Viejo Gringo Reports #1: Grisly Museum

 Andean Sanctuaries Museum (Museo Santuarios Andinos) – Arequipa, Peru

This odd museum at the center of Arequipa, Peru near the Plaza de Armas is run by the Catholic Church.  It is odd because it focuses on the archeological remains of a 12-14 year old girl – now kept in a cooled glass case - sacrificed by the Incas to appease their gods.  The girls’ creepy mummified body is in the final room of the museum. Other rooms contain other mummies of sacrificed children as young as 6. Why would the Catholic Church do this?

She's smiling!

The Catholics admit what they cannot hide, that they built a cathedral or church over every Incan religious site they could, especially those sites in Arequipa and Cuzco, in their conquest of Peru.  This was their attempt to destroy or replace local paganism.  Yet they have also practiced a form of ‘syncretism’ for years – adapting to local religious or pagan customs by trying to incorporate them into Catholicism.  How does this human sacrifice fit in?

Droughts, floods, failing harvests, lost battles – all had to be atoned for or warded off by sacrifices carried out by Incan priests.  This one took place, along with two other children, on the high, frozen slopes of the Ampato Volcano.  In their religion, the mountains were gods and the higher you went, the holier the ground became.  For hundreds of years the body lay frozen until the volcano began to erupt.  The name this girl was given was “Juanita’ – perhaps a reference to one of the archeologists who dug her up, Juan in Spanish.  She was a high-born girl, perhaps connected to royalty, buried with exquisite pottery, high-end textiles and clothing, metal artifacts and dressed in an elaborate headdress, clothing and jewelry.  It’s a bit like the burial of an Egyptian pharaoh.   

There are reasons why the Catholic University of Santa Maria latched onto this.  One, it shows their pure interest in the science of archeology.  Catholicism has always tried to incorporate scientific ideas they could live with, like the false Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.  They even made nods to versions of evolution.  This gives their wholly imaginative religion some scientific props, hiding its archaic theoretical nature.  

Two.  This event both denigrates and incorporates the idea of human sacrifice by the Quechua Incans.  Most visitors will be appalled by the idea of human sacrifice as a really primitive form of magical thinking.  Yet the video shown before the tour celebrates and justifies this sacrifice to the Incan gods as a form of holy commitment by this young girl.  It was an honor we are to believe.  By the way, the audience for this one was a group of young college-age women.  

The Incan religion is exposed as partly barbaric in this museum.  Yet Catholicism has a replacement for this holy example – Jesus.  Jesus also ‘sacrificed’ himself as a martyr for the good of humanity, not just the Incas.  This time instead of an Incan priest drugging a ‘holy’ girl with fermented corn liquor – chicha – then bashing her skull in with a club, we have a young man being crucified on a cross by a Roman judge.  Christ purportedly didn’t want to be killed, but martyrdom is a goal of religious types and even non-religious ones, as we know.

The Catholic love of ‘relics’ – bits of saints' bones and spatterings of blood, the cross symbol as a form of holy torture, is here transformed into a similar format – a mummy with all the relics buried with her in her volcanic tomb, which was a hole in the ground. What this museum does is both sanctify and abjure her death, then replace her with Jesus for the Peruvians.  Though that second part you are not supposed to guess.  Syncretism, you see.  It's kind of like Incan paganism and Christian Catholic thinking share something key in common.  

Prior blogspot posts on this subject, use blog search box,  upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Religion,” “Peru.”

Kultur Kommissar / May 14, 2025 - Please celebrate and read books by B. Traven, a German Marxist who wrote about class struggle in Mexico.  He IS the viejo gringo.  

You Might Even Think The 'International' Right is Working Together...

 A Political Snapshot of Peru

In 2022-2023 Peruvian indigenous, peasants, trade unions and leftists protested against the ultra-conservative government of Dina Boluarte, which had overthrown the prior, somewhat ‘progressive’ government led by Pedro Castillo.  Castillo’s government lasted for 1 year, 4 and a half months, a short period common to presidencies in Peru. The battles on the streets of Lima went on for days between government forces and protesters.  In June 2023 the Peruvian Supreme Court said that the Constitution did not give legal protection to protests.  Right.

Lima - founded by conquistadores

As you can see, ‘voting’ and bourgeois democracy are just a smoke-screen in Peru, as in so many other countries.  In 2024 Human Rights Watch said: “In 2024, the Peruvian Congress passed laws and adopted other decisions that undermined judicial independence, weakened democratic institutions and hindered investigations into organized crime, corruption, and human rights violations.”  Sound familiar?  

Severe corruption in Peru is ongoing.  President Boluarte is under investigation along with 67 of 130 members of Congress.  “Corruption is a major factor driving the deterioration of public institutions, deficient public services, and environmental destruction in Peru” according to HRW.  It’s all about the money for these ‘dedicated public servants’ and their wealthy puppet-masters.

The National Board of Justice, like our Supreme Court, is the highest legal body.  2 members were removed in March 2024 by the Congress for political reasons.  A committee of the Congress advocated eliminating the National Board of Justice entirely, but this proposal is on hold.  The Peruvian Attorney General was barred from investigating crimes, and replaced by the national police in October 2024. So ‘justice’ is being politicized.    

Peru had an increasing homicide rate in 2024 by a third, with extortion becoming another increasing crime.  Boluarte has instituted a State of Emergency in parts of Peru and some neighborhoods in Lima. This has not worked.  Boluarte blamed Venezuelan immigrants and asylum seekers for the increase, without proof.  She specifically names Tren de Aragua. Sound familiar?

Investigations of atrocities committed by the government during the Sendro Luminoso period, 1980-2000, have slowed to zero.  At least 600 cases could be voided, as the Congress ruled for a new ‘statute of limitations’ of 2003 and up.   Nor have the 49 deaths of protesters in 2022-2023 been investigated, which would involve Boluarte and her cabinet, as their military forces were responsible.  Would there be pardons?

