A Martyr for Socialism

 “Rosa Luxemburg – the Incendiary Spark,” by Michael Lowy, 2024

This is an excellent look at the political activities of Rosa Luxemburg, concentrating on her ideas as they relate to historical events.  Lowy, though not explicitly, tries to make a case that there is a ‘Luxemburgist’ perspective.  Because of the complex intertwining of errors and brilliance in her thought, that prospect seems difficult. But many of her ideas are now routine among Marxists.

Luxemburg was formed by the tumultuous experiences of the increasingly bureaucratized Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), a deep understanding of colonialism and the First World War, the Bolshevik victory in 1917 Russia and the revolutionary wave in Germany which involved the 1919 Spartacus League insurrection.  She was executed by the Freicorps on orders of the SPD government for her role in that insurrection, which involved strikes, the formation of workers’ councils and a Bavarian Soviet.     

Lowy highlights the important contributions or highlights she made to Marxist theory and practice. 

    1. “Primitive accumulation” by capital continues to this day.

    2. “Primitive communism’ and indigenous struggle can aid any struggle for modern communism, linking two periods of history.

    3. Opposition to ‘socialism from above.’

    4. An outlook of ‘socialist democracy’ as essential to the dictatorship of the proletariat, not the dictatorship of a party, a revolutionary elite, a central committee or a leader.

    5. The most important idea she first clearly promulgated, based on Engels and the Communist Manifesto, is that socialism is not inevitable.  This was expressed in the Junius Pamphlet in 1915 as ‘socialism or barbarism.’  One aspect of barbarism is a world war.  Lowy said this was “a true turn in the history of Marxist thought.”

6. Marxism is a theory of praxis – practice, consciousness, organization and action.  No ‘crisis’ or automatic process can create a social revolution.

7. Revolutionary consciousness comes out of the proletariat’s experience.

8. The mass strike is a transitional method.

9. “Parliamentary cretinism” – in other words an exclusive strategy of winning a majority in Congress - will lead to pure reformism.

10.     She supported workers councils as opposed to the ‘democracy’ of a bourgeois parliament. The former are far more democratic.

11.     A completely hostile attitude towards nationalism and militarism, along with colonialism and imperialism, support of which she saw as ‘social patriotism.’ 

12.     She supported the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin and Trotsky's leadership.

Luxemburg had problems with the Bolsheviks however, as she opposed both the ‘right of self-determination of nations’ and ‘land to the tiller.’  This hints at a somewhat ultra-left tack, ignoring the support of the peasants or national minorities in the success of any revolution. Lowy points out that she even ignored the anti-Semitism question, though she was born Jewish.  She also opposed the dispersal of the out-of-date Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks at first, but later came to understand that soviets were a better democratic answer. 

Luxemburg’s main beef with Lenin was that she intuited that the Leninist form of a party could become a dictatorship in itself. That is what actually happened after the ruin of the Civil War and the isolation of the revolution.  This is similar to the young Trotsky’s opinion until he joined the Bolshevik party.  Against Stalin, he eventually called for a ‘workers’ democracy’ that would block counter-revolutionary and bourgeois political forces but allow all proletarian, peasant and radical forces.  

Luxemburg supported, after the revolution, ‘general elections, freedom of the press and assembly, a free exchange of opinions’ as her form of workers’ rule, otherwise “only the bureaucracy remains the active element.”  She had seen this in the German SPD in a pre-revolutionary form.     

Luxemburg’s idea of ‘spontaneity’ is that organizations would form in the context of the struggle.  However in actual practice the Spartacus League was a mini-Bolshevik Party, born out of the SPD’s long history.  The Spartacists did not call for a Constituent Assembly or bourgeois-democratic rights, and even she recognized the difficulty in Russia in 1918 of doing this.  Obviously class organization, the historical conjuncture, democracy and proletarian spontaneity are intertwined.

The West Advocates Drugs in the Chinese Opium Wars

Against Colonialism

Luxemburg paid special attention to the old agrarian communist patterns that still existed around the world or in history that she knew about – Incan communism in Peru; the German ‘mark,’ the Russian ‘mir,’ American Indian communal villages, Algerian collectives, African ‘kabyls’ / kebelles and Hindu communes. She called this ‘the natural economy,’ ‘ancient economic organization’ and ‘communist village communities.’  The German SPD instead said that colonialism helped ‘create jobs.’  Where have we heard this before?  She shares this attitude towards indigenous collectivity with Marxist thinkers like Mariátegui in Peru. She saw colonialism and imperialism as crushing any of these forms through private property and military force, dispossessing the indigenous from land, animals and water, trying to turn them into workers, slaves or migrants. 

In this context, Luxemburg wrote against the Opium War in China, colonialism in Madagascar, the Antilles, India, South-West Africa and the Philippines, proving herself a hard opponent of capital’s expansion.  Her economic analysis led her to conclude that eventually this expansion would reach its limits, severely damaging capital in the process. Is that happening now?

Luxemburg and Her Comrades

In the last parts of the book Lowy discusses Luxemburg’s ideas and those of Georges Haupt, an expert on the Second International; Leon Trotsky and Gyorgy Lukács.  He also compares her outlook to SPD revisionists like Bernstein and Kautsky. Haupt noted, as did Luxemburg, that some struggles for ‘national self-determination’ were ridiculous, yet she combined Poland’s struggle for self-determination with Alsace-Lorraine’s and Bohemia’s as all ‘petit-bourgeois radicalism.’  In her debates inside the SPD, she examined the leadership’s fondness for parliamentism, but also their support of positivism, scientism, rationalism, Darwinist evolutionism and neo-Kantism.    

Lowy compares Luxemburg and Trotsky’s opposition to the two different kinds of Party bureaucratism that they encountered – before and after a revolution.  He also points out that both had premonitions of what could happen to a Leninist Party.  Both were murdered by their political opponents for these insights. Luxemburg proposed the strategy of “the dictatorship of the proletariat supported by the peasantry” at the 1909 RSDLP convention in London, which was endorsed.  Later Lenin temporarily came up with an odd form of it, “the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry.”  Stalin accused Luxemburg of supporting the permanent revolution in 1931, just as Lenin was accused of Trotskyism by Kamenev in April 1917.  Both Luxemburg and Trotsky worked together at times, with Trotsky later defending Luxemburg over Stalin’s lie that she had not broken with Kautsky soon enough. 

