainly had not the slightest interest whatever

in his life or in his well-being. On the

 

that combine, on a large scale, to show staggering organization. As
Deborah M. Gordon writes in Ants at werk: How an Insect Society is
Organized, ”the basic mystery about ant colonies is that there is no
management. A functioning organization with no one in charge is so
unlike the way humans operate as to be virtually inconceivable. There
is no central control. No insect issues commands to another or
instructs it to do things in a certain way. [m] Somehow [m] small
events create a pattern that drives the coordinated behavior of
colonies" (vii). Watchers of Disney movies might object at this point
and raise questions about the ant queen, but, as Gordon points out,
calling the ant queen a queen says more about human ideas of
hierarchical organization than it does about how ant colonies actually
operate. ”[A]lthough ’queen' is a term that reminds us of human
political systems," Gordon writes, “the queen is not an authority
figure. She lays eggs and is fed and cared for by the workers. She does
not decide which worker does what" (118).

177

contrary, they had no wish whatever to see him

alive and happy. He knew that he was completely

defenseless and at their mercy. He was a good

enough marksman to shoot six of them, but the

twenty left alive would not give him time to

recharge his gun. (March to the Monteria 123-4)
Even though Don Anselmo possesses the power to ”shoot six
of them," the peasants, if they were to cooperate, could
prove that they possess a greater degree of power than Don
Anselmo does. At this stage in the swarm's evolution,
however, these rebels in waiting are more like individual
ants who decide to take on the lion.

Sensing that Don Anselmo is weaker than they are, two
of the group attack him. Sensing that this attack is
immanent, Don Anselmo reaches for his gun.

At the same time that he drew his gun his horse
received a powerful blow on the rump with the
broad side of a machete from one of the men who
had jumped from a cup and landed close to the
horse. [m] Immediately he got up [m] The Indian
hit him a blow with the sharp edge of his machete
straight across the face. Then another Indian
came from behind and struck Don Anselmo a

terrific blow on the right shoulder. The blow had

178

been aimed at the head. If it had landed true
that would have been the end of the fight. (March
to the Mbnteria 128)
This last machete blow did not hit its expected target,
however, and Don Anselmo is able to fight off his
attackers. Once the rest of the ”large group" sees that Don
Anselmo is able to fight off his attackers, they sit idly
by. Traven's narrator falls on a racial stereotype to
explain why the others did not join the fight:
Indians, although by nature highly intelligent,
have, as a rule, little experience for
organization. The Bachajones, true to their race,
did not know how to organize the situation they
had created to their advantage. Unable to keep
the final end in view, all those who had not
actively participated in the fight simply sat
where they had been sitting before the struggle
started. [m] If one of them had had the sense to
yell: ”Now, come on, let’s finish him,” that
would have signaled the end. But nobody did
anything. The two who had launched the attack
were now worrying about themselves. They did not
think of attempting a second attack. And the old

feeling of submission, of obedience and respect

179

for the ladino rapidly regained its hold on their
minds. They turned completely humble. By just
wiggling his finger Don Anselmo could have
ordered any of them, even his two attackers, to
come close. And the man would have come, saying
in a sheepish way: ”A sus ordenes, patroncito, at
your service." (March to the Mbnteria 129-30)
But this episode is only the beginning of the characters’
growing awareness. Once the group reaches the monteria, the
story of the fight spreads through the workers. ”In the
monteria [Don Anselmo] was asked how he had gotten his
wounds. He said that one of the men had hit him with a
machete and then run away. He did not go into details. In
due time, however, the circumstances of the case became
known, because some of the men told them to fellow workers
at the monteria" (March to the Monteria 142). These ideas
spread, and the incident with Don Anselmo plays a formative
role in the swarm's emergence.9
Moments like the fight with Don Anselmo begin to
accumulate. In Trozas, the fourth novel in the series, Don
Severo, one of the monteria overseers, begins to suspect

that he can no longer count on torture or other means to

 

9 The story of this fight spreads through the monteria in much the same
way it spread into Traven's fiction. As Heidi Zogbaum points out, this
episode is taken almost verbatim from Chiapas folklore (125-6).

180

dominate the workers. One day, at the end of work, Don

Severo

saw that all the lads, already prepared for the
journey home, were standing together in a group,
that they all had machetes in their hands and
were all looking at him. He didn’t know whether
the lads intended just to make a challenging
impression or whether they seriously thought of
attacking him. He thought it wisest not to decide
the question definitely there and then. He
casually dropped his arm with the whip and said:
”You could surely have done a bit more today to
get the trail ready quicker. Maybe you’re right,
you’re tired. But you'll all be up at twelve! I
shall be calling you. The trozas from up there
must all be at the tumbo tomorrow. Don Severo has
ordered that expressly." Without waiting for an
answer, he turned his horse and rode off. (Trozas

248)

This is a key moment in the novels. Don Severo knows that

the peasants make up a superior force, and the workers know

it too. This moment is not quite an epiphany for the

workers, because the awareness of their power evolves

slowly over the course of the novels, rather than in a

181

single moment of illumination. This is a tipping point in
the narrative, however. Very soon Trozas, the fourth novel,
comes to a close, and the fifth novel, Rebellion of the
Hanged, begins. Rebellion and General from the JUngle, the
last novel, show how the rebels break into open warfare.
Once they leave the monteria, the rebels "would destroy
every form of authority they met" (The Rebellion of the
Hanged 199). They burn debt records and destroy anything
they believe contributes to their domination. They also
begin at this moment to exhibit the signs of emergent

horizontal organization.

