White People Can't Run in Hijabs

Reflections on the Olympics 2012

What’s interesting about the Olympics isn’t the commercialization or the nationalism.  These have ruined it for many years, and this year is no different.  This year there is a Nike ‘swoosh’ on nearly every track suit, swimming costume and warm-up jacket.  Nike does not even have to run ads because every athlete is an ad.  Even the Russians are now labeled.  Of course, that was the point of promoting counter-revolution in the USSR – expanding the markets for U.S. and western products.  Right next to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is the U.S. embassy, now on the ‘east’ side of town.  And right across the street?  A Starbucks.  Lining Unter Den Linden are no longer stores selling the plastic Trabant, but stores selling luxury Italian automobiles like Lamborghini. 

Ahh, freedom. 

I understand in the next Olympics, the athletes will be tattooed with the Nike emblem, with a number for individual identification.

Nor is it enough to watch the ads for one of the Deutschland’s best cars, BMW, promoting U.S. sports, but now “God’ – ah, Morgan Freeman, is portentously narrating VISA ads.  And Freeman is a self-styled liberal-leftist and atheist.  Does he need the money? 

Or the nationalism.  Is it now a requirement for every athlete to literally wrap themselves in their national flag after winning their competition?  The odious coverage by NBC featuring bland and ignorant hosts Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Bob Costas and Ryan Seacrest concentrates solely on American athletes, from what I can see.  If one is not participating, that event will not be covered, which is why we have not seen some events at all.  NBC cut the tribute to the British victims of the 2005 London tube bombings from their opening ceremony broadcast, claiming Americans wouldn’t be interested.  Probably it interfered with squeezing some more ads on, but NBC is not going to say that.

So this is all as it always is.  6 corporations control most of our media.  Relax!  You are in good hands. 

However, the Olympics are still the most popular international sporting event in the world, hence there are some things that happen that are not under complete U.S. control.  I’ve got to hand it to Danny Boyle - the opening ceremony started like some theatrical version of the “Making of the English Working Class.”  Boyle, of course, is the producer of the subtly subversive film, “Slumdog Millionaire.”  The ceremony started with Tolkien’s idyllic world of the English village - which was then replaced by hundreds of industrial and mine workers emerging from pagan-haven Glastonbury Hill, and hammering out a very large Olympic ring (the one to rule them all?) - accompanied by the thundering of drums.  Strutting around while they worked were the top-hatted capitalists of ostensible yore.  Of course, to please everyone, they had to fly in the bored Queen, Daniel Craig as James Bond and the military, but then the damn thing veered back towards celebrating the National Health Service (single payer for you Yanks), British childrens’ stories like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Harry Potter, then finished with a history of British rock music, ending with the off-key contribution of “Sir” Paul McCartney.  (See commentary on ‘Music Sell-Outs,’ below.)  They certainly couldn’t end the story with crowds of tie-wearing capital-markets traders and bankers from the City with their feet on the necks of office workers and factory blokes, but hey, it’s a thought.  And maybe Boyle wished he could.

Unlike U.S. sports coverage, which is dominated by year-around exclusive focus on male baseball, football and basketball, the Olympics gives equal play to women’s sports.  This is absolutely rare.  So for the shortest time, Americans get to see strong, fit, good-looking women compete equally, and not be relegated to the background.  And surprisingly, the evidence shows that white American women cannot run and that black women have a lock on many track events. We’ve known for years that American black men outrun white men, at least in the Olympics.  And this seems to be true internationally too.  Jamaican Usain Bolt (Insane Bolt?), a theatrical name if I ever saw one, is now the fastest human on the planet, at least in short distances.  Russian and Ukrainian women are about the only women that give black American and African women a run for their medals.  This, of course, reflects social practices in Russia and the Ukraine that have existed for many years, especially during the workers’ states period.

In my day in high school, the only thing women were allowed to do in sports was join the ‘dance line,’ which was like the cheer-leader squad.  There were no women’s sports.  After Title IX in 1972 (under Nixon, I might add) American girls were finally allowed to get involved in sports, and this has made great changes in women’s abilities.  Many women of my generation are not involved in exercising at all, while many younger women participate in sports and exercise, simply due to Title IX.  Just look at the capable young female bike riders on the streets to see how this plays out in real life. 

In the Olympics, women’s achievements seemed to be roughly linked to the development of a country, and also its cultural values – specifically religion.  It is not just that countries which are wealthy or partly or mostly developed always bring forth women.  For example, Saudi Arabia is wealthy, and India is supposedly one of the great rising ‘tigers’ of neo-liberalism.  (While the real tigers are all being killed.)  Yet in neither country have women made a significant contribution in the Olympics.  The Saudi’s and other countries were humiliated into enrolling a couple of women in hijabs this year for the first time.  As a result, this is the first year that women are represented on every Olympic team.  India, with 1.2 billion people, spent more money than they ever have, and so far have only gained 5 medals – with a woman winning bronze in badminton and another in judo.  Yet China, which is sometimes compared to India, and does not suffer from Hindu and Islamic fundamentalism, sent 100s of women to the games.  African women participated too – even from the poorest countries like Kenya and Ethiopia. (One winner oddly plastered a picture of Mary and baby Jesus on her forehead after she won a long distance race.)   The Saudi women – and other women from Muslim countries – are almost invisible.  The only exceptions are some Turkish runners and one Malyasian girl in diving.  Turkey, under the revolutionary Kemel Ataturk, expelled Islamic controls in the war for independence in 1922 after a 4 year war for independence against the British.  Women were then given rights, unlike many other Middle-eastern countries.  The Turkish women did not run in hijabs or burkas, which would make running harder, and at least got into the final heats.

India and Saudi Arabia, both U.S. allies, are consistently listed in the top 10 worst countries for women in the world.  

The Malaysian girl came from a country that is only 61% Islamic, and she became the first Malaysian woman to win a medal for her country, a bronze.  I do not know her religion, but Islam is weaker in Malaysia than in Afghanistan or Iran, for instance.  Several Iranian women did compete in the Olympics.  However, they are not allowed to compete in swimming events, due to the allegedly skimpy clothing involved.  Clothing for every sport in Iran has to be approved by the regime – and Iranian women are still waiting for approval regarding karate uniforms, so they could not compete there either.  Iranian women cannot compete in any sport in Iran before an audience of men, even their fathers, which of course limits their abilities and participation.  How the reactionaries in Tehran square that with competing internationally before men at the Olympics is anyone’s guess.  Perhaps the immense political humiliation that would follow if they forbade it?

Title IX was a product of a domestic women’s movement in 1972, but was also the product of the success of women’s sports in the USSR and eastern Europe, especially as displayed at the Olympics. The comparison did not sit well with US authorities.  After all, the Soviets had attained their version of Title IX and the ERA in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution.  Like civil rights, which was not just a product of black struggle, but also chided into being by relentless international propaganda against racism run by the USSR, and through domestic, communist-inspired songs like “Strange Fruit” (See review of ‘Malcolm X,’ or “33 Revolutions Per Minute,” below) - abrogation of women's rights are having a harder and harder time existing in national isolation.

Red Frog
August 12, 2012

Everyone Loves Small Businessmen!

