Ass Sass Sins

 “John Wick: Chapter 4” movie directed by Chad Stahelski, 2023

If there was an example of terminal, neo-liberal and debased American cinema, this is it. Even more over-the-top than previous versions, it is a simple-minded violent video game pretending to be in reality. The plot is as thin as a tasteless saltine – John Wick wants to get out from under 'The High Table' and no longer be an assassin. To do this he has to kill probably over 200 people. It's comedic its so idiotic. At one point after he's fought his way up the steep steps going to Paris' Sacre Couer church several times, Wick is kicked all the way back down the steps like some murder slapstick act. Sisyphus he ain't.

Wick incinerates Stunt Man #207

Wick shoots more shots than any automatic can hold, his clips seem to arrive out of nothing, he doesn't miss while everyone else does. He's invincible because he's fast and maybe wearing kevlar! A blind guy is his most deadly opponent. Goofy Japanese gangsters still use samurai swords. An evil and possibly gay Frenchman heads the attempt to kill Wick. Rave dancers in Berlin high on ecstasy are not phased by bloody fights going on in their midst. A High Table hotel exploded into dust in New York is suddenly just a standing, empty shell. Traffic around the Arc de Triomphe never stops in the middle of a vicious firefight. Worst of all Lawrence Fishburne and Ian McShane lent their cred to this mess, along with legions of stunt-men. This movie clocks in at almost 3 hours, with most of it Wick fighting hordes and hordes of assassins to the point of boredom. If this were a kung-fu movie (which it kinda is) we'd be laughing at what low quality crap Hong Kong, Singapore or Taipei cranks out. But this is Hollywood.

This travesty got 94% from audiences AND reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes. In its first weekend it took in $73.5 million for Lions Gate, which Bloomberg called a 'blowout.'  Even the Social-Democrats at Jacobin liked this debased horseshit. Most of the U.S. audiences who watch this film have never been to Osaka, Berlin, Paris and even New York. It's a poor man's vacation reel, full of cliches. Would every bad guy in Paris gang-up on Wick if they knew who they were fighting? No. Even the armored Samurai clones in Osaka and the gold-toothed thugs of Berlin would think twice. But they keep comin' and comin' because of 'the money.' Money, money, money! No one thinks of sniping except the dark-skinned assassin. Everyone else wants to duke it out 'mano a mano' in close combat. Really? I imagine most people consider this a running joke – but it is a joke without any real humor.

The saddest ethnic bullshit is a bunch of Belorussian gangsters in Berlin called the “Russki Roma” who brand Wick as part of their clan after he's been shot-gunned by their Orthodox priest. And yes, Wick's bastardized Russki nickname is 'Baba Yaga.' The French marquis running the attempt to kill Wick represents old decadent European aristocracy and dresses like a dandy. He's so 'not American' – just another surrender monkey. The Table decrees a duel at the end like we are back in the 1800s. The stereotype of archaic, effete France and Europe is complete.

The underlying message is that good deeds and friendship rule over the requirements of assassin jobs for The Table. Yet, unaccountably, Wick shows up at a friend's High Table Hotel in Osaka only to be discovered and his friend killed. His friend's daughter is injured, and then she disappears. Yeah, good thinkin' Sherlock, with friends like you... One assassin hoping to be paid $40 million doesn't shoot Wick because Wick saves his dog. Ahhhhh... The blind assassin keeps him alive so he too can be free of The Table. Wick even saves him, to his own detriment.

If this sounds like a ridiculous version of the far better Bourne series, you are right. Young boys watching this circus might think they too need to get revenge – as revenge is always the motivation in nearly every violent movie, and its Wick's as well. After all, they killed his dog! Combat is just like a video game and a ballet - ask the Marines or the Army. At the end – spoiler alert – we see the grave of John Wick. I breathed a sigh of relief. But is he really dead? Only the dollar counters in Hollywood know for sure. But Keanu Reeves sure looks old and tired of it all.

Mini Review:  "1923" the forerunner to 'Yellowstone' should be called 'Big House on the Prairie.' 

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Kill the Assassins!” “The Story of My Assassins,” “The Plot to Kill King,” “All the King's Men,” “Hannah,” “Redbreast” “Fargo,” “Game of Thrones,” “The Devil's Chessboard.”

The Cultural Marxist

March 30, 2023

Lady Death

 “The Diamond Eye” by Kate Quinn, 2022

This is the story of Soviet sniper Lyudmila ('Mila') Pavlichenko, who had 309 official kills in WWII and many more unofficial ones, as sometimes she shot into massed troops or could not prove a kill. She estimated around 400, with 39 of these kills enemy snipers. She is the female equivalent of Stalingrad's Vassili Ziatsev depicted in the book “Enemy at the Gates.” Quinn's method as an author is “historical fiction” based on extensive research, Pavlichenko's diary, fleshed out scenes, imagined dialog and made-up melodrama.

Mila was a young history student and a single mother who, according to this story, stood up to her obnoxious and arrogant estranged husband by learning how to shoot at a sniper school. She enlisted in the Soviet Army the day after the Nazis invaded the USSR, having spent the previous day at the beach in Odessa and an evening at the ballet. The Army almost didn't take her. Her first weapon was a shovel, but a soldier next to her was injured and she inherited his rifle.

The WAR

The story involves the relentless 1941-1942 assault against the southern USSR by fascist Romanian and German armies. Mila's first kills are described, her promotions, her training squads of snipers, her injuries and her comradeship with another Siberian sniper and a tough nurse. Her constant fight against male chauvinism in the ranks of the Chapayev Rifle Division is highlighted. She fights through the retreat from the initial Ukrainian front, through the siege of Odessa to the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimea. From there she reluctantly goes on tour with Soviet officials around the world, including to the U.S.

Being a sniper involves more than being able to bulls-eye a target. It means being good at camouflage, at digging in, at silence, at waiting, at calmness, at building a nest. It means understanding wind, elevation, distance, sight-lines, geography and the capacities of the weapon. It also means getting good intel and knowing enemy routines. In this case her sniper rifles were a bolt-action Mosin-Nagant 7.62x39 and for a short time the inadequate semi-auto Tokarev SVT 40. Later she got a special telescopic sight and carried a Tokarev 7.62x25 pistol for close-in defense.

