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Book Review of ‘Salt of the Earth’: Workers’ spirit honored through a red lens
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- 09 July 2021 403 hits
"Whose neck shall I stand on to make me feel superior, and what will I have out of it? I don't want anything lower than I am. I am low enough already. I want to rise and to push everything up with me as I go."
These are the words of Rosaura Quintero, a working-class woman, zinc miner’s wife and one of the central characters in Herbert Bieberman’s film Salt of the Earth (1954). Based on a true story the film, which captures the valiant struggle of zinc miners on strike and the leadership of their wives, contains powerful lessons about the power of anti-sexist and anti-racist class fightback against the exploitive mining industry. However, few know the dramatic struggle that was waged to make the movie and to show it to broader audiences. That relatively unknown struggle is also the subject of Biberman’s book Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film.
The book reveals that Salt of the Earth, finished in 1953,was made by film workers who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era witch hunt due to their pro-communist politics or affiliations. The Hollywood film industry, not content with driving these workers out of jobs, did everything it could to stop Salt of the Earth. Despite the film’s radical working-class politics and the film maker’s ties to communism, both works conceal the most important lesson for the working class: workers need communism in order to rise above the misery of capitalism as Rosaura’s quote poignantly illuminates.
The story of getting this film made is ably told by Herbert Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten sentenced to jail for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Hollywood began by refusing to give Biberman's Independent Productions Corporation (IPC) a union crew. This was done through Roy Brewer, International Representative of the stage workers union (IATSE). Brewer built his entire career as a professional anticommunist in the labor movement (the Wikipedia article on him makes this crystal clear).
When IPC got a union crew anyway, Hollywood got Congressman Donald Jackson to denounce the filmmaking, starting an intense campaign to stop it. The lab that had developed the film refused to finish the job. In addition, armed vigilantes made their appearance, as Biberman describes:
From the other side of the ranch house a shot was fired. But it was not our guard; it was too far away. We waited. Another shot was heard coming from what seemed to be our side of the gully.
Besides describing the courageous struggle of individual miners and filmmakers at the height of McCarthyism, this book also shows how the rotten politics, infected with reformism and landslides back into capitalism, of the old Communist Party led to the sellout of our class struggle.
For example, the only thing Biberman and the leaders of the miners union could think to do was call in the state police and dissolve in slobbering praise to the independent businessman who stand up to monopoly capitalism, like this:
America's chances for a democratic future were indeed good. America possessed one very meaningful attribute. It was so diverse in the composition of its human inhabitants . . . It also possessed businessmen who believed business was a way of making a living and not a cider-press to squeeze sovereignty out of a people. And it had a few businessmen who were so independently individualist that you attempted to organize them into a conspiracy at the peril of your life.
The main weakness of Salt of the Earth, both the movie and its accompanying book, is that it purposely omits the communist message that workers will lose anything they win unless they fight for and win communism. Reformist politics will never free the working class.
Although the book is riddled with rotten politics it does not negate its good points. In addition to the inspiring struggle just to make the film, the book also explains how the film was made, and this is perhaps the most important thing the modern communist moveщment can learn from it
The script for the movie was written by Michael Wilson, a blacklisted screenwriter. Wilson read the script to the miners, whose lives were laterportrayed in the film, and they made changes in it to make it true to themselves. For example:
Then he discussed another scene in the treatment. Just before the strike began Ramon, with part of his last pay check, knowing it was to be the last in quite a while, bought a bottle of whiskey. The men had no time to comment on the scene before the women objected. 'Our husbands are not drunkards,' they said. 'That goes out too,' said Mike. 'You see,' he said to us, ‘these are perfectly legitimate dramatic scenes and illustrations. In [a] script in which you are after a drama for its own sake, they'd be perfectly able. But we're dealing with something else.’
The miners were also given authority over the shooting of the film. What evolved was а film collective, made of professional Hollywood filmmakers and zinc miners. The collective was made up of Black, Latin, Native American and white workers. Biberman acknowledges the leadership given bу the mostly non-white miners. Speaking of Mrs. Molano, who plays Mrs. Salazar in the film, he writes:
One day, when I was rather beaten with problems, she came to me and said, “When you feel discouraged in your life afterwards, you come to us. We will always give you courage. Because we always have our backs against the walls, we have never а way to go but forward. We cannot afford to be downhearted. You will finish the picture.
In addition to the story of the struggle to make the film, the book also includes the screenplay, and stills from the movie.
