Kumbaya? Pollyanna? Or Real Threat to Capital?

 Anti-Fascist Front / Left United Front?

The Trump administration, managed by the Heritage Foundation, a clown car of dangerous appointees and cash from Silicon Valley billionaires, is finally trying to realize their 50 year plan to privatize and destroy any aspect of the 'administrative' welfare state. Sending 'buyout' e-mails to millions of federal workers; arranging camps for millions of undocumented workers; trying a funding freeze on programs for millions of indigent workers; firing a good number of internal inspectors and pardoning their fascist street bullies is their memo to the actual working-class. The Republicans are going to the hard, Libertarian right on nearly every political and economic issue per Project 2025, in a shotgun approach designed to destabilize any opposition.

Back in the Day

Like a pretend Gulliver, the Republicans 'might' be restrained by the courts, their own overreaching and even by some Lilliputian Democrats. It's as if Fox News is now running social reality, with the White House Blonde telling us that it's not just violent thugs, shop lifters or traffic violators - they understand every undocumented worker to be a criminal and probably every federal worker to be a woke leech. This while the kleptocracy associated with the Trump crime family, Cabinet office holders and oligarchical government contractors gleefully feed at the tax trough and issue crypto meme coins.

If you sense that capitalist leadership has turned a 'corner,' perhaps even fallen into a hole, you'd be right. Desperate right-wing radicals and incompetence in the service of Ayn Rand and Mussolini reflects a capitalism in disarray. It's actually a sign of weakness. Trump’s re-election, along with gains by other authoritarian forces across the world, marks the beginning of the end of liberalism as a dominant capitalist strategy in developed bourgeois states. Consent is no longer required. A larger and larger faction of the capitalist class is moving towards autocracy and hyper-nationalism given its inability to grow profit or ‘growth’ in any other way.

Tariffs and deportations, tax cuts for the rich, along with decimating the government's role, could prompt a deep recession or worse. Recent reports of farm workers not showing up for work will cause fruit, meat and vegetable shortages. The decimation of the health system could add another pandemic to the mix. The acceleration of anti-global warming efforts will only supercharge disasters, which are now reflected in the fraught U.S. housing sector. Trump's threats to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal reflects the new interest in direct territorial acquisitions by a 'greater' Israel and Russia. Climate, war, poverty and crime are forcing millions across the world to move. A large increase in poverty, racism, unemployment, homelessness and violence will be the domestic result.

This marks what some leftists for years have called ‘late stage’ capitalism. This time it seems quite real, especially with climate change and the increasing lack of credibility by the liberal or centrist parties, starting with the U.S. Democrats. The result will be both an increase in fascist and reactionary mobilizations defending the turn, and a responding increase in class struggle. This could lead more and more people towards revolutionary solutions, especially the young. What is going to be required is unprecedented. How should the actual Left respond?

GROUPS

In my town the socialist left is made up of small groups with influence in the anti-war movement, the labor movement and even the local Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. The Minneapolis City Council includes some supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a social-democratic organization with a main strategy of turning the Democrats to the left … for now. Other city council's across the country, like Chicago, also have DSA'ers on them. DSA has been losing members since the Sander's movement fell apart, yet still has around 50,000 members on paper. Also in town are the China-liners in the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO); Trotskyists in the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA) and Socialist Alternative (SAlt); neo-Marcyites in the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and former IWW anarcho-syndicalists in the Workers' Solidarity Circle (WSC?). All these organizations are somewhat small but other groups in town like the Socialist Workers' Party and the Communist Party are smaller. I even talked to two quirky Enver Hoxha fans, an absurd hangover from the past.

FRSO, RCA, SAlt and PSL all had their own 'anti-Trump' rallies alone.  Instead DSA blocked with the WSC for a large meeting – the only groups smart enough to actually work together. Now I don't want to echo the fascist brownshirt who organized the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017, which failed because they couldn't refrain from killing and injuring their opponents. Yet the hard Right – the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3%ers, Patriot Front, etc. – have been growing since that shit-show. The pardon of their members after January 6 is a green-light by the Trump Administration for future violence and actions. The point is that we need our own united front against this turn. I've been called a 'Pollyanna' by isolated and hardened sectarians who believe the slogan 'workers of the world' is possible but a modicum of Left unity isn't ... which seems a pretty absurd contradiction. As if the Left is so rotten that some kind of joint work is impossible. Is that true? 

The 'small group' mentality mentioned by Lenin is among us. My intimate experience with a good number of groups is that each thinks they will be catapulted to stardom by their own individual efforts and skills. In a complex class structure like the U.S. with its various strata of proletarians, the odds that 'one party' can be the only force left standing or relevant is almost absurd. Even in Russia after the 1917 revolution there were 3 groups that could have participated in the government, as 2 were invited in by the Bolsheviks. In the German revolutions it was not just the Spartacus League that attempted a council republic, or the CP later. Recently in semi-successful attempts by the actual Left to influence politics, it was a Left electoral united front in Sri Lanka and France that gained a level of power.

Power is what the labor movement needs and the emphasis should be on 'long-term' power, not just episodic marches or events, which have become increasingly ineffective. They are huge, then they shrink time and time again. The George Floyd protests and the Gaza marches are only the latest examples of this. If you think your picket line of 75 anti-war people or performative rituals of banner-waving will lead to peace or power, you are deeply mistaken. It's the left version of writing a letter to your Congress person.  

Transitional approaches are key to this, not micro-demands and reformist isolation. Trade unions are forms of long-term power, but they are not revolutionary organizations. They make bargains with their employers or the state. They are part of 'normal' capitalist functioning, though normality is now slipping away. While tethered to the milquetoast Democrats, even trade unions could one day join transitional efforts like independent labor candidates, a Labor Party or a United Front against Fascism. Non-profits and single-issue activist and community groups, of which the Twin Cities is overrun, are also forms of 'long termism,' but are isolated and nearly always reformist.

The Heritage Foundation, the Republican Party, the inheritors of the mantle of the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, worked together for years to get to the point of the second Trump regime and Project 2025. On the other hand the leadership of the Democratic Party has no goal except to maintain things as they are. They have no emancipatory social agenda except perhaps weakly alleviating some of the problems of capitalism. Their recent defeat only puts paid to their long-time abandonment of working-class needs.

A united front against fascism and a Left united front, (which would still allow organizational independence,) based on transitional and long-term approaches, is the only thing that can revive the labor movement and defend the class at this point. Many people secretly agree and have for years. However few organizations understand the gravity of the present situation, which is actually 'over their heads.' Conditions will force some of these groups to work together on a longer-term basis, along with pressure from their own base or the working-class at large once they understand this problem of the Left.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “DSA,” “anti-fascist,” “united front.”

