Gear-Heads Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Cubicles!

“Shop Class as Soulcraft – an Inquiry into the Value of Work,” by Mathew B Crawford, 2009

This book can be seen as a continuation and addition to Robert Pirsig’s odd but memorable book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which was, at bottom, a meditation on quality. Pirsig wrote that book in the 60s over Robert’s Shoes on Lake and Chicago here in Minneapolis, and it went on to make millions of dollars. Crawford’s title however is misleading – it is not the value of ‘work’ that is at issue in this book, but the value of blue-collar, or physical / mechanical work, over paperwork. Crawford is also concerned primarily with motorcycles – and at present owns an antique motorcycle repair shop. He’s been in various other roles as a car gear-head, philosophy Ph.D at the U of Chicago, think-tank employee, carpenter and now, motorcycle mechanic. Brought up by a hippie mother in a commune and a mathematician father, both imprinted themselves on him as something ‘not’ to do. He has an odd antipathy to ‘hippies’ (always a conservative red flag…) and also combats his father’s purely theoretical relation to reality.

Crawford is a materialist – and someone conversant in Marxism will have no trouble following his arguments against various forms of idealism. He points out that the shutting down of shop classes in high school in the 60s and 70s was a huge mistake, because it meant that everyone was being funneled into colleges to get white-collar jobs in the ‘post-industrial’ society, as Daniel Bell so badly put it. Crawford makes the point that someone doing blue-collar tradesman work – skilled labor – can make more money than a paperwork drone in a corporate HR department, or an actual clerk in a law firm. He also points out that the blue-collar work that cannot be digitized will survive. And while many people are not suited for the deadening work experience of corporate life, they are still shuffled into colleges!

The cube versus the shop – that is the topic here, and Crawford does a great job of showing the value of ordinary mechanical work as an intellectual discipline. Why this needs to be done is probably for the benefit of academics or middle class people who don't believe it. Of course we know the shutting-down of shop classes was not only an attack on the working-class through de-skilling, but also was preparing the population for the out-sourcing of blue-collar work to other countries.

Crawford, however, is really an advocate of skilled labor, and more specifically, small entrepreneurship. He finds Marx’s position that labor under capitalism can be alienating to be partly untrue, as he, as an antique bike mechanic and small businessmen, wants to give people their bikes back, so to speak, to further the thrill of the ride. I think he misreads Marx here, as he insists Marx’s alienated workers do not want others to ‘use’ their products. This, or course, is not really what alienation is all about or even what use-value is about.  He does find paper-shuffling and semi-skilled / unskilled labor to be alienating though. He calls his time as a tie-wearing cube denizen to be more proletarianizing that almost anything else he’d done. Crawford uses Pirsig’s story of the idiot worker who did not care about what he was doing, and who damaged Prisig’s motorcycle as a result, as another example of alienation. Beware of the repair shop where the radio is louder than the thinking.

The book is full of funny stories about what it takes to do real things – and the superiority of actual experience and practical knowledge to poorly written maintenance manuals (written by technical writers, not people who actually do the work), erroneous electronic systems on cars and purely theoretical ‘scientific’ knowledge. He praises thinking as doing, and various older workers he learned from. Those who do, think, those who don’t, do not.

This brings to mind a story a co-worker of mine told me. She bought a GPS unit for her car, and on a trip to Colorado, she put it on the ‘shortest route’ setting, which she thought would get her there the quickest. It took her about 6 hours longer to get to Denver by this method, as the ‘shortest route’ setting will take you down dirt roads, through virtual alleys and around many tiny corners. Instead of applying practical experience – is a shorter route always the fastest? - she trusted the GPS unit. Workers with practical experience know when the computer or the manual or the ‘advice’ is wrong. Those who don’t, don’t. The word ‘bullshit’ describes that moment. As Crawford points out, reality is far more complicated than that. His favorite example is having to drill out a broken bolt from a metal head, or drill out a broken tap. Or dealing with rusted parts, dirt, poor fits or metal fatigue. None of which are provided for in manuals but all quite common.

Crawford makes the ridiculous point that the slogan for the new international capitalists is “workers of the world, unite!” because the capitalists are not ‘nationalists’ anymore. He bases this on an analogy of Rolls Royce workers having pride in their ‘national’ work or BMW workers in theirs. However, more carefully, the real slogan should read: “Capitalists of the world, unite! - except they can't.” Capitalists, while international, always base themselves on a national unit to protect their interests, or a fake ‘international’ unit like the IMF, run by the US and Wall Street. Their ‘internationalism’ is only of the exploitative kind. Of course, a proponent of local small business has no need for internationalism anyway. Which is why he looks down his nose at 'elite' Marxism.

Crawford’s book is a valuable contribution to the debate over class and over-work. He wants people to overcome their alienation towards their own ‘stuff’ and to become self-reliant in the physical world, instead of hiring someone else to do everything for them. While marred by his small businessman view, (after all, is the low-end motorcycle mechanic at the factory shop who’s in charge of oil changes and tire replacements as thrilled as Crawford as a profit-oriented owner-operator?) he still gets to the heart of the matter over the deceptive lies of the white-collar world and society's propagation of it.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, June 30, 2010

Oil Booms - protection or just public relations?

Things heating up in Europe

Things heating up in Europe according to this piece:

Workers in Greece today stand in the forefront of the converging European class
struggles against big capital's attempt to make working people pay the costs of
its crisis.

Mobilizations against this austerity drive are spreading
across Europe. In France, strikes and demonstrations were held on May 27 and a
day of actions is planned for June 24. In Portugal, 300,000 working people
demonstrated in the streets of Lisbon on May 30 to express their rejection of
the socialist government's austerity plan. In Spain, public employees took to
the streets on June 2. In Italy, a national demonstration was held in Rome on
June 5, with strikes and other actions planned up to June 14. In Great Britain,
the unions and left-wing organizations are organizing a day of demonstrations on
June 22. In Romania public employees took to the streets on June 4.

Meanwhile the drugged and hypnotised American population continues placidly grazing away. And the idle breed of liberals and progressives is congenitally incapable of doing anything save chattering away.

Zizek Also Predicts End of World

I'm going on a 'summer hiatus' for several weeks - that is if I don't get fired first. In keeping with the creeping 'apocalypse now' theme of this blog, I'm reading Zizek's new book, "Living in the End Times," new at May Day. Essentially, he too predicts that capital is reaching a dead end.

His intro talks about the 'four riders of the apocalypse' (sound familiar - see my 2007 review on American Theocracy, below) -- "comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (struggles over intellectual property, raw materials, food and water) and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions."

