Disemancipation

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

 Italian Gramscian 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. Oddly 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.

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 also made reference to the Party, Marxism and class struggle.  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 both 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 that method, 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 at neo-Liberalism now for most Democrats at least.

Lusordo never discusses state 'democracies' in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, India and elsewhere.  He also ignorers forms of proletarian democracy – councils, assemblies, Soviets, communes.  These are all forms of more direct democracy far superior to the parliamentary or Congressional kind, based on workplaces and geography. In a way it is the socialist version of what the capitalists promoted against feudalism.  This is an odd omission for a book about democracy by a Marxist. He mostly posits universal suffrage and proportional representation. But hey… 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. 

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 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, internationalism.  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, 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.   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.  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. 

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 even 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

Anti-Fascist Series #13: The Real Story

 “The German Communist Resistance 1933-1945”by T. Derbent, Preface by D.Z. Shaw, 2008/2021

Unlike the fable sold by anti-Communist historians and journalists, this thin book shows that, after the failed and flawed fight against Hitler, the Communist Party underground was still the most effective and widespread anti-fascist movement in Germany. Some of it's members spread through Europe and fought fascism there. This is its untold story.

The book occasionally mentions other labor anti-fascists. It wasn’t the Christians, the liberals, the intellectuals or the aristocrats that were the main force fighting Hitler inside Germany. You might think this given William Shirer's 100 pages dedicated to their efforts, while having one footnote dedicated to the resistance of the Kommuniste Partei Deutschland (KPD). This historic ignorance was repeated by other bourgeois historians. Their erroneous political perspective equating totalitarian Nazism = Communism couldn't make sense of the actual facts so they had to hide them. This remarkable volume shows in extraordinary detail the wide range of heroic and effective anti-fascist activity by KPD members after the Nazi takeover in 1933.

The author of the preface, Shaw, is a philosophy prof at Douglas College. He seems to be an anarchist or Maoist who advocates an initial anti-fascist united front of socialists, anarchists and communists in the U.S. This front would embrace all forms of struggle, unlike liberal anti-fascism which trusts the courts or police to protect them. He claims the U.S. is a settler-colonial state, not a capitalist and imperialist one, as if U.S. capital has not developed at all.  This is a typical position from this tendency.

Derbent points out that the KPD's idea of 'After Hitler, Us!' was folly. He wobbles on the designation of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as 'social-fascist' by Stalin. The SPD leadership protected Nazi demos, arrested and killed Communist anti-fascists and treated the KPD as a bigger enemy than the Nazis. They refused to participate in anti-Nazi strikes, left the Socialist International and actually endorsed Hitlerite foreign policy proposals. While seemingly accurate, Derbent points out this view blocked any attempt at a 'united front from below' with anti-fascist SPD workers and led to splitting the trade union movement. Another result of this strategy is that the KPD blocked with the Nazis in a referendum against the Prussian SPD in 1931 - joint work with the Nazis that was not an isolated incident. The collaborationist German-Soviet pact also disoriented German anti-fascists. Stalin later gave up the failed 'social-fascist' perspective for a political 'popular front' with capitalists, one of his famous zig-zags.

THE BATTLE AFTER 1932

Derbent provides dates, numbers, names, locations and organizations for the activity carried out by the KPD underground. The period is from the Hitlerite attacks in early 1933 after the Reichstag fire to the Nazi defeat in 1945. The KPD worked in many factories, in concentration and extermination camps, inside the Reich's administration and military, infiltrated the Nazi Party, in guerrilla operations, in sabotage in war factories, in propaganda and radio, in strikes and union struggles, in assassinations, in prison breakouts, in mutinies, in espionage. They endorsed all forms of resistance. Repeatedly their networks were discovered and brutally dismantled by the Nazis, then reconstituted.  Many comrades were executed, tortured or sent to camps.

Derbent notes that the Nazi 'labor' organizations and the Nazi Party vote never penetrated the vast bulk of the working class, as Hitler's electoral victory came from the former voters of the peasant, petit-bourgeois and middle-class liberal parties. After the Nazi victory workers were not allowed to change jobs, were paid what the owners wanted and any dissent was heavily punished, including strikes. The Nazi's ostensibly opposed 'Corporate Marxism' but they were the actual corporatists. Any perpetuation of class struggle was opposed by the fascists.