Mila finds a solid shooting partner in a 'wolfish' Siberian hunter, Kostia, who is her second in command. She has to fend off creepy officers who want a 'front-line wife.' During the defense of Sevastopol, a charming officer and wit named Kitsenko backs her up against her boresome commander, yet stayed respectful. He gives her blood when she is wounded, after which she is melodramatically operated on by her nasty estranged husband, Alexei, a doctor. Mila survives, engages in some excellent shooting, and pledges to marry Kitsenko after they have a front-line romance in his underground officer's bunker. 

Romance is one of Quinn's fortés ... and Mila's continuing contact with exe Alexei is a pure fabrication. It also casts doubt on the other romance scenes in the book. In reality Mila married Kitsenko in Odessa and he was killed soon afterward. Mila is submarined out of Sevastopol before the disastrous and fated surrender of the Southern Soviet Army in July 1942. The book hints at the massive casualties inflicted on that army, as it was overrun and captured on that isolated peninsula by the Hitlerites. A strategic mistake, that.

Mila with Eleanor Roosevelt

THE TOUR

On the 1942 Soviet delegation's trip to the States and Canada, the chauvinist press and the half-wit civilians call Mila a girl, think she's lying about killing 309 soldiers and are stupefied that women in the USSR have more rights than their precious ladies. They ask about makeup, criticize her clothes and ask about her underwear. They say so many stupid things she is stunned and irritated.

The point of the tour is to get the Allies to initiate a real Second Front instead of waiting for the Soviets to be bled dry ... which they were doing. Patriotic American 'war experts' who study WWII always miss this long delay. It was only in September 1943 that Allied units invaded Italy, finishing the fight in May 1945. In June 1944 Allied forces finally landed at Normandy and actually began fighting in the main geography of the war, 770 miles from Berlin and more than one and a half years after Pavlichenko's tour. This was because Soviet armies were already heading west towards Berlin.

Quinn packs the book with sly digs at the typical rigidities of the Soviet system, as she is not Comrade Quinn. The book also has an absurd sub-plot about a right-wing assassin in Washington D.C. waiting to shoot FDR and blame it on Pavilchenko, who is staying in the White House courtesy of Eleanor Roosevelt. This seems to be a fictional reflection of two earlier assassination attempts on FDR. This fake plot-line and its fanciful 'sniper duel' ending mar the whole book, adding 50 pages of hooey. Quinn doesn't just write about history – like a Hollywood movie she also fakes it. Mila was one of 2,000 female snipers in the Soviet army. She taught snipers after this tour, then after the war finished her degree, became an historian, worked for the Soviet Navy, suffered from PTSD and alcoholism and died in 1974. Salute Comrade Mila!

P.S. - The Russian film on Youtube, "Battle of Sevastopol," is her story, with another mix of romances.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Enemy at the Gates,” “Red Valkyries,” “The Unwomanly Face of War” (Alexievich); “Life and Fate” (Grossman); “Soviet Women,” “Panzer Destroyer,” “Amsterdam,” “War is a Racket” or the word 'feminism.'    Woody Guthrie even wrote a song about her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSQBzlqEybM

And I got it at the Library!

Red Frog

March 27 2023

Performative Liberalism

 “Amsterdam” a film by David O. Russell, 2022

This is a cheese-ball film about a real episode in U.S. history. It is almost infotainment and might leave some viewers wondering 'WTF?' It is about 2 men, one dark-skinned, one light-skinned, who become friends during WW1. They get sent into battle in the Argonne Forest and get injured. They meet an American nurse in the hospital and after the war, the 3 become inseparable, living a hip, artsy, fun life in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. So, we'll always have Amsterdam!

Anyway, the two men return to New York. One is a doctor and helps veterans and the other becomes a lawyer and helps veterans. They become involved in stopping a real plot to overthrow FDR by a cabal of rich capitalists and their fascistic spawn after they are accused of murder. This refers to a real incident in U.S. history that has been called The Business Plot. The plotters were to use a prominent general, Smedley Butler, to recruit WWI veterans, as Mussolini had done and Hitler was doing, to overthrow FDR.  Butler, in real life, refused and testified against the plotters in 1934. He was vilified by the press or pooh-poohed and ignored. Even Wiki thinks the plot was alleged, so that attitude continues to this day on an event never talked about in any history class.

Its significance is not its weakness as a plot – yes it was sketchy as far as we know - but the continuing tendency it reveals within the capitalist class and its allies to get rid of any sort of bourgeois democracy using the military.

This movie has a ridiculous amount of top stars – Taylor Swift, Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Chris Rock, Anna Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Rami Malek and god help us, Robert DeNiro. Is this Oscar bait? This movie seems to literally be 'performative liberalism' by the Hollywood glitterati. It is perhaps meant to remind us of the threat of modern fascistic or military plots, like the botched autogolpe selfie Putsch on January 6^th attempted by Trump.

Reality intrudes in references to the 1932 veteran's bonus march and the real WW1 369^th Regiment of dark-skinned soldiers, but most of the story is a buddy / romance picture, with popping-out eyeballs, stupid spies, goofy cops, creepy rich people, corny singing and sinister shooters. It has the feel of a cartoon or screwball comedy. According to Butler's real testimony, the plot involved shadowy financiers, including JP. Morgan; an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune and higher-ups in the American Legion. To Butler, they proposed a march similar to the one Mussolini proposed on Rome, but this time on Washington, D.C. - to replace an 'ailing' FDR. In the movie, these forces are fictionalized.

David O. Russell has done prior films – the war comedy Three Kings; the 'existential' comedy I Heart Huckabees; the tragi-comic Silver Linings Playbook; the financial scandal comedy American Hustle; and Joy, another 'dramedy.' There seems to be a pattern here. Is this film worth watching? Other than the fun of identifying famous actors, no. Experts on the plot reveal the film is about 10% accurate. The mash-up scene of Madison Square Garden Nazis and Harlem Hell-Fighters is made up. No one was murdered in the real plot. Nor is Butler's violent colonialist background shown as the rationale for recruiting him.

