Historical perspective

Some historical perspective from Doug Henwood:

http://lbo-news.com/2010/10/31/taking-the-measure-of-rot/

Mayday Discussion Forum

Thanks to all who came to our discussion of Marta Harnecker's article Latin America & Twenty-First Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid Mistakes! Twenty people attended.

We are planning to have more discussions in the future and would love your input in the comments. Some ideas already floated:

• Articles in Monthly Review (a month after they publish)
• State and Revolution by Lenin
• The ABCs of the Economic Crisis by Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates
• The Great Ecnomic Crisis by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff

Next event will probably be after the new year. Please add comments below.

The Eclectic Dialectic

"Society of the Spectacle," by Guy Debord, 1967, re-issued 2005.

This thin philosophical classic was written by Debord, a semi-Marxist situationist living in France. It is in two main parts – one, on the ‘society of the spectacle,’ which is really about the all-compassing alienation brought about by bourgeois culture; and stuck in the middle, a criticism of Leninism, Trotskyism, Lukacs, structuralism, anarchism and Stalinism from a ‘Councilist’ and 3rd Camp perspective, similar to CLR James.

May Day carries it in English

What is most striking is that Debord writes in an epigrammatic and dialectical form which is enjoyable to read, though not always so easy to understand. It initiates surprised pondering and stuns the reader into thinking. To do this, as Feurbach and Marx did, Debord many times replaces the subject with the predicate. While Debord is against quotations, or as he might put it: “Quoting is the death of the quotation,” I will do it anyway. Here is one example from section #72, which shows his dialectical method of thought:

“The unreal unity proclaimed by the spectacle masks the class division on which the real unity of the capitalist mode of production rests. What obliges the producers to participate in the construction of the world is also what separates them from it. What brings together men liberated from their local and national boundaries is also what pulls them apart. What requires a more profound rationality is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchic exploitation and repression. What creates the abstract power of society creates its concrete un-freedom.”

The dialectic realizes that within every process is its negation, which is the heart of historical movement. Nothing is fixed. Capital, on the other hand, requires everything to seem eternal.

According to Debord, Situationism believes in the ‘supersession’ of art – not its realization, as in Surrealism, or its termination, as in Dadism (#191). It was most powerful in France during the worker-student strike wave in May-June 1968. The Situationists developed ‘unitary urbanism’ and ‘psycho-geography’ as fields of study, combining Marxism with non-alienating architecture and urban planning. They disbanded in 1972.

Debord’s main point is that during the early phases of capitalist accumulation, the proletarian is only seen as a cog, receiving the minimum compensation for his contribution. However, as the society becomes more abundant, what is also required of the worker is ‘collaboration.’ Hence arises the ‘humanism of the commodity’ (#43) – the bourgeoisie finds it necessary and also profitable to take over the workers whole cultural existence. And the “society of the spectacle” is born. As Debord puts it: “The real consumer is a consumer of illusions.” (#47) Gramsci understood the necessity of a proletarian cultural politics for this same reason.

Debord identifies the ‘spectacle’ as not just religions, or sports, but every non-physical ideological commodity - tourism, celebrity worship, television (and now, the internet…), pseudo-festivals, the disappearance of history, credit, the service economy selling ‘experiences,’ art as a ‘collection of souvenirs,’ – perhaps even dating services, outdoor adventure trips and sites like Facebook.

Many ideas within this book show up later in the works of other writers. The commodification of dissent (#59) leads directly to Thomas Frank’s “The Conquest of Cool” and many articles in the Baffler. The ‘dictatorship of the automobile’ (#174) and the fake ruralism of suburbia (#177) show up in James Kunstler’s analysis of the suburbs, “The Geography of Nowhere.” Even Debord's comments on the bourgeoisie’s belief and promotion of cyclical time can be seen as a criticism of writers like James Joyce, who posited the ‘endless return.’

The Revolutionary Organization:

Debord’s ideas on the events in the USSR and other former and present workers’ states regarding third-campism are nothing new. The opposition of the ruling class to the bureaucratically-run states was part of their ‘bourgeois spectacle,’ if you may. However, I am becoming more and more convinced that the Party, or the revolutionary organization, should ‘wither away’ itself. And it should wither away before the workers state.

Lukacs, in his 1924 book, “Lenin, a Study of the Unity of His Thought,” fresh from his own participation in the Budapest Soviet, wrote: “…had a relatively quiet period of prosperity and of the slow spread of democracy ensued …the professional revolutionaries would have necessarily remained stranded in sectarianism or become mere propaganda clubs. The party … is conceived as an instrument of class struggle in a revolutionary period.” If a highly ‘centralized’ party (Lukacs words) is not fit for time of ‘relative quiet,’ according to a Leninist like Lukacs, than why would it be fit to control the state after the working class takes power? In other words, if actual power is held by proletarian Soviets /workers councils, a party (or parties) is redundant. It/they should slowly relinquish it/their role(s), as the working class, through the councils, matures in its running of society. The Leninist idea of the party, or a single party, or any revolutionary organization, is really a ‘raft’ for revolution. And the raft, like the state, needs to wither away, not to exist eternally. Otherwise the party becomes (and did become, and still is) the vehicle for rule by a new bureaucracy. Of course, this bureaucracy is also made possible by the continued world dominance of capital. As such, another guarantee against bureaucratism is the extension of the revolution.

The Intellectual Commodity:  Academic Commodity Production

Debord reminds us that the development of late capitalism is not just about increasing financialization. Intellectual property and intellectual services have become a larger and larger segment of ‘production’ in the US and other advanced capitalist societies. This is in the form of films, inventions, software, music, graphics, television, etc. Intellectual services like legal work, engineering, drafting, academic theses, etc., and the paper/electronic ‘products’ of that labor, are also a larger part of the economy. They do not just play the role of 'spectacle' but also a role in profitability. As such, Marxists have to develop a clear analysis of intellectual property, and the nature of intellectual/cultural labor and its role in political economy.

Debord's book is a delight, and if Craig has any copies left, grab one. It is certainly not for sale anywhere else in town.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, October 17, 2010

Class war, pure and simple

A piece at Globalresearch:

In his intransigence, the Spanish leader is following the lead of other European governments. In France, despite three recent massive protests against pension reform, President Sarkozy repeated that he would not change the law. In Greece, six general strikes in as many months against the austerity measures had no effect on Prime Minister Yorgos Papandreu.

But at least the European proles know they're in a class war, and that the only means of combating the sinister powers-that-be is on the streets -- and not through the farce of formal elections, which are rigged from the get-go.

Essay on the FBI raids by Lydia Howell

An essay by Lydia Howell, published today at Commondreams:

"President Bill Clinton’s 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act made “material aid" a crime, was expanded under George W. Bush’s PATRIOT Act and is broadening to Orwellian vagueness under President Obama."

The Masters of ... No Strategy

Part II - “Liquidated – An Ethnography of Wall Street,” by Karen Ho. 2009

Ho continues her analysis of 1990’s Wall Street by finally getting to THE brass tack – compensation. People do not go into Wall Street for intellectual stimulation. Or the privilege of sucking up to rich or powerful people. The main preoccupation is money. So while the ideology of ‘shareholder value’ is what is transmitted to clients, or even the shareholders of their own firms, individual cash is the point of each and ever deal, trade or sale. 