When read with a critical eye—with a willingness to learn from an important struggle by communists of the past, to learn from their mistakes but also from their courage, antiracism, and perseverance—it is an inspiring story.
Herbert Biberman. “Salt of the Earth”, The Story of a Film. Illustrated edition. Harbor Electronic Publishing, 2003 (originally Beacon Press)
As CHALLENGE goes to press on July 7, President Jovenel Moïse of Haïti was assassinated. At this time very little is known about the killers or why they took that action. The rumor mill has postulated that it was the U.S. DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) that carried out the killing, with armed agents speaking English and Spanish demanding that Moïse go into exile and when he refused, opened fire. Or maybe it was paid mercenaries by the opposition politicians. What we do think is that this seems to be a dogfight between the pro-government ins and the outs who want their share of the capitalist pie. No good will come of the situation for the workers and students of Haïti, as armed thugs in and out of uniform control the streets and the country remains under martial law. As the New York Times put it, “…the police and security members can enter homes, control traffic and take special security measures and all general measures that permit the arrest of the assassins…It also forbids meetings meant to excite or prepare for disorder.”
Moïse was supported fully by the OAS (Organization of American States) and the U.S. imperialists. We also know that Moïse was almost universally hated by the Haïtian masses, who had risen up in the tens of thousands against his regime many times, charging corruption in the PetroCaribe scandal, attempts to rewrite the Constitution to officially cancel the Senate (one of the two houses of Parliament), and to absolve the President of any crimes that may be committed in office, etc. Moïse has also overseen rampant gang violence that is terrorizing the working class and others, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic (there are no vaccines in Haïti and people are sick and dying mostly at home because there is virtually no medical care available).
What we do know is that only last week, well-known anti-Moïse Haitian journalist Diego Charles and activist Antoinette Duclaire joined a long list of people who were assassinated for their political views. And finally, what we do know with any certainty is that only by building the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party(PLP) can this life that capitalism/imperialism has wrought in Haïti ever be changed. Our Party is struggling with friends and supporters to join us. Now is the time to stand up.
New Jersey, July 6–What’s in a name?” asks Juliet in Shakespeare’s famous play Romeo and Juliet. Well, actually, quite a lot. What you call something has a lot to do with how you think about it.
Some words, like racist or sexist slurs, do not encourage thought but simply harden the dehumanizing psychological categories that enable the bosses to divide and rule. Other words we use, though, can open up new ways of thinking about the world—or, conversely, set limits to our understanding. While a phrase like “great power conflict” obscures the causes of wars, for instance, the word “imperialism” encourages us to analyze the root economic causes of the violence causing mass impoverishment, uprooting, starvation, and murder.
Especially when millions of people, many of them young, are becoming fighters in movements for “social justice,” the vocabulary communists bring to the struggle can play a crucial role in challenging the popular liberal beliefs—vigorously promoted by the main wing of the U.S. ruling class–that often end up tying people to the capitalist system that in many ways they oppose.
Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party, who are active with the Radical Caucus (RC) of the Modern Language Association (MLA), initiated what we’re calling the “Keywords Project.” Our goal is to analyze the potentialities and limitations embedded in terms that are significantly influencing the theory and practice of the emerging generation of worker and student organizers. (This discussion focuses only on words in English; clearly other languages pose issues that are both overlapping and distinct.)
A few of the many terms we are investigating are: “abolition”; “intersectionality”; “racial capitalism”; “white supremacy”; “privilege”—and “social justice” itself. While these and comparable terms are often treated as simply referring to what we all know, actually they contain many ambiguities and unstated premises. Their meanings are not transparent and self-evident.
Some currently popular terms, like “abolition,” convey a militant call for change. But…abolish what? Can the system of racist mass incarceration be demolished, for instance, without the corresponding overthrow of the capitalist state? Other terms, like “white supremacy,” target inequality. But this term also implies that whiteness is the source of oppression, and that all white people are oppressors: the foundations of racialized hierarchies in capital’s drive to exploit and divide the working class are obscured.
And can “social justice” be anything but a pipedream so long as a small number of the super-rich control governments and economies around the world?
The “Keywords Project” has been conducting a series of reading groups and is aiming at a mini-conference on September 11, as well as a session at the MLA Convention in January 2022. The goal of the project is not to separate language from action, but—through a series of “reports from the field”—to integrate theory with practice.