While the real plot was somewhat limited, the film reinforces the idea that it was just another funny shit-show, the kind that is so common in the U.S. The movie is a continuation of 'the ship of fools' idea about the wacky politics of America. Unfortunately, we're not laughing much anymore. While the ultra-Right is a comedic gold-mine, Hitler was also a joke initially. Rightists like Trump, Marjorie Taylor-Green, Ted Cruz and Lauren Boebert, their internet backers, along with many military generals are clowns – but is comedy sufficient to stop them? The obvious answer is no.

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use the upper left search box to investigate our 16 year old archive, using these terms: “War is a Racket” (Butler); “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Flivver King” (Sinclair); “1917” (Mendes), "It Was Predictable." 

The Cultural Marxist

March 23, 2023

Adrenaline Junkie

 “A Rumor of War”by Philip Caputo, 1977

After graduating from a Jesuit college in English literature in 1960, Caputo joined the Marines to get away from the boredom and safety of suburban life. (You read that right.) In a familiar and grueling process, he became a marine officer and is flown to Viet Nam in early 1965 to defend the Da Nang airfields after ARVN defeats. His platoon is made up of high-school dropouts from slums, dirt farms and Appalachia. This is his story, a combination of the enjoyment of combat and its cruel reality, with comradeship its redeeming quality, a comradeship that also produced barbarities of revenge.

This memoir reads like Matterhorn by Karl Malantes, whose similar ambivalent attitude also promotes war on the sly. The excitement, the making of a man, the solidarity, the mission, the discipline – all elide politics, which is absent from this narrative. This attitude is a fitting tribute to Caputo's middle-class, Catholic upbringing in American suburbia in the 1950s. But for a young reader not sucked in by military heroics, it might dissuade them from making the same deep mistake.

As a young man he arrives in a Viet Nam still without ubiquitous shell craters and multiple dead and wounded. Its the familiar tactile Viet Nam – insects, dust, heat, sweat, sun, shit, body odor, boredom and routine. Until the first casualty, a blasted foot from a mine. Sickness, disease, accidents and unfriendly-fire follow. Later in 1965 the U.S. brass decide the defensive war will become one of search and destroy. U.S. troops begin the offensive and the intervention starts in earnest. The criminal command from on high also came – that if they were running or dead and Vietnamese, they were VC, civilians be damned. The body count bloodbath had begun. Later, prisoners were not taken either, especially by the ARVN.

Gunship Huey's, transport helicopters, thundering howitzers, overwhelming noise announce the first big sortie into VC territory. Even though Caputo had read many books about WWII, he is happy as he flies in a chopper to the LZ. So he concludes that every generation will make the same mistake, forever. He mistakes his own avocation as a macho adrenaline junkie for a rationale of eternal war. He thinks war is a psychological phenomenon, not a political and economic one. This is a bourgeois, low-level cover for war.

What follows are routine commutes into the bush by helicopter and walking jungle trails west of Da Nang while being attacked by groups of phantom snipers. He describes the combination of viciousness towards Vietnamese civilians and the odd kindnesses of GIs. In one firefight, a platoon burns down a whole village in irritation. Caputo later wants to make amends to the villagers, but then notices they seem to have no emotion about the destruction, and he becomes angry with them. This is an odd reaction.  After killing some VC the units start to become hardened to war, a process Caputo shows in detail. With the first death by sniper fire in his unit, Caputo and the men realize they might die. Yes, you read that right. 

Checking the Bombs at Da Nang Airfield

PAPER the DEAD

As a second Lieutenant he's transferred off the line to battalion HQ where he became a paper pusher, gruesomely counting KIAs among other work. He notes that every kind of dead human body has the same terrible smell. He keeps up a VC KIA board that displays the tally for visiting generals from Westmoreland's HQ, and once had to include the dead bodies themselves for show. Caputo describes an attack against the Da Nang airbase by VC sappers and mortars which destroyed 6-7 planes. As casualties, exhaustion and stress mount in the units, depression and anger take over for many soldiers. He looks at the various peccadilloes and stupidities of officers and routine in a Marine HQ. He watches green, gung-ho marines stepping off the landing crafts. He remembers some of the dead. At this point, Caputo still thought the war was ok … though it was no longer “a splendid little war.”

Caputo rejoins another platoon, is more exhausted than ever in the constant rain and patrols, spends 3 forgetful R&R days in Sai Gon, then goes back to the moving front. He engages in a delirious and successful attack on a VC ville, then his platoon is shelled by 'friendly' fire. As his platoon heads back to the line, 9 are injured by a mine and in response, his troops burn half a village. He hates the VC and communism, you see, so revenge is sweeter. In a final 1966 operation southwest of Da Nang, Caputo calls in jets to strafe, bomb and napalm VC positions, after which his platoon burns a VC village along a river in a fit of rage in another 'successful' action.

Caputo is later accused of orchestrating the murder of two innocent young Vietnamese men in one VC ville, but is acquitted. He becomes an international war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and returns to Sai Gon in 1975 as the south Vietnamese regime is collapsing. Then you realize the author – an educated, middle-class adrenaline junkie who enlisted - has used the war to jump-start his literary and journalism career. This book was called “the best book about Vietnam” and “a battle narrative of the first rank.” Each chapter is introduced by a pretentious literary quote. The reviewers loved that he was so sensitive and 'moral' during his involvement. Yet he was a pro-war fuck-head by any measure, though he personally turned against the war, probably because it was unwinnable. The whole pretense is fucking terrible and ignorant, but conventional reviewers embraced it. This memoir is an addition to the literature about the war, but mind the embedded war propaganda.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Matterhorn” and “What It Is Like to Go To War” (both by Marlantes);“Kill Anything That Moves” (Turse); “People’s History of the Vietnam War,” “Ken Burns,” “Soldiers in Revolt,” “In the Crossfire – Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary” (Van); “The Sympathizer” (Nguyen); “Da 5 Bloods” (Spike Lee) “The Latitude of Mercy,” “Tree of Smoke.”  