“No Local – Why Small Scale Alternatives Won’t Change the World,” by Greg Sharzer, 2012

As our seasons of faux-politics troop by year after year, a real counter-trend has emerged on a somewhat ‘grassroots’ level.  It is the buy local/small co-op/business approach to creating an alternative culture, ostensibly to replace the corporate model.  Richard Wolff, a Marxist professor of economics at Amherst, endorsed the anti-capitalist part of this approach as a key way of ‘democratizing the workplace’ in his book, “Occupy the Economy.” (Reviewed below.)  Various localvore chefs like Alice Waters, the Italian Carlos Petrini of the ‘slow food’ movement, progressive writers like Barbara Kingsolver (Her book “The Lacuna” is reviewed below), advocates of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and urban gardening, both left and right anarchists, prominent environmentalists like Bill McKibben, and E.F. Schumaker in his seminal 1973 book, “Small is Beautiful,” all tout local, small-scale efforts as the key way to change the economy, protect health and protect the environment.  These efforts don’t necessarily need to be non-capitalist, of course – in reality, the two trends are combined in most people’s heads.

Here in Minneapolis, like many other cities, we can see the material results of this movement.  Neighborhood micro-brewers, bicycle co-ops, the continuing existence of the 60s-based organic food co-ops in the metro area headed by the Wedge, the blossoming of urban gardens led by the grand-daddy of them all - Dowling, numerous CSA’s providing food to metro residents, many local restaurants serving local/organic produce, farmers’ markets – even May Day Books itself – form a web of local institutions that seemingly provide a popular- based alternative to the Target/Wal Mart economy.  However, no actual worker-controlled businesses exist in the Twin Cities except some small co-ops – a point Wolff would be at pains to make.

On a parallel course, Republicans, followed by Democrats, have for years claimed that local small businesses provide the most jobs in the U.S., and thus money should be funneled to small businesses to lower unemployment.  They are the ‘job creators.’ Since both parties are not parties controlled by small businessman, these apparently populist claims are mostly useful in gaining votes.  Even the local Green Party, dominated by progressive small business owners, was indirectly involved in a mayoral campaign led by Papa John Kolstad that mainly focused on the plight of small business. (see commentary, “Meltdown of the Minnesota Green Party?“ below.) 

It seems, everyone loves small, local businessmen.

Greg Sharzer is a British Marxist, and decided to take a look at this movement.  This timely book puts the local movement under the lens, and reveals why it is lacking as a way to actually protect the environment or change the economy.   He does not completely dismiss it either, for obvious reasons.  Localism is an indicator that the corporate approach is not working, and has arisen as an alternative to monopoly capitalism.  I have noticed that the people most interested in recycling, growing their own food, buying locally, changing their diet, reducing energy use, bicycling, etc. – and are actually willing to DO these things in their personal lives -  are many times the same people who want an anti-capitalist alternative. After all, if individuals and families can all do this, why can’t businesses and government?  I myself compost, recycle to one bag of garbage per month, grow some vegetables, bicycle to work, mow my lawn with a push-mower, eat vegetarian and a bit of fish, belong to a CSA, repair items, try to buy used, and purchase items locally, or ‘fair trade’ items, if possible, even if they cost more.  Yet none of this is going to change capitalism ultimately.  It is a sandbox.

The apparently populist claim that small businesses ‘create’ the most jobs has been debunked recently by Jared Bernstein in his blog, “On the Economy.”  In a massive study on small-business job production by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it reveals that, like the deceptive unemployment, GDP, poverty and inflation numbers issued by the government, the ‘job creation’ numbers have also been massaged.  (And they used to bitch about the USSR issuing fake statistics!) The numbers which show small businesses generating the most jobs are based on ‘establishment size.”  And ‘establishment’ is based on a specific geographic site. In effect, if you have a business that employs less than 50 people on a geographic site, that qualifies as a ‘small business.’  Even if it is a McDonald’s restaurant, a GAP store or a MAC cosmetics store.  And now you see the falsity of these numbers.  When you take an ‘entity’ point of view, large corporations are the chief hirers of labor in the U.S., not small businesses. And on an international scale? No contest.  Nor does it show how many small businesses are nothing but feeders for large corporate enterprises.

Small business has also recently taken another adjustment in the statistics field.  George Zornick of the Nation recently posted statistics that show that 66% of low wage workers work for large corporations, not small business, so that raising the minimum wage is really something corporate America does not want, not ‘small business’ America. 

In Sharzer’s reasonable polemic, of which I can only sketch an outline, he takes on many claims of the localist movement.  Probably the most solid claim by the localist movement is that money spent in a local business stays in the community.  On the face of this, it seems quite logical and bulletproof.  'Civic Economics' is an organization charged with investigating this issue in Andersonville, a Swedish ethnic business neighborhood in Chicago.  They found chain stores retained $43 in the local economy, while local stores retained $68.  However, hidden in this statistic is how much of the product being ‘locally’ sold is also produced locally.  I.E. an Andersonville gift store selling handicrafts or food from Sweden is exporting part of that $68 back to Sweden.  It is also possible that that gift store is owned by someone living on the tony ‘Gold Coast” of Chicago – and again, more of the $68 starts migrating away from Andersonville into a wealthy ‘local’ enclave of the same city.  An expensive and unhealthy ‘mom & pop’ grocery store in Andersonville may suck more money out of the local population than a Wal-Mart, thus leaving less for other local vendors.  Nor might all local stores pay more than chains.  In addition, not all local products are as carbon-friendly as products shipped from other countries, due to the low carbon output of rail and ship.  Sharzer maintains that the apparent economic / environmental benefit of consumption based on local firms is not as clear as stated.  

Sharzer analyzes the role that consumers can have in changing capitalism, both factually and theoretically. At present, in the UK, only 1% of all purchases are ‘ethical’ purchases – not enough to sway anyone yet.  Even if this percentage crept up to 5 or 10%, it would not dominate the economy.  One of the present losing tactics of the labor movement, as Joe Burns pointed out in “Reviving the Strike,” (reviewed below) is the consumer boycott (aka “Corporate Campaign”) which replaced effective strike action in many strikes in the recent past.  Burns concluded consumer boycotts are only subsidiary tactics that can accompany a real strike, not the main tactic itself.   

Theoretically, neo-liberals maintain that consumers are at the heart of capitalism and labor is peripheral – or invisible.  If they are right, then the localist movement is also right.  If they are wrong, then the localist movement’s ideology is just a bit of populist neo-liberalism, this time benefiting small business.  Anarchists like Proudhon believed capital was not the enemy, just the way the market was run.  Marx believed the market was a product of the social relations of production – ownership by the capitalists of most land, means of production and most property.  Changing the ‘market’ could not change the ownership of society, because the owners of society controlled the market.  Sharzer points out that even present ‘fair-trade’ items do not eliminate exploitation.  Sharzer hinges his argument on “SNALT” – socially necessary abstract labor time, a Marxist concept – in essence, labor power.  Humans create value, not machines or techniques.  The market does not exchange concrete use values; only exchange values.  As a result, no worker will be compensated adequately and no product will be sold for its real price.

Schumaker himself opposed Marx’s ‘labor theory of value’ because it was ‘human-centric.’ Marx’s theory actually showed that capital was anti-human because it only valued products – and in the derivative, the consumers who buy those products.  In addition, Marx implicitly costed natural inputs to production.  It was a Soviet Marxist who actually formalized this – though his economic accounting was not followed by the Soviet state. Most pro-capitalist localists idealize the market – and that is why they can never  undermine a market economy, nor can they free labor as a commodity, nor can they protect the environment, which can also be exploited ‘locally.’  Their real goal is to realize the dominance of small enterprise owners – an impossible goal, of course, in a period of increasing world monopolization.  It is only an argument to create niche markets within the broader confines of the capitalist system.

Sharzer cites authors who contend that the nostalgia for local small business hides their real make-up – in 2010 83% of small businesses in the U.S. were owned by older, white, married men.  No surprise there. 