Lukács was inspired by Luxemburg in his ‘road to Marx’ according to Lowy. Later he developed differences over the Party issue, and sometimes combined both Leninist and Luxemburg perspectives. He was especially struck by the idea that unlimited capitalist accumulation was impossible.  Both held ideas about the inevitability of socialism based on the line of the SPD, which believed in passively waiting for the fall.  Both later rejected that perspective, acknowledging the role of politics and revolutionary will.  He wrote the introduction to her pamphlet Mass Strikes published in 1906 in Hungarian and discussed her in parts of his book History and Class Consciousness (reviewed below). Much of the discussion revolves around a failed KPD insurrection in March 1921, though Lukács could have said much more about the Budapest and Hungarian Commune of 1919 that he participated in.

Lastly is Lowy’s analysis of Luxemburg’s criticisms of Bernstein and Kautsky.  Bernstein favored ‘ethical socialism’ much like the social-democrats of today.  They believed that there was a firm line between Marxism and the social sciences, as the latter were ‘objective’ while the former is a class ideology.  Neither side wanted to address issues like cosmology or nature – the hard sciences - though Lenin, Marx and Engels had. Luxemburg said nothing on environmentalism, for instance. Kautsky claimed that the “materialist conception of history is in no way linked to the proletariat.” (!)  The social-democratic idea of ‘scientism’ is that science always rises above all ideology or social pressures.  They argued for an abstract morality that had no relation to economics or class society.  They believed in socialism being the end point of an evolution, much like Darwinism as applied to nature.

All of this was not really Marxism, materialism or dialectics, even though they wrapped themselves in that banner. Regarding history, Marx and Luxemburg both recognized that class struggle would be an outmoded form of thinking upon the arrival of communism. But they also applied this to capital’s historicity, taking the long view that it too could end.  After all, as Luxemburg pointed out, the regressive Catholic ‘dark ages’ finally ended too.  Though a new dark ages is also possible, as she made quite clear.

All in all an invigorating read and only 132 pages that will give you a real insight into Luxemburg’s ideas and actions and how they relate to today. 

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “History and Class Consciousness” (Lukács): “All Power to the Councils!” “Radek,” “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “A Socialist Defector,” “The Brown Plague” (Guerin); “Fighting Fascism” (Zetkin); “Living in the End Times’ (Zizek); “Hothouse Utopia,” “Socialism or Barbarism” (Mésáros); “Red Valkyries” (Ghodsee), “The German Communist Resistance," "An Anthology of the Writings of Jose Carlos Mariategui," "In the Red Corner." 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / September 30, 2024       

 

The Radical Liberals Are Coming!

 “A How-To Guide to Cosmopolitan Socialism – A Tribute to Michael Brooks” by Matthew McManus, 2023

If you don't know what 'cosmopolitan' socialism is or who Michael Brooks is, join the club.  There is a review of Brooks' book “Against the Web” on this blog down below.  The book is a product of podcasting polemics against right-wingers.  Among other things, Brooks was against hyper-woke capitalist nonsense, which he called 'militant particularism.'  He also used the phrase 'cosmopolitan socialism.’  The word “cosmopolitan” sounds suspiciously upscale in this context, even though the Greek root is “cosmos” meaning the world, universe or cosmos and 'polites' means the urban citizen.  Almost literally it means 'citizens of the world.'  It is another name for internationalism and I'm not sure why McManus or this group of DSA'ers favors it.  Too many Cosmos?

In spite of the title, three-quarters of the book is a history of internationalism among various writers and bits of history, usually in the context of attempts at international laws or ethics.  There is no 'how-to' in these pages.  The last quarter is ostensibly about how to try to apply internationalism in the present situation.  It's how to 'think globally ...while acting locally,' which is such a tired and limited cliché I'm sorry to even repeat it. “Cosmopolitan socialism ... seeks to empower and democratize many of the international institutions developed in partnership with liberal internationalists, while moving them in a progressive direction.”  That means the U.N., the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the EU and others.  This looks like a social-democratic project similar to their plan to slowly take over the U.S. government, a Reverse Project 2025.

The Philosophers Speak

First the history.  McManus traces the idea of cosmopolitanism from the Greek philosopher Diogenes, the Roman Stoic Seneca and politician Cicero, the Buddhist Indian emperor Ashoka and the 'just war' theories of the Catholic philosopher St. Augustine.  All of them realized that a polity shouldn't be able to do anything it wanted in regards to outsiders, enemies and the rest, as all had a shared humanity. Toleration, compassion and dialog with 'outsiders' was preferred to butchery.  Augustine went further and tried to define a just war, as opposed to an unjust one.  This is the beginning of international law.  Whether all these people were hypocrites or not is not the issue, though McManus points out they failed to follow their own precepts at times. After all the Roman republic and empire both believed they were bringing civilization to the barbarians, an idea similar to early colonialists infused with Catholicism and Protestantism.  That was their ‘internationalism.’  Now we have 'humanitarian interventions' based on the same logic.

This cosmopolitanism is attempting to be humanist and universal, which McManus thinks leads it towards socialism … and liberalism.  He discusses the liberalism of Grotius, Hobbes and Locke.  Grotius fought for religious toleration and Hobbes insisted on a strong national state to restrain the population's 'nasty and brutish' lives.  Locke perfected the doctrine of 'possessive individualism,' i.e. protecting the property fruits of an individual's labor as the role for the state. All these liberals rationalized the development of capitalist society and the nation-state out of feudalism.  Immanuel Kant went a step further and denied that reason could ever understand the universe, 'God's will' or the meaning of existence.  Kant wrote in 1795 that Hobbesian states would still war against each other, moving the 'ware of all against all' up a notch.  Kant advocated republics, a federation of states and the elimination of armies and warfare for a 'perpetual peace.'  He backed refugee rights and became more critical of colonialism.  McManus christens this internationalism the beginnings of 'democratic peace theory' - whatever that is.