Other fiction on Vietnam, not reviewed below: Bao Ninh’s “The Sorrow of War;” all of Tim O’Brien’s books and: “Dispatches,” “Dues,” “The Farther Shore,” “In Pharaoh’s Army,” “The Bamboo Bed,” “Fire in the Hole,” “Black Virgin Mountain.”   And non-fiction:  “Working-Class War.”

And I got it at May Day's used/cutout section!

Red Frog

March 19, 2023

Rabin a'Hood, Whar Be Ye?

 “Sherwood,”BBC limited series, 2022

This story is about a former coal-mining town near Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, in the midlands of England. It is a version of class war PTSD, as the central drama revolves around repercussions from the massive miner's strike in 1984, but years later. It shows the quality in BBC drama over the non-existent fare on U.S. PBS, even given BBC's problems. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) strike led by Arthur Scargill was a defining moment in how England became a neo-liberal ruin under Maggie Thatcher. The 1984 strike was defeated after many arrests, bloodshed, court orders, riot cops, media collaboration and scabs. Later all the mines were closed by the government and the collier towns left to fend for themselves.

Annesley Woodhouse is the real town

The characters are a local lead detective, an assistant detective from the Metro police, a former under-cover cop, a NUM militant, a group of scab miners who had been with the breakaway Union of Democratic Miners, two estranged sisters, their children, a dark-skinned love interest and an odd, dorky Indian dad. It all revolves around a horrific night when a fire in the scab-transporting bus building killed and burned several workers, supposedly started by a group of NUM strikers nicking some food, but really set up by the under-cover female cop. This bloody incident poisoned the lives of many in the mining village, leading to years of severe family estrangement.

The under-cover cop suffers guilt over her role in the deaths, calamity and arrests, one of whom was not even there. The lead cop also has his guilt, as he turned in his father and ignored his burnt brother. Scotland Yard assigned under-covers to infiltrate the union and mining towns to gather information on militants and leaders, but also to act as provocateurs. The unit was called the Special Demonstrations Squad. She was one, but she stayed in town after her assignment was over.

Can you imagine PBS exposing the FBI about its own infiltrations of left movements over the years, something still going on? No. The BBC environmental fantasy drama “The Rig” revealed under-cover British police, even MI5, infiltrating a Scottish anti-nuclear group and camp. The BBC drama “Line of Duty” reveals systemic, deep corruption in the London Metropolitan police. The long-running BBC series “The Peaky Blinders” shows police agents gunning for subversives. The British film drama “Official Secrets” is about MI5 spying on U.N. members over the Iraq war. Again, when has PBS ever cast aspersions on U.S. police? Never that I know of, except perhaps an episode of Frontline.

Class war in England

The somewhat unbelievable plot revolves around a confused, alienated son who takes to Sherwood Forest with his bows and commits various crimes. So, the sheriff of Nottingham looking for him is now the kinda good guy while the guy with the bows in the woods is the bad guy. Like everything else in neo-liberalism, the story is turned upside down. Robin Hood no longer exists.

What is interesting are the personal class attitudes of the various characters – an arrogant Tory daughter of the bus owner in town, who shipped scabs into the mines.  Or the defensive weakness of the majority of local scabs, who still feel put upon for selling out. Or the genuine attempts of the villagers to get along with each other, even during the strike. Their anger, hidden secrets, betrayals and humanity are on display. The psychological arc is to attempt a reconciliation between the two sides. As one lead character on the NUM side points out, they benefit when workers fight among themselves. As the chant goes “the Miners united will never be defeated.” They weren't so they were. Other factors, like the scabbing of Jaruzelski's Poland by providing coal to England and tepid support by national union leaders played a role too.

The scenes shift back and forth between the 'present' and 1984, with key characters portrayed by younger versions of themselves. It is a class war version of a civil war, tearing families apart. This is the first fictional TV portrayal of this strike that I can remember other than Pride, which was a movie. Both turn a critical eye on Thatcherism. The series is inspired by the real murder of an outspoken NUM union miner in Annesley Woodhouse, Keith Frogson, in 2004, and dedicated to him.

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Class Against Class – The Miner's Strike,” “Pride,” “Chavs – the Demonization of the Working Class” “Peaky Blinders,” “Line of Duty,” “Manufacturing Consent,” “Left Confusion on Brexit,” “Official Secrets,” “I, Daniel Blake.”

The Cultural Marxist

March 16, 2023

College Library Browsing #7: A General Overview

 “The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx” by Alex Callinicos, 1983

Calinicos tracks the history of Marxism in a compendium that would help anyone who wants to know its broad reach. He discusses Marx and Engel's various fore-runners, ideas, books, history, background, facts, opponents, organizations, problems and theory - trying to cover everything in one small 250 page book. I think he does a clear job. His biggest point is that socialism will be a creation of the working-class itself, which can be interpreted in several ways of course. Lenin said that Marxist socialism came out of German philosophy, English economics and French revolutionary socialism. It was truly a product of the best of Europe.

This book was written before the fall of the workers' states in central and eastern Europe and the USSR. It was also at the beginning of the neo-liberal counter-offensive by capital, embodied in Thatcher and Reagan that is faltering as we speak. Callinicos is a long-time leader of the British SWP, a 'Cliffite” organization which believes the USSR & China became or are 'state capitalist.' I'm not here to parse that erroneous idea, only to look at any useful info he brings up re Marxism.

Callinicos sees 4 main trends in Marxism – orthodox Marxism, Social-Democratic Marxism, Stalinist 'Marxist-Leninism,” and “Western Marxism.” He places himself in the first category. The book is written as a brief, historical description of Marx's life, activity and writings. Some fun facts from the book:

* In 1850 Marx and Engel's Communist League initiated a bloc with Blanqui's organization, writing that they would be “keeping the revolution in continual progress (en permanence) until the achievement of communism.”

