The rightward evolution of the trade unions arises out of fundamental
features of this form of organisation. In his lecture “Marxism and the Trade
Unions,” the chairman of the World Socialist Web Site international
editorial board, David North, stated: “Standing on the basis of capitalist
production relations, the trade unions are, by their very nature, compelled to
adopt an essentially hostile attitude toward the class struggle. Directing their
efforts toward securing agreements with employers that fix the price of labour
power and determine the general conditions in which surplus value will be pumped
out of the workers, the trade unions are obliged to guarantee that their members
supply their labour power in accordance with the terms of the negotiated
contracts. As Gramsci noted, ‘The union represents legality, and must aim to
make its members respect that legality.’
“The defence of legality means the suppression of the class struggle,
which, in the very nature of things, means that the trade unions ultimately
undermine their ability to achieve even the limited aims to which they are
officially dedicated. Herein lies the contradiction upon which trade unionism
flounders.”
Sunday, March 7, 2010
The inherent flaws in the trade union movement
I found this enlightening essay by Ulrich Rippert a day or so back:
Monday, March 1, 2010
How to stay awake during Obama speeches
I confess I can't bear to sit through any politician's speeches. But for those who must listen to the speeches of Obama, here is one way to survive the ordeal:
1. Before Barrack Obama’s next televised speech, prepare your “Bullshit Bingo” card by drawing a square. I find that 5″ x 5″ is a good size — and dividing it into columns –five across and five down. That will give you 25 1-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
Restored our reputation
Strategic fit
Let me be clear
Make no mistake
Back from the brink
Signs of recovery
Out of the loop
Benchmark
Job creation
Fiscal restraint
Win-win
Affordable health care
Previous Administration
At the end of the day
Empower (or empowerment)
Touch base
Mindset
Bipartisan
Trust
Inherited as in “I inherited this mess”
Relief for working families
Unprecedented
Accountable (or held to account)
Free market
Reform
Players can make substitutions to this list, but only one phrase can be used in any one block. Alternatives include:
Change (as in “change you can believe in)
Universal health care
Brought the economy back from the brink
3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout ”BULLSHIT!”
Testimonials from past satisfied “Bullshit Bingo” players:
”I had been listening to the speech for only five minutes when I won.” - Jack W., Boston
1. Before Barrack Obama’s next televised speech, prepare your “Bullshit Bingo” card by drawing a square. I find that 5″ x 5″ is a good size — and dividing it into columns –five across and five down. That will give you 25 1-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
Restored our reputation
Strategic fit
Let me be clear
Make no mistake
Back from the brink
Signs of recovery
Out of the loop
Benchmark
Job creation
Fiscal restraint
Win-win
Affordable health care
Previous Administration
At the end of the day
Empower (or empowerment)
Touch base
Mindset
Bipartisan
Trust
Inherited as in “I inherited this mess”
Relief for working families
Unprecedented
Accountable (or held to account)
Free market
Reform
Players can make substitutions to this list, but only one phrase can be used in any one block. Alternatives include:
Change (as in “change you can believe in)
Universal health care
Brought the economy back from the brink
3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout ”BULLSHIT!”
Testimonials from past satisfied “Bullshit Bingo” players:
”I had been listening to the speech for only five minutes when I won.” - Jack W., Boston
Thursday, February 25, 2010
K-illusion Kultural Kriticism - Two-Fer
“Empire of Illusion – the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” by Chris Hedges, 2009
Chris Hedges is famous for writing the anti-war book, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.” He has a working-class background, but also found his way into the seminary, so the bit of moralism exhibited in that book comes from a familiar source. In “Empire of Illusion” Hedges follows up with a totally different subject – the dance of shadows that is bourgeois culture. I was expecting a full-blooded analysis of various cultural mirages that work upon the American people, and a defense of reading. After all, entertainment has replaced religion, and ranks right up with alcohol as the ‘opium’ of the people. Instead, the book only partly covers that issue, while mostly being a familiar jeremiad against all things Bush and all things Democratic Party.
Hedges covers some parts of the empire of illusion – for instance, the role of wrestling as cultural marker. Wrestling was first analyzed by Roland Barthes from a Marxist point of view, and so this is an update. Hedges shows how class is now one of the markers in the U.S. ring. Hedges stops by to look at TV and journalism briefly; spends two large chapters on pornography as the unreal and humiliating replacement for sex; analyzes ‘positive psychology’ in its quest to blind people to the condition of the real world, and covers the decay of scholarship in corporate universities, and its replacement by training. All of these things help people avoid looking at the reality all around them. However, the largest sections of the book are redundant attacks on corporate America, abandoning his main topic. For my money, the pornography chapters are the most valuable.
Reading is the source of the deepest ‘formal’ knowledge. Personal experience, the experience of friends and family, scientific experiments, and the experience of organizations are intimate. More formal knowledge comes from incidents covered on television, then in films, or documentaries, and on to reading newspapers, magazines and the net, and finally in massive detail, in books – all make up a spreading pool of knowledge. Hedges says little about this, except to decry the obvious aliteracy, limited literacy and illiteracy of a majority of people in the US – and the dangers this poses to democracy. The fact that no present major figure even discusses this proves his point.
Hedges brushes on the failed culture of bourgeois journalism; the ubiquitous nature and consistently deceptive content of television, such as reality television; the powerful effect of the shared myths in films; and most potent of all - the mass spectacle of sports. These areas seem to fit into the culture of illusion – but, curiously enough, they are for the most part absent from the book. He frequently cites Neil Postman’s excellent 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” showing his book to be in this tradition of sociological critiques of U.S. culture. His frequent lapses into political rhetoric are the only thing that mar this volume.
“Culture of Fear – Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things,” by Barry Glassner, 2009
This book links to Hedges book in the sense that they both talk about how bourgeois culture’s nearly full-time role is to hide the realities behind the scenes. The Wizard of Oz is a powerful ogre until his curtain is pulled aside. Both Hedges and Glassner attempt to pull back the curtain of U.S. culture. Glassner has a more scientific approach and keeps on topic. He catalogs in a factual manner all the ‘mis-direction’ that the American media issue to hide the reality that cannot speak its name. That reality – poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, lack of health care, the tyranny of corporations, lack of democracy, war, foreclosures – cannot be feared, because fearing them would make the population face their real problems. To avoid this is the essence of creating fake problems, which mostly lead people to ‘blame the victims’ or concentrate on the wrong things.
Glassner essentially describes the press-driven scares of the '90s, and shows how they bear little resemblance to reality by citing science and facts. Fear of decreasing crime, fear by whites of black men, hatred of teen-age moms, fear of ostensible killer children, mysterious ‘metaphoric’ microbes, road rage, Gulf War syndrome, infrequent plane wrecks, asbestos, house mold, foreign terrorists, illegal drugs, ‘political correctness,’ breast implants, date rape drugs, rap music, child abduction, cyber-smut, pedophiles, Halloween candy – all these outsize fears come in for a lashing. He is an equal-opportunity critic – liberal fears like Gulf War Syndrome and breast implants also get lambasted,
Glassner thinks there are 5 things that make a good ‘fear’ story in the U.S. 1, it has to have some anecdotal evidence – tearful mothers, catching personal testimony. 2, it has to have some shaky but repeated secondary scientific ‘authority’ to promote it. 3, it has to be endorsed and repeated by important news or political persons. 4, it has to have some statistic that looks good on the surface until you look under the hood. And 5, most importantly, it has to reflect some more deep-seated concern that the fake fear displaces, and therefore hides.
Take implants. While, according to Glassner, most science indicated they were not responsible for the many serious and varied problems they were blamed for, feminists used this matter to attack the masculine medical industry, which would insert bags into womens’ bodies for men’s pleasure. This was at a time when the issue of abortion was being hammered by the Right, and the ability to have an abortion was starting to disappear. People angry about the Gulf War could direct their anger about the war into the GWS issue – and not the issue of imperialist militarism. According to Glassner, GWS had no definitive medical insignia. I myself think Gulf War syndrome will show up in latent cancers, based on exposure to radiation from depleted uranium, so I am not as happy as Glassner to call it a fraud.
While these two were liberal issues, most of the other issues are conservative ones. The constant talk about crime, for instance, even when statistics show it is declining, indicates that ‘fear’ and the local news are twins. Television is crowded with programs that feature various grisly murders and the ‘heroic’ people that solve them. Fear of other people is at the heart of most conservative scares. It is designed to get people to distrust anyone other than immediate family members and friends, and break down any social solidarity that might develop. These fears are just part of the culture wars waged by the Right. It is what they point to as the ‘decay’ of civilization. Glassner would agree – but it is not these ridiculous issues that are ruining the U.S.
Glassner shows a bit too much faith in any scientific testing – even going on to say at one point that tests on their own products sponsored by the medical industry are as accurate as any other. Anyone familiar with the practice of science in the United States knows that even scientists can be bought; can alter statistics; can structure a test to prove a pre-determined point. Skepticism when it comes to corporate ‘tests’ is a necessity, as it has been shown that companies have changed or hidden results. But for the most part Glassner stays on-course, and teaches us to be wary of the fake fears promoted by politicians, neurotics and the news media.
And I bought them at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 2/25/2010
Chris Hedges is famous for writing the anti-war book, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.” He has a working-class background, but also found his way into the seminary, so the bit of moralism exhibited in that book comes from a familiar source. In “Empire of Illusion” Hedges follows up with a totally different subject – the dance of shadows that is bourgeois culture. I was expecting a full-blooded analysis of various cultural mirages that work upon the American people, and a defense of reading. After all, entertainment has replaced religion, and ranks right up with alcohol as the ‘opium’ of the people. Instead, the book only partly covers that issue, while mostly being a familiar jeremiad against all things Bush and all things Democratic Party.
