MOVIE REVIEW

The movie, "12 Years a Slave." Is adapted from the 1853 memoir of Solomon Northup, a freeman, kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in the Deep South. This review is based on viewing the movie twice and reading the complete, Twelve Years A Slave, Narrative of Solomon Northup. When you look at the difference between a movie and the original source (the book), you see the political point of view of the movie.
In the movie, Solomon sits huddled with two other prisoners on a slaver's boat headed south. One prisoner insists that they should fight their crew. A second disagrees: "Survival's not about death. It's about keeping your head down."
Solomon says," Now you tell me all is lost? I want to live." This conversation isn't in Solomon's narrative.
According to Solomon's narrative, he and two other prisoners, Arthur and Robert, plot to "steal… the captain's cabin, seize the pistols and cutlass, and … dispatch him and the mates. Robert, with a club, was to stand by the door…and beat back the sailors…. We resolved to regain our liberties or lose our lives." Once they took over the boat, they planned to make their way to New York Harbor although they "knew little of the compass." The escape plan wasn't carried out because Robert died from smallpox.
Solomon's first slave master is William Ford, a wealthy "Christian" man. However, Ford falls into debt and sells Solomon to John Tibeats who works his slaves "from earliest dawn until late at night." When Tibeats attempts to whip Solomon for a dubious offense, he fights back, and with his foot on Tibeats' neck, whips him "until my arm ached." Afterwards, when Tibeats and two associates attempt to lynch Solomon, an overseer (armed with two pistols) intervenes and saves his life. Tibeats backs off. Later he attacks Solomon with a hatchet and he again bests the master, "an act in that state, punishable with death." Solomon flees from the plantation chased by hounds and escapes through the swamp. He makes his way to Ford's plantation where he is protected from harm. These fights are in Solomon's narrative; however, in the movie, it is one fight between Solomon and a lowly overseer, not a slave master, and focuses on Solomon dangling by a noose in the hot sun from morning until late evening.
Tibeats sells Solomon to Edwin Epps, a sociopathic slave master. Soloman spends ten years on Epps' plantation and is eventually freed and reunited with his family.
This movie focuses on victimization, survival, and brutality, not resistance and evokes sympathy, not admiration for courage. It argues that liberation lies in going through the proper channels. There are no militant mass fighters against slavery, no Frederick Douglasses, Harriet Tubmans, or Nat Turners here.

BALANCING POLITICAL COMMITMENT WITH EVERYDAY LIFE

My struggles as a communist and as a student have always been a challenge for me. I was first introduced to ICWP when I was in high school thanks to someone on my high school campus who would distribute Red Flag to students. After reading a couple of issues of Red Flag, I decided to join ICWP. Joining the party involved continuing to read and discuss Red Flag, but I also began writing for our paper and participating in sales. At times I found it very easy to balance high school, activities, family, and the party because I had less responsibility. As time progressed, it became harder for me to commit to all the activities I was once able to do. Now, as a community college student, I still struggle constantly with assignments, classes, family obligations, and making time for our party. What makes things even more complicated is that I also have to balance these responsibilities with a job to help support my family. As communists, we know that mobilizing the masses to abolish capitalism and build communism also involves trying to survive under it, while it still exists. Although I feel conflicted at times, I have found other ways to contribute to our cause of building a communist society.
I have decided to write more for Red Flag and to express our communist point of view in my writing assignments, especially on global issues that affect the working class. I will also speak with my friends and fellow students about communism. By writing this, I hope to help other working students understand that, no matter what else we have going on in our lives, we can always find ways to contribute to our party and the fight for communism. To my fellow student comrades around the world, what challenges do you have in balancing your schoolwork, and other commitments, with your commitment to ICWP and building communist revolution? What are some ways you have found to resolve them?

--Red Student

I believe that this book review was unfairly biased and that only certain areas were pinpointed to make a point. The author of the article picked the worst moments of the novel to illustrate his point that capitalism warps the natural state of people.
I believe that how the book portrayed the boys is, in fact, the natural state of adolescents. The novel is about young boys, stranded and unsupervised on an island and it shows their natural state: violent and aggressive. So, to say that all men are naturally violent and aggressive, due to their nature being tainted by capitalism, is inaccurate. This is why rules are needed. Young people need guidance from elders and guidelines of how to behave; rules provide those guidelines. To take the novel Lord of the Flies and say that the young boys featured in it are a representation of all humanity, is not fair, due to them being young and not fully shaped by a society which provides rules in order for them to adequately function as people. Doing this is the same as taking a book on small children and saying that men, in their natural state, are whiny, immature, and irresponsible. It is a misrepresentation and it can be used to support a bias on humanity, such as Lord of the Flies was.

—Reader

Thank you, comrade, for your critique. We hope more young people take time to respond to articles they feel strongly about. Your response provides an opportunity to clarify some points we made in the review. People are products of upbringing (external) and nature (internal) when it comes to morals and values.
External influences include our parents, friends, teachers, media, etc. and the ways the system we live under has us relate to each other. The internal includes our natural contradictions such as selfish vs. considerate of others, greedy vs. giving, violent vs. calm, individualistic vs. collective etc. These ways of being have nothing to do with rules and/or laws, but are struggles with ourselves.
Dialectics tells us that while the external is necessary, the internal is primary. So, while Capitalism nurtures our selfish, greedy, violent, individualistic side, this does not mean that we lose our ability or desire to be considerate, giving, calm and collective. A communist society will work to bring out the latter by design of our social relations to each other and communist education.

—Writer