In Milton Lumky Territory, or PKD on the Road

Philip K. Dick's In Milton Lumky Territory, one of his realist novels, is a short and endearing read about a young man adrift in the Western states. A product of small-town Idaho, Bruce Stevens encounters a quirky salesman, an older woman he knew in his past, and takes a vast drive across multiple Western states to find himself. As Dick reveals in his foreword, it features a happy ending and, although certainly not politically correct to readers of 2018, engages in humorous vignettes of family life, marriage, and finding meaning in the universe. Given his youth, Stevens's major fumble proves to be a learning experience that allows him to grow and succeed. Like many other PKD protagonists, Stevens represents a quirky or slightly out there 'average man,' a small businessman, out there competing against larger forces and trying to find his home. Perhaps, akin to Mr. Biswas, he's searching for his patch of the earth to claim as his own, and not simply waste away or be utterly dependent. In that light, this realist novel is an entertaining and uplifting tale on adulthood, although its utterly quotidian nature and comic tone may conceal its nature. 

The Game-Players of Titan

The Game-Players of Titan is a typical Dickian novel blending suicidal male protagonists with romantic troubles, paranoia, drug-induced hallucinations, unstable realities, psionic powers, alien political factions, and a dystopian, post-apocalyptic (and depopulated) world ruled by players of a board game resembling Monopoly and poker. Needless to say, it is also hilarious because of the petty feuds among the few humans left and their bratty auto-mechanic cars and machines. Despite it's inconclusive ending and rather slow beginning, this novel picks up where amnesia and a few plot twists throw the reader off the edge of their seat. The vug aliens from Titan and the remaining human populations of Terra continue the status quo, although the extremist faction persists, leaving the future of humanity uncertain (despite many expecting birth rates to soar after Peter Garden's team in California defeats the game-players of Titan). Much like his other novels, one may detect here a push for solidarity and cooperative practices for the survival of the species, and it is only after Garden's wife, Carol, becomes pregnant, that he truly pursues a selfless devotion to his group of California Bindmen and the fate of the planet. Thus, far from being one of his better novels, like Galactic Pot-Healer, it's comic nature and consistent ruminations on the meaning of marriage, community, and survival in the worst circumstances provides for interesting reading. 

Association Ouvrière

Michel Hector's chronology of Haitian labor history includes a reference to a mutualist association founded in July 1894, Association Ouvrière, in Port-au-Prince. Details about this early worker association in Haiti are scarce, but I uncovered the following.

1. Founded in July 1894, the short-lived organization included a bureau of M Laforest (Maximilian?), president, Stanislaus Madour (cabinetmaker whose work was displayed at the 1893 fair in Chicago), vice-president, P. Errié, secretary, I. Vieux (Isnardin), adjoining secretary. L'echo d'Haiti newspaper (associated with Etienne Mathon) reported on the foundation of the Association Ouvrière in July and August 1894.

2. Joseph Jérémie, writer, politician, and intellectual, was also tied to early attempts at worker organization and education in Port-au-Prince in the 1890s. He was involved with Association Ouvrière and, according to Maurice Ethéart (in Revue de la Ligue de la jeunesse haïtienne), he was a pivotal figure in the origin of Association Ouvrière.

3. Maurice Ethéart references Joseph Jérémie for evidence of the Association Ouvrière attracting nearly 200 workers (not defined, but presumably artisans and skilled workers in Port-au-Prince) to the organization's meetings. This indicates something of the appeal of the mutualist society to the workers of Port-au-Prince of the 1890s. Coeurs-Unis des Artisans, a society founded in 1870, cannot be brought into discussion of an earlier history of worker associations due to the limited knowledge available at the moment to the author, although it presumably reflects a previous interest in mutual aid and labor among Haitian artisans in Cap-Haitien.