Compensation on Wall Street has soared since the 80s. Average bonuses (the bulk of compensation) in 1986 were $13,950. In 2006, it was $190,000. In the 1990s, a first-year associate would make in the $100,000 range. In the second year, with an MBA, you could make $200,000-$300,000. The recent bull market, which ended in 2007, saw investment banking associates out of business school making $220,000-$330,000 in their first year. First year vice-presidents salaries were around $200,000, which is LESS than their bonus. In 2000, most investment banking and senior vice presidents were making $1M a year. Managing directors received multi-million dollar bonuses. In 2000, the average salary for a director was $240,000, with a $4M bonus – a 33% increase from 1999 (2000 was the final year of the tech boom and crash…) At the top, Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein made a record bonus of $53.4M in cash, stocks and stock options in 2006. Ho points out that the bigger the bonuses, the closer Wall Street is to crashing.

Ho’s interviewees claim that the insecurity of Wall Street is the price for the high compensation. Being a ‘liquid’ employee is the human commodity equivalent of the booms and busts on Wall Street. Although not as liquid, of course, as the day laborer who vies for jobs on the street, and is paid in daily cash if he is lucky enough to get one. She also notes that because most compensation is done through bonuses, which are more difficult to track by law, discrimination in compensation is far easier. In one academic survey, women in investment banking were compensated at 60.5% the rate of men. The average gender difference was around $223,368. (!!) And it is not insignificant to point out that Wall Street does deals for corporations – not for the benefit of the corporation’s shareholders, but their own. And sometimes, only for the individuals WITHIN the investment bank. 50% of all money earned in investment banking is doled out in compensation to bankers, NOT to shareholders. A massive wealth transfer away from the public, the taxpayer, the corporations and smaller businesses into the coffers of finance capital’s employees is really what is going on.

Capital on Wall Street moves from one ‘product’ to another at lightening speed. If a financial ‘product’ is invented, and becomes successful, every bank tries to move in on this new market immediately. If a product fails, the desks are shut down, and everyone is out of a job. Because Wall Street is only after the ‘new’ buck, the new boom, they, in essence, never plan anything – unlike even an ordinary corporation or retail company. This is why Ho claims that Wall Street’s temporal strategy is ‘no strategy’ at all. Sort of the ‘short attention span theatre’ of finance. The corollary of this is that built into every boom is a bust. Even though this is common knowledge in that business, the point is to’ ride the wave’ until it breaks on the beach, and make as much money as possible while doing so. Since these are mostly speculative products unconnected to the real world or real world production, they have little to no actual use value. Which would give them some permanence. Like making shoes, for instance. They only have exchange value – a value which can easily fall because of a glut, a change in tax policy or government policy, over-leveraging, etc.

Her last anthropological point is that the emphasis on the rhetoric of ‘globalism’ within every investment bank is sometimes a necessary sham, and sometimes a capitalist reality. In reality it reflects each banks attempt to have a ‘global reach,’ necessary to doing business, not in Kinshasa, Zaire of course, but in bringing banking deals from Sydney, Australia to customers in the rich parts of the world. The bank that can sell privatized shares of Australia Telecom, for instance, to some rich client in Russia, is the bank that will be able to garner more business. Because the local market for shares in Australia might be insufficient for the size of the deal, which are getting much bigger. The sham part Ho discovered was that many banks maintain virtually empty offices in some locations because they do not really have any business in a certain country or city, but might at some point. She points out that not one investment bank truly has a fine or global network of offices, even in countries like Japan. Merrill Lynch attempted to bring their broker, M&A and sales and trading businesses to Japan in the late 1990s– and eventually pulled out in the early 2000s. While McDonalds still sells hamburgers there in many cities.

Ho’s main thesis, as is common in anthropology, seems to be that the cultural habits of the Wall Street ‘tribe’ – the ‘corporate culture’ - determine how business is done on Wall Street. ‘Smartness,’ hard work, high compensation, temporality, job insecurity and globalism on Wall Street create the booms and the busts – not anything in the underlying economy. This essentially idealist view of Wall Street masks the actual financial roles of labor exploitation, surplus value, use value, exchange value, overproduction, the falling rate of profit and debt in the growth of financialization. Wall Street's cultural habits play an important ideological role in promoting finance capital, of course. Defending and hiding an exploitative financial relationship cannot be done simply. A Marxist would say that the cultural habits of Wall Street reflect how money is made there – i.e. they are perfectly adapted to finance capital at this time in late capitalism. That is not to say that these cultural habits do not sometimes heavily influence and refine the financial basis of life on the Street. But they do not determine it.

They key here is that corporations go to Wall Street to 'raise capital.' Evidently, raising capital the old-fashioned way, by exploiting labor through surplus value, is not sufficient any longer. They must dip into the pool of OTHER people's capital - both the working classes through pensions and 401Ks/Roths, or other capitalists and petit-capitalists, who have stolen that money from the working class too. Some of this borrowed capital is used for M&A activity. I.E. the firm itself cannot grow normally without borrowing to ... buy other firms. I think this fits quite nicely with the thesis of capitalist stagnation and the falling rate of profit ... which is partly what the triumph of finance capital represents.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog, 10/4/10

Labor militancy in Europe, and the conspicuous lack of such in the USA

An essay at Commondreams:

The greater challenge looming over the One Nation campaign isn't just the optics—it's defining a weakened movement in an increasingly unstable political arena. And it's tapping into the public outrage that the right has shrewdly exploited in galvanizing new constituencies. So the groups carrying the “One Nation” banner might want to focus a bit less on projecting an aura of middle-class liberal harmony, and instead learn from the mass appeal of European union militancy.

We're running into one of the most dangerous aspects of the myth of American Exceptionalism: the concept that American workers somehow operate outside historical class antagoisms. Folks are lulled into the belief that deep social crisis can and should be resolved by individual upward mobility and by negotiating within establishment institutions (like Election Day or corporate-controlled collective bargaining).

But as the ITUC's new report starkly reveals, America's labor crises often put its people in the same quagmire as their peers in other economies. So when workers around the world are roused to action—organized, passionate, and not afraid to get a little dirty—why should American labor be any exception?

To be fair, comparing American labor to European labor is analogous to comparing apples to oranges. There's a sense of both history and class consciousness embedded in the collective psyche of European labor, which is conspicuous by its absence in the more heterogenous USA. And because of the way the US neo-feudal and plantation economy has evolved, the dice -- legal, political, cultural -- are loaded against American labor in a way not to be seen in most West European countries.

It's a disheartening state of affairs in the USA and arguably comparisons should really not be made since the terrain differs so much. American labor will have to make its own individual destiny.

Yesterday's Protest

"Justice" Department Brings Back Hoover

Legal “Logic” Behind Raids

As we’re all aware by now, members and friends of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), the Anti-War Committee (AWC) and the AWC itself were recently visited by suit-wearing thugs from the FBI, who seized their paper files, cell phones and computers in various cities. The FBI has been the political police in the United States since Hoover led the Palmer Raids back in the 1919s. So this is no surprise.

I Never Left

It has been difficult to discover the FBI and Justice Department’s legal ‘logic’ to this process - but given some digging, anything is possible. It is clear that Obama’s Justice Department has decided to prosecute these activists. Given the continuing legality of Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, rendition, the Secrets' Act, wiretapping innovations, the RNC indictments, and other Bush ‘era’ laws and practices that have now become permanent or semi-permanent under Obama and Eric Holder, it was only a matter of time that they came calling on parts of the socialist and anti-war movements.