Red Frog / January 30, 2025

A Freethinker Pillages Heaven

 “God and the State” by Michael Bakunin, 1882 / 1970

This is Bakunin’s most famous book, or fragment of a book. It excoriates religion much like Nietzsche was doing a bit later.  It points to the state’s use of religion to dominate the population.  And to be complete in its instinctual hostility to all overlords, it also attacks the ‘savants’ of science as to any assumptions that they can also rule.  Bakunin’s comments about science’s limitations are a veiled attack on Marx and some followers’ claims of ‘scientific’ socialism.  Marx and Engels were his main opponents in the First International, as Bakunin stood for revolutionary socialism and anarchism against the claimed ‘doctrinaire abstractions’ of historical and economic study carried out by Marx and Engels. “Instinctual” is the word used by Paul Avrich in the 1970 introduction to refer to Bakunin’s politics. 

Religion and the religious establishment during the 1800s were an even more oppressive force than now in western Europe and north America so this piece, like Stendahl’s 1830 book Red and Black or Nietzsche’s 1882 statement “God is Dead,” was invigorating to those who were sick of the Christian church’s prominence.  Something like this might be appropriate to theocracies dominated by Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam even now.  What is missing in the book, which is somewhat extraordinary, is any mention of labor or capital.  The ‘trinity’ of Church, State and ? is absent one important leg!  So what does Bakunin, the “revolutionary of the deed,” a leading subversive in the 1848 upheavals, a son of the Russian landed gentry, have to say?

Bakunin denounced “...all the tormentors, oppressors and exploiters of humanity – priests, monarchs, statesmen, soldiers, public and private financiers, officials of all sorts, policemen, gendarmes, jailers and executioners, monopolists, economists, politicians of all shades, down to the smallest vendor of sweetmeats.”

While the introduction claims Bakunin had no truck with a scientific analysis of history, the book says otherwise, seeing it as a useful goal. Bakunin was a materialist and dialectician, and in this volume he turns Rousseau’s aphorism on its head by saying this:  “If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.” His identification of humanity as a higher animal is the ability to think and to rebel.  This leaves out the ability to work, which seems significant for a materialist.  He makes fun of the Bible’s Book of Genesis, where Adam & Eve are punished for gaining ‘knowledge,’ a fruit given them by Satan.  It seems even then the Christians had to abolish thinking and put faith in its place, while denouncing the knowledge-giver as evil.  The curse continues.

Bakunin says Christianity began with absurd tales, the myth of original sin and a crude, jealous Jehovah and was refined into an abstract monotheism. He asserts understanding the world can be had by purely natural, materialist means, through experience, reason and later science.  This is actually the real, daily, common-sense understanding of religious people as well, in fact all of humanity.  He posits that all thought originates from the human brain, a physical thing, and not some ‘spirit.’ He opposes all the philosophers who dabbled in religion and idealism, starting with the ‘divine’ Plato and ending with Voltaire, Robespierre and Rousseau.  The latter were emblematic of bourgeois compromises with religion in their pursuit of “a semblance of belief”, which appeared in later bourgeois Socialists.  He calls religion a ‘collective insanity.’  He understands that society has physical, ‘animal origins.”  He thinks religion is a historic but necessary error in the development of humanity, even in its morphed form of ‘spiritualism,’ but that time is over.    

The states in Europe during those days were consecrated by a Church, either Protestant or Catholic.  He said the former better fit capitalism. This state, like all states, was an agent of ‘slavery.’ 

Bakunin then switches gears and denounces a government of scientists too, as they would institute another kind of slavery – that of abstraction.  This he also associates with ‘the German communists.’  Bakunin’s assertion that all science is ‘abstract,’ and does not deal with individuals seems to be an abstraction itself.  For instance, a doctor setting a broken leg knows the nature of infection, the skeleton, blood, muscle, ligaments and tendons.  He puts a rod in an individual’s leg, not some abstract human, to allow them to walk again.  Bakunin recognizes the general role of science – “the absolute authority of science” - even a science of history in the fight for emancipation, but believes that ‘philosopher kings’ and scientists will be slavers in power. “The mission of science is to enlighten life, not to govern it.”  So what would his position be on vaccines? An impermissible attempt by science to govern life?  That would be libertarianism, a product of his false dichotomy regarding science.  He prefers the method over the men, who he thinks will form another ‘class.’  This, the introduction notes, was prescient in another way.  Oddly, Bakunin thinks former ‘bourgeois students’ will bring science to the masses, which will democratize the matter out of the hands of an elite.

A good chunk of the book discusses the history of philosophy in Greece, Rome and France.  This is a somewhat rambling, impressionist weave, attributing the monotheism that refined Jehovah to the influence of the Roman conquest, ‘Oriental’ mysticism and Greek idealism.  He attributes materialism and naturalism to paganism, as against what followed with Christianity.  Bakunin shows how the idealism of religion leads to the very material result of slavery and exploitation. He says the ‘fall of man’ was caused – solely – by God’s manifestation on earth.  You will note that Bakunin here falls into idealism himself, just as he identifies humanity only with thinking or rebellion.  As if there was no material reason for slavery or exploitation except Church and State.  Yet there is money to be made!  This is a laughable mistake for a materialist to make.  Later materialists like Feuerbach, Hegel and Comte reduced religious metaphysics to psychology, and Bakunin agrees.  Like Marx, Bakunin attributes the attraction of religion at the time to not just tradition, upbringing, power or wealth, but to the ‘sigh of the oppressed creature.’

All in all, a somewhat disappointing sojourn into atheism and anarchism.  I have no faith in describing socialism as thoroughly ‘scientific,’ as it gives an aura of invincibility that only bolster’s bad claims to truth.  Social ‘sciences’ are just that.  But actual scientific truth can also penetrate the social sciences, as there is no wall between them.   

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  ‘atheism,’ ‘religion,’ ‘anarchism,’ ‘philosophy.’

And I bought it at May Day Books, which has many anti-religious tracts and also several shelves of anarchist material.

Red Frog / January 26, 2025

A Woman Soldier's Story

 “Joan” by Katherine J. Chen, 2022

This is the story of Joan d’Arc, told as if Chen was there.  A work of imaginative historical fiction, it tells of Joan growing up in a small village, Domrémy, near Burgundy in eastern France and her ascent as the teenaged leader of the French military.  This is during the 100 Years War after the disastrous 1415 battle of Agincourt that France lost.  It’s an early feminist story.  As Camille Paglia once remarked, women who avoid military matters due to ‘sensitivity’ sell themselves short or worse.  Joan did not.  This is also a class story about a tough rural nobody, a daughter of a peasant who rises to historic heights.