4. However, the large numbers of people drawn to the organization's meetings and fears of socialism and anarchism, led to its eventual demise. Ethéart alludes to fears of this sort, plus L'Echo d'Haiti likewise alludes to Capoix Belton's exaggerated fears of socialism and anarchism as a threat to the social order ,which Association Ouvrière supposedly represented, despite its mutualist aims and goals.

5. Although certainly not radical, the rise of mutual aid societies among workers in Port-au-Prince by the 1890s indicates a certain incipient class consciousness, as well as the beginning of a search for common interests and social solidarity between different artisans and workers in the capital. One can likely assume most of the workers attracted to such an organization were tailors, shoemakers, barbers, printers, government functionaries, and other skilled and probably educated workers in Port-au-Prince of the era (and, one supposes, not the numerous laborers of the West Indian migrant population or other foreign skilled workers in the Republic at this time).

6. Although members of the Haitian political class and press supported the mutualist organization, one cannot help but wonder if it reflects self-movement of skilled workers in Port-au-Prince of the time. For instance, Michel Hector's chronology references a 1891 strike among coiffeurs in the city. Perhaps this, plus the founding of a night school in 1892 (associated, again, with Joseph Jérémie), reflect a burgeoning interest in mutual aid societies, craft associations, and common identification among skilled workers in late 19th century Port-au-Prince. If Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic are any indication, Haiti certainly would not have been alone if gremios, night schools, and worker associations begin to proliferate near the end of the 19th century in urban areas of Cuba, PR, and the DR.

7. Possible influence of Freemasonry and socialist or anarchist ideology is something that may also explain how and why Haitian intellectuals and workers may have supported some of these mutualist ventures. For example, much has been made of the impact of Cuban immigration on skilled trades in Haiti (especially tailors and shoemakers), and perhaps Cubans and other foreigners in Haiti may have assisted in the spread of socialist, union, and radical ideology beyond mutual aid societies among the Haitians they took on as apprentices or employees and colleagues in period between 1868-1898. More work must be done to explore this possibility, but Cubans were definitely an important influence on Haitian artisans of the late 19th early and early 20th century, if Fleury Fèquiére can be trusted. Certainly, Haitian intellectuals and politicians were aware of debates in France and elsewhere around Europe on capitalism, socialism, labor, and syndicalism, which may also have shaped the larger discourse among artisans in urban areas who interacted with the upper classes in Masonic lodges or other institutions.

8. However, given the important role of upper-class patrons and organizers within Association Ouvrière, and their own belief on the role of education in inculcating proper moral values and appreciation of labor's importance, they may also have limited the scope of the organization by opposing it against trade unions and class consciousness. Jérémie and other like-minded intellectuals also saw the danger of a large unemployed urban population without labor and other distractions, and may have supported workers organizations of a mutualist type as reformism without advocating for unions or self-emancipation of laboring masses.

Until further sources and newspapers of the era are consulted, one cannot say with any certainty what Association Ouvrière represented in Haitian labor history or its larger significance. Yet, it certainly speaks to a burgeoning embryonic proletariat and its gradual political assertion of itself in the affairs of Port-au-Prince. It also speaks to the limits of mutual aid societies and the focus on moral uplift of the toilers without class struggle. However, if events of Haiti were comparable to corresponding trends in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, Haiti's economic structure limited the potential growth of radical and militant labor formation among the nascent working-class. If the works of Angel Quintero-Rivera, Joan Casanovas, Martinez-Vergne, Cassá and Kirwin Shaffer are any indication, events in Haiti probably resembled to a smaller degree trends among artisans and proletarianization in the region. Moreover, Haiti had, already by the 1860s, experienced the role of popular classes in political transition, and reformist elites could support mutual aid societies, night schools, and worker clubs to redirect the weak urban pre-proletariat from action against the upper-class. 