According to Colleen Rowley, in the 1996 “Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,” material aid to terrorism was defined as what you would expect – giving guns, money or recruits to an organization that was engaged in indiscriminate violence. By “terrorist” it is meant anyone on the “Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO)” list, as established by the US State Department. This list has existed for many years, being established in Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended. It was recently defended by Hillary Clinton, as the present Secretary of State is in charge of the FTO list. There are 47 organizations on the list presently – all using violence in various ways – some defensible, some not.

Right now this list is limited to foreign organizations. But there is no reason why it could not be extended to domestic organizations.

The 2001 Patriot Act established a new, added definition for material aid – giving ‘professional advice’ or ‘training’ or ‘services’ or ‘personnel’ to terrorists. Now the terms ‘professional advice’ could mean – “I think you should do this or that.” Jimmy Carter has met with Hamas – a group officially on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list – and suggested they make peace with Israel or with the PLO. Now you could consider this ‘giving professional advice’ to terrorists. There are US-backed charities in Afghanistan that negotiate with the local Taliban in order to survive and prosper. And you might also consider this ‘giving professional advice’ to terrorists. (I.E. “don’t attack us…we’re just trying to help.”) Neither of these examples have been prosecuted – just as military negotiators with the Taliban right now are not prosecuted.

Prosecution is reserved for those outside the government orbit, or those who are more powerless.

David Cole and the Humanitarian Law Project decided to challenge this Patriot Act law in 2009, in a case called “Holder v Humanitarian Law Project.” The Humanitarian Law Project was a religious group interested in aiding PKK refugees in and out of Turkey, based on humanitarian grounds. The PKK – the Kurdistan Workers Party – is on the FTO list. Part of their aid was to encourage the PKK to use peaceful means to pursue their goals. On June 21, 2010, in a 7 to 2 decision, the conservative Supreme Court majority plus 1 ‘liberal’ voted against the Humanitarian Law Project. The logic was that even ‘speech’ about a ‘terrorist organization’ might legitimize that organization. (!!) Lower courts had declared these provisions in the Patriot Act about freedom of speech invalid. Pacifists like the Humanitarian Law Project could be sentenced to 15 years for suggesting militant organizations pursue peaceful methods. The Supreme Court overruled the lower courts – and the Obama administration and the Bush appointees all appeared on the same page. 

The government (and Holder) in this case was represented by Elena Kagan, who recently joined the court. If you don’t find this significant, I’ve got some smelling salts for you. The June 2010 ‘Holder v Humanitarian Law Project’ decision basically shut down any freedom-of-speech for social activists to, with or regarding militant or violent organizations – 5 months after, in ‘Citizens United,’ the same Supreme Court gave corporations the right to all the free speech their disembodied money could buy. Could this decision even intimidate journalists into not talking to militant organizations, because they are 'legitimizing' them?

Evidently, FRSO and Anti-War Committee members went to the Middle East or to Columbia to meet with the FARC, PFLP and Hezbollah – all on the FTO list. The FSP published laudatory articles on these organizations in their newspaper, Fight Back. The facts in each matter might legally exonerate certain FRSO and Anti-War Committee members. For instance, just meeting with people, and not writing about them, might be a significant fact. In addition, this case will test whether ‘journalism’ and ‘advocacy journalism’ is covered under the Patriot Act. It also explains the 'why now?' about these raids. The green light was given in June.

At any rate, this part of the Patriot Act is ‘settled law,’ due to the Supreme Court decision. Claiming a freedom-of-speech defense, based on support of the goals and methods of specific organizations on the FTO list, is sure to be more difficult than the position of the Humanitarian Law Project. Which is why facts are the only detail that might mitigate the prosecution, at least on legal grounds. Of course, I am not an attorney. 

The real legal issue here is the FTO list and ultimately the Patriot Act itself. The related no-fly “Terrorist Watch List’ now has nearly a million names on it (do you think there are a million ‘terrorist’ supporters in the US?!!). The odds that the Supreme Court will rule against themselves are zero. The odds that the Republican/Democrat government will reject provisions in the Patriot Act, or over-rule the Supreme Court, are almost nil. Will the so-called ‘liberal’ Obama administration back-peddle on their own Justice Department and drop or plea bargain? As they say in the ‘biz’, asked and answered.

Red Frog
9/27/10

P.S. - The prosecutions never were pursued, which shows the fragility of the Government's cases.

Masters of the Universe

“Liquidated – an Ethnography of Wall Street” – Karen Ho, 2009 (Part I)

Karen Ho is a former anthropology student from the U of Minnesota that worked on Wall Street until she was downsized, then followed up with further research into the denizens of that strange New York tribe. Like anthropologists who investigate the ‘primitive’ peoples of the Amazon, Ho instead spent time with the ‘masters of the universe’ – the employees of investment banks on Manhattan.

She worked in the 1990s, and so this book is a nice follow-up to “Den of Thieves,” which covered the triumph of financialization in the 1980s. (see review below) Ho has the ability to chart what that decade did to the Street in the ‘go-go’ 90s of Bill Clinton. As one Democrat once asked me about Clinton, “What do you have against prosperity?” Of course, I answered, ‘Whose?’

This book is unusual in that it combines economic with anthropological/cultural analyses. Ho’s first anthropological point is that the people in investment banking and Wall Street generally see themselves as ‘smart’ – maybe even geniuses. The firms mostly recruit from Harvard, Princeton and to a lesser extent, Yale. If you are a graduate of those schools, the Street does not think you even need an MBA. They do hire MBA’s from lesser schools on the east coast, but merely graduating from Harvard or Princeton guarantees you a place in the pantheon – er, the corporate finance department of a Goldman Sachs or a Morgan Stanley. Ever since Mommy put them in a private nursery school, and told them they were ‘exceptional’, until the day they graduate from Princeton, they believe it. The Wall Street firms, who recruit in these school constantly, tell them the same thing, all the while lavishing them with high-class food, cocktails and trips. The young idealist who enters Harvard thinking about ‘saving the world’ is soon turned into the investment banker thinking about getting rich. Up to 40% of the graduating classes of these schools enter Wall Street – the highest proportion of any ‘discipline.’ So the cream of the bourgeois crop is soon – sour. Ho went to Princeton, and lived to tell the tale.

Ho’s second anthropological point is that ‘work’ becomes a value that knows no peer. First and second year employees of the investment banks work 6-7 day weeks, 12-15 hours a day, eat catered food at work, and are driven home by chauffeured limos if they stay that long. They grind out Power-Point and Excel spreadsheets if they are on the technical end, or schmooze corporate CEO’s if they are on the ‘relationship’ end. They lose friends, they drop relationships, they do nothing but work. The 40-hour-a-week worker is to them a ‘chump’ – lazy, unambitious, weak and beneath respect. That, of course, includes the admins, the back-office, the assistants, and all the staff of the banks. Since investment bankers in whatever area are amazingly legally “exempt’ from overtime rules – syndicate, research, corporate finance, sales, trading - they work all the time. Bringing a brown bag, wearing tennis shoes to work, helping an admin, or even socializing with staff is a sign that the ‘master of the universe’ is not one. Class, anyone?