Journalists have been investigated for exposing corruption by being accused of corruption. Journalists and prosecutors have also been threatened by a right-wing, fascistic group called Resistencia.  A bill to control and sanction any NGO that receives funds from outside the country has been advanced in the Congress.  Other countries, like Russia, do this.

1/2023 protest in Lima

28% of Peruvians live under the poverty line.  Lack of electricity and health facilities are most common among indigenous communities in the highlands, mountains and Amazon.  A national strike was called in October 2024 over high levels of crime affecting citizens.  In April 2025 transport workers in Lima went on strike too, also over crime against transport workers.  The Congress had softened laws against organized crime previously, so the protests were also against the Congress.    

A new Forestry Law passed by this self-same Congress will allow large-scale deforestation.  This primarily affects the Amazonian environment, where illegal logging, illegal gold mining using mercury, cattle ranching and some coca growing are already butchering the jungle and water for profit. Indigenous water and forest defenders have been killed. Recently ‘artisanal’ miners in the northern mountains have been attacked by corporate-linked goons and criminals who don’t want competition. 

Boluarte’s administration promulgated a decree declaring trans-sexuality a ‘mental health’ problem, but they have put that on hold.  Abortion is only legal if child-birth will result in the death of the mother.  A fetus that was the product of a rape of a 13 year old girl was forced to term.  Sexual violence is common in schools against young students.  No one has been convicted of these many sexual assaults, though a some teachers were suspended. 

That is the sorry reality behind the tourist veil of Peru.  Machu Picchu, llamas and alpacas, colorful Quechua dress, condors, mountains, cerviche, Incan art, Lake Titicaca, cathedrals, plazas and centuries of impressive pre-colonial architecture all are marketed to gringos, but the reality for the people is not quite that.  What is obvious is that all of the reactionary ideas and tactics pushed by the Peruvian ruling class are being used or tried by other reactionary governments throughout the world, even in the U.S. It is a sign of the decay of world capitalism, which more and more can no longer promise wealth, democracy, safety or freedom except in words.

***The author will be visiting Peru, including the Casa Museo Mario Vargas Llosa in Arequipa and the Museo Jóse Carlos Mariategui in Lima.  He will also visit Cuzco, which has links to deceased Trotskyist peasant leader Hugo Blanco and the Confederación Campesina del Perú. Blanco was a representative of the Partido Unificado Mariateguista in the Peruvian Congress for a time. Blanco recently died in July, 2023 in Uppsala, Sweden.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Peru,” “Mariategui, “Llosa,” “Blanco,” "Latin America."  

May Day books has many volumes about struggles in other countries than the U.S., including a Latin American section. 

Kultur Kommissar / May 11, 2025    

College Library Browsing #21b: The Politician

 “Marx”by Terrell Carver, 2018 (Classic Thinkers) – Part 2

Carver’s interpretation of Marx is primarily as a political agitator, and so he denigrates any scent of economic, historical or philosophic ‘theory’ from Marx.  However in this section he discusses 1867’s Das Kapital, Vol 1, and puts no diminishment quotes around Marx’s economic concepts of surplus value, commodity, use value and exchange value, falling rate of profit, labor power, exploitation and so on.  Evidently he appreciates this theory.  He points out that Marx partly wrote Capital as a political ‘performative’ polemic against classical economists like Ricardo, Smith, Mill, Say and Malthus to undermine their support of early capitalism, exposing its ugly and hidden heart instead. 

Carver mentions that this ‘political economy’ approach was soon overtaken by bourgeois (neo-classical) economics, which he calls ‘marginalism.’ It treats economics as an automatic and ‘natural’ process, not a human-created and class-based political construct. Carver points out that because of long years of propagation, it is very hard for people to understand anything other than the myth of ‘free markets,’ prices as the only source of value, the supposed equality of selling and buying and the goal of working for a ‘fair’ wage for a ‘good’ boss. Trade and exchange creates wealth in this scenario, not labor and nature.   

However Marx-influenced concepts like class, progress, historical contingency, direct democracy, periodic economic crises and socialism are all now common in realms beyond Marxism. Carver’s repetition of the quote “It’s the economy, stupid!” also hints at the political impact of this materialism.  Yet in marginalist economics the current focus is on micro-economic issues and sub-capitalist thinking so as to obscure the larger context.  Right now it is inflation and billionaires, and how they impact individuals. These take our continual attention. 

Carver avoids the complications of explaining ‘out of date’ Capital, Vols. 1, 2 or 3 by looking at Marx’s journalism around the 1857-’58 economic crash.  Marx writes about that crisis, saying it was not caused by speculation, as his rivals thought, but speculation as a symptom of a deeper problem… a falling rate of profit due to the introduction of machinery. He emphasizes Marx’s constant use of satire and sarcasm to undermine his capitalist opponents, unlike a dry theorist.   

Carver thinks Marx didn’t focus much on current issues like colonialism, which is untrue.   He points out that Marx did not want to make things worse so as to hasten the revolution, which is why he supported reforms, including transitional ones.  He writes about the constant use of ‘the Red Scare’ as a capitalist political tactic.  Marx himself was indicted in absentia in 1852 in Cologne, Germany over an alleged plot by the Communist League in the 1848 rising.  This led to his move to Paris.  The ‘red scare’ is still with us, used by both U.S. Republicans and Democrats continually.

A simple description of surplus value & profit

The key concept of exploitation is handled by most people as a moral or justice issue, a method that Marx avoided in spite of its popularity, which is true even today.  For Marx exploitation was a specific economic practice applied to workers and rural proletarians and later in a more general way, poorer nations and nature.  For ‘justice warriors’ exploitation is a general harm inflicted on the vulnerable, almost like a religious invocation.  His approach was rationalist, not emotional, which made it less appealing to many.  Terms like ‘just prices,’ ‘fair exchange’ or 'fair' treatment, power dynamics and a ‘living’ wage are far more current and cuddly.  In this version, instead of production, the moralistic focus is on exchange.  Yet the clear inequality of outcomes in ‘exchanges’ – where supposedly equal parties trade money or labor for goods or a job – is becoming even more obvious and hints at a deeper flaw in the production system itself. 