This method was not really followed until after World War II when Nuremberg, the U.N. and its various declarations, along with the world-wide anti-fascist struggle, the mass anti-colonial battles and socialist internationalism, broke the exclusive hold of the capitalist nation-state as the sole legal framework.  McManus cites the 1948 Genocide Convention; the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the 1960s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 

McManus recognizes that imperialism was the method used by some of these 'cosmopolitans.' The military side of this continues to this day – an invasion of Ukraine; a genocidal attack on Gaza and now Lebanon; a fueled conflict in Sudan; the repeated use of military attacks across national borders.  Libertarianism was another response.  It arose to combat state-led development in the 'third' world, the USSR and its allies, social-democratic welfare state practices in Europe and 'big government' in any country, especially world-wide.  Its first experiment was the bloody coup in Chile.  This developed into neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, the twins of bourgeois international policy.  The international 'war on terror' and 'clash of civilizations' is still going on, but now has turtled back into regressive nationalism given war, immigration, environmental damage, pogroms and starvation. McManus calls this 'post-modern conservatism and nationalism.' International institutions have become the target again, and are oft ignored... much as the John Birch Society once crusaded against the 'One World Govt' of the U.N. The situation in Gaza is indicative, as is the undemocratic structure of the Security Council.  What are the prospects of 'cosmopolitanism' now?

U.N. Security Council - Veto This!

How To?

I'll repeat that McManus wants to gradually takeover international institutions as his key 'how to.'  He does not explain how that would be done. He also embraces Brooks' position against 'essentialism' – i.e. against hyper-identity politics and separate struggle perspectives which break the needed unity against capital.  In that vein McManus includes class as another identity, vociferously attacking those Marxists who think it heavily influences each identity's role in social and class life - so he gets to have it both ways.  Brooks' hero was Cornel West, a “Christian revolutionary intellectual,” who is now running as a candidate for president alone.

McManus repeatedly links 'radical liberals' and 'emergent socialists' as twins in his text, which reflects his social-democratic organizational outlook. J.S. Mill even gets to be called a “often-praiseworthy liberal socialist”!  In his summation McManus excoriates some Marxists for being too hostile to liberal ideology.  I guess the Marxists are waiting for the liberals to stop red-baiting and drop their anti-communism... which isn't going to happen. McManus sees that reform demands sometimes overlap between the Left and liberals, yet misses the class interest at bottom of each perspective. 'Radical' liberals may break from capital, but that is not the question here.

McManus criticizes some Marxists for being 'teleological Marxists' … without naming names or using quotes, failing to prove these people actually exist. (And 'teleological'? Could you come up with a more abstract nomenclature?) This analysis is part of 'eschewing elements of the Marxist tradition.'  Another thing to get rid of is 'class reductionism' - and again, no names, no quotes, nothing.  Another thing to 'chuck'?  “Marx's theory of history” which he interprets as guaranteeing a socialist outcome, a rather odd conclusion.  As if all Marxists were Karl Kautsky!  Another is vanguardism, i.e. probably Lenin's concept of a revolutionary party and not its butchered variants.  Again, no names, no quotes, nothing.  Another is some Marxists' dereliction of 'morality,' and his wish to return to 'equal moral worth' as a standard – as if being for the elimination of classes and social equality doesn't already guarantee that.  Here McManus just echoes Bernstein's attack on class struggle as key to socialism. He also wants to link to liberal Christians and the “spiritual side of human nature” - also left undefined.  Ah, our morals and theirs. Yet he reverts to political economy by wanting “global material conditions” to make it easier to recognize the equal worth of all humans.  I guess it's not all about identity.

McManus doesn't directly come out against other aspects of Marxism with more vague allegations, but he certainly could.  His conception quite clearly leads to the gradual conquest of the capitalist state, transforming it towards a gentle kind of semi-socialism.  The implication is that the whole world can slowly become Norway.  This has been the strategy of social-democracy since it began as a separate tendency in its bid to construct a capitalism with a human face.

McManus' unnamed targets are a large collection of world-wide Marxist intellectuals, academics and Marxist organizations who resist, or have resisted, reformism.  He ignores international Marxist groups and labor internationals that try to make labor internationalism concrete. He ignores the social gains of prior socialist revolutions. He doesn't even mention other international formations like the World Social Forum or the 'New International.'  His only focus is on existing trans-national institutions. Hence the need to rechristen internationalism, with its hint of Marxism, as cosmopolitanism. 

DSA here has a large stable of podcasters, writers, academics, publications and organizations.  McManus is part of this intellectual ecosystem. McManus himself has published on 'liberal socialism' and is a lecturer at the U of Michigan.  DSA has become a semi-acceptable form of pick-and-choose buffet Marxism, which allows them to get close to liberal ecosystems of power like the Democratic Party.  Given the conservatism and anti-communism embedded in U.S. culture and politics, this gives them breathing space and room to maneuver a bit. Within DSA there are working class and more radical tendencies, so there is that. I actually give plaudits to their efforts, along with Sanders, as they are clearing the way for even more radical forces.  The failed long march of their predecessor, DSOC, through the Democratic Party resulted in their host's turn to neo-liberalism.  Where will this long march end?  Certainly not with actual cosmopolitanism - perhaps only to increased drinking.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Against the Web” (Brooks); “Jacobin,” “Seventeen Contradictions of Capitalism” (Harvey); “Why the U.S. Will Never Be a Social-Democracy,” “The Democrats – A Critical History” (Selfa); “Bernie Sanders,” “The Panthers Can't Save Us Now” (Johnson).

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / September 27, 2024

The Dreaded Food Question

 “You Are What You Eat” a documentary by Louis Psihoyos, 2024

This documentary is ostensibly about an identical twins-study of 21 pairs of twins on two diets – an omnivore diet and a vegan diet. Both are to be accompanied by a robust exercise routine and are normally healthy people in their 20s-40s. The highlighted twins in the documentary are two somewhat overweight Filipino women, two young, in-shape African-American men; two chubby South-African women and two tall Euro-American male cheese eaters. The 8 are all subjected to very detailed before-and-after tests of their blood, body mass, fat locations, mental acuity, microbiome, biological age and for the women, sexual arousal.