Sharzer takes on the anti-capitalist version of localism too. He contends it is similar to visions of national autarky, yet on an even more narrow, fragile basis. Long-distance trade has never been absent from almost any economic system, even the former workers’ states.  Hidden behind the bias against the use of efficient large-scale technology is an anti-industrial attitude – essentially substituting subsistence and a microscopic cottage economy.  This paradise was idealized by Marxists like William Morris in his book, “News From Nowhere”, (reviewed below.)  Sharzer, citing Marx, says that anti-capitalist localists cannot overcome the law of value when they try to replace big industry and high-tech with direct, non-capitalist trade. Big capital dominates markets and will always do so until capital is overthrown.

Sharzer goes into an analysis of urban agriculture (“UA”), its dependence on bourgeois land rent and its minor role in national agricultural policy.  He then discusses the lifestyle recommendations similar to those of middle-class socialists in England cited by George Orwell (In “All Art is Propaganda,” reviewed below) -‘hygiene, fruit-juice, birth-control, poetry…”- and their similarity to the life-style recommendations of the present localists – organic food, yoga and craft beer. Ultimately, Sharzer identifies localism as an ideology of the progressive petit-bourgeoisie – which sees the culture war as the true font of politics, not economics, capital and class.  Kingsolver even sees conspicuous consumption in negative Buddhist religious terms – in essence, shopping is now a spiritual issue.  Market choices for upscale hiking boots, vintage furniture, wheat-grass juicers and locavore food identify the true cutting edge of this revolution – in its cultural, consumptive choices.  In essence, this approach disappears the working-class – that grubby majority which this ostensible democracy rests upon.  Everything returns to a modern day ‘Renaissance Festival” of artisanal villages and art fairs for consumptive hobbits. 

Artisanal improvements in certain products can increase quality and health – hand-made soaps, hats, furniture, breads, etc.  They might be made by individual entrepreneurs that live a somewhat precarious existence. Yet this improvement in quality does not change the essence of the commodity as a commodity.  And in both price and payment for labor, artisanal products for the most part cannot compete with large capital. 

Sharzer’s book flows directly into “Rebel Cities” by David Harvey, (reviewed below) which raises the class issues of any locality or ‘community’ that do not disappear once the worker leaves his plant, office, warehouse, hospital, school or retail store and returns home.   Predatory local businessmen are many times a derivative exploiter, seeking their cut of the workers’ wages.  Not to mention the ‘local banks’ that mortgage the houses, apartment buildings and businesses lining the local streets. 

At best, both pro and anti-capitalist localism provides a space for alternative businesses and people to get a breathing space and an organizing center. At best, it provides training for the future task of running the whole of society, not a tiny part of it.  At worst, it provides a substitute, a placebo for true change, and ultimately, is a prop to the petit-bourgeoisie as a class, and no one else. 

P.S. - February 27, 2013 on Bloomberg, a professor at the New School in NYC said the similarity between "Occupy" and the Tea Party was that they both liked small capitalism.  He called the new form of hipster capitalism, "Indie capitalism," citing one of the first organic restaurants, Alice Water's Chez Panisse in Berkley.  'Nuff said.  

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog, August 1, 2012

A Peruvian Writes

“The Dream of the Celt,” by Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 

Critics are always yapping about Gabriel Marquez and his ‘magical realism.’  Realism that actually buries and hides reality, like transmittals from Plato’s cave, writings for the aesthetic sensors and the political censors.  We get the tail of the elephant only, not the elephant itself.  Llosa, a Peruvian, has no such compunctions.  He is by far the best Latin American fiction writer.  His prose is clean and almost elegant, he tells a great story, and his stories have a point.  A political point, which means he actually cares about the human condition, not just someone’s psychological condition.

Some of the arrows in Llosa’s quiver: “The War at the End of the World,” about a real communist / anarchist insurrection in central Brazil; “The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta,” describes the life of a Trotskyist terrorist/activist in Peru; “Feast of the Goat,” covers the struggle against Trujillo in the Dominican Republic; “Death in the Andes,” an analysis of Sendro Luminoso through the eyes of one of his continuing characters, Litumo; “The Time of the Hero,” his first novel, about students at the military academy in Lima, a book which was banned by Peruvian authorities; “Conversation in the Cathedral,” a serpentine story of intrigue after a right-wing coup in Peru, peopled by dozens of characters and periods of time. 

“The Dream of the Celt” is his latest novel – a novel that removes the curtain from economic colonialism in the Congo and Brazil in the late 1800s and early 20^th century, and then links that to the struggle against the British in Ireland.  The book follows the life of disowned Irish nationalist and human-rights hero Roger Casement, who ended being hanged by the British soon after the Easter Rebellion in 1916.  This book ends any speculation about the ‘humanizing’ mission of colonial capitalism. 

Casement is an odd fellow.  He was thrilled by reading about the colonial adventures of Stanley and Livingston in Africa.  He got a job with the Belgians and Stanley himself, a brutal pig, who were ‘developing’ the Congo at the time.  It took years for Casement to understand what was happening around him.  Rubber was the extractive material of the day.  Africans were forced, by gun and whip, not wage, to work for the Belgian King’s company, going into the forest to milk the rubber trees, then bringing the fluids back to the rivers, where they were hauled overland and eventually shipped down river, back to Europe.  Of course, the Congolese could not hunt or grow crops while also tending rubber trees, so men disappeared, villages revolted, the Congolese starved, villages were burned and the Africans eventually became slaves on their own continent, this time enslaved by Europeans. 

Casement began to understand all this, and started to write letters back to England, working with anti-slavery societies and exposing the Belgians.  Eventually he was sent on an official trip by the English government to describe the conditions of the Belgian rubber trade.  He survived because of the British connection, presented his findings to Parliament, and the Belgian companies were denounced and ostracized by the British government.  Casement was a hero, interviewed, invited to make speeches and feted by the liberals of his day.  And all the while, he was still, really, an Irishman. 

It suddenly dawned on him, that, while the brutality the Belgian King showed to the Africans – who they considered sub-human – was extreme; it did not differ in essence from the centuries-long British occupation of Ireland.  Casement started to learn Celtic, and made contacts with the Irish nationalists of the time, all the while working for the British government as an officer of the foreign office.  He also remembered that his mother, a Catholic, had secretly baptized him in the Roman Church when he was little. 

Casement also had another secret.  He was a homosexual in a time when being gay was considered a crime.  He never had a long-lasting affair – it seems the only one he had that lasted for months was with a British spy assigned to inform on him.  Instead, he visited bathhouses, dark bars, parks and swimming holes in the Congo, and later, Brazil. And kept an incriminating diary of these encounters.  This is one reason he has been almost forgotten as a prominent Irish nationalist.

Stories of similar brutal treatment were coming out of Brazil, about a British crown company also involved in harvesting rubber there.  Casement was again sent to Brazil by the British government to discover the truth.  He left with a group, and traveled down the rivers to the bases of the rubber company.  There he documented more whippings, beatings, rapes, starvation, intimidation, child-selling and executions of the native Amazonian tribes, who were being forced to work for free to harvest rubber, and resisted for the same reasons the Africans had.  They were treated like animals, which was the key to justifying their economic exploitation.  ‘Animals,’ after all, are the most inferior beings of all.  Blacks from Barbados were used as foreman to control the Amazonians, and they were the first to step forward to tell what they knew.  Again, modern slavery, covered up by pretty words, lies, legal niceties, prominent people and lots and lots of money.  Eventually, unlike others, he escapes with his life, presents his findings to Parliament, and the Amazonian rubber company is ultimately dissolved. 

