The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath ​

“Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on.”
~William Weston Patton, “John Brown’s Body”​

Some excerpts from British press coverage of the American Civil War

“Amidst allegations of voter intimidation and rampant ballot-stuffing by Bolshevik militants, wide scale rioting has spread in major cities across the United States of America. Reports have indicated large scale property destruction, as well as instances of ‘lynch law’, a foul American practice once predominantly exercised in the mob murder of American Negroes, being applied to men of the affluent classes. This has become severe enough that the American president, Herbert Hoover, has been forced to call up the militia to suppress this insurrection.”

Front page story, The Daily Telegraph , 3 February 1933

“There are those among our intelligentsia which have cautioned that the Empire must tread lightly towards the new regime in America. One can only guess as to their motives; while a great deal have undoubtedly been seduced by Communistic treachery, there are some who may yet be won over. Their genteel abhorrence to the violent restoration of order by MacArthur’s triumphant party is understandable, though we must obviously support such regrettable necessary measures to prevent the collapse of American civilization into the proletarian abyss. I am confident in predicting that MacArthur’s sensitive Conservative leadership will bring about a revitalization of the nation which would silence all protests about the means of this rebirth. The minor misdeeds of individual members of the National Salvation Front would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon America.”

Lord Rothermere’s editorial, The Daily Mail , 21 March 1933

“The Conservative Party, under the leadership of Stanley Baldwin, have announced their decision to withdraw from the National Government, citing irreconcilable political differences with their partners in the National Labour and National Liberal parties. Conservative members of His Majesty’s Government have resigned, and it is expected that Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald will petition His Majesty to dissolve parliament and call new elections. While Baldwin’s address made no explicit connection between his party’s resignation and the Prime Minister’s refusal to extend credit or permit arms sales to the White Government amidst increasing reports of large scale atrocities following the suspension of their constitution in early February, the record of parliamentary debate on the issue leaves no other conclusion.”

The Times , 24 April 1933

“One hears endlessly of the collapse of ‘English civilization in America’ and the rise of ‘Oriental barbarism’ with each new victory by Popular forces. Among the ‘respectable’ voices, each cable from across the Atlantic brings only more doom and gloom. But for the British labourer, the news can only be met with cheer. In the guild halls and workshops, there is no self-deception. We do not laud murderers and despots keeping men in bondage at the point of the bayonet. But perhaps most importantly, the decisive revolutionary spirit of the American worker has dethroned the conservative orthodoxy within the Labour Party, who have devoted their efforts to managing the excesses of capital for capitalists instead of advancing the cause of the workers. The half-measures of Labour’s timid governments have failed. Collaboration with class-enemies has proven disastrous to the real situation of the workers and their families. The building of an authentic socialist economy, based off the lessons of the American experience, must be the central aim of the entire Labour movement.”

James Maxton’s opinion-editorial, Daily Herald , 29 April 1933

“Amidst the very public failure of his bold aims to restore order ‘within two months’ of the beginning of hostilities, the White Generalissimo MacArthur has moved troops from American colonial possessions to the mainland with the hopes of bolstering his beleaguered war effort. This is made difficult by the increasing reports of partisan warfare within the White strongholds of the American South. As the Governor of Mississippi reported, the White cause was ‘bleeding from a thousand cuts,’ made by ‘Negro brigands.’”

The Manchester Guardian, 2 May 1933

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April Showers Bring May Flowers

The Constitutional Restoration consensus which the members of the Provisional Government had pledged to had already been a dead letter before March was over. Cracks had been appearing beforehand; the collectivization of industry and agriculture had begun in a bottom-up, spontaneous fountain of revolutionary enthusiasm. When necessary, the Workers Party had excused these acts as matters of local military necessity. The logic did pass a certain muster, as the sovietization of industry ensured a quick clearing of logjams, as workers took to their tasks with considerably enhanced enthusiasm. It also served to remove internal White resistance in Red controlled areas, a process that came to be assisted by Antifa “public safety commissions” that dealt out justice by shillelagh and revolver.

The internal faction war within the Party reached its decisive moment on 30 March. Three of the most influential surviving theoreticians in the Party met in private, agreeing to form a triumvirate to push the party into seizing the moment. The Provisional First Secretary William Z. Foster, and the Party Communications Director John Reed were already stalwarts of the Party’s left-wing. The major coup was the third member of the triumvirate, Party Secretary-General Earl Browder, a staunch Muscovite centrist by reputation, who moved dramatically to the left as the Civil War ensued.