Reading is the source of the deepest ‘formal’ knowledge. Personal experience, the experience of friends and family, scientific experiments, and the experience of organizations are intimate. More formal knowledge comes from incidents covered on television, then in films, or documentaries, and on to reading newspapers, magazines and the net, and finally in massive detail, in books – all make up a spreading pool of knowledge. Hedges says little about this, except to decry the obvious aliteracy, limited literacy and illiteracy of a majority of people in the US – and the dangers this poses to democracy. The fact that no present major figure even discusses this proves his point.
Hedges brushes on the failed culture of bourgeois journalism; the ubiquitous nature and consistently deceptive content of television, such as reality television; the powerful effect of the shared myths in films; and most potent of all - the mass spectacle of sports. These areas seem to fit into the culture of illusion – but, curiously enough, they are for the most part absent from the book. He frequently cites Neil Postman’s excellent 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” showing his book to be in this tradition of sociological critiques of U.S. culture. His frequent lapses into political rhetoric are the only thing that mar this volume.
“Culture of Fear – Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things,” by Barry Glassner, 2009
This book links to Hedges book in the sense that they both talk about how bourgeois culture’s nearly full-time role is to hide the realities behind the scenes. The Wizard of Oz is a powerful ogre until his curtain is pulled aside. Both Hedges and Glassner attempt to pull back the curtain of U.S. culture. Glassner has a more scientific approach and keeps on topic. He catalogs in a factual manner all the ‘mis-direction’ that the American media issue to hide the reality that cannot speak its name. That reality – poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, lack of health care, the tyranny of corporations, lack of democracy, war, foreclosures – cannot be feared, because fearing them would make the population face their real problems. To avoid this is the essence of creating fake problems, which mostly lead people to ‘blame the victims’ or concentrate on the wrong things.
Glassner essentially describes the press-driven scares of the '90s, and shows how they bear little resemblance to reality by citing science and facts. Fear of decreasing crime, fear by whites of black men, hatred of teen-age moms, fear of ostensible killer children, mysterious ‘metaphoric’ microbes, road rage, Gulf War syndrome, infrequent plane wrecks, asbestos, house mold, foreign terrorists, illegal drugs, ‘political correctness,’ breast implants, date rape drugs, rap music, child abduction, cyber-smut, pedophiles, Halloween candy – all these outsize fears come in for a lashing. He is an equal-opportunity critic – liberal fears like Gulf War Syndrome and breast implants also get lambasted,
Glassner thinks there are 5 things that make a good ‘fear’ story in the U.S. 1, it has to have some anecdotal evidence – tearful mothers, catching personal testimony. 2, it has to have some shaky but repeated secondary scientific ‘authority’ to promote it. 3, it has to be endorsed and repeated by important news or political persons. 4, it has to have some statistic that looks good on the surface until you look under the hood. And 5, most importantly, it has to reflect some more deep-seated concern that the fake fear displaces, and therefore hides.
Take implants. While, according to Glassner, most science indicated they were not responsible for the many serious and varied problems they were blamed for, feminists used this matter to attack the masculine medical industry, which would insert bags into womens’ bodies for men’s pleasure. This was at a time when the issue of abortion was being hammered by the Right, and the ability to have an abortion was starting to disappear. People angry about the Gulf War could direct their anger about the war into the GWS issue – and not the issue of imperialist militarism. According to Glassner, GWS had no definitive medical insignia. I myself think Gulf War syndrome will show up in latent cancers, based on exposure to radiation from depleted uranium, so I am not as happy as Glassner to call it a fraud.
While these two were liberal issues, most of the other issues are conservative ones. The constant talk about crime, for instance, even when statistics show it is declining, indicates that ‘fear’ and the local news are twins. Television is crowded with programs that feature various grisly murders and the ‘heroic’ people that solve them. Fear of other people is at the heart of most conservative scares. It is designed to get people to distrust anyone other than immediate family members and friends, and break down any social solidarity that might develop. These fears are just part of the culture wars waged by the Right. It is what they point to as the ‘decay’ of civilization. Glassner would agree – but it is not these ridiculous issues that are ruining the U.S.
Glassner shows a bit too much faith in any scientific testing – even going on to say at one point that tests on their own products sponsored by the medical industry are as accurate as any other. Anyone familiar with the practice of science in the United States knows that even scientists can be bought; can alter statistics; can structure a test to prove a pre-determined point. Skepticism when it comes to corporate ‘tests’ is a necessity, as it has been shown that companies have changed or hidden results. But for the most part Glassner stays on-course, and teaches us to be wary of the fake fears promoted by politicians, neurotics and the news media.
And I bought them at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 2/25/2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Worker restiveness in Europe
As Mayday's distinguished (albeit unpaid) foreign correspondent in Europe, I suppose I should cite this article in today's Independent:
A wave of industrial and social unrest is building across Europe as workersI don't want to do an extensive copy-and-paste but I recommend the article be read in full to grasp the dimensions of the European crisis. The political arrangements that lie at the foundations of the capitalist system at any point in time tend to be makeshift and ad-hoc, jettisoned when they no longer work. This applies to Europe with the same strength as it does to the US. As I see it, there are two aspects. The first is how Europe will fit into a fluid and changing global economy -- one which incidentally it's crucially dependent on for trade. The second is what will happen (and is happening) in Europe itself. My humble opinion is that the "Club Med" countries -- the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) -- will leave the Eurozone (but not the EU). The inner core will be "Mitteleuropa": Germany, France, Benelux, Scandinavia, Austria. The eurozone was built on a dream of a united Europe -- a fairytale. The present strains between Northern Europe and Mediterranean Europe show how absurd the dream was. Worker restiveness in Spain and Greece is a symptom both of the unworkability of that dream and the global economic crisis that has demonstrated the flaws of the conception of Europe.
resist attempts by governments and private companies to impose austerity
policies, drive down wages and rescue some nations from near-bankruptcy.
Huge protest rallies took place in cities across Spain last night; today
a general strike could paralyse Greece while industrial action at French
airports and oil plants as well as the narrowly averted stoppage at Germany's
Lufthansa promise to be just the start of the greatest demonstration of public
unrest seen on the continent since the revolutionary fervour of 1968. Europe's
industrial economy is not clear of recession yet either and with unemployment
rising and demands for austerity growing, Europe's workers are becoming
increasingly restive.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A country of serfs
I read the articles of Paul Craig Roberts with keen appreciation; he has a knack for explaining seemingly complex things in pellucid and succinct fashion. Here is an excerpt from his latest:
In short, the stimulus programs are a complete crock. Now where did I stash my whiskey bottle?
Policymakers who are banking on stimulus programs are thinking in terms of an economy that no longer exists.... The U.S. labor force is being separated from the incomes associated with the goods and services that it consumes. With the rise of offshoring, layoffs are not only due to restrictive monetary policy
and inventory buildup. They are also the result of the substitution of cheaper
foreign labor for U.S. labor by American corporations. Americans cannot be
called back to work to jobs that have been moved abroad. In the New Economy,
layoffs can continue despite low interest rates and government stimulus
programs.
To the extent that monetary and fiscal policy can stimulate U.S.
consumer demand, much of the demand flows to the goods and services that are
produced offshore for U.S. markets. China, for example, benefits from the
stimulation of U.S. consumer demand. The rise in China’s GDP is financed by a
rise in the U.S. public debt burden.
Another barrier to the success of stimulus programs is the high debt
levels of Americans. The banks are being criticized for a failure to lend, but
much of the problem is that there are no consumers to whom to lend. Most
Americans already have more debt than they can handle.
In short, the stimulus programs are a complete crock. Now where did I stash my whiskey bottle?
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Arm A Gettin’ -- Out
“Ecological Revolution,” by John Bellamy Foster, 2009
Marxist theory has been crossing the desert. Recent Marxist theorists either make contributions so minuscule as to go unnoticed, or make academic ones that barely register in the real world. Anyone who can point to a major contribution by a recent theorist, other than the group around Monthly Review, gets a free drink from me.
Foster, on the other hand, has made a massive breakthrough. Essentially Foster illustrates the strong environmentalism in the work of Marx and Engels; and Foster uses these insights to show that the present environmental crisis cannot be solved under capitalism.
Bourgeois ecologists like Al Gore, petit-bourgeois ‘deep-ecology’ theorists and crude productionist Marxists inspired by the Soviet Union in the 1930s all oppose the idea that Marx cared about sustainability.
Who said this?
“The private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all existing societies taken together are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias {good heads of the household}.”
-- Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III. This is not the ‘young Marx’ but the mature Marx speaking.
Or this?
“…it {is} intolerable that ‘all creatures have been made into property; the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth – all living things must also become free.’ ” Black Elk? Some hippy? No, Marx, approvingly quoting the peasant revolutionary Thomas Muntzer.
Marx observed that capital introduced alienation, not just of labor, but between the earth and society. Both the soil and labor were exploited for essentially private profit. Marx, basing his work on Liebig, a German soil chemist, wrote extensively about how soil was exhausted in order to feed the cities, and then the human waste of the cities, instead of being recycled, was thrown in the Thames, polluting the water. He pointed out that the soil of Ireland had been used up for the profit of London. Capitalists scoured the battlefields of Europe for bones, and islands in Peru for guano, until they discovered how to make artificial agricultural fertilizer. And this chemically-based fertilizer, Foster points out, is a non-renewable resource. As is the oil used in the agricultural machines. Foster illustrates how Marx observed that capital creates a ‘metabolic’ rift between society and nature.
Marx again, Capital, Vol. 1:
“All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in raising the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility... Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques … undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.” Soil condition was the key environmental issue of the day, as it directly related to the issue of food. However, according to Foster, Marx did not just concern himself with soil issues, but deforestation, desertification, climate change, the elimination of deer from the forests, the commodification of species, pollution, industrial wastes, toxic contamination, recycling, the exhaustion of coal mines, disease, overpopulation and the evolution and co-evolution of species.
