Si Se Puede!

 “On the Line – A Story of Class, Solidarity and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union” by Daisy Pitkin, 2022

Successful union organizing might be moving the balance between anger and fear, between human solidarity and isolation, between a hope for the future and the bad smell of the present. This book shows how that plays out among a group of low-paid toilers in Arizona. Any union member, supporter or organizer would benefit by reading it, as the events, details and tricks used by both sides are blazingly real.

Union membership in the U.S., in spite of recent successes, changes in leadership and organizing drives, has now dropped to exactly 10.0%. This is the lowest since BLS records started in 1983. It is at 6% for private corporations. One reason for the drop is because the workforce is growing and this book is pretty clear about the other reason. The National Labor Relations Act legalized unions, collective bargaining and the establishment of the NLRB in 1935. Those were heroic days for labor in the U.S. The NLRA was immediately followed by the 1938 MacKay decision allowing the permanent replacement of workers by scabs, the 1947 Taft-Hartley law that heavily constricted union power and allowed 'open' shops, up to the present day with the 2018 Janus Supreme Court decision making all public sector employment an 'open shop.' This has been true for private employers for years in the South. The open shop essentially individualizes union membership in a worksite and is designed to weaken union power. The NLRA itself has huge loopholes and weak enforcement. The conclusion here is U.S. law and practice dislikes labor. It's not just the employers who are the problem. It's the capitalist state, their police, their courts and conflicted administrative bodies and their political parties.  However this story has a sobering victory at the end.

This book is an illuminating, on-the-ground inside look at a 2003-2005 struggle in Phoenix by Latino industrial laundry workers for a union and contract. The book has to use the word 'epic' because that is many times what it takes. Why should having a union be so hard? Because it begins to hit at the essence of capitalism – profits, power and private property - PPPP. The large Sodexho plant cleaned laundry, but not from private homes – for hospitals, hotels, restaurants and other large operations. The sheets, tablecloths, clothing, napkins, cloth and blankets are sometimes covered by food, urine, vomit, shit, blood, with occasional body parts, needles and medical waste included. The workers make $7.25 an hour, working 10 hour days over 3 shifts, with forced overtime and occupational injuries. Safety methods are demobilized, the line is sped-up and there is no air-conditioning. Nearly all the workers have Mexican backgrounds, so its racist capital at play. Sodexho/Sodexo is a French-owned conglomerate operating in 55 countries. It has deep pockets, a skilled PR department and lots of lawyers.

The book is not fiction. It is addressed to a Latino worker on second shift who was one of the leaders within the plant, Alma Garcia. It also has chapters on labor history – Triangle Shirtwaist, French silk weavers, moths' role in textiles, labor law and the Patterson textile strike that reflect on the Sodexho effort. It is written by a real UNITE union organizer Daisy, a young, somewhat naive European-American woman from Tucson in her first union struggle. She and Alma form a working pair. The author went on to become a veteran organizer with UNITE-HERE, a union descended from a long line of garment worker struggles. Alma herself helps the staff of UNITE in its attempt to organize all Phoenix industrial laundries, joins the Local's staff for awhile, then goes back to the factory.

It describes in detail the tactics involved in establishing a union used by UNITE. It first means finding workers and then quickly signing union cards in a 'blitz;' preparing workers for the lies and fight ahead; warning them about bad bosses, 'good' bosses and 'sad' bosses; resisting the illegal anti-union violations that inevitably crop up; reaching out for support to the community and finally getting a signed contract. This is not how it really goes. In the scum-bucket U.S. version of labor freedom there are firings, arrests, police, strike actions, vicious supervisors, bogus and hidden voters, surveillance cameras and NLRB Section 8 filings and legal process. In other unionization efforts there have been bribes, deportations and beatings. Pitkin claims that more than half of all union elections, if held within 2 weeks of card signing, win. On the other hand this story descends into 2 years of legal decisions and appeals, and a final 'card check.'

Between 200-500 anti-Union meetings were held at the plant by the company, many times making illegal statements or committing illegal acts. But labor law violations and 'unfair labor practice' (ULP) charges are like confetti – even if violations are overruled at some point, they delay the process, intimidate the workforce, muddy the waters and increase the 'no' votes.

In this book there is nothing that rises above traditional unionism, hard enough as even that is. Pitkin describes the bureaucratic issues in the merger of UNITE and HERE, competition over turf and methods, and shows an awareness of the differences between middle-class union staffs and local proletarians, between top-down organizing and bottom-up organizing, but that is it. She mentions no transitional program for union power of any kind, reflecting present U.S. unionism. She admits she was too busy to think about anything but the immediate situation. The book is class conscious, but that consciousness is limited to the endless struggle by women and immigrant workers for labor dignity and standards, for solidarity and unity, for human closeness and kindness. The subtext is that it expects the working-class to be Promethean, noble and endlessly patient in the eternal class struggle. It comes out that we are to resemble Sisyphus, forever pushing a rock up a hill in the pursuit of labor justice.

To hell with that.

Prior reviews on this issue, search our 17 year archive using the search box, upper left, using these terms: “Fighting Times” (Melrod); “Reviving the Strike” (Burns); “Rebuilding Power in Open-Shop America,” “Tell the Bosses We're Coming,” “Breaking the Impasse” (Moody); “In and Out of the Working Class” (Yates); “Class Action,” “Class Against Class” (Matgamna); “Prison Strike Against Modern Slavery,” “Sick Out Against the Shut Down!” “Save Our Unions” (Early); “Living and Dying on the Factory Floor,” “On New Terrain” (Moody); “Autopsy of an Engine,” “Factory Days” (Gibbs). 

And I got it at the Athens, Georgia Public Library!

Red Frog

January 29, 2024

Boss Crackers Outnumbered, Part Two

 “The South vs.The South - How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War” by William W. Freehling, 2001 (Part 2)

The Middle and Deep South

Winning the border states and finally Vicksburg with the help of many Upper South whites where slavery was still legal, the next phase of the land-based Union 'Anaconda' was set in place – black freedmen supplying soldiers, workers and spies from all over the South. For 2 years Lincoln had rejected emancipatory decrees by several of his generals and had ordered Halleck to expel runaways and escaped slaves from the environs of the western armies. That all changed.