What the 'biogenic' revolution is is anyone's guess, but it could be some weird Freudian episode of a famous TV show, maybe. Stay tuned.

Red Frog
6/6/10 (D Day)

A Grim Memorial Day

Tombstone

I don't know about you, but this Memorial Day is a grim event. It coincides with our remembrance of the continuing dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan - 6,000 dead soldiers and contractors and over 30,000 wounded - now presided over by a Democratic President.

Memorial Day was preceded by the failure of British Petroleum's macho "Top Kill." The perspective for the Gulf now is at least 3 more months of an underwater oil volcano. Some even say Christmas.

We were also greeted with the news that Likudnik soldiers stormed unarmed Gaza relief ships in international waters, killing perhaps up to 20, wounding more, and seizing these ships and their passengers. Many were beaten after being captured. The Israeli government blamed 'violent' Palestinians and Turks, because they defended themselves from descending pirates.

And prior to this day, the Arizona government overplayed its bias card, and made 'walking while Hispanic' a dangerous occupation.

4 events - covering war, the environment, Israel and immigration - all failures or attacks by the Right. And what does the Obama administration do? The 'Congenital Compromiser?" Well, they are certainly 'sorry' about the war dead, sorry about that 'spill', sorry about the Israeli's, sorry about events in Arizona.

The capitalist plan for the world is falling apart. Large working class organizations could take these opportunities and run with them. These failures piled on failure show that imperialism, its policies and leaders, are unable to solve any problems. They are reaching that 'dead end' in which societies cannot function in the 'old way.'

But failure and being replaced are two different things. It is only hoped that more and more people see the dead-end is being reached.

Red Frog, 6/1/10

An exceedingly perceptively written review and overview of E.P.Thompson's "The Making of the English Working Class" can be read here.

For those interested in the origin, development, and reproduction of class consciousness. Capital fights this class consciousness tooth and claw. And in the US it seems to have attained a great measure of success in this endeavor.

For the past year or so I've been reading increasingly negative and bitter diatribes against Obama. Like other informed observers I didn't bother voting for the bum and had no expectations of him. In fact I didn't bother voting at all since I don't want my participation to legitimise a farcical system that is corrupt to its core. As Emma Goldman said a century back, if voting could change anything, they'd have abolished the ballot box a long time ago.

In area after area -- military policy in Afghanistan, a bellicose stance towards Iran, the carte blanche afforded to the financial sector, the sluggish and ineffectual response to the environmental disaster in the Mexican Gulf -- commentators are recording their dismay and bitterness with the Obama administration. So just to clarify what this buffoon's job description really is:

1) Look sombre (GWB could never quite manage it, always threatening to break into a smirk).
2) Make grave speeches full of hot air.
3) Express righteous anger when required.
4) Dance to the tune of the financial overlords, who are the real permanent government of both the US and the Western world.

Next time you vote for a president, remember it's akin to betting on a fight where both boxers are owned by Don King.

It looks like the book, "The Global Economic Crisis," edited by Chossudovsky and Marshall, has just been released. Mayday should order eight or ten copies of this title. I'll take one myself when I pop into the store next month.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19321

I Hear You ‘Knockin’ But You Can’t Come In!

FBI Secrets – An Agent’s Expose, M Wesley Swearingen, 1995

It has been awhile since some internal source in the FBI spilled the beans. The COINTELPRO exposures in the ‘80s were the last time our very own KGB got their pants pulled down. M. Wesley Swearingen was part of this take-down. The retarded fucks in the FBI didn’t know that someone among their own number was taking notes. And he was not alone, as other agents helped him with his story. They too were repelled by the dishonesty, laziness and criminality of the FBI leadership and their local sycophants. Swearingen considers this a story of the Hoover FBI. However, any activist will tell you that the story did not stop at the COINTELPRO hearings.

The FBI has the money, guns and legal backing to pull almost anything they desire. And they did, for many years. Hoover got his start deporting communists and anarchists during the Palmer raids in 1919, right after the Bolshevik Revolution. As he become ensconced in permanent power, he made a deal with the Mob/Costa Nostra to leave them alone, because they had evidence he was a cross-dresser and homosexual. Swearington says this was common knowledge in the FBI. While this seems hysterically stupid – remember – this is J Edgar Hoover we’re talking about here. The Roy Cohn of the FBI. In a sense, Hoover left the Mob alone to build cities like Vegas, until the advent of that ‘do gooder,’ Robert Kennedy. Of course, we know what happened to Robert Kennedy – and his brother, the one who appointed him. CIA and FBI finger-prints were all over those assassinations.

Swearingen comes into the story in the 50s, following members of the Communist Party in Chicago. At the time, he was a straight-laced, honest, “good American.” He made the arrest of Claude Lightfoot on violation of the Smith Act, which shows you he was no clerk. His secret job, however, was to tail Communists and then conduct hundreds of ‘black bag’ jobs on Communists and other activists. These ‘jobs’ were illegal under US law. The existence of black bag jobs was first covered up, then undercounted by FBI representatives testifying before Congress. After all, when has the FBI ever told the truth? They actually are incapable of it. Lying is part of the modus operandi. They were hiding their own illegal activities, directly authorized by Hoover.

Swearingen began to have doubts about the FBI in Chicago, but his questions and comments were ignored by local FBI bureaucrats. Later he found out from a friend that the FBI had helped kill Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Black Panther leaders in Chicago, in the 60s. The FBI informant gave the Chicago police a map of Hampton’s apartment, and the Chicago police did the rest, lead by States Attorney Ed Hanrahan. The FBI rarely gets their hands directly dirty. They hire or ‘lead’ other people to do the hits.

Swearingen ended up in Los Angeles in the 60s, and heard about numerous continuing black bag jobs in that city, against the Black Panther Party, the Weatherman, and any local activists Hoover didn’t like. The FBI was above all a political police, and Swearingen makes this very clear. One dodge of the FBI was to claim they had informants that they did not. Each FBI agent was supposed to have 5 informants, but most were so lazy they just made the informants up. They also spent massive amounts of tax-payer dollars on bogus stake-outs that went nowhere. One informant they did have testified against Panther Geronimo Pratt. Pratt was sent to jail for a life sentence on the frame-up testimony of the FBI informant. Swearingen saw this agent’s informant file, while even today the FBI denies the testimony was by an FBI informant. The FBI technically dropped him as an ‘informant’ during the trial, in order to say he was ‘not’ an informant. Then he returned to work.