Impressions of Galactic Pot Healer

Although I have been in a state of sleep deprivation and distraction for the last 5 days, I finally completed Dick's Galactic Pot Healer. This is one of his stranger novels involving an overpopulated Earth where the majority of humanity lives under a totalitarian regime and pointless lives. Alien life forms are present, as well as a powerful entity on another planet. This being, Glimmung, brings Joe Fernwright, a pot healer whose family has repaired ceramics for generations, to help raise Heldscalla, an ancient cathedral, and restore balance to his planet. Dualism, religion, fatalism, free will, and Philip K. Dick's comic genius shine here, particularly in the sentient robots, religious references (Islam, Zen Buddhism, Protestantism) and literary references and phrases. In typical Dick fashion, agape and combating fate seem to be the larger themes here, although it is a Sisyphean task if Fernwright's struggle to become a potter indicates anything. 

Searching for An Embryonic Proletariat

Source 

A little project I've been obsessed with over the last few days is the question of the 'pre-proletariat' in Haiti, before the US Occupation. Although I am still waiting for access to a few sources (Pean, Gaillard, Corvington), I believe I can lay out a sketch of what I am trying to do here. Haitian Marxist historian Michel Hector has written about this "embryonic proletariat" and is my main source, but, unfortunately, he doesn't cite sources for some of his dates of early strikes in Haiti (in the 1890s and 1900s, among barbers, cordonniers, etc.). I am also struggling to find information about the Coeurs Unis des Artisans (founded in Cap-Haitien, in 1870, this organization of artisans and government functionaries persisted into the 1890s) and the Association Ouvrière (founded in July 1894, in Port-au-Prince), the only labor organizations I have come across for the 19th century. Regardless, here is a schematic overview of what I have been attempting to uncover.

Beginning in 1848 (or 1860, if one cites another essay by Hector published in a Mexican academic journal), assuming one agrees with Michel Hector's chronology, one sees the encroachment of foreign capital in Haiti (particularly in agriculture) and early attempts at improving industry, importing new technology, and a growing population of wage laborers. The period of 1804-1843, although including some plantations for sugar production (especially 1804-1820) and centers of local industry (such as hat production, in 1840s Port-au-Prince), Haiti did not attract significant foreign capital for new industries or agriculture.. Under Geffrard and successive presidents, attempts were made to improve productivity and attract foreign capital through concessions, educational reforms, public works projects, and imported technology (steam engines, cotton gins, coffee processing plants, soap factories, etc.) and new agricultural exports (cotton, for instance, was profitable in the Geffrard years). Unfortunately, state economic policies inhibited the growth of industry because of the growing dependence on foreign firms for imports, dependence on coffee exports, and trade policies which made it more difficult for Haitian industries to compete with Europe or the United States for various goods and products. In fact, Michel Hector cites a petition of Haitian artisans and workers to the government of Port-au-Prince, demanding a change in prices of consumer products and state support for Haitian-produced products, to which Edmond Paul, also responded. Paul, a proponent of industrialization and Haitian economic independence, certainly saw the need to support Haitian self-sufficiency and development in order to protect national independence. Under Salomon and successive governments, various expositions in Port-au-Prince and abroad (such as Chicago's 1893 fair) promoted Haitian industry, agriculture, and attempts at economic modernization. Both the Liberal and National parties were devoted to progress, agricultural improvements, and industry, at least rhetorically.