Ho’s third anthropological point is that Wall Street itself is subject to the ruthless downsizing, ‘right-sizing,’ asset stripping and mergers that they advocate for corporate America. Wall Street firms have constant turnover – most people never stay in the same firm for long. The reason is they have the planning outlook of a 4 year old. Short term internal and market trends combine to make them hire and fire constantly, in small layoffs mostly. While they blame the market, it is really the short-term focus of the street that enforces their employment policies, as even in good times, they lay-off. Of course, having a golden parachute, or have packed big money away, or having ‘connections’ or a Harvard pedigree is somewhat different from the loading dock worker who loses his job at Amazon.com. But that doesn’t stop them, because working-class America is invisible to these people, except as a bunch of rubes.

Ho’s point is that these attitudes gained at work carry over into the ideology of Wall Street. I’m smart, I work hard, I get fired, so I have the right to ‘advise’ you because I’ve been there and I’ve lived it, and I know better.

Ho’s fourth point is the most important, from the economic point of view. She neatly analyzes the conflict within capital between corporate capital and finance capital – essentially giving a very good history lesson on the development of this relationship since the early days of the modern corporation in the early 1900s. The conflict between ‘managerial’ capitalism and ‘shareholder’ capitalism came to a head in the 80s, when the ‘shareholder’ group won the battle, and Wall Street took command of the economy. Ho very carefully points out that this was the FIRST time that financial capital had dominated so severely, unlike the ‘neo-classical fable’, as she puts it, that postulates an early ‘idyllic’ time when the shareholder dominated. The shareholder never did.

Essentially it boils down to whether the corporation is an entity responsible to many parties – suppliers, employees, shareholders, the environment, the society, the community in which it is located, the country – or just one – the shareholder. After World War II, and with the long lingering effects of the 30s still on everyone’s mind, ‘welfare’ capitalism was ascendant. 90% of all financing of corporate growth was done internally, through exploitation of labor. The rest was through corporate bond offerings – i.e. debt. Equity offerings – i.e. stock – was rare and only a third possibility. The ‘ownership’ society – defined as owning stock – was limited to a very small part of the population.

Adam Smith, in his “Wealth of Nations,” actually based his vision of capital on the sole entrepreneur, the independent businessman – not the corporation, or Trust as it was called then. Smith said the Trust would fail because it did not involve personal considerations of profitability. Capitalist classicists and neo-classicists have had difficulty trying to reconcile the modern corporation with their seminal theory, or actually, seminal fantasy. Modern capitalism started as the ideology of the local shoe-store owner.

What is interesting here is that the ‘welfare’ corporation is coming very close, in form, to a socialist ‘corporation’ – or co-operation. Marx pointed out that the forms of capitalism would burst at some point, and the hidden, but pre-existing social relations of production would become dominant. So this battle between corporate ‘welfare capitalism’ and Wall Street ‘shareholder capitalism’ also marks an ideological battle between finance capital and the hidden forms of social capital – socialism –within the capitalist shell. And the advocates of shareholder capital know it well, whether they can verbalize it or not. Of course, what Ho misses, as she is not a Marxist, is that there is a reason why formerly profitable companies have to go to the Street to raise – capital. What happened in the 1980s was not just an ideological fight, but also has to do with falling rates of profit by corporate capital – and their need for another source of funds. And also as an outlook for investment – as productive investment no longer seems desirable. Enter the ‘equity’ market. As I call it, ‘the only game in town.’

There is more to the book, and I will add that in Part II.

And I bought it at Mayday Books.
Red Frog, September 24, 2010

Manufacturing dissent

At some level of my being I've always understood that American dissent, protest, "progressivism," and activism are a load of steaming horse manure. But I've never quite been able to articulate the inchoate feeling about why it has always struck such a false note with me. Partly, perhaps, it has had to do with the nature of the people to be found in these "movements" (I use the term rashly): ill-educated, ill-dressed, ill-spoken, and generally uncouth. I wouldn't trust them to change a light bulb, let alone successfully orchestrate meaningful change. In part, perhaps, because there has never been a program for change -- it's mostly been ill-articulated rhetoric with no grounding in action, with no basis in active confrontation with the powers-that-be. Michel Chossudovsky takes this attitude of mine a bit further and argues in this essay that the reason there's been no plausible program for change is that they've been orchestrated from on high by the very powers they're supposed to have been opposed to:

Under contemporary capitalism, the illusion of democracy must prevail. It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not constitute a threat to the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent.

To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition, with a view to preventing the development of radical forms of protest, which might shake the very foundations and institutions of global capitalism. In other words, "manufacturing dissent" acts as a "safety valve", which protects and sustains the New World Order.

To be effective, however, the process of "manufacturing dissent" must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement.

The mechanisms of "manufacturing dissent" require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement.

Whereas the mainstream media "manufactures consent", the complex network of NGOs (including segments of the alternative media) are used by the corporate elites to mould and manipulate the protest movement.

The objective of the corporate elites has been to fragment the people's movement into a vast "do it yourself" mosaic. War and globalization are no longer in the forefront of civil society activism. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement. The economic crisis is not seen as having a relationship to the US led war.

Dissent has been compartmentalized. Separate "issue oriented" protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women's rights, climate change) are encouraged and generously funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement. This mosaic was already prevalent in the counter G7 summits and People's Summits of the 1990s.

Imperialism and Global Political Economy

A couple of weeks back I was trying to persuade Red Frog to read "Imperialism and Global Political Economy" by Alex Callinicos, a copy of which can be found in Mayday (where indeed I bought my own copy last year). Here is an ISR review of the book. As I told Red Frog, this is a book written by an academic: careful arguments buttressed by facts and figures.

If -- big if -- a book club is ever resurrected in the Twin Cities, then this book by Callinicos, as well as books by Harvey and Brenner, should be on the reading list. Dare one hope?

Labor Day?

Notes on 9/9/10 Meeting at May Day on a Mass Party of Labor 

I attended the forum given by the “Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor” (whew) and made some notes. It was a full house, with Greens, some Socialists and many independent progressives attending. The main initial issue, of course, is ‘why’ a labor party? After all, other organizations have run. The Greens, independents like Henry Wallace and Jesse Ventura, and some radical African-American politicians have run or attempted to run candidates. Dennis Kucinich, who carried many of the south-side precincts in Minneapolis, has announced he would not break with the Democrats, according to one attendee, so a split right now of the Democrats is not in the offing. He will not run away from his Party. And so why not labor?

As panel-member David Riehle ably pointed out, Minnesota and the Midwest have a history of successful Labor Party – specifically “Farmer-Labor” activism - which continued from the late teens to the early 50s.

In the present period, the first issue everyone questions is the role of the labor leadership. What wasn’t noted by anyone is that Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIo, actually initiated and lead a demonstration of 10,000 workers to Wall Street itself, protesting against the bailout of the investment banking industry right outside the NY Stock Exchange. The bailout of GM and Chrysler from declaring bankruptcy, ‘cash for clunkers’ program and the ‘house-buyer’ tax break were a relatively small part of the stimulus, and bailouts. Much of the ‘relief’ money is going to projects and states with no relation to future growth or actual need. Most went to bailout investment banks. Trillions in free money is being made available to the banks to loan to us at 6% and back to the government at higher rates than the Fed charges. (!) The AFL-CIO made the point in a mass way. Who else has summoned that many to Wall Street? Rage Against the Machine? Trumka also initiated a mass demonstration in Chicago against the banking industry that moved right into the bank lobbies and shut them down. Of course, Trumka has also sweat bullets on TV when asked by Bill Moyers why he continues to uncritically support the Democrats.

