Scroogism?

 “Under the Affluence – Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America,” by Tim Wise, 2015

If you think the title is going to tell you about consumerist 'affluenza' you'd be wrong. It is really a detailed sociological study of proletarian poverty, in both its color caste and class varieties. It is somewhat dated, as it uses popular references that were current in 2015 prior to Trump's victory and the rise of semi-fascist forces. Wise was known as a commentator on structural racism, but moves to a class analysis in this book, incorporating racism in his analysis of the U.S. class structure. But do you think he mentions capitalism, socialism, social-democracy or even a transitional program to target poverty? No. He's the typical outraged left-liberal who, instead of the culture of cruelty, believes in some kind of 'culture of compassion.' The key is 'a better vision' for America. This vague psychological and political framing is typical of people who have no grasp of economics and in this case, earn their living by not recognizing capital's effect on the color line and the class line.

Wise, born in Nashville, cut his political teeth in Tulane campus struggles against apartheid, then versus David Duke and later the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. He's now a paid 'anti-racism' consultant. There are plenty of writers, professors and even activists who are in his camp. As a result this book has little to offer unless you are specializing in low-paid workers, the un-housed, the disabled and unpaid caretakers – i.e. poverty sociology. It is loaded with statistics and arguments defending TANF, Medicaid, SNAP, Section 8, EITC, WIC, public housing, aid programs and government food banks. He points out that while Johnson's 'war against poverty' was dropped, poverty actually went down in the U.S. after these programs. So there is a government aid patchwork to defend here. Wise understands that racism divides the working class and yet racism, following Dubois, also pays a 'psychological wage' to some white workers. He barely discusses how racism, by extension, also underpays white workers, such as keeping unions out of the South.

Over the whole book is the spectre, not of communism, but of Charles Dickens, Scrooge and Tiny Tim. In effect 'Dickensian' is now a description of attitudes toward - and conditions for - low-paid proletarians in the U.S., especially dark-skinned ones. Capital returning to its roots in squalor so to speak. He borrows MLK and John Edwards' theme about 'two Americas,' spends a lot of time on inequality and corporate welfare and even hits out at Obama – though most of his ire is directed against Republicans and FOX commentators. He disassembles the bogus 'culture of poverty' ideology, declaims the false meritocracy and rails against racism. All quite familiar on the liberal-left. It finally dawns on Wise that 'Scroogism' - looking down the class ladder - has been the main current in the U.S. since its founding. Overall, the rich are the real takers and the workers are the real makers – the reverse of the libertarian Freakonomics nonsense of 'I built this.'

Solutions to this mess? Again, no program to achieve political power or 'self-determination' in his phraseology. He says the left has to go beyond protest and mass movements with a “clear-counter narrative, a story-line.” Yet his story-line of a 'culture of compassion' does not reach into the economic bowels of the profit motive, the basis of the whole system of 'Scroogism.' It's as if the whole problem is psychological, as if everyone needs a course in empathy. He is for automatic provision of 'food, shelter and medical care' but has no idea how that can be done in this profit-oriented society. The assumption is through charity or government programs, but he is not explicit even in that. He's against any concept of revolution or self-defense. So we're left with … what?

Scrooge was redeemed by becoming a kind capitalist, giving Bob Crachit the day off and showering a turkey on Tiny Tim. I suspect that is Wise's real aim. It is also why he's still talking about 'Redeeming Scrooge' - so here we're not much beyond the early liberalism of Charles Dickens. Looking for sociological facts, not slanders, on poverty and poverty-programs, this book will be very informative. Looking to eliminate poverty permanently, create relative equality, crush the roots of racism or rid the world of a class of exploiters and wreckers? It will not.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Poverty? What is it Good For?” “The Lie of Global Prosperity,” “Toward Freedom” (Toure Reed); “U.S. Cities With the Lowest Life Expectancy,” “The Lower Depths” (Gorky); “Famished Road” (Okri); “What's Hidden in Rural Areas?”

And I got it at May Day's Excellent and Cheap Used/Cut-out section!

The Cultured Marxist

December 28, 2023

Surprise! Art and Politics DO Mix

 “The Folk Singers & the Bureau – The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party USA – 1939-1956 by Aaron J. Leonard, 2023

This book weaves together the stories of various left folkies, informers, turncoats, Communists and their pursuers before and during the severe 'red scares' after WWII. It also shows the essential and unavoidable relationship between art and politics during this period, as well as the problematic politics of the CP itself. It describes how a bourgeois 'democratic' state can suppress and destroy political organizations and dissident artists. Leonard has gathered info from the FBI files of some of the principals. These forms of repression are something that is happening now and can happen again, so pay attention.

The targeted folkies were Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Lead Belly, Paul Robeson, Burl Ives, Alan Lomax, Irwin Silber, Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Cisco Houston, John Hammond, Aunt Molly Jackson, Dave Van Ronk, Sonny Terry, Tom Glazer, Oscar Brand and others. The musical groups were the Almanac Singers, the 'No-Name Quintet' and the Weavers. The alleged CP entities were People's Songs, People's Artists, the Cafe Society Night Clubs, Commonwealth College, Almanac House, Camp Wo Chi Ca, the Progressive Bookstore, the Progressive Party, Sing Out! Magazine, the Neighborhood Folk Chorus, the Musicians' Study Group, the Folksay Group, the American Labor Party and the Song Swappers. All subversive!