The Party began to discreetly encourage greater measures of revolutionary confrontation under the guise of “military exigency.” They quickly found that both industry and partisan forces were eager to advance the revolutionary cause. By the time the triumvirate finished exerting its control over the Party, relegating the remnants of the Party right to “consultation” roles within the apparatus, the whole of Antifa’s chain of command, which were nominally under the direction of the pluralist Provisional Government, de facto answered to the Workers’ Party. Even the other political militants, such as the DFLP’s Minutemen, were able to be pulled away from the Restoration consensus.

Elsewhere, the cauldron of discontent began overcoming MacArthur’s attempts to crack down, boiling over into a second front in the American Revolution. Emboldened by the news of Patton’s Bonus Army mutiny, the sailors of the US Pacific Fleet stationed in San Francisco began their own mutiny.

Under the loose leadership of naval aviator John S. Thach (he is said to have remarked he didn’t so much lead the mutiny as he was the one running fast enough to stay at the head of the pack), the sailors holding the Bay Area under martial law revolted against their officers. In the early morning hours of 4 April, a cadre of Red sailors struck simultaneously on each of the battleships anchored in the San Francisco bay. Assisted by sympathetic junior officers, and with the majority support of the crews, the sailors raised the red flag of revolution over the battleships at dawn. With the battleships’ mighty guns no longer holding the city hostage, the revolt spread like a wildfire. Similar mutinies spread to the lesser support vessels in the fleet, and the naval security detachments in the city proper began to raise the red flag. The city’s powerful trade unions turned out in force, sweeping aside the weak White paramilitaries trying to hold the city.

By dusk the next day, the city of San Francisco was under complete Red control. The mayor and much of the city council had been arrested as enemies of the people, and soon the radio stations began broadcasting a revolutionary call to arms. The West coast was quickly ablaze with revolution, aided by similar mutinies by Naval personnel in San Diego and Seattle. The California countryside became a fierce battleground between Red and White militia groups.

The opening of the second front on the West coast came too late to stop the repatriation of troops from the Philippines. It did, however, mark a decisive turning point in Soviet attitudes towards the American revolution. While the Soviet government and the Comintern centre did not go so far as to issue any censure to the American communists, behind closed doors the reports of revolutionary agitation were viewed as needless adventurism. The official Comintern line, as handed down by Stalin, was to fight for constitutional restoration, and avoid risky gambles that could damage the whole international communist movement. But with the success of the West coast uprisings, Stalin finally committed to seeing the American revolution through to the end. In a historical irony, Stalin’s foreign policy began to mirror his rival Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution.

Arms, resources and volunteers began to be channeled to America, especially the torrents of German communists fleeing the embryonic Nazi regime. The Comintern’s International Brigades brought new reserves of manpower to the Red cause in the Civil War, and Communists in the European trade unions succeeded in pushing the unions to thwarting attempts by the bourgeois governments of Europe to provide material support to the White regime.

As April drew to a close, General Marshall’s Army of the Mississippi laid siege to Chicago. His forces clashed with Antifa workers’ militias along the suburban outskirts of the city. And though he seemed mere inches away from closing his grip around the revolution’s throat, his troops encountered Chicago’s defenses the same way a car encounters a brick wall.

He did not attain the easy walkover that he had anticipated based on the experience of Springfield. Instead, his already shaken troops encountered intense resistance from an armed urban mass of men and women who dug in and did not yield ground cheaply. The Antifa defenders effectively used commandeered civilian vehicles to move reserve troops into breaches as fast as they appeared. And the uncontested air superiority he had enjoyed was now challenged by a motley group of mutinying airmen and Soviet volunteers.

On 24 April, Marshall’s offensive ground to a near standstill. His soldiers, ill-equipped and poorly trained for streetfighting, measured their gains in blocks, and then buildings. The defense of the city was bolstered by the arrival of the first proper Red Army divisions, the 19th “Black Cat” and 25th “Lightning” Infantry. In the brutal melee, casualties mounted on both sides. On the following day, Marshall abandoned his previous restraint, and set his artillery to a round-the-clock shelling of Red positions in the city. But the heavy masonry of the city’s buildings proved more resilient to 75mm artillery shells than anticipated, and even bombed-out structures still made effective bunkers.

26 April saw the first bouts of mass desertion in the Army of the Mississippi. This did less to sap the effectiveness of Marshall’s forces than it bolstered the strength of Antifa’s ranks. The troops who defected had been the ones ideologically opposed to the MacArthurite agenda, and had been subtly sabotaging the White cause by inaction and pantomime.