Why labor? Questions from the floor suggested the word ‘labor’ was a bit archaic. The difference of a ‘labor’ or ‘workers’ or ‘working families’ or whatever you want to call it, party, is that it represents the most numerous class in the US. By nature, a labor party is the most ‘democratic’ party – really a word that should not be owned by the people that misuse that word, the “Democrats.” The Democratic Party is run by rich people from finance, communications, high-tech and advertising companies, who use labor as voting cattle. It cannot be said to be a “democratic” party at heart.

Why labor? Labor, by being the most numerous class in the US, is also by its very nature able to shut down the functioning of the whole society if it chose to. While investment bankers ‘toil’ away on their computer screens, it is the material world of brokerage back-offices, tech support, subways, communications, electricity and food that keep these people in business. Of course in the long run, who made their three-piece suits, their computers, their Beemers, transported their steaks, generated their electricity and heat, and mixed their martinis? Not them, that is for sure. They’d be naked without the working class.

One of the questioners asked about the role of some trade union leaders, who are only concerned with jobs for their little bargaining unit. A response from one speaker was that ‘some labor unions would make gas chambers’ if it got members jobs. This seemed to be an intentionally over-the-top comment to point out that some unions do not care what they build, or make, as long as they make it. The nature of a Labor Party is that it breaks unions and union members out of ‘small group’ thinking and gets them to look at what is good for society as a whole. And enables them to work towards doing something other than building stadiums for private enterprise, for instance, or weapons, or any other useless or anti-social product. After all, you are somewhat trapped in a job, no matter what they do.

For instance, converting the old Ford plant to making wind turbines and equipment would be a socially and environmentally progressive thing to do, but Ford is not interested in doing it. However, the local UAW thinks it is a good idea. I might add, perhaps better than continuing to build F-150s. The UAW in Fremont California is working with Tesla to manufacture an all-electric car in the old Saturn plant closed by GM. This too shows the UAW is not as asleep as GM is.

As panel-member Greg Gibbs pointed out, many Labor Party activists from the 1996 “Labor Party” became activists for Ralph Nader and the Greens in 2000 when the Labor Party failed to run candidates, or show any interest in running candidates. The Green Party still exists in town, and has made a gallant attempt to change the dynamics in Minneapolis - creating a situation where the battle is not between Democrats and Republicans in the city, but between Democrats and Greens. However, recent events are showing the Greens are running out of ‘fuel’ – organizationally, ideologically, etc. The recent mayoral campaign that eschewed a Green Party label, and ran John Kolstad as an ‘independent’ with support from the Ron Paulites, on a ‘small business’ platform, is indicative of this. And there is a reason why – especially during a massive recession/initial depression like we have now. The Green Party does not have a proletarian orientation, to put it bluntly.

Another astute question from the floor was questioning the typical labor program of higher wages and more production, irrespective of environmental issues. This is certainly a timely question. The exact labor approach to this question is still being worked out, but the ‘green jobs’ initiative is a start. Converting the economy from a non-sustainable to a sustainable one, while helping workers not loose jobs, is probably one of the main tasks faced by labor.

Gibbs pointed out that Tony Mazzochi, who founded the Labor Party in 1996 and Labor Party Advocates in 1984, was the first chair of Earth Day. We also mustn’t forget that in Seattle in 1999 at the protests against the World Trade Organization, unions and greens formed a block. Labor may have to prioritize fundamental issues – creating a full employment economy, single-payer health care, sustainable food and sustainable jobs, job democracy - and not just getting the highest wages possible. The material fundamentals of life have to be seen as more important than simple high wages.

Anyway, just notes on the discussion at MayDy.

Red Frog
9/12/10

Why millions march in France but not the US

Rick Wolff examines why millions march in France (and other European countries), while no-one marches in the USA. The difference between Europe and the US is interesting to those like me who have lived in both places. The degree of brainwashing is less in Europe, and there has historically been more heightened social and political awareness and more mass mobilisation. Or to put it briefly, more class consciousness -- with all that that entails of understanding who's the oppressor, who the oppressed, what the various subtle mechanisms of oppression that are being employed, and how to fight back on a collective basis.

The Fire Next Time

"Fire on the Mountain" - by Terry Bisson, 1992, republished 2009

This rare and legendary science fiction book is about the triumph of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and how it sparked a slave uprising in the South to create the independent black nation of Nova-Africa. The nation started by Brown and Harriet Tubman, and joined by Frederick Douglass, eventually spreads to the north, where a revolution in the 1940s extends Nova Africa's socialism across north America – forming the USSA – the United Socialist States of America.

Against a background of visits to Mars, hydrogen and plasma-drive dirigible airships and cars, porcelain engines and a ‘living’ pair of shoes, Bisson tells a story of deep history – a what-if Brown had not been surrounded and hung. The story starts in the present as a black woman communist, Yasmin, comes north from Charleston to visit her dead husband’s mother, get her daughter Harriet, and deliver the journal of a long-dead relative who joined Brown. Bisson weaves a powerful story combining 3 sources. The first is a diary narrative of that relative, a black boy that becomes "Mr. Abraham," who eventually joins Brown and Tubman’s army “up the mountain.” The second are letters from a southern Tidewater doctor who turns against slavery, and meets the black boy, becoming one of the Army of the North Star’s doctors, and training Abraham to be a doctor himself. The third is the present-day story of the boy’s modern relatives, Yasmin and Harriet.

Of course this never happened. Bisson makes it seem real. The key here is that Tubman was not sick and instead joined Brown, and made the correct tactical decision to blow up the bridge that Lee’s troops would use to cross the river, and so evade capture in Harper’s Ferry. (Bisson points out that Brown was not so good at tactics.) The rebels instead escaped up the mountain next to town, along the present-day path of the Appalachian Trail, which Bisson here re-christens the “The North Star Trail.” At the top, they start the first “fire on the mountain’ for all the slaves to see – a sign of deliverance.

Brown, Tubman and Kagi eventually use the tactics of guerilla and political warfare up and down the Shenandoah Valley, the Cumberlands, the Smokies and other ranges to confuse and militarily defeat Robert E Lee, who resorts to terror and hanging of suspect blacks. Male slaves start to join the army in droves as it begins to evade capture and win battles. The war then becomes internationalized, sort of a Spain of the 1860s. Garibaldi’s Italian revolutionaries arrive through Mexico to fight the ‘Mericans who had seized it from Mexico, backed by Mexican republicans, then move north. A Haitian mule cavalry brigade from Toussaint L’Overture’s free Haiti land surreptitiously in the south. German volunteers from the 1948 Commune; a brigade from London organized by Marx; Molly Maquires from the Appalachian coal-fields and Cherokee Indian allies filter into the mountains to help the North Star Army fight Lee. Irish dockers lend a hand against English supply to the slave states. Independence for California is declared by Chinese and Irish railroad workers and an uprising in New Orleans against slavery succeeds. Philadelphia becomes the early Barcelona of the Americas; Whitman joins Brown in the mountains; Emerson and Thoreau argue about the ‘Cause.’ And the “Cause’ succeeds, through guts, blood and fire - not through speeches alone.