Foster then lists the contributions of dozens of other Marxists and socialists to environmentalism, showing that the socialist tendency made the original environmental critique. William Morris, Henry Salt, August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, VI Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, VI Vernadsky, NI Vavilov, Alexander Oparin, Christopher Caldwell, Myman Levy, Lancelot Hogben, JD Bernal, Benjamin Farrington, JBS Haldane, Joseph Needham were all Marxists and socialists that made contributions to environmental theory. The dedicated environmentalist Lunacharskii was appointed by Lenin to be in charge of conservation for the USSR. In 1919 Lenin set aside in the southern Urals the first nature preserve in the world for the exclusive study of nature. Conspicuously missing from this list is Leon Trotsky, and this author will attempt to see if this is a political omission or a factual one. Foster indicates that in the 1930s in the USSR, Lysenkoism and bureaucratism throttled the dialectic as applied to nature, and environmental thought died out among those influenced by this strand of Marxism.
Even today, it is nations and areas with a strong socialist currents – in Cuba, Venezuela, Kerala in India, Curitiba & Porto Alegre in Brazil, and Evo Morales in Bolivia – that are making the largest strides towards sustainability. Even China – which was built on a ‘productionist’ view of development – has decreed almost a trillion dollars be spent on wind farms and solar production, and they are now the leading solar producers in the world. The government shut down 100s of coal mines at the drop of a hat. They outlawed plastic bag production by decree. They made it mandatory that every new office building now built be LEED certified. While these steps alone cannot stop global climate change, they indicate what an economy not thoroughly controlled by capitalists and the 'market' can do.
Right now bourgeois environmentalism consists of finding a technological ‘silver bullet’ to ‘solve’ the environmental crises of global warming, dying species, non-sustainable agriculture and fishing, peak oil, chemical contamination, water and nitrate shortages, among others -all within the confines of the market. Bourgeois economists interested in the environmental crisis, all advocate a ‘go slow’ approach, so as not to injure capitalist profitability. This is the approach of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. This was their position at Copenhagen. This is what is behind the ‘cap & trade’ system they advocate, which will make carbon a commodity, affordable to wealthy corporations, but do little to slow climate change. And who is behind this new form of derivatives? Goldman Sachs is already operating a carbon-trading desk. They want to make everything in the world - water, air, the weather - a commodity. And if this does not work, their plan is to build 'fortresses' around their centers of wealth - on a national, regional or even a local basis, when ecological deterioration gets too great.
To give you an idea of where these people are coming from, here is a quote from Larry Summers, Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary, World Bank chief economist, and one of Obama’s chief economic advisors: “The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”
Building on Mike Davis' investigation of this "Planet of Slums" (reviewed below) you could even say that the health of the environment is measured by the size of capitalist cities. As capitalist agricultural methods like mechanization, chemicalization and monopoly increase; water, air, soil conditions deteriorate; and pollution spreads - more and more traditional farmers and peasants see their livelihoods destroyed, and are forced to move to the cities. In the U.S., small farmers were ruined in the depression and Dust Bowl, and continuing corporatization of farming has done the same to American agriculture, ruining small farmers and depopulating the rural areas - though perhaps without the same dire conditions as faced in Bangladesh, Mexico City or Kinshasa. In contrast, Marx always advocated spreading the population and solving the contradiction between town and country. Instead, the contradictions are getting worse.
For bourgeois environmentalism, the health of immediate capitalist profits is primary over the environment. And this will never change, up to and including any ecological collapse. I quote from Foster: “We should not underestimate capitalism’s capacity to accumulate in the midst of the most blatant ecological destruction, to profit from environmental degradation and to continue to destroy the earth to the point of no return…because the system does not have an internal (or external) regulatory mechanism that causes it to reorganize. There is no ecological counterpart to the business cycle.”
Foster’s work provides a revolutionary tool to undermine the capitalist system, and restore the earth. Capital cannot survive without profiting from 'growth.' It literally cannot live in a finite world - a limit which it has reached. Without seeing the intimate and undying link between capital accumulation and non-sustainability, no environmental movement can succeed.
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, 2/14/2010
Marxist theory has been crossing the desert. Recent Marxist theorists either make contributions so minuscule as to go unnoticed, or make academic ones that barely register in the real world. Anyone who can point to a major contribution by a recent theorist, other than the group around Monthly Review, gets a free drink from me.
Bourgeois ecologists like Al Gore, petit-bourgeois ‘deep-ecology’ theorists and crude productionist Marxists inspired by the Soviet Union in the 1930s all oppose the idea that Marx cared about sustainability.
Who said this?
“The private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all existing societies taken together are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias {good heads of the household}.”
-- Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III. This is not the ‘young Marx’ but the mature Marx speaking.
Or this?
“…it {is} intolerable that ‘all creatures have been made into property; the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth – all living things must also become free.’ ” Black Elk? Some hippy? No, Marx, approvingly quoting the peasant revolutionary Thomas Muntzer.
Marx observed that capital introduced alienation, not just of labor, but between the earth and society. Both the soil and labor were exploited for essentially private profit. Marx, basing his work on Liebig, a German soil chemist, wrote extensively about how soil was exhausted in order to feed the cities, and then the human waste of the cities, instead of being recycled, was thrown in the Thames, polluting the water. He pointed out that the soil of Ireland had been used up for the profit of London. Capitalists scoured the battlefields of Europe for bones, and islands in Peru for guano, until they discovered how to make artificial agricultural fertilizer. And this chemically-based fertilizer, Foster points out, is a non-renewable resource. As is the oil used in the agricultural machines. Foster illustrates how Marx observed that capital creates a ‘metabolic’ rift between society and nature.
Marx again, Capital, Vol. 1:
“All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in raising the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility... Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques … undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.” Soil condition was the key environmental issue of the day, as it directly related to the issue of food. However, according to Foster, Marx did not just concern himself with soil issues, but deforestation, desertification, climate change, the elimination of deer from the forests, the commodification of species, pollution, industrial wastes, toxic contamination, recycling, the exhaustion of coal mines, disease, overpopulation and the evolution and co-evolution of species.
Foster then lists the contributions of dozens of other Marxists and socialists to environmentalism, showing that the socialist tendency made the original environmental critique. William Morris, Henry Salt, August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, VI Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, VI Vernadsky, NI Vavilov, Alexander Oparin, Christopher Caldwell, Myman Levy, Lancelot Hogben, JD Bernal, Benjamin Farrington, JBS Haldane, Joseph Needham were all Marxists and socialists that made contributions to environmental theory. The dedicated environmentalist Lunacharskii was appointed by Lenin to be in charge of conservation for the USSR. In 1919 Lenin set aside in the southern Urals the first nature preserve in the world for the exclusive study of nature. Conspicuously missing from this list is Leon Trotsky, and this author will attempt to see if this is a political omission or a factual one. Foster indicates that in the 1930s in the USSR, Lysenkoism and bureaucratism throttled the dialectic as applied to nature, and environmental thought died out among those influenced by this strand of Marxism.
Even today, it is nations and areas with a strong socialist currents – in Cuba, Venezuela, Kerala in India, Curitiba & Porto Alegre in Brazil, and Evo Morales in Bolivia – that are making the largest strides towards sustainability. Even China – which was built on a ‘productionist’ view of development – has decreed almost a trillion dollars be spent on wind farms and solar production, and they are now the leading solar producers in the world. The government shut down 100s of coal mines at the drop of a hat. They outlawed plastic bag production by decree. They made it mandatory that every new office building now built be LEED certified. While these steps alone cannot stop global climate change, they indicate what an economy not thoroughly controlled by capitalists and the 'market' can do.
Right now bourgeois environmentalism consists of finding a technological ‘silver bullet’ to ‘solve’ the environmental crises of global warming, dying species, non-sustainable agriculture and fishing, peak oil, chemical contamination, water and nitrate shortages, among others -all within the confines of the market. Bourgeois economists interested in the environmental crisis, all advocate a ‘go slow’ approach, so as not to injure capitalist profitability. This is the approach of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. This was their position at Copenhagen. This is what is behind the ‘cap & trade’ system they advocate, which will make carbon a commodity, affordable to wealthy corporations, but do little to slow climate change. And who is behind this new form of derivatives? Goldman Sachs is already operating a carbon-trading desk. They want to make everything in the world - water, air, the weather - a commodity. And if this does not work, their plan is to build 'fortresses' around their centers of wealth - on a national, regional or even a local basis, when ecological deterioration gets too great.
To give you an idea of where these people are coming from, here is a quote from Larry Summers, Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary, World Bank chief economist, and one of Obama’s chief economic advisors: “The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”
Building on Mike Davis' investigation of this "Planet of Slums" (reviewed below) you could even say that the health of the environment is measured by the size of capitalist cities. As capitalist agricultural methods like mechanization, chemicalization and monopoly increase; water, air, soil conditions deteriorate; and pollution spreads - more and more traditional farmers and peasants see their livelihoods destroyed, and are forced to move to the cities. In the U.S., small farmers were ruined in the depression and Dust Bowl, and continuing corporatization of farming has done the same to American agriculture, ruining small farmers and depopulating the rural areas - though perhaps without the same dire conditions as faced in Bangladesh, Mexico City or Kinshasa. In contrast, Marx always advocated spreading the population and solving the contradiction between town and country. Instead, the contradictions are getting worse.
For bourgeois environmentalism, the health of immediate capitalist profits is primary over the environment. And this will never change, up to and including any ecological collapse. I quote from Foster: “We should not underestimate capitalism’s capacity to accumulate in the midst of the most blatant ecological destruction, to profit from environmental degradation and to continue to destroy the earth to the point of no return…because the system does not have an internal (or external) regulatory mechanism that causes it to reorganize. There is no ecological counterpart to the business cycle.”