Armies like this are never just made up of people with guns. There are teamsters, lumberjacks, cooks, laundresses, ambulance drivers, nurses, iron mongers, mechanics, guides and diggers needed. The Confederate Army itself was using their slaves as helpers, as they were short of personnel. Some body servants, i.e. 'house Negroes' as Malcolm X called them, even went further, protecting their massa in the field and his wealth at the plantation. Yet the South never armed African-Americans en mass, but the Union finally did. Abolitionist General Benjamin Butler first welcomed 'contraband' blacks who offered to dig trenches and build fortifications in Virginia in 1861. This pro-fugitive policy would later reap massive rewards for the whole Union Army and the fight against slavery's disunion. At first Lincoln substantially blocked it with a 1862 'First Confiscation Act' which put up barriers to escapees who wanted to help. But the ranks knew the benefits … as did the more perceptive generals. Even a Copperhead Democrat like General McClellan finally came around in the end.

Freehling is antagonistic to a slave insurrections, as were Union generals. He is also hostile to the abolitionist left, writing it out of this history in place of Lincoln. He prefers the gradualist and escapist varieties of resistance and so details each twist and turn of Lincoln's policy. Because of this he doesn't look at the impact of left abolitionism on Lincoln and the Republican Party. Throughout 1862 Lincoln, the 'soft war' advocate, made a 're-enslavement' proposal to the South, a slave 'buyout' plan lasting 38 years, a proposal to protect slavery in certain states, along with a plea for African-Americans to self-deport to Latin America! No matter, as the Confederacy ignored everything. Lincoln finally came around on January 1, 1863 to relatively full emancipation. The 13^th Amendment in 1865 sealed the issue of chattel slavery.

The advances and victories of the Union Army made this particular change inevitable. The ranks started to refuse to obey Halleck's orders to turn away runaways. The official tide changed in July 1862 with the First Confiscation Act and especially after Lincoln's “Emancipation Proclamation” in January 1863. 196,000 freedmen were eventually recruited to the Union Army and Navy. They were paid for going into combat, on garrison duty, on patrol, at labor, as foragers, as spies. Lincoln, ever the politician, at first only mentioned the role of 'garrisoning' when the issue came to guns to avoid irritating racist Northerners or border Southerners. Half a million slaves ran to Federal armies if they were near, as slave patrols could not function in those areas. After it all played out, with the prior addition of non-Confederate whites, this policy undermined the slaver war machine, its economy and doomed the Confederacy.

Freedmen were armed and trained after the Proclamation. Freehling makes sad fun of Col. Shaw and the 54^th Massachusetts suicidal attack on Fort Wagner outside Charleston. To this day that spit of land has no memorial except on Boston Common, but then it's South Carolina so it figures. Freehling praises the black soldiers at the battle of Milliken's Bend, Mississippi, who held off rebels with their bayonets and also the heroic attack on Port Hudson, Louisiana. At Nashville and Petersburg both Thomas and Grant were impressed by the aggressive role of black soldiers.

But most black troops did not participate in quite this way. Garrisoning the Mississippi Valley and the upper and middle South were essential to the forward movement of the Union armies towards Chattanooga, Atlanta and Savannah. Protecting and rebuilding railroads and bridges, guarding prisoners, driving wagons, guarding boats, fighting raiders like Forrest and Morgan – all the essentials of Northern logistics. 100,000 freedmen and women also worked for the Union Army behind the lines without being enlisted, doing things like growing food, repairing uniforms and weapons, feeding garrisons, handling the dead and even nursing.

Non-Plantation Geography Economy

Freehling describes how this split in the Southern population continued in various deep southern 'white' regions too that were inhospitable to large, flat plantation slavery.  This became a 3^rd leg of the southern anti-Confederacy stool. These areas did not have a large periphery of jobs associated with plantations – overseers, carpenters, wheelwrights, farriers, lawyers, doctors, thugs, etc., so locals were not materially indebted to rich slave masters. Freehling only mentions the rebellions of white Jones County Unionists in woodsy southeast Mississippi, Jackson County Unionists in mountainous northern Alabama and anti-Confederate Okefenokee swamp rebels in southeast Georgia. This absence is odd, given his topic and the increased resistance across parts of the deep South - like east Tennessee Unionists who carried out sabotage against Secesh targets. Pro-Union guerillas, desertions, no-go areas, push backs against confiscations and protests happened in nearly every state, especially after 1863.

The bloody battle of Chicamaugua, below Chattanooga, was a Confederate victory partly because of the presence of 15,000 Eastern Confederate troops under James Longstreet, bringing a rare numerical parity to the fight. Longstreet then left to reinforce Knoxville and the Federal army regained a 2-1 advantage, which helped them storm Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, sending the Confederates reeling back towards Atlanta. Freehling makes the point that numbers matter and the collapse in Reb morale on Missionary Ridge in November 1863 mattered even more.

Sherman, sitting in Savannah, looked down on ex-slaves, seeing them as only good for building 'corduroy' roads through marshes. He wanted to free his army of the long lines of freemen tailing his troops. He gave 20,000 of them 35 miles of shore-line land from Jacksonville, Florida to Charleston, South Carolina, averaging 50 acres each. This was as close to what black farmers and fishermen needed to restart their lives as something other than being sharecroppers for rich white farmers. It was the actual '40 acres and a mule.' The program ended a year after it started, killed by conservative Tennessee President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln.

The rest of the story is well-known. The northern Democrats and the English lords never came to the rescue of slavery. Southern General Cleburne's plea to arm slaves and make them free was suppressed, then bastardized. Lee was caught between the mountains, Grant and Sherman's armies and the deep blue sea. He surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia after a wave of desertions. The Northern and Southern Anaconda was ultimately successful, ending with a 5-1 numerical advantage. The slavers and their supporters were outnumbered almost everywhere. This book is useful for both Civil War newbies and Civil War aficionados, revealing the lie that the Civil War was a 'war between the states' or a war for 'states rights' or a “war of Yankee Aggression.” It was about slavery from beginning to end and no one but Neo-Confederates, ignoramuses and fools believes otherwise.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The South vs. South” (Part 1); “The Civil War in the United States” (Marx-Engels); "Why the South Lost the Civil War," "Lincoln" (Spielberg); "Struggle & Progress" (Jacobin); "The Neo-Confederate States," "Blockaders, Refugees and Contrabands," "The Bloody Shirt," "Guerrillas, Unionists and Violence on the Confederate Home Front," "The Free State of Jones," "Andersonville Prison," "James-Younger Gang," "Southern Cultural Nationalism," "The Civil War in Florida," "A Blaze of Glory," "The State of Jones," “Monument,” "Drivin' Dixie Down," “A Confederacy of Dunces,” “U.S. Army Bases Named After Confederates” or the words “Civil War,” "John Brown" or “slavery."