The first time the rebels are characterized as a swarm
is also the first time they fight their domination in a way
that shows successful coordination. When the overseer
nicknamed El Gusano—the worm—threatens to rape Modesta,
Celso’s companion, Celso spontaneously attacks El Gusano.
For a moment, it looks as if Gusano might escape. As
Opposed to the earlier attack on Don Anselmo, however, the
rebels realize that the ”comedy has lasted long enough”
(Rebellion 166) and they join Celso to kill Gusano. For a
moment, the rebels seem like Carlyle and Nietzsche’s
stereotypical mob—crazy with the blood of Gusano, they

immediately, magnetically start off to find the other

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overseers

interject:

on the finca. Celso and Martin Trinidad, however,

”Hey!” Celso shouted. “Come on, everybody. We
have to think. We must make plans. [m] First
we’re going to think what we must do and how to
do it. If we rush in crazily it won't cost us
anything to take over the office. But then? You
know very well that there are overseers in every
corner of the jungle and that the other men don’t
yet know anything about our plans. The overseers
can all get together and finish us off easily.
They’re all well mounted and armed. They can
gallop to outside camps for reinforcements, and
we can't win against them. Listen to what Martin
Trinidad told you—he speaks the language of
reason. Let’s stay here and talk it over. If we
make useful decisions now, we won’t have to

regret them later." (Rebellion 164, 165-6)

The rebels ”sat in a circle" (Rebellion 164) to discuss

their plans, which include methods of stealing arms and

ammunition, the degree of "pity," if any to have toward the

overseers, and, importantly, the ideas that motivate the

rebellion. The meaning of ”Land and Liberty," while never

explored very deeply by the rebels, is discussed at some

183

length in this moment. "We must raise all the men suffering
in the camps," Trinidad says. ”The peons must be free—all
of them, absolutely all. [m] All of them must have their
patches of land that they can cultivate in peace, and the
harvests must by for them only and for nobody else. That is
land and liberty!" (Rebellion 165).

After some additional preparation, the rebels begin
their attack on the finca. When they arrive at the main
house, it is Don Severo, the overseer who first got a hint
of how threatening rebels can be, who meets them. Realizing
that something grave is about to happen, Don Severo ”stuck
out his chest, and tried to look as though he believed in
his own authority" (Rebellion 178). When the rebels laugh
in response, Don Severo shouts, ”[b]ut, men, what is it you
want?" The rebels shout in return that they ”want to go
back to our people. We don’t want to work now! We want our
freedom! We’re going to set free all the men on the fincas
and in the lumber camps! Land and Liberty!" (Rebellion
179). As Don Severo falls, he is sure that he had fired
seven times at the rebels, ”because the chamber of his
pistol was empty when the men burst into the office. They
swarmed in a mass from the open space and the slope. Not
one of those who had arms fired a shot. They attacked the

foremen with sticks and rocks" (Rebellion 180).

184

It is significant that the first mention of the swarm
comes at this moment. Traven’s coupling of swarm imagery
and freely associated rebels is more than just a
coincidence—it is, rather, indicative of a change in how
the rebels cooperate. They are no longer single ants
fighting against lions, but now a swarm. As such, they
coordinate their activities, confer together, and act in
cohesive ways—all without the authorities that formerly
directed them. This in and of itself is significant:
although the rebels will soon designate a general and adopt
a command structure for their army, they repeatedly assert
that all the rebels are equal, and that they ”have no
chiefs or officers," (Rebellion 171) and that "no one any
longer is superior or inferior" (General 59). The rebel
swarm is not a flat plane—some rebels are leaders, some are
foot soldiers—but it is clear that the rebels explicitly
attempt to organize themselves in more horizontal ways. It
is also clear that they do so without any contribution from
monteria overseers, government officials, or Federal army
generals who argue that "louse-infested, filthy Indians [m]
could not think for themselves, and that was why they
needed dictators and tyrants to relieve them of the burden

of thinking" (General 47).

185

From this point on, there is now way to contain the
rebels. On their march, ”they would destroy every form of
authority they met. They would kill all the finqueros,
bosses, aristocrats, and white men and would enlist all the
peons and workers being held as slaves" (Rebellion 199).
More formal aspects of organization begin to emerge, such
as a council of war, which deliberates and decides the
direction of the rebellion (Rebellion 198-9), but at the
moment when their organization emerges, so does the
ambivalence of their goal: ”nobody seemed to ask himself
what would happen once everything had been destroyed. Even
Martin Trinidad had only a vague picture of what might
happen later" (Rebellion 199). Even though the rebels
"argued animatedly” about the tasks that were ahead of
them, they had little appreciation for the ”windbags of
revolution," who ”talk and talk" (Rebellion 239, 238). This
swarm is an army, not a debating society, but compared to
the Federal army, a hierarchical organization that has very
little value for debate or discussion, the swarm seems like
it takes with it a mobile commons, and at moments of
relative calm, the rebels discuss and debate—albeit in
limited ways, the narrator always points out—the ideas of
their revolution, especially of their battle cry, ”iTierra

.y Libertad!”

186

From this moment on, the Jungle Novels illustrate how
”a thousand heads and two thousand vigorous arms make up a
superior force" (Rebellion 231). Building to a crescendo,
the rebels ”swarm out fanlike over the terrain" (General
44). When confronted, ”the well—drilled, smartly riding
Rurales [believed] that nothing could bring order out of
this panic-stricken mob," and they are partly right
(General 46). The Rurales can no longer bring "order” to
these rebels, but they are no mob. They are a swarm, and
this misunderstanding is costly. This assumption of
disorder, of irrationality, this assumption that any
effective organization would need to be ”led by
knowledgeable officers," (General 47) proves fatal. When
the first real battle is over, literal ants pick up where
the metaphorical ants end: moments after the rebels
successfully end their fight, "the mangled remains of the
Rurales were already swarming thickly with red ants"
(General 54).

Traven’s narrator leaves little doubt that the rebels
win each military encounter they enter, and in these
encounters, Traven frequently uses the language of the
swarm. At subsequent stops on their march, ”like ants, the
muchachos swarmed through the rooms in the buildings"

(General 64). Along the way, literal insects continue to

187

fight on the side of the rebels. ”At this time of year,"
Traven writes, “the insects are particularly numerous and
even more bloodthirsty. Quite apart from the discomfort of
their stings, they fall in swarms into the soups and sauces
of the diners and swim lustily in every wine or water
glass. So, for even the most hardened toper, a lengthy
session at table is generally more of a torment than a
pleasure" (General 126). At Achlumal, “the muchachos were
swarming [m] from all directions" (General 147), and as the
final novel ends, Gambino Villalava makes it seem as if the
rebels are omnipresent “gangs that are swarming about here
and reducing all the fingueros to desperation" (General

275).

Although the swarm's ”two thousand vigorous arms make
up a superior force" (Rebellion 231), what does Traven’s
narrator suggest about the swarm's ”thousand heads”? What
do the Jungle Novels suggest about collective intelligence?
The answer, in part, is in how Traven’s narrator
reinterprets the swarm over the course of the novels. If
military intelligence counts toward determining the
intelligence of the swarm, the swarm itself clearly
possesses some intelligence. Strength is not evidence of

higher-level intelligence, however, so we are left to ask

188

if there are other characteristics of the swarm that make
it intelligent.