Casement by this time is deeply involved with the Irish revolutionaries, from the socialist / laborite John Connolly on down, though he favors the more Catholic, nationalist faction himself.  He believes an armed rebellion at the wrong time would be a mistake, and counsels caution.  Casement’s great idea to aid the Irish nationalist cause is to call on the German government for guns, aid, even troops against the British.  World War I gives Casement the chance to try out this unpopular theory – unpopular even among nationalists.  During the war, he goes to Germany, works with the Kaiser’s generals and is allowed to recruit Irishmen out of the German prison camps.  Only 50 Irish volunteer to work with the Germans to fight for Irish nationhood.  Casement hears about the Easter Rising, and sets out on a German submarine to aid it, with German guns in tow, but no soldiers.  He’s caught, the submarine carrying the guns does not land, and Casement is sent to prison for trial in London.

The rising happens without the added guns.  Hundreds are killed, hundreds arrested, many disappear or escape, and many do not mobilize.  The book ends as a meditation on the wisdom of the Easter Rising, eventually coming down on the side of martyrdom.  Casement himself meets the gibbet a bit later – his own martyrdom, but hung as a double-traitor and a pervert. 

Nothing ‘magical’ about this story.  Only true.

And I bought it at Cheapo Books!

Red Frog / July 25, 2012

Musicians With A Spine

“33 Revolutions per Minute – the History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day,” by Dorian Lynskey, 2011 

How fast does a CD spin?  Around 500 rpm at the center, and 200 rpm at the edge.  And audio files don’t ‘spin’ at all, except perhaps from a hard drive.  So you know this book is anchored in the past - after all, it is a history.

Lynskey is a British music critic for the Guardian.  In this book he concentrates on popular U.S. and British music, and other music that has appeared in those countries, like Afro-pop, Chilean folk and reggae.  He ignores U.S. blues, country-western, blue-grass, Tex-Mex, old English or American folk, but does discuss political jazz, and concentrates mostly on songs about social issues, not about economic issues or class.  His appendix includes a bit on older folk music.  Each chapter is organized around a song and a group or musician, but delightfully spreads out to capture the other artists and songs surrounding that period.  He manages to encyclopedically name-check many political songs or bands in the process, though not all. An index of mentioned albums, songs and artists is included at the end.

Canned Heat’s “Sic’ Em Pigs,” Beach Boys “Demonstration Time,” the Band’s “King Harvest,” Sir Douglas Quintet’s “Chicano," key pieces by the Plastic People of the Universe or Gang of 4, and neglected country music like Charlie Daniel's "Still in Saigon," John Anderson's "Seminole Wind" and Aaron Tippin's "Working Man's PHD" are examples of songs that I can think of that are not mentioned even in footnotes.

Lynskey starts his music history with the 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday, though there were political blues songs prior to that – for instance Leadbelly recorded “Bourgeois Blues” in 1938.  Lynskey ends with a chapter focused on the period during and after Green Day’s 2004 anti-Bush punkish rock opera, “American Idiot.”  Lynskey seems to ask at the end of the book, “Is political music dead?”

The main ideological issue with music and politics is – can they be combined?  Bourgeois high and middle-brow culture says no – citing ‘arts for arts sake,’ while commercial low-brow culture says no too, citing its sole use as dance tracks or love songs.  Capitalist culture generally sees music as a form of escapism, elevated entertainment or aesthetic pleasure alone.  But of course, it does not have to be only that.  Bureaucratic socialists insist music’s role is solely political – again, a warped view.  The author shows some nervousness about this issue, but of course makes an excellent case for their possible combination.  And like most leftish Brits, Lynskey is not afraid of talking about socialist influences on musicians, unlike American critics - which is probably one reason why he was the person to write this book.  Many British political musicians – not just Billy Bragg - were influenced by socialism and trade unionism because of the strength of British labor traditions.

The first song, “Strange Fruit” was written by a Jewish Marxist, Abel Meeropol, the lyrics first appearing in “The New Masses.”  It was about the lynching of blacks in the south, based on a photo printed in newspapers around the U.S.  Billie Holiday adapted it and it became her signature song – one of the most powerful ever sung. 

Lynskey goes on from there, covering in historical sections the U.S. folk scene starting with Woody Guthrie, then Dylan’s contribution; a large raft of 60s radical folkies, rockers and R&B stars; his international section, with Victor Jara, Fela Kuti and reggae-man Max Romeo; the birth of punk and rap in the 70s and 80s, featuring the Clash, Grandmaster Flash and Special AKA; and songs from Rage Against the Machine, Steve Earle and Public Enemy in the 90s until 2008. 

What struck me is the heavy human toll being a leftist songwriter took on people like Phil Ochs, Fela Kuti and Victor Jara.  Kuti was forced into exile after having his home and recording studio burnt; Jara was killed during the Chilean coup.  Though this is unlike political song-writers in the U.S. or U.K, where only career suicide or depression itself threaten.  Ochs did commit suicide.  In the U.S. and U.K., many hard-core political bands just disappeared - but they were not 'disappeared.'  Being political in England or the U.S. was for the most part not very financially viable or socially acceptable, except in special times.  So mainstream bands like REM, U-2 and Radiohead jumped in the water when the water was warm, or wrote in indirect ways about political/social topics so as to cushion themselves from reaction. They did not wear it on their sleeve.

Lynskey’s closing section on the difficulty of writing and performing political music at the present is weak.  He never makes an explicit connection between the strength of dissident political, class, geographic and cultural movements and the rise and quality of protest songs.  The folkies, hippies, punks, black nationalists, riot grrrls, trance dancers, trade unionists, anti-war activists, environmentalists and other sub-cultures make appearances time and time again in the book.  Without them it is obvious that political songs would not exist in such abundance. Why Lynskey doesn't make this connection explicit is odd.  Certain kinds of politicized music exist only in connection with movements of social change or cultural disruption - they do not exist alone or in a vacuum.   Bemoaning the lack of politicized music is really bemoaning the lack of the dissident movements that underlie it!  Of note, the book was finished before the Arab Spring, anti-austerity movements in Europe and Occupy.  Perhaps Lynskey will be able to add a major song or two based on them.  I know Tom Morello is certainly trying to write it.

And I bought it at May Day Books expanded music section!

Red Frog

July 22, 2012

The Dialectic is Ruthless

“Occupy the Economy – Challenging Capitalism, in conversation with Richard Barsamian” by Richard Wolff, 2012

The dirty secret of American politics is that no one is supposed to ever think about the ‘big picture.’  We are supposed to plod away, either observing passively or cheering our ostensible political party while the corporate press discusses the acceptable or ginned-up issues.  How much austerity should we have?  How great small businessmen are!  How culture-war politics are the only politics.  How stupid those who don’t agree with us are.  How afraid we should be of terrorism.  How the ruling taste-makers are always right, considerate and noble.

Richard Wolff, one of the few Marxist economics professors in the U.S., produced this small book at the height of the Occupy movement.  Occupy, unlike the culture-war politics of the Democrats or Republicans, made class and economic power key to its analysis, and in the process galvanized a more objective approach to the world.  Wolff is right to understand it as the beginning of a new American class understanding – something long abandoned in bourgeois politics.  Recent studies have shown that this has penetrated beyond tattooed youth camping in town squares.  Most American’s now self-identify themselves as working-class, not middle-class.  This is a sea-change.  Surveys also reveal that ‘socialist’ is no longer the terminal slur it once was, with significant minorities supporting some form of the term.

Like the vicious religious fundamentalists of all stripes who have done more to promote atheism than anyone else, the market fundamentalists of the world, in word and deed, are promoting socialism.  The dialectic is ruthless. 

The book is presented in a series of conversations with Richard Barsamian in late 2011. Key points made by Wolff in these conversations:

1. For the first time in 150 years, wages for the U.S. working class are now stagnant.  30 years of credit replaced wage growth, and now that, too, is over.  Wolff considers the present conjuncture not to be a normal capitalist ‘downturn.’
2. Wolff estimates in the past 30 years in the U.S. that only the top 5-10% of the population has benefitted.  (See commentary "Look Who We're Calling Comrade" on the narrowness of the‘1%’ designation, below.)
3. Corporations can still prosper by serving international markets, not local/US markets.  Hence the Keynesian idea that no money in the pockets of the American people means less sales and profits for U.S. corporations is actually false.  Krugman does not take the international economy into consideration - he's in essence an economic nationalist. 
4. The political liquidation of communists, socialists, left populists and now unions in the U.S. has been the trump card the rulers use to ensure that no significant or even small economic changes can ever be made.  There is no ‘big stick’ on the left anymore. 
5. Wolff recommends government-run national jobs programs.  Incentives to private enterprise do not work, and have not worked.
6. Wolff believes the democratization of enterprises is key, instead of the rule of some untrained white-collar manager, let alone a group of high-flying plutocrats.  Of course, how this is done without unions or political groups having strength in the workplace or in the political system is beyond me.
7. Marxism is the only living method that really understands capitalism.  All critics of capital eventually have to adopt some or all of its premises. 
8. The government is not a family, nor does it have to balance its budget like a family.
9. Recent events have shown that “capitalism does not deliver the goods… it now delivers the ‘bads.’”
10. The most recent figures show 1/3^rd of the U.S. population – 100 million people – now live below or close to the real poverty line.
11. Occupy’s work with the unions – during the Verizon strike and the longshore strike at Longview, Washington  – are key.
12. Wolff feels that U.S. weapons’ production does not generate many jobs.  Actually, Robert Reich pointed out in 2010 that the biggest ‘jobs program’ in the U.S. was the U.S. military and weapon’s producers – which involved 3.83 million jobs at that time, not including foreign contractors.  Reich estimated that this lowered the U.S. unemployment rate by 2%. Military spending in the U.S. has been the true Keynesian program (and surplus destruction program) since after World War II – not to mention an absolute necessity for imperialism.  Wolff does point out that money spent on weapons production is actually less productive, dollar for dollar, than money spent on domestic programs.
13. The Social-Democratic Parties of Europe – in Greece, in Spain, in Germany, in England – have become obvious pillars of capital, and have betrayed their own working-class bases. 
14. A real political democracy and the present economic dictatorship are incompatible.
15. The real U.S. unemployment rate – the U6 figure - is around 16%.  This is a picture of a large precariat. However, the U6 figures does not include prisoners, which would make the rate even higher.  (See review of "The Precariat:  The New Dangerous Class," below.)
16. Stocks and bonds should be taxed, just as property is taxed.  Religious institutions are not taxed, but should be.  The so-called separation of church and state stops at the money door.  Universities like Harvard and Yale pay no taxes, but should.  Lotteries and legal gambling are disguised – and regressive - taxes. 
17. Markets are very recent, are not egalitarian and are not efficient. 
18. Mexicans are an imported labor commodity that became less needed during the Great Recession. 
19. The capitalist banking system was saved by the working-class taxpayer – and the capitalist state – in 2008. The sector was nationalized, for all purposes, then returned to profitability by that same state.  Recent revelations by Neil Barofsky, the TARP overseer, depict Geithner and Treasury being interested in saving the banks and no one else.  Wolff, like many others, maintains there is no justification for a private banking system anymore. 

Wolff ends with a “Manifesto for Economic Democracy and Ecological Sanity.”  His real solution is hinted at in the phrase, “occupy the corporations.”  He thinks that worker-run businesses, federations of such businesses like Mondragon in Basque Spain, ESOPS, co-ops and businesses with more control by the people who work there, will ‘transform the economy.’ 

However, as an example, the food co-ops of Minneapolis, which were started by radicals and hippies in the 60s and 70s, still exist.  They are wonderful enterprises – but they have not transformed capitalist agriculture for the majority.  The U.S. Farm Bill is still written by agri-business and the politicians in league with it.  The food (and bike, etc.) co-ops provide a bit of economic and cultural/lifestyle space – but, in a sense, then allowing the major corporate institutions to stand.  Co-ops from the 30s also still exist, but are barely distinguishable from normal capitalist businesses now.  Greg Sharzer’s book, “No Local – Why Small-Scale Alternatives Won’t Change the World” is a great answer to Wolff’s point, and will be reviewed soon.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog, July 21, 2012

Preview of "33 Revolutions Per Minute"

The Music Sell-Outs

Snoop-Dogg – played at David Sacks’ “Let Him Eat Cake” Birthday party, which had an 18^th Century pre-French Revolution Theme - powdered wigs, tights and all.  Sacks just sold his small software company, “Yammer” for $1.5 billon to Microsoft, and figured he’d order up some ‘edgy’ entertainment.  Fake thug Snoop-Dogg always valued the Do-Re-Mi over anything else.  At least he didn’t wear the powdered wig.  Evidently there were no guillotines about, but perhaps there should have been.

Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John – for being knighted in the first place, and then for playing Queen Elizabeth’s Birthday Bash concert last weekend at Buckingham Palace.  Of course, pop music always had a weakness for the Queen - or was it being a queen, or was it for the pop group Queen?  No?  Are these two musicians democrats with a small d?  No.  Royalist pop tarts?  Yes! “God Save the Queen – the Fascist Regime,” sang another band that we know.  They did not get invited.

Bob Dylan – awarded the ‘Medal of Freedom’ by Barack Obama.  Showed up wearing dark sunglasses, with a smug look on his face.  He’s one of ‘those’ guys – the ones who wear dark glasses inside.  Another aging millionaire more concerned with himself than a fake award obviously given to capture a certain music demographic in an upcoming election.  Come on, the ‘medal of freedom?’  What did he do, jump out of a plane and seize some town in Afghanistan?  Dylan has not written a political song since 1975 when he released the great song, "Hurricane" about the false arrest and imprisonment of Hurricane Carter, a black New Jersey boxer.  Since then?  Nada.  He's a good musician and song writer, but this? 

Stay tuned for the review of "33 Revolutions Per Minute - A History of Protest Songs" from musicians that have a spine.  Dylan and Snoop Dogg had one at one time.

Red Frog

June 20, 2012

Dracula ... Or Frankenstein?

Hungary Continues On Horthyite Path

If you know the history of Hungary, you know Admiral Miklos Horthy, a rightist authoritarian, led to the fascist Arrow Cross, who handled the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and other camps towards the end of World War II.  Both supported the Germans in that war.  The only thing that ended that romance was the arrival of the Soviet Army.  Now their successors, the Fidesz Party and Jobbik, continue on a similar path in present-day Hungary - all thanks to the restoration of capitalism.  Hungary is presently in the 2nd recession in four years, and no one has any money.  No wonder Orban wants to distract attention from the tremendous performance of his economy.

Proof? 

January 27, 2012 - Guardian

50 miles north of Budapest, in the Hungarian village of Gyöngyöspata, right-wing paramilitary groups linked to the fascist Jobbik Party have started a reign of fear against the Roma of the town, resulting in 4 serious incidents of harm against Gypsies.  The Civil Guard Association for a Better Future, Defence Force and Betyársereg dominated the town for 2 months, allegedly fighting ‘gypsy crime.’  The mayor of town is in Jobbik.  Romani children in town are taught in separate classes, use different toilets, lunch areas and festivities.  The Romani children cannot use computers until years after the other children, or participate in after-school activities.  The governing Fidesz Party has a program of sending the large amount of Roma unemployed (as well as others) to ‘labour camps,’ where they work for peanuts in poor conditions.  These camps remind the Roma of similar camps in war-time Hungary.  There are 400,000 to 800,000 Roma in Hungary.  Canada has become the destination of choice for Roma seeking asylum from Hungary.  

April 19, 2012 – New York Times

TEK is the acronym for a praetorian guard created by Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban of Fidesz in 2010.  They have almost unlimited powers of surveillance and data collection as an ‘anti-terror’ force, and are outside the command structure of the police, the courts or the security agencies.  They are instead under the Interior Minister, a lackey of Orban's.  Essentially, they are a personal secret police. TEK only have to act under police authority when pursuing criminal activities, like drugs.  The Fidesz Speaker of the House now also has command of a private guard – a “Parlia-Military’ – which is allowed, not just to ‘protect’ the Speaker or the Parliament, but to enter and search homes, etc.  The author asks whether these moves presage a police state in Hungary, loyal to only one Party.

June 13, 2012 – Bloomberg News

In a village 60 miles west of Budapest, Csokako, a statue to Milos Horthy has been erected to celebrate his rule from 1919 to 1944.  Horthy was an ally of Hitler, an anti-Semite and an extreme Nationalist. Other statutes of Horthy are going up in other parts of Hungary.  Books by Jozsef Nyiro are being brought back into the Hungarian school system. Nyiro was close to the fascist Arrow Cross Party.  Fidesz organized a reburial of Nyiro in ethnic Hungary, in what is now Romania.  The Romanian government refused to allow, in their words, 'anti-Semite/ fascist/ anti-Romanian' ashes, into their country, so Nyiro had to be ‘reburied’ without his ashes.  A large part of Fidesz program is for a ‘greater Hungary,’ including a large chunk of Romania.  Fidesz has given these Romanian citizens of Magyar/Hungarian ethnicity voting rights, which shows to what extent they are serious.  This is a voting bloc they hope to control.  By the way, this part of Romania includes the former Transylvanian territories of Count Vlad Dracula - the Impaler, which evidently makes it quite a prize for Orban.  Through these moves, Fidesz hopes to capture votes from the base of Jobbik.  Anti-Semitic incidents are occurring in the rest of the country.  There are still 120,000 Jewish people in Hungary.  A bit less than 500,000 Hungarian Jews perished in the Nazi/Arrow Cross/Fascist holocaust. 

Fascism?

People who use impressionistic methods to say that the U.S. is already ‘fascist' only prove how out-of-touch they are with real fascism. Perhaps they need their teeth knocked out by a Nazi punk.  Take a look at a country that actually has a developing fascist movement and compare. 

First there is the old hippie logic of the phrase 'friendly fascism.' 'Friendly fascism' is an oxymoron, like a 'kind killer.'  It cannot exist.  The U.S. government does not need fascism yet – not in a society in which the government has almost full surveillance powers and is weakening the rule of law in order to criminalize dissent, strikes and any real opposition.  In which the ruling class controls a vast propaganda network of television, newspapers, magazines and radio stations, holds the money card and controls both political parties. In which education is merely training.  In which the ruling class has at their disposal the largest arsenal of military/ police/ security forces in history.  I would call the U.S. an authoritarian plutocracy with a parliamentary veneer, or some variation on that.  For the American ruling class, fascists right now are just loose cannons that they allow to simmer, but not grow to their actual, full, height.  Mussolini’s definition of fascism (corporations and government acting together) was an incomplete description for what it really was – open terror against labor, against the left, against foreigners, against minorities of every kind, by a government and extra-legal paramilitaries acting on behalf of the corporations.  Of course, who takes Mussolini's word for anything?  You'd be surprised...

Fascism is the last resort of a threatened capitalist class.  Evidently the Hungarian capitalists feel they need these measures to solidify their weak position.

Happy Fathers' Day!

Red Frog

June 17, 2012

Feeling Precarious Today?

“The Precariat – the New, Dangerous Class,” by Guy Standing, 2011

Guy Standing is a former economist with the International Labour Organization (“ILO”) from 1975 to 2006, a mainstream U.N. sponsored labor organization connected to the AFL-CIO and many governments.  So it is with some distrust that I read a book written by a former 31-year professional ‘labourist,’ as even he would call himself.  The ILO, to my knowledge, other than analyzing the working classes of the world, has never had any role in building a real workers movement anywhere.  In fact, it has done its bit at times to degrade labor. 

Standing has discovered what he calls a 'new class' - the 'precariat.'  And Standing is definitely on to something here. Traditional Marxism has some possible categories for this ‘new class’  – the semi-proletariat, the lumpen-proletariat, the self-employed, the reserve army of the unemployed.   The precariat borrows from all 4 of these groups.  One of his problems is that his definition wanders all over the place – at times seeming to include the whole working class and at other times a more clearly defined group made up of workers who’s main status is contingent.  After all, every worker experiences ‘precariousness’ at times, and also shares some of the pressures of the precariat.  Many workers with stable jobs still have no union contract and work ‘at will,’ with almost no protection from layoffs or termination.  Accidents or sicknesses can throw a worker into poverty quickly.  Even union plants close, layoff or cut work time, no matter how long you’ve worked at them. Of course, this is not news. 

Standing’s present status as a tenured professor at Bath in the UK seems to make him somewhat distant from the realities of the actual working class.  Everything seems to be strained through statistics.  In the earlier part of the book, he seems to include in the precariat paralegals (and other para-professionals), social workers, administrative assistants (formerly called secretaries) and even auto workers.  That might surprise the admin who has to copy his papers and make appointments for him at the University of Bath.  None of these groups is by nature precarious.  He also pulls a large factual boner by claiming that U.S. workers need to be in a job for a year to qualify for unemployment benefits.  It is a half-year.

Along with the precariat, Standing has created two odd new classes along with the precariat – the ‘salariat’ and the ‘proficians.’  The former seems to mean lawyers/doctors/professors/engineers/managers and other professional, high level white-collar types and oddly, also evidently the more numerous white-collar working class.  The white-collar working class is otherwise invisible in his schema, but perhaps he has another place to hide it.  Standing is a member of the top end of the salariat, by the way, and has been his whole life.  His understanding of the vast numbers of the non-salaried white collar and service workers is low, given this verbal slight of hand. (The salariat here serves the same muddling purpose as the term ‘middle class,’ I think.)  He seems not to know that many white-collar workers are legally ‘non-exempt,’ meaning they get paid by time worked, not based on a set ‘salary.’  His focus on the ‘salaryman’ of Japan illustrates this method – or ‘the man in the grey flannel suit,’ as it was called in the 50s in the U.S.  In his view, the industrial working class is the only real working class, an odd point of view shared with David Harvey (See “Rebel Cities,” reviewed below.)

The latter group, the ‘proficians,’ are identified by Standing as professional contract technicians.  I.E. self-employed contract ‘experts’ who collect pretty good wages – when working.  Given this group fits in several other categories, but mainly the self –employed, I find it odd that he even creates a group like this.  Nor does Standing’s grasp the enormous growth of peddlers in almost every country – the ‘self-employed’ of the street. 

Standing, however, does highlight the enormous growth, under late world monopoly capitalism, of millions of contingent workers – the long-term unemployed, temporary employees, part-time employees, contract employees, migrants, the elderly retired, the criminalized, the periodically self-employed; welfare recipients and the disabled; exported workers, prison laborers, forced (slave) laborers, political, environmental and economic refugees, and those without papers, even as citizens of their own countries.  For instance, in China hundreds of millions of rural workers cannot legally move to the cities to stay.  He contends that China has seen the largest internal migration from rural to urban in history.  Standing thinks that world capitalism prefers a contingent workforce to a stable workforce, which is patently true.  And which is why conditions of ‘precariousness’ are filtering into every workplace.  World capital has in essence degraded working conditions for millions of especially young workers to such a point that even dull wage stability is a dream.  As Michael Yates cleverly put it in “In and Out of the Working Class,” (reviewed below), not every worker in the world gets dental. 

Standing does not include them, but I would add the vast increase of street peddlers to this precariat list, as they are living unstable lives that depend on their exploitation of themselves, and often are fronts for various businessmen.  Most street peddlers buy their goods or materials from someone else, and are merely street ‘salesmen,’ repairmen or cooks, working on their own or in small groups.  The precariat also merges into the lumpen-proletariat at a certain point - those who have given up on finding a job, and resort to various types of crime.  They live contingent lives, part criminal, part self-employed.  After all, selling drugs is a ‘sales’ job, if you want to look at it from a non-legal point of view.  So is prostitution, selling your sexual labor, and giving some of the money to a pimp or madam.  These jobs are victimless crimes and are only illegal because of a law.  Standing does not mention this group except by inference (‘the criminalized’).  Once having a criminal past, it hangs around the neck of the precariat like an albatross, inhibiting better employment for a lifetime.

Standing also infers repeatedly that youth do not want to be life-long wage slaves – and that there is something liberating in not doing so.  However, being a life-long 'non-wage' slave might be even worse.  Otherwise, why is he writing this book - to celebrate the rejection of the 9 to 5 job?  Which is, of course, why anyone who looks at the present wants to end wage-slavery itself – something Standing does not want to do.  Standing accepts the market economy and at one point, says he wants labour to be ‘fully commodified’ – while cursing every other kind of commodification.  As if that is going to happen under capital without a class struggle that actually overwhelms capital.

Standing uses the term ‘populist’ in an exclusively right-wing sense, never in a left-wing sense, which is standard Democrat Party/New Labour verbalism.   Notice that the sub-head of the book calls the ‘precariat’ dangerous – and not necessarily just to the ruling class.  His usage suggests that a section of what I would call the working class –is no longer historically progressive.  While one half of young precarians might lean to the left (like his graduate students?) he insists that the other half of the precariat can become fascist – defined as people who complain about Wall Street, inequality and job loss (!)  There is certainly evidence of precariousness leading to the right.  For many years the absence or difficulty of holding jobs in the Palestinian West Bank has swelled the ranks of Hamas, and depleted the Marxist organizations.  Hitler himself was an unemployed house painter.  Recently, one of the top leaders of the National Socialist Movement, Jeff Hall, an unemployed plumber, was killed by his abused 10-year-old son in California. 

Indeed, as a capper, he puts in the standard helpless liberal line in his book:  "To imagine sustained ... resistance" against globalization "is fanciful."  (Shades of Chris Hedges in ‘Death of the Liberal Class,’ reviewed below.)  How convenient.  Resistance is Futile!  Resistance is Futile!  You can just hear the government megaphones echoing this phrase down the streets.

The best parts of this book are really progressive sociology.  Standing has immense sympathy for the precariat, and stands up for them.  He carefully details the precariat’s addiction to the internet; the greater presence of surveillance, which is used to control them; government programs inspired by Libertarianism that blame unemployment on the unemployed;  the use of counseling and ‘therapy’ to qualify for benefits; and the massive amount of unpaid labor that goes into job hunting and benefits retention.  Standing supports international accreditation, and opposes means-tested government aid, which alienates the more stable part of the working class.  Standing, however, opposes ‘workfare’ programs, and then implicitly comes out against national work programs of any kind as well, like the Civilian Conservation Corps, the WPA and the Federal Art Project from the U.S. depression-era.  In his definitions, Standing supports non-alienated ‘work’ over alienated ‘jobs’ or ‘labour’ - echoing Marx.  Though how I might pay for my groceries through writing this blog, I’ll never know, and nor does he.

Standing calls the lack of voting, the ‘thinning of democracy,' which results in alienation of the precariat, and denounces its replacement by the 'commodification of politics.'  Standing understands that the European social-democratic parties and U.S. liberals abandoned any class point of view in their activities, adopting neo-liberal platforms when required to do so by finance capital.  Instead of real awards for his help to the working classes, Obama won an award in 2008 from the Association of National Advertisers as “Marketer of the Year”  for his successful 'change' campaign branding.  As a result of this failure, the harder right is able to capitalize on the dissatisfaction of the precariat.  Here in the U.S. Standing thinks that means the Tea Party, which he, like many impressionistic liberals, calls ‘neo-fascist.’  Of course, are the real supporters of the Tea Party in the precariat?  Standing has no evidence this is so.

So what is the real answer to the rise of a hard right?  An actual mass left.  The precariat might be the most radical part of the proletariat at this precise time, so building a hard left might begin in the precariat and spread from there.  I think that is Standing's most valuable insight.

Standing’s solution is ‘denizens of the world unite.’  'Denizen' is his term for someone who lives somewhere, but it not really fully integrated into society.  If you notice he tries to borrow from Marx.  Many angry ultra-liberals borrow from Marx because they have no real source of their own anymore.  What Standing is about is replacing the proletariat with a precariat, providing an alternative to that 'fuddy-duddy' proletariat.  He calls it a ‘class in the making,’ not yet a ‘class for itself.’  He does not make one suggestion on how to unite the two ‘classes’ – if indeed they are completely separate, which I don’t’ think is true.  Nor does he mention the proletariat except negatively.  I would say the precariat is intimately connected to the proletariat, its lower half, whether white or blue collar, and not some totally separate entity.  I'd even be willing to bet, though I'm not an expert, that some or much of the proletariat in Marx's day was also contingent.  Standing does advocate broader organizations than just unions, as he feels unions will only protect their members.  Standing is in essence a social-democratic idealist intent on tinkering with government policy in order to make the labour market work better for everyone.  The word ‘socialism’ is invisible.  Of course, mass collective action against globalization is also invisible.  'Tinkerers of the Universities unite; you have a world to win' - that might be his final slogan.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

June 10, 2012

Looking Forwards to the Banana Republic

“With Liberty & Justice for Some – How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful,” by Glenn Greenwald, 2011

Greenwald writes a column for Salon.com on law, politics and journalism.  He is one of the top bloggers in the U.S.  As a former Constitutional attorney, he frames his argument on the words and intent of the founders of the U.S. and the Constitution itself.  His assertion is that since the pardon of Richard Nixon, the top political and economic classes are now above the law in a real sense.  Given the importance of ‘a nation of laws, not men’ and ‘equal application of the law’ to the essential nature of the U.S., the republic that used to exist no longer does.  Implicit in this argument, of course, is the right of revolution given this state of affairs, though Greenwald does not mention it.

Greenwald pays particular attention to the broad swathe of pundits at the Washington Post, Time Magazine, The New York Times and other establishment presses that consistently uphold the right of the rulers to break laws.  They say if this is done, than we can all concentrate on a ‘future’ time of corrective action, not vindictive ‘looking back.’ Of course, why would anyone obey any law if there is no punishment?  You can see the problem with this argument. It actually encourages lawbreaking. Yet that is the heart of the argument by politicians and their pundits.

