Mark Twain'ish Brown?

 “The Good Lord Bird” The book, by James McBride, 2013

This book is an entertaining and funny read on John Brown’s anti-slavery actions from 1856 to 1859.  McBride gives the Mark Twainish treatment to this tragic and bloody affair.  It is one of the few recent ‘popular’ descriptions of Brown, which is why it needs to be looked at carefully.  It forms the basis for the somewhat worse streaming series of the same name. The picture it mostly paints of Brown (which the series dwells on more – see prior review of Episode 1 on this Blog) is that he was a religious nut, a disorganized leader and an insane fool, but also a courageous fool.  He was ultimately right about slavery and how to end it - no small point that.

The African-American slaves in Kansas that Brown runs into, as portrayed by McBride, seem to be mostly scared and ignorant, though street-smart - which might be true or might not be.  Certainly a slaveholder would be entertained.  Many of the pro-slave border ‘ruffians’ from Missouri are also ignorant thugs, so there is balance. The African-Americans are fictional creations, including Bob and especially young Onion/Henrietta, who Brown thinks is a girl but is really a boy, Henry.  In the book and series Brown’s kidnapping of Henry involves the death of Henry’s father, an event that never happened.  But it sets the stage for portraying Brown as a careless blood-letter. 

KILLINGS at POTTAWATOMIE and BATTLE of BLACK JACK

The bloody Pottawatomie Creek attacks carried out by Brown’s Rifles in the book lacks the real context of the burning, sacking and destruction of the Free State stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas on May 21,1856 by pro-slavers.  In the book it is blamed on a more trivial but bloody cane attack on Charles Sumner in the U.S. Congress by a pro-slave state legislator that came on May 22, the next day.  The attacks occurred on May 24-25 a few days later as revenge, when Brown’s abolitionist group killed 5 pro-slave settlers who participated in the Lawrence raid.  The book tells the story more truthfully than the series.  The book shows the actual sword killings were done by Brown’s sons and fellow Free Staters, not Brown, outside the cabins.

The Battle of Black Jack on June 2 followed after Deputy Pate captured 2 of Brown’s sons as a consequence of the Pottawatomie killings.  Brown’s 30 Rifles were the only force that fought Pate, not the humorous and failed contribution of a contingent of organized soldiers under Sam Shore as in the series. Unlike the series, in the book Brown’s tactics were more on the guerilla side, not just a straight-ahead charge across a ravine into gunfire. Not quite an idiot.  The book does not show Brown praying right before the battle, as does the series. The TV version shows Pate’s silly men surrendering almost immediately because they were so scared of Brown - though in reality the fight lasted 5 hours with Brown using some clever tactics. This some consider the first battle of the Civil War – not Harper’s Ferry or Fort Sumter. Black Jack is now a U.S. historical park - though at the time Pate was a deputized Federal Marshall working for the official pro-slavery government of Kansas, not a 'Red Shirt.'  Yeah… confusing but not really.  The Federals were supposed to keep the two sides apart. 

This covers the first 7 chapters of the book and they relate to the 1st episode of the series.  As can be seen, the book differs in small but important ways from the series.  Brown in the book comes off as a lovable old coot, but also crazed and bloodthirsty - though certainly not as bad as the more-watched series, at least Episode 1.

Brown's cabin in Osowatomie - now preserved

BATTLE of OSOWATOMIE

In the series, this battle is ignored, showing just one scene of Brown's men escaping down a river.  In the book Brown is defeated defending the Free-State town of Osowatomie, Kansas, while his son Frederick is killed.  Unlike the book, Frederick actually understood who the man that killed him was, a pro-slave Reverend.  He did not die as a soft-hearted half-wit praying over a dead bird as the book pretends.  The real battle took place August 30 of the same year, long after Black Jack.  5 abolitionists were killed and their town burned by a party of 250-400 pro-slavery border thugs using cannons. After this defeat, the book has Brown deciding to leave his men.  Osowatomie escalated the battle in ‘bleeding Kansas’ as the second battle of the Civil War. 

INTERLUDE

After the battle McBride spends time on Onion’s travails and joys working in a whore-house in Pikesville, Missouri after being grabbed by a pro-slaver.  There is more Twainish humor at the expense of everyone, especially as Onion is one ugly high yaller ‘girl.’ At the same time Bob is forced to work at a sawmill in this crude slaver town.  One pretty brown prostitute has no problems with slavery and hates the rude black slaves in the slave pen who are later accused of planning an insurrection. 9 slaves, led by a woman named Sibonia, are hanged – something that never happened in Missouri.  Not sure how ‘funny’ this event is! But hey, Onion didn’t mind, as his tips increased due to the land-office business the hangings brought in.  He’s somewhat of a dumb-ass at this point.  Later, Free-Staters attack Pikesville and Brown recaptures Onion.  This is more fabrication, though Brown actually did attack two households of slavers in Missouri to free their people, something he did regularly around Kansas.  The book doesn't show any of that.

HARPER’S FERRY

In the lead-up to the attack on Harper’s Ferry, the book treats Frederick Douglass as a pampered blowhard, perhaps attempting to adjust the picture of Douglass in most liberal movies as a revered sober hero.  He’s a lecher, a drunk and a bigamist. However Harriet Tubman, who we meet in Canada, is not made fun of.  In the series – but not the book - Douglass pillories Brown for being a white man who thinks he knows what slaves and freemen want.  Why don't film-makers expose some of the present pampered and sell-out misleaders of that old ‘black’ community, black and white.  Instead the identity sarcasm is reserved for John Brown. 