Foster’s work provides a revolutionary tool to undermine the capitalist system, and restore the earth. Capital cannot survive without profiting from 'growth.' It literally cannot live in a finite world - a limit which it has reached. Without seeing the intimate and undying link between capital accumulation and non-sustainability, no environmental movement can succeed.
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, 2/14/2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
A Fellow Commodity Wants to Warn You...
NOTHING IS TOO GOOD FOR THE RICH !
supreme court rules...Money talks........shit walks.
“...the Supreme Court will remain what it has been during the greater part of its existence of the United States—a bulwark of the propertied class against the propertyless”.
“...(It is)... an ILLUSION that it is an impartial and objective body composed of apolitical men with a deep and abiding sense of justice, dedicated primarily and at all times to the defense of the liberties and freedoms guaranteed to all by the Bill of Rights”.
The above brief excerpts are from “The SUPREME COURT, Watch dog of Capitalism”. Socialist Labor Party 1971
----------FellowCommodityDooley
2/8/2010
supreme court rules...Money talks........shit walks.
“...the Supreme Court will remain what it has been during the greater part of its existence of the United States—a bulwark of the propertied class against the propertyless”.
“...(It is)... an ILLUSION that it is an impartial and objective body composed of apolitical men with a deep and abiding sense of justice, dedicated primarily and at all times to the defense of the liberties and freedoms guaranteed to all by the Bill of Rights”.
The above brief excerpts are from “The SUPREME COURT, Watch dog of Capitalism”. Socialist Labor Party 1971
----------FellowCommodityDooley
2/8/2010
Stop It: The Play’s Not the Thing
“Rock and Roll,” by Tom Stoppard, first produced June 2006, England – Park Square Theatre, St. Paul, 2010
Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia, and his real name is Straussler. He’s written several plays about events in Eastern Europe, mostly from the position of an anarchist or perhaps petit-bourgeois intellectual. Before it opened, this play had ‘good vibrations,’ as it were. It was ostensibly about the Plastic People of the Universe, an underground rock band in Prague that just wanted to play rock and roll. The resistance of the Plastics helped mobilize youth against the Husak regime. Husak was put in power after Alexander Dubcek was deposed by the 1968 Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.
I saw the Plastics at the Cedar last year, and they were great. Four of the original members played. They are gaunt, tall, serious rockers. They exude more gravitas than 99% of most American rock bands. They do not speak much English. They are self-taught musicians. They refused to cut their hair, change their lyrics or their heavy, experimental, edgy sound, no matter how much pressure was applied by the secret police. For this they were repeatedly jailed by the Husak regime in the 70s for refusing to play what they were told.
The play, however, is really two plays in one. One play is about the situation in Czechoslovakia, seen through the eyes of three people - a British Communist intellectual, a Plastics fan and an intellectual dissident close to what becomes Charter 77. The other play is about, yes, Syd Barrett, the demented genius behind the early albums of Pink Floyd, And also about several generations of English Barrett fans - presumably including Stoppard. Barrett left Floyd, recorded two great, invisible solo albums, lost his mind, then retreated to the streets of Cambridge, England for many years as the village ‘crazy.’ Neither the Plastics or Barrett really ever make an appearance. The play constantly alternates between a drawing room in Cambridge and run-down apartment in Prague, but it is the spirit of Barrett as a Greek “Pan” that entrances the play and the players, not the developments in Prague. The professor’s daughter and grand-daughter become protectors of the errant Barrett, and he is the unseen presence that animates the English.
Not one song by the Plastics is used in the whole play. Hard to believe. There is not one nightclub, but many spun records. Music by the Stones, Floyd, and the Velvet Underground (the Velvet Revolution, remember?) play instead. Instead of creating a parallel between a Plastics fan in Czechoslovakia and perhaps the insurrectionary spirit of a Stones fan in Britain listening to “Street Fighting Man,” or of British pirate radio – Stoppard for the most part clearly comes down on the side of this wonderful life in Britain. His Cambridge ‘don’ and Communist professor stays a ‘Tankie’ (supporter of the ’68 Soviet intervention) until finally deciding to back Charter 77 ten years later, after the Plastics are again jailed. Rock is not to be taken seriously by 'intellectuals,' so it is interesting that it is the subject of this play. This play is an attempt to show the liberating effects of rock and roll by a clear fan, Stoppard, but it fails because it doesn’t really link politics and rock.
The play, of course, shows how the Stalinist position of ‘socialist realism’ or ‘folk art,’ at the expense of all other styles, undermined the Czechoslovak workers state. Czech youth and intellectuals like Vaclav Havel united on the demand for ‘freedom of music.’ Havel was himself a poet and a rock fan too. Really quite a simple thing to grant, you’d think. The transformation of the 'don' from the most die-hard supporter of the bureaucracy to an anti-capitalist anti-Soviet dissident is the intellectual thread that connects the play together.
However, the play also unintentionally shows the commodification of even ‘rock and roll’ by capital. The play ends with a performance by the Stones in Prague; not a performance by the Plastics in London. That is significant. The Stones penetrate the eastern bloc. And bank capital (not 'tank' capital) penetrates the eastern bloc. But not visa versa. The Stones were at one time problem-children, even for western capital. Now, from 40 years later, they are just another product sold to entertain the aging youth. After all, our greatest opium is not religion – it is entertainment.
And I didn’t see it at Mayday Books….
Red Frog, February 8, 2010
Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia, and his real name is Straussler. He’s written several plays about events in Eastern Europe, mostly from the position of an anarchist or perhaps petit-bourgeois intellectual. Before it opened, this play had ‘good vibrations,’ as it were. It was ostensibly about the Plastic People of the Universe, an underground rock band in Prague that just wanted to play rock and roll. The resistance of the Plastics helped mobilize youth against the Husak regime. Husak was put in power after Alexander Dubcek was deposed by the 1968 Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.
 |
| Czech band Plastic People of the Universe |
The play, however, is really two plays in one. One play is about the situation in Czechoslovakia, seen through the eyes of three people - a British Communist intellectual, a Plastics fan and an intellectual dissident close to what becomes Charter 77. The other play is about, yes, Syd Barrett, the demented genius behind the early albums of Pink Floyd, And also about several generations of English Barrett fans - presumably including Stoppard. Barrett left Floyd, recorded two great, invisible solo albums, lost his mind, then retreated to the streets of Cambridge, England for many years as the village ‘crazy.’ Neither the Plastics or Barrett really ever make an appearance. The play constantly alternates between a drawing room in Cambridge and run-down apartment in Prague, but it is the spirit of Barrett as a Greek “Pan” that entrances the play and the players, not the developments in Prague. The professor’s daughter and grand-daughter become protectors of the errant Barrett, and he is the unseen presence that animates the English.
Not one song by the Plastics is used in the whole play. Hard to believe. There is not one nightclub, but many spun records. Music by the Stones, Floyd, and the Velvet Underground (the Velvet Revolution, remember?) play instead. Instead of creating a parallel between a Plastics fan in Czechoslovakia and perhaps the insurrectionary spirit of a Stones fan in Britain listening to “Street Fighting Man,” or of British pirate radio – Stoppard for the most part clearly comes down on the side of this wonderful life in Britain. His Cambridge ‘don’ and Communist professor stays a ‘Tankie’ (supporter of the ’68 Soviet intervention) until finally deciding to back Charter 77 ten years later, after the Plastics are again jailed. Rock is not to be taken seriously by 'intellectuals,' so it is interesting that it is the subject of this play. This play is an attempt to show the liberating effects of rock and roll by a clear fan, Stoppard, but it fails because it doesn’t really link politics and rock.
The play, of course, shows how the Stalinist position of ‘socialist realism’ or ‘folk art,’ at the expense of all other styles, undermined the Czechoslovak workers state. Czech youth and intellectuals like Vaclav Havel united on the demand for ‘freedom of music.’ Havel was himself a poet and a rock fan too. Really quite a simple thing to grant, you’d think. The transformation of the 'don' from the most die-hard supporter of the bureaucracy to an anti-capitalist anti-Soviet dissident is the intellectual thread that connects the play together.
However, the play also unintentionally shows the commodification of even ‘rock and roll’ by capital. The play ends with a performance by the Stones in Prague; not a performance by the Plastics in London. That is significant. The Stones penetrate the eastern bloc. And bank capital (not 'tank' capital) penetrates the eastern bloc. But not visa versa. The Stones were at one time problem-children, even for western capital. Now, from 40 years later, they are just another product sold to entertain the aging youth. After all, our greatest opium is not religion – it is entertainment.
And I didn’t see it at Mayday Books….
Red Frog, February 8, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Obama's first year
An edifying essay by David Michael Green on Obama's first year:
There may have been presidents in the USA's chequered history who've been even more incompetent, mendacious, indecisive, and lacking in ideas and conviction -- Warren Harding, maybe? But like Green, I think Obama is the most pathetic and worthless little sh!t who ever got elected to the presidency. Of course, being a Marxist, one must be careful to see things systemically. A pathetic and scummy little sh!t like Obama is a simply a product of a corrupt and mendacious political system, itself a part of an extortionate and militaristic plutocracy. Christ, I could use a stiff whiskey right now.
Barack Obama has now, in just a year’s time, become the single most inept
president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my
lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been pissed away so
rapidly, and what’s more in the context of so much national urgency and
crisis. It’s astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in
a single year.