What is most emotionally telling is that each twin who was assigned to eat vegan food felt like they were being punished. One high-school boy in an interview said it best – “I just like to eat what tastes good.” He reflects what the majority thinks, even though tastes change, what tastes good can be toxic, while some foods are addictive such as the ‘high’ linked to cheese.

But the documentary is also an advertisement for veganism and vegan businesses, hosting plant-based meat companies like Impossible; cheese and butter substitute companies like Miyokos and starter plant-based meat businesses hot-housed at UC Berkeley. It features anti-CAFO and anti-farm raised fish and anti-industrial fishing advocates, along with testimonials by Eric Adams and Cory Booker. It visits Detroit vegetable farmers who have changed that city, along with a former North Carolina chicken grower who is now a mushroom farmer. One sequence is the fraught conversion of a top NYC restaurant Eleven Madison Park to vegan food, which regained its 3 Michelin stars eventually, though after a barrage of hostility. The documentary shows common fecal contamination of chicken; interviews with scientists, environmentalists, health advocates, vegan athletes and bodybuilders - and lots of negative information about cows. Every burger you eat kills a tree in the Amazon!

One of the most startling claims is that African-Americans are the biggest growth group for veganism in the U.S. This is perhaps because of the dire legacy of poverty, food deserts, fast food and unhealthy versions of ‘soul’ food in that community.

The documentary was attacked for making too-broad or vague claims and for being funded by vegans, so there is that. Much of the attacks were centered on the health claims, not the environmental, animal or social claims. This documentary was based on a Stanford University Medicine study. Opponents seem to confuse the Stanford study with the one in the documentary, which is more extensive for just these 4 couples, though the documentary includes both. At least that is how I saw it, but the extra tests might have applied to everyone. At the end it is surprising to see an auditorium full of 21 twins while the results are read out. Obviously this kind of thing is controversial in the present food empire controlled by unsustainable corporate agriculture, a captured USDA and fast food / ultra-high processed food (UPF) dominance.

The study lasted for only 8 weeks: for the first 4 weeks the food was provided, for the second 4 the participants chose the food for their diet. Nor is one study deliberative. The other issue is that the omnivore diet provided was healthier than many real ones.

Scientists who have looked at the results in the Stanford study confirm that the LDL bad cholesterol did go down for vegans, as did weight levels and fasting insulin levels. The documentary itself reported – I think just for their sample? - that mental acuity did not change. For the vegans bad cholesterol LDL and TMAO (inflammation) levels dropped, while the microbiome improved, biological age dropped and sexual response was way up. Regarding fat and muscle, ‘bad fat’ around the organs went down for vegans, which is good, but so did overall muscle, which is not good. The 8 individual participants all reduced the amount of red meat, cheese and animal products in their diet after the study.

Welcome to the Farm

Substitutes for Meat and Dairy

It is clear more twin’s studies are needed. Nearly every larger study not based on twins according to science advocates like YouTuber Mic the Vegan, shows that vegan diets are healthier in almost every aspect. Vegans have to take B12 supplements daily, along with possible needs for other minerals like zinc, iron or vegan algae Omega, based on exactly what kind of vegan diet is being pursued. Yet as the documentary points out, the food issue is not limited to individual health by any means.

Mic reports that millions in corporate money is flowing into non-animal food production. Biological bio-mass creation of edible proteins, fats and vitamins, called precision fermentation using microbes, could replace animal sources. Insulin, formerly from animal sources, is now produced through precise fermentation. Rennet for cheese is now made from this fermentation, when originally it was directly from animals too. Honey, silk, palm oil, ice cream, whey and casein are now also being produced this way. Precision fermentation uses far less water, energy, drugs, chemicals and insecticides for all of these products, while having a minimal impact on the environment, such as no shit lagoons, slaughter houses, CAFOs, deforestation or methane-burping cows. Production facilities look like brewpubs or breweries full of large, stainless steel vats. These vats seem to be the solar panels, batteries and wind energy of the food future. Cultivated meat and fermented foods like these could replace the dairy and meat industries in 10 years according to him, so the Big Ag lobbies are going bonkers. Of course, there is no plan for a just transition, as this is still capitalism. (Source: Mic the Vegan - Fermentation)

Mic the Vegan has covered the follow-up to this Twins study, which was even more detailed, especially on epigenetic biological age. Epigenetic means that gene effects can be altered based in environmental influences. Biology is not always destiny: Twins FU - Mic

Prior blogspot reviews, use blog search box, upper left, to search our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Vegan Freak,” “The September 21 March and Actions in USA on the Environment,” “Hunger,” “The Potlikker Papers,” “John Oliver – Meatpacking,” “The Playbook,” “A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism,” “Seaspiracy,” “Animal, Vegetable, Junk.”

The Cultural Marxist / September 24, 2024

"Weimar Without the Art?"

 “Gang Politics – Revolution, Repression and Crime” by Kristian Williams, 2022

This is a nuanced study of the methods of counter-insurgency used against U.S. civilian populations; the seemingly dual character of some gangs in the 1960s; the roots of Antifa and its battles with the Proud Boys in the 2020s and problems of violence in anti-fascist fighting groups. As an anarchist Williams ignores the role of economics or class in the identification of a real gang, leaving the definition somewhat vague, then defining it as similar to a ‘state’ or any group using violence.  That is not a surprise for some anarchists, who see economics as peripheral. 

In a prior review, I said we needed a more detailed look at the behavior of criminal gangs in politics.  Williams has provided one for the U.S. that looks at recent history.  I say ‘criminal’ because that is the most common understanding – i.e. working an illegal business.  A generic ‘gang’ of kids who protect each other, hang out and sometimes get into fisticuffs with outsiders is not what immediately comes to mind.  Police, fascists and subculture groups have sometimes been called gangs too, and even Williams contends that Antifa can be seen as a ‘gang.’  This is a broad and sloppy definition, as it ignores the economic purpose of real gangs like the Mafia, cartels, motorcycle MCs, online fraud, illegal fishing outfits, and drug and smuggling groups. At any rate, Williams does an excellent job showing the role of gangs in the hyper-political 1960s in regard to the Left, especially the relationship between Chicago’s Black P. Stone Rangers and the local Black Panther Party.