As the book gets closer to its tragic denouement, the humor and ‘romp’ subside.  Onion is involved in the preparation, but he’s half-useless and knows it.  Onion considers Brown crazy for the Harper’s Ferry plan, but it is not that crazy in concept.  It could have worked, especially basing a guerilla struggle in the Appalachian Mountains, which extended deep into the slave South.  Prior investigation among the local slaves and freedman was not done, reflecting Brown’s ‘one man army’ approach, not a collective approach.  Guerrilla attacks on smaller federal arms’ caches or plantations to collect guns and supporters would have been a better method to start. 

Kennedy Farm, where Harper's Ferry raid was organized.

McBride shows how small mistakes – the location of the base house at the Kennedy Farm, the choice of a blowhard to visit Harper’s Ferry first – helped speed up the timing.  This significantly weakened the attack on the arsenal.  Ultimately Douglass refuses to show up, Tubman is sick and the urban freedmen from Philly run the other way.  This is mostly due to Brown’s changing of the date because of imminent discovery by the local sheriff and his deputies. Timing is everything, especially this kind of thing. 

Before the raid, Onion leaves with Brown’s daughters and a female in-law, heading towards Philadelphia in a wagon, but turns back with a missing password.  This mistake leads to death and confusion. Brown easily takes the Federal Arsenal but waits for the arrival of the freedmen or a rising of the slaves, which never comes.  Instead of leaving with what he has and getting into the mountains, he waits far too long.  Starting his raid at 9 P.M. the night before, he is still there at 4 P.M. the next afternoon when a disorganized militia starts shooting and by 7 P.M. or so makes a final charge with the help of seasoned troops.  The rest is history - all that is left is the hanging after this, the third battle of the Civil War.  

At the end, Onion finally realizes Brown is no fool. 

The Fundamental UnSeriousness of the Middle Class      

The falsity of most of the tone is the issue. You can't call this story a 'tragi-comedy.'  It is perhaps a trick so that people read it, but then what do they walk away with?  Remember, the NYT called it a ‘romp.’ Onion is obviously a funny character telling things from an ex-slave's point of view, but he’s a plot device.  He nearly always thinks Brown is mad and insane, and this reflects the conventional reader and bourgeois political opinion.  However to its credit the book continually shows how ‘talking’ and acting are two different things.  Those who talk but don’t act are found wanting by Brown and the reader.  This is crucial and might remind us of a famous saying of Marx's. 

I’m waiting for a witty comedy by McBride about Che Guevara.  Maybe he can make Guevara’s failed guerilla expedition in Bolivia somewhat laughable, featuring a clownish side-kick who thinks he’s nuts. Or how about the union fools who struck Hormel in the 1980s and lost?  Hey, even those desperate BLM protesters? Ha ha! Twain never wrote a comedy about the Civil War for instance, because he couldn’t.  Huckleberry Finn had the background of slavery, but Twain never portrayed real people or events.  Roberto Beignini in Life is Beautiful attempted to make a WWII concentration and death camp into a summer holiday for his son.  That didn’t quite work either.  In contrast, Trump, Biden and the capitalist political system are open farces.  These are the real targets for a modern Mark Twain.     

Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  “The Good Lord Bird”(TV) “Fire on the Mountain” (Bisson); “No Fascist USA!” “The Free State of Jones” “The Souls of Black Folk” (Dubois); “Struggle & Progress” or type in the phrase “Civil War.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 30, 2020

One of the Top Working Marxist Economists

Michael Roberts

This blog will rest for a week.  In the meantime, please sign up with Michael Robert's blog, or purchase his book from May Day as a gift:

Robert's focus is on the rate of profit...

“The Long Depression – Marxism and the Global Crisis of Capitalism” by Michael Roberts, 2016. 

It was reviewed on this blog in 2016 at:  https://maydaybookstore.blogspot.com/search?q=michael+roberts 

Michael Robert's Blog is at:  https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/

Robert's focuses on the essence of capitalism - the rate of profit from labor. He gathers national and world-wide data to update his figures, using models and methods from other political economists as well.  His conclusion?  The trend of the profit rate has gone down over the years, as Marx hypothesized. This speaks basic trouble for the capital system. 

BREXIT

For those clueless leftists who supported Brexit or ignored Brexit or waffled (I'm looking at you Jeremy Corbin) here is Michael Robert's initial thoughts on the damage Brexit will do to labour and to the British economy.  

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/12/29/the-brexit-deal/

HUDSON & CHINA

Roberts recently attended the American Economic Association conference.  In his newest post, he eviscerates Michael Hudson's theory that financial capital is dominant and we now have 'neo-feudalism.'  This is similar to the positions of Harvey and Minsky, but he argues it is reformist and not Marxist.  

He also describes four papers that explain China is not imperialist but still think it's capitalist.  Hudson presented a paper in 2019 that also agreed with this thesis of 'non-imperialism.' But he went on to question how a capitalist economy the size of China could not be imperialist and yet why it performed so well -unlike clearly capitalist economies suffering greatly.  So the class character of China is still up in the air for him.

Red Frog

December 24, 2020

The Drone Future-Present

 “People’s Future of the United States,”by 25 fiction writers, 2020

Evidently we have none. 