Just as there is strength in numbers, the same idea
might hold for intelligence: multiple brains are better
than a single brain, just like ”two thousand vigorous arms”
make up a superior force. But this idea also leads to a
dead end—in the Federal Army, too, there are multiple
brains. The difference is in how intelligence is aggregated
in different groups. In more hierarchical organizations,
where decision-making power resides at the top, the
judgment of a relatively few experts almost always has
opportunities for expression, and the lower one goes, those
opportunities become more seldom. This is a generalization,
of course, but it is a generalization for which we can find
ample evidence in the Jungle Novels. We may even say that
the Federal General’s unwillingness to incorporate the
intelligence of his soldiers causes his defeat.

Whereas the rebel General is portrayed as
contemplative and empathetic (General 42), the Federal
General consistently refuses to admit that the rebels pose
a military threat. In ”an example of the atrophied powers
of thought of all those who occupy a public office or a
position of responsibility under a dictatorship" (General

208), the Federal General is approached by one of his

189

sergeants, who, after first asking permission to speak,
offers the most tepid of comments: ”I think, sir, that
there’s something not quite right in this whole affair, if
I may put it like that, sir” (General 207). With a
“paternal smile still on his fat, rosy lips,” the General
”said indulgently and patronizingly, ’Sergeant Morones,
your question and your observation do you credit. They show
that you are an excellent soldier, able to think for
yourself and weigh unusual occurrences’" (General 207-8).
The General dismisses the Sergeant, however, by saying that
the rebels "are yellow cowards, and they all behave just as
one would expect of such riffraff” (General 208). The
sergeant is unsatisfied by the General's response, but
as a dutiful and experienced soldier who,
moreover, knew that his promotion to officer
depended on always conceding one's superiors to
be in the right, always being tactful toward
higher-ups, and not concerning oneself with
matters not expressly entrusted to one, he
carefully avoided even mentioning any doubts that
still lingered in his mind after his commanding
officer had expounded his opinion. (General 209)
Hubris, sycophancy, and submission to authority make a

deadly combination for the Federal army. Traven’s narrator

190

writes that “[m]uddled thinking becomes a virtue under a
dictatorship, but in a democracy it is simply regarded as
laziness" (General 214). Traven’s narrator suggests that
the weaknesses of hierarchical organizations are that they
stifle free thinking and that they cannot aggregate the
collective intelligence of its members. A more horizontal
organization would find ways to unleash the intelligence of
its members and to aggregate their intelligence in ways
that makes the organization itself smart-clearly this is
the strength of the swarm, and it is one of the major

factors of its victory.

Whereas the Federal army is rigidly hierarchical, the
rebel army attempts more horizontal forms of organization,
though not completely. The rebel army has several
characteristics in common with the Federal army, not the
least of which is that it too, has a general and a command
structure. But the rebels express their belief in free
speech and debate frequently throughout the novels.
Although Traven’s narrator argues that independent thought
takes time to develop (General 19), at several moments, we
see the rebels engaged in discussion, debating tactics and
strategy, but also discussing their views on the

revolution’s goals. The narrator frequently points out how

191

the rebels "had never been allowed freedom of expression;
every possibility of communication and discussion had been
denied them" (Rebellion 200). This is clearly a lament, but
it is also meant as a wedge to separate and distinguish the
swarm as a horizontal form of organization from the Federal
army, which is far more hierarchical.

If we couple the distinction between the two armies
with the fact that Traven’s narrator all but points to the
Federal General’s hubris and dismissal of dissenting ideas
as a reason for the Federal army’s defeat, we see that the
narrator has reinterpreted the idea of the swarm itself:
rather than the unthinking, irrational swarm of Thomas
Carlyle’s imagination, Traven’s narrator suggests that
horizontal organization is not just liberatory, but that it
also is the form of organization most able to unleash the
intelligence of its members and to aggregate that
intelligence in ways that make the organization itself
smart. The more horizontal the organization, Traven’s
narrator suggests, the greater the capacity for collective
intelligence; the more hierarchical the organization, the

greater the chances are for thought to atrophy.

Hierarchy Redux

192

Traven's narrator would prefer a horizontal
organization without any residue of hierarchy, but he does
not represent the rebel swarm as such. As a result,
Traven’s narrator’s ideas about horizontal organization are
pronounced, but the narrator’s stance on the rebels’
actions conveys a deep ambivalence. The narrator leaves
little doubt that the rebels are justified in their
attempts to dismantle the hierarchies that dominate them,
but the situation grows murky when those rebels resuscitate
hierarchical ideas in their own organization. When the
rebels begin to display characteristics that resemble the
structures of domination that they had sought to dismantle,
Traven’s narrator has a difficult needle to thread. The
rebels are committed to the idea of an egalitarian society,
one in which “land and liberty" are the goals, and where
all are equal. In early interactions between the rebels and
the peasants they meet, the rebels quickly correct the
peasants when they defer to the rebels' authority. Even the
rebel General voices his devotion to the egalitarian ideals
of the revolution: ”I’m not your chief!" General says to a
group of peasants. “I’m your friend and comrade. We are all
comrades. There are no more bosses, no patrons, no major-
domos, no capataces” (General from the JUngle 69). The

situation is more complex, however, than General suggests

193

it is. Besides the fact that the rebel army has several
hierarchical features—a fact which undercuts General’s
claim of an abolition of hierarchy—there is also the
uncomfortable fact that the rebels
were mounted on proud horses, and they carried
weapons. And whoever came riding on such fine
horses, and had revolvers and rifles, and fought
with Rurales must be a new master, probably a
crueler, more relentless and unjust master than
the former one. What happened at this finca now
was exactly the same as occurred later throughout
the whole Republic: the peons, accustomed for
years to masters, tyrants, oppressors, and
dictators, were not in truth liberated by the
revolution, not even where the feudal estates
were divided among the families of peons in
little holdings, in ejidos. They remained slaves,
with the single difference that their masters had
changed, that mounted revolutionary leaders were
now the wealthy, and that the politicians now
used small-holding, ostensibly liberated peons to
enrich themselves immeasurably, to increase their
political influence, and, with the help of the

now independent peons, whom murder and

194

bestialities kept in a constant state of fear and
terror, were able to commit every conceivable
crime in order to become deputy or governor, and
that with no other intention than to fill their
chests and coffers with gold to overflowing.
(General from the Jungle 60-1)
What began as an attempt to articulate a counternarrative
to hierarchy becomes, to some degree, a new master
narrative. Traven’s narrator seeks to put the violence of
the rebels in perspective by arguing that the rebels’ ”acts
could not be taken as proofs of cruelty, because their
adversaries and oppressors were a hundred times more savage
and cruel than they when safeguarding their interests"
(Rebellion 200-1). This is undoubtedly true, but especially
when one considers that, as historical fiction, there is no
bright line between the events in the Jungle Novels and the
events of the actual Mexican Revolution, it is not

satisfactory, either.1°

 