It was hilarious, of course, when Michelle Bachmann invoked the Charge
of the Light Brigade at a rally against “Obama’s” (has he ever really owned it?)
health care “initiative” (isn’t that too strong a word to use?), quite oblivious
to the fact that the actual historical event was one of history’s greatest
debacles. Obama, on the other hand, seems to be actually reliving the
famous cock-up in the flesh. Except, of course, that he doesn’t really
“charge” at anything. He just talks about things, thinks about things a
real long time, defers to others on things, and waits around for things to maybe
happen.
There may have been presidents in the USA's chequered history who've been even more incompetent, mendacious, indecisive, and lacking in ideas and conviction -- Warren Harding, maybe? But like Green, I think Obama is the most pathetic and worthless little sh!t who ever got elected to the presidency. Of course, being a Marxist, one must be careful to see things systemically. A pathetic and scummy little sh!t like Obama is a simply a product of a corrupt and mendacious political system, itself a part of an extortionate and militaristic plutocracy. Christ, I could use a stiff whiskey right now.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Labor, Part II: Trumka
One of the few bright spots in the recent development of the labor movement is the election of Rich Trumka as president of the AFL-CIO. A quick view of the succession of AFL-CIO presidents, from Meany to Kirkland to Sweeney to Trumka, shows that the political views of each gets 'a bit' more leftish. This corresponds to the increasingly weak and desperate state of the labor movement - though of course lagging behind the real situation.
Trumka is a veteran of the ferocious Pittston strike in the 80s. He was president of the United Mine Workers and led the UMW into the Labor Party in the 90s. The UMW is a blue-collar union of workers actually making goods, not moving paper or providing labor services. The recent demonstrations in Chicago against the bankers convention there were the biggest mobilization labor has had in awhile - and it was highly visible. Trumka just today warned the Democrats that a bad health plan and a lack of financial regulation will lead workers to stay home in droves in 2010, as they did in 1994 under Clinton. He pointed out that workers at that time did not see a dimes worth of difference between the Party's practice, in spite of the Democrats happy labor sloganeering.
Trumka could help lead to a new attitude towards labor's electoral and strike practice. Watch Trumka.
Red Frog
1/11/10
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Mao Ma, Mao Ma, Mao Ma, Ma Mao, Get a Job
“Embedded With Organized Labor,” by Steve Early, 2009
This is the first book on labor reviewed on these pages. This is not an accident. Like a bad marriage or a war, looking back on a long string of defeats or miseries is not something anyone relishes. I spent the mid-70s to the early-90s mostly as a union ‘rank-and-filer’ in Chicago and Minneapolis, so this is not an abstract story for me. The labor movement has been beaten senseless. It has puked on its shirt before the whole nation time after time. Even the singing of innocuous songs like “Solidarity Forever” now grates. Because ‘solidarity’ is almost, actually, never. Labor clichés, like Marxist cliché’s or anarchist clichés, need to be banned for awhile. We need to go back to … facts. Ruthless facts.
This is the first book on labor reviewed on these pages. This is not an accident. Like a bad marriage or a war, looking back on a long string of defeats or miseries is not something anyone relishes. I spent the mid-70s to the early-90s mostly as a union ‘rank-and-filer’ in Chicago and Minneapolis, so this is not an abstract story for me. The labor movement has been beaten senseless. It has puked on its shirt before the whole nation time after time. Even the singing of innocuous songs like “Solidarity Forever” now grates. Because ‘solidarity’ is almost, actually, never. Labor clichés, like Marxist cliché’s or anarchist clichés, need to be banned for awhile. We need to go back to … facts. Ruthless facts.
Steve Early’s book is actually a book of book reviews, although the sections seem somewhat disjointed. He has read almost every recent book concerned with the labor movement. This volume is invaluable as a readers’ guide for labor activists and anyone else who understands that without labor, there will be very little change. It is appreciated that he only dwells briefly on the classics of American Labor history. Our infatuation with the 30s and the Knights Of Labor etc. blinds us to our own recent history and the present configuration of American and world capital. Early does not read as a zombie, but as someone who has definite ideas about what is needed for labor to come back from the dead. He has been there too.
Early’s reviews go from general, high-profile books down to academic volumes concerned with the twists and turns of Sweeny and the “Change to Win” coalition. Barbara Erenreich’s book “Nickel and Dimed’ comes in for review as one of the former. Early compares it to George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London," and Jack London’s “The Abyss” - quite high praise. Early reviews “Revolution in the Air” by Max Elbaum, (also reviewed in these pages, below) pointing out its bizarre Maoist infatuations, and reaffirms that Elbaum does not really cover Maoist labor activity. Early seems to be a class-conscious labor activist, not really wedded to any one Marxist strand, close to the CLR James view of the importance of actual working-class practice. (CLR James is reviewed below too.) He also seems to be a sympathizer of the International Socialists, based on their work in TDU and Labor Notes, but he is not dominated by any one ‘line.’
After a short section on historical labor literature, Early scans Linda Chavez’ anti-labor books, probably as his version of ‘fair and balanced.’ Chavez once worked for Albert Shanker and the AFT – a cold-war, uber-white-collar union leadership. In a way, the teachers’ unions replaced the AFL building trades as the unions of ‘privileged’ labor. Chavez is their bastard child. Her account follows the right-wing reign of Meany-Kirkland and its domination by staffers from Social Democrats USA. She spends much time showing her fondness for neo-conservatives, and red-baiting the Democratic Socialists of America around John Sweeney, a closet member. As a former ‘labor’ leader, she spends most of her time attacking even the idea of labor unions.(!)
As an antidote to cold-war ‘unionism,’ Early reviews “SingleJack Solidarity” and “Punching Out,” both books concentrating on a rank-and-file unionism, and attacking the ideas coming from, for instance, the leadership of UNITE-HERE, that bigger is better. The authors are former supporters of the Workers Party of CLR James. They criticize the idea of ‘social unionism’ represented by Reuther as not much different than ‘business unionism,’ because both of them were thoroughly top-down. Early also later reviews Staughton Lynds two books on modern rank-and-file activism, “The New Rank & File” and “Personal Histories of Working-Class Organizers,” including leftists who ‘colonized’ various work sites.
Believe it or not, someone has written a book on Tony Mazzochi, called “The Man Who Hated Work.” Mazzochi was legendary as the conflicted founder of the Labor Party; head of OCAW and friend of Karen Silkwood; fighter for OSHA and environmentalism; supporter of various social causes, who helped organize “US Labor Against the War” and started working-class book clubs. Early considers Mazzochi to be a unique individual in the American labor movement, combining an affinity for the left with an ability to remain connected to the rest of the labor movement.
Regarding black labor activism, Jacqueline Jones has written a descriptive book on the long history of discrimination and racism in the US labor movement, “American Labor.” “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel” covers the history of black workers influence in the steelworkers union, up to the Sadlowski campaign in the 1970s and the rust belt turn in the 80s. Another book, “Left Out’ details the influence of non-white workers in the labor movement, even quoting WEB Dubois, who points out that the CIO became a ‘major racially egalitarian force in American life.’ “Beyond the Fields” is a book covering the UFW campaigns from the 1960s to the present. It shows how the UFW, lead by Cesar Chavez, functioned as a social movement, not just a union, and owed much of its success to that. There is a chapter on the short-comings of Chavez, who towards the end got rid of any democratic life in ‘his’ union. A member of the “Change to Win” coalition, the UFW is now down to 6,000 members in 2007.
Early then takes up theoretical questions, reviewing “The Working-Class Majority” by economist Michael Zweig. Zweig directly attacks the idea that the ‘middle class’ is the majority in the United States, and that this phrase means the same thing as ‘working class.’ Zweig contends that this verbal ‘switch’ so beloved of politicians and bad journalists disappears the working class from existence - although, according to him, the working class is 62% of the labor force. The book “Striking Steel” also makes the same point, though in a more personal way, attacking the domination of the professional middle class in culture and politics, and pointing out that the exceptional period of the 50s was the high point of working-class life in the U.S. And, I might add, never to be repeated. Early also covers the ILA dock-workers campaign of the ‘Charleston 5’ in the book, “On the Global Waterfront.” The remnants of the Labor Party in South Carolina were deeply involved in this campaign.
In two sections, Early reviews a number of books, both laudatory and critical, on the Sweeney “New Voice” leadership of the AFL-CIO, and the politics behind the recent split of the “Change to Win” coalition, and their leader, technocrat Andy Stern. Both situations involved an influx of more middle-class, college-educated activists into staff positions. As someone who had zero faith that Sweeney would change anything vital, it is interesting to read about the small changes that did happen when Sweeney swept the cold warriors of the SDUSA out of Solidarity House. Early feels this event was largely based on the Ron Carey victory in the Teamsters Union election immediately prior to Sweeney’s election.
The hardest part to read is Early’s section on labor’s strike defeats. If the words “Phelps Dodge”, “P9”, “International Paper”, “AE Staley”, “Caterpillar”, “Bridgestone-Firestone,” “Decatur”, “Ray Rogers,” “Overnite”, “6.5 years”, “camos” and “Pittston” bring out a certain pain, then you know what I am talking about. The central book Early reviews is “Three Strikes” by Chicago Tribune reporter Stephen Franklin about the ‘war zone’ in central Illinois around Decatur in the early 90s. This section mentions our own home-town hero and labor academic, Peter Rachleff, and his book, “Hard-Pressed in the Heartland,” about the Hormel strike, a defeated strike Minnesota labor activists were intimately connected to. 2003 saw only 14 strikes in the US, involving 129,000 people.
Early has somewhat disjointed sections on books about labor and environmentalism, prospects for future labor activism, labor law reform (including Chicagoan Tom Geoghegan’s book, “Which Side are you On?”) and in-plant strategies, international unionism, workers organizing outside unions in workers centers, immigrant labor activism, and again revisits SEIU and Andy Stern, in very illuminating pages. The section on Stern is dense, and reveals what “Change to Win” is really about – technocratic changes, top-down unionism, mergers and cooperation schemes with various managements.