This book's title riffs off of Howard Zinn's "People's..." series, but it falls short.  Lots of this poetic future fiction seems too precious or vague or confusing to make sense.  But there are broken outlines in these short stories.  In the future, dystopia rules.  The United States is gone by civil war, plague or environmental destruction and global warming.  The stories are centered on a diversity approach to characterization.  Class is invisible.  Production is magical and the fictional characters are indigenous, gay, lesbian, Arab, immigrant, African-American, angry women, Latinix, trans.  They make appearances outside of any notion of class or movement or politics, like some kind of fantabulist dues check-off. This is what the writing market demands at this time in liberal history evidently. 

Most of the people in these stories are hunkering in the ruins under an omnipotent and militarized surveillance state intent on getting rid of knowledge.  Not a stretch.  Yet some stories don't even attempt to be in the future.  There is an occasional high fantasy of change, or an individual rebellion, a bit of sabotage, a childish riot.  But impotence seems to be the main theme.  No future, no power, no organization, no nothing.  

The stories are full of drones, walls and detention camps, implanted chips and Dollar Stores.  Memorizing books like Bradbury’s 451.  Imaginary names for repressive forces and technological horrors.  Two undergrounds, the Matriarchs and some unknowns.  Not-so-futuristic gay conversion therapy.  Echoes of the sterility problems in Handmaid’s Tale or Children of Men.  (Why this fear of a dearth of babies?!) An MSNBC take on Russian hacking, involving Russians in the Cleveland Municipal Government!  A Universal Basic Income future that conflicts with a cranky capitalist, which is the funniest of the lot.  Hologramic faces and clothes that hide the real person.  A burning Seattle. Dragons get ridden, like Game of Thrones.  One story has nods to racist robot algorithms, Lord of the Rings sentient trees and nods to the digital world of The Matrix.  Another is a women's version of Ground-Hog Day.

Most of these bits are not so different from the present.  Omar el Akkad, who wrote the book American War, writes one of the best stories, as it tries not to be too ‘magical’ and ‘science-fiction-y.’  Attempts at poetic alchemy fail if there is no real ‘ground’ to a story, instead dwelling on a vaporous gruel.  A good number of these efforts at speculative fiction are in that style.

At any rate, if you like snapshots of speculative fiction, you might like this collection and the diversity within.  Looking into the future is valuable, but it is really a projection of present politics.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  “American War” (Akkad); “Hunger Games,” “The Matrix,” “Blade Runner,” “The Road” (McCarthy); “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (Dick) “Red Star” (Bogdanov);“War for the Planet of the Apes” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “The Heart Goes Last” and “Handmaid’s Tale,” (both by Atwood); “Good News” (Abbey); “World War Z,” “Cloud Atlas,” “The Dispossessed” (Le Guin); “Maze Runner,” “Divergent – Insurgent,” “Children of Men”(James). 

  

And I bought it at May Day Books! (Please knock if door locked due to crime.  Covid hours 1-5 PM.  Mask up!)

The Kulture Kommissar / December 19, 2020

Happy Solstice and Great Convergence on the 21st!

Whose Government?

 The Not So Secret

Media pundits and the Democratic Party rarely bring up one of the political charges used by the Republican Party, by Trump, by the Alt-Right, by neo-fascists.  The Democrats and media criticize the former for authoritarianism or racism or sexism or anti-Semitism or religious nuttery or hypocrisy or lack of professionalism or corruption.  All true of course, though that cannon can be aimed back at them on most of these claims. Hypocrisy is a bi-partisan value.

Trumpers at Trump's Rally in Valdosta, Georgia

What the media and Democratic leaders rarely discuss is the strident and endless anti-socialism of Rightist and Libertarian politics because they themselves are anti-socialist.  Antagonism to socialism or anarchism has been going on since the Civil War in the U.S., so it is built into the woodwork.  The most cursory investigation of Rightism reveals that at its heart it thinks the Democratic Party, liberals, neo-liberals, the U.S. government and nearly all government programs are ‘socialist.’  

The Republican ads in the Georgia Senatorial contest accuse the Democrat Ossof of being a dangerous socialist, allied with Bernie Sanders.  Raphael Warnock, the other Democratic Senate candidate, is a 'hate America' radical liberal, socialist and even communist.  Of course this is fiction but that doesn't stop the rhetoric.  However they lead in an unpleasant direction for orthodox market-only capitalist ideologues and the Dems too.  More on that later. 

Unscientific and impressionistic neo-liberals, liberals and left-liberals have their own hysteria about Donald Trump's all out ‘fascism.'  You'll see endless ahistorical and anti-materialist analyses looking at Trump's politics. This is sort of a funhouse mirror reflection of the Republican’s idea of them, as the Reps can't tell a communist from a neo-liberal.  

As historical experience and Marxist analysis show, real fascists rarely get voted out of office.  The triumph of fascism means the end of bourgeois democracy, to be replaced by an open bourgeois dictatorship.  Trump’s legalistic ‘coup’ was always somewhat of a Hail Mary pass to a bunch of receivers who probably didn’t want to catch the ball – to use the stupid sports analogy method common in the U.S.   It is all over but the shooting.

The shooting!  Capitalists and even the FBI and CIA use thugs when they have to.  Strike-breakers are nothing new, the Klan is nothing new, right-wing terrorism is nothing new, cops shooting civilians is nothing new, nor is a capitalist threatening another with violence to get a leg up.  Nor would the reliance on a bunch of neo-fascists or alt-right thugs like the Proud Boys or others by a President or the Republican Party be out of order.  By the way, Proud Boy's leader Enrique Tarrio is the son of Florida Cuban immigrants, marinated in anti-communism.  Declarations of “civil war” and ‘secession’ for the neo-Confederacy headquartered in Texas is second nature, as we have seen.   It is all typically ‘American.'  You could say that the South under the KKK and Jim Crow was the closest the U.S. has gotten to fascism in recent times.

