National Negro Department,
Socialist Workers Party
On Gone with the Wind
(December 1939)
Originally published in Socialist Appeal, 30 December 1939.
Republished in Scott McLemee (ed.), C.L.R. James on the “Negro Question”, Jackson (Miss.) 1996, pp. 51–53.
Transcribed by Daniel Gaido.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Eighty million Americans visit the cinema every week, and in the course of the next year or so, perhaps ninety million will see the film Gone With the Wind. Millions will get from this film their most powerful impression of the greatest civil war in history and one of the decisive turning points in modern history.
What will they see? At the very start we are informed that the film is a tribute to the “grace and gallantry” of a vanished civilization “the age of chivalry.” The South was a “land of grace and plenty” (our quotations are literal). The Civil War took place, God knows why: as far as can be made out from the film, owing to the hotheadedness and chivalrous gallantry of the Southern cavaliers; and the Southerners lost because, blinded by their excessively martial qualities, they did not notice that they had no munitions factories.
Of the slaves themselves, old O’Hara tells Scarlett, “You must be firm, but you must be gentle, especially with darkies.” And Negroes, not only the house-servants but the field hands, are all faithful unto death. Negroes are all right – so long as they are kept in their places. Of the old Negro mammy, Rhett Butler says that there are few persons whose respect he so much values. When Scarlett O’Hara sees the faithful Negro man-servant in tears, she says, “I can stand anybody’s tears but yours.” When Ashley remonstrates with Scarlett, about exploiting white convicts, she retorts that he wasn’t so particular about owning slaves. Ashley replies that slavery was different: we treated them well, and besides, he intended to free all his. When Scarlett is attacked by louts, a white and a Negro, it is a Negro, a former slave, who rescues her at great danger to himself.
Of the carpetbaggers, robbers of the South in Southern mythology, we get a brief but emphatic indication with a particularly gaudy and fat-looking carpetbag to symbolize Northern rapacity. And, glory be to the God of History, the Negro ex-slave who rescues Scarlett is thankful to leave the South because he has had enough of these carpetbaggers.
Incredible as it may sound, the decisive result of the war, the abolition of slavery, is not directly mentioned in over three hours. The South would not have been able to stand that. And for good reason. As an article by Robert Birchman on Southern agriculture (in the December 1939 issue of New International) shows, the essentials of Negro slavery still remain over large parts of the South.
The picture is a stimulus to the old prejudices and hatred which were the natural outcome of chattel slavery and which must continue on the basis of the sharecropping system of today. Writing in the Amsterdam News of 23 December 1939, St. Clair Bourne notes “the fond illusions of the days of slavery” reinforced in many Southern whites since they have seen the picture at the Atlanta premiere. Bourne reports that a Negro girl who takes care of two little white boys, one of them eight and the other ten, noticed that on the morning after the premiere they acted strangely to her. On being questioned, the elder said he had overheard his parents, who had seen the film, discussing slavery and the Civil War. This small boy continued, “You’d be a slave too, if it wasn’t for the Yankees. And then my Daddy wouldn’t have to pay you ...”
Even in the making of this picture, the natural resentment of the Negroes showed itself. The Pittsburgh Courier claims that the script as originally written was even more offensive to the Negro people and it was only because of the Courier agitation that some of the offending parts were taken out. The Amsterdam News, 18 December 1939, states that during production many Negroes, irritated at the role that was attributed to their people, refused to go on with their parts; there were quarrels and even fist fights.
The historical statements and implications of the picture are false from the beginning to the end. A few thousand slaveholders in the South exploited the millions of slaves, while a few thousand others bred slaves for the slave market as today people breed horses and dogs. If house servants were often treated kindly, the majority, the Negroes in the field, were worked to death and terrorized in order to be kept in submission. By the middle of the nineteenth century the slave system was bankrupt. But the slaveowners wanted to establish their domination over the country in order to shape its course for no other purpose than the maintenance of their rotting and reactionary system. The Northern industrialists, in that age progressive, crushed the South because the South was a check on capitalist production. In the war 220,000 Negroes fought on the Northern side.
That was the Civil War. It is the duty of all revolutionaries wherever possible to point out the gross historical falsifications of this picture, and to do all in their power to counteract the pernicious influence that it is likely to have on the minds of the people, who, knowing no better, may be tempted to accept this as history.
J.R. Johnson
On Gone with the Wind
(January 1940)
Originally published in Socialist Appeal, 13 January 1940.
Republished in Scott McLemee (ed.), C.L.R. James on the “Negro Question”, Jackson (Miss.) 1996, pp. 53–55.
