Promises, Promises...

 “How Will Capitalism End?” by Wolfgang Streeck, 2017

The title is more provocative than the book.  Streeck thinks world-wide capital will slowly self-destruct from a 'thousand cuts.'  He combines the theories of 5 others to construct his ‘economic sociology.’  Capital’s decay will result in a form of barbarism-lite, relying on individuals, families and groups to organize themselves as the state and ruling class become weak and unable to control the situation.  He doesn't use the phrase 'failed states' however, though this certainly seems to be what he’s saying. “Economic stagnation, oligarchic redistribution, plundering of the public domain, corruption and global anarchy” are his version of a slow-moving apocalypse.  It is a world of 1) declining growth; 2) increasing inequality and 3) rising debt.  Versions of democracy are superfluous to this dictatorship of finance capital.  Democracy has outlived its usefulness and will only decline.  He does not directly discuss warlordism, which might be a variation of this scenario.

Socialism is not on the agenda because of the weakness of the labor and socialist movements produced by the onslaught of neo-liberalism.  Capital’s disorganization also disorganizes its opposition.  So he’s a pessimist as to movements and organizations.  Streeck thinks we are coming to an interregnum – a transitional period – to something else.  To what?  And how long will the 'transition' last?  He makes no mention of fascism, of war or of the situation outside the ‘advanced’ capitalist economies. 

Streeck goes into some detail.  For instance, reams have been written about inequality for years, but nothing has changed.  According to statistics from the 'material power index' the difference between the top 100 U.S. families and the bottom 90% of the population is 108,327 to 1.  This is an inequality level similar to Roman plutocrats and Roman slaves.  This power will block any Piketty or Warren 'wealth tax' proposal, no matter how popular.  He takes apart the suspicious neo-liberal meanings of the terms 'resilience' and 'disruption,' and the individual methods of “coping, hoping, doping and shopping.”

Streeck cannot imagine what social structure comes after capitalism however.  He is more ‘modernist’ than Marxist, more Polanyi and Weber than anything else.  He thinks Marx was a ‘determinist’ which shows how little he understands the Marxist method.  He rejects a "decree, Leninist-style” that abolishes capital, which means in his own contorted way that he rejects an organized social revolution, no matter how massive or coordinated world-wide.  Protests will be - and are presently - “of a Luddite-sort: local, dispersed, uncoordinated and primitive.” Capital will decay ‘as a process” – which is pretty obvious. But because he doesn't believe in dialectics, he thinks there will be no 'quantity into quality' in this decay.  Let’s see if there is anything valuable he has to say about the conditions under which a social revolution might take place or might not.

CONTRIBUTIONS?

Streeck’s focus is on Europe, the aftermath of the 2008 crisis and financialization – all done to death at this point.  He makes much of the incompatibility between democracy – what he calls a ‘moral’ economy; and capital, an 'economic economy' … a split that is only growing wider.  The 30 years after WWII – the ‘trente glorieuses’ of what he calls ‘democratic capitalism’ were an exception to the general trend of capital and its incompatible relation with democracy… a relation always based on power.  Because counter-capitalist movements are weak, capital is losing any ability to regulate itself, and democracy is a ‘demand’ of the weak.  Regulation and ‘self-regulation’ have proved to be continuing failures in preventing crises, another morbid symptom.  Capital's entrepreneurs are always one or two steps ahead of regulators, who are members of a revolving door anyway.  Capital is becoming a victim of its own success. This view might lead to a position of passivity by the radical labor movement, ‘waiting’ for collapse.

Gradual decay?  Or Both Sudden and Gradual?

Streeck believes capital, a historical formation, has gone through 3 phases after WWII – the tax state, the debt state and now the ‘consolidation’ state, where austerity becomes the norm.  This is true even in the more social-democratic states of Europe like Sweden and Germany, and certainly shown in the EU’s treatment of Greece. Money like the Euro, dollar or yuan are sites of contestation – not a neutral chit of exchange. Money is a ‘politico-economic institution’ at heart, part of ‘market struggle.’ He points out the domination of the EU by Germany and perhaps France, though again makes no prediction as the future of the EU or the euro.  He notes that ‘international bodies like the World Bank, the ECB, the IMF, BRICS Bank, etc. are even farther away from democratic control than national entities – though certainly the ‘national’ Federal Reserve and other central banks have almost no social oversight either.  He makes no predictions as to whether central banks can continue to patch over capitalist crises and explicitly states that this is impossible to guess.  This even though central bank assets and liabilities have climbed to astronomical levels.   

Streeck has many charts on growth, debt, inequality, strike days, inflation, interest rates and taxation.  The decline in taxation of the rich and corporations by capitalist states, especially in the hidden international arena, is forcing public entities into austerity and more public debt, which then sparks privatization for their benefit.  He does not mention war budgets or how high debt can grow before it is terminal. He thinks capital has entered a period of stagnation which has spurred financialization – but doesn’t call it profit stagnation.

He focuses on the drive of capital to create new ‘needs’ above and beyond basic necessities as essential to the survival of the system.  Basic ‘necessities’ was the drive under the ‘Fordist’ system until the early 1970s. These optional needs are now the reason for the relentless onslaught of advertising in every communication medium.  He assumes that ‘most’ basic needs have been taken care of in capitalist center countries, which was not true even in 2017.  These “customized commodities’ are represented by those hundreds of boxes of questionable cereals in your local super-market, but also every single variation of every commodity niche imaginable.

He thinks most of this is not based on ‘use-value’ but on ‘status value’ – which might not always be true.  For instance, if you have a computer (something he only mentions once!) there is a broad range of software and hardware needed to work at a high level.  It’s not a ‘status’ product until at a certain point the monitor is bigger than the wall!  Or perhaps when the digital equipment allows a child to play high-end multi-player video games in real time across the world.  But I digress.  He quotes Veblen as to conspicuous consumption and Marx on commodity fetishism in this context.  Intentional defunding of the public sector has made it dull and old-fashioned compared to the shiny world of hip, cool products.  He also thinks single-issue politics are a kind of life-style commodity, which can be easily jettisoned.