Are the thugs posing with AR-15s, bullet proof vests and combat gear all doing cosplay?  Performance art?  Will they back up their macho death strut with action in a concerted way?  We will see if the thugs go beyond scattered but aggressive street fighting with BLM or Antifa, as happened in D.C. for a second time.  By the way, the 4 rightists recently stabbed in D.C. (either Patriot Prayer or Proud Boys) happened because they attacked a random black civilian who had wandered into 'their' bar, Harrys, according to the NYT.  Another anti-fascist was shot in Olympia, Washington a few days ago and a second BLM activist has been killed in Louisville, so they are edging in that direction, with help from some local police. It is doubtful that anything they do will change the election result however.  Nevertheless the Left – and even the Democratic Party - has to be ready to use self-defense now.

But the basic politico/economic issue remains.  Joe Biden and the multi-millionaire leadership of the Democratic Party hate ‘socialism.’  Witness the treatment they dole out to the mild social-democrats of the Squad, to Sanders or to BLM and Antifa who aren’t even socialist - to anyone who doesn’t buy into neo-liberalism.  Not to mention their attitude towards actual Marxists.  You vote for us, we spit on you.  “Defund the police” has replaced Ralph Nader or Jill Stein or ‘the Russians’ as the excuse de jour for their crappy centrist, do-nothing candidates losing more elections.     

The tactical difference between Republicans and Democrats is that the Democrats know they have to pretend to dole out a few concessions to keep people voting for them.  That ain’t socialism - it just reflects pressure from people's movements.  Gay rights, $15 Now and weed legalization are recent examples of the population dragging the Democratic politicians behind them like dead weights.  Even the ACA reflects the pressure of single payer and Medicare for All.  

This ‘appeasement’ process lessened as the Democrats moved to the right for 44 years, even since LBJ.  They have failed to provide almost any substantive relief or progressive change on a host of issues since then.  This is where we stand now. Is government intervention in the economy to keep the banking system afloat ‘socialist’?  In an imperial capitalist system with an unlimited ability to loan or print money, no it is not.  Is providing expensive capitalist healthy care to more consumers 'socialist'?  No, that is just expanding the market.  That is normal functioning for a capitalist government.

Fed's Jerome Powell announcing $1T Loans a day to Big Banks 

‘Government’ does not equal socialism, but it does hint that the capitalist market system and profit motive is unable to survive without a sympathetic government that props it up.  This is the dirty truth the Republican market fundamentalists cannot swallow.  Capital and their government are actually twins, as no libertarian capitalist system could survive very long without a fully functional government, not one just limited to repressive institutions.  This is what scares the small business Republicans, Libertarians, self-employed peddlers and alt-right clowns – the market is not infallible and capitalists are not gods.  Big Republican capitalists know this but play along with their voting cattle. This accounts for the red-baiting of the Democrats – the simple-minded idea that most government is somehow socialist and can slightly limit the profits of capital.  Which it certainly does sometimes, but for the greater good of the survival of the whole capitalist system itself.  The specter of social revolution still haunts the ruling classes, as the conditions for it are developing world-wide.

Actual socialism would require taking over the property of the big capitalists.  It would involve the institution of a mass assembly democracy in neighborhoods and work places and the strengthening of labor organizations.  It would lead to the slow socialization of major production, banking, housing, schools, agriculture and land for the good of the majority working classes, all part of an eco-socialist economy.  Fascism would be suppressed and hopefully eliminated.  At bottom the battle between socialism or a ‘cooperative commonwealth’ and capital is the basic battle of all politics, reflecting the two main classes in present society.  This is the subdural secret the Republicans obsess over.

Yes, it involves a concept of society far more communal and collective than now, ultimately without classes, poverty and war.  Republicans think if you are against war, poverty or inequality, you are a ‘commie.’  Democratic leaders pretend to be against all three, but lie about that.  They just joined with Republicans for another massive military gift! This is why Democrats are blind and surprised about the accusations of ‘socialism’ hurled against them.  Not us!? They can’t broadly admit, except in passing as Pelosi or Warren did, that they are on the same side as the Republicans on this most basic of all issues.  They too love the dollar, profits, classes and color castes, war, “Amurica,” labor exploitation and the good old property and slavers Constitution. 

P.S. - "Warming up the mob on 6 January, Donald Trump Jr referred to the new senators from Georgia – a Jewish investigative journalist and a black pastor with a doctorate in theology – as “commie bastards”; Ashli Babbitt, who got herself killed while battering the doors of the House of Representatives, had previously tweeted that coronavirus curfews were “commie bullshit.” (Michael Pembroke, Guardian 1/18)

Red Frog

December 15, 2020

Music Power

“Music is Power – Popular Songs, Social Justice and the Will to Change,” by Brad Schreiber, 2020

I once made a tape of political songs as something new to be played before a political forum in the 1980s.  Some of the songs: Sic’ Em Pigs by Canned Heat; Nelson Mandela by Special AKA; King Harvest by the Band; Chicano by Doug Sahm; Pie in the Sky When You Die by Woody Guthrie; The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott Heron, Still In Saigon by Charlie Daniels; The Message by Grandmaster Flash; Bourgeois Blues by Leadbelly, The Internationale by Billy Bragg and so on.  Only a few of these are covered by Schrieber, which tells you how many songs there are to choose from.