Even by conservative estimates, his forces were inflicting two casualties for every one they received, but still Marshall found himself no closer to taking the city after nearly a week of hard fighting. With MacArthur breathing down his neck, demanding from on high that the centre of Red subversion be taken “immediately,” Marshall had no route available but forward. A protracted siege of the city would be nearly impossible; the Solidarity federation taken control of nearly all American shipping on the Great Lakes. Their allies on the Canadian side had taken decisive strike action, grinding transport to a halt at the mere whiff of any material support being extended to the White regime. Chicago could thus be continually resupplied, with men and materiel, from unassailed Red strongholds in Wisconsin and Michigan.

In spite of a month’s worth of setbacks, the National Salvation Front regime in Washington was in a triumphalist mood. MacArthur’s chosen stooge Raymond Moley, appointed by a rump reactionary Congress now controlled by a motley group of Republican collaborators and a patchwork of elevated far-right political nobodies, was already busy planning reforms to come with the New Order after the end of this little bout of civil unrest. MacArthur himself did little to discourage him, or the Congress enacting the NSF’s domestic agenda as though the Civil War were already won. But the cracks in that confidence were beginning to appear. Patton’s Bonus Army handily suppressed a White militia uprising in central Pennsylvania.

A hundred bleeding sores had opened up across the prairie and the mountain west, as railworkers stopped the passage of transcontinental cargo. Farmers and miners clashed with Baldwin-Felts stooges for the control of the towns. The banners of the Platformist Black Brigades galloped across the plains, running the cattle barons and corrupt sheriffs from the towns. Troubling reports came in from the Canadian consulate that the junta forces in Helena were being routed, and a Montana Soviet Socialist Republic was being established in Butte.

Chafee’s Army of the Prairie drifted in and out of contact, and at times the reports that were received made little sense. The DFLP party militant, the Minutemen, had created a bleeding sore all along the Mississippi River, and now seemed to have St. Louis under their control. There hadn’t been any good news in the development of the Mexican Civil War in over a month, and now there were rumors that Villa’s revolutionary forces in the North were set to link up with Zapata’s in the South. In spite of intense fighting, Pittsburgh and Toledo were still holding.

Yet still the General of the Armies of the United States remained irreproachable on his dais. Chicago would soon be rolled up, and with it one of the revolution’s hearts would be excised. And he was confident that the 2nd Marine Division landing on Long Island would accomplish the same for the second heart in New York.

The illusion came crashing down on 28 April. M1927 cavalry tanks from Chaffee’s 1st Cavalry Division began cutting into the Army of the Mississippi’s logistical tail. Too fast for howitzer crews not trained to deal with tanks, yet well armored enough to be safe from frontal attack from the Army of the Mississippi’s few 12.7mm heavy machine guns, even the light Christies proved to be an unstoppable force of nature. The heavier M1925 infantry tanks followed in the wake of the light tank’s spearheads, mopping up makeshift bunkers and fortified trenches.

The Red Army’s 101st “Nike” Infantry, recently mobilised in Grand Rapids, launched a sweeping hook through northwest Indiana, pincering the Army of the Mississippi on its eastern flanks. The spearheads pushed deep into the rear area riding on Detroit’s finest. Marshall’s headquarters became a pandemonium, and even all of his careful skill was not enough to turn the tide. The already faltering morale of his troops collapsed, and mass surrenders began to occur.

Spurred on by the arrival of the almost legendary Smedley Butler, the 1st Marine Division securing the bulk of the Atlantic fleet was beginning its own mutiny at the Norfolk Naval Station. As for the Marines on Long Island, the rot began to spread as worker militias augmented by a volunteer group of Soviet Naval Infantry and Marine veterans encircled them in Queens, New York. Utilising their control of the subway system, the New York Red Guards rapidly reinforced the sectors under assault, forcing the White Marines into an ever-shrinking pocket.

As news of the reversals of fortune began streaming in, MacArthur found himself fixated on a single cable. Patton’s stinging betrayal was now festering. The man he once considered his protégé had taken command of the defense of Pittsburgh, forming the Eastern Combined Antifa Group from the Spartacus League’s Nat Turner Column, the Pennsylvania Red Guards, and the Bonus Army. Worse, the tide seemed to be slowly turning in the city.

Only when news came in that General Marshall, finding his headquarters surrounded, had surrendered, did MacArthur begin to appreciate the world of trouble he was in.

Battle of Chicago Wikibox by@Asami