The Anaconda

Streeck discusses the nature of a certain kind of authoritarian state – not fascist, or a dictatorship or theocracy or even the ‘authoritarian fake democracies’ that are common now in Russia, Iran, Turkey or Hungary - but what he calls a ‘liberal-authoritarian’ state. He, like Foucault, believes that monetarist neo-liberalism was initially developed in Germany, not the U.S. or England.  His term is ‘ordoliberal’ – a German terms meaning a government that caters to the capitalists. This led to ‘post-democratic’ or ‘a-democratic’ Hayekian capitalism where the market, big banks and financial entities rule.  He makes no mention of international corporations oddly enough, their interlocking directorates, their shared role in private and public planning entities like the Atlantic Council, the Trilateral Commission or the G20.   So his concept is quite limited to the finance side, a la Michael Hudson.

PREDICTIONS

Streeck’s failure to actually answer the question in his book’s title suggests his theory has no ability to predict anything.  It is basically ‘kinda’ descriptive and might help sociology students.  He’s more interested in ‘the public mission of sociology’ which uses an ‘economic sociology’ that understands capital is part of history and which does not separate economy from society.  He understands capital to be a dynamic yet unstable system always in pursuit of capital accumulation, so turmoil is built into the capitalist lifework and culture.  This is no secret to anyone alive today.  His focus is on self-destruction of the system without break points – just a continual slide into dystopia, like a car rusting into the junkyard.  Of course we know cars don't go to the junkyard based on gradual problems.  It's the failure of a key component that usually leads to that.  It will be a major breakdown in the capitalist economy or some other event that no longer allows people to avoid staring capital's failure in the face.

Prior blog reviews on sociological topics, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms:  “Microverses,” “Understanding Cities,” “Angry White Men,” “The Politics of the Precariat,” “the Souls of Black Folk” (Dubois);  “The Melancholia of the Working Class,” “The Precariat” (Standing); “Time Wars” (Rifkin); “Riot, Strike, Riot,” “Caste – the Origins of Our Discontents” (Wilkerson).

 And I bought it at May Day Books excellent used/cutout section!

Red Frog

May 4, 2023      

May Day in Minneapolis

 “May Day in Minneapolis, 2023”

This march was again sponsored by MIRAC – Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, with Women Against Military Madness, Minnesota Workers United and 16 other groups also sponsoring.  It started at 4 P.M. on East Lake Street and wound its way over to the site of a local environmental protest at the Roof Depot.  11 union bodies endorsed – 3 locals of AFSCME, the CWA State Council, AFT, OPEIU, SEIU and a Teamster locals, 1 SEIU state organization, a UE grad students’ local, and Starbucks Workers United.  4 left groups endorsed – Freedom Road, PSL, the CP and DSA, along with anti-war, environmental, abortion and civil rights groups. At least one left group I know of was ignored when they tried to participate, the Trotskyist IMT, while other similar groups were missing.  Other left groups I noticed were the Party of Communists USA and the SWP.  The FRSO had the most presence. 

It was a cool, windy, sunny day in Minneapolis, in the dark lee of the state employment building.  About 350 showed up.  Speakers were from Little Earth / American Indian Movement; MIRAC; the new UE Grad Students Union at the U; the president of the local AFT; an ‘interfaith’ migrant activist; and a Filipino socialist.  What is notable about these gatherings is that they don’t just reflect labor – which is still weak – but social movements that are really part of the labor movement.  The unions that did endorse had little presence however.  One AFSME flag, a few SEIU buttons, a few members, but mostly paper endorsements or one rep, per normal. Abortion rights and anti-police brutality group CUAPB were also there.  I did not follow the march to the Roof Depot.

Police in Minneapolis allow demonstrators to police their own marches, so the Motorcyclists Against Police Brutality again rode in front of the speakers’ flatbed.  Labor in Minneapolis is riding a bit high, as an overwhelming majority of grad students at the U of Minnesota just voted to unionize last week in the UE.  The recent AFT strike in Minneapolis got good raises for non-teaching staff and more protections for teachers.  “Drivers Licenses For All” was just voted in at the state capitol after years of activism.  New leaderships are being elected in various locals, like the Teamsters and Transit Workers.  The voice of younger workers is beginning to be heard.

Labor Day as a national workers’ holiday is now moribund, even here in the ‘pro-labor’ Cities. May Day, a day of international workers’ solidarity, is slowly taking its place.  As the MIRAC speaker noted, the massive 2006 Immigrant Rights March across the country revived May Day in the U.S.  As he wondered, what is wrong with these gringos in the U.S.?  (Gringo is my term.) Well, sometimes it takes a new eye.

One speaker noted that in his home country, the Philippines, marches were held across the country and in Manila.  In France more than a million came out.  In Turkey and Iran, the demonstrations were bigger than usual.  Same in South Korea and Indonesia. Nearly every country has a labor movement more active and left-wing than the U.S.  Our labor tops are almost invisible.  Do you even know the name of the head of the AFL-CIO?  I don't. The crisis of capital involves the whole globe, and labor is everywhere to see it and deal with it.  This is a day to say "Workers of the World Unite!"

Red Frog

May 1, 2023

European Hollywoodism

 “Transatlantic” created / directed by A. Winger, D. Hendler, 2023

This series is part of the 'World War II' genre which never seems to run out of steam – probably because there are echoes in the present. This limited series tries to reference the present.   It's 1940 and the Nazi's have just occupied Paris.  There is a U.S. consul in Marseilles, Vichy France, who wants no part of this war, which is why he's hoping the Republican candidate, Wilkie, beats Roosevelt.  He's in discussions with a technology company offering new typewriters and data collection methods that wants to do business in Europe, including Germany.  He doesn't care about Jews, refugees, pinkos or any targets of the new regime, following U.S. policy.  Sound familiar?