Early ends his book in a most obvious, yet odd way, describing working-class literacy and book efforts in unions and out. He details the efforts and non-efforts of various union activists and internationals to promote reading about labor. Tony Mazzochi started a book club as one of his first acts of labor involvement. To focus on such a basic reality like this makes reading Early’s compendium of reviews such a pleasure.
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, 1/6/2010
Early’s reviews go from general, high-profile books down to academic volumes concerned with the twists and turns of Sweeny and the “Change to Win” coalition. Barbara Erenreich’s book “Nickel and Dimed’ comes in for review as one of the former. Early compares it to George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London," and Jack London’s “The Abyss” - quite high praise. Early reviews “Revolution in the Air” by Max Elbaum, (also reviewed in these pages, below) pointing out its bizarre Maoist infatuations, and reaffirms that Elbaum does not really cover Maoist labor activity. Early seems to be a class-conscious labor activist, not really wedded to any one Marxist strand, close to the CLR James view of the importance of actual working-class practice. (CLR James is reviewed below too.) He also seems to be a sympathizer of the International Socialists, based on their work in TDU and Labor Notes, but he is not dominated by any one ‘line.’
After a short section on historical labor literature, Early scans Linda Chavez’ anti-labor books, probably as his version of ‘fair and balanced.’ Chavez once worked for Albert Shanker and the AFT – a cold-war, uber-white-collar union leadership. In a way, the teachers’ unions replaced the AFL building trades as the unions of ‘privileged’ labor. Chavez is their bastard child. Her account follows the right-wing reign of Meany-Kirkland and its domination by staffers from Social Democrats USA. She spends much time showing her fondness for neo-conservatives, and red-baiting the Democratic Socialists of America around John Sweeney, a closet member. As a former ‘labor’ leader, she spends most of her time attacking even the idea of labor unions.(!)
As an antidote to cold-war ‘unionism,’ Early reviews “SingleJack Solidarity” and “Punching Out,” both books concentrating on a rank-and-file unionism, and attacking the ideas coming from, for instance, the leadership of UNITE-HERE, that bigger is better. The authors are former supporters of the Workers Party of CLR James. They criticize the idea of ‘social unionism’ represented by Reuther as not much different than ‘business unionism,’ because both of them were thoroughly top-down. Early also later reviews Staughton Lynds two books on modern rank-and-file activism, “The New Rank & File” and “Personal Histories of Working-Class Organizers,” including leftists who ‘colonized’ various work sites.
Believe it or not, someone has written a book on Tony Mazzochi, called “The Man Who Hated Work.” Mazzochi was legendary as the conflicted founder of the Labor Party; head of OCAW and friend of Karen Silkwood; fighter for OSHA and environmentalism; supporter of various social causes, who helped organize “US Labor Against the War” and started working-class book clubs. Early considers Mazzochi to be a unique individual in the American labor movement, combining an affinity for the left with an ability to remain connected to the rest of the labor movement.
Regarding black labor activism, Jacqueline Jones has written a descriptive book on the long history of discrimination and racism in the US labor movement, “American Labor.” “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel” covers the history of black workers influence in the steelworkers union, up to the Sadlowski campaign in the 1970s and the rust belt turn in the 80s. Another book, “Left Out’ details the influence of non-white workers in the labor movement, even quoting WEB Dubois, who points out that the CIO became a ‘major racially egalitarian force in American life.’ “Beyond the Fields” is a book covering the UFW campaigns from the 1960s to the present. It shows how the UFW, lead by Cesar Chavez, functioned as a social movement, not just a union, and owed much of its success to that. There is a chapter on the short-comings of Chavez, who towards the end got rid of any democratic life in ‘his’ union. A member of the “Change to Win” coalition, the UFW is now down to 6,000 members in 2007.
Early then takes up theoretical questions, reviewing “The Working-Class Majority” by economist Michael Zweig. Zweig directly attacks the idea that the ‘middle class’ is the majority in the United States, and that this phrase means the same thing as ‘working class.’ Zweig contends that this verbal ‘switch’ so beloved of politicians and bad journalists disappears the working class from existence - although, according to him, the working class is 62% of the labor force. The book “Striking Steel” also makes the same point, though in a more personal way, attacking the domination of the professional middle class in culture and politics, and pointing out that the exceptional period of the 50s was the high point of working-class life in the U.S. And, I might add, never to be repeated. Early also covers the ILA dock-workers campaign of the ‘Charleston 5’ in the book, “On the Global Waterfront.” The remnants of the Labor Party in South Carolina were deeply involved in this campaign.
In two sections, Early reviews a number of books, both laudatory and critical, on the Sweeney “New Voice” leadership of the AFL-CIO, and the politics behind the recent split of the “Change to Win” coalition, and their leader, technocrat Andy Stern. Both situations involved an influx of more middle-class, college-educated activists into staff positions. As someone who had zero faith that Sweeney would change anything vital, it is interesting to read about the small changes that did happen when Sweeney swept the cold warriors of the SDUSA out of Solidarity House. Early feels this event was largely based on the Ron Carey victory in the Teamsters Union election immediately prior to Sweeney’s election.
The hardest part to read is Early’s section on labor’s strike defeats. If the words “Phelps Dodge”, “P9”, “International Paper”, “AE Staley”, “Caterpillar”, “Bridgestone-Firestone,” “Decatur”, “Ray Rogers,” “Overnite”, “6.5 years”, “camos” and “Pittston” bring out a certain pain, then you know what I am talking about. The central book Early reviews is “Three Strikes” by Chicago Tribune reporter Stephen Franklin about the ‘war zone’ in central Illinois around Decatur in the early 90s. This section mentions our own home-town hero and labor academic, Peter Rachleff, and his book, “Hard-Pressed in the Heartland,” about the Hormel strike, a defeated strike Minnesota labor activists were intimately connected to. 2003 saw only 14 strikes in the US, involving 129,000 people.
Early has somewhat disjointed sections on books about labor and environmentalism, prospects for future labor activism, labor law reform (including Chicagoan Tom Geoghegan’s book, “Which Side are you On?”) and in-plant strategies, international unionism, workers organizing outside unions in workers centers, immigrant labor activism, and again revisits SEIU and Andy Stern, in very illuminating pages. The section on Stern is dense, and reveals what “Change to Win” is really about – technocratic changes, top-down unionism, mergers and cooperation schemes with various managements.
Early ends his book in a most obvious, yet odd way, describing working-class literacy and book efforts in unions and out. He details the efforts and non-efforts of various union activists and internationals to promote reading about labor. Tony Mazzochi started a book club as one of his first acts of labor involvement. To focus on such a basic reality like this makes reading Early’s compendium of reviews such a pleasure.
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, 1/6/2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Book Club at Mayday Books?
We've had requests for a book club at Mayday in the past, with intermittent success. Let me know by commenting if this idea appeals to you and what you might like to read and discuss with a group at Mayday?
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The origins of the state
This notion of a "workers' state" continues to bother me (though my apprehensions may be misplaced). As I understand it, the state originated with Babylon, Sumeria, Lydia, and Assyria. The idea was to expropriate agricultural surplus from peasant communities and use it to feed standing armies, which could then be used to invade other peasant communities (a "virtuous circle" of military expansion). The expropriation was carried out (if memory serves) through the introduction of coinage -- i.e., a monetary economy -- which allowed for taxation and caused, inter alia, the instant impoverishment of the peasantry. Anyone in the neighborhood not organised along state lines quickly got invaded by these proto-states and incorporated into these structures. Thus, the state itself was born as a military entity, and organised to channel resources from peasants to armies, rulers, a priesthood, and an aristocracy. In passing, it goes without saying that the state has been in the hands of different oligarchies at different times -- military rulers (like Sargon, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar in ancient times) or the modern capitalist bourgeoisie that we're lumbered with today. But regardless of the era and regardless of the nature of the ruling oligarchy, it has always served as an instrument of armed might, coercion and extortion. Whether it can ever be anything else -- such as a "workers' state" -- is what I'm wondering about.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
Ugly demonstrations
David Macaray echoing what I've been saying for awhile now:
I look forward to an implacable and militant working-class movement, which has been purged of all limousine liberals and champagne socialists, and which has been purged of all sissy "discourse" about Jameson and Althusser. I look forward, indeed, to a working class which slams an iron fist on the table and makes the ruling class dirty its pants. Unabashed class warfare, with class consciousness firmly instilled.
And guess what happened when these people poured into the streets, stopped
traffic, shut down businesses, and mixed it up with the police? They found
that by making a goddamn bloody nuisance of themselves they got what they
wanted. Only by “embarrassing” themselves were they reckoned with.
Of course, those in authority will always tell you that ugly
demonstrations don’t work. They’ll tell you that demonstrations are, in
fact, counterproductive, that the only tactics that can be relied upon to get
the dirty job done are rational discourse and the free but orderly exchange of
ideas.
This is a myth. The authorities tell workers that because they
want to control them. They want workers to believe it because the bosses
have no fear of rational discourse, and no dread of the free exchange of
ideas. What they do fear are massive protests. What they do dread
are ugly demonstrations. Which is why they work.
I look forward to an implacable and militant working-class movement, which has been purged of all limousine liberals and champagne socialists, and which has been purged of all sissy "discourse" about Jameson and Althusser. I look forward, indeed, to a working class which slams an iron fist on the table and makes the ruling class dirty its pants. Unabashed class warfare, with class consciousness firmly instilled.
Default structure
As I understand it, the usual liberal and progressive point of view is that there are certain immoral and greedy individuals at the pinnacle of capitalist society and that if these people are done away with (or persuaded of the error of their ways), everything will be hunky-dory. This is a deeply unsatisfying explanation, particularly to anyone steeped in Marxist thought. That we have the specific structure that we endure on a daily basis should itself give us pause. I contend that it is the "default structure" of our times, given our technological modernity and the concomitant stage of history we are presently at.