The main ex-CP and other informers are Louis Budenz, Boris Morros, Benjamin Gitlow, Harvey Matusow and Morris Childs. Childs informed for the FBI as Gus Hall's deputy to the USSR into the 1970s. Some of the CP leaders mentioned are Hall, William Z. Foster, Earl Browder, Henry Winston and Dorothy Healy. The main red hunters are the U.S. Congress and courts; the media; the FBI, military intelligence, the IRS, Joe McCarthy, the Subversive Activies Control Board, the John Birch Society and Bircher / ex-FBI outfits like Red Channels and CounterAttack. The FBI put Marxists – including the Trotskyist SWP – on various 'indexes' for detention, deportation, surveillance or arrest. There was one index on sabotage in case of a war with the USSR and one to recruit 'top level' CPers like Childs. Some still existed into the 1970s and I'm sure they have the equivalent now. They even left Guthrie on the indexes while he was dying in a NY psychiatric hospital.

For you lawyers and politicians, the laws invoked were the Smith Act, statutes against 'criminal syndicalism,' the McCarran Act, the Voorhis Act, the Hatch Act, the Taft-Hartley Act - all pushed by the political elite, the courts and the Dies Committee, the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and various black lists. Incidents were the 2 fascistic Peekskill riots and physical attacks on local Communists, the deportation of thousands of blue-collar workers, the dismissal of CP'ers from union positions, the arrest and jailing of the leaderships of the CP and SWP, the CP mistakenly going underground because 'fascism' had arrived, and the big nail in the coffin for them, Khrushchev's 1956 long speech on Stalin's cult of personality.

CP leaders arrested after Smith Act

Standouts! Did you know the CP endorsed the internment of Japanese Americans? Do you remember that Stalin and Hitler split up Poland after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Did you know that a pro-Tito Communist in the U.S. CP - John Lautner - was railroaded out of the CP at gunpoint? Or that Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit” first at the 'CP' Cafe Society club in Manhattan? Or that Alan Lomax, the recorder of Lead Belly, worked at the Library of Congress and his boss was Archibald McLeish of all people. Lomax later left the U.S and went to Europe to escape prosecution and questioning. In Hollywood, Bertold Brecht got dragged into HUAC and later left for East Germany while Trumbo and Ring Lardner stayed.

Josh White recanted any association with Communist and CP-front organizations, as did Burl Ives. Neighbors, relatives, phone taps, mail opening, break-ins, internal informants, long-time leading organizational plants, tails, slander and more were used to gather info by the FBI. Now it is an added digital profile that will reveal secrets. The U.S. Supreme Court finally said that advocating the overthrow of the government “in the abstract” is protected free speech, contradicting the practice and arrests under the Smith Act of CP and SWP leaders. Vague anti-Communist allegations by informers like Matusow were later found to be suspect – even to the FBI. The IRS raided CP and Daily Worker offices due to 'unpaid taxes' – only to drop the charges later. Many targets of the red scares like Seeger were later lauded and rehabilitated as great American artists. As Lenin pointed out, the bourgeoisie will make them out to be “harmless icons” after they have been hounded into oblivion – much like MLK. All it takes is 50 or 100 years!

Lee Hays made this statement about the artistic period of the Depression and after, in defense of their musical work with left unions and the CP: “We lived in a veritable renaissance of arts and letters thanks to the WPA and various projects. The work of Steinbeck and Hellman and so, so many others was a direct result of socialist thought that was going on all over the world...” That environment no longer exists in quite the same way, which is one reason why art in the U.S. is stagnant.

This is Leonard's fourth book related to repression against various socialist currents – Maoists and CPers - along with attacks on music artists in the 1950s and 1960s. In this one he tries to determine if folkies really were Party members according to documents and testimony, mostly non-public or not. These are not just histories but warnings about the lengths the capitalist state will go to stymie opposition to their policies, even from artists. We will see these same actions in the present and future as the capital system in the U.S. 'shakes' under the impact of various forces. Be prepared!

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Whole World in an Uproar,” “A Threat of the First Magnitude,” “Heavy Radicals” (all 3 by Leonard); “In Search of the Blues,” “33 Revolutions Per Minute,” “The Blues – A Visual History,” “Blues and Blues-Rock,” “The Romance of American Communism” (Gornick); “The Great Crash” (Galbraith); “The Worst Hard Time,” “We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years,” “FBI Secrets,” “The Terror Factory,” “The Plot to Kill King,” “American Assassination,” “United States vs. Billie Holiday,” “Who Killed Malcolm X?” “City on a Hill,” “Green is the New Red,” “How Bigger Was Born” (Wright).

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 25, 2023 – the ostensible B-D of Hesus Christa, borrowed from pagans.

Mountain Marxism

 “In the Red Corner- the Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui,” by Mike Gonzalez, 2019

This is an excellent exegesis of the thought of Mariátegui, a Peruvian Marxist active in the teens and 1920s and probably the most creative in Latin America. He grew up in poverty with an indigenous mother, was sick for 4 years, then lost a leg to gangrene as an adult, dying at 36 in 1930. Yet he educated himself as an anti-academic auto-didact, became a journalist, organized meetings of the indigenous, labor and socialists, traveled to France and especially Italy where he met Marixists like Gramsci and Togliatti. He edited the Marxist journals Amauta and Labor, wrote the Constitution for the first General Confederation of Peruvian Workers, and was in touch with the Comintern as it was becoming Stalinized during its “third period” sectarianism. He founded the Peruvian Socialist Party with a group of comrades as a revolutionary nucleus within a united front. He was not fond of instant 'vanguardism' as he thought a real proletarian vanguard must emerge organically out of the revolutionary movement.