* After the general defeat of the 1848 revolutions across Europe and a rise in capitalist growth, Marx understood that only in a crisis could the working-class movement gain. War is one such crisis.

* Marx had a child by their families' 'retainer' even though his family lived in dire poverty for many years. Marx tried to get a job as a railway clerk and was turned down due to his illegible handwriting. Jenny Marx was constantly sick and had the worst of their family life. Marx also developed ailments. When Engels told Marx that his partner Mary Burns had died, Marx sent a response letter complaining about his problems. This created a huge row between them, after which Marx apologized profusely. Marx preferred wine, but settled for beer on a London pub crawl with comrades where they nearly got arrested. I.E. he was a flawed human.

* The International Working Men's Association (the First International) was formed in 1864 with Marx one of 34 general council members. It was made up of followers of Fourier, Proudhon, Blanqui, Bakunin and others - syndicalists, anarchists, utopian Socialists, English trade unionists, representatives from Germany, France and elsewhere. It did good work and lasted for 5 years. This will shock our present sectarians who don't even try to work with any other leftist. After all they assume 'we're beyond all that.' Actually, no.

PROBLEMS & ISSUES

Callinicos covers the issue of the 'transformation problem,' - how socially necessary labor is transformed into a 'competitive' price for a commodity's value. I.E. a simple formula. If labor inputs and capital inputs vary greatly, how can you get an average rate of profit for all capital, as people like Michael Roberts and others consistently get? The labor theory of value would say low capital inputs should lead to higher profits. Marx believed each industry had a similarity in the relation of socially necessary labor to 'dead' labor in machines and raw materials, and this is how you look at the problem. This is still a debate among leftists.

Callinicos somewhat ignores the issue of monopoly and oligopoly, as his focus is on how competition raises the bar for every industry. Yet logically if oligopoly comes to dominate mature industries – which it has in many U.S. sectors - then the rate of profit should remain steadier. It is clear that oligopoly does not freeze the organic composition of capital, which continues to increase even in oligopolies, still leading to falling profits. One reason is competition is now international for many of these industries.

Callinicos and Marx locate the key internal source of the periodic crises of capital in this 'tendency of the rate of profit to fall' over time given no changes in production. This has been proved by a raft of Marxist economists. Marx said of it in the Grundrisse: It is “In every respect the most important law of modern political economy, and the most essential for understanding the most difficult relations.” There are many ways for the capitalist to counter-act this fall – increase hours, increase the intensity of labor, increase productivity, increase layoffs, not pay wages, drop wages and benefits, cheapen the commodity, buy competitors and the like. So it is only an internal tendency towards stagnation and crisis, not an absolute law.

POWER

Callinicos easily refutes attacks on Marx for the supposed inevitability of socialism. It is not inevitable, as the class struggle determines the outcome, though underlying material issues in society push workers in the direction of complete revolt. No capitalist crisis is automatically final. He goes light on the party issue. Marx believed the working class had to become a conscious 'class for itself' by forming a real mass workers party. Callinicos does not discuss the historical experience regarding the party or the possibility of several working-class parties. He opposes 'lumpen socialism' of the pure anarchist kind, which is a product of a disconnection from workers and an assumption a revolutionary elite will lead the way through exemplary acts. He identifies the transitional 'dictatorship of the proletariat' with the council form as a democratic improvement over bourgeois democracy. The Paris Commune, the first proletarian dictatorship, made two mistakes in this regard. It excluded women from voting and was based on neighborhoods, so all classes were included in voting.

The international spread of capital is obvious to us now and Marx understood it even in the 1800s. Yet many workers do not know how international competition and borderless functioning shape their lives. Nations are more obsolete than ever, yet they still function as body guards for their group of capitalists or as ways to split workers. At the same time some nations and nationalities are still oppressed by imperialism, so we have yet to jump over this problem. Callinicos emphasizes that communism can only come about on a world scale as the productive forces increase and even out across the globe, and as the proletariat grows. Actual 'socialism in one country' is not possible, though a workers' government in one or a number of countries is possible and happened. Engels, in 1847s Principles of Communism, wrote: “The communist revolution will therefore be no merely national one...” The next year, 1848, revolutions broke out all across Europe.

Callinicos describes how the state will 'whither away' as class antagonisms slowly drop. This clearly did not happen in the USSR, the European workers' states, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea or in China, which is a proof that real socialism was never achieved. According to him, Marx and Engels opposed the German notion of 'state socialism.' They predicted the rise in automation, the assembly line, robots and the use of technology in reducing labor time – something socialists would use to free workers from wage slavery.

WAS MARX RIGHT?

Callinicos discuss three modern assertions that Marx was wrong.

#1 – The issue of 'really existing socialism.' He answers by quoting Marx as to revolutions not having to go through automatic stages and can happen in places that are not fully capitalist, i.e. China and Russia. Again, the class struggle plays a lead role. The second part of this is the rise of a bureaucracy in the USSR and elsewhere. It was predictable given the isolation of the struggle in Russia after the failure of revolutions in Finland, Hungary, Germany and Italy. Marx (and the Bolsheviks) wanted a Russian revolution to spark more revolutions in Europe. “Socialism in one country” led to squandered opportunities in China, Spain, France and finally, and most tragically, Germany. Callinicos goes on to describe his theory of state capitalism, which is erroneous for many reasons.

#2 – Capitalism has changed. Has it fundamentally? Oligopoly has increased, as predicted by Marx. There have been booms in wealth in some countries, and among some classes, true, due to increases in productivity and exploitation of the periphery. The state has grown in its role, true. None of this changes the essential picture, just the strategies and tactics of class struggle. Large enterprises, increases in productivity and machine automation, international ties, the vast increase in the world proletariat and the growing role of the state all point towards an international worker-run society 'in the egg.' They actually are harbingers of socialism.