Joan, at 10, has grown up hearing stories of battles from this endless war.  She already has a military head on her shoulders, allocating throwing stones for use in fights with boys from a neighboring Burgundian town, planning ambushes from trees and telling her thick-header older brother to gather far more stones for battle.  Joan is what we used to call a tough girl – a ‘tomboy.’  She is beaten regularly by her father Jacques, a leading, greedy peasant in the village, who dislikes her lack of feminine virtues.  She has her hair shorn due to lice, making her look boy-like.  At a county fair, she successfully climbs up a greased pole for money and a goose using hidden iron nails in her hands.  At the fair Joan is also fascinated by a chain mail outfit and a small metal helmet made by skilled blacksmiths.  She is not religious, ignoring priests, holy women and praying, and that continues.  But the groundwork is laid, fictional or not.

Joan ‘of Arc’ is the herald of French nationalism and the actual formation of the nation.  It is 1422, still a medieval economy based on feudal relations after the Black Death 69 years earlier.  The English occupy Brittany, Normandy, Paris and all of the north of France around Rouen and Reims.  They have allies in Burgundy, while what is left of France is run by an addled and weak Dauphin.  Domrémy is sacked and burnt by Englishmen and her sister raped, then commits suicide. Anger and revenge are on the agenda.  A tall, strong 16-year old Joan is thrown out of the house when she defends herself from her father because of his continued abuse.  And so the journey begins.

The Battles Commence

Chen infuses this history of Joan, ‘the statue,’ as a real person, a former peasant, perhaps colored by modernity, streaming feminist fables and perhaps too many skills.  Joan wins an archery contest against the best marksman in the local French Army, in spite of never having shot a bow.  She eventually beats two expert swordsmen, though never having wielded a sword before. She learns to ride a horse, to swim, to track in dark woods.  She masters every unpleasant work she does.  She is chosen to meet the god-addled Dauphin in Chinon's castle, because they think her skills mean she is chosen by God.  This story has no visions, no silly stories about knowing the Dauphin before meeting him, no religiosity, no greed, no laziness.  Only a woman, a nobody, who wants to go to war. After being tested and forming a relationship with the Dauphin over shared miseries, Joan is sent by the prospective crown to relieve the siege of Orléans, a central city key to the rest of France. 

For Chen’s narrative, it is not God who is behind Joan, it is her upbringing.  Joan does not believe God is on France’s side, as the English have been winning for years.  To Joan it is about money, wealth, land, power, men and victory in war.  Engels would not be surprised as to Joan’s understanding of the role of force in history.  The Dauphin’s mother however knows Joan the peasant girl has to be dressed in the robes of God to convince others.  And so the ideological charade of national sainthood proceeds, to cloak war in a heavenly doublet, though it took 500 years to conclude. The virgin maid, encased in chain mail and a breastplate, has arrived.  Religion, like war, is politics by other means – even to this day.

In Orléans Joan slices a horses belly and slays an English knight in one battle.  In another she is wounded in the neck and yet leads an attack on a tower, driving the battering ram, then throwing Englishmen from the ramparts. Joan appears without armor in the third battle and the English retreat from the city in fear.  It reads like a Hollywood movie where the hero is unbeatable.  Is it true or embellishment?  She leads a defeat of the English in 4 more battles and clears the Loire Valley of them. Joan eats with the army, which is now full of village workmen.  She demands better maps and food and begins to learn the logistics of a campaign because she intends to take Reims and then Paris. She is injured 3 times in battle and becomes a promoter of cannons to defeat the English bowmen.  Those cannons eventually win the war for France 22 years after her execution.

Joan ignores the vile clerical intrigues of the Dauphin’s court, which lead to failed attempts at bribery and assassination against her by some bishops.  In fact the book has an excess of ‘court time’ in its sections.  Arriving in Reims the Dauphin is crowned King of France in the wake of the French retaking the town.  I won’t tell the rest of the story, which is of defeat. 

Her Crimes?

Joan’s sexual identity is an issue for others.  Is she a half male / half female? A lesbian?  Asexual?  She has already rejected an arranged marriage in Domrémy. She has threatened men who have spoken of ‘having her.’ Yet Joan does not want to be a man, she is happy as she is, even being ‘ugly.’  Her ‘crime’ of not being feminine enough becomes a reactionary accusation at her trial by the English when she is ultimately captured in Compiégne and executed in Rouen.  Heresy was the main charge, with the ‘wearing of men’s clothes’ and cutting her hair short another.  Chen, oddly, does not write about her trial or execution, but the issues are there - reactionary religion and the oppression of women.

Joan is portrayed in this book as a soldier, not as a sacrosanct and pretty virgin cheering the army on from the side, as the Church preferred.  A word to my comrades, men and women, be like this Joan – toughen up, for battles are coming.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: ‘France,’ “medieval,’ ‘feminism,’ ‘peasant,’ ‘religion.’

Red Frog / January 23, 2025

Humanism and Riot Squads

 “Public Disorder” Netflix limited series by Michele Alhaique, 2025

The original title of the 2012 book this Italian series is based on was All Cops Are Bastards i.e. ACAB. It is centered around a riot squad, the Roma 3 Mobile Police Unit, which is sent into conflict situations on a regular basis. The squad chants this phrase ACAB in their police van and even in a hospital, pounding the glass, taking perverse pride in the designation.  So you suspect this 6 part series will be about how crooked and brutal they are.  And it certainly starts out that way until you realize the purpose of the series is to humanize the cops who have to do this crappy job for the capitalist state.

Environmental confrontation

It starts in the Val di Susa valley near Turin where the squad is called in to defend a high-speed rail construction project against environmentalists and masked ‘commies’ defending a mountain.  It’s nighttime, the two sides push and battle with shields and clubs, then a retreat by the protesters, then a fragmentation Molotov severely injures the leader of the squad, Pietro.  In revenge a veteran cop, Mazinga, leads an attack on the protesters, who scatter.  His squad goes through the woods, finding some of the protesters down near a river and beats them severely, sending one into a coma and eventually death.

That event haunts the rest of the series.  The ‘blue wall of silence,’ the police / Mafia code of omerta is used to stymy the internal police investigation. All but Marta, the one woman in the unit, sign a declaration of what didn’t happen, hiding the truth.  A new, ‘professional’ leader, Michele, is assigned to the unit, as the police boss knows Roma 3 goes rogue sometimes.  Michele had previously testified against two fellow police officers who beat a suspect.  He also seems to have a normal home life, with a teenaged daughter and loving wife, unlike other cops in the unit.  He understands that some tactics escalate confrontations and don’t calm them down. 