Mariátegui was an organizer, an editor, a theorist and a cultural thinker. His main theoretical points were to focus on the massive indigenous population in Peru. In the early 1900s the Quechua and Amari formed the great majority in the country and were forced to work in the mines or plantations as they lost land through the 'enganche' system. He was the first to do a detailed historical materialist analysis of all levels of Peruvian society and history – a method relevant to other Latin American countries. He called parts of the economy 'semi-feudal' due to the forced labor used by the gamonales (rural bosses). His analysis included Peru's origins in the Incan empire, which was authoritarian at the top and communal at the root; its beginnings as a colonial outpost of guano, saltpeter and debt and the early rebellion of Túpac Amaru.

Another theoretical point was to build a proletarian united front of workers, peasants, indigenous communities, students and dissident middle-class artists and intellectuals. He opposed a reformist, popular front bloc with the local 'patriotic' capitalist class, which was the strategy of his main opponents, the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). The petit-bourgeois APRA attempted to rope all class forces into a reformist 'anti-imperialist' front. The economy of Peru in the teens and 1920s was dominated by foreign capital in the mining, textile, agriculture and other export sectors, receiving manufactured products in return. Mariátegui considered the local capitalists to be craven and unable to bring even democracy to Peru. They collaborated with imperialist firms and the neo-feudal latifundistas and would not change their spots. APRA tried to appeal to dissident capitalists, along with young military officers, the middle-class and small businessmen in its election work. This reformist popular front strategy was Mariátegui's main target after the decline of the anarchists. APRA eventually attained political power in Peru in the 1980s as a corrupt populist entity, an event familiar in Latin American history.

The Comintern at the time recommended APRA join the Comintern, as they did in China with the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang ended that bloc by slaughtering communists in Shanghai and Canton in 1927. The Comintern then junked that strategy and chose sectarianism, only to return to the popular front after disastrous CP policies led to the victory of the Nazis in Germany. Mariátegui never read Gramsci's Prison Notebooks on praxis, hegemony and culture or Trotsky's position on the United Front, though he was familiar with the idea of permanent revolution - but his ideas closely paralleled them.

Mariátegui believed that the 'myth of the revolution' was a necessary ingredient in any popular uprising against capital. This myth – 'mistica' - provided an overarching narrative and goal for those not theoretically inclined or bureaucratically-minded. It also motivated activists as a dream, as a calling, as an emotional passion. He considered the religiosity of the majority of poor Peruvians to be a reflection of their need for a heaven on earth, not in the bye and bye. He proposed that socialism fill the bill instead. Some consider him a source for Liberation Theology due to this position on proletarian religion. He anticipated Latin American 'magical realism' as a literary style, a current that still exists. He had a deep concern around culture, having first worked with dissident bohemians, poets and surrealist artists in Lima as a young man. He saw all art as an 'engagement with history.'

Mariategui (center) in Italy

These subtleties and leftist positions were lost on the post-Lenin Comintern and he was harshly attacked as a nationalist and romantic. Within Peru he and his comrades had been arrested, jailed or exiled a number of times and their newspapers shut down. They were accused of both a “Jewish” plot and a communist conspiracy by the local ruling class. In 1919 the first large miners' strike shook Peru, in which his group participated. This spurred his trip to Europe in 1921 at the time of the mass factory occupations and workers' councils in Turin and Italy, which opened his eyes to the Marxist movement, along with his conversations with Gramsci, Croce and Togliatti. He attended their meetings and learned of the struggles between Left and Right within the Italian socialists, between supporters of the Bolsheviks and those of the Social Democrats. He was a hard supporter of the 1917 Revolution, internationalism and Lenin, while the founder of APRA, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, drifted away from it. Haya was mostly inspired by the radical bourgeois revolution in Mexico instead, where he lived most of his life, favoring a form of state capitalism. Mariátegui saw the quick rise of fascist forces under Mussolini, but optimistically predicted that the workers would turn away from Mussolini. They did not – and later could not.

The journal's name “Amauta” is a Quechua / Incan word for a group of wise men. It was conceived as the Peruvian movement version of Iskra. It published indigenous authors and artists among others. Mariátegui always wrote how the oppression of the Quechua and others was linked to the capitalist economic system in Peru. Organizers from the Andes mountain areas regularly visited the office of Amuata in Lima. Like Marx's view of the collective character of the mir or obshchina - Russian peasant communes - so Mariátegui saw the same communality in native Andean practices of collective territoria and the old Incan 'ayllu' which survived the destruction of the empire. Marx's point was that the reformist idea of always going 'through capitalism' was not accurate. Mariátegui agreed. Socialized land was the main demand of the indigenista movement, along with relief from the sugar and textile latifundistas and the mining conglomerates. Mariátegui saw this reflected in the Bolshevik demand for land in Russia.

Peruvian indigenous ayllu

His vision was to unite the indigenous with the small working-class movement in the fight for socialism. The Comintern in 1928 insisted instead that the indigenous should form isolated mountain 'republics,' similar to the abandoned 'black belt' theory in the U.S. This would have split a united movement to overthrow capital in Peru and would terminally isolate the highlands. With Mariátegui's death and the formation of a reformist, dogmatic CP that took its views from Moscow, it did for many years.

Theoretically Mariátegui believed that all human knowledge derived from 'praxis' – essentially human experience, knowledge, history and work. This included the growth of revolutionary individuals, movements, parties and theory. This is why he opposed simple-minded dogmatism, mechanical Marxism, sectarianism, liberalism and populism, which were the main theoretical problems he dealt with. This led to his opposition to creating an instant Communist Party with no roots in the proletariat. Marxism grasps totalities – integrating various strands of reality into a multi-dimensional view, where culture and ideas are not mere reflections of reality, as Lukács posited, but directly interact with the material world. In this sense, ideas become a material force. He might have gone too far in this direction, advocating “materialist idealism” and initially embracing Sorel, a varied syndicalist thinker, but I think this is not a terminal issue.

