The People On The Hill

Excerpt From Howard Fast's 1946 Essay On Literary Classism

In a May 7, 1946 New Masses article, titled "Toward People's Standards in Art," the then-20th-century proletarian writer Howard Fast indicated why most of the U.S. literature created by U.S. upper-middle-class writers, published by the subsidiaries of global corporate media conglomerates or praised by U.S. upper middle-class academic literary critics doesn't generally accurately portray the reality of U.S. working-class lives or promote the liberation of U.S. working-class people from institutional classism in the 21st-century:

"What shall we say of the standards of the literary esthetes who rule the highest level of our `modern culture?' I think the best one can say is that in most cases they have no standards at all. Their approach to art has taken on all the aspects of a retreat from life, and avoiding life as carefully as they do, they have a moral fear of putting standards into operation.

"They are at a point now where they are entranced by sound. They worship style. Like children, they cavort at cunning phraseology, and their idea of a high intellectual achievement...is the creation of a second-rate pun. They have adopted a canting and formalized literary phraseology, and they are endowing it with a sacredness very like the ritual of a church. They delight in the resultant confusion because confusion does not place upon them the responsibility of sifting facts for the truth. They are enraged if, perchance, progressive critics should point out that Swinburne wrote revolutionary odes; they value only that part of Swinburne which is sound without meaning, and they value Shelley that way, and Keats too.

"One cannot deny that these critical czars have vast material means at their disposal. Each week they coin hundreds of thousands of words of so-called criticism, and with that criticism they establish their own hierarchy of the great, both in practitioners of art and in works of art.

"But are their great the people's heroes? ...I think not...We have accepted too uncritically too many bourgeois idols...

"We today, in the midst of the struggle, must not forget that the bulk of modern writing is not created by the working class or by friends of the working class. We very often have reason to remember that much of it is created by enemies of the people, enemies of progress, enemies of all that we believe in, and by and large those enemies control the critical standards of today.

"Are their standards our standards? Can they ever wholly be our standards? Today, our standards and their standards occasionally will coincide--on a Walt Whitman, for example. But what was the attitude of those people toward Walt Whitman in his day, during his life? They attacked him and slandered him, and even today you cannot read critical journals without finding regular attacks on Whitman, supercilious and snide commentaries on Whitman, and scholarly investigations of the `dubious worth' of Whitman.

"Did these makers of standards approve of Uncle Tom's Cabin?...Did they not malign Dreiser and say that he was a buffoon presuming to art? Did they not condemn Jack London to the hall of mediocrity? Did they not fairly successfully expunge Frank Norris from our literary memory? Did they not deride Upton Sinclair, the early Sinclair whose socialist novels were so magnificent?...

"What is their attitude toward the social writer of today? What will be their attitude toward the social novelists of tomorrow?

"We cannot depend on them, on their concept of artistic truth or worth...,Before art can be wholly a weapon for us we must understand art, both the art of the people and the art which the enemies of the people create and use in one fashion or another to keep the people in subjugation. And, so long as we confuse these two, the people's art and the art created by the enemies of the people, so long as we bow to the decadents, to the mystics, to the cheap literary frauds, art will not be the weapon we want it to be, and the great people's art...will not come into being...

"The art we embrace comes from the people and, at the same time, it is a gift to the people. The people are not grateful for gifts from fascists and other enemies of mankind. Such gifts are not art by our standards... Only death or the seeds of death are sown by such gifts. Even as the people must some day destroy the last seeds of fascism, so must they reject `art' which leads away from life and toward stagnation.

"And when they do so, a new art will emerge, a people's art, judged by people's standards."

Poor Whites--Bob A. Feldman

The Workers All Wealth Create

 

Fight The Corporate State -- Bob A. Feldman

Israel's Historic Rothschild Dynasty Connection Revisited: Conclusion

Rothschild & Co.office location in Silicon Valley/Palo Alto/Bay Area of Calif.

In the 21st-century, the mainstream corporate media monopoly conglomerate news departments and most of the U.S. power elite foundation-subsidized alternative media groups are generally not interested in mentioning much the historic role that members of the Rothschild Dynasty played in supporting the Zionist movement’s settler-colonialist project in Palestine; that eventually led to the violation of Palestinian democratic self-determination and national rights, and Palestinian human rights, especially following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. But in addition to having a fully-staffed office in Tel Aviv, the Rothschild Dynasty’s Rothschild and Co., not surprisingly, also has some business offices in the United States in the 21st-century.