W Like much of the material for his novels, Traven takes this
ambivalence from the narrative of Mexican history. Traven wrote the
Jungle Novels in the 19303, approximately a decade after the end of the
Mexican Revolution, when it was already apparent that the legacy of the
revolution was not as positive as many hoped it would be. It is for
this reason that Traven writes that the ”end of the dictatorship [is] a
disgrace our country will suffer under for a hundred years to come"
(General 279). Like they were for Traven, the ambivalences of the end
of the Mexican Revolution present problems and inspirations for many
other writers. See, for example, Adolfo Gilly’s history of the Mexican
Revolution, La revolucion interrumpida—the ”interrupted revolution."
For fictional explorations of this ambivalence, see, for example,
Mariano Azeula’s novel The Underdogs, Martin Luis Guzman’s The Eagle
and the Serpent, and Carlos Fuentes’ The Death of Artemio Cruz.

195

Traven’s narrator, then, reinterprets the swarm
itself, not the rebels who make up the swarm. The swarm
itself is seen in a new way, as a positive form of
horizontal organization. The rebels, however, are like many
other revolutionaries: they seek to dismantle someone
else’s hierarchy, but end up replacing it with one of their
own; they end up replacing one hegemony with another. The
ambivalence at the end of the Jungle Novels, then, is due
to the ways the rebels resuscitate hierarchical ideas in
their organization, not due to any intrinsic
characteristics of the swarm. The positive connotations
attached to the swarm in the Jungle Novels, therefore,
suggests that Traven’s narrator believes that the swarm
holds promise for more horizontal forms of organization.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Jungle Novels end soon
after the rebels defeat the Federal army. We get little
evidence to suggest whether the swarm could successfully
transition from a fighting organization into a horizontal
form of organization in civil society. Traven’s
reinterpretation of the swarm, however, leads one to think
that similar forms of horizontal organization should be
tested in other contexts, and that the ideas that guided

the swarm might be useful in other organizations as well.

196

The Jungle Novels, therefore, present us with both a
problem and a promise. After six novels of domination and
resistance to hierarchy, we are left both unsettled and
hopeful. If the resuscitation of hierarchy in their own
organization were not enough, as they arrive at the village
of Solipaz—sun and peace—in the last novel’s last pages,
the rebels find out that their isolation has kept from them
the news that the dictator that they had sought to dispose
had fled Mexico even before their rebellion on the monteria
began. The idea is an ominous one, and it underscores just
how powerful and pervasive hierarchical systems are: even
without a dictator, race, class, and gender hierarchies
remain.

The end of the novels is not without hope, however.
Even though we have no tidy ending, we still have a
suggestion of struggle to come, and questions about how
experiments with horizontal forms of organization might be
expanded. The name of Solipaz itself is a hint of things to
come, and it all but begs the question of whether
horizontal forms of organization are fit for civil society
as well as for rebel armies. This question is also
symbolized in the last act of the swarm: Traven concludes
his novels by giving a ”greetingT—"fTierra y LibertadIT—the

rallying cry of the revolutionaries. Gabino Villalva, the

197

 

 

 

 

teacher whom the rebels meet in the closing moments of the
final novel ”stood up. Drew himself up. Held his clenched
fist on high and shouted in greeting, ’Muchachos, iTierra y
Libertad!’ And the muchachos answered with one voice:
’iTierra y Libertad!’" (General from the JUngle 280). This
”greeting" can be read as a question and a welcome—a
calling to those who would further nurture ideas about how
the swarm can emerge. These questions are only suggested
fleetingly in the Jungle Novels however; to pose them
further, we must turn to a more contemporary swarm—one in

which rebel ants have evolved into beetles and guerrillas.

198

Conclusion

The Swarm’s Democratic Horizons

Ya se mira el horizonte, Now look to the horizon,
Combatiente Zapatista, Zapatista combatant,

El camino.marcara The path will mark us

A los que vienen atras To those who come after us

- from the Zapatista anthem ”El Herizonte"

The contemporary Zapatista movement has also been
called a swarm—not by B. Traven, of course, but by the
United States Department of Defense. Writing for the RAND
Corporation, one of the Pentagon’s think tanks, in Swarming
and the Future of Conflict, John Arquilla and David
Ronfeldt point out that "the Zapatista movement in Mexico,
which fused the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)
with a transnational network of sympathetic.nongovernmental
organizations [m], kept the Mexican government and army on
the defensive for years by means of aggressive but peaceful
information operations" (2)} In the span of just over a

decade, Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos—the Zapatistas’

 

‘ Also see Arquilla and Ronfeldt’s other two works on related topics,
Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy and
The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico.

199

balaclava-wearing, pipe-smoking writer, spokesperson, and
theorist—has driven these ”information operations" by
producing texts that can be placed in various literary
traditions. Marcos’ communiqués stand with a foot in the
tradition of the manifesto and a foot in the epistolary
tradition, his fables and histories are frequently derived
from folklore, and his fictions—like the stories that
feature the talking beetle Don Durito de la Lacandona—often
evolve from classics like Don Quixote, the text that Marcos
calls “the best book of political theory” (Garcia Marquez
and Pombo 79).