Haya accused Mariátegui of 'Eurocentrism' because he paid attention to European Marxists. This is a typical nationalist dodge, heard many times from anti-socialists. This is similar to feminists who denounce the work of all male scientists or black nationalists who claim Marxism is 'white.' Since Marx, Marxism has spread to every country in the world, which is the practical fact that refutes such nonsense. Class and capital occur everywhere, capital intrudes everywhere, workers occur everywhere, and so Marxism will occur everywhere too. Capital crosses national borders! Mariátegui used the Marxist method and applied it to Peru, which is what Haya really disliked. Mariátegui understood that the proletarian and insurgent forces in Peru incorporated huge diversity, much like the present U.S. They were not one simple, monochrome 'working-class.' The great trial was to unite these disparate layers, especially early on when disunity and sectarianism could hurt the small revolutionary forces. As he said 'We are too few to divide.” Nevertheless in 1928 he denounced Haya when Haya formed APRA as a nationalist electoral party, so he was not for ties at all costs.

This is a very informative book about an important Marxist who has lessons for revolutionaries in the U.S. and other countries. In fact his points are eerily relevant.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive using these terms: “An Anthology of the Writings of Jose Carlos Mariategui,” “Washington Bullets,” “The Dream of the Celt” (Vargas); “Revolutionary Rehearsals in the Neoliberal Age,” “Scorched Earth,” “Marx on Religion,” “Blood Lake.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 22, 2023 - Happy Solstice!

Gathering Moss

 “The End of Tourism?”

Driving in the U.S.

Take a long-distance drive across the U.S. someday. What do you see? Here's what I dealt with on one heading south. I drove through Chicago at 3 a.m. to avoid the traffic and got through town from top to bottom easily. If you've driven through Chicago's rush hour or even on a Saturday afternoon, you'll know the horrors awaiting. This prompted the very early start. The toll attendant on the Chicago Skyway was startled to see my lone car at 3:45 a.m. I entered Indiana and was immediately confronted by a construction truck blocking the tollway as it trundled down both lanes at 5 miles an hour. So I and the truckers sat in the block for a period of time. Construction at 4 a.m.? WTF?

The early bird gets no traffic in Chi Town

Then the accidents. In Indianapolis an accident block caused a miles-long backup on the other side of the interstate. All those cars and trucks are trapped with barely any outlet. On my side it was slightly less miles full of gawkers – a gawker's block. In southern Indiana a car hit the meridian just before I went by, so there was no backup yet, nor was I involved or hit any debris. Escape!!  Kentucky was normal, passing Breonna Taylor's former home town, bourbon distilleries, the Kentucky Derby site, Mammoth Cave and Fort Knox.

Nashville, a fast growing metro area, was its usual slow slog, as 3 interstates come together over about a 5 mile stretch. There is no way to avoid this as there is no bypass. It was noon, so rush hour had not started. Coming into Chattanooga, Tennessee there was a miles-long backup on the interstate, trucks and cars stop-and-going after crossing the Tennessee River. There was no discernable reason, so probably the result of a much earlier accident. Then the endless construction project south of Chattanooga's Missionary Ridge led to another miles-long backup through town. I was tired of driving on the interstate as you might imagine, especially with the trucks.

In Georgia I planned to cut cross-country instead of driving into Atlanta just at early rush-hour. I made the stupid decision of driving through the wooded, winding, exurban landscape of north-east Atlanta – Gwinnett County. I imaged these edge areas to be relatively quiet, verdant and bucolic. No! These exurbs are full of cul-de-sacs, outdoor malls, sprawling 'towns' and a few larger roads connecting them – all of which were completely full of commuters at every traffic light in all directions. I got lost as my highway disappeared (poor signage) and eventually, after too long where even the GPS was confounded, I found the road into Athens, Georgia. It was now nighttime and it was full of red lights from commuters crawling for miles after several accidents and one construction area.

Is this transport system sustainable? At this point, it seems a failing system – too many accidents, construction, traffic, rush-hours, sprawl, lack of public transport and the like. For instance, poorly paid and exploited truckers, including owner-operators, have to drive huge 18-wheel rigs through these conditions every day. They are the main transport method in the U.S. Are you kidding me?

Acapulco after Hurricane Otis

Traveling Outside the U.S.

Going outside the U.S. is always a journey. We chose Costa Rica because of its nature reputation. We encountered a problem that tourists and travelers will increasingly face. In this case, weather issues. Specifically, rain on and off for days. Costa Rica is located between two huge bodies of water – the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. This helps provide a huge source for storms, humidity, mists, clouds and rain. With global climate change, Costa Rica will probably get wetter and wetter in some places, killing their tourist industry. Or dryer and dryer, killing their famous and varied vegetation, as it is already slowing the Panama Canal, just south. Now the 'cloud' forest on the Pacific side of the continental divide around Santa Elena no longer has many clouds. The cone-shaped black Arenal Volcano, on the other hand, on the Caribbean side of the divide, is obscured by clouds. Yet both had rain.

Weather and labor strikes cause airplane delays that can totally mess up a tourist schedule – and they will increasingly occur. That is mild compared to the Cat 5 hurricane that hit Acapulco, knocking out the tourist hotels that line their beach. Huge flooding in the reactionary bourgeois citadel of Dubai a few weeks ago probably put a dent in their tourism. Atlas mountain villages in Morocco were destroyed by an earthquake not connected to climate change. But that ends sojourns to those areas by tour groups. Fires in Spain, France and Greece this summer chased tourists out of those areas. The choking smog and smoke in Mumbai and Delhi will deter visitors. Huge rain storms disrupted the English countryside several weeks ago. Just this week Caribbean cruise ships had to find a port due to a massive storm. A people's rebellion against a conservative coup in Peru shut down Machu Picchu. The people of the Canary Islands are protesting over-tourism and environmental damage because of it. Dubai airport was closed due to heavy flooding.  Even ex-pats will be shaken from their comfortable beds, as places like Ecuador become more dangerous. Examples could be multiplied, but you get the idea. Traveling will be more and more like playing Russian roulette with a 'carbon' loaded gun.

