Murdered by Capitalism: A Memoir of 150 Years of Life and Death on the American Left

by John Ross

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2004

After spilling bourbon on Schnaubelt's grave, its pugnacious and very dead occupant becomes Ross's mentor, sidekick, and boozing companion through this epic telling of the hallucinatory, carnal, and ornery histories of the American Left and John Ross's own remarkable life. Schnaubelt navigates us through his seemingly boundless revolutionary battleground, uttering cries of subversion from within the grave while trying to remain out of earshot from the FBI snoop and local supermarket tycoon buried nearby. Ross's own story -- hobo revolutionist, junkie, poet, and journalist is a contrapuntal to Schnaubelt's. Ross never takes himself too seriously, yet his most remarkable trait is the honesty with which he approaches life, even while trying to deconstruct his own faults, personal tragedies (including the death of his one-month-old son), and imperfections. His pursuit of revolutionary politics and poetics is the constant, often spent with his muse, Revolutionary Mexico. Ross concludes with a trip to Baghdad as a "human shield," before the Anglo-American invasion, ready to sacrifice his life as part of his perpetual struggle for justice. Award-winning writer John Ross's memoir is inspired from a tumbledown tombstone in The headstone E. B. Schnaubelt 1855 -- 1913, "Murdered by Capitalism."

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Biography Memoir, Memoir

400 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2004

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This is John^Ross.

Born in 1938. Grew up in Greenwich Village, New York City. Lived in California and Mexico. Worked as a free-lance journalist in Mexico. He wrote, "I have worked for many years as a freelance foreign correspondent, a job description that dignifies the trivia of political exile. Social strife in the Third World is a particular attraction. Which is to say, for a long time now I've been moving around Latin America looking for trouble." Died in Mexico in January 2011.

Reviews

[Stephanie Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most amazing non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Having lived in the Bay Area and in Oregon, I can remember when the names of most of these people were in the news in the latter half of the 20th century. John Ross was right there, taking notes! Then he wrote this astounding book so that we have all the pieces together.
Ross does a clever thing by having those that are already dead speak from their graves, which were sometimes quite close to each other! The Forest Home Cemetery just outside of Chicago has a Monument to the Haymarket Martyrs. Besides the martyrs, there are also the graves of Emma Goldman (1860-1940), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964), and Lucy Parsons (1859-1942) to name a few.
I’ll be keeping this book forever as reference material.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feeling pretty goulish himself after 50 years of radical politics and hard drinking, Ross communes with a host of dead leftists in their graves. He records their various testimonies, mixes in his own debauched tale, and strings together a partly fictional parade of All-American revolutionary skeletons. With lapses of self-ridicule, Ross and his dead give free vent to self-righteous defiance against almost every known authority. They veer over the edge of legal speech, paying tribute to the old anarchist dream of a bomb for every president. Ross upholds the American right to bear bombs, but at some point in the 1960s realizes, ``I was 32 and had never thrown a bomb.``

Feeling that bombing is a central aspect of the American psyche, Ross reviles the government`s bombing campaigns, and tries to separate good bombs from bad bombs: ``In America, the bombs come in all flavors -- racist bombs, revolutionary communist bombs, union bombs, Capitalist bombs, criminal bombs, and just plain old grudge bombs.``

I enjoyed the banter of semi-sane idealists over the past 7 or 8 generations. But I had some difficulty separating one bomber from the next.

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite by accident, I picked up this book to take on a trip to California's far northern coast. It turns out that I was haunting the same sites that Ross was. I even found the gravestone that had the epitaph which is the title of this book! This stupendous coincidence alone endeared me to Ross's work.

Ross's treatment is lyrical and, at times, lackadaisical. Nevertheless, he has a deep sense of compassion for his dead subjects. It unapologetically embraced a leftist "subculture", with references to things like "the Internationale" that leftists hold dear but most people this side of Berlin have never heard of. For those of us "in the know", this is definitely a delightful work.

[P.J. Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Ross liked to visit cemeteries and chat up the bones of fallen working class heroes. Their surreal conversations cover decades of American labor history.

E. B. "Eddie" Schnaubelt was murdered by capitalism in 1913. That's what it says on his grave stone in Trinidad, California. He tells Ross how he came to California from Chicago, on the lam from the police roundup that followed the Haymarket bombing in 1886. He insists that neither he nor his brother Rudolph was the bomb thrower.

When Schnaubelt clams up on him, Ross descends into hell to interview President McKinley, then proceeds to a boneyard outside Chicago to chat up the remains of the Haymarket martyrs. Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Sacco and Vanzetti, William Z. Foster, and others join the conversation, discussing the pros and cons of communism and other isms. It makes for a lively discussion and even stirs the bones of Senator Joe McCarthy, who butts in all the way from Wisconsin!

John Ross was a long-time radical, beat poet, and freelance foreign correspondent. His book is a zany and raucous historical memoir of epic proportions. It often lapses into poetic imagery. It is pugnacious and outrageous at times, and always unequivocally on the side of working people against their capitalist tormenters. But it is not non-violent. There is even a warning on the cover that "This book contains graphic scenes of revolutionary violence." Ross condoned that violence--if it came from the Left. Otherwise, a good read.

[Mainzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a erudite derive through some clandestine histories of the North American radical left, and I tore into it with gusto. I read it from cover to cover in less time than it takes to erect a barricade across the main thoroughfare. What a wonderful, breathless romp through a secret subversive history that positively dances and hoots with delight under the tutelage of Ross's deliciously monstrous pen. And in the process, he reclaims that forbidden history and those all too human anti-heroes and takes them as his own, and in the process, presents them back to us : here, your prodigal brothers and sisters, in all their pitted glory, embrace them.


It strikes me as a deftly inspired methodology to recount one's memoirs at the plinths of the great anarchist ghosts, interspersing your story and all theirs in some collective consciousness of our own possibilities, hopes and tragedies. Companero Ross gave me a copy and scribbled 'History is Us' as he signed it - which had initially struck me as somewhat pompous but suddenly I understood what the words meant. Radical history in all its bickering, backbiting, mendacious, weak, flawed, failed manifestations also always contains a kernel of the daring bravery, heroic resilience and visionary strength that remains the essential inspiration and alluring beauty of political subversion

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star-
Friedrich Nietzsche

[LG · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read half of this book while staying at a friends. I put it down because it moved from telling a story to listing facts. It might have been worth my while to keep pushing through. But I would need another copy to fall into my lap for me to pick it back up. Not something I would chase down.

[De'Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a nice history book to read about and it can draw some interest.

[Crotillus]

Throwing words will just make people angry - throwing bombs will have an impact that history will not forget.

[Rocio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Understading Mexican politics and its relationship with the United States. Rest in peace John Ross