 The real M Ernst, J Breton, A Masson, A Breton, Varian Fry of the ERC

Then there is the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC) in Marseilles, set up by prominent people States-side who want to rescue known European intellectuals, writers and artists from the approaching Nazis and the Vichy police. It's based on a true story.  Who are among the 2,000 they actually got out of Europe?  Walter Mehring, Walter Benjamin, Marc Chagall and his wife, Hannah Arendt, Andre Breton and his family, Marcel Duchamps, Max Ernst and Victor Serge, among others.  Peggy Guggenheim helps.  Benjamin famously dies on the Spanish border.  They first operate out of the classic Hotel Spendide in the city, then get a large chateau outside town, Villa Air Bel, to stash refugees.  The authors said this was an expression of the present reality of statelessness, but most of these people are part of a very elevated, elite crowd – unlike the present.

The ERC finds a path through the Pyrenees to Francoist Spain and on to Lisbon.  They use a huge ship to get 300 refugees to the Caribbean, including many ordinary Jews.  They get Serge to Mexico, even as a declared revolutionary.  They have to constantly deal with the Vichy police chief and the U.S. consulate, a consulate which is a nest of contradictions.  

The series' idea of the 'Resistance' is one run by monied, kindly and daring Americans, with some help from the British Secret Service and colonized Africans. Much of this true, some is not. One socialist is portrayed.  The mood of the film is like a Hollywood production, romantic and wacky, with many narrow escapes.  The romances are invented; the gay relationship, de rigueur at this point, is fictionalized. It's their version of Schindler's List and Raoul Wallenberg's efforts to save Jews.  The film ignores the French underground, which was mostly based on Communist Party cells, though it shows some radical partisans raising their fists in secret night-time meetings.  Even the Gaullist underground is ignored.  The key African hotel worker wants to crush Nazism, then overthrow colonialism.  The German socialist ultimately stays in France to fight the fascists, along with the rest of the local resistance figures.  They are portrayed as politically vague however. The rest of the ERC bails. 

Surreal'ist' Dinner Party in New York?

The artists and writers are mostly shown to be kooky or weaklings, though able to throw incredibly fun parties.  Hannah Arendt comes off as the most serious.  To people who don't know who they are, they are just question marks.  They are the 'baggage,' not the focus.  During the blow-out party Elsa Schiaparelli's 'shoe hat' makes an appearance, along with a fantastic collection of head-wear, while the chateau is decorated with surrealist art.  This event seems to be the actual center of the film – partying and loving on the edge of danger.

Winger was involved in 'Unorthodox,” about a distressed Jewish girl who runs away to Germany from her fundamentalist sect in New York; and “Deutschland 83” and “Deutschland 86,” two cold war spy series set in East and West Germany.   The screenplay for Transatlantic is based on the book, “The Flight Portfolio.”

The real 'party' scene at Villa Air-Bel

My gut feeling about this film – as I didn't know the basic facts – is that it is purposely light-minded, fun and romantic because they felt a more realistic portrayal would put off viewers.  The invisibility of the people they were rescuing also bothered me.  No explanation is given to who these people are, just assuming the audience is knowledgeable about them.  Ignoring the actual working-class communist / socialist / Gaullist Resistance maquis, which was organizing in Marseilles, is another failure.  It is a political omission.  The leader of the ERC, Varian Fry, is made out to be a legalistic and stubborn dolt, which he was not in reality.  This perhaps in order to generate some fake cinematic arguments.  Nor was his alleged gayness ever public, unlike this story.

This is fictionalized history, which becomes 'actual' history to many viewers who don't know or check out the whole story.  Is this European Hollywoodism?  It has inspired 'surrealist' dinner parties in New York, so there's that.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms:  “Fugitives of the Forest,” “One Way Street,” “The Coming Insurrection,” “Art of the Soviets” (Part 2); “Not a Nation of Immigrants,” “Central America's Forgotten History,” “The Great Escape,” “Stateless.”

The Cultural Marxist

April 27, 2023

Proletarian Rebellion

 “The Great Escape – a True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America,” by Saket Soni, 2023

Hurricane Katrina left a wake of destruction across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Thousands of homes, businesses and structures were damaged. Who fixes this wreckage? This is the story of Indian men tricked into going to the U.S. as welders, and paying $20K for the promise of a 'green card' by a 'reputable' Indian company, Dewan Consultants and a U.S. lawyer, Malvern Burnett. The book illustrates the cruel life of migrant workers who might have worked in the Arabian Gulf, then went to the Mexican one. It is also the story of thousands of unknown migrants who rebuild the U.S after its repeated disasters, from many countries.

Actual green cards can take five years. A loophole in the 1986 immigration act allowed companies to bring in labor for 10 months on a temp H-2B visa if no local labor could be found. A Mississippi firm, Avondale, which built ships, didn't want to pay local wages and was fighting a union drive. They needed 450 welders and it was the '90s. Burnett went to work and traveled to India. The Indians would pay $1,000 each for the privilege, and Avondale would pay him too. The Labor Department approved and Malvern and his business partners made lots of money. But the end run around U.S. labor was discovered and the visas later shut down, as U.S. labor was available.

MAN CAMPS

In 2003 the rules for the H-2B visa changed, with a chance at a green card in 2 years. Malvern went back to India in 2004 and this time charged each worker $10,000 for a chance at a visa and got rich again. This money came from the workers' families, who mortgaged or sold houses and land in India to pay the exorbitant fees. In August 2005 Katrina hit and all the applications were destroyed in Malvern's office in coastal Mississippi - though they could have been filed in March. And that is when Malvern hooked up with Signal International, an oil rig construction firm to save himself. The Gulf Coast and the Labor Department were frantic for workers, so 10 month work visas were approved again. Malvern said they could extend them 8 months, then promise to try to get green cards for the best workers – though they would have to return to India to apply. The big hitch was they had to lie and tell the Indians they would all get a green card as part of the deal. And pony up $20,000. $20,000.