P.S. - Greg Abbott, Texas Gov., just cited Civil War 'states rights' theories (called 'nullification') in his battle with the Federal Govt. over border control.  This puts his local 'national' Guard in conflict with the federal DHS.

And I got it at the Athens, GA Library!

The Cranky Yankee, February 26, 2024

The '5th Column'

 “The South vs.The South- How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War” by William W. Freehling, 2001 (Part 1)

This is a brilliant continuation of the argument about why the South lost the Civil War. It was not the superior industrial capacity of the North; it was not its greater population, immigration or its wealth. The South's failure was a geographic one, and that bad geography was based on the institution of slavery. It was not just in the mountain regions, in the piney woods, the seashores or in the swamps of the South that Unionism took hold, as these were areas where slavery was almost non-existent. After all, why fight or supply a rich planter's war? It was in the 5 border states of “the Upper South' and the 4 states of 'the Middle South' too. Finally, it was in the enslaved population across the whole South. It gave the North hundreds of thousands more men and deprived the Confederacy of the same. All conspired against the slave power centrally located in the Lower South, which by the middle of 1863 was starting to crumble.

The South had military advantages – interior lines, a defensive posture, a huge area the Union would have to occupy, and tight units made up of recruits from the same towns skilled with shot and shell. The rifled long gun made massed charges more and more suicidal, aiding their defense. The water 'Anaconda' line manned by the Union Navy was porous. The South, as has been noted earlier, nationalized all industry and developed some industrial war capacity quickly, especially in Atlanta and Richmond. It was the 'land' Anaconda that Freehling says eventually strangled the South. How did it happen? It happened primarily on the political terrain, but then on the military terrain too.

Lincoln was one of the main architects of the defeat of the South through his skilled and initial 'light touch' against neutrals, border states and waverers according to Freehling. At this time the Republican Party stood against any expansion of slavery, but claimed it would not attack existing slavery in the South. Lincoln here is no abolitionist, but he hoped that dozens of years in the future slavery would die a natural death as its opportunities for expansion were throttled.

The Upper, Border South

Remember the infamous incident in Baltimore in April 1861 when Copperhead Democratic Party thugs attacked a Massachusetts regiment transiting 'neutral' Maryland to defend Washington, D.C.? It was the last gasp of anti-Union sentiment in that border state. The reasons were manifold – one being free blacks outnumbered enslaved blacks in Maryland, the city was full of immigrants and most of the trade in Baltimore was with the North. It was really a northern proletarian city, not some southern outpost. This situation was replicated throughout the 'neutral' border South which still allowed slaves, but had fewer slaves and slave-holders. Some had been sold to the deep South, so the material reasons for violence and secession had lessened in these areas. Lincoln allowed the Maryland 'neutralists' to meet and yell and argue, but they eventually did not secede. Republicans then swept into office in Maryland and even the shouting stopped.

“Neutral” Kentucky followed Maryland in finally allowed Federal troops across the border after a Confederate general invaded Kentucky from the south. Here Lincoln did as he did at Fort Sumter, where he allowed the South Carolina secessionist idiots to shoot first. A rump of South Carolina's population had declared 'independence' on Dec. 20, 1860 in response to Lincoln's election, so they jumped the gun there too. Kentucky had more slaves in proportion than Maryland (20% v. 13%) but Republican Unionists swept the elections and the invasion sealed the deal, with Kentucky allowing General Grant to enter and defend the state. Twice as many white Kentuckians signed up with the Union Army than the Confederate one after that, while the majority sat out the war. Jefferson Davis had just lost another state.

As they say, divide and conquer. It's not a 'war between the states' but 'a war within the states.' Remember this strategy with our present neo-Confederacy, comrades. The main internal contradictions for the neo-Confederate capitalists are the southern working-class, including all of its black and Latino members, young women and the big cities and worksites of the South. Rural areas and exurbs are another matter.

Lincoln's slicing and dicing continued across the formally neutral upper South as neutrality became more and more untenable. All 5 border states including Delaware, Missouri and West Virginia were taken by the Union after elections, with occupations needed in Missouri and West Virginia. The boat building hub of St. Louis and the rail hub of Baltimore were lost to the Confederacy along with the large crossroads city of Louisville. Soon Nashville would be occupied.  Given the vast preponderance of 'free soil' and free labor people and the small amount of slavery in these last 3 states, the Union forces need for garrisons was smaller. This geographic coup, based on slavery's weakness, gave a strategic advantage to the North from the Atlantic to past the Mississippi.

Mapping the Geography

Guerrillas and War

Freehling notes the lack of southern 'filibustering' successes in these places too. With fewer locals to harass Union trains, transport and forts, the Confederacy could not disrupt the flow of troops and supplies to forward-moving Union armies. He contends that the Union had much more success in the South with 'filibustering' and sabotage.

Freehling calls it a myth that the war was stalemated for 2 years. Grant, Sherman, Foote and Porter's progress in the West was continuous. They seized Forts Henry, Donelson and Island #10, controlling much of the Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi rivers,  They occupied New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Natchez and Nashville, bloodily defeated Johnson at Shiloh, Tennessee and Beauregard and Van Dorn at Corinth, Mississippi, then encircled Vicksburg. Sieges – like those at Vicksburg, Atlanta and Petersburg - demanded an overwhelming numerical advantage and they had it. Grant and Buell had recruited white units from Missouri, Kentucky and Kansas, 'turned' every flank they could which forced Confederate units in Kentucky and then Tennessee to leave and even 'lived off the land.' During all this these upper and middle-south areas did not 'rise up' in any significant way to oppose them. It was now the Deep South in the cross-hairs, the hot-house of slavery. The Union was on the borders of Mississippi, Alabama and soon, Georgia.  

