"John Barleycorn proved the strongest man at last."

 “John Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs”by Jack London, 1913, re-pub. 1990

This is the story of London's great drunks, starting at ages 5, 7, 15 and 17 years old, which begins a tale told in rot-gut and later, cocktails. Beer, wine and whiskey, saloons and men, toil and the sea-life. He never had a child-hood from this narrative. At the age of 5 while hauling a pail of beer out to his father in the field he dipped his beak and passed out. At 7 he fearfully drank wine at the urging of swarthy Italian desperadoes and nearly died of alcohol poisoning. At 15 he communed with sailors on board a sloop and was sick for days. At 17 he participated in an electoral parade drunk fest and was again on the brink of death.

This was all in the pursuit of adventure, romance and the lure of growing up a real man, not, according to him, the physical taste for booze. Later the seamen of San Francisco Bay became his idols and their life, his. The real turning point towards drink came when he stood at the bar of one of Oakland's waterfront saloons with the most daring oyster pirate on the Bay, Nelson. Nelson stood him to 6 rounds of drinks as a gesture of companionship, but really as a test to see if he would reciprocate. He didn't due to his general and long run of poverty, then felt ashamed. He dug into the stash on his boat and returned to the saloon where he treated the pirate to drinks too, lying that he'd not had money on him. The lesson he learned is that these men drink to socialize and that if you don't respond, you are cast out and are a no-good fellow. As a 'prince' of this realm, the daring ship-master of the Razzle-Dazzle, he had to follow. The sorry result was that the whalers, sealers, oystermen and sailors all drank their earnings away toasting each other and never saved a dime. As he recounts, many Oakland rowdies and seamen he knew died, went to prison or disappeared due to demon alcohol.

These are the lessons of John Barleycorn in the late 1800s. It's a riveting read. The soon-to-be socialist writes a proletarian saga alternating between the Bay, the sea and boring, grueling jobs in jute mills and canneries that paid squat, hinging on drinking episodes. Saloon life is at it's center. The bar bolt-hole was a warm and welcoming refuge everywhere he goes in San Pedro Bay bucket shops, Japanese fishing villages and railroad tramps, full of companionship, drama and I guess you could call it 'love.' Saloon keepers were even bankers of sorts for the likes of him, loaning money at no interest. London went for long periods of time dry onboard or at land-side factory labor, as he insists he was a social drunk at first, not a real alcoholic. His wife thought otherwise. His real love was candy and reading.

A bar in Oakland mentioned many times in the book.

As you can see, women are missing in this tale. While working on-shore London discovers girls and a buddy who knows how to talk to girls. He experiences his first love, this hardened boy-man. And yet both friends end up in saloons to escape the cold and rain, pinching their pennies to stay warm in short bouts with John Barleycorn. London turns away from the sea and grueling factories to a 'career.' He's manipulated by a boss to do the exhausting work of two men for less pay at an electrical facility because he believes in the fairy tale of working his way up from the bottom. Finally he is told the truth, quits and takes another 'adventure path' on the train rails as a hobo, a familiar, liquored-up dead end. He resolves never to be destroyed by manual labor and starts on the 'brain path,' ignoring drink. He joins socialist clubs, debating societies, goes to high school and attends some University. He is becoming the Jack London we know - 'intellectually intoxicated' this time.

Punctuated by one drunk in the Bay town of Benicia due to his drained mental fatigue, he starts on a writing career. London tries to sell his fevered stories and thoughts, but has no takers. So he gets a job at a hot steam laundry, where he again experiences the desire for drink, a siren song now, the lady of the lake beckoning, yet he still resists. At 21 he throws it all up for the Klondike and the chesty adventurers of the barrooms. After a year and a half he brought nothing back from there but scurvy … and stories of course. Unemployed and in desperation he started sending short adventure stories to boy's magazines, journals and newspapers for $5 here and $10 there. This hard-luck memoir becomes a Horatio 'Hornblower' Alger story, which it was all along. He becomes the real Martin Eden.

