A Marxist I Q for Revolution/Independence Day AKA The Fourth of July by Norman Markowitz

by: Saturday 30 June 2012

Marxist IQ for July 4th

This July Fourth is coming on Wednesday, which is not good for either workers or consumer goods retailers since it undermines the traditional long  weekend.  But while reactionaries may forget and/or distort our revolutionary heritage we remember, like the YCLer who in the late 1930s rode a horse in front of the headquarters of the reactionary Daughters of the American Revolution(DAR) on the anniversary of Paul Revere's ride, with the sign "The DAR Forgets, but the YCL Remembers"

That of course was around 75 years before Sarah Palin's strange comment on Paul Revere's ride, which would have blown the minds of both the DAR and the YCL

1.        Marxists  long have seen the American revolution as

a.       A revolution for individual freedom

b.      A revolt of slaveholders to protect slavery

c.       A bourgeois democratic and anti-colonial revolution

d.      A great workers and farmers peoples revolution

 

      2.     Some of the first workers parties in the world were founded in the 1830s in

a.North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia

b. New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania

c. Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine

d. Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware

     3.      The first generation of Marxists and socialists in the U.S. were

              a. German and other refugees from the revolutions of 1848

              b. survivors of Paris Commune

              c.  exiles from the 1905 Russian Revolution

              d.  participants in the Boston Tea Party

      4. During the great depression Communists mobilized millions around agitational slogans: which of

            the following was not a Communist agitational slogan

a.       Black and White: Unite and Fight

b.      Communism is the Democracy of the Twentieth Century

c.       We want a piece of the action

d.      Work or Welfare

 

      5.  Marxists and Communists in the U.S. have long believed that that the great lessons of July 4 can be found most in

     a. The writings and life of Alexander Hamilton

     b. The writings and life of Tom Paine

     c. The writings and life of Thomas Jefferson

d. The Writings and Life of Benjamin Franklin  

 

Answers for last week’s Marxist IQ

  1. b
  2. a
  3. d
  4. b
  5. c

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments

  • Note error, Russell was British.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 01/17/2013 4:58pm (12 years ago)

  • Brother Sean Mulligan, having excellent marks, may not have read 4. carefully (smile).
    5. is interesting. Paine or Franklin-both leading and profound revolutionaries of the time and geniuses far ahead of their time. As the question is cast-we have"long believed"- that says nothing about accuracy-anyway, Paine has been referenced by many, many socialists and controversial religious, American styled Deists-he(Paine) doing much to develop Deism on an international scale-for instance, our fiery African American "first African American socialist"Peter H. Clark(grandson of William Rogers Clark)made much use of the writing of Thomas Paine, in many struggles.
    I choose b.-(it perhaps is the brother professor's correct answer (and it is brother Mulligan's)).
    Now, mine is the genius among geniuses, Ben Franklin.
    All scientists almost have to be writers, but not all writers are professional scientists. We have Franklin-who the co-polymath Marx cited(it has appeared in our PW)as having advanced a labor theory of value far ahead of his time, along with a wave theory of light, theories in meteorology, electricity, oceanography, and concepts in cooling.
    From Imhotep, to Pythagoras, to Zhang Heng, to Al-Jahiz and our own Americans, Russell, Robeson and Du Bois, there are polymaths. The polymaths, along with the indispensable masses and masses of people, have and teach great lessons, one of the greatest of which is
    the July 4, 1776 Revolution, the lightning and thunder of the system of Atlantic Revolutions, with Du Bois we include the earthquake of the Haitian Revolution, with the leader, the great Toussaint L'Ouverture-the last would be first-letter d (smile).

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 07/11/2012 2:56pm (12 years ago)

  • 1. C

    2. b

    3. a

    4. a

    5. b

    Posted by Sean Mulligan, 07/02/2012 4:44am (12 years ago)

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