Man Camp - Popular in Williston, ND too - trailers and fences

The Indians were stuck in a fenced company 'man camp' in Pascagoula, near Mobile by Signal. Others were sent to a Signal man camp in Orange, Texas. The Sikh's were made to cut their beards. The camp sat over soil with toxic levels of lead and overflowing toilets. Men hired as welders were told to work as pipe-fitters. The trailers were packed; they were fed only rice every day; their work dangerous and grueling. The Indians worked with black and white locals, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Laotians, Central Americans. And never news on green cards. Because of this, anger began to simmer and the company heard about secret meetings, a lawyer and a union. And of course, the one telling this story from his own experience and court documents, Saket Soni, is the outside immigrant activist - not a lawyer - who wrote the book.

WHEN BOSSES' ATTACK...

Signal instituted harsh rules to deal with the threat of rebellion, then tried to deport 5 'trouble-makers' back to India. It threatened to not renew the visas of the hundreds who rallied around the deportees and refused to work. After this some workers escaped into the U.S. and illegality. Another worker realized the lie about green cards and decided to rebel. Signal refused to grant extended visas and all the workers became 'illegal' but were still expected to work.  The battle begins to revolve around the “T-Visa” - given to people who are victims of human trafficking. It involves “debt bondage, peonage, involuntary servitude, slavery.” Filing a claim like this with the Justice Department would allow workers to stay and work, as they are witnesses. This process is called “Continuing Presence.” The catch is they all have to escape the guarded company compound and shut down the project. According to Soni, a strike would only lead to negotiations, a few changes and back to the same old, same old. Their real chance at a green card was rebellion.

Soni tells his own Delhi immigrant story, of studying literature at the University of Chicago on a full scholarship, then being stranded after 9/11 as an undesirable darker-skinned illegal, his visa expired, no jobs offered. This story is part of his; of all the tricky ways the men organized; how they hid what they were doing from the bosses; how they made friends with the guards; the problems with the 'Delhi-wallas' of north India; how they escaped, how nearly all hung together to file against Signal. It is also the tale of the vicissitudes of the turgid, U.S. legal system, of spies, lack of money, weariness and fortitude; of a very long 'satyagraha' march to Washington, D.C. and a hunger strike.  There is even a visit to Greensboro S.C. and an echo of the murder of anti-fascists by the Klan and Nazis, protected by the local government and police.  It is a narrative of the fight against the largest human trafficking operation in U.S. history ... that has been discovered, that is.

Their opposition – ICE, the company slandering them, the politicians intent on ignoring them, the Indian government turning up their nose at these 'coolies' – runs the gamut. It's a great story and a successful one. But most of all it is a true example of proletarian rebellion by the most exploited workers, a “Grapes of Wrath” for our own day. Funny how labor's side of capitalist time is circular, aye?

I won't reveal the whole tale, as you'll have to read the rest.

P.S. - an interview with Soni on Democracy Now!  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/9/4/the_great_escape_saket_soni

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Modern DeFacto Slavery,” “Debt & Capital,” “Blood and Earth – Modern Slavery,” “Not a Nation of Immigrants,” “Central America's Forgotten History,” “Slave States - Kafala,” “Illegals, Migrants and Refugees,” “The Latino Question,” “Stateless,” “The Debt Trap.”

And I got it at May Day's excellent cutout / used section!

Red Frog

April 24, 2023

Transition Back

 “Art of the Soviets – Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917-1992” edited by M.C. Bown, B. Taylor, 1993 Part 2 of the review:

1937 Soviet Pavilion in Paris

The author describes the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exhibition, the first time anything major was shown outside the USSR. It was a soaring construction along the walk to the Eiffel Tower, topped by a familiar and massive male worker with a hammer and a female peasant with a sickle raising their tools together. Across the lawn was the Nazi pavilion, also gigantic in size. Inside the structure, which implied Utopian dynamism, were statutes of Stalin and Lenin, a model of the unbuilt Palace of the Soviets, a full-bodied display of socialist realist art in massive frescoes and paintings along with wood sculptures, water colors of Soviet construction, theater designs and textiles from Tajikistan. Images of Stalin dominated many paintings, giving visual proof to the 'personality cult.' Soviet modernists like Tatlin, Rodchenko, Malevich and others were not included. The author says the pavilion showed Soviet art to be “developing backwards... to a nineteenth Century Beaux-Arts tradition.”

Soviet Pavilion in Paris, 1937

At the same time the show trials of the opposite groupings in the CPSU were going on, as Zinoviev and Kamenev had been executed. Tukhachevsky, two military marshals, 11 Commissars of Defense, 13 of 15 Army generals and 35,000 officers were executed during the exhibition. Victor Serge, Andre Gide, Andre Breton, Max Ernst and other Surrealists, Boris Souvarine and Trotsky used the occasion of the pavilion to denounce the murders of the Bolshevik old guard and the military staff. Henri Barbusse and Louis Aragon defended them.

Alexandr Gerasimov

The most prominent traditionalist painter in the USSR was Alexandr Gerasimov. He was born in Kozlov, a small rural town in southern Russia, a town with no artists. He had skills as a sketch artist and a portrait painter. After moving to Moscow, he attended art school where he still felt the country-bumpkin and was perhaps treated like one. In 1927 he met the People's Commissar of Defense, Clement Voroshilov, did his portrait, and began his career rise. He did a series of paintings of banya bathers, Russia's version of the Finnish sauna. He painted the famous 'Lenin on the Rostrum,' Red Army soldiers, fellow artists, construction sites, political meetings, peasant gatherings, street scenes – a good number still influenced by Impressionism. His own Rembrandt-like self-portrait shows his skill incorporating light and shade, a style that never changed.