 (To be continued in a Part II...)

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Civil War in the United States” (Marx-Engels); "Why the South Lost the Civil War," "Lincoln," "Struggle & Progress" (Jacobin); "The Neo-Confederate States," "Blockaders, Refugees and Contrabands," "The Bloody Shirt," "Guerrillas, Unionists and Violence on the Confederate Home Front," "The Free State of Jones," "Andersonville Prison," "James-Younger Gang," "Southern Cultural Nationalism," "The Civil War in Florida," "A Blaze of Glory," "The State of Jones," “Monument,” "Drivin' Dixie Down," “A Confederacy of Dunces,” “U.S. Army Bases Named After Confederates” or the words “Civil War,” "John Brown" or “slavery."

And I got it at the Athens, GA Library!

The Cranky Yankee / February 23, 2024

College Library Browsing #9: Do You Believe in Magic?

 “Magical Marxism – Subversive Politics and the Imagination” by Andy Merrifield, 2011

Given the relative weakness of Marxist movements in advancing actual class-struggle right now, I read books that might provide 'new' ideas, tactics or strategies. This is one. I'm no fan of magic, a gauzy, idealist contraption if there ever was one, but perhaps there is something here. After all, given the magical role of religion, the emotional wealth invested in politics, the power of myth, play and other cultural forces – facts, reason, science, history and theory don't have as good a chance in this scenario, especially alone against material power.

The book first reads like a mash-up of the magical realism of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Márquez and the Situationism of “The Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord. If this is too heady for you, you can quit reading. He does make an early observation in the book that many more people than we think understand the present social structure and economy to be corrupt and terminally flawed. They know it but don't say it out loud. They evince this understanding in many ways, through many different forms and actions. The conquest of capital and commodification has moved from the factories and workplaces into the homes of the population, infecting social life and most know it - even “in their beds.” He's making the point that instead of some intense, simple and singular Party understanding, any revolution will entail a broad front of actors, eventually across the world. You just have to know which ones are going forward and which ones are going backasswards. 

Merrifield quotes not just Marxists like David Harvey or Henri Lefebvre, but the Invisible Committee, the Surrealists, Lautréamont, Wordsworth, Freud and so on. In this vein he approves of Luxemburg's criticism of Lenin's hostility to spontaneity and instead supports 'left libertarianism' – whatever that is. Mariátegui touches on this issue with his promotion of 'myths of revolution and collectivity' as antidotes to capitalist realism. Mariátegui advanced the concept of 'mistica' which Merrifield and others endorse. Discovering the roots of the future society in the present might also help, and there are many. Perhaps a more full-blooded and modern vision of future socialism than the one left by Marx is necessary. No one leaves a sinking ship to jump on a lifeboat they know little about ... and whose most well-known artifact is Stalin.

Anyway, it's not clear what 'magical Marxism' really is as a practical reality except Merrifield's fever dream, a form of literary criticism or a plea to 'act,' not watch. Maybe its a form of anarchism or anarchist collectives, of 'liberated zones,' of protest culture, of cooperatives and communes, of counter-culture, of personal confrontations, of sabotage. I should note that Marquez's book was partly published by the literary wing of the CIA while Debord's tiny organization fell apart in 1972. Not encouraging developments.

The Invisibiles

At one point Merrifield discusses 'neo-communism' and the 'Imaginary Party,' based on the book “The Coming Insurrection.” As he excitedly put it in 2011: “Everybody agrees, current society is about to explode.” He added that it's about “a non-class based Marxism.” Well, France didn't explode in an insurrection in 2011. It did result in police raids on a farmhouse in Tarnac and the arrest of a number of anarchists for 'sabotage.' Merrifield goes on to discuss the 'Coming Community' which seems to be what he's trying to get at under the avalanche of literary verbiage. What follows are many ritual nods to the increasingly isolated Zapatistas and a widening of the notion of the proletariat.

Merrifield says that “alliances across the globe are forged through an emotional connection, through anger, pain, sympathy, admiration, etc.” He likens this to the rhythmic pulse of music. But what happens when the music stops? Where's the 'Invisible' Committee now? Certainly we have seen recent world movements come and go – against the WTO and World Bank, against the Iraq war, for the Arab Spring, for Occupy Wall Street, for BLM, for women in Iran, now, though its not over, for Palestine. Every country has experienced something like this. Yet they mostly fade away, leaving a residue of organization, experience and memory, but not one of sufficient weight. This is why 'the movement' cannot be everything and organization and goal nothing.

The Solution?

So how does Merrifield insert his 'Coming Community' into this scenario? He thinks the revolution will break out in the cities, on a geographic terrain, involving many strata. There is a history of this in the various Communes, central squares and general strikes, but now with the technical aid of the cell phone – which he thinks is borning a “Fifth International.” In this context he praises anarcho-communist hackers and claims the working-class is passé. This 'either/orism' seems a clear academic error of undialectical thinking, especially as the world's proletariat has only gotten larger.  So what the hell is he talking about? His solution is “autogestion” - defined by the dictionary as “workers' self-management” or a 'self-managed economy' – yet always through a 'post-Marxist” Marxism. This is similar to the position of Richard Wolff who thinks socialism will come through Spain's cooperative Mondragon et al. I suspect Merrifield would extend this method to rural areas too. He endorses Local Exchange Trading – basically a barter/potlach system outside of the money economy. - something proletarians have participated in since day one. This is his way out of Kafka's maze.

Merrifield understands that negation is the stuff of radical politics – but “it is not the stuff dreams are made of” - citing some ideas of Hardt and Negri. As such Marxism has to illustrate a positive move towards emancipation and liberation, not just continual negativity and 'exposure' – in other words a Blochian “militant optimism.” As Marx pointed out, imagination is a form of labor and if you let it whither and die, the future dies, your children die, your dreams die. An example is the endless highlighting of government or press hypocrisies that confirm what everyone already knows. This is something you see on FB© all the time. As we might say in the factory, “Duh! No shit, Sherlock.”