The KPD was outlawed in January 1933 and top leaders of the KPD were arrested in February. 20,000 KDP members were arrested later and 15,000-20,000 went into exile. In November 60,000 more Communists were arrested. Unions were dissolved when they came for the SPD in May. This is long before major deportations and murders of Jews, as the labor movement was the first target of the fascists. The 100K members of the League of Red Front Fighters and the 250K members of the Antifa League, which had engaged in confrontations with fascists before 1933, were further targets. A figure of above 1 million Germans were arrested, jailed or killed for anti-fascist activity from 1933-1939.

No section of the KPD bowed to the the Nazis. Many escaped abroad, including the remaining leadership, which settled in Paris. KPD members fought in anti-fascist units in Spain, France, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Greece, Austria and elsewhere – especially in France's maquis and earlier in Spain, where 5,000 left-wing Germans battled Franco and Hitler.

Armed KPD prisoners greeted U.S. troops at Buchenwald  

Some of the notable things that happened: In 1933 escaped KPD members brought back the first information on the Nazi camps. Their cadre repeatedly warned the Soviets of the impending 1940 Nazi invasion – information that was ignored. They gained intel in Tokyo that Japan would not invade the Siberian USSR, which allowed the Soviets to shift troops west. Walter Ulbricht, a head of the KPD, had taken refuge in Moscow. He was on loudspeakers at Stalingrad urging a German surrender. Saboteur KPD dockers hid explosive material in coal shipments, which sank many ships in the North Sea when the coal was burned. Ulbricht called for an armed uprising in Germany in February 1945 and KPD units attacked, trying to set up dual power. Most amazing is the armed Communist insurrection at Buchenwald that preceded the arrival of U.S. troops, which stopped 20,000 deportations and defeated the Gestapo guards. In many camps the Left controlled the civilian side – Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Dora and others.  You don't see that in any movies.

The Gestapo and SS were well aware of the strength and spread of KPD underground activities from their documents, something that escaped Shirer and his cohort. According to Derbent in 1944 the KPD still had 10,000 active underground workers in 100 German cities in spite of immense casualties, along with a broader base of supporters. Under orders from Moscow, KPD rhetoric about a German Soviet republic was ended in 1943 in favor of one for a 'German Democratic Republic'. This was the program of the Soviet-backed 'National Committee for a Free Germany' which was designed to appeal to liberals and bourgeois anti-fascists, part of a political bloc with the liberal bourgeoisie in a popular front.

Derbent points out that 'de-Nazification' in West Germany was pathetic, while in East Germany it was almost total. Only 5,234 Nazi murderers were convicted in the west, then given light sentences. Nazi judges and prosecutors that had ordered tens of thousands of deaths were reinstated. Collaborators escaped notice. Prominent ex-Nazis gained positions of power in the 'new' Federal Republic. Many of the July 20 conspirators in the celebrated plot to murder Hitler had also been associated with the Nazis – yet these people are celebrated as heroes. A good number of Nazi's were imported into the U.S. in Operation Paperclip. There's a pattern here.

All together an excellent and brief look at the facts of the German anti-fascist resistance led by the KPD after 1933.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Anti-Fascist Series,” 'East Germany" or 'GDR.'

And I bought It at May Day Books!

Red Frog / July 13, 2024

Not Cutting the Mustard

 “American Nightmare” Short Streaming Series, 2024

I rarely watch ‘true crime’ documentaries, as they are sensationalist and bloodthirsty voyeur experiences. This one has wider political resonance though, and it’s not bloody, so stick with me. It’s about the kidnapping of a woman in Vallejo, California in 2015. It shows the laziness, stupidity, sexism and inertia of the Vallejo police, the FBI and the media, the latter who, with promptings from the police, characterized it as a real life version of the movie “Gone Girl.”

Meet the victim suspects.

In that reactionary film a jealous woman stages her own kidnapping and death to get back at her husband. This was the tack ultimately taken by the all these real ‘institutions.’ They first blame the boyfriend as the kidnapper and killer, then blame the woman when she returns alive, saying she staged her own kidnapping. All this without evidence. So the victims become revictimized by police, FBI and media, with the vile Nancy Grace topping the list. By the way the two accused people are naïve and harmless middle class ‘white’ folks who worked as physical therapists.

