Research Center:
345 Kellogg Boulevard W., St. Paul, MN 55102
From Radicalism in Minnesota, 1900-1960: A Survey of Selected Sources. 20th-Century Radicalism in Minnesota Project, Carl Ross, Project Director. Minnesota Historical Society Press. St. Paul. 1994.
Archival and Manuscript Collections:
(see also the ETOL oral histories, film, photo, and, newspapers sections)
Central Labor Union of Minneapolis and Hennepin County. Papers, 1912-62. 61 boxes. This collection documents the activities of the Central Labor Union and its predecessor, the Minneapolis Trades and Labor Assembly. It contains substantial materials about the AFL, Communist activities within the AFL, Communist activities within the building trades, the Citizens Alliance, local branches of the Communist party, conflicts between the Socialist Workers party and the Communist party, May Day rallies, the Minneapolis truck drivers' strike of 1934, the Worker's Party of America, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, the Public Ownership League, the Labor party, the Farmers' NPL, the Working People's NPL, the F-LP, the DFL, and the Independent Labor party. Also included are records and correspondence regarding the Minneapolis labor School, Sacco and Vanzetti, the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Ole J. Arness case (1917) of a Minneapolis teacher accused of being an IWW member, various other antiradical investigations, the Americanization movement, and several strikes and boycotts. The collection contains much more.
General Drivers, Helpers and Inside Workers Union, Local 574 (Minneapolis), Minneapolis Teamsters Strike, 1934: Selected Documents, 1928-41. 1 roll microfilm. Originals in the Library of Social History, New York, N.Y. Correspondence, telegrams, clippings, legal documents, and broadsides documenting the strike. Selected by Farrell Dobbs, former secretary-treasurer of Local 574, from his papers.
Kane, Lucille M. "Memorandum of Legal Cases, 1934." 1 p. Complete files are located at the federal records Center, Kansas City, Mo. A list of the files of two cases arising from the Minneapolis truck drivers' strike of 1934.
Socialist Workers Party, Minneapolis. Papers, undated, 1914-64. 10 boxes. The collection consists of printed and mimeographed materials, campaign literature, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and booklets. Most of it is from the national organization, and very little is specific to Minnesota. There are, however, materials on the 1941 sedition trial of the 18 leaders of the party, Motor Transport and Allied Workers Industrial Union, Local 544, the Carl Skoglund deportation case, 1949-51, the Albert Lea strike of the Wilson Co. by the United Packinghouse Workers in 1959, the DFL merger in Minnesota, and the 1948 elections, in which two Minnesotans -- Farrell Dobbs and Grace Carlson -- headed the national party ticket.
Socialist Workers Party, Minnesota. Records, 1941-81. 3 boxes. Restricted. Although the records date mainly from the 1970s, there are miscellaneous newspaper clippings and printed fliers about political campaigns, 1944-57, and seven folders of mounted newspaper clippings on the 1941 trial of 18 party members for sedition under the Smith Act and the expulsion of the leadership of the Teamsters Union, Local 544.
Socialist Workers Party, Minnesota. Scrapbooks, 1941. 1 roll microfilm. Originals owned by Tom Kerry, New York, N.Y. The collection contains information about the 1941 trial of party leaders and Teamsters Union, Local 544, prosecuted under the Smith Act for alleged subversive activities.
Tyiomies Society, Superior. Records, 1903-70. 24 boxes, 1 roll microfilm. The society began as a Finnish-American Socialist publishing company in 1903 and later became a Communist publishing house. Records include minutes of meetings, unpublished proletarian plays, sheet music, and correspondence received by Andrew Roine, head of the society, 1959-63. Also includes about 600 photographs.
United States. Eighth District Court of Appeals. Dunne vs. United States, 1943. Abstract of the Record, Briefs, and Opinion. (Conspiracy Trials in America, no. 13). 1 roll microfilm. Published by Michael Glazier, Inc. The item consists of the appeal of the convictions of 18 members of the Socialist Workers party who had been among the leaders of Minneapolis Teamsters' Local 544, tried in 1941 for sedition under the Smith Act. The appeal was denied.This thesis attempts to re-examine the work of Jean-Luc Godard and in particular the claims which have been made for it as the starting-point for a revolutionary cinema.
This re-examination involves, firstly, a critical summary of the development of Structuralist thinking, from its origins in linguistics, with Saussure, through to its influence on Marxism, with Althusser. It is this `Structural Marxism' which prepared the ground for a view of Godard as a revolutionary film-maker so its influences on film theory in the decade after 1968 is traced in journals such as Cahiers du Cinia and Screen and in the work of their editors and contributors.
Godard's relationship with such theories was a complex one and some of the cross-breeding is revealed in a brief account of his own ideas about his film-making. More important, however is his practice as a committed `political' film-maker between 1968 and 1972 which is analysed in terms of the responses it makes to the cultural opportunities offered in the period after the revolutionary situation of May 1968.
The severe problems revealed by that analysis may be partially resolved in Godard's greatest `political' achievement Tout va bien, but a comparative analysis proves that in earlier `a-political' films such as Vivre sa vie, he was creating more meaningful and perhaps even more revolutionary art, whose formal experimentation is more organically linked to its subject and whose ability to communicate ideas far oustrips the later work.
In conclusion some indications are suggested of a more fruitful basis for Marxist theories of art than Structural variants, seeking a non-formalist approach in the work of Marx, of Trotsky, of Brecht and Lukàcs.
Back to Book Index | Back to Trotsky Encyclopedia Home Page
Last updated 7 April 1998