Merrifield makes the valid point that human labor, nature and capital have now produced enough knowledge, skills, machines and 'things' so that every social need can be fulfilled across the world. Some environmental solutions are still needed, as this was written in 2011, but generally we do not need to wait for the next iPhone or gadget to 'proceed,' for the 'productive forces' to mature, for labor to be lessened, for the bosses to be expropriated. Have we reached the peak that Marx predicted, now just waiting for the 'machinery' to be seized by the proletarian population? Certainly there are many indications that the situation is actually over-ripe and even rotting.

Merrifield ends with a meditation on poetry, butterflies and owls, which might appall the realistic socialist. There's even the need to turn to 'black magic,' so it seems things are getting desperate. At the time he wrote this Merrifield was living in the center of France in the Auvergne, having lost his academic job. Auvergne is full of forests, old mountains and hot springs. As a socialist geographer, this might be why he added 'the right to the land' to 'the right to the city' in his portfolio. And perhaps this rural environment prompted something less 'citified' in him. No doubt we are all citizens of the places we live or have lived, and the more variety, the better. This book acts a bit like that, dwelling in a place that not everyone has visited. Merrifield seems to be some kind of anarcho-communist in this book, part of a broad anti-capitalist front, a front that is moving towards a new society down many paths, around many corners, through many experiences and under and over many barriers. Given the threats we face, we will need all the aid we can get.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Marx Dead and Alive” & “Beyond Plague Urbanism” (both by Merrifeld); “Society of the Spectacle” (Dubord); “The Coming Insurrection,” “David Harvey,” 'magical realism,' “The Damnificados” and “Nazaré” (magical realism, by JJA Wilson); “Mariategui or Mariátegui” “Right to the City,” “Beach Beneath the Street,” “Wageless Life,” “Hardt" or "Negri,”

And I got it at the University of Georgia College Library!

Athens / Clarke County – one of the 10 most unequal counties in the U.S.

Red Frog

January 20, 2024

College Library Browsing #8: Not Scandalous Enough

 “The Scandal of Marxism” by Roland Barthes, 1993 (French); 2015 (English)

Roland Barthes is the well-known author of 'Mythologies' – a series of essays about cultural issues from a Leftist point of view. I remember reading them years ago and his commentary on the theater of American wrestling stuck out like an amazing thumb. Who even looks at the rigged comedy and drama of wrestling with a penetrating eye?! This work is a series of book reviews, questionnaires and commentaries defending Marxism and attacking the Right and liberals on issues like revolution, religion, Algeria and DeGaulle. He also looks at Left / socialist art, China and the concept of 'violence.' The later analyses become more 'objective,' almost absent a left point of view.

Barthes writes in an elegant, subtle and theoretical way without using crude Leftist bludgeoning to make his points. The articles date between 1950 and 1978 in various non-CP Left French journals like Combate!, L'Observateur, Les Lettres Nouvelle and Arguments, then moves to more mainstream publications. As time goes on his writing becomes more abstract, less political and more indolent, paralleling the conservatism that swept France in the 1970s. The later contributions seem lost in apolitical word meanings - his intellectualism continued while his leftism weakened. So the title of the collection is actually partly wrong. It is almost embarrassing.

The Left

Algeria was France's second Vietnam, with De Gaulle finally granting Algeria independence in 1962 after a long struggle. When peace was at hand, the war led to an attempted 1961 coup by French ultra-right military types in league with the CIA against De Gaulle. This followed another attempted military coup in 1958 by the same forces. Their slogan was “Algeria is France.” Barthes was adamantly against the occupation of Algeria, unlike the 'agnostic' position of the PCF – Parti Communiste Francais.

In France the category of 'the intellectual' has always been one outside the realm of ordinary education. Barthes was part of this post-war coterie, along with Sartre, existentialists, situationists, post-modernists, structuralists, 'cultural' Marxists, socialists and nouvelle philosophie.

Here are some useful observations, in quotes or summation, amongst the rest: 

• The formal conservative analyses of revolution are “merely changes of regime” in which “actual men are absent.”

• In accusations by liberal skeptics that Marxism is a 'church' he contrasts 'Muscovite dogmatism' based on state power with Marxism as an analytical method that works for those out of power - a strange 'church' indeed.

• Barthes writes approvingly about two expositions on racism: one a UNESCO statement that shows “the inanity of racial prejudice” - the other, by Daniel Guerin, exposing racism in the U.S. that “was developed and (is) maintained to justify the exploitation of coloured people's labour.”

• Barthes endorses the explanations of Tran Duc Thao contrasting phenomenology with Marxism, as the latter posits that “consciousness develops on the basis of matter” and that “humanity's various ideologies each have a precise economic basis.” Phenomenology (reality subjectively experienced) is subsumed within dialectical materialism.

• On Marxism as a 'religion,' Barthes continues: “...those common forms (linking the two) might be said to be hierarchy, dogmatism and infallibility.” This method of superficial analogy “divest(s) (them) of their causes, history and particular content, (and) are reduced to signs they may have in common.”

• Left-wing literature: Is a “gathering of all the writers who profess a left-wing politics” and is “...the production of left-wing writers.” He includes Sartre and Aragon in his list of left writers. His meaning seems to be dissidents and non-conformists of most types.

• Left-wing literature: “In the last instance it is always a description and a deep analysis of a given historical situation.” Proust is included here. This is part of his opposition to both Stalinist Zhdanovism and a-historical fantasies.

• Barthes praises a book on Brazilian culture that combines the contributions of Africans, Portuguese and the indigenous “...in all aspects – historical, economic, religious, ethnic, sexual, culinary, moral, etc.”

• Barthes refuses to label himself, as it is obvious by reading someone what their politics are. It is not a “simple declaration of faith.”

• Anti-Semitism: “Right and Left are confused notions. They each can be led, for tactical reasons, to exchange positions.” Anti-Semitism has always been a right-wing ideology in France and elsewhere, so: “it is anti-Semitism that makes the Right, not the Right that makes anti-Semitism.”