London's circle of friends and acquaintances rose into the middle-class as he gained success as a writer and a socialist. They drank unknown, exotic liquors and 'cocktails' at home and expected him to do the same. The social bonding of the house parlor and then the ranch house replaced the working-man's saloon. He once got into a drinking bout with youngster 'revolutionaries' in London due to what he calls his 'man-pride.' As he says, he 'outswined the swine,' but he never did it again, as part of being a 'seasoned drinker.' He claimed he never drank when he was alone. Yet to fortify himself from increasingly boring social interactions, he called on John Barleycorn and grew to anticipate the enjoyment of the rush in company. He then descended to regular, heavy cocktail inebriation while drinking solo at his ranch – his extremist way of really 'living.' Even a long 'dry' trip on his ship the Snark ended in port-side rummies. What he calls the “White Logic” of depression and death raised its head.

It's a somewhat tragic story. London died at 40 of dysentery, late-stage alcoholism, renal colic and uremia, while using both morphine and opium for pain. He ends the book with support for Prohibition.  As the English rock band Traffic put it: “And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl proved the strongest man at last.”

On a political note, a lot of leftists drink, but not quite to stupefaction. Some have become teetotalers because of that. One organization I was around had a bar in the headquarters, while the branch leader was a well-known 'dipsomaniac.' Marx distrusted anyone who wouldn't have a round, but that was in the mid-1800s. Some Austrian Marxists distrusted booze due to its debilitating effects on so many workers. The sodden trail of vodka among the Russian proletariat was evident too. John Barleycorn, indeed. Now drugs have replaced or accompanied booze in many a place. What to do?

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Quick Fixes,” “Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety,” “Red Baker,” “Indian Country Noir,” “The Marijuana Manifesto” (Ventura); “Hillybilly Elegy” (Vance); “Hollywood” and “Post Office” (both by Bukowski); “Bar None Rescue.”

Red Frog / December 28, 2024 / Happy New Year's!

Camel, Meet Needle - Again

 “Jesus – A Life in Class Conflict”by J. Crossley & R.J. Myles, 2023

This is a historical-materialist study of the Jesus movement in ancient Judea and Galilee.  It closely looks at writings about the material conditions of that time, in a land ruled by Rome and dominated by a local elite, both subsisting on taxes, tribute, slavery and corveé labor.  The authors contend, following the work of English historian Eric Hobsbawn, that Jesus was an artisan and leader of a movement against both Rome and the local Temple Pharisees, based on the grievances of the Jewish peasantry.  The struggle was cloaked in moralism, magic and ‘end times’ verbiage, as was common at the time, but the real issues were economic and political.  The authors call it ‘revolutionary millenarianism.’

Their work involves at least 28 sources, principally the 4 Gospels, the Synoptic tradition and the work of historians like Josephus. They are acutely aware of the historical weaknesses and contradictions in the Bible, along with the theological motivations of its various authors, none of whom were writing until long after Jesus’ execution. They make reasonable, grounded points, discard others and propose possible theories when they are not sure.  The authors carefully note when the Gospels insert later things into the past.  In 66-73 CE there was a violent mass rebellion against Rome by the Israelites, and it is logical that Jesus and other prophets laid the groundwork.  In 70 CE Jerusalem was surrounded and the Temple destroyed by the Roman legions. 2 other rebellions followed.  It was only later in the early 300s that Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of Rome – turning Christianity into an ideology of the ruling class.

If you want to understand what was going on at the time, this book is far more level-headed than the magical nonsense dished out in a Bible-study class at your typical church.  I myself have not read the Bible in toto, and I suspect many others have not done so either, so it’s an excellent historical introduction. It might also make the Christian socialists happy – all 8 of you.  Yet you will have to discard the idealist and moralistic baggage that you carry.  It also might make the Maoists happy – after all, this was a peasant movement.

The authors contradict various bourgeois historians that paint Judean social conditions as pleasant; or picture Jesus’ followers as passive ‘believers,’ or think that the movement was led by ‘middle-class’ fisherman.  There was no real middle-class at this time – the fisherman were not much different than local farmer living off subsistence crops. They point out that several mega-building projects, so beloved of those same historians, might have displaced residents, involved forced labor, increased taxes and were resented as bad attempts at ‘modernization.’  Freeway, corporate, mining, oil and stadium projects in our own day play the same role.