Texts such as the Quixote—inspired ”Durito IV:
Neoliberalism and the Party-State System" present the
opportunity to confront one final problem of grassroots
politics: the idea that the only options for significant
political change are variations on master narratives,
stories that always end with one hierarchy replaced with
another, one master exchanged for a new master. Referring
to previous political movements, plans, and the caudillo,
the traditional strongman of Latin American politics,
Marcos writes in ”Durito IV" that the "problem with
revolution (note the lowercase letters) is no longer a
problem of THE organization, THE method, THE caudillo (note

the uppercase letters)" (92). The statement is a

200

 

 

 

 

 

 

provocation and a puzzle: this departure from the radical
tradition leaves us wondering what this novel approach to
grassroots politics might look like. While the end goal is
purposefully unclear, such a novel approach begins with
challenging the need for master narratives. Marcos and the
Zapatistas have taken on this task, and through this
process, I will argue, they are reinterpreting the swarm’s
radical democratic project.

Each of the preceding chapters has told a

 

counternarrative to a particular master narrative; the
Zapatista literature presents the opportunity to confront
the idea of master narratives as such. In this Conclusion,
I will first consider the context, content, and structure
of ”Durito IV" in order to explicate the ways in which this
text mobilizes a critique of and an alternative to a master
narrative told about what Durito calls ”a structural
deformation that cuts across the spectrum of Mexican
society" (90). Next, I will analyze how Marcos reinterprets
the swarm’s radical democratic project by examining how he
tells stories that challenge the very idea of master
narratives. Just as the view from Whitman’s shoulders
became too limiting, however, so does the view into the
democratic horizons from behind Marcos’ balaclava.

Therefore, in closing, I will consider the ways in which

201

“Durito IV" prompts questions that can motivate further
research on grassroots politics and the literatures of the

Americas.

The Beetle and the Guerrilla

It is difficult to overstate what the Cervantes

scholar James Iffland calls ”the enormous resonance the

Zapatista movement has produced throughout the world"

 

(177). Howard Zinn, for example, calls the Zapatistas ”one
of the most dramatic and important instances in our time of
a genuine grassroots movement against oppression" (IYa
Basta! n.p.), and Valeria Wagner and Alehandro Moreira
write that the Zapatistas' commitment to the
”nonauthoritarian foundations of democracy" are widely
influencing contemporary political struggles (190).
“Whether considered as the ’model’ for antiglobalization
movements or as representing the transition from armed to
symbolic struggle that characterizes them," Wagner and
Moreira write, ”the Zapatista insurgence clearly emerges as
paradigmatic of the new forms of resistance, political

organization, and transformation that have been called for,

202

with growing consensus, to understand and cope with
globalization" (187).2

The Zapatistas get their name from Emiliano Zapata,
rebel general of the Mexican Revolution, and many of their
ideas about horizontal organization echo those articulated
by B. Traven’s narrator. In ”Durito IV" we read that ”the
Zapatistas of 1994 and those of 1910 are the same" (89),
but although the contemporary Zapatistas are the swarm
reborn, they do not tell the same stories that Traven did.
It might be said that previous revolutionary movements were
more linear—their focus was on taking power of the state,
which would allow them to direct society, from above, in
the ways that they decided were best. In fact, this idea is
one more master narrative: it was thought that significant
political change could only come through a hegemonic
struggle in which one hierarchy would be replaced with a
better hierarchy. The Zapatistas, however, tell a different

story. In John Holloway's phrase, they seek to change the

 

2 The Zapatista movement has inspired a fair amount of scholarship,
mostly from social science fields. The work that is most relevant to my
concern here is about the Zapatistas' use of information technologies
to convey their texts to a network of supporters. See, for example,
Harry M. Cleaver’s work, especially ”The Zapatista Effect: The Internet
and the Rise of an Alternative Political Fabric.” The ”information
operations" run by the Zapatistas and their allies include websites and
blogs such as the official Zapatista website, <http://www.ezln.org.mx/>
and the Chiapas Centro de Medio Independientes
<http://chiapas.indymedia.org/>, podcasts like Radio Insurgente
<http://www.radioinsurgente.org/>, and print publications like the
English language volumes IYa Bastal: Ten Years of the Zapatista
Uprising and Our werd is Our weapon: Selected writings of Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos.

203

world without taking power. This goal has proven to be both
attractive and difficult. Rather than the relatively linear
goal of toppling a government through force, the Zapatistas
have embraced the more chaotic goal of organizing
autonomously in self-governing communities. In this way,
the Zapatistas are less like Odysseus, who knows his final
destination, and more like Don Quixote, whose path is much
less well defined. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, to find
that Marcos’ fictional beetle, Don Durito de la Lacandona,
is prone to literary fits like those that affected Alonso
Quijano, the ”sane madman" who fancies himself to be Don
Quixote.

How do Durito’s literary fits, however, counter the
master narrative about hegemonic struggle? Our first clues
to this question come from the structure of the text, and
its unique characteristics. Marcos begins “Durito IV" with
a brief introduction, but unlike most of his other texts,
Marcos does not sign his name to it. Rather, an unnamed
narrator notes that "Durito IV" was written while Durito
participated in the Exodus for Dignity and National
Sovereignty, a ”41-day protest march against electoral
fraud from Tabasco to Mexico City” (87). After this
introduction, we find the heading of the letter:

Zapatista Army of National Liberation

204

Mexico, May 1995

To: Mister So and So

Professor and Researcher

National Autonomous University of Mexico

Mexico, D.F.

From: Don Durito de la Lacandona,

Knight-errant for whom Sup Marcos is squire

Zapatista Army of National Liberation

Mexico
From the start, Durito’s letter presents an interesting set
of complexities for literary study: it is signed by a
knight-errant beetle, written by a guerrilla soldier,
written to a fictional professor, and written about a harsh
reality in Mexico. Because the text appears under Durito’s
signature, its readers participate in the fiction and
imagine, as the signature suggests, that Durito’s voice has
supplanted Marcos’ authorship. This authorial playfulness
makes the text’s readers break from the guise of assuming
that Durito is only an invention inside the text but is,
rather, its author as wellf’"Durito IV” is genre-bending
text: part fiction, part academic analysis, part satire,
part manifesto. ”Durito IV” could be described in much the

same way Robin D. G. Kelley describes Aime Césaire’s

 

3 For this reason, when the text I quote is in Durito’s voice, I refer
to him as the text’s author. When the text suggests Marcos' voice, I
attribute the quoted material to him.

205

Discourse on Colonialism: it is "full of flares, full of
anger, full of humor. It is not a solution or a strategy
manual or a little red book with pithy quotes. It is a
dancing flame in a bonfire" (10).