Bisson includes a hilarious aside about a book kept by an old white lady who lives near Harper’s Ferry, who gives it to Yasmin as an insult. It is called “John Brown’s Body.” It is a right-wing fantasy about Brown’s defeat at Harper’s Ferry, and his hanging. In this book, the war eventually starts, but it is not for an independent black nation, but to keep the South in the Union. After the war, the ex-slaves are treated like chattel and denied all their rights. The ex-slave owners keep all the land and political power. There is no socialist revolution in the North - the world continues to be run by the same ruling class of people. Yasmin is appalled by this white-supremacist fantasy. She eventually throws the book out the window of the car.

‘Fire on the Mountain’ can be seen as a counter-point to Newt Gingrich’s book on Gettysburg – a reactionary fantasy about Lee winning at Gettysburg. Instead, in ‘Fire’, Lincoln leads a failed Whig invasion of Nova-Africa, and is celebrated by Copperheads and slavery advocates, not the slaves. The Bible is described as being loved by ‘bloodthirsty crackers’ for being an ‘encyclopedia of torments’ - a phrase I love. Bisson, a former member of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, specializes in progressive science-fiction. He has many other sci-fi novels to his credit, and this certainly augurs well for the others.

And I bought it at Mayday Books.
Red Frog, 9/6/10, Labor Day (Because American Labor didn’t want to celebrate May Day.)

William Upski Wimmsatt, Author visit

Monday, September 6 (Labor Day) · 5:00pm - 7:00pm
Location Mayday Bookstore, 301 Cedar Ave, West Bank, Minneapolis (enter down stairs at side of building)




IN PLEASE DON'T BOMB THE SUBURBS, Wimsatt weaves a first-person tour of America's cultural and political movements from 1985-2010. It's a story about love, growing up, a generation coming of age, and a vision for the movement young people will create in the new decade. With humor, storytelling, and historical insight, Wimsatt lays out a provocative vision for the next twenty-five years of personal and historical transformation. Never heard of Billy Wimsatt before? Your life just got better.

Akashic Books site: http://www.akashicbooks.com/pleasedont.htm

Social networking sites

I was talking earlier today to the mysterious "Red Frog," whose true identity -- like the Phantom -- remains shrouded in mystery. He expressed surprise that I use a social networking site like Faceboook to discuss politics. But there's no injunction against using it for this purpose; among my Facebook "friends" I have people like Alex Callinicos, Doug Henwood, Michael Yates, Norman Solomon, and Gopal Balakrishnan, scattered on four continents. We can trade information, stories and discussions almost instantly. This is a link I posted a couple of hours ago on Facebook, which has been subsequently picked up and reposted by at least three other people; an excerpt below:

"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money." (Robin Cook, ex-British foreign secretary)

Survival +

One book I'd warmly recommend -- based on both the excerpts available on Amazon and the author's online essays -- is Charles Hugh Smith's "Survival +." This is the kind of book Mayday tends to stock and Craig should definitely look at acquiring at least half a dozen copies. The author maintains his own site.

Rasmus's "Epic Recession"

Mayday has in stock Jack Rasmus's "The Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression" (I bought my own copy at Mayday). For some weeks I've been thinking of writing my own amateurish and bungling review of this important book but have been saved from the effort by this one here, written by Suzi Weissman, which is far superior to any pathetic effort on my part. As a caveat, the book is heavy going and not for the faint of heart. I may yet write something on another important book along (roughly) the same lines: "The Great Credit Crash," edited by Martijn Konings, with contributions, inter alia, from the likes of Peter Gowan, Thomas Ferguson, Michael Hudson, Walden Bello, and Leo Panitch. This, too, I bought at Mayday. And this, too, is a taxing book that makes demands on the reader. In defence of the two books above it has to be said that economic and political reality is complex, and to acquire perspective and insight -- historical or otherwise -- into the present quagmire takes careful study.

An excerpt from Weissman's review:

Rasmus recognizes the theoretical debt he owes to three economic thinkers: John Maynard Keynes, whose work is more about how to recover than what produced the crisis; Irving Fischer, who identified debt and deflation as the main mechanisms that drive a downturn into a depression; and Hyman Minsky, the theorist who wrote about the role of speculative investment, showing how the accumulation of debt can destabilize the entire financial system and provoke the kind of financial meltdown we have just experienced. Although Minsky died in 1996, his thinking is so pertinent to the crises of 2007-10 that financial journalists and academics have called it a "Minsky moment."

Rasmus tries to take the work of these theorists further in order to understand the nature of the current crisis and he pledges to do this more fully in subsequent volumes as this crisis unfolds. His analysis is also aided by a thorough grounding in Marxist economic theory. Missing in Keynes, Fischer, and Minsky, he writes, is "...the consideration of the price for labor and its relationship to product and asset pieces: how wage deflation is related to product and asset deflation."

It's a pity there's no book club in the Twin Cities to discuss worthwhile books like this. There was a Marxist book club, organised by Dean Gunderson; that, however, seemingly folded about a year or so back.

Jimmy Johns workers strike today in Minneapolis:

Fast Food Chain Rocked by Work Stoppages in Sign of Mounting Economic Frustration among US Workers

Press Conference and Rally: 4pm September 2, Block E Jimmy Johns, Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS- Service was anything but 'freaky fast' at Jimmy Johns today as workers walked off the kitchen floor in an unprecedented move to demand improved wages and working conditions at nine Minneapolis franchise locations. Announcing the formation of the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union, the workers are seeking a pay increase to above minimum wage, consistent scheduling and minimum shift lengths, regularly scheduled breaks, sick days, no-nonsense workers compensation for job-related injuries, an end to sexual harassment at work, and basic fairness on the job.

“I have been working at Jimmy Johns for over two years and they still pay me minimum wage and schedule me one-hour shifts,” said Rikki Olsen, a union member at the Block E location. “I'm working my way through school and can barely make ends meet. I'd get another job, but things are just as bad across the service industry. Companies like Jimmy John's are profitable and growing, they need to provide quality jobs for the community.”

Source

Interesting essay at wsws. I'm reluctant to paste an excerpt as it deserves to be read and digested in its totality. I'll get a printout for myself.

The Counter-Revolution Cometh

"Den of Thieves," by James Stewart, 1991

The 1980s were a pivotal decade in the development of American capitalism. It was during the last two years of Carter, and the two Reagan presidencies, that the American labor movement was soundly defeated in a series of strikes. During the 80s, jobs disappeared to Mexico and overseas, factories closed, and the U.S. successfully beat-up a number of small countries. Finance-dominated capital began to spread over the whole world economy. Two recessions occurred, one as deep as a mine-shaft. The markets fell off a cliff twice. The S&L industry collapsed, and had to be rescued by tax-payers. The decade ended with the destruction of the degenerated Soviet workers’ state – finishing this decade of the global class war with a massive victory for capital. It was an ugly fucking time. I remember it well.

It is upon the success of this mini counter-revolution against Roosevelt, so to speak, that the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies are built, and the consequences of which we are living today.

James B Stewart was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and represents the best of that paper’s reporters. In this meticulously-researched history, Stewart has dug out of the 80s dust-bin the financial creatures of that time - specifically Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky – the junk bond kings. Stewart judges Milken to be the most prominent financier of the 1980s, who was treated as a ‘national treasure’ by the finance industry. What is significant about that is that Milken ended up going to jail for 10 years for 6 felonies, and paying a fine the size of Guatemala. The most prominent financier? Tells you something. Boesky is now mostly remembered for being the model for Gordon Gekko, and actually making a defense of greed a part of a 1986 talk he gave at Drexel’s annual event, the “Predators Ball.”

‘Junk” bonds (now politely called ‘high yield’ bonds) are risky corporate bonds issued by companies with weak finances. Miliken bet that the companies would not go bankrupt, and so created their debt to be bought by others. He convinced so many other people and companies to issue and to buy junk bonds that his firm, Drexel (Burnham Lambert) became a power-house on Wall Street. Using that financial base, he began to buy or ‘raid’ companies in mostly hostile takeovers, thus initiating a wave of mergers across the United States. In the process, Drexel made millions in corporate finance fees. People like Henry Kravis, Ronald Perelman, Carl Icahn, Rupert Murdoch, Irwin Jacobs, Kirk Kerkorian, Ted Turner and Felix Rohatyn became famous ‘arbitrageurs’ during this time, who also rolled companies for profit. They paid no heed to the consequences – to the real economy, or to the working class.

What is consistent across the junk bond/takeover/S&L 80s, the ‘tech wreck’ of the 90s, the Enron/World Com pyramid schemes, and the real-estate/CDO bubble of the Oughts is that someone on Wall Street convinces others that their product has more value than it does, and the bubble cometh. It is basically a con-job, and this repetitive con-job is the real foundation of American finance capital at this point.

The 'den of thieves’ was a large circle of people on Wall Street – principally Martin Siegel, first at Kidder Peabody; Dennis Levine at Drexel-NY; Milken at Drexel-Beverly Hills and Boesky at his own corporation- who traded inside information, which allowed them to make bets on the market or coerce companies into acting they way they wanted. Along with paying for and profiting off inside information, they arranged ‘parking’ schemes to keep assets off companies books, created dummy companies to hide losses or assets, hid profits in order to pay no taxes, evaded net capital rules, bribed and black-mailed companies to buy bonds, and made deliberately false statements. These are more colloquially called ‘lies.’

Levine, a greedy and lazy fatty, eventually gets caught by the SEC in insider trading through a bank in the Caribbean, Bank Leu, based on his profitable bets on stocks. Levine traded right before certain announcements that would drive the price up, and then sold. The SEC started to notice the pattern. Levine pleads guilty, spilling the beans on others, and the whole den unravels, though it takes years – from the lowest, Levine, to the highest, Milken. Rudi Giuliani makes an appearance as the head of the New York DA’s office, who prosecutes the insider-trading schemes in a hot or cold way, depending on his political fortunes. Milken is defended by Drexel, which pays his monthly millions-of-dollars legal bills and his monthly millions-of-dollars public relations bills, until the chairman, Fred Joseph, sees enough evidence to pull the plug. Far too late, of course. The firm doing Milken’s PR work, Robinson Lake, had worked on the Reagan campaign, and were a forerunner of the ‘dirty’ politics propaganda we are now so familiar with from the Republican Right. All of the ring goes to jail, and the government collects almost a billion in fines. Only one – Siegel- seems to regret what he did, and works for the government to help the prosecution case. In October 1989, the junk bond market itself collapses, sending the DOW into a 200-point decline, as companies over-leveraged on junk bonds finally do declare bankruptcy. And finally Drexel itself declares bankruptcy for the same reason, in February 1990.

Stewart’s analysis of the events showed that all the S&Ls that Milken convinced to buy junk bonds, like Columbia Savings, were taken over by the government, and then rescued by tax-payers for billions of dollars. The law that allowed S&L’s to invest in risky investments was passed during the Reagan administration. The S&L crisis was the other, interconnected nightmare during the 80s and early 90s that is supposed to be part of our collective Lady Gaga amnesia.

At the end, the returns on junk bonds were about equal to a low-risk money market fund – directly contradicting Milken’s siren song of mega-cash, even on his own terms. Only the firms made money off the boom. Companies merged and went out of existence, factories closed and workers were sent home, while assets were swapped like whores at a drunken billionaires’ yacht party – all to enrich individuals on Wall Street.

The lesson of this book is that the recent real estate bubble and CDO boom weren't born yesterday, but are rooted in the domination of the economy, the press and the political machines by the finance industry over the last 30 years. Stewart’s story reads more like a financial detective story, structured by the rise and fall of some shitheads, and its natural structure provides a plot with which few potboilers can compete. Reality many times trumps fiction.

And I bought it at Mayday Books used book section.
Red Frog, 9/1/2010

Dick Taylor's Outline for his August 21 Talk

The Limits of Keynesian Economics:

A. Central Themes to be discussed:
1. The Apologetics of capitalist economics after Ricardo
2. Idol Worship: Neo-classical equilibrium theory and Say’s Law
3. Equilibrium? The depression explodes the ruling model
4. Keynes explanation for the breakdown
5. Keynes’s goal: restoring capitalism
6. Keynes’s political goal: Reviving the Liberal Party
7. Keynes’s policy prescription: the central government supplements private investment
8. The Mechanics of Keynes’s policy prescriptions
9. Flaws: Keynes’s utopian capitalism
10. Keynes versus Marx on stagnation and crisis
B. Questions and Discussion

See the Mayday Site for further details,
By FellowCommodityDooley

Adventures in GringoLandia

"The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver, 2009

Barbara Kingsolver is one of the best authors in the United States. What this means is that any story she writes, even ones with certain flaws, has more resonance than works by lesser writers. This is also true of certain film directors, like Altman, Kurosawa or Penn, and certain playwrights, like Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner or August Wilson.

A ‘lacuna” means a ‘hole’ or ‘gap.’ The first lacuna we meet is a long dangerous tunnel off the ocean full of water, that surfaces in a possibly ceremonial pool or ‘cenote’ in-land. The lacuna is off Yucatan on Isla Pixol in Mexico in the 1920s. A half-American/half-Mexican boy is taught to roll soft tortilla flour into sweet concoctions called ‘blandas.’ The boy’s name is Harrison William Shepherd, and his seemingly true story is told in the forms of a first-person diary; by a southern friend, Mrs. Brown; by an ‘archivist;’ in letters; through newspaper clippings and in standard, third-person narrative. This gives the story the feel of a documentary reconstruction of Harrison’s life. However, the construction itself makes the story somewhat hard to follow at times. The boy Harrison, later christened ‘Insolito' or 'Soli' by Frida Kahlo, swims into the lacuna, holds his breath for a long time and survives to come out on the other side in the pool.

Harrison moves to Mexico City in 1930 with his gold-digger mother, Salome (!) and, using his blanda-making skills, becomes the plaster-maker for a certain muralist, Diego Rivera. He meets Frida, becomes one of the cooks, and then the typist for the Rivera’s, lives in their odd square box houses, then moves to the Kahlo family’s ‘Blue House’ in Coyoacan. Insolito wants to become a writer, and keeps his diary through this whole time. There, eventually, arrives Lev Trotsky and his wife, Natalya in 1937. Harrison details the time that Trotsky lives in the Blue House, then moves out to another house down the street after a legendary but perhaps inaccurate infidelity is discovered. Shepherd works for Trotsky as a typist too, taking dictation of the various articles and books Trotsky never stops writing. Shepherd accidentally leaves a certain document lying around that leads to a fight between Trotsky and Rivera, and feels very bad about it. He details the first assassination attempt against Trotsky, and then the successful one by a ‘friend’ of friends – the GPU agent Jacson. The death of Trotsky is the second ‘lacuna’ of the book – and in a way, the deepest.