And oh yeah, traveling to Russia has slowed to a trickle. And whose going to Israel!?  Failed states, warfare and crime are increasing as the capitalist world wobbles, so wandering around it will become increasingly fraught.

Then there is over-tourism, damaging cities like Barcelona, Venice, Amsterdam, Florence and others with gentrification, privatization and commercialization. Tourism in Peru at Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail has now been limited due to this problem. Massive tour ships idiotically dump hundreds of tourists out into the streets of small Caribbean islands for several hours. Bali is thinking of limitations or instituted them, as is the Grand Canyon and others. The Boundary Waters canoe area in Minnesota already limits visitors.

Tourist and civilian airplane flights impact the world carbon level, as any frightening look at a website that shows planes crowding the skies tells you. In the U.S. airplanes have replaced buses and trains as long transport, which would have to be rethought in an eco-socialist society. Yet this is only a small part of the overall airplane usage. Military planes, cargo planes, executive and billionaire jets and business travelers make up the vast majority of airplane fuel use. This is the real problem.  A tourist or civilian can buy 'offsets' – but the impact of these purchases are much in doubt or fraudulent. A recent study showed 94% of the credits were bogus. It's part of the capitalist 'carbon trading' boondoggle that allows expansion or maintenance of carbon production.  Some ocean or sea cruises are estimated to be 8 times more carbon intensive than flying and a hotel.

Pesticide Use in Costa Rica

Pura Vida

In Costa Rica, they have high prices. Their claim is quality, and supposedly designed to attract boojie tourists. But they may find themselves pricing themselves out of business. Certainly they are pricing their workers out of business, as the minimum wage is about $2, while unions are forbidden to strike.  When the news gets out that Costa Rica is also becoming less of the eco-paradise it markets itself as, the national brand will suffer. Their national tourist slogan “Pura Vida” ('pure life') reminds me of the Italian branding - “La Dolce Vita” - and both turn the whole country into a commodity.

The Guardian has just come out with a story about the limitations of Costa Rican environmentalism as the pressure of right-wing capital grows politically. Gasoline imports have increased heavily, as wind, solar, thermal and hydro power slow down due to droughts in key areas. Formerly these 4 supplied almost all home energy. I counted one railroad near the airport, so most everything seems to flow on diesel-spewing trucks. Electric boat, cycle, bike and car motors are technically difficult to work on so far, as no one is trained. That option is not possible at this time.

Most Costa Rican water is clean and healthy, rare in this part of Latin America, but one section of the country is now struggling with pesticide and fertilizer runoff in their water, so water has to be trucked in. Costa Rica is one of the highest users of pesticides in the world, oddly enough. Given their toxic effects, this does not fit the picture of agro-ecology. So their bland national diet is not as benign as imagined. Their world-famous national parks are under threat from development. This all proves that nothing is set in stone. “Progress” doesn't always last, especially in a privatized context.

Of most import is what it does to tourist workers – the maids, bus drivers, ship hands, guides, restaurant staff, touts, Uber drivers, peddlers, service workers, etc. that work in the tourist economy – especially in poorer countries. In Costa Rica, 70% of the population are now in services and industrial enterprises, including tourism. Human relations are replaced by commodification in a tourist scenario. Tip seeking and getting the most out of tourists is upper-most, even in countries like Italy. There are no unions in most of these sectors. The worker must have two attitudes – aiming to please and irritated at being a sort of servant. Their low wages subsidize the local capitalist class, which is why 'tips' are key.  That is the exploitative nut at the heart of it all and its depressing to watch.

I'm a traveler and have left the U.S. almost 50 times to visit other countries. I've visited 49 of 50 states. But there is 'something in the air' that will slow tourism and travel and perhaps eventually stop it on a mass scale.  Are we reaching peak tourism?

Prior blog reviews of this issue, search on blog at upper left, using these terms to search our 16 year archive: “Balinese Political Art,” “Oh, Canada – Reflections on Canada,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Left in London,” “Last Train From Zona Verde,” “On the Streets of St. Petersburg,” “La Dolce Vita,” “Open Veins of Latin America,” “American Made,” “The Trials of Traffic,” “A Minnesota Yankee in King Trump's Court,” “TexAss.”

The Cranky Yankee

December 18, 2023

The Mosh Pit

 “This Rancid Mill” by Kyle Decker, 2023

This is a work of punk L.A. noir. It's Raymond Chandler meets blue mohawks, leather jackets and safety pins. It's drinking bourbon all the time and women who easily fall for the young punk private investigator. There is an evil right-wing California Senator, a Salvadorean cop torturer, a vile drug dealer, Nazi skinheads, a loyal and large friend, and the ever humorous, ever semi-tough P.I. Then a new addition, a pushy rich girl who follows her own investigation. Under it all is something ginned up from TV, movies and books, but with a grimy counter-culture band atmosphere, punk rock instead of Sinatra, clubbing instead of cool. And yeah, for you non-readers, its a BOOK.