Swearingen has hard evidence that FBI informers in the “Slaves” gang killed a number of key members of the Black Panther Party. He has successfully testified for the SWP in their suit against the FBI; for a suit brought by victims of Chicago black bag jobs against the FBI and Chicago Red Squad; with Charles Gerry in his lawsuits against the “Agency,” and for Geronimo Pratt. Only the latter testimony was unsuccessful in freeing Pratt. The FBI claimed it destroyed surveillance files related to some of these organizations, but Swearingen saw the same files ‘renamed’ and still in existence.

The lesson here is that the FBI was totally without scruple regarding law and action. They lie with impunity. In fact, anything they say must be considered a lie. While the image of the present FBI is different, it has only gone into deeper hiding. A new mass movement which results in a rejection of the American ruling class and the rich will bring the FBI right back into the thick of things. Every single activist group is under surveillance right now, and agents and police continue to infiltrate activist organizations. Welcome to ‘democratic’ America.

And I bought it at Arise Books at their final sale.
Red Frog, 5/19/2010

The Case for Socialism

"The Case for Socialism" by Alan Maass is the kind of book Mayday would probably order a few copies of. In the unlikely event that Craig hasn't already ordered it.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/socialism-now-more-than-ever/#more-17200

More bilgewater from that prince of scumbags, Thomas Friedman:

“After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things
away to voters, it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye
Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics.”

Now if memory serves, Mr. Friedman lives in a $9m mansion (there are some advantages to being a whore for the ruling class). Class war is now being waged throughout the Western world. Now that the elections are over (here in Britain), the ruling coalition will, like the Greek government, be wielding an axe. Public sector redundancies are expected to be about 500,000 over the next five years. For honest assessment from a ruling-class perspective I mostly read the Financial Times these days and that's where I get these figures from.

Don't Bank on Workers?

GELDERLOOS SPEAKS

I attended a packed meeting at May Day with Peter Gelderloos, the author of "How Non-Violence Protects the State," a book many people like, as did I. Most came to hear him talk about this issue, but he mostly talked about the 'war on terrorism' and what that means. Gelderloos seemed to want to talk for hours, and had difficulty with answering questions - perhaps he doesn't do that, of course. Chugging water nervously, he gradually ground to a halt. He did talk about anarchist events in Barcelona and Greece. In Greece, one pro-anarchist neighborhood does not allow police to even go into it. Fine and good.

However, given recent events in Greece, I can't help bringing this up. During a massive demonstration of the Greek labor movement, some anarchists lit a Marfin bank on fire and three bank workers died. Dispatches from the Greek left said some leftists in the demonstration helped the Greek bank workers get out of the burning building, or aid them after they did.

Now I don't know about you, but I know people that work in banks, or for banks. I work for a bank. And they, and we, are not all billionaires. Some bank workers in France are even in unions. Most tellers and clerks make pretty low wages, and my guess is the 3 dead in Greece are not billionaires, or even millionaires. So I have to ask the appropriate 'anarchist' comrades who might 'herald' this sort of thing (and I am fully aware that there are different types of anarchists - pro-capitalist, lumpen, syndicalist and also pro-working class, among others) how they think killing bank workers might advance the struggle? I know there are certain kinds of anarchists who don't want to work, and don't. They live by stealing things (even books, as I have carefully observed, from non-profit bookstores like ours) - which we in the Marxist movement call 'lumpen' behavior. Now this activity played into the hands of the capitalists quite clearly by blackening the left and working class movement against austerity and the banking system. And encouraging police action. Not to mention killing three people in our class. Now the Marfin bank was also responsible for forcing people to work on the day of this mass demonstration, and of course, it is ultimately the PSOK and the Eurozone polity and banking system responsible. But that does not change what happened.

So I'll tell you what. You try to light a bank on fire that I happen to be working in at that particular moment? And I get out? I will find your skinny ass ... and make sure your anti-working class attitude gets NO traction except in-traction. OK?

Red Frog

Meanwhile, in Europe

Well, we had our general elections last Thursday. As is my wont, I didn't bother voting. All 2.5 parties (Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats) have more or less the same economic policies (kowtowing to the City bankers and speculators) and the same foreign and military policy (kowtowing to the US). The media tried to pump some excitement into the proceedings, and there were three "debates" (I use the term rashly) among the three party bosses (Brown, Cameron, and Clegg). About 40% of the population felt as I did and didn't bother voting. There is also evidence emerging of electoral fraud. No party succeeded in commanding an overall majority, making a coalition mandatory. The markets have been jittery -- not so much because of uncertainty about who will lead (a moot point as all three parties have roughly the same policies) but because the apathy and lack of overall majority mean there is likely to be widespread social unrest as the new government tries to implement draconian spending cuts.

As my friends across the pond doubtless know, it's the same story here in Britain (and Europe generally) as it is in the US: the poor are going to be stripped of what little they have to ensure that the fictitious capital of the rich does not go up in smoke. The European bailout package of 700 billion euros, announced yesterday, is to ensure that the banks of the rich European countries get paid. More can be found here. In addition, Michael Hudson has written an instructive essay, which will repay careful reading. I won't both pasting an excerpt but recommend it in the highest possible terms. Also, in another essay published today, it appears the "markets" are already sceptical about the European bailout package: a trillion dollars might not do the trick (it was in any case only meant to buy time as the structural imbalances remain in place).

This is essentially a class war being waged by high finance against, well, just about everyone else. Here in Britain, one pound in four that the government spends is now being borrowed. There are plans afoot for cuts of a savagery not seen for decades. Somehow the government could stump up hundreds of billions of pounds of aid to banks -- which aid is now on the public balance sheet. But when it comes to public sector spending directed at the majority of the population, everything is fair game.

Finally, let me quote from a recent essay by Greg Moses:

Arcane financial instruments called the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are finally
explainable on these terms. Invention of the CDS by JP Morgan in 1995 was
a symptom that the system as a whole had gone debt-aholic. The CDS was
the class consciousness of debt pushers acting out, insuring each other
against the prospect of their junkie clients collapsing from under the weight of
delivered services.

It seems that as finance has assumed central position ontologically, and as everything else now has a dubious and shadowy character, we cannot even understand the world we inhabit without understanding the intricacies of credit default swaps and interest rate derivatives. This is a version of the "hyperreality" Baudrillard spoke of.

Depressing times we live in. I won't engage in cheap moral outrage -- complete waste of time by armchair radicals and spineless liberals lacking the courage of any true conviction.

I may be back in the United States in a month or two. Britain is now a poorer and more backward version of the USA.

Oil-Apocalypso!

