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News & Letters, June 2001
Review: THE REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISM OF FELIX MARTIN (ISAAC WOODS)
News & Letters, 2001. 107 pp. $8.
I never met Isaac Woods, but some part of me knows him. I grew up in the
rural Ottawa Valley near the Quebec border--in Ozarks North if you will.
Like Isaac, I learned to shoot a gun at a young age, and like him as well I
began to work before becoming a teenager. We both went to one-room schools.
I never thought that we were poor. Hauling drinking water from a dug well
and wash water from the creek were chores, but like the outhouse, were
never thought of as being signs of poverty. I imagine Isaac Woods felt much
the same. My father never made any money, and the little money he did make
went for taxes. However, like Isaac Woods, I had the bush to explore, a
creek to swim in, fish to catch, and fields to dream in. Like Isaac, I have
often wished that all the children of the world could experience the Huck
Finn childhood I had.
There was little in my upbringing to suggest a future as a Marxist and
labor historian. Something happened as I grew up, however. Like Isaac Woods
I encountered the machine, the time clock, the owners and managers who
didn't seem to have much regard for anything other than the bottom line.
Like Isaac, I read, I listened, I experienced.
Unlike Isaac Woods, however, I have been fortunate enough to get a full
university education, and to be teaching in university. But reading THE
REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISM OF FELIX MARTIN (ISAAC WOODS) made me stop and
think about where I am now and how I got here. I have long been an advocate
of the self-emancipation of the working class, and Isaac Woods reminded me
of both its necessity and its possibility.
He reminded me that I do not have to be a thinker who used to be a worker,
but a full human being capable of fighting for a society in which the two
elements of my being can be integrated, thereby breaking down the
capitalist division between mental and manual labor. He reminded me of just
how much socialist intellectuals have lost faith--without reason--in the
capabilities of the working class.
Being descended from a long line of farmers, I was especially struck by his
November 1982 article about the crisis on the farm. I had never really
linked the impact of technological change on farmers with the impact of
technological change on workers. Isaac does this brilliantly, and in
relation to Marx's categories of dead and living labor. This wonderful
linking of the rural and urban experiences with Marxist theory speaks to
Isaac Woods' power as a worker philosopher.
I realize that what I am about to say may not be accepted by everyone who
knew Isaac Woods, but I believe that it is important to link him to the
republican tradition in America. I don't mean with what republicanism has
become, or with the hypocrisy of Jefferson, who could speak with such
brilliance about republican ideals on the one hand, and own slaves and call
for the extirpation of native peoples on the other.
There was a time, however, when there was a genuine commitment in American
thought to a freedom based on the ability of individuals and families to
live by the fruits of their own labor, to have the necessary independence
from bribery and corruption to be able to participate freely and
intelligently in the public life of the society. A free association of
independent producers, I think Marx called it.
This was a freedom that Isaac Woods wanted for all, not just white males.
Listen to him describe the world of his childhood: "We produced what we
wanted, and for how we wanted to live." Did Marx or Jefferson ever say it
better? In a century blighted by the twin pillars of social democracy and
state capitalism, have we ever been given a better idea of what to strive
for in envisioning the socialist future?
As a rural boy I have spent much of my life in urban Canada listening to
the stereotyping of rural people as racists and rednecks. I guess I was
more ashamed of my background than I had realized. Reading THE
REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISM OF FELIX MARTIN, appreciating what Isaac Woods
from the hills of Kentucky was able to do in his lifetime, was an
inspiration, and has given me renewed energy to carry on in some small way
the wonderful work that was his life.
--Peter Campbell
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