A May 7, 2017 press release of Rothschild and Co., for example, announced the “opening of new San Francisco Bay Area office;” and noted that “the Bay Area office” was “the seventh Rothschild office in North America.” In this same May 7, 2017 press release, Rothschild Global Advisory Managing Partner and Head Robert Leitao is also quoted as saying:

“We have been serving clients in the San Francisco Bay Area for some time, and the opening of our office there will allow us to strengthen our team, ensuring that our clients continue to have access to the best people and advice. The U.S. and North American markets are a strategic priority for our firm, and this announcement demonstrates our commitment to the region. Following the opening of our Chicago office last year and the success of our team in Los Angeles over the past few years, Silicon Valley is another key piece in our plan to build out the business in the U.S.”

And a May 24, 2017 press release of Rothschild and Co., for example, also noted that because of “expansion of Rothschild’s Global Advisory business in North America Rothschild Global Advisory” was “further strengthening its North American business by announcing four more senior hires.” The same 2017 press release also quotes Rothschild Global Advisory Managing Director Peter “P.J.” Moses, “who heads the” Rothschild and Co.’s “Consumer team in North America,” as saying that “Over the past 3 years, our North American franchise has experienced tremendous growth as clients have come to appreciate the differentiated advice and insights that we bring along with the uniquely coordinated reach of our global platform.”

Palestinian Workers: Still Economically Exploited and Nationally Oppressed In 21st-Century

In the 21st-century the Rothschild and Co. of the Rothschild Dynasty, that historically funded the Zionist movement’s settler-colonialist movement in Palestine, may be expanding its “Global Advisory” business operations in North America in recent years. But in Palestine, the economic exploitation of Palestinian workers in the economic and political system established by the Zionist movement’s State of Israel continues in 2020. As, for example, a Joint Open Letter from the European Trade Union Network for Justice in Palestine and other European labor movement organizations to the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation {{ITUC], Mrs. Sharan Burrow, on June 11, 2020 noted:

“…We would like to express our deep concern about the situation of Palestinian workers in Israel and illegal settlements…While the situation of Palestinian men and women, especially workers, is difficult after decades of Israeli colonization and occupation, the Covid-19 pandemic makes it even more acute. Before the lock-down, nearly 130,000 Palestinian workers in the West Bank were forced to work in Israel or illegal settlements to survive. As in the rest of the world, the pandemic shows that these exploited workers are in fact doing work that the Israeli economy depends on. That is why, despite the current health crisis, the Israeli State has asked 40,000 of them to remain working in Israel, while Israelis remain confined to their homes…”

In addition, according to a December 31, 2018 Middle East Monitor article, a 2018 report of Israel’s National Insurance Institute “found that the percentage of Palestinian citizens of Israel living below the poverty line is almost double the national average, pointing to a huge disparity between Palestinian and Jewish Israelis:” and “found that 47.1 per cent of Palestinian-Israeli families live below the poverty line, versus a national average of 28.4 per cent..”

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`Walk With Me For Many Miles' lyrics

A protest folk song and love song from early 1980s that describes what U.S. working-class people observed, experienced and felt in that decade of rust belt de-industrialization (lyrics)
Walk with me for many miles and share the scenes I pass through And watch with me the many trials and rest with me beneath the moon. And see the mad in uniform and hear the lies assault your brain And listen to the people's songs and notice all the rage and pain. Walk with me past tent cities and factories now all shut down Through towns where workers once could sing, past rebels beaten to the ground. And see the runners all alone and hear the selfish words spoken And listen to the people's poems and notice all the strong women. Walk with me near prison walls and outside courts with no mercy And hear the oppressed call and march with those who are not free. And see the wast and big machines and mansions and brutality And listen to the people sing in anger at the mindless greed. Walk with me and share our love and fill the air with your beauty And watch the aimless spirits hug, so unaware of those in need. And see the inequality and hear all the hypocrisy And listen for the workers' deeds and fight on for democracy. Walk with me through forests green and share our thoughts and deep feelings And kiss me in the evening breeze and love me 'till the new world rings.

`Nina At Work' folk song

`At The Welfare Department' protest folk song

`I Miss You' folk song

`Poor Whites' protest folk song

`Lookin' For A Job' protest folk song

`The Workers All Wealth Create' protest folk song