“Tar Sands – Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent,” By Andrew Nikiforuk, 2008

While we watch the BP Keystone Kops try to control the Gulf oil leaks that they claimed were totally “unpredicted”; a government that continues to exempt deep ocean drillers from environmental and safety plans; an administration that joined Sarah Palin in exclaiming “drill, baby, drill;” an environment of deep sea water containing methane explosions, ice crystals and massive pressure, unlike any oil drilling environment on the surface of land – we are witnessing the world of peak oil. We have dead oil-rig workers and dead coal miners, victims of this world of profit’s peak - just in time for Workers Memorial Day, April 28. There will be more damage, unless sustainable production and planning take over from profiteering and uncontrolled environmental mayhem.

Of course, the march of 10,000 unionists and others on Wall Street on April 29 was as invisible as Workers Memorial Day to the bourgeois media like ‘reasonable’ CNN. When the massive immigrant's rights march happened, it was invisible to these same censorious 'journalists.' Just like they never celebrate International Women’s Day, but go on endlessly about Mother’s Day, they ignore Workers Memorial Day for Memorial Day. Since dead soldiers are the only ones to mourn.

The Gulf oil spill is an introduction to this book. Canada is now the largest source of foreign oil in the U.S. and the reason is the massive tar sands above Edmonton, Alberta. These sands are the leading source for gasoline used in Minnesota. A large pipeline from Alberta is being planned through the northern part of the state, into Superior, Wisconsin, and on to the oil processing plants at the bottom of Lake Michigan. This is the ‘on-land’ face of peak oil – massive environmental destruction in the woods, air, wildlife, humans and water of northern Alberta, in one of the biggest watersheds in North America, the McKenzie River basin.

Nikiforuk is a journalist living in Calgary, Alberta, and believes that there is a reasonable, capitalist solution to this mess. He hopes that rational men and women can come together and figure out that the unrestrained rape of the environment, for a short-term gain of profits and oil, is a really bad mistake, and will reasonably decide that we have to slow down this process, or stop it all together. Let me know when that happens, will ya?

As a good journalist, Nikiforuk details the many ways the tar sands rush, like a ‘gold’ rush, is damaging Alberta. There are cancers downriver. The sludge ponds are leaking into groundwater. The ponds will never be returned to nature. There will not be enough fresh water to process the tar sands or bitumen, as the tar itself gets harder and harder to extract as time goes on, and needs more and more water. Nor is there enough natural gas to run the melting process central to the extraction of the oil from the bitumen. Multiple nuclear reactors have been proposed to ‘cleanly’ process the sand instead. The air turns black. The water gets sick. Massive forests are falling to the axe so the open-pit mines can proceed, replaced with a moonscape. Alcoholism, drug addiction, traffic accidents, mental illness, family breakups, ridiculous real estate prices, failing health, dead fish, dead animals, no government regulation, lordly politicians, corporate control of government, scandalously tiny taxes on oil companies, high carbon output and stupidly high wages all afflict the people of Fort McMurray and the small communities around the oil sands. Nikoforuk likens it to any ‘petro-state’ in the world, where the quick or profitable extraction of minerals or oil change the culture for the worse. Sort of like the foundation of the State of Texas, except with trees.

While we have a somewhat rosy view of the government of Canada – and in some things they certainly rank high above America – in the matter of tar sands they resemble our policy to mountain-top removal. Their regulators – like those in the US Minerals Management Service - are in bed with Exxon, BP, Chinese oil companies and others. The Alberta Provincial government – which used to be stronghold of the Labour Party – is now the most right-wing in the nation. Their un-audited and careless treatment of oil sands taxes puts them below nearly every other country and state in the world, including Texas AND Alaska, in that matter. The Alberta tar sands are the reason that energy usage and carbon emissions have gone UP in Canada, and made Canada fail to meet even the meek targets of Kyoto.

And this is all taking place to provide, not Canada, but primarily the United States, with oil. Much of the sludge will even be shipped to the US to be processed, thus robbing the Canadians of even that profit – making them a pure extractive economy. Like China, Canada is being used as a milking station for the profits of the oil giants and an out-of-control production system based only on scum-sucking profits. Nikiforuk, while proposing idealistic and wonky solutions, nevertheless makes the damage the tar sands are doing inescapable.

And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, May 10, 2010

Endgame?

“The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy – Minqi Li, 2008

While your favorite philosopher is pondering the dialectical relationship between “F-Troop” and the war in Afghanistan, or considering the need to increase his alienation from nature, or finding the rosy side of the Catholic Church, others are making more useful points. Minqi Li has written an excellent short book detailing the coming collapse of world capitalism. A subject dear to all Marxist hearts, of course. Li, a Maoist, synthesizes the systems theory of Emanuel Wallerstein and the Marxist environmentalism of John Bellamy Foster to create a reasonable picture of what lies ahead. One of Marxism’s strengths is its ability to predict the course of events, and much of what Li says makes sense.

Li begins his book with a defense of Mao against his right-wing detractors in China and others – arguing convincingly that Mao did not support the ultra-leftism of the “Great Leap Forward.” Li lays this at the feet of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiopeng, who later moved to the right. He considers the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Mao’s revolt against bureaucratism and capitalist-roaders. He insists that Mao had no precedent to refer to. In the process, Li ignores the struggle of the Left Opposition and others against the growing bureaucratism of the Soviet regime in the 20s and 30s. Which did, in 1991, finally lead to the restoration of capitalism in Russia and other states.

Li thinks capitalism was restored in China when the “Gang of Four” lost their intra-party battle to the conservative faction in the Chinese CP in 1976. I myself was in a Maoist organization that insisted that Chinese capitalism was restored in 1971, when Mao made a deal with Nixon and the USA, and made the USSR the ‘main enemy of the people.’ Both ‘restorations’ share one thing – they occurred without the overthrow or disintegration of the workers’ state, and instead happened in the realm of policies and leadership personalities. Some might call this ‘idealism.’ 

Li also shows how China, under Mao and a worker’s government, increased living standards far more than many similar countries, like capitalist India.

At any rate, this is prologue to Li’s arguments:

• Neo-liberalism was a successful attempt by world capital to reverse the falling rate of profit, which had been dropping. It succeeded for 30 years by lowering wages, lowering taxes on business and reducing services to the working classes and poor all over the world. It was able to loot the commons across the globe, including the former workers states. However, at present neo-liberalism has been rejected in many quarters, and is failing economically.

• The history of capitalism shows that it needs a leading force to organize it on a world scale. First the Dutch, then the English, then the Americans. As capitalism spreads across the world, it creates the need for a larger and larger ‘leading’ nation to organize it. Right now, that nation is the US. However, as events are showing, the US is starting to fail as the organizing force of world capitalism. The adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have drained the US militarily and economically. The failure to confront the environmental crisis – most notably at Copenhagen – indicates that the US does not have the where-with-all to solve this problem. The banking and debit crisis that has engulfed world capitalism, and created a severe and long term recession, has further weakened the neo-liberal model fully represented by the US. Moves away from the dollar and American debt are already underway. Without a leading force, capital cannot organize itself internationally.
  