The RC also plans a series of workshops aimed at training graduate students—currently engaged in a new wave of class-conscious protests—to organize unions and other forms of anti-capitalist activity. The struggle over words is not “academic”; it is vitally important to the shaping and guiding of the class struggle.J
If you are a reader of CHALLENGE who would like to participate in any of the reading/discussion groups organized by the “Keywords Project”, you are encouraged to get in touch with us by writing to
Reds ‘showed horror, provided hope’
The following is a letter from a comrade who attended the kickoff of our annual summer project on July 4th. For more details on the summer project, read Page 8.
A historian, a tenant, and a community member were some of the people who spoke with erudition and experience about the reality of living under capitalism and continuously striving for something better in spite of a system designed to exploit and repress.
They showed the horror and yet provided hope from their experiences and knowledge. It was a beautifully powerful example of what communism is and how easy we can make it happen. Even though we have mountains of oppression to overcome, the fire of community shines bright.
*****
Tupelo ‘79: projects teach communist lessons for life
I was one of the participants in the 1979 Tupelo Summer Project described in the July 7 issue of CHALLENGE.
There are so many lessons to draw from any summer project. Here are two that were pivotal in my development as a communist. When Floyd Banks, the leader of our security team, was arrested, he was held on a very high bail. Worse, the judge used the excuse that he was from Texas not Mississippi to order that local residents of Tupelo must post the deed to their homes as bail instead of cash. Having one of the few Black workers in our base who even owned a home take such a risk in the midst of the intense racist and anti-racist struggle that summer required an amazing act of courage.
Robert was a young Black worker who had been drawn to our Project from the very beginning. He was on the march that was attacked. I’ll never forget driving with him to his grandmother’s house to ask her to post the bond. An elderly woman in a wheelchair due to “sugar” (diabetes) she had never met any of us. Robert knelt by her chair asking her to trust him and us. She did it and signed over her home. Their courage taught me the importance of base building and the absolute trust we must earn in the working class.
The other lesson was about the internal development of new leaders that arises in the course of intense class struggle. There were at least 24 members of the Project living in two one-bedroom apartments in Tupelo. We were working intensely, always on the go. But there were stresses developing. A meeting of the Project was called to examine how to correct our work. A quiet college student pointed out that in our busy schedule we had failed to meet in party clubs. We had buried the fight for communism in the reform struggle. That weakness comes through in the article from the Project in CD. Club leaders were selected and they rose to the occasion. Some of those club leaders are still in the Party today!
The lessons of these Summer Projects remain with us in all our future work.
*****
Red on radio: need for working-class history
I have had some success in explaining communist politics on radio talk shows without being cut short because, I believe,I try to be relevant to the discussion while challenging capitalist politics.
My method of participating is absorbing past comments and ideas and writing down how they relate to present workers’ struggles and communist ideas, much as our comrades do when selling CHALLENGE or talking on the job with workers. This tactic can help us to be prepared with ideas in future discussions.
A recent show featured a history teacher’s discussion about education and I said I’d like to discuss subjects not being taught in history classes. For instance for most of human history people lived in collective, egalitarian communities where everyone was needed and cared for regardless of ability. Why only in the last 10,000 years, in ruling class and capitalist societies, were workers used as slaves, serfs, commodities, exploiters and killers? And was the U.S. Constitution’s main purpose to forever deny any chance of working class power and was racism invented to keep workers divided? Also was the Tulsa Massacre part of a worldwide capitalist attack on revolutionary workers, led by communists during the 1920’s and 30’s?
I concluded that working people need to organize with communists to destroy capitalism and the profit system to create an egalitarian society free of racism, sexism and wars.
*****
Top imperialist gangsters recently gathered at their annual Group of 7 (G7) summit in Cornwall, England in hopes of reasserting the declining U.S.-led liberal world order. The U.S. Big Fascist servant Joe Biden scrambled to slow the rise of arch imperialist rival China.
When the world’s greatest thieves make future plans, workers must remain vigilant. The G7 global gangsters’ planning meeting is a small window into the savage nature of global imperialists. When the U.S. rulers advertise their toxic reunion as an effort to defend “democracy” and “renewed cooperation” to “solving the world’s problems,” they are negotiating war plans. That is the only way exploiters can resolve their imperialist contradictions.
They will use workers to fight and die for the bosses’ profit system. When we organize as a class for ourselves, through the international Progressive Labor Party, we can turn the guns around on this rotten system and smash it once and for all. With that power, we can build a communist society to meet our class needs.
