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Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism
From inside flap: This edition of Prairie Fire is published and copyrighted by Communications Co. in response to a written request from the authors of the contents. We have attempted to produce a readable pocket size book at a reasonable cost. We are printing as many as fast as limited resources allow. We hope that people interested in Revolutionary ideas and events will make more and better editions possible in the future. (And that this edition will fill to at least some extent the request made by its authors.) From title page: The publisher's copyright is not intended to discourage the use of material from this book for political debate and study. It is intended to prevent false and distorted reproduction and profiteering. Aside from those limits, people are free to utilize the material.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
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282 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 6, 2022
Tom Hayden's Port Huron Statement is considered to be the most coherent political statement of the New Left, but after reading this statement, written in 1974, I think that Port Huron is inferior to it in terms of how much insight it gives into the protest movement, its objectives and failings.
Written by well-known Weathermen Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Jeff Jones, and Celia Sojourn, this statement reflects the progress, or lack of such, of the student radical movement from the establishment of the Weather Underground in 1970 until four years later. Deriving its name from an old saying, "a single spark can start a prairie fire," it presents the modified political ideology of the Weather Underground.
By 1974, the radical activists have committed many mistakes, lost their own members, and alienated the general public. In a rare moment of introspection and self-criticism, the authors analyze the political and collective efforts of their organization and express their desire to open "a dialectic among those in the mass and clandestine movements," emphasizing that the American public should take their words "as seriously as we do, study the content and write and publish their views of the paper . . ." This proves that the disconnection between the Weather Underground and the people on whom the success of their revolution relied had grown so large that even the Weathermen, who were the last to admit their own failings, were ready to openly acknowledge that their strategy had been ineffective.
Their statement revolves around the idea that the protest movement had to develop a new strategy that would fight for a correct ideology and win people over by developing an analysis of real conditions, building principled relationships to Third World struggle, and accumulating practice in the struggle against imperialism. However, what this statement actually demonstrates is that the student radicals still did not manage to achieve an in-depth understanding of what was wrong with their actions and ideology. Instead of learning from past mistakes, they solidify and expand their commitment to their previous beliefs.
As they themselves emphasize, their political statement is aimed to appeal to Communist-minded people and to those who carry the traditions of the struggles of the past decade. In this case, it is meant to reach a limited circle of Americans, predominantly former SDS members and other "sisters and brothers who are engaged in armed struggle against the enemy." Although they note that their activities were not as successful as they wanted them to be because they had not taken into consideration that many people who wanted to support them were not ready to become terrorists and radicals, the Weather Underground leaders still do not give up on their idea that improvement can be brought about only with armed struggle, through a revolution.
Even in 1974, after the tragedy of the Greenwich Townhouse explosion, they are not looking for an alternative to their militancy and are ready to march down the road of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh, but unlike them, they do not strive to adapt their tactics to the particular conditions of their country. America was no Cuba and no Vietnam. In the high-tech, urban society in which they lift, the guerrilla warfare that they engaged in was nothing more than annoying vandalism.
"Mass struggle and movements are not mere spectators in revolutionary war; armed struggle cannot become a spectacle." This quote from the political statement is a great instance of the Weathermen's not following their own wisdom. The protest movement in general was not meant to be a spectacle, but the actions of the Weather Underground and other militant groups were what turned it into one.
Almost everything that the radical activists did, from the bombing of the Pentagon to the robbery of a Brink's armored car, was useless and showy, and meant to attract attention. Somewhere along the way the Weathermen forgot that their objective had been to correct social and political wrongs, to fight against racism and the involvement in the Vietnam conflict, and focused on making sure that everyone knew how cool and brave, and different they were. It was already a spectacle when, during the student takeover of Cornell on April 18, 1969, the president of SDS spoke about serious issues like civil rights and racism with a snake wrapped around his neck. From then on, it did not get better.
This being said, the Weathermen make a lot of good points about imperialism, such as: "The empire feeds on war. War is necessary for expansion and colonial control, but unsuccessful and unjust war loosens the imperialist’s hold over the home base. As peoples reclaim their lands and their resources, imperialism is forced to extract more wealth from everywhere it can— where it still can reach in the Third World, from its capitalist allies and competitors, and from the US people." Their observations demonstrate that they were knowledgeable young people. However, they hindered their own understanding by clinging to extremes and rebelling for the sake of it.
PRAIRIE FIRE should be read by anyone who is researching the Weather Underground. In the activists own words, it "was rewritten four times and collectively adopted as the political statement of the Weather Underground." This book offers insight into the development of their ideology and strategy, and explains why they did not manage to become successful.