Moral or justice approaches can lead to reformism, as they do not indicate the heart of exploitation – the profit motive by private parties who own the means of production and attendant banking institutions. Amelioration becomes the goal, not system change.  That is the story of business unionism, Democratic Party politics, community activism and environmental ‘justice’ so far.  Carver reveals his own tendency in this discussion by framing battles against exploitation as “linked to concepts of social democracy, not unlike … coalitional politics.”   He seems to be a social democrat then, especially in view of his few, totally negative comments about the Soviet Union and the PRC. 

Carver turns to the recent interest in Marx’s comments about alienation and commodity fetishism arising from the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.”  Alienation was mentioned in these notes by Marx, then taken up by the Frankfurt School in various ways, providing some relief from the supposed dourness of Capital.  It infused Marxism with ‘humanism’ and youth and inspired self-management in Yugoslavia according to Carver.  He also ties it to liberation theology, though I have doubts.  As if Tito or some Catholics couldn’t have come up with these policies via some other avenue.  In fact Mariategui, the Peruvian Marxist, is credited with inspiring liberation theology.  Marx was not pushing in a backwards and romantic direction even during these early days, so pleas to return to the soil or the cloister would fall on his deaf ears. 

Carver addresses the issue of whether Marx had a concept of human nature, and reluctantly admits he did.  This has been made clear in the book “Marx and Human Nature – Refutation of a Legend.” (Reviewed below.)  It is basic bodily needs for food, water, shelter, warmth, health, community and children that lead to systems of production and reproduction.  Human nature is truly ‘embodied,’ as we are not ethereal beings without material survival and animalistic needs, as religious ideology or idealism would have it.  Marx and Engels did not ‘historicize’ everything about humans, unlike what Carver wants to believe, but certainly bodily death is included.

This book is about Marx’s attitude to the ‘social question’ as Carver puts it, relying mostly on the propagandist and journalistic side of a younger Marx.  Carver thinks that Engels played the initial role of ‘canonizing’ Marx, turning his writings and comments into theoretical systems.  He considers the result to be an ‘avatar’ – embodied in the massive head of Marx, with hair, beard and all, made into an imposing statue in Highgate Cemetery and a meme on social media.  Perhaps Carver objects to himself not also becoming a meme?  I don’t know but I suspect every erudite academic who is well-acquainted with Marx like Carver wants to ‘carve’ out his own niche.  And he’s got something of a point in seeing Marx as a highly political character, not an abstract theorist. 

(Second of two reviews.)

Prior blogspot posts on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Marx,” “Engels” “Communist Manifesto,” “Das Kapital.”

May Day carries many books on Marxism.  This I got at a library.

Red Frog / May 8, 2025

College Library Browsing #21a: The Agitator

 “Marx”by Terrell Carver, 2018 (Classic Thinkers) – Part 1

In the unending series of books about Marx and Marxism, Carver tries to carve out a different approach by connecting all of Marx’s economics, sociology, philosophy, history and politics to … activism.  I.E. the reason why Marx studied, wrote, said and acted the way he did was for political reasons – ultimately, the socialist revolution.  He was not doing the work in the abstract, for profit or as an academic or loner.  Carver seeks to link Marx’s ideas to present political practice.  Carver is an English academic from the U.S.  He specializes in gender analyses and Engel’s relation to Marx.  Unlike Marx, his Wiki page mentions no political affiliations. 

Carver makes the post-modern point that Marx was busy creating a legend of sorts, like some kind of influencer.  He brings up two scant ‘selfies’ in which Marx explains himself a bit. Carver names Engels his ‘publicity manager’ and ‘second fiddle’ and Babel / Leibnecht his experts in ‘branding.’  He calls Marx a ‘gadfly’ and Marx’s supporters a ‘cabal’ and ‘fans.’  The Communist Manifesto, the document Marx became famous for, is called ‘outre’ and outdated.  Yet it is the main starting point for many beginning Marxists to this day.  This stupid trendiness made me want to stop reading.

THEORIES?

Anyway, onward.  Carver points out that Marx never developed a ‘theory of class.’ In truth, class changes as an economy and geography changes, so it’s a moving target. Some aspects of class remain in nearly all societies, such as a laboring class and a class that lives off the surplus.  Marx’s first discussion of class issues occurred in his 1840s German journalism articles about the right to fire wood for peasants and the trials of immiserated grape-vine growers.  Carver’s emphasis is on his political activism, so he stresses Marx’s ‘rhetoric of action’ in everything he wrote.  This is why he highlights Marx’s voluminous journalism.  Carver includes the seemingly ‘outdated’ Manifesto as part of this rhetoric of action, which broadcast the role of class struggle as a programmatic document, not an academic analysis.  Carver compares Marx’s early concerns with equality and class as similar to 2011’s Occupy Wall Street.  I guess this is an attempt to ring another recent bell.

Carver mentions that Marx had to compromise with some middle-class radicals, as the oppressive European police governments of the day treated them just like the communists. This is still relevant across the world.  Carver contends that Marx was a ‘skillful compromiser’ with those who had not crossed the class line or become sub-reformists.  The First International (IWMA) of the 1860s was a coalition of trade union reformists, utopians, democrats, cooperators and religious liberals, with Marx a distinct minority. And yet they communicated.  Most of the later focus of lefties has been on Marx’s polemics with opponents, but Carver cites examples of his ability to work with some of them.  Marx's 1864 “Inaugural Address of the IWMA” celebrates the passage of the English 1847 10-Hours Bill, the progress of Union forces in the U.S. civil war and developments in the cooperative movement.   Of note, Marx promotes English labor action against cotton imports from the Confederacy, even if it materially hurts English labor. Note the present indirect reference to U.S. unions like the UAW that support Trump’s severe tariffs.

Carver constantly references Engels as the systematizer of a supposedly non-existent theory – Marxism.  He uses hash marks around everything like this related to Marx as a ‘thinker,’ blaming later Marxists like Plekhanov for elucidating this imaginary theory or method.  He prefers his Marxist history to be exploratory and contingent, as if Marx is some kind of post-modernist.  Capital, Vols. 1, 2, 3 are not mentioned, as they seem too theoretical for Carver.  It is to the Manifesto of 1848 & 1872 (notated), polemical works of current history and references to Marx’s journalism that he concentrates on.