• 
  Without a leading organizing force, imperialism cannot coordinate its actions, and will become increasingly chaotic. However, a group of nations that is ‘too’ large and dominant will crush the nation state. And capitalism is based on competition between nation states. Capital cannot organize itself to transcend the nation-state in any real sense.
• 
  Li does not think any nation or group of nations has the financial, geographic or natural qualities to replace the US. He rejects China, Russia, Brazil and the Euro-zone. There is no one after the US.
• 
  According to Wallerstein, the world is made up of the core imperialist countries, the semi-periphery and the periphery. This structure is modeled on the stability structure for most core capitalist nations – a tiny ruling class buffered by a more numerous middle class, sitting atop even more numerous working and poor classes. The rise of China, and to a lesser extent India, Brazil and other ‘semi-peripheral’ countries is reducing the share of capital for the core, as these countries are becoming like a larger and larger ‘middle class’ that must be assuaged. IE, there are becoming not enough people in the world to super-exploit.
• 
  The race to the bottom will be reached quite soon. The world is a finite space, and capital is running out of places to find low wages, poor conditions and no environmental regulation. Imperialism has been successful as long as it can find another area to exploit. As capital moves into a country, the workers, farmers and middle classes start to attempt to improve their condition. This is almost axiomatic.
• 
  The exploitation of the world’s environment is reaching an end. Peak oil, peak natural gas, peak plutonium, water, and every other non-renewable mineral will reach peak in the period 2025-2050. Many observers consider world peak oil to have been passed in 2005. Capital’s endless desire for the accumulation of profits is based on the exploitation, not just of labor, but of the environment. The environment is being destroyed in the pursuit of those profits – a process that capital cannot stop.
• 
  Climate change, based on increasing use of fossil fuels, will also come to a head in this same period. The baseline 350 ppm of carbon advocated by serious environmentalists is not even considered now by the ‘realists’ in the capitalist market camp, who think of 450 ppm or even 550 ppm is ‘doable.’ The latter two figures will create a disaster for civilization. Essentially, the market environmentalists cannot impede ‘growth’ or ‘profits’ to reach levels that are survivable. As Evo Morales, a former lama herder and coca grower just maintained at the alternative ecological summit in Cochabamba, "Either capitalism dies or it will be Mother Earth."
  
• 
  Li carefully goes through all the alternatives to oil and coal, and by his figures, no combination of alternative technologies – and this includes massive solar and wind – can maintain the present rate of ‘growth’ or maintain the present capitalist economies.
• 
  China has contributed greatly to the destruction of the Chinese and world environment by embracing massive capitalist production and some capitalist market methods on their soil. Li details all the consequences of China’s headlong crash to industrialize and produce for capital.

• China has become the workshop of the world. The Chinese proletariat is the largest in the world, and what they do will determine, in a way, the future of the world.

Li sees several alternative scenarios responding to these multiple crises of capital - essentially 'endgame.' A, a renewed offensive by capital to increase the rate of profit, but this time basically fascistic. Liberal democracy will be gotten rid of, as it will be unaffordable. B, a descent into chaos and barbarism C, social revolution, the overthrow of capital in nation after nation, and the institution of planned economies that can provide for the basics of human existence. Lee believes that time is running out and capital must be overthrown as soon as possible.

Li’s book is full of statistic and graphs, and many quotes from Immanuel Wallerstein. Li fully understands the environmental crisis, and pulls no rosy punches. His use of many economic facts bolsters his argument throughout. At the end, he raises Marx’s point about going from the ‘realm of necessity’ to the ‘realm of freedom.’ This would involve a shorter work day, that would still supply all the basic needs of humanity, as freedom is predicated on the end of wage slavery. Li finishes optimistically by asserting that this ‘realm of freedom’ is still possible.

One of my objections to this book is that Li makes no mention of the impact of having up to 40% of the world’s economy under workers state production for many years after World War II. This had a stabilizing effect even on capitalist crises. However, the removal of the planned economies in Russia, eastern Europe and partly in China has increased instability for the world’s workers. For instance, China recently announced that they would allow a derivatives market in their country. The very fact that China DID NOT BUY derivatives from Wall Street in the last few years helped stabilize the world economy, and kept it from completely melting down. The establishment of a dangerous market like this is not good news.

I also do not believe China is a fully-capitalist country. Real counter-revolutions do not happen in the dark of night or because someone made a speech. Believing China is fully capitalist is common among US pundits, and reflects a belief that capital is omnipotent. Key sectors and firms in China are still nationalized, and the Party still controls economic policy, which means that some degree of planning still exists. The state or organization established by the 1949 revolution has never disbanded or been smashed. The Chinese Red Army and Party still exist, though certainly in a greatly changed shape. Certain benefits still exist for the working classes, although they are being whittled down every day. A book detailing the exact extent of capital’s inroads would be invaluable, as the more capital controls China, the more the world is in danger. It is up to the Chinese proletariat to put China back on the road to socialism.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, April 20, 2010

Working Crime

“How to Rob an Armored Car,” by Iain Levison, 2009

Ian Levison is a college-educated guy who held many working-class jobs, and chose to write about them in several hilarious earlier books. One prior one is “After the Layoffs,” about a laid-off loading-dock worker who becomes a hit-man to supplement the money he makes at his new corner-store retail job. And he’s good at it. This book is also about the connection between blue-collar work and crime, through a fog of weed smoke, insecurity and plain dumbness. If you have never stolen from your employer, or bought something off the ‘back of a truck’ or dumped a car into the Mississippi for insurance money, then you perhaps have too good a job.

Levison captures the flavor of 3 white working-class buddies in Michigan – one, Doug, a dreamy slacker; one, Mitch, a laid-off Wall-Mart manager and one, Kevin, a convicted basement pot-grower with a wife, who now walks dogs for a living. These guys never stop ‘doing a bowl.’ Marijuana is the secret ingredient to so many films and books nowadays, it is a little like the depiction of booze in the era of Prohibition. The underground lives that connect with pot also connect with crime. To add to their paltry incomes, these guys boost a giant-screen TV with a faked invoice to pay their rent. Encouraged, they then attempt to steal a Ferrari and amazingly do, only to find it has an electronic tracking system, and find they have to dump it. Plan number three is to non-violently push over some frail and overweight armored-car guards, grab bags of money, and jump into a junker bought for the occasion. None of the crimes are against regular people – only the rich.