Written by well-known Weathermen Bernadine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Jeff Jones, and Celia Sojourn, this statement reflects the progress, or lack of such, of the student radical movement from the establishment of the Weather Underground in 1970 until four years later. Deriving its name from an old saying, "a single spark can start a prairie fire," it presents the modified political ideology of the Weather Underground.
By 1974, the radical activists have committed many mistakes, lost their own members, and alienated the general public. In a rare moment of introspection and self-criticism, the authors analyze the political and collective efforts of their organization and express their desire to open "a dialectic among those in the mass and clandestine movements," emphasizing that the American public should take their words "as seriously as we do, study the content and write and publish their views of the paper . . ." This proves that the disconnection between the Weather Underground and the people on whom the success of their revolution relied had grown so large that even the Weathermen, who were the last to admit their own failings, were ready to openly acknowledge that their strategy had been ineffective.
Their statement revolves around the idea that the protest movement had to develop a new strategy that would fight for a correct ideology and win people over by developing an analysis of real conditions, building principled relationships to Third World struggle, and accumulating practice in the struggle against imperialism. However, what this statement actually demonstrates is that the student radicals still did not manage to achieve an in-depth understanding of what was wrong with their actions and ideology. Instead of learning from past mistakes, they solidify and expand their commitment to their previous beliefs.
As they themselves emphasize, their political statement is aimed to appeal to Communist-minded people and to those who carry the traditions of the struggles of the past decade. In this case, it is meant to reach a limited circle of Americans, predominantly former SDS members and other "sisters and brothers who are engaged in armed struggle against the enemy." Although they note that their activities were not as successful as they wanted them to be because they had not taken into consideration that many people who wanted to support them were not ready to become terrorists and radicals, the Weather Underground leaders still do not give up on their idea that improvement can be brought about only with armed struggle, through a revolution.
Even in 1974, after the tragedy of the Greenwich Townhouse explosion, they are not looking for an alternative to their militancy and are ready to march down the road of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh, but unlike them, they do not strive to adapt their tactics to the particular conditions of their country. America was no Cuba and no Vietnam. In the high-tech, urban society in which they lift, the guerrilla warfare that they engaged in was nothing more than annoying vandalism.
"Mass struggle and movements are not mere spectators in revolutionary war; armed struggle cannot become a spectacle." This quote from the political statement is a great instance of the Weathermen's not following their own wisdom. The protest movement in general was not meant to be a spectacle, but the actions of the Weather Underground and other militant groups were what turned it into one.
Almost everything that the radical activists did, from the bombing of the Pentagon to the robbery of a Brink's armored car, was useless and showy, and meant to attract attention. Somewhere along the way the Weathermen forgot that their objective had been to correct social and political wrongs, to fight against racism and the involvement in the Vietnam conflict, and focused on making sure that everyone knew how cool and brave, and different they were. It was already a spectacle when, during the student takeover of Cornell on April 18, 1969, the president of SDS spoke about serious issues like civil rights and racism with a snake wrapped around his neck. From then on, it did not get better.
This being said, the Weathermen make a lot of good points about imperialism, such as: "The empire feeds on war. War is necessary for expansion and colonial control, but unsuccessful and unjust war loosens the imperialist’s hold over the home base. As peoples reclaim their lands and their resources, imperialism is forced to extract more wealth from everywhere it can— where it still can reach in the Third World, from its capitalist allies and competitors, and from the US people." Their observations demonstrate that they were knowledgeable young people. However, they hindered their own understanding by clinging to extremes and rebelling for the sake of it.
PRAIRIE FIRE should be read by anyone who is researching the Weather Underground. In the activists own words, it "was rewritten four times and collectively adopted as the political statement of the Weather Underground." This book offers insight into the development of their ideology and strategy, and explains why they did not manage to become successful.
January 27, 2023
Prairie Fire undergoes a class analysis of the United States, the history and state of revolutionary forces and posits ways socialists must organize to achieve liberation. The self-criticism of their own work i find extremely generative. I don’t think the weather underground’s analysis is original, rather they are pulling together and restating arguments made by the Black left, indigenous left and third world left. This book is extraordinarily engaging and easy to read and most importantly still incredibly relevant. I recommend anyone interested in social change to read this book and take their arguments seriously.
Want to read
July 27, 2016This is Black History Month 2014, and (among other subjects) I have been reading about the Black Panthers, especially Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, whom the FBI and Chicago Police murdered on December 4, 1969. The Weather Underground, who wrote Prairie Fire, escalated their level of violence after those murders.