But the rest of Roma 3 have the typical TV cop personal problems.  Marta is divorced with a young daughter after being beaten by her husband.  Pietro found out he was getting a divorce before he was injured and paralyzed, perhaps accounting for him being vulnerable, ahead of his squad.  Mazinga is already divorced and lives alone, having an alienated older son who hated the way he treated his mother.  The most intense and lonely thug in the unit, Salvo, has fallen for an internet ‘catfishing’ woman, and sent her money sight unseen.  He feels the fool.

All these domestic situations affect the whole crew’s anger and judgment in difficult situations, even affecting the ‘good’ cop Michele eventually. The crew is sent to stop nationalist English soccer hooligans in Rome from running rampant.  They are assigned to protect a Roma woman and children besieged by angry racist neighbors in a housing project when she, instead of an Italian, is allocated an apartment. They are shipped off to protect a ‘dump’ site in a rural area against environmental protesters who don’t want it there.  Lastly they stand guard on Rome’s Via del Corso on December 31, New Year’s Eve, in anticipation of any trouble.

Roma 3 Mobile Police Unit

“Character development” seems to be the Writing Course 1001 theme of this series.  The old, angry cop, Mazinga, decides he can’t do the job anymore, as it has deformed his whole life.  He resigns and makes approaches to his alienated son.  He eventually becomes a tragic figure. The hurt and angry Marta slowly allows her daughter to spend time with the father.  Salvo forgives the woman who took his money.  And Michele, the ‘good’ cop, loses it at the dump site and then hides evidence of what happened when the unit beat the protesters by the river.  His wayward daughter is perhaps sexually assaulted and he batters the boy who did it, with help from the rest of the ‘band of brothers’ or ‘band of thugs.’ The bad cops turns good, the good cop turns bad, yadda, yadda, yadda.  Does ‘character development’ actually happen in real life or is it only a liberal pretense?  For this series, it seems to be the latter.

So the purpose is to humanize the squad members, whose job in just about physical force, with feminism a lurking presence against police and military machismo. It also serves to slyly justify police brutality, because cops are human after all.  Other than the mother of the injured protester, who we see on TV, there is no humanization of the commies or protesters, nor the anti-gypsy types, nor the English soccer thugs.  In fact the anarcho-communists, masked in black with clubs who come out on New Year’s Eve to attack the squad, are the most sinister presence.  The series seems to riff off of the ‘Years of Lead’ – ‘anni di piombo’ - when Left battled Right and police on a constant, violent basis in Italy.  Does this still go on much in Italy?  I do not think so.

Police, unlike soldiers or national guard, rarely come over to the Left.  The real presence behind Roma 3 is the capitalist state, which needs them to get things done.  Here we are dealing with a symptom of a system, not a cause.  The real ‘public disorder’ goes far beyond personal lives, Roma 3 cops, protesters, anti-social types or even racists.   

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Italy,” “police,” “Negri,” “Gramsci.”  

The Cultural Marxist / January 20, 2025

Surrealist Revolution

“Revolution in the Service of the Marvelous”by Franklin Rosemont, 2003

I lived in Chicago for 13 years during the 1980s- early '90s and never met Rosemont at Left events – though I might have and didn't know it. So he might be a ghost. This book is about 'post-World War II' surrealism, which still saw itself as revolutionary and inspired by Marxism. Most of it seems written in the 1970s. Here is a taste: “Starting with the abolition of imaginative slavery and a thorough revaluation of all values, surrealism requires the overthrow of the bourgeois/christian order and the elaboration, on stateless communist foundations, of a non-repressive civilization governed by the watchword 'To each according to his/her desire.'” This is a riff off of Marx. I think they evolved towards IWW-style anarcho-communism.

Rosemont tries to write about the ineffable, as surrealism is not a mostly logical movement. It is a severe reaction to capitalist realism and 'normality' – to art schools and the 'art market;' to boring poetry, childish music, conventional wisdom and predictable cinema; to bourgeois conformity, to the confining strictures of capital, state and the church. Rosemont christens these as aspects of 'miserablism.' He quotes poets Lautréamont and André Breton frequently. The latter is one of the founders of surrealism who wrote the initial manifesto in 1924 and later joined with Rivera and Trotsky in 1938 to describe the nature of revolutionary art under socialism and before.

The text is a celebration of unschooled and outsider artists. One of the 'methods' Rosemont mentions frequently is 'automatism' – reaching below the conscious mind to create. Letting what is hidden, lurking beneath the surface, dreamlike, to come up and be 'freed.' Unleashing the imagination, the hand, the note, the words, the physical things, the ideas from rational control to combust something new. In a way the surrealists aimed to fully escape from alienation, even within an alienated society. He links automatism to the improvisation of jazz, especially be-bop and free jazz. In his text individual talent sometimes smells of genius, which is a false odor.

The book is a series of articles from Arsenal, Chicago Ink, Surrealist Subversion, The Heartland Journal, Race Traitor and the Black Swan Gallery booklet on the Exhibition. Rosemont discusses artists of post-war surrealism, many totally unknown to standard art aficionados. Many exhibited at the 1976 World Surrealist Exhibition at the Black Swan gallery in Chicago, which is now a celebrity restaurant, a typical fate in the capitalist U.S. Among the creators detailed are musicians Joe Jarman and Nicole Mitchell, dancer Alice Farley, artist Gerome Kamrowski, painters Tristan Meinecke, Schlechter Duvall, Shirley Voll, Henry Darger and Parisian Gustave Moreau and poet Samuel Greenberg. I hadn't heard of any of these people, some of whom lived in Chicago, Iowa or Michigan, though I was a fan of surrealism at one time and did read the Arsenal occasionally.

Charlie Parker's surreal jazzing

Rosemont, trying to correct Parisian Breton's tone deafness towards music, especially U.S. jazz, writes a long article praising Charlie Parker, Cecil Taylor, Coltrane and company. He wanted to broaden surrealism's reach into the music world based on be-bop, cool and free jazz improvisation. He does not insult or mention rock or jazz-rock improvisation or even the Chicago blues. He has an article on fellow Chicagoan Dave Roediger's book “Black on White.” The book excoriates 'whiteness' as a social and racial concept, based on the writings of many black writers. Roediger seems to be a friend of his. He's got an article on how humor is an ally of surrealism, as it punctures stupidity and reveals truths. He has references to the liberating role of Bugs Bunny, wolves, hysteria, H.P. Lovecraft, eroticism and aspects of pop culture. Rosemont uses references to left-wing causes and struggles of the times throughout his articles, including the P-9 meat worker's strike in Austin, Minnesota. This is an attempt by Rosemont to incorporate class struggle into surrealism's outsider groove too.