Not paying complete attention is a deficit when you are trying to commit a crime. While buying the junker from an isolated old man, they bury a dead dog on the mans property because Kevin forgot he left in his car. It stinks, you see. And the dog, of course, has a tag. Nevertheless, the three succeed at the armored car robbery, almost by accident. Doug bails on the crime at the last minute, but gets tapped by a car, and falls in the street, distracting the guards, who run to help him as they are unloading. Mitch runs and grabs the money and jumps in the car driven by Kevin, and they get Doug in the car at the last moment. One of the security guards shoots his partner by accident.

Mitch sees an arrest coming, and runs to Cleveland with his $66,000, the first real money he’s ever had in his life, and begins crime consulting with local Latinos. Doug buries his $66,000, to wait two years in jail, and gets a lighter sentence because the bank is afraid the news that their employees shot each other will get out. Doug finds out ‘jail isn’t so bad,’ as he has nothing required of him, and he can even get weed in prison. Kevin is questioned, and escapes arrest because Doug takes the fall. However, his wife leaves him. Kevin buys a new truck, hiding the rest of his money in a hole too, and enjoys peace and quiet away from his harridan former wife.

So some kind of happy ending! Levison is a funny and observant writer, who catches the way working-class people talk and think. His main point is that these ‘losers’ actually finally do something of quality, on their own talents, when they rob the armored car. They are all proud of it. They don’t feel guilty. After all, the only people who lost money were the bank and its insurer. And who’s feeling sorry for banks?

Levison is part of a small group of writers that write about working-class life in the United States. Most fiction in this country concentrates on cops and criminals, or FBI/CIA agents, or professors, doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Petit-bourgeois writers write about their own class for the most part, and so it is no surprise that these people get fiction. It is good to see the 'invisible people' of the working class finally getting some ink.

And I bought it at Mayday Books’ excellent fiction section.
Red Frog, 4/11/10

The US jobs crisis

This 23-minute Al-Jazeera video on the US jobs crisis seems to be informative.

It seems to be clear to me that for any substantial change, the system of contemporary finance capitalism will have to be abolished, along with the modern state which serves as its handmaiden and accomplice. There's no "reform" that will lead to this; it will involve a rupture with the past.

The differences between being a liberal and of the left

I'm loath to write a post that is essentially just giving a link to a site most readers of this blog probably go to anyway; Ron Jacobs, however, has written an excellent essay explaining the differences between liberalism and left-wing thinking.

Big Swinging Dicks?

Liars Poker, by Michael Lewis, 1990

I’ve spent some time cleaning up the elephant dung from a bond trading floor, so this book strikes home. Lewis makes raw fun of the incompetence and ‘big swinging dicks’ of Salomon Brothers in the 80s, where he trained in New York and worked in London as a bond salesman. It’s just not clear which meaning of the word ‘dick’ we’re talking about. The phrase was used in the film “Wall Street,” a sequel about the recent market crash which is soon to premiere. This book also served as background for Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities.” Liar’s Poker stands out because most insider books about the ‘market’ are nothing but apologies. This one isn’t. Lewis is coming out with a new book, “The Big Short,” about the short sellers who anticipated the housing bubble and the Collateralized Mortgage Obligation (CMO) crash.

CMO’s – which recently brought down Wall Street - were actually invented in the early 1980s at Salomon Brothers, when Lewis Ranieri developed a way to take a group of mortgages and turn them into a 'stable' bond. A little later, Drexel Burnham’s Michael Milken developed the “junk” bond – the debt of supposedly weak corporations. Milken guessed correctly that a firm that was big enough would not be allowed to go bankrupt, and so the bonds would be paid off. Milken later used junk bonds for hostile takeovers, because ownership of enough debt ensures you have control of a corporation. This is, of course, similar to stock ownership, but right out of left field.

Both these products bloomed during the Reagan era, and through several Reagan recessions, resulting in massive profits and growth for the financial sector, at the same time as the productive economy constricted like a puking stomach. They were examples of the ‘creative’ products American financialization wrought. What is clear throughout the book is the central role played by Fed monetary policies and federal tax and administrative laws in their development. Apologists for the market claim it is the geniuses from the Ivy League who make the money. However, it is changes in government conditions that allow, no, force Wall Street to make it. The era ended with the 1987 market crash – when the only people who made money were the people who shorted equities or who traded bonds.

Lewis was a Princeton and London School of Economics grad who knew next to nothing about being an investment banker in spite of all his education. What is extraordinary about this is that during this period many, many Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League graduates all wanted to be investment bankers too. The bourgeoisie’s ‘best and brightest’ were attracted to making massive amounts of money quickly. Which shows you the real quality of these people. Lewis himself was not a blue-blood, however, which gave him a bit of perspective. He never confuses gambling with ‘investing.’ He clearly saw how many traders (some babies with only a few months experience) intentionally ripped off customers in the interests of the firm or themselves, knew next to nothing about the products they sold, used (illegal) inside information, and were, as Frank Zappa would say, “only in it for the money.”

Essentially, Salomon sold mortgage bonds to S&Ls, which, after a change in federal law, allowed that once staid industry to turn into extreme gamblers. Because of the massive amount of mortgages in the US, the market seemed endless. Lewis, however, spends little time on the parallel collapse of the S&L industry during this period – hastened by its gambling on CMOs.

This is a hilarious book. Lewis shows how the mortgage-trading department at Salomon was run by fat Italians who never stopped eating, swearing, playing practical jokes and making money. In the good days in the early 80s they were more like a frat house than a business unit. Ranieri himself came from the back-office at the firm, and then became the head of mortgage trading. He always wore ugly, cheap suits to remind himself and others where he came from. The firm was run mostly by Jewish businessmen – John Gutfruend being the notorious CEO. Unlike other Wall Street ‘white shoe’ firms like Morgan Stanley full of WASPs, Salomon's ethnics specialized, not in equities, but in debt – government, municipal, corporate and mortgage. As the slogan kind of went, “Debt is Good.” They had a monopoly on mortgage debt for about 4 years. Salomon eventually weakened itself by not paying its traders a real percentage of what they made (Lewis got $90,000 and still thought he was screwed…), then refusing to get involved in junk bonds – and the traders deserted to every other firm on the Street, creating competition for Salomon.

Lewis quit in 1988, even though he knew he could have made millions if he’d stayed at Salomon. The whole time he was there, he kept notes on events which formed the basis for this book. Lewis is not an opponent of capital, but he's an honest observer nevertheless.