The key tool for both counter-insurgency and fighting fascism is social support from the local population and being seen as ‘legitimate.’  In other words putting the political over the military or tactical. She considers defensive violence by a community as sometimes necessary, but only in carefully chosen situations. Military counter-insurgency strategy - both ‘carrot and stick’ – was used in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and those tactics were also brought into the U.S. by the police.  NGOs, non-profits, foundations, local leaders in churches and poverty programs and government money are useful in ‘pacifying’ a neighborhood or issue according to this doctrine. The military called NGOs a ‘force multiplier.’ They are the carrots, while the threat of ‘the law’ and state violence sits in the background until required.  The argument between Democrats and Republicans boils down to when to use either, with the former leaning towards soft power first, while the latter favors immediate military repression.

Counter-Insurgency

Forms of domestic counter-insurgency are ‘community policing’ methods, ‘broken windows’ policies and massive databases and surveillance.  This results in precinct-level maps of city geographies.  All these were used against Muslims in the U.S. after 9/11.  The NYPD worked with Israeli intelligence and the CIA to develop programs for that city.  These methods are now used in every city, extending beyond Muslims.  Williams cites their use in Salinas, CA; Newark, NJ; Boston, MA and the US DOJ’s own ‘Weed and Seed’ program, which is a domestic version of the U.S. military’s ‘Clear-Hold-Build’ strategy.  When needed, the police also encourage and plot divisions among criminal gangs in the face of any truces.  This is significant.  

Political Gangs?

In Baltimore during the 2015 Freddie King riots criminal gangs called a truce, urged non-violence, protected black businesses and even stood between protesters and police at one point. They tried to play a ‘neutral’ role.  However the truce between the Black Guerilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips was denounced as a threat by the police.  A 1992 gang truce after the Rodney King beating was followed by LAPD attacks on truce leaders, negotiations, raids and deportations.  The truce had resulted in a huge drop in murders.  She concludes that the police favor internecine warfare among gangs over peace, even if it cools a situation. 

Williams investigates whether criminal gangs are ‘political insurgents’ and eventually decides no.  She looks at the Gangster Disciplines, who promoted voter registration, a political action committee and organized protest marches when not attending to their drug business.  The Vice Lords gang also formed a political action committee, while Los Solidos in Harford participated in food drives, youth sports and neighborhood cleanups.  The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation in NYC went to protest marches, and did tutoring, AIDS education and addiction recovery.  We must remember that cocaine cartel head Pablo Escobar was elected to the Columbian national Assembly for a year too. Yet these criminal gangs eventually collapsed back into their ‘business’ roles as time went on and radical politics was not so fashionable.  The tension between these two facets cannot be resolved and ultimately leads to the original motivation dominating – that being financial survival.

In Chicago in the 1960s the Black P. Stone Rangers, who ran drugs and practiced extortion, also had a social outreach arm.  The Rangers adopted social work strategies in their neighborhoods like Woodlawn, even more than what the Mafia did in NYC’s Little Italy or the Irish gangs did in Boston’s Southie.  This is part of building ‘legitimacy’ in a community.  They sympathized with Malcolm X and black-nationalist causes and were granted thousands of dollars in anti-poverty money by the local Democratic Party machine and federal agencies.  A conscious attempt was made by the government to buy off the Rangers and “use them as an alternative policing force for potentially rebellious populations.” This is another counter-insurgency tactic.

The Rangers also burned down an anti-gang church, extorted money from civil rights groups and defended grocery stories picketed by Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH. The leader of the Rangers, Jeff Fort, eventually went to jail for check fraud and forgery related to these ‘War on Poverty’ programs.  Mike Davis pointed out that the rise of the Crips and Bloods in LA in the 1970s was a product of the decline in the Panthers.  Williams notes that the Panthers in Oakland in the early 1970s under Huey Newton had started to extort money from criminal gangs, prostitution, clubs and drug dealers in the neighborhoods, using their money as a resource.  Newton, who became a coke addict, was later killed by a drug dealer.

Fort tried to form a block with the local Chicago Black Panther Party, even trying to recruit the Panthers to the Rangers.  The two had meetings but Fred Hampton’s approach was different from Fort’s and the bloc never happened.  The Rangers, Vice Lords, Disciples and Cobras attended a ‘Free Huey” demonstration in 1968 and also appeared at Hampton’s funeral after his assassination by Chicago police, but there was no bloc.  Using the same methods the FBI was practicing on the Marxist Left and MLK, the FBI had sent letters trying to turn the two groups violently against each other.  It didn’t work.  But the failure of the bloc shows that crime and politics are very unlikely bedfellows.

Proud Boys and Antifa

A few groups made the transition.  She cites the history of the Marxist Brown Berets in NYC, which evolved out of the Puerto Rican Young Lords street gang in the 1960s.  Anti-Racist Action (ARA) evolved out of a music-oriented skinhead group called The Baldies in the 1980s in Minneapolis, which ultimately combined many anti-racist groups in the U.S.  ARA evolved into Antifa – taking on fascism nationally and inspired by European anti-fascists.  On the other side the Proud Boys (PB) started as an explicit Alt-Right street gang borned by Gavin McInnes.  Its main purpose was violent confrontations with the Left.  As she points out, the violence rationale is easier for the Right to claim than the Left, as violence is one of their top values.  The PB claimed not to be racist, but many of their members were.  They became a virtual security auxiliary to the Republican Party in places, with some advocating a ‘Thug Reich.’  Even now anyone who publically disses a Republican issue gets a mountain of death and bomb threats, which is a method of the proto-fascist Trumpen Right.  Somehow the perpetrators are never identified.

Williams is familiar with the Antifa street battles with the PB in Portland in the 2020s. The PB have close links with the Portland police, who use them almost as an auxiliary against the Left.  Williams reports that at first Portland anti-fascist demonstrations were huge and outnumbered the Rightists by a long shot.  But as violence escalated, fewer and fewer anti-fascists came out to the demonstrations, leaving a hard core of Antifa anarchists and communists to face the PB, other militias and the police.  Deaths and injuries resulted from these reactionary provocations.  Williams thinks this was a product of certain Antifa methods, methods she addresses next.