Some of these punks are lefties, including Alex Damage, the 20-something P.I. He's a hard-drinking smart-ass who has many quips even when facing death. Like no one alive of course, except in movies. Murder, kidnapping, gun threats, beat-downs, beheaded bimbos, porn stars, porn sets, the “Starwood” hard punk club, L.A. locations, torture, junkies, groupies and bro-brotherhood fill the bill. Everyone's broke, eats shit food and drinks too much. Suspicious dads and errant daughters too - yet it all comes back to the right-wing thug of a Senator, a former military advisor to the violent Salvadorean dictatorship. It's 1981 after all and the Salvadorean civil war is in full bloom.

Alex's real name is DeMaggio, as everyone has a nick name. He's way wiser than any early 20-something, inhabiting the experience of a man twice his age. This might tip you off that he's modeled on someone else, like Mike Hammer, not Sid Vicious. The “Bad Chemicals” are the key political band in the story, a Clashy Sexy X. A heroin overdose occurs and the unpredictable and convoluted hunt is on for the killer.

This is an entertaining read, funny and well-done, seen from Alex's intelligent point of view. He's like a college MA set down in leather. The amount of violence is Hollywood style, though that makes sense as it's set near Hollywood. Punks do not get off scot-free in the problem department, so its not just hosannas. Damage gets into so many fights it becomes ridiculous. The politics fade into the background, though the anarchist lead singer of the Chemicals is intent on a 'revolution' – a revolution organized around a blackmail plot. Really? The punk scene is portrayed as kinda sad, but a bulwark against mainstream bullshit. It's counter-culture clothes draped on a retro plot and probably the only one of that type. The L.A.-based noirs The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice touched the hippie counter-culture instead. So if you're tired of the gumshoe darkness of Chinatown or the moronic language of Joe Friday, this might be your mosh pit. It's another detective story with another twist.

Now to the real question, why do 'detective stories' resonate at this time in history, even among alternos? Is it an attempt to solve a somewhat 'scientific' and concrete but small problem by the viewer? Or representative of a bigger crime that a small murder only hints at – genocide, corruption, exploitation, war, starvation, disasters? In that sense, giving viewers a sense of control over death or control over the chaos of the present? Is it morbidity, voyeurism or simple-minded morality plays of 'good versus evil?'  One detective writer told me it was about the 'pursuit of justice.'  Really?

The BBC started the trend with its Sherlock Holmes and Poirot series, followed by a legion of dull copies. Many countries now produce detective shows or books – the Nordics, France, India, Russia, Mexico, hell, even Romania. The cops are usually semi-troubled but persistent geniuses. Is this then also advertising for the 'smart' police state? Many crimes – including murder - are actually never cleared by cops.  They just pick up the pieces.  P.I.s are the civilian equivalent – unconnected to the state, yet doing the bidding of monied civilians or corporations. Politics increasingly intrudes on civilian murder, as it does in this book. Which might start to reflect how the biggest crimes are those being committed by the class with the most political power.

Prior blog reviews covering this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Salvador,” “Los Angeles,” “Inherent Vice,” “noir,” “detective,” “punk.”

And I got it at May Day Books excellent Left fiction section!

The Kultur Kommissar

December 13^th, 2023

Can I Get a Witness?

 “No Name in the Street” by James Baldwin, 1972

This is an intense personal memoir about Baldwin's nomadic life during the 1950s and 1960s trying to escape racism, then returning to confront it. He lived in New York, Paris, London and Istanbul, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Palm Springs. He visits Jim Crow Montgomery, Birmingham, Tuskegee, Little Rock and Atlanta in the U.S. South. The book is penetrating in its feelings and anger, treating its emotional knowledge as the source for its political positions. For some, especially light-skinned folks, this might be hard to read. The time was soaked in the bloodshed of assassinations, riots, war and civil rights' struggle so it figures that it is dramatic.

There is no mention of homosexuality, though Baldwin was gay. He once mentions that he was partly schooled in Trotskyism and comes out for a 'genuine socialism.' He exposes the guilty liberalism of middle-class 'white' people, undermines the radicalism of some young 'white' leftists and casts everyone else as a racist, especially police and Southerners. So it's personal slant is mostly literary and black nationalist, rarely mentioning class though that is also quietly embedded in the text. After all, Baldwin began as a poor street boy from Lenox Avenue in Harlem. As a writer and also a 'witness' he meets famous civil rights leaders like King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Rev. Shuttlesworth and Huey Newton, along with Marlon Brando and a group of mixed skin color leftie Hollywood types including Jim Brown, Eartha Kitt, Sidney Poitier and Sammy Davis. He's quite impressed by Brando. Yes, there is name-dropping.

While living in Paris Baldwin is affected by the Algerian 'issue' of independence from France – gradually understanding it's relation to U.S. racism. Algerians in Paris were treated brutally, losing their jobs and rooms, disappearing from sight. Camus came out in support of the French occupation, justifying Sartre's contempt. As Baldwin notes, “...humanism appeared to expire at the European gates.” He returned in 1952 to be confronted by McCarthyism and the betrayal of many liberals. He engages with Faulkner's turgid book “Requiem for a Nun,” as a light-skinned, cliche'd writer looking for forgiveness. Faulkner, after all, had declared he would 'shoot Negroes in the streets to save Mississippi.' Baldwin at one time worked for the CIA publication Encounter in Paris, though unaware of its backing. The CIA fooled many writers for awhile.

Huey P. Newton and Baldwin

Baldwin is involved in a legal case involving the racist frame-up of one of his former bodyguards, who is arrested in Hamburg Germany, then deported to the Tombs prison in New York accused of murder. He is also involved in writing a Hollywood movie script for a film on Malcolm X but walked out after being at loggerheads with the studio. Baldwin points out that Malcolm was personally kind and considerate, not a raving angerholic or 'reverse racist.' Baldwin takes time to defend him in the book, though they only met a few times. He also defends the Panthers as “the native Viet Cong” defending their community and has kind words to say about Newton and tougher words for Eldridge Cleaver.