• Barthes makes fun of the wife of the butcher of Algeria, General Massu, who advocates teaching 'home knitting' to Algerian women in place of independence. Somewhat like Hillary Clinton's 'micro-credit' programs for poor women living under imperialism.

• “Moral Guidance” for young women is the subject of one essay in which Barthes points out that, while recognizing women might work, what is recommended by the conservatives is to be a 'house-maid' or domestic worker where her 'skills' can be put to best use.

• “Algeria is French” is a manifestation of ultra-conservative grammar.

• The ascension of De Gaulle after the attempted 1958 military coup over Algeria was a victory of “paternalism - not fascism.”

• On film criticism: “The left-wing public is apparently not calling in any sense for the development of a socialist culture ...” “Temporal freedom and political responsibility … should be the watchwords of a socialist culture.”

• In North Africa: Barthes notes that the hippies in this poor town (in Morocco perhaps) are no longer transgressive as they are in a wealthy country because they almost parody poverty.

• Anti-intellectualism in France is a product of late Romanticism.

Barthes went to China in 1974 in the midst of the Cultural Revolution and had almost nothing to say. He does mention 'wall posters!' He comments on a generic 'violence' without mentioning self-defense anywhere. He makes nice comments about 'minority literature.' At the end of this collection his intellect becomes bland. Trés triste!

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution,” “May Made Me,” “The French Communist Party versus the Students,” “Surrealism – Inside the Magnetic Fields,” “Subculture – the Meaning of Style.”

The Cultural Marxist

January 17, 2024

Minnesota Not Nice

 “Fargo,”Season 5

“Fargo,” the streaming series, is consistently one of the best things on TV. This season is openly political. It skewers a violent chauvinist county Sheriff in North Dakota who believes his under-age second wife cannot leave him due to some verbiage from the Bible - passages of which he quotes continually. Somehow the serial beatings he administers to his young wife also play a role in his Bible.  

The Sheriff is connected to a rag-tag rightist militia of 'patriots' that he gives weapons to, buying them using public funds. He also buys a tank for his small rural 'Stark' county. The Sheriff only believes in sovereign law – meaning himself and a 'strict' and warped reading of the Constitution. These loons claim that no jurisdiction except one of their sovereign kangaroo courts could possibly arrest them, indict them, garnish them or file a claim against them. State and federal law have no application, so to speak. The Sheriff is played by John Hamm – breaking his Mad Man persona. His mission is to recapture his second wife no matter what. You see, it's Biblical.

Look familiar?

There actually is a 'Constitutional Sheriffs' organization, so this is no fantasy.  It's 'rebellion,' yes, but from the far Right.

The central character, his second wife played by Juno Temple, has escaped and found a doofus Kia car dealer to marry in Scandia, Minnesota. She has a child and tries to live a normal life, volunteering, cooking and hiding out. This 'housewife' actually has the survival skills of a big cat and in tough situations, thinks fast and acts faster. Her abilities are a highlight of the show. She marries into a family dominated by a nasty capitalist matron who runs the biggest debt-collection agency in the U.S. and has all kinds of pull in Minnesota. The matron has a one-eyed lawyer working for her who does her dirty-work.

The Sheriff's son is a moronic tough-guy who fails at everything he does except being vile. The Sheriff's first wife, who also ran away, 'might have' become a hippie feminist, founding a sanctuary for beaten women in the woods. But its possible he killed her too. The Sheriff's 3^rd wife is a nasty Liberty-Mom, Bible-spouting doormat. There is one intelligent black Nor-Dak State trooper who knows something is up, along with two somewhat clueless FBI agents. Add to the mix - a perhaps magical beast from the 1500s in Wales, a Frankensteinian lummox with a bad haircut who is out for revenge. He's no 'welsher!' His name is Ole Munch, so that should tell you something.

The series is set in the snow-swept precincts of North Dakota ranch land, on lonely highways and in snow-piled Minnesota streets – the usual visual atmosphere of the whole Fargo series. The stereotyped 'Minnee-soota' accent still abides, even though in the real world it is disappearing. The Sheriff at one point cites Mormon Ammon Bundy as a hero, so we know where the screenwriters got part of this plot. Ammon led a destructive 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon with a group of militia because the wealthy Bundy family didn't want to pay grazing fees for their herd of cattle on public land. One of their militia, Robert Finicum, was killed by Federal agents as he reached for a gun. To this day, as far as I know, the Bundys have not paid grazing fees and their cows still literally eat at the public trough.

The theme of debt courses through the series.  There is the debt collection corporation; a debt owed by the Sheriff to Munch; two blood debts, prisoners with debts, debts of gratitude and the 'debt' of marriage.  It's a primitive theme that still resonates.

Yes, it's holy sh*t! This dark, violent and funny story circles around Halloween, some magic and the hope that reactionaries everywhere will get stopped – though this unlikely task seems relegated to the compromised FBI and law enforcement. The locals are cowed by the Sheriff as the police are in his pocket, though they begin to make fun of him for buying a tank. The story-writers don't want to show any significant rebellion by the civilians against the Sheriff and his posse. The story also rests on the idea that women everywhere can stay married to the nice fool of their dreams in spite of their pasts. Or as a beautiful blonde in a short red dress once said in a southern blues bar: “Ahm sick o' rednecks.” Because this housewife certainly is.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Fargo, HBO, Season One” and "Who is Lester Nygaard?" Other television long-form streaming series reviewed – “Deadwood,” “Game of Thrones,” “Lincoln Lawyer,” “Stateless,” “Hannah,” “The Playlist,” “Line of Duty,” “Inventing Anna,” “Better Call Saul,” “Ozark,” “The Peaky Blinders,” “3%,” “We Own This City,” “Maid,” “City On A Hill,” “Goliath,” “Watchmen,” “The Good Lord Bird,” “The Wire,” “Hunger Games” or the word 'streaming.'   