#3 – Changes in the working-class. Blue-collar workers producing useful commodities are not a majority in central capitalist countries, given the rise of white-collar intellectual property and labor, along with useless labor like managers, advertising, legal work, etc. Blue-collar workers consume more, so their class standing supposedly changes. Yet class is not defined by consumption, but by an individuals role in production. Marx and Callinicos understand that white-collar workers like clerks and service workers are still exploited based on their labor and role in the overall process of production. For instance, teachers and nurses are essential to the maintenance of the work-force, as they produce education and health, as do parents, though for free. Callinicos does note the growth of the professional middle-class – engineers, doctors, professors, lawyers, tech managers, etc. whose class standing is based on labor, but can also accumulate in the stock market, start businesses, buy profitable real estate, etc. - thus changing the sources of their earnings. As he puts it, in the center countries the working class has not been abolished, just shifted.

Callinicos concludes by pointing to continuing war, economic crises, starvation and poverty as proof capital has not escaped its own contradictions.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: 'Marx,' 'Engels,' 'rate of profit,' 'really existing socialism,' ''oligopoly,' “Paris Commune,” and 'class.'

Red Frog

March 13, 2023

Bluesy and Bound

 BLUES and BLUES-ROCK – “The blues had a baby and they called it rock-and-roll” - Muddy Waters / McKinley Morganfield

African-American music is the main root of rock music in the U.S. – just as Muddy said. No doubt about it. European folk and indigenous music play second fiddle in U.S. music origins. All are actually working-class art forms. Gospel, blues, New Orleans, swing, big-band jazz, and torch songs inspired be-bop, fusion, rock, pop, R&B, Motown, soul, funk, hip hop and rap. For blues, many light-skinned people were introduced to the blues by bands who were better known – including many 'white' Brit, Chicago, San Francisco and southern bands. Some of those listeners investigated the root, so to speak, digging into origins after they heard the rock versions.

Muddy's cabin, Stovall Plantation, now in Clarksville Museum 

In this context, the issue of exploitation is relevant. Black artists were exploited, or super-exploited and stolen from, copied from, borrowed from – like the glass slide, the blues style, the jazz lick. Jim Crow didn't help, as it penetrated the North too. Huey 'Piano' Smith is an example – many of his R&B songs were covered, but his years in lawsuits to recover royalties led to bankruptcy. In fact most musicians are exploited – look at Spotify today and its tiny royalties. Labels, bars, other musicians, concert promoters, ticket vendors, managers, studios, book-keepers – all rip off musicians in various ways, not just black musicians. Many early jazz and blues clubs in fact were run by mobsters. Radio stations went through a payola period. Sex was done for work. Contracts were a joke.

ROOTS

Indigenous music played a role in the origins of the blues. If you listen to the drum and plaintive notes of southeastern native song, you can hear these repeated in the blues.  Charlie Patton and Howling Wolf, Delta bluesmen, were both Choctaw too.  The mystery of Mardi Gras Indians is solved by understanding the ethnic confluences of indigenous, African, French and other cultures in their role of developing New Orleans jazz. Link Wray probably invented heavy blues, and he was Shawnee.  Mildred Bailey, a Coeur d'Alene, set the style for vocal lounge jazz in the 1930s. Even Hendrix's mother was Cherokee.  So the blues didn't just come out of gospel and slave labor songs.  

On a personal note, which is really not limited to me - in our little farm town in the 1960s, we listened to old blues 45s & LPs, and we also listened to blues-rock band LPs. If they did a cover, you could look up the original. If you heard a common line (“Squeeze my lemon...”) or riff (grind pattern...), you could also recognize it in another song. In this process many music lovers were led from blues-rock to the original blues.

Because of this exposure to blues-rock I, like others, spent time in blues clubs in Chicago and Minneapolis. I traveled the blues trail in Mississippi, visiting grave sites, museums, significant locations, plantations, prisons and juke joints. I visited blues / R&B recording studios – Chess, Sun, Stax, Muscle Shoals' 2 studios and New Orleans' own J&M on Rampart. (Chess, by the way, was called “Cadillac Records” because you could buy a Caddie with your earnings.) I've read a number of books on the blues. I just heard 87-year-old blues-man Bobbie Rush, formerly of Chicago, now of Jackson, MS, play a show at a local club last week. That is how 'white blues' or blues-rock works with 'black blues.' I'm not the only one. If you actually give a damn about blues, this is what you do. Have you done this, dear reader? Odds are no...

The 'crossroads' - below Dockery Plantation in Cleveland, MS? 

Black blues players know they didn't make near the money the big blues-rock bands did. But without them many would have made much less, and many of them know it. After all, they are different styles, as rock's power and beat connect in a different and physical manner, making it massively popular. Listen to Robert Johnson's plaintive country-blues “Crossroads” then listen to Cream's acid-blues version - heavy, raging, electrified. Yeah, same song, but... As in any good cover, the band doing it makes it their own. Or the Dead doing Slim Harpo's “I'm a King Bee” - like riding a musical elephant in the Dead's version. The original blues style would have had a shorter lifespan without folk and rock's arrival. Blues is marginal now, just as rock is now marginal compared to pop, hip-hop, auto-tuned torch songs, DJ, dance, EDM, etc.

Can some 'white' blues people actually play the blues? Not all ... Can even some black 'party blues' bands play the blues? Perhaps not. Take Janis Joplin. Buddy Guy, echoing B.B. King, said of Janis Joplin:  “She sang black.  She proved that the color of your skin don’t have shit to do with the depth of your soul.”  Big Mama Thornton said of Janis, who covered her song Ball & Chain:  “That girl feels like I do.”  Etta James respected her style.  Mick Jagger told her he’d listen to a black singer if he wanted to hear ‘black.’  So much for cultural appropriation accusations.

SNYNERGY

How did this synergy work?  Folk festivals in the 1950s-1960s invited blues musicians, not just bluegrass, Americana, country or protest singers. Rock bands would bring on dark-skinned blues-men to open shows, as the Stones did. Rock venues like the Fillmore East and West regularly booked orthodox blues acts. Blues shows traveled to Europe, most famously the “Blues and Gospel Tour” which featured Muddy and the incredible Rosetta Tharpe.