MLK's funeral, the news of Evers being shot to death in Mississippi, the killing of Malcolm, the killing or jailing of prominent Black Panthers – all color this memoir red in its later stages. Baldwin exposes the lie that the police-Panther Oakland 'shootout' leading to the wounding and arrest of Bobby Seale and death of Bobby Hutton was actually a 'shootout' as the police claimed. The bullets only went in one direction, much like the later assassination of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago. He also points out that black pleas for 'police' are really for more police protection. In reality cops mostly ignore black on black crime. He says of cops at the time: “The white cop in the ghetto is as ignorant as he is frightened; and his entire concept of police work is to cow the natives.”

Baldwin comments on the earnest white students he first met in San Francisco, then the hippies who followed. He finishes this meditation on blackness about one world dying and another trying to be born. As he says, this story doesn't end.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “I Am Not Your Negro” and “Go Tell It On the Mountain” (both by Baldwin); “Finks – How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers,” “Red Hook Summer” (S. Lee); “The South – Jim Crow and It's Afterlives” (A. Reed); “The New Jim Crow” (Alexander); “Caste” (Wilkerson); “Selma,” “Slavs and Tartars,” “Rustin” or 'civil rights.'

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 10, 2023

The Suicide Game

 Second Viewing of the “Squid Game” directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2021

This show is now a 'reality' series on Netflix too, but you do not die if you lose. Many of the games, tricks, optics and arenas in the reality game are the same as in the film. The reality series reveals aspects of human behavior in the pursuit of money honed by years under capital, somewhat similar to the film. It is actually interesting. Given reality contests for $money$ are rampant on TV, it figures. However, these comments are about the film itself:

On the way to work at the Game

#  'Squid Game' is a clear parable of man-eat-man capitalism.

#  The gang thug and the wall-street wonder boy eventually turn out to be the same kind of killer.

#  Male chauvinism is rampant. Korean nationalism comes next.

#  Those who break the rules do better than the rule-followers.

#  A bunch of masked billionaires betting on death and life provide the cash. They're bored and have too much money to know what to do with.

#  The lead character flashes back to being beaten by cops during a Korean auto strike occupation, paralleling the brutality of the Squid Game guards.

#  Kindness, experience, memory and smarts can benefit survival, as is joining a group. Even the worst loner finds this out. Individualism takes a beating until it doesn't.

#  Most cops are useless.

#  People believe 'luck' or their personal skills will win against the hard odds, as if the game is some weird meritocracy.

#  Conditions are so bad for the working poor in Korea that they opt for incredible riches in the face of death. Only 14 refuse to return to play the game once conditions are made clear.

#  Money is the motivator. Layoffs, sickness and health bills, supporting a family, being an immigrant and huge market losses factor in. Players explain that it is as bad outside as inside the game.

#  The masked 'front man' running the game claims it is 'an equal playing field.' It is not. The unseen bosses, guns and the cash compulsion make it so. This parallels the rhetoric of 'legal equality' alongside social inequality we are fed in the real world.

#  A sideline is selling human organs, now popular across the world, just as it was in Mary Shelley's day.

#  This game has been going on for more than 20 years and no one has noticed until now... (It's actually been going on much longer than that.)

#  Love or friendship do not always protect one in these conditions.  Playing the game is actually a form of suicide.

#  The physical conditions are spare – little food, bunk beds, uniforms, strict regulation, computerized controls on everything, including time.

#  The Squid Game arenas, tunnels, Escher maze and large bunk hall are 100% surveillance societies.

#  The young game 'workers' who wear circles and triangles are treated almost as poorly as the contestants. There is a clear, brutal hierarchy in the work-force, like being in the army.

#  Anonymity is crucial to avoid connections and liability. So the masks and #s.  Anonymity is the key to wealth protection too.

#  The Christian religion is sent up the pipe three times as absurd.

#  There are crazies, sociopaths, nincompoops, religious nuts, thugs, narcissists, fools and idealists scattered among the contestants. Like normal.

#  Squealers on the outside who inform on this bloody game can be stalked and possibly killed.

#  The game ends with a form of class struggle and a billionaire twist.

This series is dystopian and exaggerated, but that is the point of parables. Hard to watch but worth watching. Don't let the faint-hearted scare you away.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Squid Game,” “Parasite,” “Hunger Games,” “Hunger,” “Friend,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “White Lotus,” “Wolf of Wall Street.”

The Guardian likes Squid Game;  The Challenge reality show:  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/07/squid-game-the-challenge-gameshow

The Cultured Marxist

December 6, 2023

Notes From the Underground

 “Marx Dead and Alive – Reading Capital in Precarious Times” by Andy Merrifield, 2020

This is a unique take on reading the first volume of Capital. Vol.1 was the only one published during Marx's lifetime. Merrifield combines culture, biography, history and current events to illuminate certain key concepts in the book. He savors Joyce, Beckett and Balzac, Harvey and Fanon, knows Marx's miserable personal history and can identify the depreciation of fixed, 'dead' capital even today. He descends 'underground' with the “old mole” Marx, then Dostoevsky and Kafka, then real moles. Merrifield is a leftie academic specializing in urban geography, and at the end sounds like the romantic anarchists of the Invisible Committee. He's also a fan of literature and uses it profusely – Dickens, Gogol, Shelley, Conrad, Eggers, Shakespeare and more. That heterogeneous method is normal in this milieu.