The Cultural Marxist

January 14, 2024

A Neo-Confederate Crawls Up the Mississippi

 “The Southernization of America – A Story of Democracy in the Balance” by F. Gaillard and C. Tucker, 2022

This is another fever dream about the last 50 years since the Carter administration by two southern journalists trying to understand what the fuck happened. They seem surprised! The heinous monsters are many – Segregationist George Wallace; Nixon and his Southern strategy; Californian Ron Reagan and his wars on drugs and welfare queens; Georgian Newt Gingrich and his vile hostility; Texan Bush and his disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Kansas' Koch oil money; the constant bellowing of Rush Limbaugh and lastly, Mar-Lago Boy Trump's raging Christian-nationalist racism.  Southern presidents and candidates – Wallace, Carter, Gore, Bush, Clinton – play prominent roles, with Democrats getting off scot-free. If anyone remembers, the Southern slavocracy basically controlled the U.S. Congress for many years before the Civil War. Since then “states rights” have not died. If that seems like a similar situation to now, have a drink. What comes next is darker still.

Gaillard/Tucker's story of the past is purely one of black skin color hatred and violence, the original sins of 'Southernization.' Now Muslims, gays and Mexicans have been added to the list. The authors reference the liberal-left book “Caste” about the color castes larded into the class system in the U.S. but especially obvious in the southern U.S. (Caste is reviewed below.) The gun panics pushed by the NRA are linked to 'crime' – dark-skin crime. Yet darker-skinned people also buy guns for protection, as poverty is directly related to crime.

As you can see, economics has no place in their view. The growing strength of southern Corporations, the southern locus of the fast food and chicken CAFO industries, the anti-unionism of the South, the toxic oil, coal and gas companies HQ'd in Texas, the low-wages and benefits proffered up by “state's rights,” the hard Southern class system – all invisible. The material gains of super-exploitation through racism – what? The intentional split in the working class - unseen. They don't mention increasing proletarianization as industries move south, but they do mention white-collar northerners moving south, such as to Atlanta or Austin.

It's just 'ideas' - personal racism or bigotry that determine 'bad' white people's attitudes. Toss in some demographic changes in the South and viola, parts of the South are becoming 'purplish!' So there is hope! It is the line of the leadership of the Democratic Party. In a way, the centrist, 3^rd Way, neoliberal politics of the Democratic Party ITSELF has been pushed heavily by Southerners in league with Wall Street. Not a word about that kind of Southernization in this book. Instead we have a celebration of South Carolina Democrat James Clyburn torpedoing Vermonter Bernie Sanders. Clyburn was first elected to the House 30 years ago and his politics reflect it.

What facts do these southern Democrats have to advance their thesis of Southernization, except the more overt racism spread nationally by the Republican Party, a Party whose main base is in southern and prairie states? Institutional racism is off this list by their design, certainly. The Supreme Court decisions in Gore v. Bush, labor, redistricting and voting rights, abortion, guns, vaccines, affirmative action, the EPA and prayer all reflect conservatism, but especially in its bulwark, the South. That is no secret. There are the retrograde and pedophilic Southern Baptists in love with 'traditionalism.' And the echoes of Jim Crow, the Civil War and slavery in convict leasing, incarceration, voter suppression, police killings, racist violence, Confederate statues and base names - even modern labor slavery. Most of these are unmentioned. They might add the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a theocratic Christian conservative from Alabama who will be president if both Biden and Harris die in a plane crash. Texas is even going to vote on secession this year, according to reports. I suspect that will be a 'non-binding' resolution but it shows their thinking.

The only benefit of the book is to show what a shit-show Southern politics is, but that has been known for years and years and years. We might say it started in 1619 and became an 'original' part of the archaic 1789 Constitution. The authors' only perspective is picking a side in the rigged 2 rich-party system absent any class struggle. Class struggle and the role of racism to materially super-exploit part of the class while splitting the working class are elementary Marxist truths. The key is joint proletarian action against southern capital first of all. These are over-their-head abstractions for these authors, who only care about standard electoral work. The rationale for this book as something new or even as a contribution to other liberals is thin to non-existent. It's a shallow journalistic take on Southernization, though perhaps for some it's a start.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Caste” (Wilkerson); “Southern Cultural Nationalism and Southern Liberals,” “Hillbilly Elegy” (Vance); “White Trash,” “The New Jim Crow” (Alexander); “The Neo-Confederate States,” “Florida Will Sink,” “Why the South Lost the Civil War,” “May Day in the Southern U.S.,” “The North is Not ‘The Midwest,’” “Monroe, Alabama & To Kill a Mockingjay,” “Go Set a Watchman” (H.Lee); “Selma,” “Meridian” (Walker); “A Confederacy of Dunces.”

And I Got It at the Athens, GA Library!

The Cranky Yankee, January 11,2024

The Freedom Not to Speak

 “The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis – McCarthyism, Communism and the Myth of Academic Freedom,” by Steve Batterson, 2023

If you don't know it by now, 'academic freedom' is not an eternal principle, but the consequence of a relation of political forces. The recent resignations of two top University presidents, especially Haitian-born Claudine Gay at Harvard, tells you what is coming. The Far Right's plan for the U.S. is to completely take over the electoral system through gerrymandering and voter suppression; the legal system through judge appointments; the federal government through abolishing, weakening or staffing it with unqualified henchmen; purging the educational system of leftish teachers, profs and material; forcing the bourgeois media to kowtow to their 'reality' and the holy grail, seizing full control of the police and the military. (Project 2025).  “Diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programs at capitalist firms are also in their sights. 

 Their present model is not full-frontal fascism but an authoritarian-nationalist model similar to Hungary's Orban, Russia's Putin or Turkey's Erdogan, among others. 'Voting' still exists in this context, the fig-leaf of 'democracy' still abides, but under massive constraints which nullify any definition of democracy.

Of course if they don't get their way, the violence and guns come out.

This is not to say that Democratic Party-style limited bourgeois democracy is actually democratic either. Nor was Gay an adroit anti-racist and pro-Free Speech advocate or Harvard a citadel of progress. Au contraire! Neither advocates universal social benefits either.  Nor was it sensible for Gay to even appear before the clowns in Congress.  But that is another subject. This is all part of a faction fight between different wings of the capitalist class, and indirectly an attack on labor. This faction fight is resulting in violence and a schism, based on the different corporate profit bases of the Parties. Meanwhile...