Gerasimov also painted many portraits of Stalin over 17 years and waged battles against any modernist art forms, including non-Russian ones. He decried Spanish Communist Picasso as a 'formalist,' for instance. Gerasimov was a member of the AKhRR, then a key bureaucrat in the Artists' Union in 1937. In 1947 he was appointed President of the official socialist realist art organization, the USSR Academy of Arts. Art outside the USSR was declared knowledge 'not needed' – though Gersimov had taken foreign trips. 'Cosmopolitanism' was denounced and some artists were arrested and died in prison. In the 1950s Gerasimov fell out of favor and after arguing with Khrushchev in 1956, he resigned.

The Non-Russian Republics

The USSR encompassed a vast area and dozens of ethnic groups. The author of this article uses anti-communist verbiage, declaring the USSR an 'imperialist' without understanding the economic roots of the term. Re: culture, the Stalinized CPSU did try to homogenize culture across various lands, but prior to that the Soviets made diverse cultural efforts.

Lenin at the Rostrum - Gerasimov 

The author looks at various painters from the Soviet republics and their styles, some of which broke from Soviet convention. The same squashing of modernists happened in Kiev, Tbilisi, Minsk and Armenia. Some artists in the Muslim republics hid their styles by describing them in acceptable terms. Others in Georgia promoted the realist style, and one became another court painter to Stalin. In 1946 specifically Russian art was promoted  across the Union as the model by Andrei Zhdanov and the USSR Academy of Arts - dispensing with 'great Russian chauvinism' by ignoring it. After WWII Zhdanovshchina enforced socialist realism in every republic, to the point where nearly all art was homogenized.

Tractors and Non-Tractors

The next author looks down on the plethora of realist and cheery 'tractor' art. The problem throughout this book is that socialist realist art is a legitimate style, though certainly bastardized by hagiography of 'the leaders' and a relentless positivity. If you find yourself offended by pictures of workers, soldiers and peasants, or a construction site or farm and prefer Christian icon painting or violent abstraction, then your taste is also being dictated by the 'ideas' of the social structure you live in. Certainly in the 1960s the CIA favored a-political abstract art and promoted it world-wide. The problem in the USSR was complete state control of the arts scene, not socialist realism. Present U.S. art for instance rarely pictures proletarian people doing anything, including working. This invisibility is part of the cultural attitudes of a class system.

After Zhdanov was dethroned in 1954, a more open period started, including a less realistic, darker and less decorative 'severe' art. Another was 'socialist humanist' art centered on humans doing human things. In a way it was a reaction to what had come prior. Under Brezhnev artists in the 1960s and 1970s began to look back at the history of the USSR and world art. Foreign sources were no longer off-limits. Valdislav Zimenko, a critic, pointed out that Lenin had called for links to the great art of the past, but not as imitation or nostalgia. The period was predictably declared 'developed socialism,' and every person could be a Renaissance man. Some began to paint inspired by Renaissance styles, Russo-Byzantine art, naive, primitivist and Christian themes. Montage, photo-realism and surrealist influences appeared, along with a new kind of historical painting. Tatyana Nazarenko was one of the most versatile of this group while Bakhtin was one of the chief promoters of the poly-stylist method. And predictably, conservative and nationalist critics resisted this eclectic view.

Glazunov - Allegories in Leninsburg

Ilya Glazunov

The artist Glazunov (b. 1930, d. 2017) did not become popular through official channels. He saw the end of the Zhdanov restrictions and became the portrait painter to the famous, the prominent and the official, extending far beyond the Soviet Union. He painted Gina Lollobrigida, Leonid Brezhnev, Fellini, Gandhi, Allende, Kurt Waldheim and so on. He was the Andy Warhol of the USSR, not quite as original, but accused of being a thief of others' styles, creating Russian kitsch on a massive scale. He painted a wide range of traditional panegyrics to Soviet achievements and so evaded official condemnation, even after a painting of Stalin soaked in blood. His partly traditional, partly popular and partly original style made him the most popular Soviet artist of his time.

Non-Conformist Art

The 1950s thaw provided a hotbed for young artists, especially in Leningrad, the intellectual capital of the Union and a perennial source of dissent. The experimental art center GInKhuK was closed in 1927 and its director Malevich arrested for a time. All of the leaders of the defense of Leningrad in WWII were liquidated, which tells you what Moscow thought of that city. Modernist art was rediscovered in the '50s by a new generation, with guidance from the old. With the example of artists like Aleksandr Arefiev, they developed the 'severe' style. In the '60s and '70s an alternative underground called “Gaza Nevski,” used collage, Suprematism, neo-realism and conceptualism to show the darker truths of life in the USSR. They were connected to rock music, protests and housing evictions. By the 1980s their styles became more solid and sophisticated.

Predictably art in the declining USSR adopted characteristics of the declining art in the central capitalist countries – a post-modernist mash of styles, intent and lack of purpose. The author says they were 'impossible combinations' of 'complex ambivalence' showing the “insanity of common sense.” As he puts it “There is no certainty about right and wrong, possible and impossible, true and false.” After the fall of the USSR in 1991, these artists, along with others, became less political. The author guesses they will be absorbed into the world art market. As Philip Roth said, in the West “everything goes and nothing matters” while in Sovietized Czechoslovakia “nothing goes and everything matters.” The same was true in Russia, but now that has changed again.

P.S. - Please visit the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis, which holds the best collection of socialist realist and Russian art in the U.S. It is, appropriately, in a former church.

P.P.S. - Red Frog used to paint in a surrealist style, but now limits himself to colored hand-drawings of cheery, abstract or strange subjects.