Rosemont crushes down on various prominent art movements, especially from New York critics and art houses. Post-impressionism, pop art, abstract art, conceptual art, John Cage, minimalism – all come in for insults as to their sterility and attempted marketability. He stands against the fascist idea of modern art as 'degenerate art' and 'Art Bolshevism' asserted by the Nazi state in 1938. Here he praises the Dadaists, surrealists, expressionists and other modernist painters denounced by the philistine fascists, who preferred kitsch.

If you are interested in art or the confluence of art and politics, this book might be interesting. Especially if you are an artist of any kind, it might liberate your method. Currently U.S. post-modernist art is mostly concerned with landscapes, decoration, abstract nothings, shock or kitsch. It is post-modernism run amok.  There is no art movement of note anymore, no radical edge trying to outgrow the constrictions of commercial bourgeois culture. As far as proletarian art is concerned, Rosemont comments on poetry, surrealism's lodestone. He asserts that: “Political poetry is poetry derived from politics: the politics always comes first. Surrealism, which has a way of upsetting established convention, reverse the priorities and derives its politics from poetry.” This, he continues, brings Hegel's poetic 'unfettered imagination' to the surface.

Prior blogsport reviews on this subject, use our search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Surrealism – Inside the Magnetic Fields” (P. Rosemont); “surrealism,” “art museum,” “Frida Kahlo” or 'art.'

And I bought it at May Day Books excellent leftish art section!

Red Frog / January 17, 2025

Magic Internet Beans

 “Let Them Eat Crypto – The Blockchain Scam That's Ruining the World” by Peter Howson, 2023

This is an astonishing book that relates the most fictitious capital in history – crypto digital 'coins' or tokens – to a wide range of cyber-libertarian economic, social and environmental damage. It is a fitting tribute to 'holistic' investigations that don't treat issues as isolated one-offs. Howson used to be a crypto / blockchain enthusiast on the non-profit 'charity' side of the bugger. He gradually realized how destructive it was. What did Howson discover besides the fact that crypto is not a currency and is not even a real speculative asset for most, just a Ponzi / pyramid scheme?

Howson's contention is that it is a through-going Libertarian con. It is aimed at eliminating bourgeois democratic-style government, financial regulation and taxes. On the other hand it fuels money-laundering and many frauds. Just a list of the enthusiasts tells you something – Bankman-Fried, Musk, Thiel, Altman, Zuckerberg, Brin, Andreessen, Dorsey and Winkelvoss; air-headed A-list celebrities – Matt Damon, Reese Witherspoon, Drake, Jeffrey Epstein, Snoop Dog, Floyd Mayweather, Jay-Z and Kim Kardashian; hard-right politicians like Rishi Sunak, Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, Steve Bannon and the rest. It became the confluence of Silicon Valley, hard-right conservatives, science fiction and Hollywood. That fiction part is important.

Yet the 'establishment' was also tolerant. International charities, Davos and units of the U.N. got on-board with crypto. The SEC advocates a 'lite-touch' towards it. Groups at Oxford University led by Peter Singer and at M.I.T. promoted it. Post-modern philosophies were developed around it called 'longtermism,' 'effective altruism' (EA) and Web3. They changed the meaning of words, substituting the internet for reality, philosophically substituting idealism for materialism. That is significant.

Howson names nearly every failed crypto exchange, shitcoin, blockchain surveillance tool, dark web node, internet game and crypto fraud. He misses the Centra-Tech one which claimed to invent an ATM dispensing real money from your crypto 'wallet.' This is key, as crypto can only buy things from other crypto holders, it cannot transition back into real world money as yet. It is sort of like old-fashioned script in small towns but no longer in a small town.  There are profitable gains for some big capitalists, hard-right reactionaries and many criminals when the rubes and marks use real cash to gamble in crypto, but not for the rest of society. Howson points out that its 'decentralization' claim is a farcical idea, as hidden capitalists or fraudsters are now the real 'centers.' And there is no recourse if you lose your money. Let's go through the points made by Howson.

Bankman-Fried.  Would You Trust Your Money to Him?

Unbanking

Unbanking is the claim by crypto bosses that they will replace real money with digital coins to help the underprivileged across the world – especially those not tied to a bank. It is similar to the exploitative 'microfinance' loans pushed by people like Hillary Clinton. Howson describes the 'pump and dump' scheme in crypto. Introduce a coin, wait for suckers to invest, then take the money at it's high-point 'value.' Or wait for 'critical mass' of investors to be reached, then 'rug-pull' and run.  Even worse than a real bank.  

Crypto has no regulation, so it is a playground for fraud, not 'peer to peer' trust. 'Market values' yo-yo all over the place, as happened in the crashes of 2017 and 2022 due to its not being tied to anything. A majority of coins and NFTs have been discovered to be scams or spam. Sometimes big coin owners 'wash trade' their own crypto to pretend there is activity. Yet 'trading' includes a fee for the groundlings. Some people lost millions in crypto due to a keyboard accident, an accidental throwaway or a lost password. Christian missionaries pitched these “magic internet beans” to the poverty-stricken unbanked and immiserated, especially to African youth and students. There is no age limit for buying coins or tokens, but studies have shown a link to gambling addictions, depression and suicide. So buy up kids!

Colonialism

Crypto billionaires target 'under-served communities' and subprime poverty spots across the global South. They crusade for weak governments to adopt crypto, like El Salvador, even though local businesses, those without access to the internet and the vast majority of the Salvadorean population wanted no part of it. Isolated islands are favorite targets of 'govt. free' economic zones, like Vanuatu, Palau or Tigray, or if not that, imaginary places on the internet that the crypto bros can gambol in with pretend flags, buildings and laws. But these 'places' are not free of capitalists, tax avoiders, Russian hackers or drug money-launderers.

Green Washing

Crypto is used to greenwash and fund carbon credits, offsets and carbon capture – failed strategies to stop global warming. Bitcoin 'mining' involves thousands of dedicated ASIC computer boxes dedicated to discovering the password puzzle that is each hours-long Bitcoin transaction, sucking energy across the world. This process is called Proof of Work. They pick vulnerable places to plant these facilities like the Navajo Nation or Pine Ridge, Transnistria or Abkhazia. In the U.S. they reopen closed nuclear, oil, tire or coal plants or siphon-off megawatts from the Texas grid at a far smaller price than regular consumers pay. Yet they pretend they are saving the world from global climate change. Crypto alone uses as much energy as all world-wide data centers. The CO2 from just the Bitcoin ASIC decryption boxes amounts to that of Greece at 72 million tons per year, while the ewaste per year is another 37K tons. Ethereum crypto does not use the same 'proof' but Bitcoin cannot and will not change their method.