This story, about a professor who was a former member of the Communist Party (CP), is a cautionary tale on how to deal with academic repression. 'Woke' or 'cultural Marxism' is now seemingly the new Communism. U.S. capital has moved on from its optimistic heyday in the 1950s to a somewhat down-beat future. Conditions do not repeat so this purge might be much worse in the long run. The target of Harvard billionaires like Bill Ackman is not just pro-Palestinian sentiment or sloppy pro-Palestinian slogans but 'critical race theory,' trans ideology, DEI, humanism, actual history, 'p.c.' positions, affirmative action, environmental science, 'cultural Marxism,' the liberal arts and any socialist profs they can find. After all, nearly every U.S. University is really run by donors, corporate interests, administrators, political appointees and businessmen. That is where the present power resides.

Chandler Davis

Davis, who became a mathematician, grew up as a red-diaper baby surrounded by CP culture and people. He was in and out of the Party, supporting its goals of combating racism, being for 'peace,' backing labor unions and supporting free speech. None of this really relates to 'overthrowing capitalism' as was alleged. He was friendly with other leftists, including Trotskyists. He finally landed at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as a Ph.D. math instructor and there he came to the attention of the FBI and HUAC. Earlier he had a applied for a position involving 'quantum mechanics' which relates to nuclear research. He had also supported the right of Communists to speak on campus, though banned by the administration. The book describes all the twists and turns of his case, along with what happened to others at Michigan.

Now oddly HUAC - the House on Un-American Activities Committee - was first set up under the sainted FDR in 1938, originally called the Dies Committee.  This is the same FDR the CP almost uncritically supported! Chandler faced several basic options re HUAC and the University's own investigation: 1, Talk, name names and issue a mea culpa; 2, Take the 5^th against self-incrimination; 3, Claim freedom of speech and freedom not to talk, i.e. take the 1^st Amendment; 4. Claim the right of privacy and allege that HUAC had no authority to expose his personal life; 5, Say nothing; 6, Make political speeches and denounce the Committee.

Anti-HUAC protest in San Francisco

The Plan

Chandler chose #3, seeking to challenge the process in court on 1^st amendment grounds, with a goal of appealing to the Supreme Court. This 'first amendment' slant seems to be the author's main interest. The benefit of blabbing is keeping your job, keeping out of jail and avoiding the black list. The benefit of taking the 5^th is that you stay out of jail but you lose your job. Taking the 1^st would lead to job loss and a conviction, but 'might' narrowly succeed if appealed. The privacy claim vs. HUAC 'exposure' was less iffy. Chandler wanted to make HUAC's position illegal using the 1st. Yet the Hollywood 10 made this argument under different facts and lost. Not talking, making political speeches or attacking the panel were, in the '50s, a direct path to jail. In the '60s that was the path taken by the Maoist Progressive Labor with no real consequences.

The focus here is academia. At Michigan grad students who were rumored to be in the CP, or used to be, were immediately dismissed, as were assistant professors without tenure. One tenured associate prof was retained due to his answers, another dismissed because he would not abandon socialist ideas. Chandler was fired after refusing to answer substantive questions. He claimed he did not support 'violent revolution,' that he supported free speech and that he had never pressured a student to join any organization. The ad Hoc Michigan U panel didn't care about any of this, as their guidance from the administration and a conservative body of academics was that present or former membership in the CP was, ipso facto, grounds for dismissal. Membership in the CP meant to them that Chandler was an agent of a foreign power; a potentially violent terrorist favoring illegal means and also pro-dictatorship. Instead he was really a mild-mannered reformer. So he was terminated.

The AAUP of the time stood up for Chandler and against the flawed process at Michigan, but that made no difference. Batterson makes clear that it was not HUAC but the University administration that led the charge against the grad students, instructor, assistant and associate professors. Congressional Rep. Elise Stefanik, our little Ms. McCarthy, had no power to terminate Gay either, but the Harvard Corporation did. Things don't change much. Chandler went on an academic blacklist and could not find an academic position in the U.S. Quite like Professor Norman Finkelstein, who was pushed out of DePaul University in 2007 for being anti-Zionist and ended up teaching for a time in Turkey.

Batterson tracks the legal maneuvers that got Chandler a 26-count conviction for refusing to answer questions before HUAC. It wound its way from a federal district court in 1956 to the federal appeals court, then was appealed to the Supreme Court. Other cases also found their way through the system. An earlier one based on privacy and the authority of HUAC, not 1^st amendment rights, was denied by the D.C. Circuit but upheld by Warren's Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denied McCarthyism in several other cases, including one related to Paul Sweezy, editor of Monthly Review. These decisions were possible good news for Chandler. Each case was marked by various factual and legal differences however.

Batterson looks at the various judicial philosophies on the Supreme Court - Frankfurter's 'judicial restraint,' Warren's 'ethical Constitutionalism'; Black's 'liberal originalism. It didn't matter in the end. A hearing on Chandler's 1^st Amendment case was denied by the Supreme Court in late 1959 and he spent 6 months in jail in Danbury, CT. Chandler then went on to a distinguished math career in Canada where he got a tenured position. There were apologies from the University of Michigan in the 1990s, but none from the Board of Regents. So all's well that end's well, I guess. Overall this book shows the variegated justice dished out by the bourgeois courts and system, which eventually moved against McCarthy. Would that still be true today? That is the problem the newer, rabid capitalists are trying to solve.

Now I don't know why this book was written, due to the volume of McCarthyism books, but it might be one of the few on academe. Lawyers and academics might find it interesting and readable, but for anyone else, it's not. Its value is that tenure, academic quality and free speech don't matter if they are coming after you. If you are associated with 'terrorism' in any way, hold an opinion that is deemed against university policy or government policy, act 'unpatriotic' or refuse to cooperate, you will be a target. This is the profile of many college defenders of Palestinian rights or those in academe who are anti-Zionist, support a democratic 'one-state' solution or a revolutionary proletarian solution to the Israel / Palestine question.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Folk Singers and the Bureau” and “Whole World in an Uproar” (both by Leonard); “You Say You Want a Revolution?” “Democracy Incorporated” (Wolin); “A Confederacy of Dunces,” “Oppenheimer,” “I Married a Communist” (Roth), “The University in Chains” (Giroux) or 'college' or 'university.'

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog, January 8, 2024