In his opening address, Durito acknowledges that ”it
may seem strange that I, a beetle that carries out the
obligations of the noble profession of knight-errant, write
to you. Do not be perturbed or seek out a psychoanalyst,"
Durito writes, ”because I will quickly and promptly explain
everything to you" (88). We might not be perturbed by
Durito’s text, but we do have a potent cocktail, even in
these opening words. Durito’s tone is at once mocking and
serious; his ideas are both disarming and an opening salvo
thrown at those who tell master narratives. But because ”we
knights-errant cannot refuse to help the needy, no matter
how large-nosed or delinquent the helpless soul in question
is," Durito gives a critique of the current party-state
system of governance in Mexico and a proposal for “the
transition to democracy according to the Zapatistas” (89).

After additional remarks, including one which reminds
his readers that “this is the ’rebellion of the hanged’"
(89), a reference B. Traven’s fifth Jungle Novel, Durito
splits his text into several sections. The section titled

"The Current Political Situation: The Party-State System,

206

Principle Obstacle to a Transition to Democracy in Mexico,"
is a brief institutional analysis (90-1). The following
section, ”Democracy, Liberty, and Justice: Foundation for a
New Political System in Mexico" describes the principles of
these new democratic horizons (91—3), and the final
section, ”A Broad Opposition Front," immerses itself
directly in ”the transition from one to the other” (93-4).
What emerges out of the structure of ”Durito IV” is a
rather familiar form: Durito chides the ”excellent
analysts" (91) who will need to provide a fuller critique,
but Marcos' fictional tropes do not fully obscure the fact
that this text mocks academic analysis while using the
tools of academic analysis.

It might be argued that Don Durito, like Don Quixote,
is determined ”to redress grievances, right wrongs, correct
injustices, rectify abuses, and fulfill obligations
(Cervantes 30), but Don Durito has more ambitious goals: he
seeks a ”profound and radical shift of all social
relations" (91). By putting such words in a beetle’s mouth,
Marcos appropriates the conventions of multiple genres and
multiple narratives. In ways that are reminiscent of Aimé
Césaire’s Discourse on Cblonialism, ”Durito IV" mobilizes
multiple tones, some fiery and some humorous. Some care,

then, is needed to approach ”Durito IV." As Iffland writes

207

in ”Don Quijote and the Dissident Intellectual: Some
Thoughts on Subcomandante Marcos’s Don Durito de la
Lacandona,”
[q]uite clearly, Don Durito evolves into an
alterego of Marcos, incarnating the many
thoroughly quixotic aspects of the entire
Zapatista enterprise. But rather than assuming
the role of the Cervantine protagonist himself,

Marcos displaces it onto the little talking

 

beetle while he himself becomes the mere
”escudero." Rather then the emblematic big belly
of Sancho Panza, it is Marcos’s apparently
prominent nose which becomes the constant butt of
Don Durito's jokes. ("Narizon escudero" becomes a
leitmotif throughout the text.) (174)
But while Marcos clearly adopts the Quixote as a frame for
his own narrative, he is not content in tweaking Cervantes’
novel alone for his purposes. Rather, it is as if Marcos,
like Alonso Quijano before him, has read so much that
stories overlap in his mind, genres mix together, and
familiar narratives pop up in surprising ways.
Such is the case, for example, in an earlier
communique in which Marcos first appropriates the frame of

Cervantes’ novel. The relationship between beetle and

208

 

 

guerrilla formed when Don Durito pointed a twig that he
called a sword at Marcos and said, ”You will be my squire.”

"I?" [Marcos says], visibly surprised.

Durito pays no attention to my question and
continues, ”Furthermore, it isn’t a twigmit’s a
swordm the only, the bestm Excalibur!" he says,
brandishing the twig.

"I think you are confusing the times and
novels," I tell him. ”The beginning of your
speech seems an awful lot like a part of Don
Quijote de la Mancha, and Excalibur was King
Arthur’s sword." [m]

”Silence, rogue! Knowest thou not nature
imitates art? What difference does it make if
it’s Alonso Quijano or the page Arthur? Now, it
ism Don Durito de la Lacandona." (Conversations
with Durito 68)

Nature imitates art, indeed. Or one might say that
literature imagines beetles as knights-errant. Or that
counternarratives to master narratives can come in many
surprising styles. This particular narrative, as Iffland

notes, is ”the product of a ’reading’ of Cervantes’s

209

 

masterpiece” (175)."This reading and the many other
literary aspects of Marcos’ writing have led Gabriel Garcia
Marquez to note that ”everything [Marcos says], in form and
content, suggests a considerable literary education of a
traditional kind" (77').5 Garcia Marquez's observation raises
questions about how the very idea of master narratives can
be challenged. Durito certainly stands in contrast to the
other protagonists in the texts considered in this project,
like Esperanza in Salt of the Earth, who is portrayed as
dignified and valiant, or the swarm in Traven’s Jungle
Novels, which is clearly a vigorous force. Durito, in
contrast, is as frequently satirized as he is valorized,
and Marcos includes himself in the joke: Durito frequently
mocks Marcos’ big nose (89), but Marcos also portrays
Durito as clumsy or prone to getting pinned under his desk
(122). These comic elements of the Durito stories cause
Wagner and Moreira to argue that Durito "has become
increasingly ridiculous, and Marcos, in turn, increasingly

subdued by it" (201). Durito is not all laughs, however: he

 

4 Iffland refers to the Spanish language version of the Durito stories,
Don Durito de la Lacandona, published by the Centro de Informacion y
Analisis de Chiapas.

5 One might call the Durito stories ”magical realism." It is no surprise
to see Garcia Marquez’s interest in the Zapatistas, nor is it a
surprise that the Zapatistas might call upon elements of magical
realism in the Durito stories. As Frederick Louis Aldema points out,
however, at times the term ”magical realism" can point readers away
from the social and economic concerns of a text. Because we are very
much concerned with social and economic questions, we will bracket the
question of magical realism in the Durito stories.