And I did not buy it at May Day Books.
Red Frog - 3/30/32010

Thirteen

Thirteen is a science fiction novel by Richard Morgan, published perhaps two or three years ago, and set about a century in the future. The United States has splintered into three entities -- the high-tech Pacific Rim, the North Atlantic Union (the northern and northwestern states + Canada), and the Republic (aka "Jesusland"). Thirteens are genetically engineered alpha males developed in the last decades of the 21st century, genetically programmed for combat. Certain qualities -- e.g., paranoia, reflexes, combat readiness -- that have been genetically bred out of modern humans by the Neolithic revolution are to be found in these males. The story involves one Thirteen methodically hunting down another such and takes us through all three of the US splinters. A review of the book better than I could possibly write can be found here:

http://www.zone-sf.com/wordworks/blackman.html

I wanted to focus on something else Morgan brings up explicitly in the course of his story. Just as the poodle is descended from the wild wolf, the pig from the wild boar, the sheep from the mountain goat, so, too, are modern humans descended from much more formidable ancestors. Just as the wolf, the boar, and the goat have been domesticated by deliberately selecting for certain qualities generation after generation, so also have modern humans been deliberately selected for docility, herd behavior, compliance with rules, and so on. Modern humans are the equivalent of factory-farm animals, and serve a roughly similar function. That's what being civilised means. In modern societies the true dissidents and revolutionaries have mostly been bred out, ostracised, denied a living, killed outright. I can't arrive at any other tenable hypothesis as to why humans remain so docile (leaving aside some ineffectual bleating) at transparent and brutal exploitation. The exploitation isn't even surreptitious -- it's out in the open. But nothing changes. The silence and docility of the lambs.

And nope, I didn't buy my copy of Thirteen from Mayday: not the kind of book the store stocks.

The realities of power

How many ways do I loathe liberals and progressives? Let me count the ways .... One thing in particular that arouses my ire is the emphasis on nonsense like "energising the grass roots," on meaningless "activism," on cheap moral indignation and fury. Behind all this I sense the influence of the European Enlightenment, of humanism, of the emphasis on individual qualities of honor, integrity, and shame that the sheer force of numbers can somehow affect. If somehow Obama could only be reached and convinced how morally reprehensible is his war in Afghanistan! He would be shamed into withdrawal. Or how reprehensible his unwitting support of the health care travesty is! He would surely do a volte-face if he realised. And if liberals and progressives could just "mobilise," then all would become possible. I've been listening to this hogwash for years. It's like listening to craven mice philosophically discussing the ravenous cat waiting outside their hole.

The realities of power are different. A tiger is a tiger, with its own appetites. Trying to convert it to a vegetarian by either reasoning with it or shaming it is unlikely to work. What did people do with rogue carnivorous tigers in the past? They would methodically hunt down and destroy them. Villagers didn't sit in a circle and talk about "energising the grass roots" so as to convince the tiger of the error of its ways. In like manner, US imperial and military power is not going to be tamed one iota by all this mobilising and hand-wringing.

The US imperium follows its own violent logic and is not amenable to the kind of control nitwitted liberals might imagine. Sure, the empire's functionaries use logic as an instrument when they can -- but that is similar to the reasoning of the wolf in La Fontaine's fable of the wolf and the lamb, where the strongest reasons always yield to the reasons of the strongest:

That innocence is not a shield,
A story teaches, not the longest.
The strongest reasons always yield
To reasons of the strongest.

A lamb her thirst was slaking,
Once, at a mountain rill.
A hungry wolf was taking
His hunt for sheep to kill,
When, spying on the streamlet's brink
This sheep of tender age,
He howl'd in tones of rage,
'How dare you roil my drink?
Your impudence I shall chastise!
''Let not your majesty,' the lamb replies,
'Decide in haste or passion!
For sure 'tis difficult to think
In what respect or fashion
My drinking here could roil your drink,
Since on the stream your majesty now faces
I'm lower down, full twenty paces.
''You roil it,' said the wolf; 'and, more, I know
You cursed and slander'd me a year ago.
''O no! how could I such a thing have done!
A lamb that has not seen a year,
A suckling of its mother dear?
''Your brother then.'
'But brother I have none.
''Well, well, what's all the same,
'Twas some one of your name.
Sheep, men, and dogs of every nation,
Are wont to stab my reputation,
As I have truly heard.
'Without another word,
He made his vengeance good--
Bore off the lambkin to the wood,
And there, without a jury,
Judged, slew, and ate her in his fury.

Master of Disaster:

“Reinventing Collapse” – Dmitry Orlov, 2008

Dmitry Orlov is a Russian-born peak-oil theorist who also visited the Soviet Union / Russian Federation several times after the collapse of the Soviet workers state in December 1991. These visits gave him an insight into how a society reacts after its economy is destroyed. In this case the destruction was intentional – due to the violent introduction of ‘free enterprise’ by European & US bankers and Jeffrey Sachs, which enabled Boris Yeltsin and his kleptocracy of primitive accumulators to loot the commons. It took 10 years for the Russian economy to get back to pre-collapse levels – at least statistically. Many workers, elderly and poor people have never ‘recovered,’ of course.

Like many former Russians and Eastern Europeans, Orlov is no simplistic fan of capitalism. He is keenly aware of the benefits of the planned economy, and also of its deficits as practiced by the Soviet bureaucracy. Because of peak oil, global warming and bourgeois economic failure, Orlov is predicting a collapse of American society in the close future – it seems around 10 years.  So he's kind of a prepper. Orlov thinks this collapse mirrors what happened in the USSR, though it will be much worse, because of various safeguards built into the Soviet economy but not the US. Those safeguards were:

1. Commissaries at workplaces. Even after people stopped getting paid, they could still eat at work for free. Nothing like this exists in the US. According to Orlov, there was no starvation and little malnutrition in the ex-USSR.
2. Socialized health care continued to function for years, as it was a right that only slowly got whittled away. The US still has privatized health care, though now Obama’s plan will make it compulsory. That still does not remove the cash/profit nexus from health care, of course.
3. Mass transit. It also continued to function in the ex-USSR, and was built with basic technology. Housing was built around the transit, so being without a car was not such a hardship. Nothing like this exists in the US, except in some big cities.
4. A national rail system existed. See #3.
5. ‘Kitchen gardens’ in many of the Soviet big cities had already grown up to cope with food shortages in the degenerated workers’ state. So when the food system really collapsed, there was already a pre-existing support system.
6. Lack of a monetary attitude. After the collapse, the ruble became worthless. Barter predominated. Since the USSR was never a society based primarily on money, the lack of it was not so traumatic. Soviets had always used personal relationships, skills and connections to get goods – not simply a credit card.
7. Housing was not based on bank ownership, but was a right. So when the economy collapsed, people retained their apartments and houses, as there was no bank to ‘foreclose’ on them. According to Orlov, homelessness in the USSR did not make it into the double-digits, unlike the possibility in the US.
8. Heat was supplied centrally in each neighborhood, by large, centralized boiler systems, which reduced the chances of individuals freezing to death. Not so in Minnesota. You are on your own.
9. State enterprises were not based on ‘just in time’ manufacturing, but instead had large inventories. As 'ineffcient' as this is, the enterprise and employees themselves then had goods on hand for barter. In the US, enterprise goods are not the property of the workers who work at a location, nor is there much inventory, so this is not as possible.
10. Goods were manufactured in the USSR or the workers states surrounding it. Goods did not have to travel large distances by ship to be delivered. This involved less oil reliance. The USSR was also an economy that was based on the production of ‘things,’ not services or intellectual property. And ‘things’ are more valuable after an economic collapse. You cannot sell legal services when the legal system itself is breaking down, for instance. Certain frivolous 'services' and 'intellectual property' will die a quiet death.
11. The USSR was self-sufficient in skilled labor. In the US many skilled workers from other countries will head home in the event of serious economic collapse.
12. Russians for the most part knew their neighbors, as they lived where they were born. A support system was far easier to construct. Not so in the US, where people move every 6 years, at least until the recent real-estate collapse. Even many families in the US are split-up geographically.
13. Many Soviet goods were built to last. The concept of “planned obsolescence” is peculiar to a commodity-based economy, as is the concept of buying something new instead of repairing it.
14. Soviet education was based on teaching general skills, so that students could solve specific problems. US education is based on passing tests, unconnected to problem-solving or thinking. Which creates issues when there are real problems to be solved.

Orlov sees many parallels between the two countries. High military spending is common to both societies. Invading Afghanistan has now happened to both nations. It was Bin Laden’s plan from the beginning to pull the US into Afghanistan. The US is now the leading jailer in the world, with 2 million behind bars as we operate our own gulags. US state illegality, ala Guantanamo, secret rendition, torture, enemy combatants without any rights, warrantless searches, no-fly lists, warrantless eavesdropping, a massive internal security apparatus, police-state conditions applied to protests – all parallel the Soviet security approach. Both societies use oil-based farming, pesticides and chemical-based fertilizers to grow crops and deplete the soil. (see review below on “The Ecological Revolution.”) He compares Chernobyl to Katrina as events which de-legitimized the rulers. Orlov, who is familiar with software, even points to the increasing corporate bureaucratization of software and ‘intellectual property’ in the US as evidence of stagnation in the high tech areas that mirrors the Soviet approach. To Orlov, at bottom, the leaderships of both societies lost or are losing any claim to legitimacy, based on their failures.

As such, the United States is extremely vulnerable to an economic collapse based on oil shortages, a massive debt crisis and global climate change. He thinks the US is bankrupt financially . He thinks a revolution of some sort is needed to prevent collapse from happening, but he doubts this will occur, so he wrote this to prepare people for severe economic dislocations.

So what should you do? Orlov calls his book an ‘exercise’ in thinking about the future. Here are his predictions and suggestions to prepare:

1. Get used to discomfort, both physically and mentally.
2. Money/investments will become increasingly useless, based on hyper-inflation. Barter of goods and services will replace it.
3. He suggests hoarding certain items – razors, soap, shampoo, liquor, marijuana, hand tools, condoms, medical drugs, bicycle tires, etc. He does not mention solar/crank flashlights and radios, or water purifiers or more techie stuff.
4. Bicycles will become a major form of transport. Bike trailers will become useful for hauling items.
5. He thinks ‘protection’ will arise in various ways. He does not suggest buying guns, but only finding, or being in, an organization that will protect you.
6. Keep moving. He mentions shopping carts as something of value. This will make all the fans of “The Road” happy. (See review below) He thinks a sailboat you can live on will be safe. (!)  He actually lives on one...
7. Environments that are too hot, or cold, or dry, or crowded with different ethnicities might be problematic. He thinks small towns might be best.
8. Figure out a way to grow much of your own food. Orlov said that Russians survived on garden plots of 1075 sq feet, or 50 feet by 22 feet.
9. Alcoholism, mental breakdowns and suicide will grow, especially among white middle and working-class, middle-aged males.
10. Life will slow down immensely. Which means more time for creative activity, talk, reading – if you survive.

I have some quarrels with Orlov's approach. He blames US consumer goods for the breakdown of the Soviet system, while admitting the Soviets never made money off their 'empire' - but ran it at a loss. What he does not notice is that the US DID make money off of their empire - which can show up in the world of consumer goods. And he swings between faith in family, small groups of people and organizations to combat collapse, and none at all. He does not believe that political action is possible. Basically he is some kind of an isolated anarchist at heart.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog – 3/21/2010

And the pox on social democrats as well:

In a word, social-democrats are capitalists who imagine themselves socialist or
want to reform the worst elements of capitalism. They desire what is essentially
the status quo with significantly less inequality and poverty. As well, they
believe this can be done peacefully through the ballot box, with no revolution
being necessary. Human rights campaigners and charitable organizations are an
example. Some of them may harbor anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and otherwise
progressive views, but the fact is that social-democracy remains firmly planted
in the camp of imperialism. Social-democrats fail to look at the real
relationship between boss and worker and between oppressed and oppressor.

(source essay)

Jameson's review of Zizek's "The Parallax View"

Fredric Jameson's review of Zizek's "The Parallax View" (of which Mayday has at least a couple of copies in stock) came out a little over three years ago. I was dithering a little as the review is not exactly fresh off the presses but since it gives such an excellent synopsis of Zizek's massive book I decided to post it. I generally don't have much time for Jameson as I consider him so much pretentious hot air but he has done a good job here.

The inherent flaws in the trade union movement

I found this enlightening essay by Ulrich Rippert a day or so back:

The rightward evolution of the trade unions arises out of fundamental
features of this form of organisation. In his lecture “Marxism and the Trade
Unions,” the chairman of the World Socialist Web Site international
editorial board, David North, stated: “Standing on the basis of capitalist
production relations, the trade unions are, by their very nature, compelled to
adopt an essentially hostile attitude toward the class struggle. Directing their
efforts toward securing agreements with employers that fix the price of labour
power and determine the general conditions in which surplus value will be pumped
out of the workers, the trade unions are obliged to guarantee that their members
supply their labour power in accordance with the terms of the negotiated
contracts. As Gramsci noted, ‘The union represents legality, and must aim to
make its members respect that legality.’

“The defence of legality means the suppression of the class struggle,
which, in the very nature of things, means that the trade unions ultimately
undermine their ability to achieve even the limited aims to which they are
officially dedicated. Herein lies the contradiction upon which trade unionism
flounders.”