This book will leave you with the realization that political music is quite common, though it is pigeon-holed as ‘protest’ music by the corporate media and labels.  Phil Ochs coined the term ‘topical songs’ which I also think doesn’t quite work.  In this book Schreiber expands the reach to include any ‘socially conscious’ or socio-political song – about being personally alienated, abused or fucked-up in various ways.  Political songs themselves are not considered ‘quite right,’ as they aren’t about love, lust or heartbreak, don’t tell a simple story, sometimes last too long, are undanceable, are too negative or are accused of being ‘propaganda.’  As if constant love songs are not a form of emotional and cultural propaganda.

Schreiber researched this enjoyable history centered around groups of the usual suspects, as well as unknown musicians that he thinks are most representative of political music.  He digs up background facts on them, so this is not just a description of single songs.  He has chapters on collections of left-wing folkies, psychedelic and roots R&B’ers, popular TV protest songsters, political rockers, heavy-metal proletarians, hard-edge punks and post-punks, early rappers and hip-hop, all the way to Zappa, from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Schreiber mostly ignores political jazz, blues; hard left folk, anarchist, communist and union music; many rock bands and country and world musicians, following his own muse.  Bob Marley and the Dixie Chicks are the exceptions for those latter categories. A book collecting all the stories around political songs would be massive - like an encyclopedia.  Which tells you that “somethin’ is happinen’ here.”  What it is seems very clear. 

Goodbye Earl!

Politically Schreiber seems to be a left-liberal and misunderstands certain terms like ‘direct action.’ The more leftist a song, the more he can label it ‘strident.’  He implies repeatedly that the choice is a weird either/or one between ‘peace and love’ or violent revolution.  He does mention a Black Panther band, the Lumpen, who advocated the latter, along with Thunderclap Newman’s pro-revolution song, Something in the Air.  He has a section on John Lennon that calls his post-Beatles work “psychological exploration” which misrepresents Lennon’s solo work.  Perhaps Women is the Nigger of the World or Attica State passed him by.

Schreiber reflects most musicians.  Most are not theorists, activists, organizers or involved in political groups outside their own musical sub-culture.  Class-wise many come from the proletariat.  Economically they are not just romantics.  Becoming a full-time musician means first moving up to a penurious form of self-exploiting ‘self-employment.’ If successful, they can move on to become petit-bourgeois sole proprietors and ‘entrepreneurs.’  If they become the dreaded monied ‘super-stars,’ they can get almost full bourgeois status, with their own brand and intellectual property.  See recent Bob Dylan on this.

While these stories, musicians and songs may be familiar to some, they might not be to you.  Worth getting in the time of Covid when music is a balm.

Prior blog reviews on music, use the blog search box, upper left:  “If it Sounds Good, It is Good,” “In Search of the Blues,” “Cool Town,” Kids”(Patti Smith); “Zappa,” “Laurel Canyon,” “Grateful Dead,” “Mississippi Delta,” “Life”(Keith Richards); “Janis Joplin,” “We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years,” "33 Revolutions Per Minute," "Searching for Sugarman," "Marie and Rosetta,” “The Blues – A Visual History,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “Echo in the Canyon,” “The Music Sell-Outs,” “Palmer’s Bar,” “Treme,” “Subculture,” “The Long Strange Trip.”

And I bought it at May Day’s excellent music section!

Kulture Kommissar

December 12, 2020

Rebel With a Cause

 “Passages of Rebellion,”by Fran Shor, 2020

This is a semi-autobiographical story about U.S. draft resistance and anti-war activism from 1967 to 1970 in Minnesota, with a familial coda many years later.  It is told mostly from the first-person point of view of a young grad student at the University of Minnesota, Franklin Roosevelt Goodman. 

Those involved in the Minneapolis movement against the Vietnam War during this period will recognize some of the players.  Marv Davidov and Eddie Felien show up, along with members of the Minnesota 8, who destroyed draft files in the state.  They are now remembered in a play, “Peace Crimes.”  Their real names are Brad Beneke, Frank Kroncke, Don Olson (still a friend of the May Day), Pete Simmons, Bill Tilton, Mike Therriault, Chuck Turchick and Cliff Ulen. This is relevant because the central event of the book involves Frank and another breaking into a draft office in the river town of Winona, Minnesota and trying to destroy draft files there.  His comrade is arrested for this and Frank eventually heads to Canada to avoid prison time in Sandstone.  This is similar to what the Minnesota 8 did, breaking into draft offices in the outstate Minnesota towns of Little Falls, Alexandria, Winona, and Wabasha.

The real Fran Shor did not participate in these raids, so this book is a bit like putting himself in their shoes.

The ideological content involves a pacifist and moral opposition to violence and war, using civil disobedience, non-violent occupations, public displays and property damage to hinder the war effort.  Camus’s “The Rebel” is the foundational text.  Frank, as well as some other draft resistors in his circle at the Twin Cities Draft Action Center, actually inform the Selective Service System of their intention not to be drafted.  This leads to long legal action in the courts against them.  Others in the movement burned draft cards at rallies, got CO status, hoped for a high draft number, enrolled in school, absconded to Canada or just disappeared.  So there is a bit of ‘martyrism’ here, as Frank’s passion about the damage being done to the Vietnamese and U.S. soldiers is primary.  He wants his opposition to be as public as possible. 