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Art of the Soviets” (Part 1); “Adios Utopia,” “Women in Soviet Art,” “9.5 Thesis on Art and Class,” “Ways of Seeing” (Berger); “Desert of Forbidden Art,” “The Marxist Theory of Art,” “Elizabeth Olds and Wanda Gag,” “Art is DEAD,” “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “The Red Atlantis” and for reading the “Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art” by Trotsky, Breton and Rivera.”

And I got it at May Day's excellent cut-out / used section!

Red Frog

4 20 2023

Transitional Art

 “Art of the Soviets – Painting, Sculpture & Architecture in a One-Party State,” edited by MC Bown and B Taylor, 1917-1992 (1993)

Part 1:

This is an erudite and academic collection of articles about Soviet art discussing various painting styles – cubism, futurism, agit-prop posters, socialist realism, naturalism, realism, Constructivism, formalism. It also looks at public sculptures and building methods. The use of 'one-party state' in the sub-title implies that art in 'two-party' states is freer or better … which might be true and might not. The editor's point was that the government had a huge role in artistic scenes for awhile. On the other hand market forces in the U.S. have created a two-party duopoly 'Dollar state' with lots of questionable architecture, sculpture and painting. The authors are not leftists, but they are knowledgeable about the USSR, pointing out a wide range of Soviet art and achievements ignored by anti-communists. These articles do not go into Russian avant-garde styles like Constructivism very much, perhaps because it is so studied.

Public propaganda: The author asserts that the seeds of socialist realism were sown in 1917. He points to Lenin's plan, addressed to Lunacharsky, asking for “monumental propaganda” - referring to sculpture and statues – as proof. Yet the selected statues were of a broad cultural range, and in varied styles. Public sculptures included not just Marxists, but Chopin, Garibaldi, Bakunin, Proudhon and many writers, including Byron and Heine. The plan removed statues of Romanov kings and Russian Orthodox saints – the Confederates, slavers and colonialists of their day. The author notes the sophisticated use of propaganda by the Bolsheviks encompassed sculpture, film, theatre, posters, murals, agitational trains and ships, agit-prop, revolutionary festivals, photomontage – it was a “multi-media propaganda machine.” Tatlin's famous Constructivist spiral model - “Monument to the Third International” was both revolutionary in form and content. It showed the Bolsheviks were not afraid of modernism at the time.

Physical issues: The 'new man' of approaching socialism engendered a focus on physical fitness, non-competitive sports, gymnastics and eventually Stakhanovite workers, able to exceed at any kind of labor. In theatre, Meierhold incorporated move modeling, gymnastics and circus antics in his plays, while designers created sports clothing for women. The 'machine-man' was a trend. These corresponded to the Marxist idea of removing the barrier between mental and physical labor. Later, sports became competitive under Stalin and 'willpower' predominant. According to one of the authors “Lenin was somewhat of a fitness fanatic,” doing daily calisthenics and exercise. The civil war and industrialization made physical exhaustion and emotional fatigue a focus in the army, architecture, work-sites and also within the Party.

Early Artist Org: The AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia) was predominant between 1922 and 1932 and was favored by the dominant groups in the Soviet CP. Western analysts have ignored it for political reasons. The organization was molded by the cultural preferences of Lenin, Trotsky and sometimes Lunacharsky, Bukharin and later, Stalin. This involved battles around pre-revolutionary Turgenevism, futurist, realist, revolutionary, naturalist and early socialist realist art. The backwardness of the old artists' group inspired the formation of AKhRR. It's manifesto dedicated itself to the heroism of soldiers, workers, revolutionaries and peasants.

Tatlin's tower in honor of the 3rd International

Lines on Art:

To be noted, the Party still had no line about art, even though Lenin favored accessible, political art. AKhRR was criticized for not going beyond naturalism in its shows. It did gain friends in the Red Army and trade unions. Trotsky called their work “manure for the new culture” - a double-edged dialectical comment. Lunacharsky, while allowing modernism, criticized cubism for its bourgeois abstraction, and naturalism for being a dead mirror. At the time he favored 'agitational' art motivated by the idea, where form and content fuse. In 1925 still no style was decreed by the CPSU in literature or the arts, except to support a general communist world-view. The author contends these aesthetic conflicts created a diverse mélange of groups and styles – mostly naturalist or realist - from all over the USSR, best shown in the massive and pivitol 1926 AKhRR exhibition. It was praised by Lunacharsky as to its breadth and insulted by the modernist critic Novitski as to its archaic amateurism and Tsar-like portraits.

The author concludes that AKhRR's 'mass-ness' was “a reworking … of Russian nineteenth century painting within the framework of a class-conscious engagement with … Soviet reality.” A transitional method, so to speak. The prescient debate included insults by some against impressionism, cubism, dada and futurism as 'decadent' or 'bourgeois' western products. In 1932, after the victory of Stalin's faction, the CPSU decree “On the Reconstruction of Artistic and Literary Organizations” initiated Party control, and demanded some form of socialist realism. In 1934 culture potentate Zhdanov said that “art had to be socially relevant to the mass viewer … understandable and instructive ideologically.”  It became official policy.

Socialist Realism: The author thinks socialist realism used the old methods of allegory and iconography to convey its messages of national social planning.  It portrayed everything 'marching forward' as part of the 5 year plan; baptized progress with the color red; portrayed ideal physical bodies; idolized Stalin and Lenin, along with many icons and symbols of October like the hammer & sickle; used visual cues to show zeal like blowing hair; brought the viewer into the picture by portrayed a side character also watching the action. This author says many of these are 'pseudo-religious' methods. He looks at 4 socialist realist paintings for proof.