Louis Napoleon - the Original Bonapartist 

HISTORY

For Carver, Marx and Engels only ask the question ‘what is history?’ and answer it as the story of how normal human life is produced in various places, using struggle and tools, traveling in a linear and unrepeatable way through time. As time has passed, this formerly ‘radical’ explanation has become a common-sense way to look at history. This mainstreaming of Marxist insights is one of his themes.  In a work of what is now history, Marx’s passionate 1851 work ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’ was a response to the dictatorship that followed the 1848 revolution in France.  Carver thinks of Marx as a ‘historicist,’ seemingly with no overarching position, just sarcasm, details and political intent.  Carter’s Marx is like an old-timey podcaster with 'hot takes' on revolution, denouncing an 1800s Trumpist like Louis Napoleon in breeches, mustache and epaulets.  He is not someone with an ‘overarching theory,’ so don't be afraid!    

Carver brings up the ‘determinist’ slant of dogmatic Marxists, who believe history automatically leads to communism.  This position has been refuted enough at this point to not need further comment.  However historical materialism, a shorthand for the class struggle through time over economics, is out as a method for Carver. The productivity or ownership of a certain economic system seems to have no relevance, only the political agency of an oppressed class based on good ‘values.’  Carver calls his approach ‘anti-foundational’ thinking, which smacks of post-modernist relativity about everything and seems to be the hidden rationale of the book.  This ignores the actual development of world economic history, as capital has now conquered most of the world, just as Marx’s ‘theory’ predicted.

Of current interest, Carver looks at Marx’s 1847 speech on ‘free trade’ versus protectionism, which was already a debate in the 1800s.  Marx opposed both as versions of capital exploitation – either of workers in other nations, (free trade) or in the ‘home’ country (nationalist protectionism).  Marx concluded that ‘free trade’ would actually hasten revolution more than tariffs, which is why he was ‘for’ it.      

DEMOCRACY

Carver wants to explain how Marx’s support of democracy is channeled through a phrase like the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ He first explains why Marx critiqued a philosopher like Hegel, who backed the Prussian monarchy and severe anti-democratic thinking.  This criticism of Hegel was a political work undermining the dictatorial German ruling class, not an exercise in abstract philosophy. 

Marx’s 1871 “The Civil War In France” follows that up by explaining the proletarian ‘dictatorship.’ The book embraced the 1871 Paris Commune as the distinct form of workers’ rule, the rule of the majority.  Working-class communes, assemblies, soviets and councils in history that have followed are all expressions of direct rule of the proletarian masses.  At bottom every form of a flawed bourgeois democracy is still an expression of the domination of the capitalist class. In the U.S. it is easy to see this due to corporate money, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the two-party system, voting barriers, media manipulation and more.  Bourgeois claims of popular sovereignty have failed. In Marx’s time Louis Napoleon was elected by manipulated universal male suffrage, then declared himself Emperor.  Sound familiar?

At this point in the book, Carver respects Marx but rejects almost any theoretical conclusions.  He claims that Marx, in his analysis of the Commune and Louis Napoleon, was more interested in democratic rights for the majority, which was being impeded by the property interests of various upper and middle-class strata in France.  To Carver Marx is really a programmatic, value-based and agitational activist. In this he's trying to make him a bit 'modern' in the present situation and more understandable. Many current reformist leftists are indeed like this, so Carver could resonate with them too.   

(First part review of two.)   Happy May 5, Karl's birthday, 207 years ago.

Prior blogspot posts on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Marx,” ‘post-modernism,’ “Engels” “Communist Manifesto.”

May Day carries many books on Marxism.  This I got at a library.

Red Frog / May 5, 2025

College Library Browsing #20: The Unsinkable Left?

 “The Return of the Left in Post-Communist States,”edited by C. Bukowski & B. Racz, 1999

If you see people always reading musty old books about politics or history in a rapidly changing world, realize that they are living in the past.  That is not always bad, but it does indicate that their ideas might be archaic too. This book has some ‘dust,’ especially given the changes from Russia to Romania since 1998.  I will try to eke out what might be relevant to today.  The volume covers Russia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Romania.  I’m only going to cover the intro and epilogue, then Russia and Hungary. 

These are the points this collection of mainstream liberal historians made at the time. Their focus is on groups or Parties rooted in some aspect of Marxism or Left and socialist politics, even if they have strayed significantly.  Remember, this is after the fall of the workers’ states in these countries:  1) The rumors of socialism’s death were premature.  In elections after the fall of ‘state socialist’ governments, the Left still had a presence and was not wiped out.  2)  Violence was absent in the collapses except in Romania, which they characterized not as a Party-controlled state, but as a personal dictatorship under Ceausescu. 3) Youth were not attracted to the ex-Communists, even in social-democratic or socialist forms in this period. 4) The fortunes of the new market economy played the key role in the rise or fall of leftists in subsequent elections. 5) Almost every former Communist Party became social-democratic or socialist.  Those claiming to still be “Marxist-Leninist’ were a tiny minority.

RUSSIA (M. Cichock)

The largest formation coming out of the 1991 collapse of the CPSU was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) led by Gennady Zyuganov – and predictably still led by him.  Presently the Party is the loyal opposition to Putin, and has whole-heartedly endorsed the Ukraine invasion.  It is described by those to its left as nationalist and ‘social patriotic,’ abandoning any pretense to Leninist internationalism. The KPRF call it ‘popular state patriotism.’  During the period under Yeltsin, Putin’s mentor, the KPRF did quite well in the 1995 and 1996 elections after the chaos of capitalist ‘shock therapy’ and Yeltsin’s violent 1993 assault on the House of Soviets that left almost 150 dead.

