Marxist Moments

Concentrating the Mind Wonderfully

 

Let me instance the case of General Ulysses S Grant (1822-85) lieutenant-general in charge of the Union forces in 1864-5 after a number of significant and decisive victories in the southern theatre and ultimately the military victor of the American Civil War. He was subsequently the 18^th President between 1869-77. Brilliant and focused in military command, Grant was, however, an inept president whose administration became a byword for corruption, though he was not corrupt himself.

After his presidency, he became bankrupted over financial affairs: in those days there was no presidential pension and Grant – now dying of throat cancer - sought to save the situation by writing his autobiography. It turned out to be one of the most incisive and readable autobiographies in history and became a triumphant best-seller, though Grant himself did not survive to enjoy the fruits of his literary success.

Until the Civil War Grant was a failure on almost all counts. Graduating bottom of his class from West Point military academy, whose superintendent was Robert E Lee, Grant fought indifferently in the Mexican War of 1848-9 after which he left the army and tried his hand unsuccessfully at farming and storekeeping. By contrast his rise as an officer in the army he re-joined on the outbreak of the Civil War was meteoric, if not without occasional setbacks. When Lincoln (‘I like this man, he fights’) finally placed him in charge directly against Lee in the closing stages of the war Grant turned out to be the only Union general Lee could not outfox or outfight. Though unlike Lee, Grant was entirely non-charismatic, even prosaic by comparison.

Prosaic or otherwise, there is no doubt about Grant’s greatness as a general. And in a special sense the American Civil War was ‘his’ war. Though reluctantly on his part, it has to be said, Grant spilt a hell of a lot of blood in his time. Yet without him the United States might have gone on drowning in it in hopeless stalemate.

After the war was over life went downhill for him even as he reached the pinnacle of American power. And then just on down and down – until the autobiography. By re-fighting the war in his memoirs, Grant regained his former iron resolution. Saving his family from destitution became the new purpose of what remained of his life, into which he poured his latent and elusive genius.  Yet again Grant ‘rose to the occasion’, as we might say. The backwoods life and footling war of his earlier years, and then the dispiriting corruption and cynicism of the post-Civil War period seem to have brought out an old enemy of lethargy in him. But he had an instinct for what mattered and did not fail that. One spark flew up from within his doleful presidency. By the late 1860s white southerners, including those who formed the Ku Klux Klan in 1868, were terrorising the southern countryside with the brutal murders of thousands of blacks in the dead of night. President Grant acted decisively by sending in the Union army to disperse and destroy these gangs, including the Klan, which did not rise again until 1915. It was his one signal service as a president-general, so to speak.

We have here a figure who needed certain circumstances and a certain kind of power of command to gainsay an irresolute nature – against the odds. Without the Civil War Grant would have ended his days as a man without purpose or even a unifying identity. He would have died a nonentity. This looks like a vivid historical demonstration of the fact that without purpose to unite the will, irresolution and ‘do-lessness’ prevail.

I am reminded of old Grant, curiously enough, when I look at the state of political polling in this country, the UK, at the present time.

Quite frankly, no one knows how to interpret the confusing signals coming from views polled on Brexit, Remaining, Single Market-till-whenever. Although adhering to Brexit out of respect for the referendum result and knowing that swathes of Labour may turn away if the Party sneaks in some kind of Remain as party policy, Jeremy Corbyn in acceding to a transitional Single Market has been lambasted as a treacherous hypocrite by the Daily Mail (itself a strong – even demented – advocate of Brexit) and at the same time is criticised by the Communist-orientated Morning Star for going wobbly on Brexit, for the Star is in the somewhat awkward position of being on the same side as the Mail regarding Brexit, though for entirely opposed reasons. Both the main political parties are in a state of confusion and internal dissension over this issue.

This merely reflects the state of public opinion taken as a whole. In other words, if we do not ourselves lead, we fall into emotional and ideological disarray. We believe contradictory things at the same time, because to us individually it really doesn’t matter what we think. And that is because, as a people, we do not hold the reins in deciding what to do in the face of the problems afflicting both this country and late capitalism in general. There is only one alternative to leading, and that is being led. But if we seize the opportunity to get to grips and decide – in forceful discussion with each other – on the plan of action to do what is to be done, lethargy of this collective divisive kind will evaporate against an all-too-necessary purposeful act, with each doing what each can and wants to do. Through purpose, power and means, our instinct for what matters revives. As it is, we have become so used to being led that through the polls we have infected our ostensible leaders in their ability to lead. And so capital, not people high and low, makes the running.