Views on Art: According to Lunacharsky Soviet artists should help to create 'the new man' and the future. Lenin opposed Proletcult's leader Alexandr Bogdanov who believed all art had to be made anew. Lenin followed Marx, who felt that a workers' state would absorb the high points of bourgeois culture, so starting anew was impossible. Lunacharsky agreed, but rejected European cubist / futurist, even Impressionist styles as too abstract for Soviet citizens. His views were important, as Lunacharsky was the first Commissar of Education & Culture, but lost his position to Stalin's faction in 1929. He became another commissar erased from Soviet history and the Kremlin Wall, only to have a revival under Khrushchev. He, too, is a transitional figure.

1926 Film Poster

Architecture: The author rejects socialist realist architecture as limited to the Stalin period. Large Soviet buildings are sometimes called 'brutalist' but the same style occurs in the west. It claimed to be a method, not a style; it sought to unite progress with tradition. It was summed up as 'National in form, socialist in content' – which indicates that Russianism had replaced internationalism. Nothing major was being built until about 1924 due to materials' shortages - and then the debates started between the main modernist Constructivist and socialist realist tendencies. In 1932 the debate about the never built “Palace of The Soviets” led to asymmetrical and unadorned methods being ruled out and socialist-realist monumentalism endorsed. This is prior to many environmental understandings, though Soviet apartment buildings efficiently shared inputs – electricity, heat, space, etc. Besides buildings, industrial cities were planned, laying out worksites, shops and living spaces in a logical order, as coherent wholes. Are these '15 minute cities'? They might be, as the car culture was not dominant. Old cities like Moscow and Kiev were partly re-designed in certain areas, trying to modernize the legacy of the Russian Czar and village.

The first real architectural project was the superb Moscow Metro, which a range of architects worked on, including Corbusier. It opening in 1935 with revolutionary art and sculpture added later. After WWII many more building projects started around the country, principally low-rise housing using local and environmental styles, much of which the author calls 'excellent.' The last gigantic socialist realist experiments ended in 1952 with Stalin's death – a series of huge, high buildings in Moscow. In 1954 Khrushchev, who'd worked on the Metro, denounced the socialist realist style as economically expensive, a waste of materials and inefficient due to heat losses and little usable floor space. And that was it.

End of Part 1 review. Part 2 to be posted on Thursday.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Adios Utopia,” “Women in Soviet Art,” “9.5 Thesis on Art and Class,” “Ways of Seeing” (Berger); “Desert of Forbidden Art,” “The Marxist Theory of Art,” “Elizabeth Olds and Wanda Gag,” “Art is DEAD,” “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “The Red Atlantis.”

And I got it at May Day's excellent used/cutout section!

Red Frog

April 20, 2023

Drunk on Debt

 “The Debt Trap – How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe” by Josh Mitchell, 2021

One way capitalism is able to survive is by making debt universal. This riveting story, written by a WSJ reporter with a working-class background, shows how a former 'private / public' entity like Sallie Mae increased college costs, made inequality worse and youth debt overwhelming. The story could have been written by Michael Lewis its so funky. It is the dialectic of a rentier economy drunk on loans and debt.

Mitchell tracks the convoluted history of college loan programs, starting in the 1960s with Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society. Johnson got a small loan to attend college in Texas in the '50s and because of this, he pushed for some kind of aid to middle and working class students. At that time only 1 out of 10 went to college. In the 1950s the Sputnik successes by the USSR made the U.S. realize it was falling behind in science and technology. This cold war added steam to Johnson's idea. The push was on to better educate more of the population.

AUNT SALLIE MAE

The student loan industry story is a Rube Goldberg patchwork that created the twisted atrocity that is 1972's Sallie Mae (the Student Loan Marketing Association - SLM). First they tried a limited, means-tested program run by private banks, calling it the Guaranteed Student Loan program.  It benefited the middle and upper classes but after awhile, the banks and investors weren't lending to students, as the profit was too low and the money ran out. They fiddled around with other patches, while of course turning down a public funding option.

Then they found a reliable money pot for the program. A so-called private/public entity would 'borrow' federal money via a discount loan program (The Federal Financing Bank) at the Treasury Department, and be technically 'off the budget books.' This is similar to the Fed's discount window for the big banks. It gave a guaranteed interest rate of 3.5% profit to the banks; a 100% federal backup for any defaults and the loans would be universal. This created a logic for every college to raise tuition above the inflation rate. For instance, for-profit 'trade' and technical schools, some mail-order, were 90% funded by federal loans. This became Sallie Mae - a private company owned by banks and colleges, who also had majority control. It eventually traded on Wall Street, so it enriched private shareholders too; and finally went fully private.

The people who gained? The banks, investors and colleges / universities. The ones who lost? The students and the taxpayer. It was a giant shuffle of Fed money 'for a good cause' into private hands, presided over by the Congressional House Sub-Committee on Education. Mitchell focuses on the key individuals at each twist and turn, but this hides the fact that they all danced to a profit tune. He peppers the book with tough personal debt stories to illustrate his points.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Of course, we know the rest, as its still going on. Elite colleges and universities – the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters – led the way and became ridiculously expensive. Under Reagan, schools became profit centers and students 'consumers.' The educational institution's role was no longer to benefit the public, but really the private pocket. Colleges went on administration, building and amenities' sprees to justify their increases, and engaged in price fixing tuition for certain students – not the most in need. Blue collar workers, practical skills and unions were getting pummeled, underpaid, insulted and laid-off, so traditional college seemed the best bet to cross some kind of class divide.

Luxury Dorm at U of Alabama

Au contraire! The government paid the interest while students were in school, but in the 1990s that interest was now added after they graduated. Nor were Pell Grants covering as much tuition – and still don't. Then the program appeared in the federal budget, as government accounting rules had changed, and its inequities were no longer a secret. The key rub? It was impossible to claim that every student could pay back a loan with a quality job, never mind how long that might take. So it was not the sure-fire 'the investment' it was made out to be. The program was becoming so bad that, according to Mitchell, Bill Clinton – of all people - rode to the rescue, torpedoing Sallie Mae with a Direct Loan program (DLP) from the Treasury, cutting out the banks and Wall Street. It was the dreaded public option again.