Transcribed by Daniel Gaido.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Stalinists are now whipping up a furious campaign on Gone With the Wind. Their methods are an exact replica of the methods of the Moscow bureaucracy. When Stalin decides to shoot some thousands of Old Bolsheviks, or to denounce Germany (or to praise Germany), or to invade Finland, there suddenly appear in the Moscow press letters, resolutions, exhortations, praising the particular move, extolling it as the highest wisdom, and pointing out that this is exactly what the Soviet workers have been waiting for. Similarly with the Communist Party in every country.
On its issue of 5 January 1940 the Daily Worker prints nearly two columns of letters, of which the following quotation characterizes the tone:
“Well, I simply can’t hold it back any longer. Your excellent and Marxist handling of that smelly film Gone With the Wind was sparkling ...”
The whole Stalinist community, we are made to understand, is simply boiling with rage at the slanders against the Negro people embodied in the film.
Gone With the Wind, however, is not the first film that deals with Negro conditions in the Old South. A little knowledge will be sufficient to show that, behind all this noisy parade, the Stalinists, here as elsewhere, are deceiving the Negro people, and serving exclusively the interests of their paymasters in the Kremlin.
Some ten years ago, when the Moscow bureaucracy had not yet entirely broken with the revolutionary doctrines of Lenin and Trotsky, it invited some Negroes to Moscow to make a film which would depict lynching and the other features of Negro life in America. The company was selected and reached Moscow. American capitalism, however, realizes that, although it can deceive the people at home, it would be difficult for it to pose abroad as the friend of democracy if its treatment of Negroes were exposed in so popular a medium as a film. Washington was at that time engaged in negotiations with Moscow over recognition of the Soviet government, and made it quite clear that if the Russians made any such film, it would be regarded as a serious obstacle in the way of an understanding.
The Moscow bureaucracy reacted in characteristic fashion. It capitulated before the capitalists. It sought to deceive and browbeat the workers. The Negroes who had gone to Moscow were told that it was impossible for the Soviet production studios to find time and room to make the film. When some of the Negroes protested, several attempts were made to frame them as drunkards, disorderly persons, etc. in order to discredit in advance any protest that they might make when they returned home. In all this the Daily Worker, which now cannot contain its rage at Hollywood’s crimes, played its usual obedient and servile role as a tout for the Kremlin’s crimes.
Among the Negroes who went to Moscow to help in the making of the film was Langston Hughes, the Negro poet. Hughes is one of the most pertinacious fellow-travellers of the Stalinists. He is, or was, vice-president of their stooge organization, the American Writers Congress. He has represented the Stalinist point of view at international congresses in Europe. Some of his works are published by Stalinist publishing houses. When the Moscow bureaucracy tried to impose its lies on the Negroes who had gone to Moscow to make the Negro film, he accepted the “explanation” entirely and cooperated with the Moscow bureaucrats, to smash down those who refused to accept this transparent lie.
But the Kremlin’s policy changes, and with it changes everything, from the clothes the Stalinists wear to their attitude to Negro films. Not so long ago Hollywood wanted to produce a film on the Old South. Way Down South portrayed the old Southern slaveowners as fine and gallant gentlemen, and showed the slaves as being contented with their slavery. One of the writers of the script was no other than Langston Hughes. Of this the Stalinists, who must have known it, had nothing whatever to say.
Now the line of the Kremlin changes once more. Their reviewer, Howard Rushmore, wrote a favorable review which, in this opinion of the author of this column, was infinitely less iniquitous than the actual preparation of a pro-slavery script. But the Stalinists become consumed with virtuous rage, dismiss him, and are now carrying on their phony campaign. This deceives nobody who knows them.
In 1929 it was the policy of Moscow to carry on a vicious campaign against all capitalists and every section of the labor movement which was not Stalinist. That was their notorious “third period.” In accordance with this line, they were prepared to make the film exposing American capitalism. As soon, however, as the capitalists gave any indication that they opposed it, the Moscow bureaucrats, as usual, capitulated. In 1934, on the other hand, they began their new policy of support to the “democracies” against the fascist imperialists. During this campaign, behind all their noisy talk, they capitulated on every front to what they called the “democratic forces.” Roosevelt was their hero, Eleanor Roosevelt their heroine, and their chief care was to penetrate as far as possible into those elements of “democracy” which they thought might be useful in furthering the alliance between America and Russia. They shoved the Negro movement as far as possible into the Negro National Congress.
With the Hitler-Stalin pact this “fourth period” came to an end. Stalin now wishes them to build as much opposition as possible in the camp of the “democracies” in order to assist the victory of the Hitler-Stalin camp. Therefore they rediscover the revolutionary instincts of the Negro people; they begin a great drive in Harlem. And they tear their hair and gnash their teeth at the crimes of Gone With the Wind.
To conclude, the film is dangerous and must be exposed and boycotted. But infinitely more dangerous, and therefore to be exposed and boycotted to an infinitely greater degree, is this mischievous manipulation of Negro militancy in the interest of the Moscow bureaucrats.
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