Even today, 50% of the visitors to the town of Clarksdale, Mississippi are from Europe according to the locals. Clarksdale is one of the centers of the Mississippi Delta country, where the Delta blues were birthed. South of there, near Cleveland, MS, just south of Dockery Plantation, is the reputed lonely crossroads that Johnson and later Cream played about. This fact about the lack of local 'Americans' traveling to Clarksdale shows you how much they love the blues – not much. Prior to the blues revival in the 1950s pop was on the jukeboxes in Clarksdale, not blues. Blues had lost much of its popularity among African Americans and others. This is still true.

Muddy Waters did an album with Chicago and Memphis compadres Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Duck Dunn, Sam Lay and Otis Spann called “Fathers & Sons.” John Lee Hooker did an album with Canned Heat called “Hooker & Heat.” Howling Wolf did 'The London Sessions' with Brit blues-rockers Clapton, Jagger and Richards. The owner of Sun Studios, Sam Phillips, said that his recording of Howling Wolf was his most important find – not Presley. I've attended live shows by BB King, KoKo Taylor, Sugar Blue, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, Lonnie Brooks, the Kinsey Report and others. At the Chicago Blues festival, it is not just black blues bands that play, but white and integrated ones. Were they slugging it out onstage about appropriation or theft? No. They might cut each other to show whose was a better player, but not actual cutting. Now there is even a version of desert blues performed by African musicians, including Nigerian and Toureg bands.

Integrated rock / blues bands during the 1960s - Santana, Paul Butterfield, Electric Flag, Chambers Bros., Sly and the Family Stone, Allman Brothers, Jimmy Hendrix Experience and Band of Gypsies, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Three Dog Night, War, Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Prince & the Revolution, etc. 

In my LP/CD collection, like many other people, I have original blues music from Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Charlie Patton, Leadbelly, Son House, Skip James, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, BB King, Willie Dixon, Lightnin' Hopkins, J.B. Lenoir, etc. But I also have blues-rock from the Stones, Butterfield, Canned Heat, Joplin, Mayall, Steppenwolf, Zepplin, Electric Flag, Free, Jeff Beck, the Allman Bros, Johnny Winter, Hendrix, Clapton, etc. Popular Brit bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Moody Blues started as blues-rock outfits, then gradually evolved their own styles. This is because of the intense interest in blues in England among working-class youth and art kids in the 1950s and 1960s. That is how blues-rock and blues interacted.

Like any art form, music styles collide and artists are inspired by other artists. They copy some of their methods and learn from covers.  In jazz a specific line is copied - it is calling quoting; in hip-hop, sampling. Blue-eyed soul is an example of style adopting. Fusion percolates, purity becomes more difficult, schools form, instruments blend or are adopted, borrowings increase - even on a world-level. And yes, outright theft too. The adoption of rock songs by orchestras, the adoption of classical tunes by rock bands, the construction of complex prog. rock compositions much like classical suites, the adoption of world or folk instruments and the adoption of folk tunes and styles by rockers, but jumped up in tempo and power. Even the multiple fusions – jazz-rock, folk-rock, blues-rock, electronic-rock, country-rock, rap-rock, orchestral-rock, space-rock, psych-rock - tells you something else is going on here.

In fact two or more things can happen at the same time, as happened here. It isn't just a story of theft or racism, misappropriation or identity politics.  It is a story of music. Its a subtlety that some might miss but musicians do not.

P.S. - The Guardian refutes 'cultural appropriation' as a flawed position:  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/24/should-we-borrow-from-other-cultures-of-course-we-should

Prior blog reviews on this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “If It Sounds Good, It Is Good,” “In Search of the Blues,” “Cool Town,” “33 Revolutions Per Minute,” “Life” (Richards); “Janis,” “Kids” (Patti Smith); “Marie and Rosetta,” “The Blues – A Visual History,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “Echo in the Canyon,” “Treme,” “Long Strange Trip,” “Really the Blues,” “Music is Power,” “Zappa Plays Zappa,” “Laurel Canyon,” “We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years” (Utah Phillips); “Summer of Soul.”

Watch the documentary "Rumble" on the link between the blues and native music.

The Kultur Kommissar

March 6, 2023

College Library Browsing #6: Nuance

 “Marx on Religion” edited by John Raines, 2002

Raines thinks Marx was the ultimate humanist – and this book of reprints of Marx partly reflects that idea. Raines also knows the relation of class to religion is unexplored by standard surveys. Marx understood religion as both a refuge of sorts for suffering workers and a club against the working class. Marx wrote about this first point: “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness … the criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.” As capital and society have developed, religion is more and more not a refuge but a club. It has been a theoretical and practical ally of political power and still is for many ruling classes. Let's see what else Marx says or Raines' interprets.

Raines seems to be a Christian socialist of some kind who tries to combine Marx and Liberation Theology or progressive African-American preacher activism together. The obvious clash between these views is not new, nor is the idea that practical joint work is possible. The two most prominent Christian socialists in the U.S. today are soul man Cornel West and Pastor Chris Hedges. The former went on to endorse Biden; the latter the Green Party and pacifism. Neither of these is a class position, yet both are partial allies of socialism.

STATE RELIGION

A young Marx opposed the German state religion yet wrote that the greatest men are those who work for the 'universal' – which he said is similar to a religious ideal. As a 'young Hegelian' he supported the division of church and state and opposed press censorship of anti-religious views. The censors contended that society would collapse without religion, as did Greece; and that Christianity was true because it had lasted. For Marx, theocracy was the real religious state, a condition Germany had passed into by 1842 when he wrote this. Christianity was the state religion in Germany at the time.

Like Zizek, Marx abolishes the conflict between Jews, Christians and Muslims by first abolishing state religion. The state abandons any connection to any religion, which leads to political emancipation for all, including minorities like Jews, and makes religion a private matter. Unfortunately, under capitalism, pogroms, attacks and slurs go on even in so-called 'secular' states, as history has shown. So secularism alone does not end the conflict.