Bad Charity

Crypto promises NGO's and big name charities that donations will be tax free and secret. NFT's, a digital image, or at least a link to one that might disappear, are also for sale as fundraisers. According to Howson, instead of solving real problems, crypto-types invent a problem or fake solution, then congratulate themselves over it. Like giving too many mosquito nets for malaria prevention, even though the nets are not used and instead sold to fishermen. Venture capitalism for charity, called DAOs, allow givers to get voting rights but no ultimate control over their funds. Crypto also funded various right-wing causes like the Freedom Convoy in Canada that protested mask requirements, both Ukrainian and Russian war efforts and a host of other conservative causes.

Machismo

Howson explores the ties between the manosphere, misogyny, pick-up artists, polyamory, right-wing politics and crypto. Most crypto investors are white guys from 20-50 in the U.S. And, oh yes, a Dogecoin was a favorite of Elon Musk's until it plummeted in value. Sound familiar? Now we have a department in Trump's government named that.  The crypto industry was a heavy backer of Trump, giving more than many other businesses. Vegans, 'soy boys,' no-coiners and 'low testosterone' men were seen as the enemy by the carnivore bros. Women hold 13% of crypto, which is why there are efforts to 'pink-wash' this 'asset' as liberating.  On the other hand Pornhub decided to be paid in crypto, without any control over the violent or humiliating porn shown, but hey, it's a free market!

The Betaverse

The metaverse is already dead and VR headsets are not the new normal. AI has taken its place with Facebook and the rest of the financial class. Howson details the various versions, including a headset that you could program to kill yourself. Living a fake 'life' online seems not to be the draw they thought it was - even with gamers. And yes, crypto allowed you to buy an avatar's digital hat and shoes! There's also a tie to biometrics, where facial images, blood and other data are stored in blockchains to identify subjects in the 'metaverse,' especially for poverty programs.

Unlike leftists like Loretta Napoleoni or Richard Wolff, Howson opposes using blockchain as some kind of 'socialist' automation of record-keeping. He also thinks it does not liberate poor people or oppressed minorities, as pushed by some black capitalists. He debates various anarcho-communists and left libertarians like Julian Assange on crypto, which kept Wikileaks running for a time. He sees crypto as a last, false resort for the disinherited trying to buy into consumer society. Even in Cuba and Venezuela it has made desperate inroads due to official financial sanctions of those countries. A Spanish Catalan experiment in crypto as a 'return to the commons' and 'degrowth' ended in speculation and fraud. In a way, it is an 'opium' for most people and a rapacious profit-source for others.  In the world now it is part of the false neo-liberal solution to economic decay.

At any rate, Howson has no specific solution except to suggest that all the lies and scams promulgated by the techno-optimists are typical of capitalism. So it is up to us to figure out a cure.

P.S. - Trump says he will make a statement on crypto on 'Day 1.' It probably relates to deregulating crypto.  He has his own coin now, by the way.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “crypto,” “blockchain,” “technology,” “libertarian,” “Techno-Capitalism,” “New Dark Age,” “Scorched Earth,” “Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth?” “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” (Bastani); “Cypher-Punks” (Assange); “Kill All Normies,” “Bit Tyrants,” “Inconspicuous Consumption,” “Ponzi Factor,” “Off-Shore,” “Crack-up Capitalism.”

MAnd I bought this modern book at May Day Books!

Red Frog / January 14, 2025

Sado-Capitalism II

 “Squid Game,”directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, Season 2, 2024

This is a rough watch, even more difficult than Season 1 because we know what is coming (reviewed below). Squid Game is cut-throat capitalism as a series of deadly children's games. It is sado-capitalism and necro-capitalism combined. It's a reflection of South Korean society, but also the poverty and debt reigning in other bourgeois countries like the U.S. and the U.K. The only encouraging thing about this season is that the winner of the last game has come back to destroy the rich billionaires and murderers who have constructed it. At the same time his ally in the police and armed men he's collected are attempting to find the secretive island lair among the hundreds of islands that rim South Korea.

The early part of this series involves finding the subway man who recruits down-and-outs to the game; repeated boat trips searching for the game island; and the stories of the two men intent on ending this slaughter. There is a traitor in each revolutionary group and there might be a traitor among the armed guards. There are weaklings and good people among the players, per usual. There are the standard crude, lumpen morons thinking they are going to win billions of won in the game, along with one creepy seer. The players' debts, which explain their presence, involve crypto coin fraud, gambling losses and medical debts, all common in South Korea. All these debt 'losers' are considered by the game owners to be part of a useless, surplus population that deserves to die. Yet, oblivious, the players are still split in half on their attitude towards the bloody game, the most surprising thing of all. Half are blinded by all the dead people's cash flopping into the hamper at the top of the barrack's room.

This is the motivation for violence by design, including fratricidal violence.

Most of the games are different from the first season. At the end there is an attempted revolution by a semi-dedicated minority aimed at the control room. This revolution seeks not to 'reform' the game but its termination. I'm no expert in game theory but as the blog has pointed out before: “Marxists question ‘what game to play.’  Institutional theorists question ‘what rules to use’ in the already chosen game. Situational theorists like Grusky / Weeden look at the moves to use within the rules of the fixed game.” Here the rebels question the game itself for a change.

Democracy gets its comeuppance, as the 'democratic' votes during the game are driven by greed, manipulation and bracketed by automatic weapons. The monied rulers are hidden, protected by locks, walls, guards and secrecy. In fact, other than the masked Front Man, we never see them. We still see the secretive trade in body parts from injured participants, a trade that is widespread across the world. We still see the colorful, maze-like MC Escher stairs, the militarized barracks room, the various ominous game environments and the employees dressed in red with geometric symbols etched into their masks.

What is most disturbing about this season is the all-powerful nature of the game controllers and funders, even as they are being assailed. This island is perfect fascism, as if resistance is futile. The mainland police don't care and the frequent spike of missing civilians in reports don't seem to matter. The pursuers make a number of obvious mistakes, including the hero Seong Gi-hun. The anticipation of hostile action by the billionaires is almost perfect. This series will end at three seasons, which is intelligent considering the brutal and hard-to-watch nature of the subject matter. At any rate, Squid Game is a metaphor for capitalism in our times. Watch it if you dare.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Squid Game,” “South Korea,” “debt,” “dystopia.”

The Cultural Marxist, January 11, 2025

Find Your Choke Point

 “Labor Power and Strategy” by John Womack Jr., edit by P. Olney and G. Perusek, 2023

Has your boss ever told you that, while he doesn't know what you do, you do a good or poor job of it? He has revealed that many bosses don't know what keeps a shop or business or factory running. Only 'their' workers do. This is a secret strength of labor. This book takes it a bit farther.