This is not to say that we should not struggle. We should. But this notion of "default structure" does, however, suggest two important caveats. The first is that we need to have an alternative very clearly delineated. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We don't want the fiasco of Orwell's "Animal Farm." Or in other words, without a very clear and detailed idea of where we want to go, we will unknowingly replicate the "default structure." The second caveat -- closely related to the first -- is that this default structure exerts a magnetic pull; in scientific lingo, it's a point of "stable equilibrium," towards which any artificial system -- even if carefully designed -- will naturally gravitate.
This mix of finance capitalism, plutocracy, sham democracy, militarism, a global economic web controlled by a hegemon, growing disparities between rich and poor, both globally and in nation states, deteriorating biosphere -- this is our present structure. Whether revolutionary force can change this set-up at a fundamental level, and transform it root and branch, is an open philosophical question.
This is not to say that we should not struggle. We should. But this notion of "default structure" does, however, suggest two important caveats. The first is that we need to have an alternative very clearly delineated. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We don't want the fiasco of Orwell's "Animal Farm." Or in other words, without a very clear and detailed idea of where we want to go, we will unknowingly replicate the "default structure." The second caveat -- closely related to the first -- is that this default structure exerts a magnetic pull; in scientific lingo, it's a point of "stable equilibrium," towards which any artificial system -- even if carefully designed -- will naturally gravitate.
This mix of finance capitalism, plutocracy, sham democracy, militarism, a global economic web controlled by a hegemon, growing disparities between rich and poor, both globally and in nation states, deteriorating biosphere -- this is our present structure. Whether revolutionary force can change this set-up at a fundamental level, and transform it root and branch, is an open philosophical question.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The House and Senate health care "reform" bills
Andy Coates -- in this interview with Ashley Smith at Socialist Worker -- succinctly explains what's in the health care reform proposals:
It serves no point for me to do a lengthy copy-and-paste so I recommend the interview be read in toto at the Socialist Worker site I've linked above. Just the picture of those three scumbags (at the SW website) -- Reid, Baucus, and Dodd -- should suffice to convince one that they're up to no good. Another giveaway is the 2000 pages of small print in the House proposal. This kind of voluminous paperwork is produced whenever the public is to get shafted. I suppose this is the reason we say, "The devil is in the details."
As I've made clear in previous posts, I don't think the usual "activism" -- standing with placards or calling one's representatives -- will serve any purpose. All it is does is provide camaraderie and a feeling one is doing "one's bit'" -- without achieving any tangible results whatsoever.
The crux of each bill is compulsory private health insurance. The
government will use its power to compel every individual to purchase private
health insurance, or enroll in Medicaid. The bills don't make private health
insurance affordable; they propose to subsidize private insurance premiums for
those who live on modest means.
For example, the House bill will subsidize the premiums of those whose
income is 400 percent of the federal poverty level and below. Taxpayers would
pay for this. But it would still mean that people who earn 200 percent to 400
percent of the federal poverty level would have to pay 8 to 12 percent of their
income for private insurance premiums, or pay a fine and stay
uninsured.
That would be the so-called "choice." For the uninsured, paying for
expensive insurance would amount to an enormous wage cut. And then they'll get
skimpy coverage, with high co-pays, high deductibles and all those other onerous
and unworkable measures that come with very expensive private insurance.
It serves no point for me to do a lengthy copy-and-paste so I recommend the interview be read in toto at the Socialist Worker site I've linked above. Just the picture of those three scumbags (at the SW website) -- Reid, Baucus, and Dodd -- should suffice to convince one that they're up to no good. Another giveaway is the 2000 pages of small print in the House proposal. This kind of voluminous paperwork is produced whenever the public is to get shafted. I suppose this is the reason we say, "The devil is in the details."
As I've made clear in previous posts, I don't think the usual "activism" -- standing with placards or calling one's representatives -- will serve any purpose. All it is does is provide camaraderie and a feeling one is doing "one's bit'" -- without achieving any tangible results whatsoever.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Another essay savaging liberals
An essay at commondreams:
Sometime early in Ronald Reagan's first term, I decided to forget
everything I'd always disliked about liberals. I took pains to subordinate what
put me off about them to the larger objective of unity against the rightwing
onslaught, I decided to overlook their capacity for high-minded fervor for the
emptiest and sappiest platitudes; their tendencies to make a fetish of procedure
over substance and to look for technical fixes to political problems; their
ability to screen out the mounting carnage in the cities they inhabit as they
seek pleasant venues for ingesting good coffee and scones; their propensity for
aestheticizing other people's oppression and calling that activism; their reflex
to wring their hands and look constipated in the face of conflict; and, most of
all, their spinelessness and undependability in crises.
... Beneath all this idiotic coyness lie liberals' long-standing aversion
to conflict and their refusal to face up to the class realities of American
politics. They avoid any linkage of inequality with corporations' use of public
policy to drive down living standards and enhance their plunder,
The tools being used by both sides in the "War on Terror" and the ideological implications
I found a thought-provoking article in Dawn:
The cavalcade of controversy that has followed recent revelations regarding
Blackwater/Xe are notable for the marked turn they represent in the nature of
warfare as defined by the age of terror. In essence, they represent the implicit
admission that liberal democracies, even those as strong as the United States,
are unable to fight transnational terror without giving up the very core
principles that define their ideological positions.
...
The new terms of the war on terror are thus being defined not by Obama or
Karzai or Zardari but Osama bin Laden and Erik Prince. In being the leaders of
the lawless frontiers where truth is ill defined and law merely an
inconvenience, they operate beyond accountability and are untouched by political
opinion. While one uses faith and the other money, the recipes of both are
simple: they employ and operate the tools at their disposal to maim kill and
destroy on a global scale. Together they have revealed the war on terror as a
conflict of evil vs evil where good is either invisible or altogether
absent.
Why is the ruling class the ruling class?
My memory grows feeble in my dotage but I seem to recall 19th century social theorists like Mosca and Michels contending that oligarchy was the natural state of affairs in human society. Why this inevitability? On the left we like to argue that it's because of the lack of scruple among the rulers. And this is doubtless a contributing factor. Though the lower orders hardly seem to be overburdened with scruple either. One explanation might be that the rulers are smarter. The plebs sordida are a stupid lot. Orwell's "Animal Farm" describes a post-revolutionary situation where the smart animals -- the pigs -- rapidly become the new governing elite. Most of the rest of the animals can't even remember the second letter of the alphabet. I've been musing about the (relative) smartness of the ruling class for some time. Yesterday evening I tried once again to initiate a political discussion -- which despite my efforts rapidly deteriorated into speculation about whether Tim Pawlenty would have Michele Bachmann as running mate should he run for president. Faced with this wall of obdurate stupidity -- which is utterly incapable of grasping the structural aspects of our situation -- I become despondent. Ah well, maybe we can teach them "Four legs good, two legs bad."
Monday, December 7, 2009
Liberals are useless
An excellent essay by Chris Hedges, with which I concur:
Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to
challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class,
and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade
Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal
health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk
stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them.
The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although
it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the
will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.
It's a point I've been making for some time: the problem with the USA is not the right, but the so-called "left." It has no balls, no real conviction. It's empty posturing and cheap moral outrage. It's standing with anti-war placards. It's voting for the "lesser of two evils." It's that fat buffoon Michael More and his admirers. You could shoot all the scumbag liberals -- with their hypocrisy, posturing, and impotent bleeding hearts -- and it would not make the USA any worse than what it is today (in fact, it might make it better as at least there would be more intellectual honesty).
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Press conference after Obama's Escalation Speech
Local activists gathered at Mayday Books on Tuesday evening, December 1, to listen to and respond to President Obama's long-awaited speech about plans to escalate the war against Afghanistan. It was great to hear a variety of reasons and viewpoints explaining why this plan is bound to fail and do little for the lives of Afghans or people here at home. Some images of the event:
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Who likes Short Shorts?
“The Handmaid’s Tale” about being “Born Under a Bad Sky” in “The Merry Month of May” while “On the Trail of the Assassins” (by Margaret Atwood (1985), James Jones (1970), Jeffrey St. Clair (2008) and Jim Garrison (1988).)
For those of you who can’t stand long book reviews, here are four short reviews:
“Handmaid’s Tale” by Margret Atwood – of course a Canadian – wrote this book about the aftermath of a violent fundamentalist Christian takeover of the United States. You are dumped into an unknown world of high-walled compounds, fear and segregation of groups. No one dances, no one plays, there is no joy allowed except in the worship of Almighty God. The ruling law is the fundamental oppression of women. It is told from the point of view of a Handmaid, a ‘breeder,’ Offred, a former modern woman now enslaved to bear sacred children. She is to be ritually impregnated by the Commander, who has a barren Wife, served by working-class Marthas, and guarded by violent Guardians. Children are the point of this society. And of course, there are still secret prostitutes, which the Commanders visit to get relief.
For every repressive society, there is an underground resistance, which Offred makes contact with, in her attempt to escape to Canada. Warning her of the fate awaiting those who defy the religious order, dead offenders are ritually hung for public viewing. Enjoy!
P.S. - The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopic book. Below, I did a review of “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, a post-apocalyptic book. This has now come out as a film with Viggo Mortenson. The film is not as good as the book, however repetitive that comment may seem, but it is still worth seeing at some point. The new film 2012, loosely based on a Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy, is also coming out soon. For a review of dystopic and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction, here is a long analysis by a professor on this very subject: Http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/deresiewicz.
