Good day Hivers and Book Clubbers,
I'm back for another book review. In the last review, I took a short overview of Nikolai Fedorov and Russian Cosmism, a pretty 'out-there' esoteric philosphy which boiled down to overcoming death and travelling the stars. Somewhat in line with that book, which showed up in my 'recommended' reading, is the book I'll review in this article. And boy, is it a strange one.
I simply couldn't help but read a book with this cover. The full title is 'I want to believe; Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism', published in 2020 and written by A.M. Gittlitz. As far as I can tell, it's the only book written by this author; I wonder how he came to write about such an outlandish subject. The book proper is about 250 pages.
Background and Trotskyism
First, some background is needed to set the stage for the story of Juan Posadas (real name; Homero Cristalli, but I'll stick to Posadas, as does the book). For this, we have to turn to Leon Trotsky (1879-1940). Trosky was one of the main forces behind the ultimate success of the Russian Revolution, more specifically the October revolution and the following civil war, where he led parts of the Red Army against the White forces.
Trotsky was a fanatical ideologue, even amongst the Bolsheviks. His idea of a permanent world-wide revolution was apparent in his desire to use the Soviet Union as a launching stage for worldwide revolts against the bourgeoisie. After Lenin's death in 1924, he was unexpectedly sidetracked however, due to Stalin becoming the leader of Soviet Russia. Stalin quickly consolidated his power over the party by either killing or exiling his political opponents within the party. Trotsky resided in several countries before ending up in Mexico.
From here, Trotsky founded the Fourth International in 1938, which was to act as an ideologically pure counter-weight to the now Stalinist Third International. Looking back with hindsight, his success was quite limited. Trosky himself would be assassinated soon after in 1940, thus leaving the Trotskyist movement without its founder and main leader.
Onto Posadas (1912-1981) and the story itself. Born in Argentina, Posadas came from a working-class background, earned his money as a shoemaker, but got involved in communist politics early in his life. The remarkable thing is that he was not too familiar with its policies. This is a running thread throughout the story; Posadas' ideological foundations were not very strong, he was not well-read, etc. This had an advantage however; this way it was easier to shift positions.
And shift positions he did. The Fourth International lost influence during the 40s and 50s due to several reasons, primary among them the death of Trotsky. The second World War also put the Trotskyist in a limbo; support the rival Stalinists against the Germans, or risk socialist progress so far and support neither? Later on, in the 1950s, there was a major rift brewing between the European and non-European sections of the Fourth International.
Anti-colonialism became the biggest issue during this time, with the rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba being a seminal moment for the worldwide socialist movement. It was a sign to Posadas and other Latin-American fourth-internationals that the future of communism belonged to the Third World, and not to the movements within the industrialized Western world. If one recounts Marx, this is the opposite of what he viewed.
Apocalypse Communism
Posadas and other Latin-American groups split from the Fourth International, which was already divided itself, in 1962. Posadas at this point had created somewhat of a personality-cult; he was a good organizer, which is why people liked him, but his positions became more erratic as his life went on.
One of them is the push for nuclear war, which he saw as a way through which communism could take over the world in the post-war fallout. That millions had to die to get to such a point was par for the course. The idea of how these circumstances would lead to communism were never fully formulated. What it did mean in practice was disappointment at how the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with the detente between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Aliens
The sixties were also the time of Man's venture into space, culminating in the American moon landing in 1969. This was felt worldwide in culture, and Posadas was clearly influenced as well. Gittlitz tracks this communist obsession with space and aliens back to the Russian Cosmists (see my last article for more on them), and Posadas became convinced that the universe must be filled with extraterrestrial life. Perhaps they could help out here on earth?
It was the position that made him known in leftist circles up to this day. In Argentina, politics would never really go his way. He lived as an exile in Italy for years, and became more unstable in the 1970s; he was caught up in a sex-scandal involving the wife of a fellow high-up party member (a common theme in modern politics), and would crush dissent in his clique with an iron fist.
Conclusion
Posadas would die in 1981, with his son succeeding him as leader of his splinter of the Fourth International. Any support still left would wither away into the 21st century. It is remembered today mostly for the oddball positions Posadas held in life, and his personality cult.
The book is not as quirky as one would expect from the book cover: it is more a biography of Posadas and the inner workings of the Fourth International than anything else. If you like the aliens but not the politics, this book might not be for you.
Also, it tries to tackle some large subjects in a very quick, I'd say over-hasty, fashion. Things like the Castro-rebellion in Cuba, the Allende-Pinochet era in Chile and Juan Peron and Peronism in Argentina are not simple or easy subjects, yet the writer dashes through them as if everyone is 'in the know'. Which for me personally was also not the case. Yet I enjoyed the read overall, although the previously reviewed book on the Cosmists was more to my liking. I'll see you all in a next article, and another review.
-Pieter Nijmeijer
(Top image; book cover pdf-version)
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