The CPSU at its height had 19.4M members out of 292M citizens. The KPRF had 540K members at this point, made up mostly of white-collars, the elderly and former apparatchiks according to Cichock.  He estimates that 13 organizations came out of the CPSU in one way or another.  The social-democratic dream of people like historian Michael Cohen about the rise of social-democracy after Gorbachev turned out to be false, as the social-democrats made no headway. The KPRF however was strong enough to block Yeltsin’s plans to privatize much agricultural land.  3 de facto factions existed in the KPRF, and in 1998 it let Duma deputies vote in secret, thus not being able to control their votes.

The Russian Communist Workers Party was the 2^nd largest organization, at 50K members, along with the Agrarian Party, which opposed privatization of agriculture.  Roy Medvedev’s “Socialist Party of the Working People’ had a known figurehead yet little of a ground-game.  ‘Far left’ and “Marxist Leninist’ groups are mentioned and they all criticized the KPRF as social-democrats and too close to Yeltsin. These groups attempted to work together but failed, while a KPRF coalition – the “Peoples Patriotic Union of Russia” (NPSR) in 1996 was more successful nationally, becoming the main opposition. Yet the ‘far left’ kept the KPRF from moving too far to the right.  No Trotskyist groups are mentioned, though there are at least 3 in Russia now. 

Cichock predicts that unless the KPRF oriented towards economic issues, and away from patriotism, it will be unable to successfully combat the new capitalist forces. Its aging membership at the time needed to recruit youth too, and that still seems to be the case given what I saw in 2017.  He predicted it will become a ‘perpetual opposition’ in its present condition.  That prediction has been born out during the Putin years, as it has only been able to defeat Putin’s United Russia and the rigged electoral system in several oblasts.  There is no mention of Alexi Navalny’s liberal forces in the book, as this predates Navalny, who started political activity in 2011.  Navalny didn’t come out of any area of the left anyway. 

HUNGARY (B. Racz)    

The dissolution of the former governing Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) in 1989 led to the formation of the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP), a social democratic / socialist organization that still exists, now known as the MSZP.  It supports the EU, opposes Orbanism and remains the main liberal opposition.  In 1990 they got 10.9% of the vote after the collapse, with ‘left’ groups as a whole winning 26%.  However the HSP was able to win a majority after the 1994 elections due to the chaos created by capitalist restoration.  In 1990 Orban’s Fidesz (AYD - Alliance of Young Democrats) was a liberal group promoting free markets, minimal state redistribution, speedy privatization and limited social policies. After their loss in 1994 the AYD moved further to the right.  They now govern Hungary almost permanently.

The HSP joined the Socialist International while the HSWP rump became the Workers Party (WP), which called itself ‘Marxist-Leninist’ and got 3.68% of the vote in the 1990 elections.  The Hungarian Social Democratic Party (HSDP) only got 3.55%.  The Agrarian Alliance opposed willy-nilly privatization of agricultural land into pre-1947 small-plot farming.  Racz also notes a large amount of non-voters.

Racz does a careful and detailed analysis of the 1990, 1994 and 1998 elections, noting the vote totals of the various left forces. He christens Hungary as a ‘one-thirder’ political culture – right, center, left.  Yet plant closures and the shuttering of large-scale agro-enterprises undermined the governing conservatives who had won in 1990.  He notes the dormant strength of the left in the labor unions, workers’ councils and parties.  The HSP allowed factions and inner-party democracy, and yet there were no splits.  HSP cadre were more sophisticated and battle-hardened than other liberal and conservative groups, so they were able to build a grassroots base for the 1994 election.  In 1992 they formed an alliance with the largest union, the NFHU.  Unemployment reached 700K in 1992, so job security, Kadar nostalgia, privatization and welfare policies became increasingly important.  The HSP also treated Hungarian minorities in other countries in a less confrontational way, opposing the ‘greater Hungary’ methods of the conservatives and Christian Democrats. "Greater Hungary" has become a current platform for Fidesz.

This led to the HSP winning a landslide victory in the 1994 election, with an absolute majority. As Racz puts it, the HSP supported a “market economy with social responsibility’ so a sort of welfare-state capitalism.  The HSP got 33% the vote, with 54.14% of the seats; while the WP shrank to 3.19% and the HSDP almost disappeared at .95%.  Fidesz only got 5.19% of the seats. Two-thirds of the HSP vote came from blue-collar workers.  The HSP joined with the liberals of the Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD) to form a governing coalition. 

As is predictable, economic problems, specifically interest on the ‘vicious circle’ of loans from the IMF began to take their toll on the national economy.  Kadar had first started the loan process in Hungary when it was dominated by the HSWP.  Investment from outside capitalists had yet to flow into Hungary at that point.  The turn came in 1995 when Lajos Bokros became finance minister and Hungary ‘balanced its’ books’ to avoid ‘bankruptcy’ on the back of labor and farmers… its electoral base.  Wage increases and benefits were ‘forcefully’ limited, the forint was devalued and for the “average wage earner … stagnation and/or reduction of living standards.”  The coalition AFD liberals heartily endorsed the policy while the HSP was of mixed-minds.  But they had jettisoned what Racz called 'solidarity politics.' 

The 1998 election resulted in a narrow 158-165 loss of governmental power for the HSP/Liberal bloc, which was predictable given the economic situation.  The 3 left formations still got 37% of the national vote. Racz goes on to predict that “real GDP growth … of the Hungarian economy will be limited for some time to come.” This continues under the conservative Orban, even with EU subsidies, investments by China and Europe, along with continuing corruption, white elephant projects and the starvation of Budapest’s finances by the national government. 

This book shows capitalism eventually creates its own labor and electoral Left opposition, which can be moderately or extremely successful unless a dictatorship of some kind is imposed.  This dictatorship has now happened both in Hungary with the autocratic ‘illiberal democracy’ of Orban, and the capitalist police state of Putin in Russia.  Orban’s Fidesz sought to never again have the Socialists win, and set up a legal and financial system that made it very difficult after they won in 2010.  Putin has made it almost impossible, except for loyalists of some kind like the KPRF, to actually oppose him.  Plane crashes, window falls, explosions, exile, prison, poisoning and prison deaths are all administered to opponents or failures.  It also shows that Stalinoid ‘Marxist-Leninist’ support dries up without a one-party state.  And it shows that economic issues are at bottom the main source of logic for the left, to be ignored at their peril.