U.S. empire in decline
Against the backdrop of the G7, capitalism is festering in its decay—nauseatingly high Covid-19 deaths; global vaccine apartheid; for-profit wars in Ethiopia, Palestine and Syria; and cyber attacks from Russia. The G7 is a bloc of capitalist countries—the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom—that formed in 1975 to counter the OPEC oil embargo. In its prime, during the late years of the Cold War, the G7 leveraged its members’ economic power against the already capitalist Soviet Union. The group is run by finance capital, the main wing of capitalism worldwide. Today, it’s a shell of its former self.
The G7 reunion, touted as an opportunity to reassert their top dog status, was really a confirmation of a U.S. empire in imminent decline.
Salvaging the house that former president Donald Trump set ablaze—when he blocked the G7’s climate and trade goals, destroyed the Iran Nuclear deal, and alienated U.S longtime allies—is upsetting the U.S. rulers’ imperialist aims.
Grappling with China’s rising clout
The summit illuminated the many contradictions facing the global ruling classes. Biden’s Build Back Better World (B3W) is a pie-in-the-sky plan to counter China’s imperialist influence by providing an alternative to the decade-old Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (see box). This shaky plan for global infrastructure development reveals the U.S.’s desperation to match their rival China for top dog position. However, other imperialists are wary of backing an unreliable declining U.S. empire against a rapidly rising China.
Biden’s G7 trip was intended to put the EU at ease. Yet, the bitter split within the U.S. ruling class—Small Fascist “America First’’ and the Big Fascist liberal imperialist wing—continued to sow doubts. How can the U.S. roll out the B3W when it can’t even pass its own infrastructure bill at home?
The EU bosses, also dealing with internal rifts over Brexit, are distrustful of the U.S. ruler’s return to the world stage. Unswayed by Biden’s Big Fascist liberal credentials, the EU bosses were left questioning whether the U.S. can get their act together, and avoid another Little Fascist takeover in the next four years. The U.S. Big Fascists effectively failed to rally its old, trusted allies against China.
The G7 cosigned the B3W project and glibly denounced China’s human rights abuses, but the EU bosses cannot break off their affair with China: “ [France’s President] Emmanuel Macron said…‘I will be very clear: The G7 is not a club hostile to China…’” (CNN, 6/14). The ruler’s summit brought their weakness into sharper focus.
Moving closer to World War III
The main takeaway from the G7 forum is that an empire in decline is at its deadliest. From the Civil War to World War II, history has shown a falling power does not go quietly. The forces of history are stacked against the U.S. as it struggles to manage its decline, moving the world closer to a U.S.-China war.
Biden’s National security Advisor Jake Sullivan argued that the strategy is “don’t try to push towards confrontation...but be prepared to try to rally allies...toward...tough competition….in the security domain as it is in the economic and technological domains” (NYT, 6/13).
Following the G7 summit, China increased military aggression against Taiwan (Newsweek, 6/15). Nevertheless, the U.S. ruler’s find themselves wholly unprepared to win a war with China. The U.S. empire’s battle readiness depends on their ability to build the fascist movement they desperately need. Jim Crow Joe Biden’s passing of Juneteenth as an official holiday (see backpage) and his calls against police murder and anti-Asian violence are superficial attempts to win loyalty needed to build a multiracial military willing to fight and die for U.S. imperialism. Trusting the rulers is a march to our certain death. These are the same rulers who disregarded millions of workers’ lives throughout the pandemic and deprived us of life-saving vaccines in the name of profit.
Capitalism’s future is bleak, but not all is doom and gloom for our class. Every crisis reveals our potential power. At the height of the pandemic, we waged war on the rulers’ profitdemic and organized to serve our class.
From striking amazon workers to healthcare workers around the world fighting for safe patient and working conditions—
From Los Angeles to Brooklyn workers fighting landlords and the courts from evictions—
From Haiti to the Bronx workers setting up mutual aid networks to provide for unemployed, disabled, and elderly workers—
From Colombia to Minnesota workers rebelling against the ruler’s fascist police forces—
Our fightback amid the crisis reveals that the working class is the class fit to run society. As the U.S. ruler’s decay accelerates the ruler’s are prepared to sacrifice millions in their next global crises in the march up to World War III, the Progressive Labor Party calls on the international working class to turn the ruler’s impending world war into a class war to overthrow their crisis-ridden system. The future belongs to us, and only communism can guarantee it. Join the PLP. Fight for communism.