The Weather Underground's manifesto Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism and Jane Alpert's memoir Growing Up Underground are on my TBR list, but they are not priorities during Black History Month (there's so much else to read and there are so many movies to watch for BHM). However, in reading about Clark and Hampton today I ran across this commentary about Prairie Fire, which lowers the book on my TBR roster, and which also mentions Jane Alpert:
Source: The New York Times: "Seeds of Terror". (November 22, 1981), page 6:
By 1974, however, the Weathermen demonstrated that they were fast losing touch with the real world: 25,000 copies of a book-length document called Prairie Fire, actually printed with gloved hands to avoid fingerprints, were released from the underground and it was without doubt one of the most boring political manifestoes ever written. The war was finally ending, Richard Nixon was being booted out, and the last thing anyone wanted to read was a paean to black terrorism combined with a tired lecture on dialectical materialism.
That same year, one Weather Underground fugitive, Jane Alpert, gave herself up, and in the days while she was waiting to be sentenced, she chose me, by this time a reporter for The Times, to speak with. She told me of her travels underground and of how Weathermen fugitives lived joyless, determined lives, existing on yogurt and endless political debate, spending the night here and there in sleeping bags.
The Weather Underground's manifesto Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism and Jane Alpert's memoir Growing Up Underground are on my TBR list, but they are not priorities during Black History Month (there's so much else to read and there are so many movies to watch for BHM). However, in reading about Clark and Hampton today I ran across this commentary about Prairie Fire, which lowers the book on my TBR roster, and which also mentions Jane Alpert:
Source: The New York Times: "Seeds of Terror". (November 22, 1981), page 6:
By 1974, however, the Weathermen demonstrated that they were fast losing touch with the real world: 25,000 copies of a book-length document called Prairie Fire, actually printed with gloved hands to avoid fingerprints, were released from the underground and it was without doubt one of the most boring political manifestoes ever written. The war was finally ending, Richard Nixon was being booted out, and the last thing anyone wanted to read was a paean to black terrorism combined with a tired lecture on dialectical materialism.
That same year, one Weather Underground fugitive, Jane Alpert, gave herself up, and in the days while she was waiting to be sentenced, she chose me, by this time a reporter for The Times, to speak with. She told me of her travels underground and of how Weathermen fugitives lived joyless, determined lives, existing on yogurt and endless political debate, spending the night here and there in sleeping bags.
September 5, 2020
This paragraph in this book is quite intriguing:
"For people in the US the basic fact of life is fear. People are afraid of society. No one knows what is going to happen. Fear of illness, fear of getting laid off. Afraid to go outdoors. Afraid of Black people moving into the neighborhood, afraid of loss of status, afraid of not looking right, afraid of being taken advantage of, afraid to speak up, afraid of growing old."
"For people in the US the basic fact of life is fear. People are afraid of society. No one knows what is going to happen. Fear of illness, fear of getting laid off. Afraid to go outdoors. Afraid of Black people moving into the neighborhood, afraid of loss of status, afraid of not looking right, afraid of being taken advantage of, afraid to speak up, afraid of growing old."
January 11, 2022
One of those I agree with, but to always go on about the topic is simply the emotional manipulation it claims to be against.
November 29, 2024
Highly worth the read to understand the rise of the new left, but not very sophisticated as a cultural or political analysis.
December 17, 2023
It's never been tried, yall.
Reads exactly the same as several other supremacism manifestos, except this is the same bolshevism-digest that you see in current movements (french reign of terror, russian anti-imperialism, han supremacy, khmer rouge) but the mass murder for freestuff themes always remain the same. The real bloodthirst seems to be the thing that sets this work apart from the others for me. A manual for the the revolutions foot soldiers to destroy the olds from their bosses in the central committee.
Why this read in particular has the honor of being the secret nugget of true ethos for so many is strange to me. Perhaps this is linked to humanist-faith that we can transcend human nature by positive vibes and never talking about it. Maybe this is the other side of the coin of Alex P. Keaton and you're expected to age out of it as you continue to read and digest more ideas. Or possibly it was their first shared religious experience with a zine in some basement; the first time they were a part of something.
Reads exactly the same as several other supremacism manifestos, except this is the same bolshevism-digest that you see in current movements (french reign of terror, russian anti-imperialism, han supremacy, khmer rouge) but the mass murder for freestuff themes always remain the same. The real bloodthirst seems to be the thing that sets this work apart from the others for me. A manual for the the revolutions foot soldiers to destroy the olds from their bosses in the central committee.
Why this read in particular has the honor of being the secret nugget of true ethos for so many is strange to me. Perhaps this is linked to humanist-faith that we can transcend human nature by positive vibes and never talking about it. Maybe this is the other side of the coin of Alex P. Keaton and you're expected to age out of it as you continue to read and digest more ideas. Or possibly it was their first shared religious experience with a zine in some basement; the first time they were a part of something.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews