Music the Universal

 “Missing Music – voices from where the dirt roads end” by Ian Brennan, 2024

This book actually functions as a music travelogue pursuing how music transcends human boundaries as a universal of sorts. The dirt roads in question involve singers and players in many countries, usually in rural areas. They include Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bhutan, Comoros, Djibouti, Ghana, Kashmir, Namibia, Rwanda, Sao Tome, Suriname and Tuva (via Venice, Italy). Brennan is part of a group of musicologists who have done field recordings of unknown musicians. Alan and John Lomax are the most famous in the U.S., but Bela Bartok and the 'song-catcher' Olive Campbell come to mind too. Brennan visits Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi, recording prisoners doing gospel, a prison that once incarcerated Son House, Bukka White and Vernon Presley. This is much like John Lomax's visit to Angola Prison in Louisiana where he discovered Leadbelly. Is Brennan secretly hoping for the same?

Some of Brennan's finds made it to the WOMAD festival in the U.K. which he is not ashamed about. What is odd is that at the same time he disdains what he calls world music.  He doesn't like 'colonial pathways' that highlight some countries either.  He doesn't like Afrobeat or K-Pop too.  He looks down on music from 'the West' all together.  This while he is well-acquainted with it.  He's a drummer and has been a record producer / engineer for bands like Green Day, Fugazi, Merle Haggard, Tinariwen and John Waters. He condemns mediocrity as the “greatest cultural crime” (Really?) and puts down some of his work colleagues as unlikable without naming them. In the intro he denounces academic terms yet sees his work as 'intersectional.' If this all seems a bit sanctimonious, it colors the book.

Brennan describes the difficulties of recording in the field just using a mic and laptop, preferably outdoors. Humidity, no shows, ambient noise, interruptions, wind, out of tune instruments, women not allowed to sing, rare languages, commercialism and rain are some of the issues. He notes how much of the music has a mournful quality, much like Delta blues, especially in Bhutan. In Bangladesh among the Rohingya it was either songs about genocide or love. In Kashmir the occupation was obvious and here he finally admits there is a difference between talented amateurs and solid musicians. In Rwanda the genocide there still reverberates in the languages spoken. He makes pitches for improvisation, music therapy and the excellence of vocal harmonies. Some songs he records are very long and improvised or done a capella. He considers what he is doing an event and sometimes uses live looping of voices or instruments. His group pays the musicians, even though many don't live in a cash economy.

Brennan explains that in the countries he visited migration from one country to the other or within countries is central.  This mixes populations, languages and sounds, burying some, promoting others. Rural musicians have provided the roots of many of the most important music styles according to him. Yet he notes how difficult it is for these musicians to visit countries like Britain or the U.S. for a festival, as they are frequently turned down for a visa. Brennan has sent 22 artists to festivals outside their home countries and that was the repeated experience. High costs, massive paper-work, time difficulties and bureaucratic nightmares awaited these players and sometimes they were barred from entering by U.K authorities, as they were an illegal risk. Some of them could be global music hits if given the chance, but all return to poverty and obscurity.

Brennan could hear 'western' music all over these countries, as taxi drivers, radio stations, discos and youth play rock, pop, rap, techno and Christian hymns.  Some of the musicians played a Chuck Berry tune without knowing where it came from. The African station in Sao Tome played Brazilian music as it was a former Portuguese colony too. The cultural impact of colonialism and imperialism was clear, as local music had taken a back seat. Some rural African players had never heard of Nigerian Fela Kuti so it went both ways, as isolation is a two-edged sword.

Brennan ends with an attack on the corporate control, limitations and vanilla excesses of popular digital music and its visual counterparts. As part of this he oddly accuses all 'white' people of being oppressors, evidently including him and that homeless old 'white' guy on the streets of San Francisco. Brennan is not a source of political astuteness, but perhaps a source of an unlimited supply of white guilt. Nevertheless his trips have taught him about deep poverty and capitalist functioning. This spurred his travel into the heart of poor, mostly rural regions and the music that will not die. It is evidently his way of countering the computerized commercial slop of contemporary pop and the oddly continuing impact of classic rock. The latter is, by the way, a frequent soundtrack in his adopted homeland of Italy.

At the end Brennan comes across as that haughty record store clerk who thought your taste in music was shite, not the modest, unassuming lover of music. One of his quotes is “pop stars … unable to play the guitar, they break it ...” Yeah, Hendrix, Townsend and others. After all Brennan's the edgy guy whose been on 60 Minutes, the BBC, NPR, PBS and in the NYT.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “In Search of the Blues,” “Cool Town,” Kids”(Patti Smith); “Zappa,” “Laurel Canyon,” “Grateful Dead,” “Mississippi Delta,” “Life”(Keith Richards); “Janis Joplin,” “We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years,” "33 Revolutions Per Minute," "Searching for Sugarman," "Marie and Rosetta,” “The Blues – A Visual History,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “Echo in the Canyon,” “The Music Sell-Outs,” “Palmer’s Bar,” “Treme,” “Subculture,” “The Long Strange Trip,” “The Playlist,” “Cool Town,” “Really the Blues” (Mezzrow),”Music is Power.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

The Kultur Kommissar / August 10, 2024

Red, Red Earth

“The Red Deal – Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth” by The Red Nation, 2021

This is a manifesto-style document, full of demands related to indigenous self-determination and environmental sustainability. It combines maximalist ideas like abolishing prisons, the police, the military and borders with advocacy of native self-sufficiency, tribal rights and land protection. It is anti-colonial and anti-capitalist. It sees itself as a continuation of the Green New Deal and has been endorsed by DSA. The Red Nation (RN) cites Winona LaDuke and AOC. The authors are 'educators, students and community activists,' with one name mentioned, Nick Estes, a professor at the U of Minnesota.

The RN does not seek to be part of the Left or “at the table of the ruling class.” It favors a form of 'degrowth.' They see the right to land as key to native self-determination as an oppressed nation. The RN wants free health care, housing, transportation and education. It believes indigenous people are key the world over in the fight to protect nature. This includes stopping all fossil fuel extraction, especially in native lands. They note that in the last 3 decades carbon production has intensified more than at any other time in history, part of the 'great acceleration.'

They do notice a contradiction in anti-pipeline struggles framed as 'protecting the sacred' instead of opposing capitalism or neo-colonialism. They explain that the slogan 'Land Back' does not mean sending all the Europeans back to Europe, which is why its another confusing slogan. It means protecting tribal sovereignty regarding land, collective ownership of that land, removing U.S. bases across the world and becoming caretakers of the water, air and land. The RN opposes putting energies into non-profits, voting, 'isolated utopias,' consumer power or episodic 'insurrections' and protests.

The book is organized in 3 sections: “Divest,” “Heal Our Bodies” and “Heal Our Planet.” “Divest” means from the text to break with violence, militarism, occupation, borders, jails and war, mostly only referring to the U.S. It points out the role of 'bordertowns' – those on the edges of reservations that are full of policing and violence towards native people, especially women. They make a plea to legalize homelessness – panhandling, tent cities, rough sleeping and the like. “Divest” does not seem to be the right word for all this, but let's go on. “Heal Our Bodies” means to legalize immigrants, oppose 'free trade agreements' and understand the climate catastrophe's role in promoting migration. This is where all the 'frees' come in – housing, transport, education and health-care. It is not clear whether this is meant to apply to reservations too. They want healthy and sustainable food, but do not define this except not the cheap, non-nutritious poison foisted on the poor. “Heal Our Planet” means what you might expect. They do mention 'returning ancestral lands' which is problematically left undefined. They oppose mono-cropping and over-grazing but don't go much beyond that regarding land.

Line 3 Protest in St. Paul, MN

Now to the problems. The RN never mentions socialism, class or the contradictions within 'Indian Country.' It has no analysis of the economies of the reservations or the splits between tribal bands related to environmentalism. For instance here in Minnesota two bands opposed Line 3 while one band protected Line 3 construction across their reservation with their own police. This harks back to divisions in 1973 between the 'apples' on Pine Ridge in South Dakota and AIM. What is the role of the gambling industry in Indian country? How will reservations become self-sufficient in food, or partly self-sufficient? What will their economies be based on, or are based on? Are there classes within native groups? Is this really a plea for eco-socialism in a series of reservations?

Politically the document tends to frame most struggles as 'anti-colonial' when colonialism is an early, though still continuing, form of capitalism. They say that “Every struggle in North America must be made into an anti-colonial struggle.” Really? Trade union strikes for instance?  They have a slogan about “decolonizing the atmosphere” which will make sense to almost no one. They move around in rhetoric between appealing to only non-'white' people and then including 'poor' people at large. There is no appeal to the working-class or interest in a political party... except by implication the Democrats.

I think a materialist analysis of reservation economies and class structures will yield an idea as to how revolutionary Indian Country can be.  Certainly reservations could be a huge boon to a social revolution or struggle, both geographically and economically.  This is missing from this document, though that is not its intent. They do aspire to 'cheerlead' every struggle however. I do not think indigenous people will be able to defeat colonialism, capitalism or imperialism – or whatever you want to call it - without broad links with revolutionaries outside Indian Country. That might be the most fraught strategic link that is not in this manifesto.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “In the Red Corner” (Mariategui); “The Great Evil” (Nunpa); “An Indigenous People's History of the United States” (Dunbar-Ortiz); “There, There” (Orange); “Rally Against Enbridge and Line 3,” “Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes,” “The Heart of Everything That Is,” “Loaded” (Dunbar-Ortiz); “Indian Country Noir,” “The Empire of the Summer Moon,” “Northland.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / August 7, 2024

Taking Back the Land...

 The Agrarian Revolution?

Jacobin’s latest issue, Summer 2024, is on the agricultural and rural question. They do not include fishing.  From their redoubts in the apartments of Brooklyn, they opine on country music, Marxist policy on peasants, farming situations in South Africa, Tanzania, India, Brazil, Gaza and Italy, progressive rural opinions and the good ‘ol days of rural insurrections, Capital “P” Populists and Southern CP sharecroppers.  Thomas Frank even pops up in this eclectic potpourri.  Their main complaint is that the Democrats do not have a progressive rural program, much as the Democrats have mostly ignored working-class issues. Their overall intention is to pressure the Democrats.  What is missing from them is any class analysis of the country-side, especially in the U.S., and what specifically rural demands to make.

Living in a small corn-belt town and a smaller forest town has made agriculture a concern of mine. I’ve seen the small 80 acre farms disappear.  I’ve run from cows.  I’ve had romance in the haylofts. I’ve tracked through corn fields. Let’s look at how agriculture has changed in the U.S. and how this impacts any attempt at a rural revolution. 

    1.    The U.S. has 2.9 million agricultural workers (NCFH). These are rural proletarians and close allies of the urban working-class.  In Italy it is around 500,000; Germany 300K; France 275K; Spain 150K; U.K. 75K.  I am ignoring their legal status, but nearly all are migrants to these countries.  In the U.S. figures show 85% settled and 15% migratory ‘within’ the U.S.

     2.    In 1935 there were 6.8M farms, declining steadily after the Depression; in 1975 there were 2.5M; in 2007 there were 2.2M and in 2023 there were 1.89M farms/ranches in the U.S.  Texas has the most farms/ranches presently, which figures (USDA).

     3.   The average farm size now is 464 acres.  Averages hide the actual number of large farms and ranches. In 1910 the avg. was a bit more than a 100 acres.  Large-scale farms ($1M+) have 51.8% of production; medium size have 19.1% ($300k to $1M); non-family have 10.4%; and small family farms have 18.7% - though comprising 88% of all farms. I'm assuming 'non-family' means corporate ownership. Many lease their land to others. Small farmers make $300K per year or less (USDA).

     From these statistics it’s clear that farms/ranches are larger, there are fewer farmers and the weight of large farms in production is obvious.  The latter’s production is based on unsustainable levels of pesticides, fertilizers, expensive machinery, animal agriculture and water usage, which is relevant to any revolutionary agricultural program.  So is the domination of farming by an oligopoly of ag giants – firms like Cargill, ADM, Monsanto, Bunge, Tyson and Deere.

The romantic images of subsistence peasants and self-sufficient small farmers in Europe and the U.S. is gone. The ranks of sharecroppers are almost non-existent.  Cooperatives have grown to the point where they are more like large businesses.  There are only a few communal farms and worker-owned businesses left. Even the ‘family farm’ is barely hanging on. Nostalgia is not going to be very useful.  Crops are different too.  Most corn is for ethanol (40%) or animal feed (36%), not for human consumption. Alfalfa, an animal feed, sucks up the vast majority of water flowing into the dying Great Salt Lake, while the Colorado River is 50% used by animal feed. Water-thirsty crops like almonds and alfalfa take part of the blame.  Of the 75% of land in ‘oil seeds’ and meat, 40% of that was for meat production. This shows the domination of meat in the production system. So how does this lay out in politics?

Jacobin points out that the phrase about the ‘idiocy of rural life’ in the Communist Manifesto did not refer to peasants, small-holders or rural people being stupid. “Idiocy” at that time meant that rural areas were isolated, apolitical and private.  In a sense this is still true today, though with the internet it is difficult to keep the young ‘down on the farm’ anymore, as it doesn’t take Paree.  55% of the world now lives in urban areas, which reflects a world-wide movement of dispossessed or broken farmers into the cities.  In 2022 in the U.S. 56.3M live in so-called ‘rural’ areas out of a U.S. population of 333.3M.  3.4M of these were considered ‘farmers’ – this includes family, renters, managers, tenants and share-croppers but not hired ‘hands.’  So most people in rural areas are not on farms, they live and work in the towns servicing the ag industry. This is crucial as this means truck drivers, maintenance workers, health and education personnel, clerks, office workers, grain mill workers and the like.  Capitalists have been moving factories to rural areas too, in a big way.  So there are large collections of workers in certain towns. These are potential allies, though under the thumb of their local employers, dispersed and few in number or unreached by unionism.

Cooperatives still in the U.S.

MARX et al.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Kautsky all supported the voluntary gathering of peasants and farmers into cooperatives, collectives and communes.  Marx was very clear on this, even suggesting the communal Russian mir could be a gateway to socializing the countryside. At the time of the revolution the Bolsheviks adopted breaking up the landed estates and distributing the land to small-holders. Later Stalin came up with forced collectivization, a method the Soviet CP exported to eastern and central Europe. Initially famine was one of the results in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.  In Soviet Europe these farms were slowly dismantled by local CPs due to their failures.

Jacobin goes into detail on the rural program of the early communists in Poland, Ireland and elsewhere, which was intimately tied to the national question.  Marx warned “not to hit the peasant over the head” with ultra-left demands in a response to Bakunin.  Because Kerensky’s Provisional Government dragged its feet on land reform, this led the Russian peasantry into revolution.  The land question is still key.               

What about divisions within the U.S. rural population?  As Marx noted, peasants in rural France were oppressed by money-lenders, mortgages and bourgeois capital.  This is still true in rural areas, as the banks, farm equipment manufacturers and large oligopolies control the markets and inputs, putting even middle-farmers into economic chains.  The Farm Bills are dominated by these forces too, as is the Agriculture Dept. from Earl Butz to the present sad-sack, Tom Vilsack. For instance Zuckerberg’s ‘farm’ in Hawaii earns massive tax breaks, as most government aid goes to large farms owned by ag corporations.  Gates, Bezos, Buffet and Turner all own large tracts of land, while nations like Saudi Arabia are buying up African lands.   

Small farmers are small businessmen and capitalists, trying to make it perhaps with heirloom tomatoes, organic produce and CSAs. Some rent their land to windmills and solar farms. Some of these are young, new farmers.  They, like so many, are in debt. They can certainly be allies, and they might practice environmental and agro-ecologic or veganic methods. They might closely rely on personal connections with businesses and customers in the cities.  Yet if they really make $300K it's a stretch, as it seems even small farmers are not so small anymore.  Most of this probably goes to debt payments, but not all.

‘Middle farmers’ on the other hand are making up to $1M a year.  They are the rural success stories and most are closely aligned to the businessmen and firms that run small rural towns and dominate isolated town workers.  This even though they are in debt, with a net worth that would be millions if not for their outstanding loans and locked-in delivery contracts.  At present this layer is not winnable and probably make up the hard base of Republican voters in rural areas. Large corporate farms, feedlots, slaughter houses and ranches are another story and use large amounts of proletarian labor, which makes them ripe for class struggle and later, socialization. 

A sketch of a socialist program for rural areas could include:  1. Debt relief. 2. Land should be socialized overall, with land leases initially. 3. The takeover of corporate farms by workers and state. 4. Encouraging small and even medium farmers to join cooperatives.  5. The primacy of sustainable agricultural practices. 6. A lessening of meat production. 7. Infusing rural areas with aid to hospitals and schools, which are closing at a rapid pace.  Though as Jacobin notes, spending money alone is not effective in changing class relations. 8. Using government policy (a progressive Farm Bill) to encourage environmental changes and cooperation in the countryside.  9.  Unionizing ag workers.  10. Repopulating rural areas with ag workers as mono-crop farming reliant on massive machines is reduced. 11.  Studying the productivity of small versus large farms.  There are indications that small farms are more productive for many crops. 12.  Socialize the large Ag companies.

I spent several years after a divorce listening to country.  Yeah, I know, that's funny.  Jacobin missed a number of progressive country songs – two are “Working Man’s Ph.d” by Aaron Tippin and “Seminole Wind” by John Anderson.  Others are “We Shall Be Free” by Garth Brooks, “The Revolution Starts Now” by Steve Earle (among others) and “The Pill” by Loretta Lynn.  Citing Woody or Pete all the time is a dodge.

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism,” “From Commune to Capitalism,” “The Robbery of Nature” (J.B. Foster); “What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?” “Vegan Freak,” “Oneness vs. the 1%” (Shiva);  “The Worst Hard Time,” “Foodopoly” “The Emotional Lives of Animals,” “Animal, Vegetable, Junk,” “Grocery Activism” or the word ‘agriculture.’  

And I bought it at May Day Books excellent periodicals section!

Red Frog / August 3, 2024

Wage Slavery in the South

 “New Battery Belt is Changing the South”by Ben Carroll, Labor Notes, Aug. 2025

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in 2022 is sending millions in government seed money and corporate welfare to EV battery manufacturing plants, some in Southern states like North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina.  The IRA consists of grants and tax credits, while state governments are contributing infrastructure improvements, tax breaks and workforce training, all totally about $60B.  Two-thirds of EV jobs may be eventually located there, as VW and BMW are already ramping up EV production in two South Carolina factories according to Carroll.

Labor Notes Convention, 2024

This so-called ‘battery belt’ includes revived lithium mining in North Carolina; a planned 8,500 worker Hyundai battery plant outside Savannah, GA; a mega-site in North Carolina for Toyota employing 5,100 workers and two ‘Blue Oval” EV production sites in Memphis and in Kentucky employing 11,000 more workers.  You will note the size of these facilities is actually conducive to union organizing, as the capitalists have been trying to shrink production facilities for years to prevent this.

The context is the nationalist U.S. trade war against China, as the U.S. government is attempting to block their EV and battery industries from penetrating the U.S. The other context is the vicious anti-unionism of right-to-work-for-less states in the South.  The capitalists and their southern Republican politician allies have denounced unionism as “threatening the values we live by…”  (What is that value, poverty?)  The governor of South Carolina, a descendent of slave-owners, said he would “…fight unions to the gates of hell.”  (Satan would do no less.) This is how ‘industrial policy’ works in the U.S., a fractured, profitable and unequal version of what real economic planning should look like.  By promoting the 'battery belt' Biden has borrowed a play from AOC/Sander's 'Green New Deal,' a 'deal' which is now functioning as a prompt to 'green' capitalism and the expansion of a profitable sector.  It should be noted that most EV production is still located in Michigan but Carroll says that will change. 

Southern workers, led by a restive black and Latino proletariat, have unionized a Blue Bird e-bus manufacturer in Georgia; the New Flyer e-bus manufacturer in Alabama; the massive VW plant in Chattanooga and Daimler truck plants in 3 southern states, all led by different unions – UAW, CWA-IUE and the USW. 

Carroll is a member of the Southern Workers Assembly headquartered in Durham, which is seeking to seed union organizers in various plants.  He recommends recognizing ‘choke points’ in the production chain, as these companies have local supply chains and vertical integration which make them more vulnerable.  All this is bearing fruit to the long-ago 1950s claim of the AFL-CIO to ‘Organize the South.’  As I’ve noted before, this increase in manufacturing in the South will proletarianize larger and larger groups of formerly small town and rural workers, and will lead to the South being a new key battleground in the labor and socialist movements.

Note:  Minneapolis just celebrated the 90^th Anniversary of the 1934 Teamster’s Strike, which made Minneapolis a ‘union town’ for a while.  That same year the Auto-Lite strike in Toledo and the Longshoremen’s strike in San Francisco announced an upsurge in the labor movement across the country.  Remember 1934!

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Cranky Yankee,” “Fighting Times,” “South,” “Neo-Confederate.”  

And I bought it at May Day Books, which has a good selection of left-wing magazines, journals and newspapers. 

The Cranky Yankee / July 30, 2024

Disemancipation

 “Democracy or Bonapartism? - Two Centuries of War on Democracy” by Dominico Losurdo, 1993-2024

 Italian Doiminco Losurdo does a deep dive into the question of democracy, a value that has always been part of a real socialist, communist and Left program.  In the process he eviscerates many doyens of classical liberalism – de Tocqueville, J.S. Mill, John Locke, Walter Bagehot, Edmund Burke, Ben Constant, Max Weber, EJ Sieyés and Karl Popper among them.  They were liberal only in respect to property and the maintenance of classes.  He also takes apart the myth that democracy is the gradual trend of liberalism.  Losurdo bases his analysis on quotes and the political / historical development of democratic ideas and movements in Europe – principally France, England and Italy; and in the U.S.  He notes 3 dates as key in the development of actual democracy:  the 1792 French Revolution; the 1848 European-wide revolutions, especially in France; and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Predictably he does not list the 1871 Commune. None of these were carried out by liberals, and certainly not conservatives.  Libertarians like Hayek and de Mises later joined in the classical liberal endorsement of surreptitious rule by a minority disguised as democracy. 

The contradiction between economic equality and political equality demands that capital nullify, minimize or reverse universal suffrage and proportional representation, hence its slant towards the erasure of democracy. If the majority actually held political power they could make inroads into property.  Losurdo calls this process ‘disemancipation’ – a regular feature of bourgeois states leading to forms of ‘democratic Caesarism.” For instance Ludendorff identified democracy as voting for a leader (führer), after which the electorate should shut up.    

This book covers 200 years and answers the question of how we understand the authoritarian version of 'democracy' proliferating in so many countries.  A controlled democracy hemmed in by censorship, voting barriers, legal anachronisms, captive courts, candidate controls and ultimately police or military action; i.e. coups.  This is nothing new under bourgeois-led capitalism as Losurdo shows us.  He tracks the role of property requirements, elitist democratic bodies, indirect 2-stage voting, single member districts, first past the poll victories, poll and education tests, plural voting, residency requirements gerrymandering, gender, ethnicity, immigration and class as barriers to actual democracy. List voting versus ‘single member districts’ also play a role. Oddly he never mentions money. The U.S. was one of the latest to actually get nominal universal suffrage, which even now is marred by the Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, gerrymandering, a supine press, advertising, the 'two-party system, corporate money and voter restrictions. The U.S. ranks 29th in world democracy standings in 2023 and is titled a 'flawed democracy.'

Classical liberals called their own working classes animals, instruments, hands, work machines, foreigners and later children who needed guidance. This all mitigated the role of the proletariat and peasantry in politics and democracy, as they were treated as inferiors. Local workers got fuller suffrage as colonial enterprises grew in order to gain the adherence of the local working classes to colonial conquest and war. From local workers being racialized (Irish, blacks, Chinese coolies, etc.) as inferior, this was transferred to the colonies, including internal 'colonies.' Later controlled voting in an 'orderly democracy' was considered stabilizing internally, especially when dominated by a singular personality.  Leadership went from heredity, blood, religion and title in Europe to great men, to charismatic leaders and to 'statesmen,' to Bonapartes and crypto-Caesars rising above the classes; and now to a whole system mirroring and configured to the wishes of that great state leader, who seems to never relinquish power.  This is the context of present authoritarian 'Bonapartist' governments masquerading behind a vote which exist on a sliding scale across the world.  Military dictatorships, theocracies, kingdoms, war-lord-ism and failed states, all which make no pretense to democracy, fall even below these regimes.

Shay's Rebellion - 1786-1787

Some Enlightening Details

Both the French and U.S. revolutions ended with what Lusordo calls a kind of coup d'etat by the upper classes against the democratic excesses of the revolutions.  One led by Napoleon the First, the second by Washington and Hamilton. The latter were fearful of Shay's Rebellion, which impressed upon them the need for a Constitution and President that would prevent 'mob rule.'  The Federalist Papers claimed landlords, merchants, factory owners and the professional strata were the best decision makers for the working classes.  Hamilton, the arch reactionary, leaned towards creating a life-long, hereditary version of the House of Lords.  The Federalist noted the usefulness at times of a dictatorial Roman Caesar.  But after the Revolution, few would buy those ideas.  They settled on increased presidential power as the 'dam' against the proletarian and farmer masses. (Lusordo goes into great detail on developments in the U.S.)

Lusordo points out that voting for officers extended into the new French National Guard for a time until it was put under control of the national political leader, as was done in the U.S.  The Left press which promoted the French Revolution was later hobbled by security deposits and hostile middle-class juries. Now in the internet age, Left sites are drowned in a sea of invisibility, nonsense and yelling voices.  The bourgeois press dominates television, as 6 corporations still control most media.  Lusordo sees the trade union and Party presses were at one time equals to ruling class forces like the Church, just as proletarian violence could match the rulers' minions for a time.  Now the monopoly of 'mental production' is clearly held by the capitalist class, while the monopoly of political violence is also theirs. Anti-democratic laws, propaganda and 'the leader' mitigate against a party of the proletariat and popular classes, which is the genius of U.S. politics.  Ideology is verboten. The 'two-party' system, based on different wings of the capitalist class, leaves out the actual working class's independent role.  This was always the plan.  Elections devolve into personalities with political programs that share support for neo-liberalism and capital while differing on tactics, sometimes significantly. Marx said you could get to vote for your favorite ruling-class figure every 4 years. These differences mirror strategic and tactical differences among the oligarchs and corporations.  

U.S. Suffragettes in mid 1910s

Lusordo sees Bonapartism not just in Napoleon I and Louis-Napoleon III, but also in Bismarck and Gladstone; in George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt; in Clemenceau and Lloyd George; in Mussolini and Hitler; in Wilson and FDR, in De Gaulle and Yeltsin. This seems to casts a wide net to the rule of individual politicians over the state.  He explains this by calling it the triumphal development of 'soft Bonapartism' in the 20th Century – perhaps what hippies used to call 'soft fascism.'  Lusordo details the unlimited power these leaders had during wars. He even introduces the concept of ‘planetary Bonapartism’ for imperialism.  He’s making Bonapartism a universal for capitalist state leaders, for all times, which so dilutes the idea as to make it almost meaningless.

Notably the Bolshevik Revolution spurred the recognition of the right of women to vote across most of the 'West,' as anything other than the claim of a universal franchise was no longer tenable.  Some MAGA Republicans have actually called for women to lose the vote, while Hayek praised Switzerland for not allowing women to vote into the 1960s. J.D. Vance has suggested giving parents more votes for every child they have.

Lusordo has trouble identifying Stalin as a true Bonapartist, as Stalin's cult of personality, one-man rule and bloody ruthlessness made reference to the Party, Marxism and class struggle. That is his reformist and pro-Stalin slant. But that might be symptomatic of Bonapartism in a workers' state, just as bourgeois Bonapartists still praise 'volk' democracy, their Party and their nation. He thinks that perhaps Mao during the Cultural Revolution approached 'Bonapartism.'  At any rate, Lusordo sees Bonapartism at various levels in almost every bourgeois state leader, which dilutes the concept.  He identifies fascism as 'Bonapartism unleashed' or ‘war Bonapartism.’  The insight is that the state leader in an ostensible democracy – or at least once elected - can easily become a dictator given the right conditions like war, civil or labor strife or any 'emergency' - and later on a daily basis.  They can be ‘elected dictators.’ This is not news, as expanding Presidential / Premier power and a ‘unitary executive’ has been a given for years all over the world.  Losurdo’s concept suffers by over-extension, especially when you have to add ‘soft’ to it.  It is the normal working of the capitalist state.

Losurdo takes aim at Mises, Hayek, Friedman and Schumpter for opposing wider democracy, as they thought the ‘market’ was the real democratic institution where consumers vote with their money.  Mises maintained that only 2 parties should exist, and neither can represent a certain class.  The U.S. has endorsed this, as capitalist domination is hidden under rhetoric around the nation and unity from both parties.  However each Party is not identical, as simple-minded folk would have it.  The Republicans are closer to classical Liberalism, which Losurdo shows infused the origins of fascism until fascism dispensed with any democratic norms.   Hayek contended universal suffrage was not a ‘natural right,’ instead claiming it was ‘a dictatorship of the workers’ and ‘totalitarian democracy.’  By the way classical liberalism is not what is called ‘liberalism’ now.  We're still at neo-Liberalism now for most Democrats at least.

Lusordo never discusses fake state 'democracies' in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, India and elsewhere, which is significant. He doesn't discuss China, Cuba, Vietnam or North Korea which is also significant, as he seems not to consider democracy as an aspect of state socialism. He ignorers forms of proletarian democracy – councils, assemblies, Soviets, communes, unlike Marx, Lenin or Trotsky.  These are all forms of direct democracy far superior to the parliamentary or Congressional kind, based on workplaces and geography. In a way it is the socialist version of democracy that the capitalists promoted against feudalism.  This is a glaring omission for a book about democracy by a Marxist, but then he leans to Stalinism. He posits universal suffrage and proportional representation as the highpoint of 'democracy.' Anyway, a dense, deeply historical tract, this book will fascinate those interested in the origins and variations of democratic processes in Europe and the U.S., but it will also repel Marxists who know what is missing.

P.S. - I have been informed that Losurdo was a fan of Deng Xiaoping.  This explains his reluctance to discuss workers' democracy of any kind, and his limit in discussion of democracy to bourgeois democratic forms, as if that was the only kind of democracy there is.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Democracy Incorporated” (Wolin); “Has Representative Democracy Failed?” “Is the U.S. an Actual Democracy Even By Its Own Standards?” “The Only Political Question That Matters?” “Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism,” “Political Beliefs of Americans,” “Death of the Liberal Class” (Hedges); “A Confederacy of Dunces?” “Democracy in Chains,” “The Nordic Theory of Everything.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / July 26, 2024

Whose Conspiracy is the Real Conspiracy?

 The Left and Conspiracy Theories, Knee-Jerk Thinking and Clichés

 If you’ve been around the Left for any length of time, you’ll find a certain repetition of factless conspiracy theories, simple-minded thinking and the repetition of left clichés – just like Right-wingers but not from the same angle.  I’ll give some examples from time in Left-Town a while ago and recently.

First was a discussion of the prevalence of violence against women in the U.S. and around the world.  I was told that ‘U.S. feminists say’ that 1/3^rd of all U.S. women are … killed?  raped?  abused?  harassed?  It was not clear, nor was this nugget meant to be clear.  When I told the speaker that women in other countries have it worse – more than 40-45% even if you take that U.S. stat for truth - she could not believe it.  I mentioned that the Pakistani military had just stopped ‘virginity tests” (digital!) for new female recruits. Or that in Somalia over 90% of the women have been gone through female genital mutilation, and nearly all of the older ones in the U.S. have too.  Or that in India nearly all rapists are getting away with the help of the police.  Or in Mexico, femicide is more common than the U.S.  Do we even need to discuss the Taliban’s attitude towards women?  Then I looked up 5 different websites on women’s worst conditions across the world and in only one did the U.S. show up, at 10^th.  I wasn’t soft-peddling femicide or other vicious attacks on women in the U.S., as she thought.  This ‘more radical than thou’ / ‘the U.S. is the worst place in the world’ attitude is a typical knee-jerk supposition you encounter frequently from so-called Leftists.  I was trying to show some countries have more nightmarish conditions for women. Ah, an internationalism which blunted national thinking.  Did it sink in?   I doubt it.  Goddamn facts.

Then an argument on the origins of the Covid 19 virus.  The speaker still thought it was from a Chinese lab after listening to a talk by Robb Wallace, a left-wing epidemiologist, who mentioned nothing of the kind.  In his book “Dead Epidemiologists,’ while considering the theory, Wallace’s indicates that the preponderance of evidence suggests it was from bats and pangolins in the jungle that had contact with humans; i.e. intrusion into nature.  Since then, more facts have come out against the ‘lab-leak’ theory, even by former supporters.  Was I convincing?  I doubt it.  Goddamn facts. 

Then a left-wing Muslim stated that he liked dogs, but if they licked him, he would have to wash before praying.  Now some people will wash their hands after being licked by a dog for health reasons, but what does it have to do with praying? Will Allah get infected?  It isn’t scientific.  More goddamn facts.

Then there is always that ‘guy’ who claims everything that happens is stage-managed, planned by an omnipotent bourgeoisie, they are all in cahoots, there are no material divisions within the ruling class, it’s just a shadow show put on for the boob-proletariat, everything is planned.  There are no accidents, no agency, no actors outside of the ruling class. As if capitalists never take advantage of a situation or flaw in the enemy, which is called normal opportunism in my book.  As if all of history is planned down to the smallest incident, like the bourgeoisie are fucking God.  When you ask him if he’s got any facts on his specific conspiracy or interpretation, he says ‘no’ - but it sure makes sense to him! This is ‘radicalism.’

In fact the more ‘radically’ suspect you sound, the more people think you are some kind of perceptive visionary and genius – when you’re just a motivated fool.  This has happened with the recent shooting at Trump.  The Republican loonies claim a ‘deep state’ plot to assassinate Trump.  The Democratic BlueAnon claim this is all a hoax and Trump set this up to help his campaign.  Some people think both scenarios are logical... Why either side would choose a poor, bullied, gun-crazy 20 year old loner to do the deed is ignored.  Incompetence is impossible in both scenarios, as mistakes are never made in a conspiracy theory. Again, proof?  Well… it just makes sense 'to me.'

Then there is the ‘left’ opinion that almost nothing in the corporate or bourgeois news is ever true, while everything from China, Cuba or Venezuela or …? is always true.  You see this on FB© or other sites.  Now on the face of it, that seems impossible.  But that does not stop simple-minded leftists from saying it.  We have to totally trust anything we hear from people we are defending from U.S. imperialism, and not believe anything said by the NYT, CBS, etc.  Now I get where they are coming from, as the U.S. lies frequently.  But so do other governments.  This reveals a total misunderstanding of what journalism is.  I seem to remember this same tripe about the USSR.  These people only sometimes call themselves ‘Marxists.’  Most of them are just post-Leftists and practice the anti-imperialism of fools.  Goddamn facts again.

Then there are the trolls and insulters.  People that post pictures of their leftist heroes, guillotines, hammers and sickles, red stars, AK-47s and make short, snotty and factless comments based on their opinions.  Like Twitter© or Facebook© is their version of Das Capital.  Signs = Signification = Not. Childish nonsense seems to be their forte.  Then the people who don’t understand subtleties, nuance and contradictions.  As if 1=1 all the time.  Infantile leftism is full of this.  Everyone to the right is ‘fascist’ just as everyone to the left of the Republicans is a Communist.  They are mirror images of each other.  And have I mentioned the guillotine was used to execute Vietnamese Viet Minh, while England, Germany and the Nazi’s used it on enemies too.

Or the guy that ignores the pedophiles in the Republican Party (their very own QAnon scandals) by pointing out that Biden squeezes women and sniffs their hair.  In Minnesota, the GOP has just melted down at the top because of a ‘sex trafficking’ scandal.  The hypocrisy is delicious.  Trump himself is a convicted rapist and an unconvicted 'pussy grabber.'  Right, but missing the point, using ‘whataboutism’ to ignore one party or the other. "But what about…?” could be used endlessly, as if hypocrisy is new.  Or the guy who thinks Nancy Pelosi is closest to the fascist movement in the U.S., not elements of the Republican Party.  And that the history of Germany, Italy and Spain, where the the corporations enabled the fascists, mean nothing to ‘modern’ hip fascism. As if Mussolini is the trusted expert on fascism.  Bah with your history and facts and theory!

Conspiracy thinking is a vain attempt at immediately understanding things that are not obvious, or sometimes too obvious and need to be twisted towards your political agenda. It is a 'secret knowledge' that makes the bearer feel smart or 'in the know.' Or course some conspiracies are real, but that requires an accumulation of facts. The problem with all of this is that outside ‘the choir’ this cheap thinking won’t play.  You are not going to convince non-leftist proletarians by relying on clichés, conspiracies, weird shit or simple-minded approaches. No matter how much you bellow. Unless you think people are clueless… which some are.   Please seek them out.

 A lot of these leftists get their information from the same 3 podcasts on You Tube© or some narrow platform.  Or they guess.  Rarely is it from a book by a leftist journalist, academic, historian or Marxist.  Sometime it is from an ‘anti-war’ hack parading as a leftist – I’m talking about you, Max Blumenthal – a guy who Aaron Mate could no longer work with.  Or triumphalist pro-Russian ‘military experts’ like Scott Ritter.  Or unfunny idiot Jimmy Dore hosting MAGA 'Communist' Jason Hinkle.  MAGA 'communism' is the U.S. equivalent of 'national socialism' by the way.  It's a new front for the Larouchies.  It is not entertaining to watch libertarian 'leftists' head to the right.

If this all reminds you of certain clueless Republicans, QAnon or fascistic people you might have run into, you’d be right.  Many times it is fueled by fear, paranoia and mistrust of everything.  Notice the isolated mental state of those promoting it.   Some organizations foster this kind of groupthink, sometimes it is just naïveté, lazy thinking or personal arrogance; sometimes it is pure bullshit and intended as such.  As if high school never ended. Well it has. 

Prior blog reviews on this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  "conspiracy," "MAGA Communism," "QAnon," "3rd Position." 

Red Frog / July 23, 2024   

Bait and Switch

“How To Be A Revolutionary – a Novel” by C.A. Davids, 2021

This is a novel about how perhaps not to be a revolutionary. It bounces between Shanghai, Cape Town, Harlem and a bit in Beijing. The author worked in advertising for many years and lives in Cape Town. It attempts to weave together the stories of anti-Apartheid youth activists; a CCP propagandist who finds out intimate facts about Tienanmen and the great famine of the late 1950s in China … and Langston Hughes. In a way the use of 'revolution' is similar to advertising, to get people to buy the book. The 'revolution' in cleansers, for instance. So I did.

Hughes was red-baited because of his closeness to the Communist Party. In scenes here he is detained by Japanese security for talking to Madame Sun-Yat Sen, who was friendly to socialism, and the great writer Le Hsun, who was close to the CCP when he visited him in Shanghai in 1933. Why Hughes is in this book seems to be an attempt to give it some literary and cultural gravitas. He's represented here in a series of letters to an unknown friend he wrote from Harlem. Hughes was never a Communist or a small 'c' communist but he was an anti-racist, which is his link to the CP and other socialists. Right-wingers think everyone to their left is a communist and his politics got him alienated from the proper social forces, so he might as well have been.

The lead character is a sub-consul for South Africa in the post-Apartheid government in Shanghai. Years earlier she was the close friend of a young woman in Cape Town who tried to bomb a police station and was fooled by state security, BOSS, into using a bomb that would kill her instead. Now this consul woman seems to be having a moment of rebellion, as she's working for the increasingly conservative South African ANC as a government asset. She testifies at the 1990s “Truth and Reconciliation” events about the set-up that killed her friend. The South African T&RC process never put anyone in jail; it served as a sort of national talk therapy. The BOSS got off scot-free, as is usual with unfinished revolutions.

In Shanghai, she is handed several manuscripts she can't read by an older Chinese man who has gathered personal information on the great famine in the countryside, which killed many in his village, including his parents and relatives. He seeks information about their fate and finds out his starving mother was executed by the government for complaining. It is alleged that food was taken from rural areas to feed the urban population while the peasants died. The cause of the famine is left unknown, a vagary that seems dishonest. She involves others in the consular world to translate the pages, then sends copies off to her alienated husband back in Cape Town for safe-keeping. She loses her job because of this and is expelled from China.

That is it in a nutshell. This is more a personal story then a voyage into how to be a revolutionary, because she certainly is not. At best she is a journalist and at one time a youthful anti-Apartheid activist. Nor was Langston Hughes strictly a 'revolutionary' – he was a poet and a truth-teller. Nor was the Chinese man, as he worked for many years as a propagandist for the CCP, and only later started digging into the facts as a researcher. Perhaps journalists, truth-tellers and researchers are her definition of revolutionaries but that is a liberal definition. None of these people wanted or wants a social revolution in the first place. There is no class struggle here. It's use is part of literary license.

The selection of letters from Hughes are from a real collection he wrote to writers in South Africa. The manuscript on the horrors of the famine and the rebellion around Tienanmen will probably find its way to a publisher outside China under a pseudonym, according to the book. It is even hinted that this book is that, but fictionalized. Tienanmen is a far larger topic than the killings in the square, as it relates to labor struggle, rising prices, bureaucratic control and nation-wide unrest. The lead character and her consular friends are subjected to intensive surveillance – tails, surreptitious entry into apartments, probably eves-dropping, so it paints a dark picture of Chinese surveillance methods, which include blocking any internal internet references to politically touchy subjects – like Tienanmen, the Great Leap Forward, the GPCR or the famine.  Certainly the CCP learned from that crisis, always attempting not to repeat it.

Davids is not a socialist or an apparent activist, but does advertising for arts organizations and at one time, Levi-Strauss. I'm not sure what to say about this book but it's a predictable, gauzy and impressionistic approach to the subject. This is a product of Davids' MA in creative writing, and certainly reads like it. It does paint a picture of political activism, which is rare in fiction. But it provides no hard guide to success against the forces of capital or authoritarian bureaucracy. In a way, it's just another prop to concerned liberalism. Certainly the New York Times saw it that way in their review.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “China,” “South Africa,” “Langston Hughes” or “Harlem.”

And I bought it at Boneshaker Books!

The Cultural Marxist / July 19, 2024

Memories of the Times We Left Behind!

 “Stalin’s Ghost”by Martin Cruz Smith, 2007

Arkady Renko perseveres through threats, injuries, official irritation, jealousy and Russian corruption in order to bring to justice two ex-military thugs.  They were part of a “Black Berets” unit in Chechnya which functioned as a death squad and later started liquidating their own members and anyone who knew of their activities.  All the while the Second World War, ghostly appearances of Joseph Stalin, memories of his own father and the Soviet period haunt the present. 

Like fervent Catholics who see the figure of Christ in a tortilla, elderly babushkas and hoaxers claim a living Stalin appeared in an underground train station in Moscow. This is part of a political stunt to aid a Patriot’s Party campaign, a stunt which has irritated the city police and power structure, the actual Communist Party and anyone who believes in factuality.  Arkady gets the assignment to track down the hoaxers and comes upon something else – a group of ex-Black Berets, one of whom is running for office under the Patriot Party banner, and who is also a detective in the Moscow police. 

The ‘ghostliness’ in the title refers to the continuing influence and nostalgia for the Soviet and Stalinist period in contemporary Russia.  This starts with Arkady’s own father, who was a ruthless Soviet Army general under Stalin and lives in Arkady’s memory.  His father’s funniest remark is how “Cossack Budyonny was the stupidest general in the Red Army.”  Arkady took away a distaste for firearms from his time with his father, though as a police inspector he is in dangerous situations all the time – and seems to court them.

This scent of brutality hangs over everything, like many noir detective novels.  The Second World War, in which the Soviet Army basically crushed the Nazi war machine, is still the most resonant moment in the political climate.  One of the unique scenes in the book is of ‘diggers’ around Tver finding bodies from WWII in old battlefields. They dig them up and re-bury the Soviet soldiers properly, while others sell artifacts from the bodies.  German bones and bodies are discarded when found.  However, in this particular site, according to a forensic expert, the bodies are of Poles… perhaps executed by Russians. This is a problem for the Russian Patriots, who promoted these digs.

The threat of officially ignored ‘modern’ bodies is also present.  Accidents, drunkenness, falls and slips get the blame and quickly close the cases, as the detectives on those cases are suspiciously associated with the Black Berets too. Arkady however has a different, wider theory.

The book contrasts the glitzy, sushi-ridden capital of Moscow, overloaded with fancy cars and casinos, with the rundown smaller Russian villages and towns living in poverty and isolation.  Tver itself was once a holiday spa for the randy Catherine the Great, so the older past continues to impress itself upon locals. Chess is a continuing fascination in Russia for an elderly Communist grandmaster living in a basement warren and an odd sort of adopted son of Arkady’s.  It provides a theme throughout the book – perhaps because detective work is sometimes like chess.

All in all a moody, bloody, nostalgic picture of Russia in 2007.  

And I got it at the Library!

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Gorky Park” and “Polar Star” (both by Cruz Smith) or the words ‘detective,’ ‘Moscow’ or ‘Stalin.’

Kultur Kommissar / July 16, 2024