Well that couldn't fucking stand. Clinton, the good privatizer that he really was, agreed to let Sallie Mae go fully private. A corporate shareholder coup in 1996 took over Sallie Mae, which ultimately allowed them to directly lend to students, competing with the Direct Loan program. Previously they had to buy the loans from the banks. By offering freebies, discounts and aid to colleges with their prior profits it took back market share from the DLP. At the same time, Clinton forced the ABA to accredit 'for profit' law schools, where advanced degrees were loan gold.

A LONG LIST of GOUGING

Sallie Mae (SM) then started to securitize student loans for sale on Wall Street … much like the housing loans that brought down the banking system in 2008. They made a deal with for-profit / on-line schools that charged more, had sub-standard quality and catered to 'adult' students who perhaps could not get into a regular school. SM created a private loan program to fund the 10% of tuition that these schools could not legally pitch. The University of Phoenix, an on-line school, had 70,000 students in 1999, and was the largest single sales outlet for SM dollars, far more than Trump University. By 2003, U of Phoenix had 225K students. In 2006, according to Mitchell, 27% of all federally insured loans were with Sallie Mae – $142B or a third of all student loans in the U.S.

While Mitchell focused on Sallie Mae, the book encompasses a whole sector and profit approach. For instance, in 2005 Congress removed restrictions on how much MA / Ph.D / JD / Med / MBA grad students could borrow from federal programs (Grad Plus), and increased their interest rate. They had a low default rate at the time because of the jobs they 'mostly' got. So even with 'public' involvement, there was no control over what colleges were doing. Nothing was planned within the whole education sector.

Sallie Mae was going to abandon the stock market and go private in 2007, which would make their operations secret. The government said no, cut the subsidies the feds paid to banks to originate, extend and service student loans and sunk the deal. Then 2008 hit and SM had large private loan defaults on all the 'no questions asked' loans they'd made, especially at for-profit internet schools – akin to the 'no paper' mortgage loan racket. In summer 2008 Republican Bush bailed out 'too big to fail' Sallie Mae partly for those securitized loans.  A formerly swashbuckling capitalist concern, it was now revealed as a failure.

Obama responded by cutting fed insurance for private bank student loans, an expensive form of corporate welfare. But then compounded the problem by pushing college on every unemployed person, as part of the alleged American 'meritocracy.' And how would that be done? Loans, interest and debt, LID. The purpose was to get working-class African-Americans, Latinos and European-Americans into school. The upshot was to create massive debt, a contradiction - instead becoming a 'ladder down.' Black and Latino students and HBCs were the hardest hit, as they needed the most loans, since the class and color caste system still existed. Even the higher-interest “Parent Plus” program, which stuck relatives with student loans, was getting high defaults...passing debt upwards to the old. In Obama's two terms, student debt hit $1.3 Trillion dollars. In response, he extended the debt repayment schedule to 20-25 years and reduced the rate to 10%, which actually increased debt due to the longer term.  He left in place the original problem.

Mitchell looks at a for-profit law school chain, Infilaw and the Disneyfied University of Alabama for more examples of how debt reverses the financial opportunities possible in education. The involvement of Wall Street equity groups in for-profit schools was usually a sure sign they were primarily money-making institutions. Alabama hired consultants to vet each prospect on whether they should be offered discounts (merit aid), primarily based on if they might be 'shopping' other schools. Mitchell calls its an airline pricing system. They spruced up the campus to look like a Disney theme park, as many parents decide in the first 20 minutes about a school. They solicited out-state and more lucrative students to bulk up their ratings.

The debt slave march

A BANKRUPT SYSTEM

And then there's bankruptcy. Studies showed that 4 in 10 students earned the same as those without college or debt. By 2016 8 million had defaulted on student loans, yet the loans were no longer dischargable in bankruptcy. If you include the status of 'forbearance' 4 in 10 weren't sending in checks. 17% of borrowers owed more than $50K in 2014. Borrowers from the Guaranteed Loan Program were not eligible for the income-based repayment of 15% of income. 'Forbearance' status still accrued interest.  A consolidated loan lengthened the payback and increased interest payments. Indebted borrowers were trapped, even to the point of having their Social Security checks garnished. In 1976 Congress decreed that government-backed student loans could rarely be discharged in bankruptcy, based on a vague 'undue hardship' claim. In 2005 private loans joined that category. Bankruptcy judges began to revolt against the legal constraints while taxpayers were covering the defaults. Under Trump, the student loan bubble burst according to Mitchell. Yet nothing changed.

An excellent book on the privatization of higher education. Mitchell's solutions? He suggests 1) colleges directly loan to students, putting skin in the game; 2) have accurate risk accounting for every recipient of a student loan; 3) Congress should write off loan interest; 4) make community college free; 5) promote apprenticeships; 6) stop subsidizing grad school; 7) get cities to pay for local schools. He does not endorse free college, any planning or control over higher education or college endowments, creating state banks, labor action or other forms of socializing education, such as going after privatization and capitalism itself.

P.S. - A good number of strikes against corporatization have occurred at universities in the U.S., with the recent Rutgers' strike winning good pay increases for adjuncts, lecturers and other debt-ridden, poverty-stricken faculty.

Prior blog reviews on this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Debt & Capital – A Confluence of Factors,” “Debt – the First 5,000 Years” (Graeber); “J Is For Junk Economics” (Hudson); “The Deficit Myth – Modern Monetary Theory,” “A Marxist Education – Learning to Change the World,” “Capitalism on Campus,” “The Nordic Theory of Everything,” “House of Cards,” “Who Gets Bailed Out?” “The Big Short,” “Flash Boys and “Liar's Poker” (all 3 by Lewis); “The Wolf of Wall Street” (Scorsese).

And I got it at the Library!

Red Frog

April 13, 2023