Womack is a Harvard historian of the Mexican Revolution who turned his attention to labor issues, most notably how to gain power in the work-place. His insight is to concentrate on 'strategic' areas and jobs within a business, a sector or even a nation. He doesn't think unionizing Burger Kings or Starbucks will lead to more labor power, much as that might help those specific workers. Nor does he endorse concentrating on 'the most oppressed' for the same reason. He also makes the point that community movements inevitably fade, something we have just seen around Gaza and before that, BLM.

These are shibboleths of reformists, ultra-lefts or anarcho-syndicalists, who'll go to the point of trying to organize tiny non-profits. He does think those with 'independent contractor' precariat jobs could be key too, as they are waged workers really. While mentioning the 'technical' side of any job, perhaps due to his age, he neglects to highlight the 'choke point' role of techies who run software systems in nearly every workplace. As Juan Gonzalez points out, the capitalists are aware of this pivotal role and pay high-end techies more, making them more resistant to unionization.

Womack's outlook is looking for various 'choke points' in a business, sector or nation, for key leverage, the weakest link, a bottleneck, a disruption, a node, the job or jobs that can shut it all down.

Womack mostly concentrates on logistics workers and mentions by name truckers, warehouse workers, dockers and crane operators – all blue-collar occupations, mostly connected to ports or retail like Amazon and Wal-Mart. He then goes on to describe how janitors in a building could bring a skyscraper or building to a halt; how teachers can disrupt a whole state or geographic area in the field of social reproduction, as they did in West Virginia. Womack looks carefully at the UAW's attempt in Canton, AL to unionize that plant, and points out 4 failures that go beyond these 'choke' point issues. So the clarity of his own view of 'strategic' unionism is muddied a bit. He discusses the ideas of sociologist Erik Olin Wright about the 'associational' power and 'structural power' of labor, leaning to the latter. The former relates to proletarian ties within and without the workplace, the latter the dominant position in the production or distribution system.

Womack is some kind of socialist or anti-capitalist, but nearly all of this book is relegated to unions and union power. He does not place unionism in the normal functioning of a capitalist welfare state, which it is. He has almost no political or organizational tack outside unions for the U.S., though once he mentions the need to work in either the Democratic Party or a new Party of unspecified nature. He clearly endorses Sanders but only as aside. He makes a weird crack about Trotskyists who talk about 'the point of production' in the singular - as if they meant that to be a granular statement. He considers the USSR to have been revolutionary until 1927 or 1933, so perhaps he is a Bukharinite or neo-CP in outlook.

THE TEN + TWO

After the interview by Olney, 10 prominent labor activists share their perspective on his idea of 'strategic' unionism. The introductions by Olney and Perusek say mostly common, anodyne points that are overly familiar and have yet to raise labor. Perusek even praises Ray Roger's 'corporate campaign' of consumer 'power' during the P9 strike here in Minnesota, which actually signaled the defeat of that strike. Most of these organizers have differences with Womack, which shows how the official labor movement is all over the map. At least they agree on some form of class struggle, of broad labor movementism over business unionism.

#1 – Bill Fletcher, Jr. (Former AFL-CIO organizer). After making a point about how Mao Zedong sought out the peasantry instead of the working class, Fletcher seems to say that work-places are only part of a broader community struggle, and that 'choke-points' could be outside them.

#2 – Dan DiMaggio (Labor Notes). DiMaggio puts an emphasis on 'reviving the strike' and emphasizes the point that seeing sources of real leverage outside of workers is a dead-end.

#3 – Katy Fox-Hodess (Sheffield professor). Fox-Hodess maintains that associational power is more important than strategic power, citing examples of dockers who were not able to leverage their position until they gained solidarity. She also mentions the role of the state in clearing 'key' bottlenecks.

#4 - Cary Dall (ILWU-BMW organizer). Dall supports a comprehensive strategy where port and rail workers meet, but cites the important role of socialist organizers among workers in the face of the backwardness of union officials.

#5 - Jack Metzgar (CP-Roosevelt U professor). Metzgar insists that the question of either 'associational' or 'structural' power is a non-starter, a non-dialectical approach, as both relate to power. He thinks 'non-strategic' workers should still organize and you can't really tell them not to.  Not sure that is what Womack is saying.

#6 – Joel Ochoa (DSA-Immigrant organizer). Ochoa supports labor forming alliances with immigrants, youth, women, minorities, as was done in LA by the ILGWU and Justice for Janitors, along with work in non-strategic sectors.

#7 – Rand Wilson (OCAW organizer). Wilson agrees with Womack on the vulnerability of capital when it reorganizes or introduces new tech. He especially highlights IT workers, who are excluded from many union bargaining units but are crucial to shutting down a business. This was a point made long ago by Hardt and Negri on the 'cyber proletariat.'

#8 – Jane McAlevey (Health worker organizer). McAlevey highlights the role of women workers and social reproduction 'choke-points' run by health workers and public sector teachers.

#9 - Melissa Shetler (Cornell Labor outreach director). Shetler puts the emphasis on education inside trade unions and as part of union campaigns.

#10 – Gene Bruskin (UFCW Organizer). Bruskin tells the story of how Smithfield Foods was unionized over years, highlighting the strike activity of 90 stockyard workers out of a total workforce of 5,000 that sparked victory.

Smithfield Foods in North Carolina

All these organizers seem to be drawing on their own particular sectoral experiences, without much references to theory or revolutionary ideas. Womack responds to some perhaps 'mulish' comments by restating a Marxist insight into capitalism, which is that surplus value created by labor is it's primal, motivating force. So an effective shut-off of production results in the most pain for capital. He does not address the point that capital will forgo profits sometimes to bully labor.  He references how his studies of the Mexican Revolution showed the proletarian power of key groups like electric, machine and rail workers, who then led broader working-class struggles. His point about 'technical' strengths relates to tools, not tech – though computers are also tools.

Womack repeats that not just any site or matrix will do. He links the peasants of Russia or China to the the urban U.S. 'peasants' of the precariat and 'self-employed' - though this stretchy analogy misses the fact that an urban and rural precariat has existed since capital developed. He looks at how the Bolsheviks organized key groups of workers, which was not the practice in China until later. His emphasis on revolutions – in Mexico, Russia and China – seems to be the dividing line between the small-bore reformism of most U.S. unionists and Womack's vision. However Womack ignores any transitional demands, any advocacy of a revolutionary party, a revolutionary front, a labor party or independent political action. He ignores the state but does mention 'workplace councils' several times, though with no content. So his singular emphasis on union power, useful as it is, is insufficient in a larger, revolutionary context – which seems to be his real focus.