The book begins and ends in Highgate Cemetery in front of Marx's massive plinth. While his body lies there, his thoughts are still alive, as the book title suggests. In Merrifield's discussion of the commodity – the heart of capitalist production – he notes that Marx used the example of the overcoat. Marx himself had to pawn his several times due to poverty. He was unable to visit the reading room at the British Museum from his hovel on Dean Street if he did not have it due to the cold. This human overcoat gained more relevance than Adam Smith's abstract pin factory, in fact and in theory. Marx had “written about capital in general, without having any capital in particular.”

Much of Marx's work in the British Museum was carefully going through the “Reports of the Inspector of Factories” - the only detailed set of official statistics then in existence. Many of the reports were written by Edward Horner, a tough and truthful investigator who could not be bought. Merrifield highlights Vol. 1's concepts of false consciousness, commodity fetishism, finance capital, 'surplus' populations, the industrialization of all labor, the falsity of Malthus, the error of Darwin and death by overwork. Marx mentions that last Dickensian fact, then Merrifield notes the many examples of workers in the modern world dying by overwork. Workhouses and child labor also make appearances.

Merrifield especially fixates on Chapter 15 of Capital concerning the dual nature of technology. He also closely reads Chapter 25 on “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation,” tying it to how urban rent is now another profit center that Marx only touched on in Vol. 3. Merrifield points out that Marx refuted the idea that financial capital was the key to capitalism alleged by people like Michael Hudson and his nonsensical 'new feudalism.'  This is why Marx called it 'fictitious capital.' Merrifield breaks with Marx on the nature of the lumpen-proletariat by defining criminals has some kind of progressive representation.

Marx said of technology: “Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature.” Merrifield points out he was no technological determinist as the allegation goes. Merrifield never mentions the tendency of the rate of profit to fall due to increasing investments in machinery, but he does show how material depreciation – lack of use, overuse and intentional disuse due to 'moral depreciation' – threaten commodity exchange-values. Cheaper machines drive out the more expensive; better machines drive out the less efficient; all resulting in rust, waste and growing landfills. Regarding 'urban ground rent,' workers are being expelled from parts of cities by gentrification, much like they can be laid-off from a job. They are sent to the edges, the banlieues, the exurbs or to live on the streets. There is a one-to-one correlation between homelessness and rent rises.  Corporate monstrosities like Hudson Yards in Manhattan exemplify this process, enabled by vast public monies. Merrifield visits this absurd sterile NY complex with Harvey.

A Morrocan peddler from the country

The Precariat

Merrifield's idea of the revolutionary 'lumpen-proletariat' is the oddest romantic idea in the book. Certain middle-class radicals seems to like the concept until they get robbed - though most avoid that impact. It extends to the whole notion of various kinds of surplus populations thrown off by capital. Marx knew that labor precarity was inbuilt into the system. He mentions the stagnant, floating and latent populations – words that are rarely used anymore, though they do refer to real groups. They all populate the 'reserve army of labor.' Temp and part-time workers, the unemployed, 'independent' contractors, peddlers, day laborers, children, piece workers, on-call, self-employed and migrant 'illegals' all fit into these categories, as do slaves of every kind.

The real lumpen-proletariat, celebrated by the Panther Party's Eldridge Cleaver, is mostly concentrated in illegal activities. Merrifield is wrong that criminals have no connection to the capitalist system. They are merely the illegal shadow of profiteering. Organized gangs are businesses – from the Mafia to the Black P-Stone Rangers, Hell's Angels to MS-13 to any drug cartel. Even the high-end, organized gang Merrifield romantically described in Paris – the Society of the Seasons - was a business. Drugs, prostitution, gun-running, on-line scams, counterfeiting, kidnapping, slavery, robbery, car theft, protection, gambling, shop-lifting, fraud – all are businesses. They are celebrations of unhindered and unproductive profiteering, nothing actually dangerous or cool about it.  They are many times a form of survival, as capital ultimately pushes some people into crime.

There are many examples of these people blocking revolution, as Marx mentioned in 1848. Some work with the police in exchange for immunity. Would revolutionaries try to blunt, neutralize or recruit some? Would some in oppressed individuals or groups break towards socialism? Of course, but that is not the same thing as basing your struggle on the lumpen-proletariat, as some ultra-left and anarchist groups think. Merrifield's citations of Bakunin and the black bloc here are indicative. Merrifield's blurring of the precariat with criminals is poor, anti-social sociology. It ignores how most prey on workers – they are not all Robin Hoods. It ignores the power of the various strata of the proletariat to impede production, whereas the best lumpen-proletarians can do is episodic street action – some good, some bad. We saw this in Minneapolis around the Floyd events.

Merrifield ends the book with a trip back to Highgate while musing on the concept of 'the underground.' The cemetery gets a 100,000 visitors a year, most heading to Marx's grave. As dialectics presupposes, small quantitative changes over time result in qualitative turns. Yet this cave-like 'drip drip' in the underground is not always visible. The actions of burrowers and moles and revolutionaries go unknown until a certain conjuncture suddenly throws the underground into daylight. As we sit in our basement bookstore, chatting with the disabled, the retired, the worker, the unemployed, the socialist, the cadre, the writer, the migrant, it seems a certain model for Merrifield's image. And Marx's too. To close with a quote from Marx: “If the emancipation of the working class requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices and squandering in practical wars the people's blood and treasure?”

Relevant prior blog reviews from this book, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Open Veins of Latin America” (Galeano); “L'Assommir” (Zola); “David Harvey,” “The Making of the English Working Class” (Thompson), “Marx and Human Nature,” “The Young Marx,” “The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx” (Callinicos); “The Jester and the Sages,” “Marx and the Earth” (Foster & Burkett); “Marx on Religion.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / December 3, 2023