Prior reviews on this subject, use blogspot search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Hungary,” “Russia,” “shock therapy,” “CPSU,” “Kadar,” "central Europe."

May Day has books on what happened after the fall of the USSR.  I got this one at the college library!

Red Frog / April 30, 2025

Anti-Capitalism & Poverty

 “Trash – A Poor White Journey” by Cedar Monroe, 2024

This might be seen as a personal follow-up to Nancy Isenberg’s book “White Trash,” which was a history of working-class ‘white’ people in the U.S.  Monroe writes this as a sort of anti-capitalist memoir, as Monroe also grew up poor and ‘white’ on the Washington state coast.  It was in a situation of abuse, shame and poverty, with an unhappy father who raised vegetables while working in a warehouse.  The family practiced a primitive ‘home schooling’ – if such a thing is really possible - in the white nationalist religious context of Quiverfull. 

250,000 people die each year from poverty and inequality in the U.S., the 4^th highest cause of death.  66 million ‘white’ people are low-income or poor in the U.S., out of 132 million low income or poor across most ethnicities.  A total of 10 million do not have stable housing.  These are the stark facts behind the lower end of the U.S. class structure.

Monroe’s county in Washington State, Grays Harbor, was first seized from native Americans by the U.S. government, privatized, then logged over by Weyerhauser and is now one of the largest meth centers in the U.S.  Monroe is gay, while some of her relatives were not ‘white,’ which helped Monroe break from the isolated religious world she was brought up in.  Monroe flipped her conservative Baptist upbringing by becoming an Episcopal Church deacon after going through Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.  Instead of ‘whiteness,’ Monroe also flipped that script, ministering to working class and poor native Americans, Latinos, European-Americans and African-Americans back in her home county. Monroe mentors those she finds in trouble as a deacon and ‘tells their stories’ in this book.  But Monroe has still not lost an identification with ‘whiteness’ as a main theoretical axis.

Monroe’s time at the university in Massachusetts showed that middle-class liberal European-Americans looked down on working-class ‘whites’ as stupid, dangerous and lost.  Monroe only found kinship among African-American professors who understood the class ramifications of being working-class in a bourgeois context.  Monroe understands that classism is key to the oppressive narratives of capital, easily denigrating ‘rednecks,’ ‘white trash’ and ‘trailer trash’ as inferiors, something done by both main bourgeois parties.  This strategy is used to demonstrate the personal failures of poor ‘whites’ and to separate them from their class brethren.   Note:  *I use ‘white’ not as a real descriptor, but as an easy identifier.  Monroe believes there are separate races when there is only one – the human one. Skin color and physical features are not ‘races,’ no matter what racists or liberals say. 

The Locals

Monroe discusses potlach and communal traditions of the local indigenous tribes, among them the Quinault, where private property is not sacred. 40% of the reservation is now in tribal hands, when before it was in the single digits. Many of the poor in Aberdeen, the biggest town in the county, are indigenous. Local tribes, with few resources, do more social service work than the County government, while also protecting salmon and preparing for sea-level rise.  It seems native Americans are one of the few organized grown-ups in the county.  Monroe describes the homeless encampments along the Chehalis River in Aberdeen, which have their share of addicts, sex workers and the mentally unstable, but also its own women leaders and creative types.   The city regularly bulldozes or destroys their living structures, while the local poor do what they can to survive. 

Monroe mentions that one out of 15 kids in the county are taken by family services and put into foster care or adoption, due to problems with a parent like addiction.  The poor in this county lose their children on a regular basis to this racialized process.  Then there is youth incarceration, which is high in Washington State.  The schools can commit children to juvenile court; parents use physical violence on their children; the juvenile jail puts kids in solitary for long periods of time; the judge in court is cruel.  What does this all do to future adults?  Nothing good. 

Monroe recounts incidents of widespread police violence against homeless, minority and poor people, some of whom have parole violation warrants. Monroe notes that some hard-up light-skins, including some in Monroe’s family, joined the police or prison guards and end up disciplining darker-skinned poor people.   Monroe spends a lot of time visiting jails and prisons to tell their stories, especially local indigenous people locked up on a regular basis.  White supremacist prison gangs like the Asatru Folk Assembly and the Klan organize inside prisons trying to get all ‘Caucasians’ to join for protection.  She notes that some Latino prison gangs accept whites now, so that is not the only route anymore.

Early death through suicide, medical neglect, violence, disease, alcoholism, exposure and overdoses are the wages of poverty in Grays Harbor County, which is mostly white.  Monroe tattoos the names of the dead on her body like a ‘holy rosary,’ while spending much time at hospitals attending to contacts and friends.  Hospitals are underfunded, under-staffed and difficult to reach without good transport.  Funerals are frequent and Monroe is involved in many as a chaplain.       

Aberdeen, WA homeless encampment

POLITICS

So on to politics:  Monroe posits that white supremacy materially hurts ‘white’ people too, inhibits working-class unity, allows the rich to run everything while poisoning its believers.  Monroe has a basic understanding of capital through private property in land and its source in labor and nature exploitation, resulting in commodification of everything.  This extends to the role of the state, the police and the laws which protect Weyerhauser’s private land, a firm that still owns 40% of Grays Harbor County.  Fell one tree on their holdings and you have committed a crime, much like ye olde English peasant who snares a rabbit for dinner on his laird’s immense estate.  Nothing has changed in that respect, especially for the homeless.  Monroe reports on a legal struggle with the city of Aberdeen to protect the land along the River for squatters, which resulted in some land near city hall set aside while shelters along the river were bulldozed again.

Local whites came out to terrorize the homeless and their allies like Monroe in some of these confrontations.   