Womack takes short shots at some of the contributions. Of note, Womack reminds us that the heroic but isolated Mexican EZLN guerrilla movement has essentially failed.  This is a useful book for unionists as to debates within labor, but ultimately it's pretty damn sad given the repetition of familiar tactics and strategies by most of the participants.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: "Erik Olin Wright," “labor movement,” “unions,” or 'strikes.'

And I bought it at May Day Books, which carries lots of labor books. 

FYI - the 20 year rift between the SEIU-led 'Change to Win' coalition and the AFL-CIO is over, as of 1/8.

Red Frog / January 8, 2025

"Bomb, bomb, bomb ... bomb Iran."

 “Inside Iran – the Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” by Medea Benjamin, 2018

This is a straight-forward pocket history, culture and political primer about Iran by a prominent U.S. anti-war activist, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. Benjamin is known for disrupting Congressional hearings with signs and shouts, a form of political theater that hints at another name - 'Media” Benjamin. But here she writes as a researcher into Iranian history, politics and economics. Once the Trump II administration starts, Iran will once again be in the enhanced cross-hairs of U.S. foreign policy. Trump's earlier administration scuttled the working Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015 negotiated by Obama.

Most of this information is already known to anti-war activists and a bit dated. Benjamin asserts that if only U.S. citizens 'knew more' about Iran, they would not be so susceptible to the government's hostility to Iran. The idea that the political elite or citizens will read this book and reject U.S. policy is somewhat naive - but then so is the U.S. anti-war movement's whole reformist approach. Benjamin herself is a left-liberal unconnected to Marxism. At the same time she rejects the reactionary 'geo-political' types who ignore class or democracy in favor of any group that opposes the U.S. The anti-working class Iranian mullahs style themselves as 'anti-imperialists' after all! Instead she looks to internal youth demographics to move Iran in a more democratic direction.

What can we learn from this book that is relatively unknown?

The first point Benjamin makes is that Iran has a long, long history of independent existence, in spite of the many invasions of Persia over the centuries. From Cyrus the Great in 550 B.C. it's been an enduring coherent area for 2,500 years. In the late 1800s the Russian Czar and the British Parliament both had their hands in controlling Iran. In 1906 it had a Constitutional Revolution, which was reversed. In recent times, the pivotal event was the CIA-MI6 coup against Mossadegh in 1953, which put the son of Shah Pahlavi in power. This protected U.S. and British (later called BP) oil interests in Iran, which Mossadegh had nationalized. The 1953 coup against a progressive nationalist backfired, first enabling a vicious dictatorial Shah and then the Iranian Right after he was gone. Since 1979 an Islamic theocracy has dominated the country when it took over leadership of the revolution after the overthrow of the Shah. A year before that overthrow the sainted Jimmy Carter praised the Shah as “an island of stability,” later inviting him to the U.S. for medical treatment. Since then hostile U.S. policy has played the biggest role in keeping the Shiite theocrats in power against their own labor movement, Azeri, Kurdish, Turkic or Baluchistani minorities, peasants, middle-class and the urban population.

Benjamin supported the Green Movement's mass demonstrations against the conservative Iranian ruling class and its economic policies in 2009-2010. She wrote this book before the mass demonstrations in 2022 against the regime's sexist hijab and women's policies that started after the death of Mahsa Amini. She has little to say about the labor movement strikes, unions and the like. Strikes in Iran are illegal but frequent; union leaders are jailed; labor is treated as an enemy by the state. She mentions the CP's Tudeh Party once. Being a socialist in Iran is illegal, so many went underground, were killed or have fled the country. Her only position is that U.S. citizens work against aggressive war moves by the U.S. - an incomplete, parochial platform. Benjamin blames Israel, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. weapons industry, AIPAC and domestic war hawks for the U.S. position on Iran. She seems to think U.S. policy doesn't have a geo-political, corporate and economic agenda of its own.

Economically, Iran is the second largest economy in the ME after Saudi Arabia. It is a petrostate dominated by large deposits of oil and gas, but has other sectors in its 80 million population. The Iranian ruling class consists of clerics, the Revolutionary Guard, the bazaar of urban small businessmen and merchants, the rural landlords and the big capitalists. After an initial spread of nationalizations, between 1988-2003 Iran began privatizing assets. The Shia clerics, religious foundations (bonyads) and the Guard now own large chunks of the economy and are invested in capitalist methods. The foundations are estimated to own 20-40% and the Guard's 30% percent.

The government itself, while having a parliament after the British model, is legally dominated by a Shia Supreme Leader, a Guardian Council and an 'Assembly of Experts.' There is direct clerical control of the voting process, the Sharia judiciary, the Basij morality police, the Revolutionary Guard, the intel services and the military. The hardliners can veto anything that is 'un-Islamic' coming out of the 'elected' unicameral parliament. Certain religious sects like the Baha'i are outlawed, along with many other un-Islamic practices too numerous to mention, but you can guess. Yet, as is well known, fewer and fewer inside Iran follow Islamic prayers or teachings.

Benjamin goes into Iran's relations with every country in the Middle East; countries like China and Russia, their allies in 'non-state' actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, PFLP and IJ. She goes into the many ups and downs of international diplomacy, including Iranian attempts to negotiate over crucial issues that were repeatedly ignored by the U.S. She describes the vile '80-'88 Iraq-Iran war, where the U.S. supplied both sides and the instability brought by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which later rebounded to Iran's benefit. Added to this are the various atrocities carried out by the U.S., including the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988 by Navy warships in the Persian Gulf. Sanctions, SWIFT blockage, seizure of assets and the like have been bipartisan moves from the Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations. Like Cuba and Venezuela, sanctions have not 'worked' except to immiserate the populations.

Internally within Iran there is a constant see-saw between the clerical establishment and more democratic 'reformers.' It is clear that the 'reformers' can never bring more democracy without an overthrow of the entrenched Islamic ruling elite, which controls the economy. This will have to be the work of revolutionary organizations and a united front inside the country, which as yet has no large organized presence except as temporary electoral coalitions. As long as the U.S. government uses sanctions and violence to harass Iran, this will be more difficult. No one wants to be seen as the patsy of the U.S., as are the right-wing terrorists of the Mojahedin-E-Khlaq (MEK) backed by the U.S.

This primer will give you a short inside look into Iran as the war drums bang again.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Iran,” “Islam,” “Lipstick Jihad,” “The Death of the Nation” (Prashad); “RFK Jr. The Libertarian,” “Argo,” “Libertarian Atheism versus Liberal Religionism,” “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,” “The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism” (Amin); “FGM.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / January 5, 2025