Anti-Fascist ‘Gang’ Mentality

Here is where Williams will get the most heat from her ultra-left anarchist compadres. Personally I have noted 2 recent instances of local anarchists physically attacking leftists they disagreed with. Anti-fascist groups that make street-fighting the main priority can become reflective of machismo, isolation, top-down functioning and sectarianism according to Williams.  To Williams they can become ‘nascent states’ - which is ur-verboten to anarchism.  As Marxists understand, an army can be a 'state on wheels.'  Antifa groups have also done educational work, doxing, intel gathering, organizing, sabotage and cultural acts, not just participated in pickets, demonstrations or street fights.  But the ones that focus only on violent confrontations can damage themselves and the movement.  This is where Antifa merges on being a ‘gang’ according to Williams.   

This conclusion is no surprise for Marxists, who also hold to self-defense actions of the class against fascism, but carried out carefully by the greatest numbers and unity possible.  A united front against fascism is the organizational form a successful struggle will ultimately take. This book is very useful in its detailed and factual understanding of the interaction of criminal gangs and political struggle.   

Note: Kieran Knutson, now a Local CWA leader, is mentioned in this book as one of the founders of ARA.

Prior blogspot posts on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “The Outlaws,” “Drug War Capitalism,” “Capitalist Shadows,” “Ragged Revolutionaries,” “Peaky Blinders,” “Subculture,” “Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate,” ‘The Coming Insurrection” or “anti-fascist series.” 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / September 21, 2024 / Happy Fall!

Lawyers Against Myths

 “Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power” by Michael Tigar, 2018

If you’ve been wary of the ‘justice’ system in the U.S., so is the author. And he’s a lawyer!  Tigar is a criminal defense and human rights attorney and also professor emeritus at Duke and American University. This book concerns 5 areas of U.S. law:  civil rights, criminal behavior, speech, labor activity and international crime.  His focus is on how laws reflect backward ‘mythologies’ – borrowing this concept from Roland Barthes – in every area.  You might also call them stereotypes, clichés, conspiracies, capitalist ‘realism’ or lies. He maintains that lawyers should deal with the facts, not mainly procedure, precedent or assumptions. He doesn’t address the embedded class and economic basis for law in the U.S. which colors all these issues, though he’s aware of it.  His angle is a rights’ argument only, based on specific cases, obvious history and judicial writings, first inspired by Clarence Darrow. 

Let’s look at the 5 areas of concern according to Tigar.  What is most interesting is that unlike the liberal myth that everything is always getting better, Tigar shows that U.S. law goes backwards in some areas and in others it never changes. Could it be that the economic system requires this kind of stability or retrogression?

MYTH 1

The first area is the role of racism as a mythological understanding which substitutes for actual knowledge. It’s a flawed shorthand for actual thinking.  In his time as a criminal defense attorney he identifies these subtle versions of racist ‘dog whistles’ used in the judicial system:  1) Ethnic Fear – Japanese Internment; 2) Separate But Equal; 3) Private property rights; 4) Free Association; 5) Neighborhood Schools; 6) Racism is Over: 7) Stand Your Ground; 8) “To Protect and Serve” police slogan; 9) Honoring Confederate History.  All of these attitudes are or have been used as legal arguments to protect racist practices.  I’ll get back to the one on ‘private property’ because it unsurprisingly pops up regularly. 

MYTH 2

Mass incarceration is a form of social control exercised over people of more color, but also on the working-class as a whole.  The death penalty is justified by the courts because of the alleged vast array of ‘rights’ given to defendants.  Tigar eviscerates these rights as they are put into practice.  As he says, “Law is not what it says, but what it does.”  Myths are: 1) A fair trial; 2) Appointed counsel; 3) Plea bargaining; 4) the existence of bail.

A great part of #2 are defense counsel appointees who are incompetent, indifferent, overworked or sleeping.  #3, plea deals, are notorious for basically forcing a defendant to agree, even though they have to swear they were not coerced in any way.  Who can ignore the heavy sentences hanging over them if convicted?  The ability to hire a qualified attorney, i.e. having money or property - runs through the whole issue of indigent defendants. As Tigar notes, 3% of law school grads go into public-interest law and every state spends millions more on the incarceration system than the pittance on public defenders.

In discussing criminal myths, he references the book L’Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus.  Instead of the standard view that this book is some kind of ‘existential’ look at a ‘deep,’ indifferent loner, it is about a Frenchman named Meursault who kills an unarmed Algerian and shows no remorse.  This is really based on his racism, not some grand philosophy.  Nor is it the behavior of a so-called ‘stranger.’  This book was another reactionary misstep by Camus.  You will note Tigar uses literary references when applicable.  

MYTH 3

Tigar tracks free speech fights concerning the ‘marketplace of ideas.’  If you spend a whole second equating the idea of the ‘free market’ with this ‘marketplace’ it is obvious oligopoly, monopoly and wealth rule both.  The Supreme Court has gone back and forth on this issue and has now refuted the ‘fairness doctrine,’ given non-human corporations free speech rights; sold the public airwaves for a pittance; treat information as property and forbid political activity in ‘private’ spaces like socially-used malls.  The latter is significant. At one time because of their quasi-public nature, it was allowed but now property rights rule.  This relates to workplaces and factories too, as Marxists have always claimed that workplaces, while ‘privately owned,’ are actually socially dominated by those who work there.  This opens the door to sit-downs and occupations of work sites…which in the U.S. are also illegal.     

In the U.K. Burger King won a judgement for libel against accurate claims by food and environmental campaigners.  Greenpeace has been sued for ‘restraint of trade’ for their environmentalist speech.  As can be seen private property is a keystone concept of capitalist laws as represented by our Constitution, case law and courts, even related to speech.