By the 1870s, Cubans, who were migrating through the circum-Caribbean region as a result of the Cuban Wars of independence, came to Port-au-Prince and other cities. Many were tailors, shoemakers, barbers, and small businessmen, who revitalized Haitian trade professions in urban areas, employed local workers, and were an important segment of the foreign population in Haiti in the late decades of the 19th century. Like the Cubans, Jamaicans and other migrants and artisans from the Caribbean and Europe also came to Haiti. Much of the skilled labor and specialized labor was performed by these foreign workers in Haiti, which may have inhibited or influenced early Haitian labor organization (assuming that many of these foreigners only passed through Haiti for a few years, and were mostly in urban areas). Thus, the Haitian 'working-class' of the second half of the 19th century was mostly based in skilled trades, and associated more with pre-industrial productivity and organization. In the rural areas, a growing number of people were working for commercial houses that exported coffee and other products, while others were employed in plantations, distilleries, refineries, and the coffee processing centers (which appear to have improved productivity and the quality of Haitian coffee beans for export, thereby spreading to other regions of the country). From going through various sources for the late 19th century and early 20th century, many of these ventures employed 50-100 laborers, and in some cases, more (including some urban workshops and factories as well as larger commercial firms preparing and processing export products). For example, Riviere's steamship company suppposedly employed 120 workers, according to an 1876 article in Les Bigailles. However, Hector's articles and essays which touch on this reveal that wages were low, and primary sources contradict each other on the availability of labor while many of these ventures did not survive for more than a few years. 

Regrettably, one must delve deeper into the newspapers, financial records, the National Bank of Haiti, and state records of the period to uncover specific informaton about the rural wage laborers of this time. For instance, how many were seasonal? Were the women trieuses of the Haitian coffee industry, such as those of Maison Vital, paid less than males who worked for these commercial houses and plantations? How many were paid in wages and in the demwatye system? How did the agrarian "pre-proletariat" relate to the "feudal" and peasant economies of the rural area? Did the landless poor and sharecropper of rural Haiti of the time begin to migrate to the cities, and if so, were any eventually employed in the new industries (such as cola factories, ice factories) or the cordonneries, cabinetmakers, tanneries, and other forms of employment? What about the educational reforms, such as the 1892 Ecole Libre Professionelle? Were skilled workers trained there, and if so, how many? What were labor relations like at Les Plantations d'Haiti, established in 1901, in Bayeux? According to various sources, this venture, founded with Belgian capital, employed perhaps 300 or more workers to grow sugar, rubber, bananas, and other products for export. Were labor relations "cordial" as some sources indicate? What about references to socialism and anarchism, which appear in 1890s and 1900s Haitian journals and texts? Or references to Anglo-Saxon/Latin dichotomies of labor and labor organization in Le Matin? Did provincial industries based on pre-industrial methods, such as the production of hats and pipes in Bainet, disappear with the rise of US capital in the 20th century? How many commercial firms were directly involved in growing coffee, cotton and other crops versus buying from speculateurs? Were the workers in the new hotels, cigarette and cigar factories, bakeries, foundries, and other ventures from the countryside or the peri-urban peripheral neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince? How did Haitian bourgeois capitalists compete with foreign firms and commercial houses also engaged in coffee, cotton, and similar ventures?

And what about labor strikes, organizations, mutual aid societies, guilds, radicalism and resistance? Hector cites Joseph Justin and Joseph Jeremie to demonstrate the non-existence of strikes, workers associations and unions in 19th century Haiti, but mentions strikes in the 1890s (barbers in Port-au-Prince, for example, in 1891) and early 1900s. The 1890s witnessed the formation of an Association Ouvriere, of a mutualist character (despite fears of socialism and anarchism among some in the Haitian political class). One of its leaders, Stanislas Madour, was involved with some of the Haitian artisanal products displayed at the 1893 Chicago Exposition, presumably since he was a cabinet-maker. Through Hector, one can locate a source for a 1905 strike of shoemakers, which was organized by a union (Syndicat des Ouvriers Cordonniers) founded in 1903 with 47 workers. This union, though small and ephemeral, even sent aid to Jamaican laborers after a natural catastrophe there, indicating an internationalist conception of labor solidarity. Of course, the non-peasant working population in Haiti remained small (one estimate I found indicated only 25,000 agricultural workers by 1915), but I am curious as to the social formation of the period as Haiti made the transition to global capitalism dominated by the United States. For example, were any of these aforementioned workers and artisans exposed to or influenced by Cuban worker and artisan radicalism or educational efforts, as indicated in the works of authors like Casanova, James, or Poyo? What else besides support political revolutions in Port-au-Prince did the urban/semi-urban popular classes accomplish? How did popular beliefs, Vodou, and different conceptions of labor and value shape worker-boss relations and resistance? What about the impact of class stratification in the Haitian countryside during this period (1860-1915)? How did the expansion of Port-au-Prince affect the semi-urban workers and unemployed in Bizoton and other districts? What about cooperatives, communal work projects, and gender relations? How did urban workers and artisans engaged in associations and the early unions of the 1900s differ from their rural counterparts?