Monroe’s solutions other than holy oil?  Very little of what she talks about involves ‘white’ people working.  Monroe centers the book around the homeless, and while it is well known that many homeless work, this is not shown. This book is about the ‘poor,’ a concept that is fuzzy about economic roles, but the implication is that they don’t work except selling drugs or in petty theft.  Monroe describes little political action involving these folks, as most are too busy trying to survive.  Monroe draws ire advocating for clean needles and Naloxone with the local city council and health authorities, but it seems to be a lonely fight. 

Monroe advocates a new Rainbow Coalition, the present Poor People’s Campaign led by Reverend William Barber and the Young Patriot Party of yore. The PPC talks about ‘low wage workers’ not just poor people.  Monroe thinks it might take another 500 years “to fully end this system” so it seems progress is not really forthcoming anytime soon.  Monroe’s church opened a community center centered on ‘lunch, pastoral care and occasional events,’ pursuing ‘education and narrative building.’  Monroe’s church also opened shelters in church parking lots, then inside a church after vigilante threats were made against them and the homeless.  Monroe began to carry a loaded gun for protection. 

Most of Monroe’s activism is social work and charity.  One march in town was held, and was opposed by threats.  3 acres of land were rented to form a CSA to provide vegetables to the hungry, and was later bought by the diocese as a permanent farm.  Monroe titles a chapter “Healing is Revolutionary” which works as a feel-good narrative but it doesn’t really undermine the system at its root. Liberation theology has to be taken to its logical conclusion to actually achieve liberation.  Monroe and the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia’s work could be an adjunct to mass class struggle at some point, but now it salves the multiple wounds of capital.  

Monroe’s work linked up with several local indigenous Nations, which is a huge plus.  A true mass movement will link tribes, unions, labor, left parties, community rights and single-issue groups in a united front against capital, on a national and even international scale.  Monroe would not oppose this, as she supports alliances of some kind.  Without that unity poverty will continue.  Certainly the concept of an anti-capitalist united front is still far off.  Is it a daunting task which may be beyond the ability of the working classes and anti-capitalist Left in the present moment?  I have seen some begin to turn towards this concept given the reactionary assault by Trump forces, but it is slow going, as liberalism and socialism do not mix in the end.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “poverty,” ‘poor,’ ‘white trash.’ 

And I got the book at the library!  May Day has many books on poverty, homelessness and the like.

Red Frog / April 27, 2025

Anti-Racist?

 “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville, 1855

This is a novella by one of the great masters of American literature, Herman Melville, who is most famous for Moby Dick.  Both are sea tales, but this one concerns slavery, which Melville seemingly hated.  A Spanish slave ship has run out of food and water rounding stormy Cape Horn and has drifted into a bay in Chile with torn sails.  It is captained by a seemingly arrogant or incompetent Spaniard, Don Benito Cereno.  Also in the bay is an 'American' sealer led by a kind and somewhat naïve Captain Delano, who comes to the ragged ship’s aid.  Yet the story is set-up as a kind of mystery.

A few remaining crew members, an ‘invalid’ captain and slaves tread the decks of the ruined San Dominick. There are many more slaves than crew, which they explain was due to the crew getting sick and dying because of their weak constitutions.  Delano provides food, pumpkin, water and cider to the ship in a ‘Republican’ fashion, yet notices some strange behavior on the part of captain Cereno, his black servant Babo, the other slaves and the remaining crew members. For instance there are no officers left except the captain. Two white crew members are thrown to the deck or cut by a blade while Delano watches.  He is surprised and can’t get an answer. He never gets straight answers to his questions from Cereno because of interruptions, coughing fits or silence.  Presiding over the decks are four grizzled Africans, sharpening hatchets incessantly.  In his time on the ship, he mulls every possible scenario but one, some very dark, then always reverting to optimism. 

Cereno tells a story about damage to the sails, men swept overboard, scurvy and fever and being becalmed for two weeks after rounding Cape Horn.  Delano notes that it would only take a day after rounding the Horn to get to this bay.  Cereno then forgets that he said he rounded the Horn.  Even more curiously, he refuses to meet with Delano alone, without his faithful servant Babo and refuses to leave the ship alone either. 

The story is told in a slow, florid and overly-detailed narrative of Delano’s thoughts and actions as he wanders the decks of the San Dominick.  Melville ends this brooding story, full of suspicions and foreboding, with a battle.  According to critics, the story highlights ‘the unreliable narrator’ concept. Like a detective story told by a biased detective, we gradually realize what is really going on.  As Delano bids adieu from his whale boat to the San Dominick to get back to his own ship, the Bachelor’s Delight,  - Cereno and the rest of the white crew suddenly jump into the sea.  Only then does Delano realize something unforeseen is up!

It was a slave rebellion all along.  Delano's crew rescue Cereno and 3 sailors and capture Babo as he has jumped after Cereno and Delano to kill them with two knives.  They give chase to the San Dominick, which is drifting away.  They succeed in retaking the ship after a battle where their arms and organization prevail, killing some 18 'pirates.' 

What follows is a long deposition of Cereno at a court in Lima, Peru, detailing the whole incident, from the slaughter of the crew and the slaves’ owner and the play-acting meant to deceive Delano.  This included fake-chaining one of the uprising’s giant ring-leaders to seem like a prisoner instead.  The ultimate goal of the mutineers was to round the Cape of Horn and reach Senegal in Africa.

What is odd about this story is that Captain Delano, who is from Massachusetts, has few thoughts about slavery itself.  He accepts it and takes a patronizing attitude towards blacks instead, seeing them as primitive but pleasant.   1855 was in the run-up to the U.S. Civil War and it was one of the burning topics in the North. Massachusetts was a hotbed of abolitionism.  Delano seems a fictional creation, a kind, liberal dimwit of sorts, a necessary foil to this plot.    

What a ‘white’ reader in 1855 might of thought during this story is not of the cruelties slavery forces on people, but that ‘Ashantees’ are duplicitous and deadly even to kind people, and anyone should be wary of them.  Melville quotes Cereno as to the ‘shadow’ here – it is “the Negro.” Babo, the leader of the revolt, is hung, his head put on a spike in Lima’s central Plaza and his body burned.  I am not sure this is an anti-racist or anti-slavery story as advertised by the lit critics! An abolitionist might think, 'well, that was inevitable, given the violence inherent in slavery.' However, to many other 'gentle' readers in 1855 it would actually inspire fear and horror, and not of slavery, but for its white victims.  