210

writes ”veeery seriously and veeery formally” (89), but he
writes about ”a structural deformation that cuts across the
spectrum of Mexican society" (90) and argues for ”a
revolution that makes revolution possible" (93). As with
Don Quixote’s journey, Don Durito introduces a degree of
uncertainty from the beginning: how should we read this
mix? As mocking? As an effort to undercut the seriousness
of guerrilla soldiers who do have guns, and have used them?
As a funny facade on top of a frightful reality? ”Durito
IV” is all of these things—as Marcos says in an interview
with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Roberto Pombo, "[i]t’s as
if it all goes through a blender. You don’t know what you
tossed in first, and what you end up with is a cocktail"
(77). In order to unpack the ways that "Durito IV”
articulates a counternarrative to the entire enterprise of
telling master narratives, I will now transition to a
discussion of the ways in which the Zapatistas are

reinterpreting the swarm’s radical democratic project.

A Novel Approach to Grassroots Politics

The party-state bureaucrats, the political elites, and

the people who were shocked by the Zapatistas’ political

innovations had told their master narratives so frequently

211

that everyone knew the refrain. These stories were backed
up by the muscle of the Mexican state, by what Durito calls
”the mass media, big capital, and the reactionary clergy"
who march under the banner of the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional, or PRI, for its acronym in Spanish (90). But
a well-told story, Marcos surely knows, can subvert even
the most polished master narrative.

Durito’s institutional analysis is largely focused on
what he calls the ”party-state system," the coupling of the
state and the PRI. ”The political system of Mexico,” Durito
writes, ”has its historical basis, its present crisis, and
its mortal future, in that deformation called ’the Party-
State System’” (90). Durito writes that this ”deformation”
is "a consequence of the savage capitalism at the end of
the 20th century,” a system that ”masks itself in what is
called ’NEOLIBERALISM’" (90, emphasis in original). In a
few short paragraphs, Durito outlines in broad strokes the
deficiencies of the PRI. While Durito’s analysis is brief,
his conclusion is unequivocal: ”any attempt to ’reform’ or
’balance’ this deformation FROM WITHIN THE PARTY-STATE
SYSTEM," he writes, is ”impossible" (91, emphasis in
original).

In the years between when Traven wrote his novels and

when Durito takes up his pen, the PRI had not only

212

”declared it was the legitimate heir of the Mexican
Revolution" (Gilly ix), but it had also appropriated the
language and symbols of the revolution itselffi‘In the
logical acrobatics of the party-state, then, to rebel
against the state or the party is a counter-revolutionary
act. This sort of thinking led to high levels of state
violence, including a ”dirty war" in which the Mexican left
was brutally repressed and, in just one example among many,
demonstrating students were gunned down just before the
1968 Mexico City Olympics. We might paraphrase Octavio
Paz's explanation of the situation: the party-state that
eventually became dictatorial first appeared, in embryo, as
liberatory (The Labyrinth of Solitude 121). This cautionary
tale is what leads Bill Weinberg to argue that there is an
explicit parallel between the rebels in the Jungle Novels
and the story of the contemporary Zapatistas in his book
Hemage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico.
Weinberg writes that the ”Indians in [General from the
Jungle], isolated in the jungle, didn’t know that the
Revolution was already over and the dictator overthrown;

the peasant army which emerged from that jungle in 1994

 

6 As I noted above, the title of the original Spanish language version
of Gilly's book is La revolucidn interrumpida. This title has no small
relevance to the Zapatista movement, but as we will see, the
Zapatistas, while possessing a profound understanding of previous
revolutionary movements, do not seek to continue the same revolution,
after an interruption, but rather are proposing a new understanding of
the radical democratic project.

213

claims that the Revolution has been betrayed and
dictatorship restored" (15). What was apparent to Traven in
the 19303 is painfully obvious to the Zapatistas: a
liberatory war led to a reactionary state-what would be, in
a memorable phrase used by Mario Vargas Llosa and many
others, ”the perfect dictatorship."

One of the tasks Durito faces, then, is to reinterpret
the language of revolution; another is to challenge the
narratives told by party-state masters. The result of these
shifts in orientation, tactics, and language is a new
political project for the swarm, one that Durito insists is
”anti-vanguard and collective" (92). As Wagner and Moreira
write, the Zapatistas’ counternarrative ”does not conform
to the practice of power that characterized Latin American
revolutionary guerrillas of the seventies, and it is
definitely incompatible with the model of the revolutionary
avant-guard leading the masses forward toward the
realization of a project they cannot fully grasp" (190). As
often happens when people first hear unfamiliar stories,
this new political narrative was not immediately
understood. As Carlos Fuentes writes,

Many people with cloudy minds in Mexico responded
to what happened in Chiapas by saying, ’here we

go again, these rebels are part of the old

214

Sandinista-Castroite-Marxist-Leninist legacy. Is
this what we want for Mexico?’ The rebels proved
exactly the contrary: Rather than the last
rebellion of that type, this was the first post-
communist rebellion in Latin America. For the
rebels, the demand for democracy was central.
(56)

The Zapatistas’ ”demand for democracy" has little to do

with hierarchical interpretations of democracy, however,

and it needs some clarification. In his interview with

Garcia Marquez and Pombo, Marcos argues that previous

revolutionary movements followed a model in which
[t]here is an oppressor power which decides on
behalf of society from above, and a group of
visionaries which decides to lead the country on
the correct path and ousts the other group from
power, seizes power and then also decides on
behalf of society. For us that is a struggle
between hegemonies, in which the winners are good
and the losers bad, but for the rest of society
things don’t basically change. (”The Punchcard
and the Hourglass" 70-1)

In contrast to a hegemonic struggle, Durito insists that

the Zapatista movement ”is not about seizing Power or the

215

introduction (by peaceful or violent means) of a new social
system, but about something that precedes both. It is about
constructing the antechamber of the new world" (92). It is
not, however, about constructing a master narrative that we
can all memorize and repeat. Durito writes that ”[i]n
summary, we are not proposing an orthodox revolution, but
something much more difficult: a revolution that makes
revolution possible" (93). But Durito must point to the
brevity of his own analysis and admit that his text is “a
problem and not a solution" (91). We can take what Durito
calls an ”orthodox revolution" to mean what Fuentes calls a
revolution in the ”old Sandinista-Castroite-Marxist-
Leninist legacy." What is meant, however, by "a revolution
that makes revolution possible"? What is this ”antechamber

of the new world"?