Organized & Organizer

The authors picture the disciples as ‘The Twelve’ - a ‘central committee’ of the movement.  They relate their artisanal and rural class backgrounds, with several fisherman, Jesus a carpenter, one a former tax-collector, and several women who had access to money.  They came from small rural villages like Nazareth. The movement was not fully male-centric, as you can see, with Mary Magdalene most prominent, but the authors discount it as feminist.  God was always a ‘Father,’ for instance, and there were strict prohibitions against divorce.  There were 12 tribes of Israel so ‘12’ was a magic number.  The leading members were depicted in the Da Vinci painting The Last Supper. Jesus actually aimed many of his sermons at the rich, telling them they should share their wealth or give it up, leading to repentance.  The authors call this a 'mission to the rich,' sort of like Millionaires for Taxation. This allowed him to gain money to fund the movement from either guilt or threats.  Left-wing groups with sugar-daddies might be familiar with this phenomenon. 

The authors go on to claim this was a ‘vanguard party’ with the goal of a ‘dictatorship of the peasantry,’ but led by new moral kings, really a moral theocracy.  Jesus was the leader of this party, a religious organizer if you will. ‘Vanguard party’ and “dictatorship of the peasantry’ is borrowed from 19^th and 20^th century Marxism and historically seems out of place, though it’s pretty clever.  The movement’s millenarianism, in which God comes down to ‘smite the wicked’ and overturn society, is absent from any Marxist concept of revolution.  Replacing one set of kings with another is against socialism too.  Indeed, the authority of God, miracles, healing and exorcism gave this group credibility, not just their class hostility to the monied elites, the line of Herod or the Roman praetorians.

The present Evangelical prosperity gospelites or the wealthy Catholic, Anglican and Mormon churches will not be happy remembering the Biblical quotes from Jesus about camels and needles, God and Mammon, how the last shall be first or sending the rich away empty. The fate of the poverty-stricken Lazarus in Heaven and the ordinary wealthy man in Hades are the divine rewards imagined by this movement. The Lazarus story explicitly rejects wealth itself…not behavior. The authors refute the idea that this class hostility was just the complaint of ‘out elites’ – scribes who resented their subservient role - as these ideas were also held by ‘crowds,’ ‘multitudes,’ 'mobs' and 'hundreds' of followers in rural areas.  The authors pay special attention to the power of crowds.

Wandering, Pacifism, Non-Jews

A curious question is why Jesus, at the age of about 30, would quit his trade as a carpenter and begin to wander from village to village.  He certainly had no land though he spoke Aramaic and was literate.  Most historians claim it was ‘voluntary,’ a life-style choice so to speak.  Yet why would former farmers and fishermen abandon their work and families to become virtually homeless as wandering cadre?  The authors cannot say definitely, but there might have been economic forces at work that made it the only option left – as it is for many migrants on our own borders. To this day religious street people accept donations as one way of surviving.  Even homeless people scrawl “God Bless” on their cardboard.

The authors refute the idea that Jesus was a pacifist.  The movement’s use of non-violence was a strictly practical tactic, saving violent retribution and judgment for the end times.  The Book of Revelation ending the New Testament tells you all you need to know about their ‘pacifism.’  The Jesus movement embraced the actions of prior ‘manly’ Jewish martyrs – the Maccabees, John the Baptist and the rebels executed by Herod the Great.  So it is no great surprise when Jesus was also martyred. 

The authors point to the movement’s strict adherence to Jewish tradition and law on subjects like circumcision, honoring the Sabbath, pork, purity laws and Jewish holy days so as to gain the confidence of conservative peasants.  For instance divorce was heavily sanctioned by Jesus, perhaps to keep peasant families whole, as children and wives where essential workers on most plots of land.  Child labor is still economically useful to small businessmen on farms and in small shops, as are intact families, both providing free labor for the business.  Hence the social conservatism.

Note that all of this rhetoric was aimed at Jews, not non-Jews like Gentiles, Samaritans, Romans and the like.  Non-Jews only became important as the movement spread out of Palestine's urban centers and began recruiting others.  

Passover

Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem for Passover is a crucial event in the Gospels.  Passover itself is full of political meaning against slavery and oppression – sort of the U.S. 4^th of July or Juneteenth; November 7 in the former USSR or the date of the storming of the Bastille in France.  Jerusalem was packed with Jews arriving from the villages.  Roman legionnaires stood guard at the Temple; volatile and unruly crowds filled the streets.  The Jesus group was in and around the city as revolutionary millenarians, led by a leader pursuing imminent liberation.  It’s not quite Lenin at the Finland Station but you see the setting. 

The key, plausible event that got Jesus arrested and executed was his entry into the Temple itself, where he supposedly overturned the money-changers tables and chased away traders using it as a commercial site, saying it had become a ‘den of bandits.’  The authors suggest that it was quite possible that Jesus’s disciples and followers also participated in shutting down the commercial activities in the Temple. At Jesus’ trial before Pilate there is a mention of an ‘insurrection’ that week involving Barabbas.  At any rate, this was performative politics, but behind it was a general and historical dislike of the corruption, wealth-seeking, idolatry and cruelty of the Temple priests and behind them, the local Jewish elite and their Roman allies. 

Jesus was later quietly arrested at Gethsemane with the help of a traitor in his own organization, Judas.  He was then quickly tried by the High Priest and then Pilate, and condemned to be crucified between two insurrectionists – the actual Greek translation according to the authors. The authors consider Jesus was executed as a ‘deranged insurrectionist’ too.  The Romans supposedly hung an insulting ethno-racialist notation ‘King of the Jews’ above his head.  Crucifixion was the normal Roman method used to punish the lower classes, slaves and foreigners with the most excruciating and shameful death.

Being buried in a ‘rock cut’ tomb was only for the rich – normally a condemned criminal would be thrown into a pit grave or left for feral dogs.  It is possible that his followers retrieved his body.  The story that a powerful and observant Jew, Joseph of Arimathea, asked Pilate if he could take the body to his own crypt is analyzed by the authors, who say it is possible.  At any rate, there is no reliable source as to what happened after Jesus’ crucifixion – the claims are all over the map.  The authors cite visions of Jesus after his death, which became a central element in the Jesus myth.

The Jesus class struggle revolution failed.  No apocalypse appeared from on high.  The 2nd Coming is still in abeyance and will be forever.  Jesus didn't even denounce slavery, so his emancipatory activity only went so far.  This is the real story from the authors point of view.

P.S. - Christian conservatives are now rejecting Jesus as 'too woke.'  How they are going to retain the moniker 'Christian' is beyond me.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1alx8lLGwrc

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Marx on Religion,” “Nonverts,” “Rise of the Nones,” “Libertarian Atheism and Liberal Religionism,” “Jude the Obscure” (Hardy); “Spiritual Snake Oil” "The Dark Side of Christian History,"  “The Great Evil” (Nunpa); “Godless – 150 Years of Unbelief” and “Astrology – (both by Bufe); American Theocracy” (Phillips); “Religulous” (Maher); “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (Baldwin); “The Da Vinci Code” (Brown); “To Serve God and Walmart,” “Marx and Human Nature,” "The Jesus Comics."

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / December 25, 2024 (A reprise of something published in June, 2023)

A New Constitution Needed

 “How Democratic Is the American Constitution?” by Robert Dahl, 2001

Dahl is a Yale political science professor – very erudite, formal and no radical at all.  His dispassionate look at our archaic and anti-democratic Constitution proves we need a new one, even though that is not his intention.  I’m going to bullet-point his studious insights, as it’s the frantic holiday season and no one has time for anything.

1.          Nearly every bourgeois democracy of some solidity differs from the U.S. Constitutional order. They are parliamentary systems. The U.S. is an ancient outlier, a fact unknown to the U.S. public.

2.         “First Past the Post” election judgements bar multiparty democracy and enshrine a two party system.  “Proportional Representation” leads towards multi-party democracy, which better reflects the population.

3.         The Senate is explicitly undemocratic.  A bicameral legislature duplicates functions, with the Senate being the more aristocratic and unrepresentative.  Witness Wyoming and California both getting two senators. 

4.         The Electoral College is an undemocratic institution and actually elects the president based on a ‘states right’ – a fact that is now well-known, with 5 elections going to the popular vote loser. 

5.         Gerrymandering is primarily a result of ‘first-past-the-post’ majoritarian functioning.

6.         The Supreme Court was never meant to legislate in place of Congress, but that is just what it does.  A majority of 5 ‘justices’ hold the power.

7.         The presidential system of a virtual king with a ‘mandate’ is unique among advanced bourgeois democracies.  The rest are restrained by a parliament who can remove them... not solely for a crime.

8.         Amending the Constitution is virtually impossible, especially now, given the ‘state’s rights’ system of amendments. 

9.         Most of the framers disliked party factions, so had no understanding of how parties play a role in a democracy of any kind.  Now we have two factions of one class only.

Dahl explains how the ‘framers’ – he avoids ‘founding fathers’ – came up with each of these ideas, whether it was that point in history, a lack of experience, bad practical compromises between states, time desperation to ‘get ‘er dun’ or slavery. 

Dahl does not mention how the federal state structure actually benefits ‘state’s rights,’ which have been used to block progress for years.  Nor does he discuss property or corporate personhood or money, given the Constitution enshrines private property at all levels, which is its primary function.  In consequence slavery,  indentured servitude and class are not in his sights. He does not touch on the vast array of electoral compartments even within states. He seems to think that a ‘continuing democratic revolution,’ his form of liberal positivism, will assuage all these follies. Yet for a simple thing like repealing the Electoral College he holds out little hope, even after the presidential debacle in 2000.  He calls it ‘measured pessimism’ which hints that, even for him, the Constitutional legal system in the U.S. is unreformable.

Dahl ends his review of the Constitution by saying that it is not the constitutional systems in the 22 countries that determine ‘democracy’ but something far more fragile – similar cultural and political views.  So why did he write this book?  He also says:  “…ours is the most opaque, complex, confusing and difficult to understand.”  That is a measure of its 235 year old age.  He makes no general point about how each one of these issues has retarded democracy, held back the working classes or established a profound anti-democratic conservatism. He advocates a more democratic Constitution based on political equality, as it is not a ‘sacred text.’ But it seems it really is.     

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Cult of the Constitution,” “…the Marxists Working to Undermine Our Constitution” (J Stewart); “The Second Founding” (E Foner); “Democracy Incorporated” (Wolin); “Loaded – A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” (Dunbar-Ortiz); “Democracy in Chains,” “The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment” (Hartmann); “Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power.”

And I got it at May Day Books, which has a large selection of used and cutout books for low to no prices right now.

Red Frog / December 22, 2024   Happy Solstice, you pagans!

Still True After All These Years...

 “The Myth of Black Capitalism” by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, 1970, republished 2023

Hutchinson wrote this book as a Marxist in the aftermath of the 1960s class and color struggles against aspects of capitalism.  It is a careful and factual description of failed efforts by a ‘black elite’ as he calls it, to promote capitalism within the African-American community since the late 1850s.  Hutchinson’s new 2023 introduction says that while there is now a larger strata of black millionaires and multi-millionaires, mostly from sports and entertainment, his thesis has not changed.*  The black ‘masses’ will never be able to raise themselves up through capitalist methods. While a bit dated in its figures, they still show the trend.

Hutchinson centers his book on class in the black community, noting how the black elite – businessmen, middle-class professionals, ministers, social reformers, non-profit leaders – have different goals than dark-skinned working class people.  This split was occurring prior to the Civil War among free African-Americans.  Their real interest was in exploitation and gaining wealth. Hutchinson’s view of class is anathema to liberals, nationalists and profiteers, along with ruling white corporatists. It is also fatal to pure identity politics.  The main figures carrying the banner for black capital, ‘self-help,’ entrepreneurship, independent business and even a national territory were figures like Martin Delaney, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, the Nation of Islam, Roy Innis and leaders in Liberia.  He also addresses the temporary 3^rd Period (1928) embrace of the ‘Black Belt’ by the Communist Party as a reformist impossibility.

Just The Facts, Ma’am

Hutchinson’s main angle is that black financial ‘independence’ is a will-o-wisp in a capitalist society dominated by big capital and imperialism, with its added layer of racism.  He proves it by looking at the various attempts to build a black business infrastructure or a “separate Negro economy” from the 1840s up to 1970.*  He notes in his modern intro that Nixon and Agnew both supported ‘black capitalism’ and enlisted millionaires like singer James Brown to the cause. Yet in 2010 .8% of Fortune 500 CEO’s were black, while blacks owned 3% of all businesses in 2020.              

Dubois pointed out that original African societies were highly communal – sharing food, shelter, clothing, land and property, along with equal distribution.  This was transmitted to the U.S. in the early pooling of meager financial resources by African-Americans who were not enslaved.  However these efforts were always overseen by a ‘black elite.’ In Philadelphia in 1856 this group held $1M in real estate property.  In 1830 there were 3,777 dark-skinned slave-masters in the U.S., mostly centered in Louisiana.  Black resettlement in Africa started in 1815, which made a Paul Cuffe wealthy and later benefitted Marcus Garvey. Martin Delaney followed Cuffe and attempted a re-colonialization of African land and minerals in the Niger River valley with explicit help from French and English colonialists.  Hutchinson calls Delaney ‘a pioneer black separatist’ and “black cultural nationalist." His example prompted black businessmen in 1853 to promote ‘buy black’ campaigns, which returned in the 1920s-30s and are still around today.  In 1858 another campaign for ‘self-help’ was launched, a campaign that differed from those advocating armed resistance to slavery. 

Capital and credit are essential to business development and this was in short supply for African-Americans.  The post-war 1865 ‘Freedman’s Bank’ failed, even after Frederick Douglass was stuck with it. In 1898 1,906 black businesses had an average capital of $4,600 – very small.  In the 1880s the black elite formed 36 banks, mostly from the deposits of fraternal orders, with the longest lasting 22 years.  Together they held $13M in deposits.  The Depression of the 1930s wiped out many enterprises.  Today there are 22 black-owned banks of various sizes, less than in the past. 

Booker T. and the Benjamins

In 1900 Booker T. Washington started a National Negro Business League (NNBL), with help from Andrew Carnegie.  This is a familiar theme as nearly every effort appeals to wealthy “white” capitalists to help.  This give the lie to the idea that any segment of business can be independent.  Rockefeller, Mellon and others backed Washington’s program of black entrepreneurship which de-emphasized suffrage.  This pattern of big capital’s patronage continues today.  Black ministers were a big part of the NNBL, encouraging their ‘flocks’ to patronize NNBL members.  However members of the NNBL had little capital, few employees and small earnings.  Only 10% even made $10K gross.  These businesses – a pattern true today – were cafes, groceries, barbershops, hair-salons, tailors, cleaners and mortuaries.  The other pattern is that the NNBL advised against political activism, unionism or civil rights. 

Here are other business examples:  Marcus Garvey set up the Black Star Line of 4 run-down ships in the 1920s and achieved a capital of $610K.  But it collapsed and Garvey was jailed, losing more than a million in believer’s subscriptions. In 1938 Chicago there were some 2,600 black businesses – yet they only gathered 10% of sales in the ‘ghetto,’ with groceries earning 5% of sales. 85% of these ‘businesses’ were sole-proprietorships and could not hire many workers.  The famous millionairess Madame CJ Walker had an Indianapolis business making toxic skin and hair cosmetics that whitened skin and straightened hair – a dubious product. Another profitable Chicago financial idea was ‘the policy’ or ‘the numbers game,’ as many black businesses were owned by a secret syndicate which made the real money. Cheap fast-food chains also undermined local black businesses in the 1960s.       