The boyfriend’s convoluted and odd story of the nighttime kidnapping and home invasion convinces the cop he’s lying. It would make more sense to fake a conventional account actually, and not make up all these specific, weird details. They bully him for hours.  The lead detective's name is, I kid you not, Mike Mustard.  The FBI agent has a conflict of interest involving the boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, who he is having an affair with. The police turn off the boyfriend’s cell phone for a day. This misses two phone calls from the kidnapper asking for money and would have geo-located the cabin the woman was being held in and perhaps prevented a second rape. Prior to this they ignored multiple reports of a peeping Tom in their town. After the woman shows up, the police interview her. They don’t understand rape and think all women scream and yell and fight like hell, as she alleges she was raped twice by her kidnapper. They seem to have absolutely no training on what rape really entails for a woman afraid for her life. So this woman, in a sense, ‘deserves’ it because she didn’t engage in a bloody fight - or she just made the story up. After her return, all the journalists, up to a national level, go along with the police when they announce that the couple has wasted the County’s time and money and could be prosecuted for a fake kidnapping. The head of the police is behind this tack, where he is quoted saying ‘burn the bitch.’

Only an observant female detective in another town, after the local arrest of a very odd man in a sexual assault, notices a blonde hair on a piece of evidence, blacked-out googles.  The hair is not connected to her victim. She starts looking into a string of sexual assaults, home invasions and peeping Toms in middle California and finally comes upon the “Gone Girl” case in Vallejo, where the abducted woman was blonde. She connects this to her weird perp and his other victims. That single strand of hair upends the whole lie promoted by the police, the FBI and the media because it connects directly to the odd aspects of the kidnapping. It's kind of a smart cop / stupid cop story in real life - which is also the theme of so many fictional detective stories.  Det. Mustard got an award that year from Vallejo P.D. for superior detective work, so facts don't matter.

This documentary is a perfect example of how police can blame the victim, especially women; do the laziest thing they can to close a case and ignore real evidence. It also highlights how the media are not so much reporters looking for facts as stenographers for officials. Journalism is now practiced by naïve, sensationalist and lazy practitioners evidently, produced by J Schools not doing their job to teach actual, fact-based reporting. 

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: Gone Girl,” “Really? Rape? Still?” “Missoula – Rape and Justice in a College Town” (Krakauer); “What is Behind Rape, Assault and Harassment,” “Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.,” “FGM,” “Celebrate Indian Women,” "The Murdaugh Murders" or the words ‘feminism,’ ‘police’ or 'detective.'

The Cultural Marxist / July 10, 2024

Prometheus is Sad

 “The Double Shift – Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work” by Jason Read, 2024

This book is about the effect of work in the political, cultural and personal worlds.  Read’s contention is that work bridges the somewhat clunky and static Marxist concept of base and superstructure which implies the relationship is more like an Egyptian pyramid than a dynamic interaction.  His contention is that work under capitalism is the basis of economics but also infuses politics, ideology, culture and emotions.  Read’s method of understanding how this functions is to add an analysis of movies, perhaps because he’s spent too much time reading Zizek.  But there it is. He bases his insight on a quote from Marx in Capital, Vol. 3, that partly says: “The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of domination and servitude, as this grows directly out of production itself…in short, the specific form of the state.”

All in all the book breaks new theoretical ground, which is rare in a leftist book.  One of his skills is to descend from extra-theoretical terminology to more comprehensible language, commonalities and facts. This is something Marx himself did. The book is not strictly logical, as its theoretical fixations wobble, are extended or ignored and sometimes categories and terminology shift around.

Not sure the movies prove his points but they also ground the narrative and provide some touches of reality. He looks at Office Space, Fight Club, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Compliance, The Assistant and Sorry to Bother You.  Most of these except the last depict real but flawed reactions to work, devolving into crime, lumpenism, resignation, deep ecology, job changes or obedience in the face of evil. After all, ‘crime is work!’ Read is a philosophy professor at Southern Maine and sees labor mostly through the lens of theory.  He sees these films as reflections of popular attitudes towards work.

