I couldn't put it down. An excellent account of the Soviet Union's 1930s industrialization from inside, and from a person who wanted to build socialism in earnest. John Scott details the ups and downs, the victories and the failures. Peasants from families who have always been illiterate getting education, healthcare, and employment. Almost everyone studying their asses off in evening classes.
The Stalin era was remarkable in that it seemingly had a radical pioneering spirit as well as the brutality of the Purges and forced labor systems at the same time, coexisting. He made an absolutely harrowing speech about the necessity of Russia industrializing faster than any country had ever industrialized before so that it would not be destroyed. Even though many people died in the chaos history may have vindicated that choice since Hitler would end up invading, and it is thanks to the brute force and incredible pace of industrialization that the Soviet people had a snowball's chance in hell.
A rock and a hard place. The Soviet Union had to either do 50 years of progress in 10 years or it would be wiped from the face of the earth. Workers struggled to learn new professions, and sometimes had to steal railway ties for the fireplace to keep warm. They died in workplace accidents, falling from icy scaffolds or inhaling toxic fumes, always keeping a stash of hard crusts to eat when the bread didn't show up. Inside, a blast furnace is operated by men some of whom saw a staircase or a hammer for the first time less than a year prior when they immigrated in from their traditional life on the steppe.
Schools operated programs in minority languages for workers from a wide range of cultures. John watches NKVD officers at night visibly exhausted from the intensity of their workload purging political enemies, many real and many imagined. John's American friend remarks that "they will catch some spies, but it will take generations to undo the paranoia being created."
Really informative and interesting. It opened different topics that I now want to do further reading on, particularly the potential fishing-based cradle of civilization in Peru, dynastic struggles and politicking in the Maya realms, the Milpa farming system (the one which uses 10 or 15 species rather than just 3 of them), etc.
As a Marxist (I tell you in the interest of full disclosure) I also found liberal ideology including American settler-nationalism somewhat peppered in. It was strange how Charles could gush about how America represents freedom at the end of the book after doing such a deep dive on the massive loss and destruction of many hundreds of peoples which formed the foundation of America, after explaining that the "pilgrim" colonists of New England were robbing graves and thanking God for clearing the land for them by the epidemics which ran ahead of the colonists.
Charles decides "Indian" is the best cover-all term for indigenous people everywhere in the Americas, rather than indigenous, aboriginal etc. It's weird, but I leave it to our indigenous colleagues to decide the validity/ appropriateness of this.
We have got to be together. We have got to be in a position to tell the pig that if he doesn't serve the food when it's warm and pass out the scouring powder on time, everybody on the tier is going to throw something at him, then things will change and life will be easier. You don't get that kind of unity when you're fighting with each other. I'm always telling the brothers that some of these whites are willing to work with us against the pigs. All they got to do is stop talking honky. When the races start fighting, all you have is one maniac group against another.That's just what the pigs want.
Blood in My Eye is a riveting, jarring program of the necessary goal of revolution and socialism in the United States - the destruction of the capitalists and the pigs in armed struggle. In his dedicated study and analyses he has found that the United States is a paper tiger too, and it is NOT invincible as "leftists" will say, but a system with defined weaknesses. George Jackson tells the reader that the system which relies of Law & Order must be fought with Perfect Disorder.
Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.
George Jackson put it beautifully in the text.. Rest in Peace.