There are political pokes against more radical activists, some in SDS, some spouting revolutionary clichés about ‘picking up the gun.’ Though the novel acknowledges that the older black vets coming back from Vietnam weren’t pacifists.  Oddly, the bomber of the Army Mathematics Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin is foisted on Frank at one point. While the book is trying to contrast Frank’s pacifism with the bomber, there is no debate between them as they travel in a car.  One died and three were injured in this real bombing, the only deaths in the whole U.S. during this period carried out by the anti-war left.  Using this anomaly, the attempt to compare their respective ideas fails.  To me, Frank seems a bit naïve, but then his politics are not my own.  Pacifism is a useful tactic at times, but not a permanent all-around strategy.

The Real Minnesota 8

Frank during this period meets an attractive fellow grad student, Mary, and quickly gets married.  This is the personal side of the story, but his obsession with the anti-war movement ultimately breaks them apart.  This happens prior to his knowledge that she was pregnant, which forms the coda of the book.  In this part of the book, one character, Ruth, becomes an Andrea Dworkin-style feminist.  The story tracks the historical timeline of events during these tumultuous years and mentions key books read by beginning leftists of the time.  This ‘name-dropping’ method doesn’t really integrate the books or events into the story. 

As to the writing, it is somewhat simplistic, including many details that have no relation to the plot.  For instance Frank stops at Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown, a favorite dining spot in a famous University neighborhood.  This is evidently meant to spur nostalgia and knowing nods from local readers.  There is a lot of this, which mentions local place names, gets in two sly references to Dylan lyrics and includes random details that add little to the story, the language or the ideas.

At any rate, part of the literature of the local and national left which many people will identify with.  Pick it up today!

P.S. – Don Olson will be providing his insights on this book later.

Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: “Into the Streets (Felien); “American Pastoral” (Roth), “The Real Balfour Declaration,” or type in the word “Vietnam.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 8, 2020

Digital Taylorism

 “On the Clock – What Low Wage Work Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane,” by Emily Guendelsberger, 2019

A white-collar worker walks into an Amazon warehouse, a Convergys/AT&T call center, a McDonald’s … to work!  Guendelsberger is a journalist who was laid off and then took time to update Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 classic “Nickel and Dimed – On Not Getting By in America.”  This is her story of how the intensity and stress of labor has gotten worse for temporary, low-paid blue collar or service workers since 2001 due to computerization.

The key is the full application of Taylorism through technology.  Taylor was the first to develop ‘scientific’ management in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s, timing workers’ tasks and breaking them up into smaller tasks.  Under capital, speed-up and de-skilling of labor was the result, but the higher work productivity drove up profits.  With computers, algorithms, digital tracking and databases, workers have now been captured by a digital Taylorism.  Time theft is the cardinal sin and the computer knows it to the second.  Even though the workers’ time, energy, bodies and minds are being stolen every day.  Humans are now required to be flesh robots, before being replaced by actual ones, working at high speed, sometimes with little knowledge required.  Short-staffing is built into this situation – something nearly every worker is familiar with.

It is no surprise that turnover is huge in these jobs.  I myself worked in warehouses, in shipping and in a call center for a long time years ago and it was nothing like this - though two of those jobs were union shops.  ‘Union’ is a dirty word in these places.

AMAZON

Guendelsberger goes into detail on what each job entails.  She gets a temporary job through an agency at a giant Amazon ‘fulfillment center’ in Louisville, Kentucky, an anti-union state.  That fact is indicative of the labor conditions there.  As a product picker, she works through excruciating pain, boredom and exhaustion, feeding on free pain pills from an Amazon dispenser while walking 15 miles a day trying to make ‘rate’ on a timed tracker.  Her scanner tracks every product, her location and her time.  According to some Amazon workers, Amazon is an improvement over similar low-paid jobs, as they pay a bit more and have a bit of paid ‘time off.’  Which tells you something about what is going on in the U.S. class system.

As part of its proletarian workforce, Amazon uses workampers – mostly elderly RV folks or ‘crusty punks’ who follow seasonal or temp jobs around the country, living in RVs, vans, cars or tents – while paying for their camping spots.  These are our modern hobos and Hoovervilles.

Guendelsberger lasts a month at Amazon as a temporary ‘white badge’ during a Christmas surge, while living in an acquaintance’s bedroom, eating fast food and taking quick smoke breaks.  The carrot held out in front of white badges is to make rate, excel, and you ‘may’ be hired as a permanent ‘blue badge.’  At one point she collapses in agony and can’t get up, though she gets better at the job as time goes on.  After Christmas Eve, she is happy to drive away.

Amazon Warehouse

AT&T & CONVERGYS

Convergys is the number 1 call center corporation in the U.S., selling their services to many top U.S. corporations.  Guendelsberger gets hired at the Hickory, North Carolina Convergys facility, one of many.  As a help line ‘representative’ for AT&T, Guendelsberger is tracked every second.  She’s forced to make sales pitches to every caller except those disconnecting AT&T for a dead person.  Workers must multi-task through archaic software and hardware, many times dealing with angry AT&T customers while attempting to pitch DirectTV. She almost has a breakdown on one nasty call where a woman screams and swears at her for a long time as she fumbles with the software.  She is forbidden to hang up or talk back.  The job attracts mostly young working class women with children who can’t get a better job.  She has no kids, so that burden is not on her shoulders.  Still…

At the end of Guendelsberger’s 5 weeks of training the 20 who started are whittled down to 8.  A month later it is zero.  At one point her supervisor points out that any time off the phone, other than the legally-required breaks, is not paid, which disturbs nearly everyone.  Convergys knows this because they track every workers’ keystrokes, programs, logins and calls. After work she sleeps in her small car in a nearby Walmart parking lot, using its toilet while showering at a nearby health club.  A sympathetic female co-worker finally offers her an empty bedroom.