As both Marx and Spinoza attest, the practical activities of work are the basis of human existence and consciousness.  Work has two sides – alienation, exhaustion, damage and humiliation - but also is a source of pride, of overcoming difficulties, of individual strength and skills. The ruling class uses these latter facts to normalize and naturalize capitalism, enforce individualism and prevent collective action.  He christens this process ‘negative solidarity,’ an attitude hostile to those who don’t seem to work.  Work produces not just commodities or services but also consciousness.  It is not just a method of survival or a way to buy things but also a measure of individual worth no matter what class you are in.  “Work” becomes the measure of all things. 

Those who do not ‘work’ normally – those on welfare, on Social Security, those who receive benefits from the state; immigrants who get grants; or workers who get ‘unfair’ benefits from a labor union - are looked down upon by individualist bootstrap politics based on ‘work.’  This is a huge source of reactionary resentment.  So christening what a woman does in the home as ‘housework,’ a prostitute does as ‘sex work’ a service worker does as ‘emotional labor’ or calling exercise a ‘workout’ makes the labor legitimate in the public dialog.  This right-wing attitude embraces suffering and the deficits of any job as a form of individual heroism ... and wants it applied to others. So ‘bah’ to government regulations around workers in high heat conditions! Why capitalists, who earn millions more for their work day, or inherited their wealth, are not subject to the distain of these reactionaries is evidently because they are ‘self-made men’ who deserve their fortunes.  Their market is seen as a necessity and a natural force not to be trifled with.  It's 'normal.'  This ‘negative solidarity’ is what class conflict comes to when the real class struggle itself is weak. It's perhaps the class struggle of fools. The film Sorry To Bother You overcomes this problem, breaking with individualism for collective action … but it’s a movie. 

A Successful Tele-Marketer in Sorry to Bother You

Read sees this in 3 relationships or ‘double shifts’ between the base and superstructure – 1, economics and politics; 2, ideology and emotions; and 3, praxis (action) and poiesis (production).  He shows how Spinoza’s theories on labor dovetail and complement some of Marx’s.  His introduction of Spinoza into the dialog seems marginal and unnecessary, though Spinoza was also an anti-religious materialist.  Spinoza emphasized the idea of the emotions connected to work, specifically imagination, superstition, affect and desires.  He asked why humans embrace their wage slavery and this book has a clue to that.   

The first contradiction Read looks at is that between concrete and abstract labor, which includes mental and manual labor.  Abstract labor (the potential for labor across all skills, i.e. the labor power commodity of humans under capital) promotes the idea that all workers are equal as long as they work.  Concrete labor (specific skills) promotes the idea that there is a hierarchy of ‘natural’ talents which might also justify a social hierarchy, a ‘meritocracy.’ 

The second contradiction looks at the relationship between ideas and physical reality, especially emotions.  Marx maintained that all work has a mental component, so the artificial division between mental and manual labor is just that.  He maintained that all work is social and cooperative, though this is not always apparent. The ‘affective component of labor’ is highlighted by corporations now, as the nonsense about ‘flair’ in the film Office Space showed. This also relates to the performative nature of job interviews. Without emotional intelligence, workers in some fields are doomed. Now the human resources’ drones speak of ‘human capital’ as a thing, a group of talents, interests, physical appearance and skills to be commodified by them.   

The third contradiction Read brings up is that between action (politics) and production, which both play upon each other. He notes that there is no such thing as a total automatic, apolitical ‘administration of things.’  All production is social, hence political, there is no production process of ‘pure reason’ even under AI.  Read seems to think that it is a failure of the imagination to not see the arbitrary nature of the present economy and society.  But that might just be the function of work ‘realism.’ 

This is just an outline of the major points it makes.  I’ll leave you with a few random ideas from the book: 

*Marx’s ‘religion of everyday life’ involves work, capital and money.

* Like Graeber Read has a confused idea of what a ‘bullshit’ job is. 

*Capitalists know they need to incorporate ‘popular’ ideas to justify their own rule, whether they believe them or not.  Religion is the first candidate, patriotism a second, anti-intellectualism a third, charity a fourth and so on. 

* The illusion of free will is necessary for the goal of obedience. 

* Archaic ideas are the realm of fascism.

* The role of bourgeois politicians is to take the blame for the capitalists when things go wrong, as they always do.

All in all a useful book looking at what most people do for most of their lives, giving it the central place in consciousness it deserves.  Work!

Prior blog reviews that deal with this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Assistant,” “Bullshit Jobs” (Graeber); “Better Call Saul,” “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” “Patriarchy of the Wage” (Federici); “In Letters of Fire and Blood” (Caffentzis); “Work, Work, Work” (Yates);

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / July 6, 2024

9 Kinds of Intelligence

 The Value of Practical Skills and …

 Whether you learn these in the home, at school, on the job, or experimenting on your own or with others, practical skills are a life-long asset.  All definitely have a biological basis – health, body shape, class and color caste background, gender and national origin to start.  As Marx put it, the apparent contradiction between so-called 'mental' skills and physical skills, while both are related, should be overcome.  And they are in the labor process.

Learning how to do basic wood working, electrical and plumbing, assembly and mechanics will save you money over a lifetime and perhaps provide a living.  Learning how to cook, sew, organize, understand medicines and the body, exercise and clean are also essential.  Repairing broken items is a necessary skill, which means trouble-shooting, trial and error and some knowledge of how things work in various areas.  Understanding a broad array of tools is also key. This now extends to software, computers, many electronic devices and other practical items. Marx understood this as 'concrete labor.'

Problem solving stretches across all human activity and might even be the most important skill for any job, approaching what he called 'abstract labor' - the essence of labor power.  This concept of work stretches into problems between people and even within a person. This relates to the concept of the 9 kinds of intelligence, not the simplified and erroneous 'one' kind promoted by IQ tests, MENSA and narrow academics.   As we know, sometimes people with J.D’s, M.A’s or Ph.D’s are stupid in some ways, while relatively uneducated people have touches of genius. 

Here is a list of 9 kinds of intelligence.  The idea is to improve in all of these areas if you can.  This list was developed by Howard Gardener, a Harvard psychologist:

 1. Visual-spatial intelligence – Understanding maps, blueprints, schematics, sizes and shapes, physical reality, etc.

2. Linguistic-verbal intelligence - Verbal, written and language skills.

3. Mathematical intelligence – Logic, abstraction, reason.

4. Kinesthetic intelligence – Physical understanding of the world – athletes, dancers, physical workers.  Sometimes called physical intelligence.

5. Musical intelligence – the ability to create, play, recognize, grow in sophistication or enjoy music.

6. Intrapersonal intelligence – The ability to work with others and read people, even making them laugh.  Sometimes known as emotional intelligence.  

7. Interpersonal intelligence – The ability to understand yourself, your body, manage feelings, have achievable goals and know how you come across to others.

8. Naturalistic intelligence – The recognition and understanding of plants, animals, growth and the natural world – like the weather, seasons, signs, growing crops, etc.

9. Existential intelligence – The ability to understand the forces behind 'reality' - to have an accurate 'big picture' of what is going on. 

(Based on definitions from Practical Psychology, 10/6/2023)

They are not all centered in the brain...

Most people have some of these skills, which are all forms of labor.  It is the definition of a “Renaissance Person” to be really good at many. One that might be missing here is a 10., Artistic intelligence – which might combine some of these other skills but apply more broadly.  Some artists excel across the board in music, painting, poetry, etc.  And I might ask, where does 'planning' fit in?  Some people can't think ahead for 5 minutes, or their plans change constantly. They live chaotically.  A math skill? 

As you can see this theory explains why a scientist might not know how to drive a car and has multiple accidents.  Or explains a musician or sports star who is inarticulate, as there are plenty of those.  Or a carpenter who has anger-management problems.  Or a philosopher who looks at a forest and can't specifically recognize anything.  Or a dancer who is an obnoxious prima donna.  Or the accountant with a meth addiction.  Or a nurse that gets easily lost. Or the farmer that lives day-to-day.  We all have some level of all of these skills but no one has them all.  Sadly, some people have very few.

Here we get to the question of how people are 'educated' by the family, the school system, the streets, the society, the class structure, the economy.  A person who is always late might have bad transport, a drug or alcohol problem, live in their own inner world or be under stress - so social forces impact intelligence.  Not news.  Basic and prior to education is biological health, which remains problematic in much of the world.  That is a whole 'nother issue. 

The main force for proletarians and farmers under capitalism is how to survive, i.e. how to earn some kind of living if you are not a trust-fund baby or living on inherited wealth.  Subsistence farmers have to have very high levels of natural intelligence, as do most farmers across the board.  But it is also true that a job does not designate your intelligence, as we know many people who do not fit their jobs.  Like a bookstore owner that doesn't read.  Or a factory worker who is clumsy and wrecks what they work on.  Or the tech coder who can't balance a checkbook.  Or the lawyer that steals from his clients. Or the 'green' capitalist that ruins the environment.  Though for the latter that can come with the territory and might just show a certain 'math' intelligence. 

Right-wingers think that the only intelligence skills to be taught are job skills needed by corporations or small businessmen. See Ron DeSantis on this. For some small businesses, key is knowing how to keep track of time – for some people a lost math and space skill.  Knowing how to do simple math, basic reading and have physical strength is enough to get that person hired in many of these jobs.  This is why many small businessmen sneer at more developed forms of education.  The Republican Party, while being funded by a sector of billionaires, has a base among these small business people and farmers, who are their prime voting cattle. 

For corporations, the skills range upward, especially due to the increasing complexity of labor in a white-collar environment.  A rude or crude co-worker will usually not last long unless they have achieved boss status.  Someone who cannot solve problems will not last long.  Someone with an aversion to software will not last long.   If you can't take sitting in a cube, drinking corporate coffee and taking orders, you won't last long.  The favored 'intelligence' for survival as a worker is that of adaptability and fitting into the goals of the owner in both kinds of jobs.  Aargh... wage slavery's emotional intelligence content.

This latter white-collar strata is favored by the Democratic Party as voters because the corporations in their corner understand the need to go beyond physical strength, Bible thumping and the basic 3Rs. Even now so-called physical jobs require tech understanding  – mechanics, plumbers, machinists, rail workers, postal workers, truck drivers, soldiers, etc.  “Education” is the Democrat's mantra, especially under Obama, as if unemployment could be solved by re-education.  

“Working for yourself” as a sub-contractor, 'gig' or temp worker, small business person or 'independent' contractor is then proffered as the alternative to the banalities of being an employee.  But in a society and an economy no one is really independent and all these people eventually find that out.  There are degrees of independence, with the big capitalists having the most freedom, though they are also trapped in the parameters of profit. 

Post-modern architecture that ages like a Bad Tattoo

Marxists, unlike post-modernists and other short-term thinkers, have an accurate big picture of the world economy – how workers holistically reproduce and survive based on labor.  So they perhaps excel at #9.  Practical skills are pragmatic, but they also can lend themselves to #9.  Multiple forms of intelligence also play a role in aiding #9. 

Post-modernism posits that the world is made up of disconnected bits and pieces – a poppy, loose mosaic without a frame and no 'big picture.'  Straight bourgeois ideology ignores the economy and proclaims empiricism, 'realism' and pragmatism.  These are ideologies that allow one to fit into the present economic 'frame' without wondering about the gold-fish bowl you are swimming in.  Religious ideologies are mostly based on faith and upbringing and do not need real-world confirmation, so they are usually excellent methods for a false ‘big picture’ understanding of the world.  Liberal religionists still hold to a moral code of some sort, yet separate from any economic understanding except forms of charity, including government charity.  

Most people patch together a series of influences, a personalist variety of bits and pieces, a satisfying emotional patchwork to make sense of the world.  As a result of this kind of dispersal many 'schools of thought' have gone or are going by the wayside – positivism, idealism, Existentialism, liberalism, market fundamentalism, deep ecology, surrealism and even many religious traditions. Capitalist 'realism' seems to have won.  Libertarianism seems to be having a moment, as does paganism and identitarianism.  And then there is fascism, which is a patchwork of emotions, upbringing, class position, violence and irrationality – the ultimate post-modern method of destruction.

Whatever the level of these 9 kinds of intelligence, it seems to be an excellent way of approaching the issue of working intelligence, able to explain what we see every day.  Calling someone ‘stupid’ is only the beginning… 

Prior blog reviews on this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “News From Nowhere” (Morris); “From the Factory to the Metropolis” (Negri); “Deep Survival,” “Anti-fascism, Sports, Sobriety” (Kuhn); “Sometimes A Great Notion” (Kesey); “The Making of the English Working Class” (Thompson); “Divergent-Insurgent,” “A Terrible Thing to Waste” or “artificial intelligence.”

 The Cultural Marxist / July 1, 2024