"Born Under A Bad Sky," by Jeffrey St. Clair, rips the hood off of neo-liberal Democratic Party ‘environmentalism.’ The Republicans take their share of fire, of course, but the clear new information is about the coddling during the Clinton/Gore years of the worst anti-environmental corporate figures and companies, looking especially at the situation in the U.S. mountain West. St. Clair, an editor at Counter-Punch, uses these essays to focus on water theft, forest destruction, mining pollution, dam consequences, nuclear carelessness, oil drilling, air pollution levels in LA, mine safety, FBI treatment of environmental protesters, Cancer Alley along the Mississippi, the oppression of native and Latino rural populations and the destruction of endangered species.
St. Clair especially focuses on the ‘Big Green’ paper organizations complicity with all of this. Sainted figures like Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Bruce Babbitt, Dick Gephardt, Ralph Cavanaugh, John Kerry, Ken Lay, Mary Landreiu, Edward McGaffigan and sainted groups like the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Counsel, the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Defense Fund are all pinned for their attacks on the environment in the name of market solutions and corporate giveaways. This is another hard book to read.
“In the Merry Month Of May," by James Jones, is the story of the massive May-June 1968 worker-student rebellion in France, as told by the middle-aged, middle-class editor of a literary magazine. Jones, evidently, was trying to compete with “The Sun Also Rises” by Hemingway. If so, this is a truly poor second. The blasé editor doesn’t take the events seriously at first, then treats them like tourism, and eventually blots them out by his overwhelming focus on the sexuality of a young black woman from America. Jones trivializes everything that happens to focus on the romantic quadrangle of one family – wife, father and son – with this woman, who also happens to be anti-political.
Nevertheless, Jones WAS in Paris at that time, and his eye-witness descriptions of clashes between the flics and the students in the West Bank, and the activities of the students at the Sorbonne are its chief benefit. The involvement of the working class is marginal to what Jones witnesses. The book’s events are treated like a light-weight diversion, until, of course, he has to kill off a central character to give it some weight.
“On the Trail of the Assassins,” by Jim Garrison, is the story of the Kennedy assassination investigation undertaken by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. Garrison was the only one who treated the assassination like an actual criminal case, unlike the Dallas police or the FBI. Garrison was attacked for doing his duty by nearly every magazine and newspaper, the U.S. government, the CIA and every useless pundit in America. Which means he was on to something. Later this story was made into the film “JFK” by Oliver Stone. The books abounds with great facts about what a sorry white-wash the Warren Commission, the FBI and the later Congressional Inquiry made of the assassination. It is invaluable as a description of how the intelligence agencies work in the United States.
Garrison conclusively proves that Oswald did not even fire a shot at Kennedy, but was a prepared patsy; that Oswald did not shoot Officer Tippet; that people impersonated Oswald for quite a time before the assassination; that Oswald worked with CIA and FBI figures like David Ferrie and Clay Shaw as a fake ‘communist’ in New Orleans; the Ferrie and Shaw openly discussed killing Kennedy; that Jack Ruby delivered guns to the grassy knoll just before the assassination; that about 15-20 people were openly involved in the assassination as shooters, getaway drivers, diversions, fake Secret Service agents; that the Dallas police destroyed much valuable evidence, and that the whole force of the secret police and their political allies in the United States blocked a real investigation of the killing.
He concludes that this event had all the hallmarks of a military coup by the secret police, aiding the political class in support of a continued hardline, cold-war approach against the USSR, Cuba and for intervention in Vietnam - a line Kennedy was not following.
And I bought all but one of these books in the new and used sections of May Day Books
Red Frog, 12/1/2009
For those of you who can’t stand long book reviews, here are four short reviews:
“Handmaid’s Tale” by Margret Atwood – of course a Canadian – wrote this book about the aftermath of a violent fundamentalist Christian takeover of the United States. You are dumped into an unknown world of high-walled compounds, fear and segregation of groups. No one dances, no one plays, there is no joy allowed except in the worship of Almighty God. The ruling law is the fundamental oppression of women. It is told from the point of view of a Handmaid, a ‘breeder,’ Offred, a former modern woman now enslaved to bear sacred children. She is to be ritually impregnated by the Commander, who has a barren Wife, served by working-class Marthas, and guarded by violent Guardians. Children are the point of this society. And of course, there are still secret prostitutes, which the Commanders visit to get relief.
P.S. - The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopic book. Below, I did a review of “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, a post-apocalyptic book. This has now come out as a film with Viggo Mortenson. The film is not as good as the book, however repetitive that comment may seem, but it is still worth seeing at some point. The new film 2012, loosely based on a Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy, is also coming out soon. For a review of dystopic and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction, here is a long analysis by a professor on this very subject: Http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/deresiewicz.
"Born Under A Bad Sky," by Jeffrey St. Clair, rips the hood off of neo-liberal Democratic Party ‘environmentalism.’ The Republicans take their share of fire, of course, but the clear new information is about the coddling during the Clinton/Gore years of the worst anti-environmental corporate figures and companies, looking especially at the situation in the U.S. mountain West. St. Clair, an editor at Counter-Punch, uses these essays to focus on water theft, forest destruction, mining pollution, dam consequences, nuclear carelessness, oil drilling, air pollution levels in LA, mine safety, FBI treatment of environmental protesters, Cancer Alley along the Mississippi, the oppression of native and Latino rural populations and the destruction of endangered species.
St. Clair especially focuses on the ‘Big Green’ paper organizations complicity with all of this. Sainted figures like Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Bruce Babbitt, Dick Gephardt, Ralph Cavanaugh, John Kerry, Ken Lay, Mary Landreiu, Edward McGaffigan and sainted groups like the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Counsel, the World Wildlife Fund, the National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Defense Fund are all pinned for their attacks on the environment in the name of market solutions and corporate giveaways. This is another hard book to read.
“In the Merry Month Of May," by James Jones, is the story of the massive May-June 1968 worker-student rebellion in France, as told by the middle-aged, middle-class editor of a literary magazine. Jones, evidently, was trying to compete with “The Sun Also Rises” by Hemingway. If so, this is a truly poor second. The blasé editor doesn’t take the events seriously at first, then treats them like tourism, and eventually blots them out by his overwhelming focus on the sexuality of a young black woman from America. Jones trivializes everything that happens to focus on the romantic quadrangle of one family – wife, father and son – with this woman, who also happens to be anti-political.
Nevertheless, Jones WAS in Paris at that time, and his eye-witness descriptions of clashes between the flics and the students in the West Bank, and the activities of the students at the Sorbonne are its chief benefit. The involvement of the working class is marginal to what Jones witnesses. The book’s events are treated like a light-weight diversion, until, of course, he has to kill off a central character to give it some weight.
“On the Trail of the Assassins,” by Jim Garrison, is the story of the Kennedy assassination investigation undertaken by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. Garrison was the only one who treated the assassination like an actual criminal case, unlike the Dallas police or the FBI. Garrison was attacked for doing his duty by nearly every magazine and newspaper, the U.S. government, the CIA and every useless pundit in America. Which means he was on to something. Later this story was made into the film “JFK” by Oliver Stone. The books abounds with great facts about what a sorry white-wash the Warren Commission, the FBI and the later Congressional Inquiry made of the assassination. It is invaluable as a description of how the intelligence agencies work in the United States.
Garrison conclusively proves that Oswald did not even fire a shot at Kennedy, but was a prepared patsy; that Oswald did not shoot Officer Tippet; that people impersonated Oswald for quite a time before the assassination; that Oswald worked with CIA and FBI figures like David Ferrie and Clay Shaw as a fake ‘communist’ in New Orleans; the Ferrie and Shaw openly discussed killing Kennedy; that Jack Ruby delivered guns to the grassy knoll just before the assassination; that about 15-20 people were openly involved in the assassination as shooters, getaway drivers, diversions, fake Secret Service agents; that the Dallas police destroyed much valuable evidence, and that the whole force of the secret police and their political allies in the United States blocked a real investigation of the killing.
He concludes that this event had all the hallmarks of a military coup by the secret police, aiding the political class in support of a continued hardline, cold-war approach against the USSR, Cuba and for intervention in Vietnam - a line Kennedy was not following.
And I bought all but one of these books in the new and used sections of May Day Books
Red Frog, 12/1/2009
Senior Goldman Sachs people arming themselves
An article by Alice Schroeder at Bloomberg:
There's no question that the situation is becoming tense. As a recent New York Times article made clear, one in eight Americans are now on food stamps. Destitution is increasing. And the baboon elected to supreme office has turned out to be another shameless sell-out.
It's also clear (at least to me) that many self-proclaimed "people of the Left" will be caught off-balance by a spontaneous populist uprising. These people can argue about something obscure in Althusser or Lacan till dawn -- but wouldn't know how to change a light bulb. Sort of reminds me of the film "Life of Brian," where the People's Front of Judea gets to arguing with the Judean People's Front .... Anyway, not to quibble. Serves no purpose.
... The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people haveAnd the single most damning comment in the article:
loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a
populist uprising against the bank.
... Talk that Goldman bankers might
have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt
a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have
become a target for public rage.
The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money,It's becoming clear even to an indoctrinated and befuddled public that politicians are acting overtly for those at the financial pinnacle.
not from the free market, but from the lack of one.
There's no question that the situation is becoming tense. As a recent New York Times article made clear, one in eight Americans are now on food stamps. Destitution is increasing. And the baboon elected to supreme office has turned out to be another shameless sell-out.
It's also clear (at least to me) that many self-proclaimed "people of the Left" will be caught off-balance by a spontaneous populist uprising. These people can argue about something obscure in Althusser or Lacan till dawn -- but wouldn't know how to change a light bulb. Sort of reminds me of the film "Life of Brian," where the People's Front of Judea gets to arguing with the Judean People's Front .... Anyway, not to quibble. Serves no purpose.
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