MYTH 4

Tigar looks at lawsuits involving the CAFO giant Smithfield Foods, which used a RICO claim to sue the UFCW for attempting to organize their slaughter houses in North Carolina, mostly worked by new immigrants. Corporate RICO and SLAPP charges against activists and unions like this, while eventually denied, echo the 17^th and 18^th century claims that trade unions or any labor ‘combination’ in British law was illegal because it damaged trade and profits.  The real purpose is to delay and bankrupt opponents with legal fees. In the same vein the Sherman Act was used against rail strikers in the 1890s for ‘restraint of trade.’  In the 1920s court injunctions were issued more than a thousand times against labor action, though that was blunted in the 1930s with the Norris-LaGuardia and Wagner acts.  Yet recent lawsuits were filed against corporate campaigns run by SEIU against CINTAS laundries, alleging a similar claim, ‘extortion.’  One hospital chain, Prime Healthcare, sued Kaiser Permanente and the SEIU for its partly union-friendly policies as damaging to its profits, using RICO again.  RICO is the new legal iteration about labor ‘conspiracies,’ carrying on the same legal logic in the late 1700s in England.

MYTH 5

Tigar takes on legal cases with international reach against Shell Oil in Nigeria and Mercedes Benz in Argentina.  In the first case in 2013 Shell used thugs to attack and kill opponents of their polluting oil operations along the Nigerian coast.  In the latter case, Mercedes Benz fingered auto union activists for death by the Argentine junta and its paramilitaries in the 1970s-‘80s.  Several laws, like the Alien Torts Claims Act and the Due Process clause of the Constitution, narrowly specify what can be an international cause of action in a U.S. court.  The Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. ‘does not rule the world,’ thus avoiding international lawsuits about corporations that are domiciled or do business in the U.S.  Liberals like Justice Ginsburg chimed in with the same logic.

Given society is now a world economy and the U.S. military spans national borders too, the increasing obsolescence of this form of venue-blocking legalism is apparent.  Internationalism is the order of the day, not nationalism, even on the legal front. Tigar lists his legal objections. 

Regarding the property issue central to capital, socialists are not intent on privatizing toothbrushes, beds, clothing or small assets like houses or cars, etc. as the stereotype goes.  It relates to large property, to large capitalist and landlord property.  The myth of property rights as prevailing over everything is the heart of libertarian and capitalist thinking and law and can be seen in these 5 areas, even though each only deals with ‘rights.’  The social reality of capitalist private property reflects the U.S. economic system, something upon which every legal system, even in the past, has been based.  Large property has the most rights, period. 

This short book is a good introduction to legal issues surrounding real freedom in the U.S., i.e. freedom for the majority of people, not the capitalists, bankers and large landowners.  Not sure if the word ‘myth’ is appropriate for everything here, but certainly it refers to basic, sometimes unsaid, assumptions embedded in the law.

For prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box in the upper left, using these terms to investigate our 17 year archive: “On the Line” (Pitkin); “The Cult of the Constitution,” “The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis,” “Professional Degrees in Recent Democratic Party Politics,” “With Liberty and Justice for Some” (Greenwald); “Legal Logic Behind Raids,”  “The Trial Before the Trial,” “Painkiller,” “Junk Science and the Criminal Justice System,” “The Appeal” (Grisham); “Dirty Waters,” “Missoula – Rape and Justice in a College Town” (Krakauer), “Goliath,” “Slave States – the Practice of Kafala,” “The Making of the English Working Class” (Thompson).

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / September 18, 2024   

Hippity Hobbity Ho

Documentaries on a Modern Myth

With apologies to Joseph Campbell, myths are always being created.  You don’t have to go back to ancient India, Egypt, China, the Middle East, Rome, Greece, Gilgamesh or the Bible. If you are still doing that, you are missing a boat. This article is about the most popular literary myth of the Twentieth Century in ‘the west.’  It’s an equivalent to the Mediterranean Mare– a sea in the ‘middle of the land’ in Latin.  It is about the other middle, Middle Earth, the world created by J.R. Tolkien.  This world actually led J.R.R. Martin to creating Game of Thrones, an even more recent myth-making event.

Two somewhat odd documentaries shed light on the geography and mythical origins of the stories in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (LotR).  They are “The Real Middle Earth” (2003) and “Looking for the Hobbit” (2014), both on Amazon.  

PLACES

The Real Middle Earth identifies the Shire from the obvious – the various county ‘shires’ in the Midlands of England where Tolkien grew up, had family and lived - Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Lancashire and the rest.  As a child Tolkien explored a rural area near Birmingham called Sarehole Mill, christening various hostile personages as ogres.  The huge rolling downs west of Oxford became Rohan, with White Horse Hill at the center.  Old Oxford itself, a city he taught in for 40 years, is theorized to be part of the model for the fortress city of Minas Tirith.  You could consider the "Eagle and Child" pub in Oxford as the real Prancing Pony.  The odd Anglo-Saxon names of towns and villages in this area inspired his naming of places like Bree in The Shire. 

Tolkien, as a too-young man in high-school, maintained that the ancient kingdom of Mercia located in this area should reject the Norman conquest of 1066, evidently preferring Anglo-Saxon settlers to Norman ones.  Saxons and Angles both migrated to Britain from Germany after the Roman’s left.  Their languages formed much of the basis of Old English and this was perhaps his attraction. 

The documentaries do not identify the woods that make appearances in the books, but Tolkien was a nature fan who rode bicycles and walked in rural areas on a regular basis. There are still forests scattered across the counties, and in the pre-WWII era there were more. He loved trees, as can be seen in his creation of the anti-industrial Ents who opposed the destruction of forests by Saruman for the making of weapons and armor. Castles in the area like Broughton and Warwick would also have been familiar.    

Tolkien actually didn’t travel much, except in his philology and in his imagination. He was first a philologist – a linguistic collector of words and etymologies.  He created the Elvish language out of a combination of Finnish and Welsh – two close-by but absolutely foreign languages to him.  He also deeply explored Old Norse.  But most importantly, he ‘traveled’ to Europe in his 20s to fight in WW1.  His experience on the bloody Somme in France as a young man made him turn to writing, trying poetry first.  He explicitly said that the Dead Marshes were from his experience in that war.  Mordor, with its foul odors, smoky air, violence and general desolation is sourced to the broken battlefields of the Somme too. Above all, the Lord of the Rings is a war story inspired by the rejection of power, which is the goal of inter-imperialist and inter-capitalist wars like WWI and WWII.  The ring of power must be destroyed... and who is tasked with destroying it?  Who can we trust?