Harrison eventually moves back to the United States. He becomes employed by the US government to preserve paintings from U.S. federal galleries, which are being hidden in Asheville, North Carolina. They are being hidden because of threats of invasion during World War II. He gets the job through the good offices of Rivera’s gallery friends in New York. Frida carefully rescues an early story of his about the conflict between the Aztecs and Cortes from the Mexican police, who had confiscated it at the time of the assassination, and sends it to him. Shepherd finally opens the package, finishes the story, and becomes a famous writer in the United States. He continues writing books that indict militarism and government lying, while hiding the politics in coded fictional stories about Mexico’s history.

Shepherd tries to stay as invisible as possible, and his long-term homosexuality is also kept hidden. He never gives interviews and rarely leaves his house. However, the McCarthy period comes calling. Shepherd is eventually denounced in Asheville as a Communist, being accused of being an associate of notorious people like Rivera, Kahlo and Trotsky. As they say, guilt by association. He becomes a ‘non-person’ in Asheville, except for his older female friend and typist, Mrs. Brown. It is she that gathers his documents and tries to tell the story of his life. Due to the anti-communist hysteria, Shepherd’s last book contract is finally turned down by the publisher after they try to get him to put out the book under someone else’s name. As such, he can no longer earn a living. This is the third lacuna.

Insolito eventually returns to Isla Pixol, intentionally swims into the same ‘lacuna’ again … and drowns.

What I find interesting is that Barbara Kingsolver, a normally liberal or perhaps leftish writer, would retell this iconic story of Kahlo, Rivera and Trotsky, and in not unfriendly terms. In certain ways, the death of Trotsky is the emotional center of the book. Liberals are not known for their friendliness to communists. A similar story was also delineated in the film “Frida,” based on the biography of Frida Kahlo, a flim by director Julie Taymor. Kahlo’s paintings have toured the United States, and were recently shown here at the Walker. (See review below.) As someone who tracks ‘memes’ – ideas that spread through culture – the fact that Trotsky is not seen as some kind of crazed devil by some liberals and progressives, but a martyr to true communism and the working-class, is significant.

Kingsolver does have a long record of progressive political writing. Kingsolver wrote the non-fiction “Holding the Line” about the failed Phelps-Dodge strike of the 80s, especially highlighting the role of women. She is a clear environmentalist, whose non-fiction “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life” is a contribution to the anti-corporate organic food movement. The excellent “The Poisonwood Bible” is a clever demolition of religious fundamentalism. “The Bean Trees’ is about the violence done to Central American immigrants, along with its sequel, “Pigs in Heaven.” “Animal Dreams” is about fighting pollution in some Arizona orchards.

Kingsolver is a writer who does not tell stories just to ‘entertain’ the middle class –the hallmark of American bourgeois literature. The recent spate of navel-gazing ‘memoirs’ written by dysfunctional individuals and their 12-step miseries is an example of the middle-class attempting to give their writing some significance – and failing. Run with these scissors, fuckhead! Kingsolver writes about the actual events of the wider world – a usually taboo preoccupation in bourgeois fiction, except as a ‘backdrop’ to some more important individual drama. As Kingsolver would point out, we are really more than ourselves.

And I bought this at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 8/14/2010

A sympthetic essay in today's FT, comparing unions in Asia and the "developed" West:

Workers at a garment factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, went on strike at the end of last month in protest against the dismissal of one of their union officials. The factory produces for Gap, Benetton and Adidas, whose customers have long benefited from low-cost Asian labour. But union militancy in Cambodia’s textile sector can now count some successes: the minimum wage went up by $11 a month in July – less than the unions wanted, but enough to end the wave of strikes.

The large, even heroic, tasks of protecting rights might be declining sharply in developed nations. But they are increasingly common in the catch-up world – especially in China and south east Asia. In many recently (or still) communist countries, labour remains exploited and union activism is badly needed.

is the most eye-catching example. Strikes swept through foreign-owned companies – including Honda, Hyundai, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Toyota – in the south of the country in June, in spite of heavy attention by police. Unofficial as they were, they worked. Party leaders, including Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, called for improved wages and conditions, especially for the low paid and precarious migrant workers, who have formed much of the work force in areas such as Guangdong.

Mr Wen told an audience in Beijing that migrants’ work “is glorious and should be respected by society at large. Migrant workers should be cared for, protected and respected.” However, as Simon Clarke of Warwick University, who studies unions in Russia and China, stresses, independent unions in China and south east Asia are often fleeting, while membership remains hazardous. Official unions, unused to militancy, even try to suppress activism.

A similar problem is true in Russia, where the legacy of unions wholly dominated – indeed, created – by the Communist party lingers. In post-communist Russia, control by the party has been replaced by control by the state. Established unions suffer from a pervasive culture of poor civic and political activism. As Simon Clarke puts it, Russia’s labour movement “is completely under the thumb of [prime minister] Vladimir Putin.”

Yet even if Russia isn’t following suit, the growing strength of unions in Asia is a welcome move; one which will put pressure on the regimes to increase domestic consumption, raise skill levels and develop social and welfare services, especially for migrant workers. True, neither the remaining Communist parties (as in China and Vietnam) nor the old official unions will want to relinquish control that has served them well. Even so, bolstered by newer campaigning unions, the economic struggle can be waged hopefully.

Success is a much fainter hope in the west, where unions suffer from a past seen as noble and a present seen as irrelevant. But now with austerity as the posture of choice, unions scramble to reassert themselves. British unions are planning an autumn of discontent with demonstrations, special conferences and possible strikes. That said, French public sector workers, British Airways cabin crew and Greek workers in any sector – all have tested the resolve of their governments and none have succeeded.

Indeed, in rich countries unions continue to weaken, especially in the private sector. Even in Germany, where co-operation with employers has ensured power at corporate level, they have been helpless to stop loss of income, to cancel cuts, or to change the government’s mind on raising the retirement age to 67. At the conference in June of the federal unions (DGB) delegates seemed to agree with the centre-right chancellor Angela Merkel – who addressed the union to mild applause rather than catcalls – that “very hard years lie ahead”. Michael Sommer, the DGB chairman, lauded the government’s commitment to social equilibrium – which has meant, in practice, acceptance of layoffs and wage cuts.

Yet they might also raise their sights: for if they are unlikely to succeed in their traditional search for better wages they might fare better by returning to the moral force they mobilised in early years. Vast discrepancies in earnings between the bulk of salary earners and those at the top of the corporate sectors can unite ethics and polemics. Labour movements have a chance to sway public opinion and in so doing regain a status they lost with their draining of members and shrinking of ambitions.

If not, the declining unions of the developed world may begin to look jealously at the achievements of their less privileged equivalents. “The union makes us strong” was ever the slogan of workers’ movements. But the contrasting strengths of unions east and west illuminate one basic fact: unions do well for their members in rising economies, but in more austere times, moral suasion is their best – and perhaps only – card.