Greenwald first takes us through a short history of executive pardons and protections.  The one that started it all - of Nixon by Ford; the pardon of the Iran/Contra crowd like Ollie North by Reagan; the protection of the Iraq-gate perpetrators like Donald Rumsfield by Clinton; the pardon of Cap Weinberger re Iran/Contra by Bush41; and the pardon of Scooter Libby for the outing of Valerie Plame by Bush43.   The wholesale protection by Obama of the Republican authors (and Democratic Party collaborators) of the illegal torture-kidnapping-imprisonment regime, the illegal Iraq War, obvious perjurers like Alberto Gonzalez, evidence destruction, and domestic spying is only the latest phase in this decades-long development.  As Greenwald puts it, ‘To date, Obama has succeeded in blocking and suppressing virtually every investigation into Bush crimes.”   Greenwald contends the political rulers do this to protect themselves in the future – the behavior is self-serving and self-perpetuating. 

Ford’s pardon of Nixon set the stage, by using the phrases, ‘look forward, not back’ – a phrase that every single president has used since to justify elite law-breaking. (as Greenwald put it, try that on a cop next time you get a ticket!)   Libby was indicted, then pardoned, and the right and center went ape-shit just because of the indictment.  Of course, the reason he was even indicted was because he had crossed the CIA.  The lesson there is that the only people the elite have to fear is the other people in the ruling elite - certainly not the laws of the U.S. or the general population.   

It should be noted that the increasing lawlessness of the elite corresponds quite well with developments in the so-called ‘private’ sector.  The merger of government and corporate capital has become closer and closer over the years.  Greenwald’s prime example is the struggle over telecom immunity during the Bush administration.   Only one major telecom stood up to Bush’s request for illegal surveillance and warrantless spying – Qwest.  AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Bell South, etc. all cooperated.  When the program was revealed to be illegal, and lawsuits against the telecoms began to successfully move through the courts, Dick Cheney and the Democratic Party leadership crafted a ‘telecom immunity’ bill, which, after initially being rejected due to immense pressure from the base, was finally signed into law by Bush, and, in opposition to prior statements, also supported by Obama.  Greenwald looked through the case law and found only one other example of ‘retroactive immunity’ – related to some banks in the 60s.  That is how rare this was. 

Greenwald pays special attention in this matter to a guy named Michael McConnell – the ultimate insider moving between the lobbying firm Booz Allen, the telecoms and the intelligence agencies in the government, advocating privatization of all security and intelligence functions while in both positions.  A mountain of telecom cash found its way to the Democratic Party during this debate, culminating in the obscene spectacle of Democratic Party delegates in Denver in 2008 carrying bags emblazoned with the AT&T logo.  Or, as I read it, “Your Convention, sponsored by Crooked Shit-Bags.” 

The legal immunity of the private sector continued after the 2007-2008 market crash, when not one firm or corporate individual was indicted, let alone gone to jail.  (See review of the book, “Griftopia” below.) Massive illegal practices – by the ratings agencies, the capital markets firms, the insurance and mortgage companies – were topped off by in incredible scandal in which banks fabricated documents in order to foreclose on homeowners, basically stealing their houses illegally.  Small fines were paid, and business went on as usual.  As they say, ‘that is the cost of doing business.”   Oddly enough, Greenwald starts this chapter about a hedge fund manager running over and killing a bicyclist in Vail, Colorado, and only being charged with a misdemeanor. (Amy Senser, you should have lived in Colorado and been a fund manager.)  Greenwald calls the chapter, “Too Big To Jail.”

Greenwald has a long chapter on how Obama has deepened the Bush regime behavior (just as Clinton carried on the legacy of Ronald Reagan in his own way…).  Obama continued to maintain Guantanamo and the military court system, even though most people in it were known to be innocent.  His treatment of U.S. citizen Bradley Manning, following on the heels of Bush's cruel treatment of Jose Padilla, was especially brutal.  Obama has now made a specialty of increased drone attacks, which by any international law are illegal.  And now most radically, he claims the right to kill U.S. citizens without a judicial warrant and without review of his actions.  I.E. the President is now judge, jury and executioner, all in one. Whistle-blowers are now more hounded than under Bush.  The Obama DOJ has gone after Spain, Italy and the U.K. for trying American secret police for violations of the International Convention on Torture, intimidating them into not proceeding.  The Obama State Department under Hillary Clinton endlessly lectures other countries on how they must come to terms with their own historical crimes, exempting America of course - remember, 'look forward, not back!"  Obama has deported more people than Bush ever did.  The Obama DOJ’s attempt to extradite Julian Assange and to prosecute Wikileaks as ‘terrorist’ supporters are more of the same.  And this from a guy who ran on a platform of bringing lawfulness back to the centers of power.

Can I say it?  Obama has no peer among presidential candidates for promising one thing, and doing a 180 once in office.  Except for the Afghan war.  There he carried out his campaign promise. 

Greenwald points out that while the law is in abeyance for the ruling class (or can be changed by Congress conveniently), laws increasingly are applied to the general population, and especially the black and Latino poor.  The flip side of attacking whistle-blowers, claiming executive privilege and exempting private capitalists and their politicians from the law is to bear down on the rest of the population.  The U.S. has the largest prison population of any nation in the world, by percentage and by numbers.  It has the most people locked up for non-violent crimes and for victimless crimes.  The ‘law and order’ mentality first developed by Goldwater, then Nixon, was instituted on a bi-partisan basis by Bill Clinton.  Can we forget his enthusiastic support of the execution of a retarded black man as one of the first acts of his campaign?  The private prison industry lobbies for more prisoners.  And at the heart of the whole mess is the reactionary drug ‘war’- aimed squarely at young black and Latino males.  Given this group might be the most susceptible to revolutionary impulses, it only makes sense that the government concentrates on incarcerating millions of youth under the excuse of drugs.  This, as they said in the 1960s, is institutional racism. 50 years later, nothing has changed.

And if you are leftist then you get treated like you are the lowest of the low.  Recently a supporter of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression in Los Angles was arrested for allegedly throwing a can of pop at a cop almost 40 years ago, and charged with 5 felonies. (He won this one, however, on Tuesday!)  Who can forget the ‘cold case’ mentality that went after Sarah Jane Olson?  Eric Holder, of the Obama DOJ, and their front woman, Elena Kagan, now of the Supreme Court, used the implementation of Bush’s Patriot Act in “Humanitarian Law Project v Holder” (See analysis of Humanitarian Law Project case, below) to go after local anti-war and socialist activists as ‘terrorist supporters.’ And lets not forget the epidemic of entrapment by the FBI - they almost wouldn't have caught anyone without providing the bombs themselves.

What to do?  Well, Greenwald has few solutions.  He’s been a supporter of left-Democrats in the past.  But here, I think, is the key sentence – “Democratic activism is no match for the army of corporate money, lobbyists, national security officials and media servants.  Ordinary Americans, even when united in a coordinated campaign, may be able to delay or disrupt this limitlessly funded onslaught, but they eventually will be steamrolled by it.”  Think back to the mass opposition to the second Iraq war, the stopping of the first bailout, or the stopping of the first attempt to get telecom immunity.  The population won for a short time, then lost.  Even the Vikings stadium debate is an example on a local level.  We need a mass organization that does not go away, that has people in Congress, in the communities and in workplaces, that will not compromise on essential points, and is based on the majority of the population.  The Democratic Party is not it.  Nor are small, temporary, local committees, working on isolated issues.  Short of a major mass movement or a revolution, the situation of unequal application of law is not going to change.

And I bought it at May Day books!

Red Frog

June 4, 2012