The Hobbiton set still exists in New Zealand

The HOBBITS

In the search for influences on Tolkien’s writing and stories, the Looking for the Hobbit documentary cannot find any references to the ‘halflings’ – to the small but big-footed rural people, to little heroes like Frodo or Bilbo, to anything like the Hobbits.   They are nowhere in the noble myths that Tolkien was familiar with and studied.  These myths are the Arthurian legends; the heroic German epic the Nebelungenlied; Icelandic and Nordic Sagas; common fairy tales; the Finnish epic poem Kalevala; the old English epic poem Beowulf.  From these he drew dragons, the city of Midgard, trolls, dwarfs, Mount Doom and more.  He was inspired by Siegfried to create Aragon II; Grendal perhaps became Gollum; Merlin inspired Gandalf; the dragon in the Nibelungen was a model for Smaug, the Fellowship was a borrowing from the Round Table.  These books have been translated into 80 languages by the way, so the resonance of these little people goes far beyond Europe.  LotR are some of the best-selling books in history which is why this is significant. 

So who are the hobbits?  As both documentaries point out, Tolkien called himself a ‘hobbit.’  They are his greatest creation - THE central figures in this modern myth of the Twentieth Century.  They are quite clearly English rural people visually grounded by their ‘big feet,’ but by extension ordinary people trying to go about their lives, not lusting for power, money, wealth, fame and the rest. They are somewhat dumb and ridiculous, enjoy comfort, but also capable of feats of intelligence, kindness, morality and bravery. This populism was injected by Tolkien into stories that are normally the province of heroes and heroines, of kings and queens, of princes and princesses, of warriors and devils, of monsters and dragons, of dictators and Caesars.  The hobbits bring us back to modern reality, back to the people. 

Which is, by the way, the impact of the disputed ending of Game of Thrones too. That ‘game’ was not going to end well if anyone thought about the title for a second.  The result, unexpected by clueless viewers still searching for traditional heroes and leaders, was instead filled with a dead megalomaniac, her absent dragon, the rule of a mute cripple and the departure to join the anti-authoritarian Wildlings by the key player, Jon Snow.  The ‘ring of power’ and the ‘game of thrones’ are the same.  In contrast to Tolkien who Martin criticized about this, Martin has a modern, very dim view of kings and queens. 

Abuse of Hobbits by tall Reactionary

Right-Wing Attempts

Tolkien’s writings lean to the left, though this point is missed by some.  Giorgia Meloni, right-wing president of Italy, loved LotR as a young ‘reenactor’ and calls it a ‘sacred text.’ She posted as the “Little Dragon of the Internet” thus confusing the issue of dragons like Smaug. She endorses its rural, anti-industrial angle and its’ reliance on myth and fantasy as a method. As if fantasy has no connection to reality!  This while she presides with her ring of power over an Italian economy not just marked by grapes, wheat and olives, but by high-end fashion, high-end autos and motorcycles, high-end glass and high-end industrial and textile equipment.  She ran with the help of large Italian capitalists and landlords, who are the Saurons of Italy, along with the orcs of proto-fascism in the Brothers of Italy and the archaic backing of the corrupt right-wing proto-kings in the Vatican.  Is Meloni a great figure in the battle against global warming and deforestation, beloved of Ents?  No.  She attempts to be a right-wing populist instead, muddying any water still left.  The water of the Po, the longest river in Italy, is running dry.  

By the way, that great nationalist Italy that she promotes was on the side of Adolf in WWII, whom Tolkien called “that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf H....."  Here is Tolkien’s full quote written during WWII: “I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf  H.....”(for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.”   

Demonic!  While infused by an ethnic angle, he was an anti-fascist.  He refused to work with Nazi publishers for German translations of his books.  He called Jews a ‘gifted people’ in one letter with these publishers.  He wrote LotR between 1937 and 1949 over the whole course of the Nazi period and WWII, a barbarity which did not escape him.  It gave to him day-to-day proof of the horrors of power and war. Hitler and Mussolini and Sauron and Saruman are a quartet in Tolkien’s world, but evidently not in Meloni’s. Power in these cases was the function of an alien ruling class, not the people.  Peter Jackson, who made 6 films out of LotR and The Hobbit, is not some kind of right-winger either.

According to YouTuber Adam Something, a Hungarian leftist, urbanist and engineer, Meloni is not alone.  Adam has translated a large number of propaganda comics put out by the Russian government publishing house, and in some of them heroic Russia is depicted as actually backing Sauron and Mordor. Perhaps they missed the fact that the volcano in Mordor is called Mt. Doom.  You can’t make this shite up. Post-modern reactionary confusionism is rampant – up is down, left is right, war is peace, red is brown, anti-imperialism can also be disguised reaction - nothing is as it seems. Even Hitler becomes an anti-fascist in some of these Russian comics. (The definition of fascism in these comics is anything against Russia.)  Ideological gibberish is the method of authoritarianism and fascism, which is why Meloni can twist it into any shape she wants.

Like any contested text or film (The Matrix anyone?) the duty of Left cultural criticism is to bring out proletarian, anti-war, anti-racist or anti-sexist, anti-capitalist and pro-environmental messages in works that are not otherwise explicit about such things.

See Adam Something’s podcast on the comics’ issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI6es9G0oo&t=135s    

PS:  The Rings of Power, the expensive prequel to LotR, is far more depressing than the original up to S2, E5. Two wandering half-lings, a confused pre-Wizard, a cast-out human, foolish Elf kings and smiths, a greedy Dwarf king and others present a scattered opposition to Sauron, the orc King (who seems to be a fallen Elf) and Mordor.  There is no Fellowship, no unity as yet, no one you can rely on except perhaps the relentless female Elf Galadriel and an Elf that reminds one of Obama.  

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Lord of the Rings / LotR,” “Game of Thrones,” “The Matrix,” “Tokien,” “myth,” “fantasy,” “News From Nowhere” (Morris); “English history.”  

The Cultural Marxist / September 15, 2024