The Zapatistas’ ”Specialty of the House"

Durito writes that ”I am only making points to be
developed on other occasions or to provoke debate and
discussion (which seems to be the Zapatistas’ 'specialty of
the house’)" (92). Much like how the view from Whitman’s
large shoulders became too limited, so does the view from

behind Marcos' balaclava. The question, then, is about how

216

new vistas and horizons are to be imagined. What Traven’s
rebels longed for—the common space in which to speak and
debate—shows up in great quantities in the Zapatista
writings. The provocation of debate, the invitation to
speak together about how best to walk into the democratic
horizons, is a profound shift from the vanguardist
tradition and it is indicative of the ways in which many
new narratives might be mobilized, narratives without
masters but rather with many protagonists. The Zapatistas,
however, can only imagine their own new worlds—the
blueprints for them are not transferable out of their
specific contexts. This does not mean, however, that the
Zapatistas’ ideas cannot be used in other experiments in
grassroots politics—quite the contrary. How then, might we
use "Durito IV” as a springboard to motivate further
research on grassroots politics and the literatures of the
Americas?

As Gilles Delueze praised Michel Foucault for showing
us ”the indignity of speaking for others" (qtd. in May,
97), Durito openly mocks the idea that the Zapatistas can
provide ”THE method" (92) which could serve as the one true
way to revolutionary activity. Durito steps out of the
shadow hierarchy casts when he argues that ”all methods

have their place, that all fronts of struggle are

217

necessary, and that all levels of participation are
important" (92). It is, as Marcos says, ”political
masturbation” ”to believe that we can speak on behalf of
those beyond ourselves" (“The Punch Card and the Hourglass”
72). The ”indignity of speaking for others” leaves a
purposeful silence, one that invites other voices. This
focus on questions and the provocation of debate is the
next logical step after giving up the vanguardist pretense
of speaking for others and after dismantling the machinery
that goes with the traditional interpretation of grassroots
politics. This move raises important problems in turn,
however.

The revolutionary vanguard, that hierarchical figure
of political movements of the past, hoarded the task of
imagining alternatives to himself; instead of liberating
the swarm, he caged it. What he promised was certainty—
certainty that, in Durito's words, ”THE organization, THE
method, THE caudillo" (92) were correct and did not need to
be challenged. The certainty that came with vanguardist
hierarchies was easy—the swarm was expected to follow its
keeper obediently, and everything would work out well in
the end. This ease required no intellectual struggle from
the swarm itself, and therefore these master narratives had

sad endings: such vanguardist certainties ended up as

218

 

tyrannies, ended up suffocating the swarm’s political
activities. By breaking the lock on this cage and choosing
to cultivate what Wagner and Moreira call the
”nonauthoritarian foundations of democracy," Durito and the
Zapatistas tell new narratives that are directly opposed to
the narratives masters tell. In doing so, the Zapatistas
reinterpret the swarm's radical democratic project. The
catch is that they invite us to tell our own stories as
well. The questions, then, are: what narratives will we
tell each other? How might these stories nurture radical
democratic movements? How can these narratives motivate new
protagonists to join grassroots movements? What stories
will these new protagonists tell? How will these
protagonists’ narratives reshape grassroots politics?

While on one hand, it may be frustrating that the
Zapatista literature does not provide a master narrative to
memorize and repeat, it is also liberating: rather than a
command from above, we find an invitation to what the
Zapatistas call “a collective network of all our particular
struggles and resistances, [m] the network [of] all of us
who resist" (Our word is Our weapon 117). The shape of this
resistance, like the features we see in the horizon, are
not always clear; without a master, the details of the

narrative change, and the end is always in doubt.

219

Nevertheless, as Noam Chomsky argues, it is of ”critical
importance"
that we know what impossible goals we’re trying
to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the
possible goals. And that means that we have to be
bold enough to speculate and create social
theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while
remaining very open to the strong possibility,
and in fact overwhelming probability, that at
least in some respects we’re very far off the
mark. (The Chomsky-Feucault Debate 45)
Horizons, like vistas, are things we walk toward, but never
reach. As we walk toward these impossible goals, what was
in the foreground shifts to the background; previously
blurry landscape comes into focus. Twisting paths into
those vistas and horizons take us places we did not think
we would go; sometimes the path is blocked, forcing us to
take new paths. We may find, as George Orwell argues, that
Whitman’s ”’democratic vistas’ have ended in barbed wire"
(Essays 219). We may find tools to dismantle that wire.
These new vistas and horizons leave us with a problem
that is always to come: how might we continue to imagine
narratives about new democratic horizons? What might

Durito’s ”democratic space[s]" look like? Might they look

220

something like the ones Whitman suggested in Democratic
Vistas, with democratic control over even rigidly
hierarchical organizations like the armed forces? How might
literary study expand upon Chomsky’s call for thinking
about ”democratic control in the workplace and in the
community"? As Durito admits, these are difficult
questions, ones that need "brilliant and forceful analyses
(said without sarcasm)" (91).

While the horizons are always in the distance, the
means of walking into them might be just a bit clearer. ”We
do not believe that the end justifies the means,” Marcos
writes. “We define our goal by the way we choose the means
of struggling for it. [m] Sometimes this yields results and
sometimes it doesn’t. But it satisfies us that, as an
organization, we are creating an identity as we go along"
(”The Punch Card and the Hourglass" 76). It could also be
said that the Zapatistas are imagining new democratic
horizons as their narratives go along as well, albeit
horizons that are still, and will always be, in the process
of imagination.

The stakes implied by the swarm’s new vistas and
horizons are significant: much depends on continued efforts
to tell stories that reinterpret grassroots politics and

imagine deeper, more meaningful ideas of democracy. The

221

question remains whether democracy will be interpreted in
hierarchical or horizontal ways; the effort to reinterpret
grassroots politics as radical democracy will take a great
deal more research and a great deal of struggle. To
reinterpret grassroots politics and radical democracy will
entail experimenting with new and unknown ideas, testing
them, improving them, and using them in many different
contexts. There are many other questions to consider:
problems of ecology, problems of identity, problems of
globalization, problems in the workplace and the community.
There are questions of literary study itself: how might
this reinterpretation of grassroots politics influence the
readings of texts and widen the archive of texts considered
within literary studies? These new narratives may provoke
the literary imagination. They also may be the most radical
aspects of grassroots politics, and the aspects that

motivate our further research.

222

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