As for sources, this work in progress has not pressured me to forming a proper bibliography. The works of Michel Hector have been the main source, as well as various 19th century and early 20th century commercial registries, consular reports, Haitian state documents, some newspapers, and contemporary Haitian texts and essays on education, labor, political econony, and industry. The Blue Book of Hayti, published during the US Occupation, is a priceless source for information on various firms that operated in Haiti in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In addition, it includes photographs of various offices, warehouses, and factories, as well as estimates on the number of employees and the commodities produced, processed, and exported. Pierre-Charles, Joachim, Dupuy, Trouillot, Jean Luc, Richman, Dubois, Plummer, Gaillard, and others have been useful secondary sources, although future references from Latortue, Corvington, Brisson, Redsons, Pean and additional newspapers shall be beneficial. Richman's oral history and archival research on Lacombe's land theft and HASCO in the Leogane plain is fascinating, but one wonders how representative it is of the ways in which Haitian landowners and foreign firms seized land from Haitian peasants in the second half of the 19th century and used the sharecropping system for production of coffee and sugar. One wonders to what extent the Simmond Brothers and other firms would have done what Lacombe did, who, since he lacked the capital and access to credit, persisted in using the sharecropping system to grow coffee and sugar. Perhaps, even before HASCO, wage laborers for agro-industrial companies were already experiencing dislocation and preferred to work outside of their communities, while their more fortunate counterparts persisted in the 'traditional' peasant economy. If the peasant moral economy was under threat already by Lacombe, and further weakened by the enroachment of HASCO, it would be interesting to see if this development was similar to that of other regions of Haiti, and in what manner agricultural workers may have responded similarly to other large-scale plantation developments and displacement. 

Mr. Biswas Is Home

The news of Naipaul's death has me in a strange place, emotionally. A good part of a year of my life was dedicated to exploring his literary works, as well as the novels and short stories of his younger brother, Shiva. Unlike other fans of his work, I prefer the earlier comic fiction of the Caribbean, and Naipaul more so than the usual writer successfully brought the reader into a different time, place, and world. Naipaul, and his brother Shiva, brought countless hours of joy and reflection for a year of my life, and for that, enriched my understanding of myself and the world around me. Nothing could have been a greater gift, and I shall always remember the commitment to the life of intellect, the desire to escape from the periphery, that motivated this great writer. Rest in peace. 

Eye in the Sky

Dick's Eye in the Sky is a novel on so many things, such as simulated reality, the Cold War, McCarthyism, religious fundamentalism, race relations (Bill Laws, an African-American with an advanced physics degree, is screwed in all the universes imagined by the whites in the group), mental illness, and psychology. Ostensibly about the fuzzy nature of reality and imagination, the 8 characters who experience the accident with the Bevatron are forced to experience reality as seen by others in the group, including a retired soldier (as well as a religious fundamentalist and racist whose fierce religion combines Islamic and Christian fundamentalist concept), a neo-Victorian middle-aged woman, a paranoiac, and a Communist. However, what is most interesting of this, is how Dick shows the limitations of each of the aforementioned idealist formations of reality.  However, we see how the Communists attacked individualism (the "cult") through McFeyffe's false accuations against Marsha Hamilton, bringing to mind Richard Wright's experiences with the Communists in Chicago (he wanted to be a writer, to express himself, but the Party wouldn't allow it). Perhaps this helps explain Dick's personal inclinations and political sympathies, since he's certainly sympathetic to left-wing causes (such as Jack Hamilton's friendship with Bill Laws, and defending Laws against the segregationist Silvester) and critiques of corporations and capitalism, he's also drawn to the significance of individual experience and rejecting larger groups. 

