A new journal, Geese Magazine, has arrived on the scene with its first issue, Storming Heaven. A promissory title. Having read through its articles and thought over its contents, I offer this short reply.
I did consider a longer polemical response to its varied criticisms and proposals for the communist movement. Many of Geese‘s criticisms I agree with, though I don’t agree with a single one of its proposals, save for the general idea that the communist movement (which I contend is the democratic movement) needs to be raised to a higher level in national politics. Though who actually opposes that?
Following this, in a short fit of insanity, I contemplated responding in the form of a prosaic fable, wherein Saul of Tarsus, blinded by the vision of a goose on the road, is sent into a fit of contemplation over the points laid out in the magazine. Only once he reached the point about the communist movement adopting pragmatism as a navigational compass to discern the truth north of Marxism (don’t laugh! or maybe laugh), the scales fall from his eyes and revealed to our Saul are not the walls of Damascus, but the walls of Dis.
Saul, now we all see, was instead to be Dante traversing the circles (articles) of Hell, and his Ananias, now Virgil, was to be very the goose who blinded him. The goose floats upon the river Styx. Absurdity was meant to ensue, though I didn’t work out the details. Brutus, Cassius, and Judas were to play the parts of Browder, Hall, and Foster, Dante would have scolded Virgil upon seeing the underside of Lucifer, demanding to know what Heaven there was to storm there, et cetera and so on. I foresaw how perfect my responses to issues two and three were to be in my future recastings of Purgatorio and Paradiso, but alas.
Perhaps this short story would have been quite entertaining had I chosen to write it, but I’m too shambolic to pull off such a stunt with any grace. That I was driven to such insanity in the first place, trying to grapple with the ideas laid out in the ganderous rag, might lead one to think I was rather affected by them. In truth I was so driven trying for affection. My insanity manifested for want of the promised new substance that was not to come.
What I actually take away from Geese is their fundamental agreement with the program of the Communist Party USA, their progenitor. What sets Geese apart from Joe Sims’ party however, is a decidedly greater intellectual rigor in their political inquiries. As above, I concur with their criticism of the Communist Party’s economism!
So below, there’s no new ground to tread. To suppose that a higher intellectual foray along this over-tamped path would generate something new is just sophistry. In other words, the criticism of the popular front is the criticism of Geese.
Here or there already, I’ve seen readers put that what Geese really desires (perhaps in the “super-political” sense) is a Communist Party USA which is open to factions, of which they would constitute one anti-economist trend. If one rejects the popular front, then the only real take away this mislocation of Paradiso offers is a lesson-by-example about factional and programmatic unity. Herein is a tendency that aligns in toto with the program of a party, but tactical criticism of that party has driven them out.
My conclusions, as slogan:
Read Geese, sans Ananias, sans Virgil, and judge for yourself if you have found Heaven hanging under the maws.
No to the liquidation of the coming Democratic Socialist Party into the “national political life” of the country.
Yes to the open factional struggle over tactics and program inside the Communist Party USA.
-Drake Berkman