During her time in Hickory, Guendelsberger takes a side trip into Hickory’s past, when it was ‘the furniture capital of the world.’  Clinton, the 1990s, NAFTA and off-shoring killed the industry, leaving empty factories and lost wages.  Locals had to trade higher-paid furniture factory jobs for fast food, retail clerking or this call center.

McDonalds

Guendelsberger works for a high-end McDonalds in San Francisco for two months, as city and state law mandate $14 an hour at that point, some sick time and more normal consistent scheduling.  She has always loved the junk food at McDonalds so she feels at home with the menu.  She details the complexities and stress of working there.  The line never quits, people make convoluted time-sucking orders, people get angry, throw food at workers and understaffing is intentional due to a standard algorithm that estimates capacity at every moment.  To order one item she counts 28 steps she has to engage in. She gets a skin burn like 70% of fast food workers.  Homeless people crowd the neighborhood and store, ordering off the secret $1 or cheap menu but also create chaos at times.

Most of the workers at this McDonalds are Latinas or Filipinas who also have kids, fitting the profile of increased exploitation of women workers.  This is similar to the other two jobs she had.  Their commutes are longer, but she gets a free bed a mere 40 minutes away by the BART.  McDonalds is so fast-paced that she can barely talk or make friends with anyone.

One of the main points she makes is the high stress levels all 3 jobs produce due to the inhuman speedup.  She herself claims she has PTSD and gets angry or flustered somewhat easily.  She cannot push back according to the rules of every company, but must put up with abuse.  She never works directly for the large capitalist firms, but for a temp agency at Amazon, a 3^rd party at AT&T, a franchisee at McDonalds.  So the corporations can always claim innocence even though the reality is the opposite.

TAKEAWAYS

One of the bigger takeaways from this book is that many southern workers don’t know how badly they have it.  They are desperate for a job and praise the tiny benefits because they know nothing else.  Anyone who doesn’t like the treatment dished out by Amazon or Convergys is ‘lazy’ or ‘spoiled’ or has a ‘bad’ attitude according to bosses and loyal workers. This is common among many southern workers statistically. In some workplaces in the north we might call the latter brown-noses. Sniff.

Guendelsberger realizes that white collar workers have better work conditions than these service or warehouse jobs. It is quite a contrast with her former life as a reporter.  Most white collar workers just get their work done while putting up with less regimentation.  Talking, going to the bathroom, calling home, even surfing the internet and wasting some time are not so crucial.  Most white collars do not have time clocks either. For the workers in the industries detailed here, these bits of freedom are luxuries.  It is a measure of the weakness of the U.S. labor movement and U.S. working-class culture especially in the south that conditions like this are widespread and long-standing.

Guendelsberger does not really understand the concept of surplus value created by labor over wages paid.  Exploitation and super-exploitation is dimly visible hovering in the background, but never made explicit. Nor does she tie it to the workers tied to companies by a software platform - Uber, Task Rabbit, Door Dash, etc., who are basically low-paid day laborers with their own cars, tools or bicycles.

A valuable book for those who have never worked these jobs; for union organizers dealing with the new Taylorism; for people that use Amazon, call centers or McDonalds; for those who work or will work in a low-paid digitally-controlled ‘modern’ job.  It is a peek at the modern U.S. precariat, locked in its Procrustean bed of digital control or what she calls ‘techno Taylorism.’

 Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  “Nomadland,” “The Precariat,” “The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism,” “Wageless Life,” “Love Your Job?” “Bright-Sided,” “Behind the Kitchen Door,” “Salt Sugar Fat,” “Super-Size Wages!” “Why People Don’t Buy Books” or references to ‘The South.’  

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / December 5, 2020

Stealing Feminism

“The Queen’s Gambit,” directed by Scott Frank, 2020

One conventional view of this Netflix series is that it is the ‘Bobby Fischer story’ in drag.  Fischer was a chess child prodigy from Chicago, won the U.S. championship at 14, became a Grandmaster at 15 and was probably on the autism spectrum.  He was initially brought up in poverty by a single mother.  His long lost father was a Hungarian mathematician, which is relevant to something else.

Is the film “The Queen’s Gambit,” and Beth Harmon, its ‘on-the-spectrum’ female orphan, really about the male Bobby Fischer?  Or is the real attraction of this film about a woman succeeding in a male-dominated game?  I think it is quite obvious that it is the latter.  This is a transparent feminist series.

There have been a number of films about Fischer but none have attracted the attention of this Netflix series, which had 62 million who glanced or watched it.  Why?  It is no accident that it comes as part of a recent number of popular STEM films about western women doing well in science and math – “Hidden Figures,” “Contagion,” “Radioactive” and "Ammonite" come to mind.

Beth Harmon is brought up in the 1950s in an orphanage, outside the paradigm of a typical 1950s U.S. female. She doesn’t give a damn for convention, religion, nationalism, men or pop culture.  She has no father or mother, and instead gets close to a fellow black orphan and the orphanage’s male janitor, who teaches her chess.  Instead of getting married and having a baby like the girls in her high school, she goes straight to tranquilizers, drink and chess.  She rejects the religion of the orphanage, which shows up later.  She eventually gets adopted by a cold father and a repressed housewife who yearns for the life of a pianist.  This is the U.S. 1950s and these are all familiar feminist themes.