In a somewhat confusing section in 1843s 'On the Jewish Question' Marx declares that a secular state is only the first step. What must happen after that is the “destruction of religion,” for 'self-liberation,' to free people from personal superstition, injury, abuse and fear, as “the revolution is permanent.” Then he says all the old crap will reappear. (Pg. 53) This sequence, if I am reading it right, doesn't make sense.  Perhaps, 'otherwise' the old crap will reappear.

Marx says the “perfected Christian state” is ”the atheist state, the democratic state.” This is because any state religion distorts religion. The young Marx here splits Christianity as a religion and Christianity as an expression of humanity. In this same article, Marx associates Judaism with 'the market.' He does it in order to show the material base of religion – if the market disappears, Judaism's material basis disappear. This has been said about the origins of Islam in 'the bazaar,' as Muhammad was first a trader. Marx understood religion to be an expression of the productive, material 'base' of society. I'd say this association is flawed or a bit anti-Semitic and stereotyped, as it assumes all present Jews are businessmen. They are not.  He might have been exaggerating to make a point?

Marx later became a communist in 1844 in Paris after contacting the various socialist workers' groupings there and finding out about the mass Silesian weavers' strike in Germany. He had assumed all German workers were passive.

IDEALISM

In refuting Hegel's idealism, Marx makes fun of the aristocratic day of judgment intended for 'the rabble.' He calls man a 'natural being' who is limited and suffers. Like the Christians, he knows suffering is built into human existence, but it does not come from sin, but from existing as a sensuous, biological and emotional being. Which means all animals suffer too. He asserts that a 'philosophy of religion' only ascribes religion to ideas, which opposes a materialist view, as it says: “I therefore deny real religiosity and the really religious man.” Here again in 1844 Marx splits the idea of religion from the actions of certain religious people.

Marx says Hegel supported “sober philosophy” as opposed to “drunken speculation.” As he puts it, just as infinity is not perceptible, “Nothing is known of the existence of God” either. Marx: “Deism is no more than a convenient and easy way of getting rid of religion.” Note, most of the founders of the U.S. were deists. As he developed, Marx slowly left philosophic and theological speculation for economic and political analysis, leaving drunkenness even farther behind. The further analysis of religion would be its role in the class struggle.

CLASS STRUGGLE

Marx felt that the onerous conditions of labor, whether in a factory or field, produced suffering. Under capital, religion is meant to salve that condition; socialism is the actual, real salve. Theological criticism is a re-doing of idealism and religious estrangement and Marx had no interest in that. Instead in 1844 he said “Communism begins with atheism'” but that is only a philosophic start, as communism is real and bends towards action. Simple atheism is inadequate.

In The Communist Manifesto of 1848 Marx and Engels hint that even religion will be undermined by money relations, material developments and the science of capital. Money and credit becomes like gods. Marx later said in Capital: “The religious world is but a reflex of the real world... Christianity, for its cult of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments...is the most fitting form of religion.”

Marx was observing the religiosity among oppressed workers in Germany, France, Belgium and England at the time. In 1844 while appraising Hegel, he started the essay with this: “...the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.” He continued: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” To Marx the final role of religion was as an illusory and useless tool to end suffering, which is why he opposed it.

UAW workers on strike and praying.  Did they win?

TODAY

Raines says that slave owners slept quietly after hearing slaves talk of the rewards of heaven, only to be frightened when 'heaven' suddenly descended to earth in a slave revolt or Union armies. Elites use religion to legitimate and protect their rule and as a form of psychic escape for their minions. Religion in the U.S. and many other countries has become a political battering ram and ideology - not by the oppressed - but by Christian Nationalists, some neo-fascists and by elite, reactionary politicians and state actors. It has changed since Marx's time and become more backward in a world-context.

The most reactionary states or rulers in the world still rely on a formal or informal state religion, for instance: India's Hinduvta-inspired Modi, Israeli Zionism, Catholicism under Bolsonaro and Orban, Russia's Orthodox Church, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan's Islamic theocracies, the Buddhist reign in Myanmar, the fundamentalist evangelicals of the U.S. South. Even the present Democratic mayor of New York opposes the separation of church and state. Theocracies and semi-theocracies still exist today, as if 'God' had given the rulers a privilege to rule. All are profound roadblocks to changing the lives of the working classes.

Their barely existing religious oppositions – liberal Protestants, liberation theology and Dorothy Day Catholics, secular Jews and the invisible, secular Muslims – have almost no political clout whatsoever over their reactionary counterparts. As Marx said in 1847 when a Christian advocated the 'social principles of Christianity' in order to sideline communists: “The social principles of Christianity have now had eighteen hundred years to develop, and need no further development by the Prussian consistorial councilors.” Marx goes on to point out that Christian 'social principles' had justified slavery, feudal serfdom, the oppression of the proletariat and hypocrisy. Yet we still hear this kind of 'optimism' from liberal Christians more than 175 years later.

The book goes on to poke fun at Luther, the Pope, the English Anglicans, various Saints, Sundays, the Reformation and Protestant parsons. It notes that the religious wars were also class wars. Engels' look at the peasant war in Germany led by Munzer shows it was directed against landlords and priests and embraced religious 'heresy.'  Engels wrote that the early history of Christianity had elements of a working-class movement. One of Marx's 1881 letters hints that the original Christian revolt against Rome inspired Millenarian religions and is similar to the socialist movement. So they paid attention to the class content of religious inspiration.  Of course Christianity was officially adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 313 and that changed the nature of Christianity.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Nonverts,” “Rise of the Nones,” “FGM,” “God is Not Great” (Hitchens); “Violence” (Zizek), “Libertarian Atheism and Liberal Religionism,” “Annihilation of Caste” (Ambedkar); “Jude the Obscure” (Hardy); “Spiritual Snake Oil” "The Dark Side of Christian History,"  “The Great Evil” (Nunpa); “Godless – 150 Years of Unbelief” and “Astrology – (both by Bufe); American Theocracy” (Phillips);“The God Market,” “Religulous” (Maher); “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (Baldwin); “The Da Vinci Code” (Brown); “To Serve God and Walmart,” “Marx and Human Nature,” "The Jesus Comics."

The Cultural Marxist

March 2, 2023