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “slavery,” “Creole Rebellion.” 

May Day Books has many volumes on the Civil War, slavery and the like.  I got this at its ‘used book’ section!

Red Frog / April 24, 2025

College Library Browsing #19b: The Moor, the Mole and Old Nick

 “Last Years of Karl Marx – an Intellectual Biography” by Marcello Musto, 2016 (Second review)

The book pictures Marx in his last years, 1880-1883, but dips into the 1870s in its discussion of his unfinished work on Capital Vols. II and III, and various translations of Vol I.  This is when he wasn’t reading about electricity and immersing himself in French novels for distraction due to sickness.

The final part of this book is a story of inability to work, sickness and death.  For almost a whole year he could not really produce anything.  Marx’s wife Jenny von Westphalen died of liver cancer in December 1881; his eldest daughter Jenny Longuet died in January 1883, also of cancer of the liver, and he died on March 14, 1883 at the age of 64.  He suffered from bronchitis, rheumatism, a constant cough, pleurisy - eventually dying of heart failure brought on by tuberculosis. 

Prior to this, doctors sent him out of the drizzle of London to Eastbourne, then the Isle of Wight; then to the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil where his daughter’s family was living.  They sent him on to Algiers for a long stay, then Monaco, Cannes and Geneva to try to get warmth and dry air into his lungs and body.  Many of these places had rain instead, so he was not ‘cured,’ while the travel exhausted him.  He was not able to work and could only keep up with the news.  He had one meeting with supporters of the French Workers Party in 1880.  Oddly, both son’s-in-law had moved towards anarchism and this upset him greatly.  This is when he wrote his famous quote about some ostensible ‘followers’ of his – “What is certain is that I am not a Marxist.”  This was in reference to ‘revolutionary phrase-mongering’ by his sons-in-law.      

Marx consulted on the relevant Electoral Program of the French Workers Party.  It included:  1) Emancipation of the productive class will include every ‘race’ and sex.  2) Producers can only be free when they control the means of production. 3) Freedom of the Press. 4) Equality at work between men and women, native and immigrant. 5) Defunding the religious orders. 6) Elimination of the public debt. 6) Abolition of standing army and arming of the people. 7) Ban on child labor; one day a week off; workers’ determination of a minimum wage; equal pay for equal work. 8) Free, professional public education. 9) Care of old and disabled; 10) Workers accident compensation. 11) Labor power on the job. 12) Socialization of public property through workers’ control of banks, railways, mines. 13) A progressive income tax. 14) Suppression of all inheritances over 20,000 francs.

Reading this, you will see that this program has been partly enacted in many bourgeois democratic countries due to pressure by labor.  It seems eerily familiar!  The issue of immigrants came about partly due to his readings of the unequal treatment of Chinese workers in the U.S. who were especially used in railroad projects.

Algeria was the only country Marx visited outside of Europe and he wrote anecdotal social observations in letters to Engels and others.  This location seems significant given his nickname ‘The Moor.’  He noted in Algiers that while classes existed, there was a level of social equality between the well-dressed and the ones in tatters, perhaps attributing this to Islam.  The state, in the form of police and soldiers, was almost invisible to him.  He even got a haircut, stripping his face of its imposing white ‘St. Nick’ beard. 

Marx in Algiers

CAPITAL

Marx first published an edition of Das Kapital, Vol. 1 in 1867 in German, then 2 more revisions were brought out.  A French translation was done by him during the late 1870s, as the translator was ignorant of economic terms.  Translating took an immense amount of his time.  What is notable is that the French translation included changes from the German editions.  He was still working on various aspects of these in the late 1870s and early 1880s. This shows you that, even at this point, nothing was ‘set in stone’ in the details.  Revision, like change, was a constant.  That is a philosophic point too, as well as a writer’s truth.  Being 'done' is a decision, not a final understanding.  

Capital, Vol. 1 began to be read in Russia, Germany, France and even in philistine England during this period, as Marx’s influence spread beyond his role as the subversive devil of the First International, promoter of the Paris Commune and author of the Manifesto.  It’s not to say everyone understood it, but some began to make headway. Blanqui, Proudhon, LaSalle and Bakunin were still prominent influences in various countries at this time.  Marx’s Capital was almost unknown in the U.S., as an English translation only became available in 1887.   

Marx studied what happened to Russian peasants after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. He looked at the role of solar energy, especially a writer who claimed socialism would utilize it better than other social systems.  He studied books on banking and trade, the formation of joint-stock companies and ‘loanable capital,’ geology, agrarian chemistry and mineralogy. He asserted after some of his investigations that:  “The energy of the universe is constant” so he did not limit himself to economics or politics. Marx wanted to flesh out the relation between ground rent and profit, which became a section in Capital, Vol III.  He noted that revolution was not a single event, but a process, thus echoing his own phrase about permanent revolution from 1850.  He stated: “Socialists invent no movement, but merely tell the workmen what its character and its ends will be.”  This shows he was aware of the role of spontaneity.  His wide reading made it clear to him that no world-wide ‘schematic’ would account for all societal forms and development.  He told Engels that he was ‘secretly ashamed’ for relying on him for funds.  Marx noted that, due to his age and wisdom, he was careful about what ‘fights’ he engaged in, as so many were a waste of time.  A truth we can all appreciate.

As you can see, even in ill-health, Marx continued his work towards socialism, which was his life-long passion. Musto’s work here is drawn from the voluminous Marx-Engels Gesamtaustaube (MEGA) which in 2016 reached 67 volumes, including many of Marx’s notes, letters and unpublished manuscripts.  These documents were unavailable to earlier Marxists. 

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Marx,” “Engels,” “Capital.”

May Day has many books on Marx.  This I got at a college library!  I am waiting for them to discover, empty and burn the Marxist section however, at the rate things are going. 

Red Frog / April 20, 2025 / Due to sickness, this review has been delayed and truncated.