Perhaps this explains a pattern in Dick protagonists being alienated men working for large outfits or the government, or, alternatively, small business owners struggling against the chains and the dangers of postwar US capitalism.  Thus, Dick could poke fun at Communist interpretations of American society as overrun with debauchery, class exploitation, hedonism, and Chicago gangsters while expressing sympathy for the masses, an appreciation for the importance of religion or spirituality (without a fatalistic Islamic God), the necessity of the arts, and a sense of trust for one's environment and in others. In other words, Dick was too noncomformist and open-minded to the 'weird', the spiritual, and the idealist conceptions of the world to ever fit in with some of the American Left of the 1950s, nor could he stomach the religious conservatives, segregationists and military warlords of the postwar military-industrial complex. Significantly, like his later famous novels of the 1960s-1980s an openness to a a spirtual renewal may be expressed here through the encounter with God in one of the reality simulations experienced in the novel. More will be said later....

Mary and the Giant

An early novel by PKD, Mary and the Giant features a young woman adrift in a small California town of the 1950s. Mary is not sure what she wants, like many young people, but she rejects the mainstream aspirations and habits of her peers and community. She feels a certain affinity for African-Americans since they too are excluded from the mainstream, but despite her relationships with various men, she doesn't find what she's looking for. Tweaney, her African-American lover and singer, falls short. She also rejects her fiance Dave Gordon, who accepts the status quo and doesn't deviate from the mainstream. Joseph Schilling also falls short. However, what interests me the most about this realist novel of Dick, is the use of jazz. Jazz operates as an aura of urban cool and popular taste that rejects the mainstream. Jazz is urban. Jazz is Negro. Through Paul Nitz, her final lover in the novel, Mary experiences bop jazz, as well as life in San Francisco. The tiny town of Pacific Park couldn't hold her, so the big city wins in the end. Jazz and jump provided the context for black-white intimacy, Mary's independence from her family, and, ultimately, her liberation. Classical music, the genre preferred by Schilling, though stimulating to Mary, loses to the jazz musician Paul Nitz and the chance to break out of the mold represented by the genre. The battle between the urban and rural in California plays out in this novel (a pattern in some of Dick's realist fiction), but here the musical element predominates. Sure, Dick's Mary has a rather condescending view of African-Americans at times, but jazz as a symbol of a very American fixation on breaking from the confines of society and establishing oneself are powerful themes. All in all, a sweet and casual read, but not unworthy of one of the 20th century's greatest science fiction authors. One truly feels the turmoil of young adulthood and sailing adrift.

The Broken Bubble

The Broken Bubble was one of Dick's realist novels published posthumously. It's prose is awkward and clunky. The four central characters, two couples, brings to mind the more successful Confessions of a Crap Artist. However, 1950s San Francisco truly emerges as a character in this novel, and intergenerational conflict between teenagers (with their affiliated gangs, clubs, maltshake diners, skating rinks) and the older generation sheds a fresh light on Philip K. Dick. Presumably, his teen characters reflected some of his fan base (science fiction readers of the day), and perhaps he wrote this novel with that in mind? Indeed, one of the teens writes a science fiction short story himself and despite its corny nature, one cannot help but think Dick was defending some of the virtues of the genre for moral value. In spite of the novel's horrendous depictions of the struggle of married life and selflessness, Jim Briskin (not the same first black president Briskin in Crack in Space) sticks by his ex-wife while Art and Rachael struggle through with their marriage. Unfortunately, most of the minor characters and subplots are not as seamless as they should be, so the whole narrative is disjointed. But as an early example of Dick's writing and with a San Francisco setting, one sees how the rise of the teenager complicated life in American culture of the time.