Then she starts her rise in the overwhelmingly male-dominated world of chess, which in the U.S. of the time is the passion of a small sub-culture of geeky, broke men.  In Russia and central and eastern Europe on the other hand, it is a national passion.  She plays in Kentucky, Vegas, Mexico City, Paris and eventually Moscow.

 STEALING FEMINISM

I contend that this film and book steal real chess feminism from the USSR and Hungary, substituting a fictional ‘American’ heroine.  These countries were on the other side of a ‘curtain’ separating the bureaucratic workers’ states from the U.S. and so verboten.  Yet at the time in the ‘50s-‘60s these places where actually advanced over the U.S. in feminism and chess.  For instance, an ERA was passed in the Soviet Union in 1917 mandating formal equality between the sexes.  Daycare creches were developed in workplaces and women given pregnancy leave.  They gained the right to vote, the right to own land, the right to abortion, and the separation of church and state.  Women were allowed in combat. Child illegitimacy was abolished, homosexuality legalized and divorce made easy.  Alexandra Kollontai became the first female government official in any western government as Peoples Commissar of Social Welfare.  This was light years ahead of the conditions for women in the U.S.

In the U.S. on the other hand the ERA has not been passed to this day, while the women’s vote was attained after the USSR.  Abortion was made legal only in 1973 and it is now under threat again.  U.S. women on their own couldn’t get credit cards, sports training, certain jobs and other property rights until the 1970s.  In chess, the U.S. right now has only had 6 out of 119 female international masters and 1 out of 37 female grandmasters.  This is why I call this series an exercise in stealing feminism.

Vera Menchik

RUSSIANS & SOVIETS

The Washington Post on 11/28/20 figured out this film is not about Bobby Fischer but about women and now other publications have chimed in.  Since the Harmon story is fiction, who might be the real Harmon? The Post wrote about Vera Menchik, a wealthy girl in Russia who after the Revolution and the break-up of her family, took up chess.  In 1927 Menchik won the female World Championship and became the first women to play in men’s tournaments.  In 1929 she tied a male Polish grandmaster and was the first strong female chess player in the world.  She was followed by 3 more females, one Russian, Lyudmila Rudenko and two Soviet Georgians, Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, the latter two Grandmasters. 

HUNGARIANS

Of most interest to me are two sisters from Hungary, who learned chess as child prodigies similar to Harmon.  This happened in the 1970s and 1980s before the collapse of the deformed workers' state in Hungary - Susan Polgar and Judit Polgár.  Susan, like her sister, was a child prodigy trained by their father, an educational psychologist.  In 1984 Susan at the age of 15 became the top-ranked female player.  At 17 she was the first woman to qualify for the Men’s Zonal Championship in 1986. In 1991 she became the 3^rd women to become a Grandmaster.

Judit was also a child prodigy playing at 10 (and Grandmaster at 15) and tied as winner in the U.S. Open Chess Championship in 1998, similar to Harmon.  She was the first female player to defeat a reigning world number one in a game, beating the Russian Garry Kasparov.  This is reminiscent of the final scene in the “Queen’s Gambit.”  In her career she also defeated Karpov, Spassky and others.  The outline of their two stories are similar to Harmon’s.  The Polgárs were quite cute to boot.

Judit Polgar

Some of these events happened after the 1983 book was written, so they are not models for the book.  That is not the argument being made here, though a comparison of the book and series by Slate call the latter ‘an escapist fantasy,’ as the book has a much tougher tone.

WOULD the REAL BETH HARMON PLEASE STAND UP?

These Russians, Soviet Georgians and Hungarians are the real Beth Harmons.  But would a large U.S. audience watch their stories on Netflix?  No.  This mainstream, stylish film is in essence a U.S. nationalist and Jenny-Come-Lately feminist ideological project. As part of this patriots are supposed to take pride in the victory that Beth has against the implacable Russian Vasily Borgov in Moscow.  At least the film shows that Harmon is more irritated with her CIA handler than the Russians.  The Russians mob her with praise, shake her hand, compliment her and she eventually mingles with them in a park to play chess.  The more intellectual USSR and eastern Europe took chess seriously as a common skill for all - and you can see it here.  Hungarians play chess in their geothermal baths.  Cuba participated in female chess and to this day, Cubans play chess in the parks. 

The slant behind this film is a bit like the State Department feminists who supported Carter’s war against the Communist government in Afghanistan, in alliance with Islamic fundamentalists.  The Americans claim to be the preeminent fighters for women in the world.  Yet the U.S. feminists’ anti-Communism outweighed their commitment to the rights of female Afghans. The Communist government was teaching girls in schools and giving rights to adult women, unlike the Islamists who wanted girls out of the schools and women back under the thumb.

Ignoring the USSR, bureaucratic Hungary and eastern Europe is evidently the duty of all U.S. feminists, male and female - even on the issue of chess!  So please note that the real Beth Harmon did not live in Lexington, Kentucky or was a man in drag.

P.S. - The actress playing Beth Harmon also appeared in the series "The Peaky Blinders," reviewed below.  Here she is talking to Polgar on Twitter about chess:  https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1341081066619035648?lang=en

P.P.S. - Harmon spent time with Judit Polgar in a Netflix-organized chat after the show came out, making the connection explicit.

The Kulture Kommissar

12/1/2020

 Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left:  “Feminists and Feminists,” “Socialist Feminism and the New Women’s Movement,” “Fortunes of Feminism,” “Marxism and the Oppression of Women,” “Revolt.  Revolt She Said.  Revolt Again,” “The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born.”