Exploitation of labor, rents, nature and interest are the main profit avenues for capitalism and ‘black’ ownership doesn’t change this. Hutchinson points out that black preachers were enthusiastic supporters of this right-wing tendency.  To quote him: “The organized church could provide … the means for retaining long-term control over the financial resources of the black masses…”  This eventually led to a profusion of store-front churches and people like Father Divine, Daddy Grace, Prophet Jones, Noble Drew Ali and the Nation of Islam (NOI). The NOI is the main propagator of black separatism and black capitalism in the U.S. with ‘self-help and ‘non-participation’ as their watchwords.  The NOI owns restaurants, groceries, barber shops and farms, paying their members almost nothing (paid in ‘charity’ according to the NOI) to work these enterprises, similar to many cults.  While ‘collectively’ owned by the NOI, the actual monies go to the leadership to decide.  In 1970 or so the NOI grossed $500+K annually and the NOI's 1980s estimated worth was $80M.  

Farming is an area in which black farmers have slowly been whittled away.  In 1970 the annual income of black Southern farmers was $3,970, a 90% majority.  In 1967 the number of black farmers and farm workers decreased by half to 423K from 876K in 1960.  This pattern of the decimation of small farms applies across the board.  By the way Hutchinson never in the book baits white workers as the enemy, seeing them as potential allies who share some of the burdens of the class.

Solutions?

Hutchinson identifies the rise of massive U.S. corporate oligopolies in the 1920s as mitigating against the success of any small business.  Large corporations directly employ a plurality of workers, while feeder businesses that depend on them increase those numbers.  Even in 1970 1.6% of the upper class owned 32% of all U.S. wealth, with significant holdings in cash, bonds, stocks, mortgages, debts, real estate and the like.  These inequality numbers have only gotten higher. All small business, but especially black business people, are victimized by these forces.  Hutchinson goes on to point out the corporate-sponsored public/private ‘redevelopment’ partnerships in black communities in the U.S. aided the local black bourgeois.  He especially notes the role of the ‘black nationalist’ CORE and Roy Innis, along with Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket.

Hutchinson addresses 3 prominent solutions presented by neo-black elite reformists.  They are: 1) rebates; 2) cooperatives; 3) reparations.  He rejects all three in turn. Rebates are monies given back to the ‘community’ for every purchase at a ‘buy black’ business.  He points out this justifies exploitation and also raises questions about how the funds are reinvested … and by whom. He is positive about cooperatives, but realizes they cannot dominate a capitalist economy.  Cooperatives face price competition, capital acquisition, credit maintenance and labor costs too.  Dubois did support a ‘cooperative commonwealth,’ as he recognized that black capitalists can exploit.  Cooperatives were envisioned as a self-sufficient ‘socialism in one community’ and Hutchinson realizes this is liberal utopianism. Hutchinson believes reparations are a legitimate demand, having been used in West Germany, Finland and for Japanese-Americans.  Yet he sees most of the monies being directed towards the operations of the neo-black elite. He highlights a proposal of the National Black Economic Development Conference in 1970 which details how reparations would be handled.  He doesn’t address its political ramifications in the general class struggle. 

Hutchinson tackles the demand for a separate black nation in the ‘black belt’ made by certain black nationalist groups in the U.S.  He says there is no way that a ‘black’ nation could be independent in almost any way, nor the fact that there are millions of white people living in this ‘belt.’  He considers these demands benefitting the neo-black elite the most.  Lastly he details the sad colonization of Liberia by U.S. African-Americans, and how that country became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Firestone Rubber Company and a colony of the U.S.  He follows that with the experience of many countries in Africa whose elites collaborate with imperialist and sub-imperialist firms and nations, especially Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya.  Of the exceptions he lists – Guinea, Tanzania, Algeria, Mali and the UAR – none really stand out today except Mali, and that is still outstanding. 

The book is a good analysis of the class structure in African-American ‘communities’ and a precise rundown of the program of black capitalism, which has failed for years to alleviate oppression for the majority of working-class folks. It only needs someone else to take up the analysis and bring it up to date.

*  In 2020 Forbes said there were 7 African-American billionaires in the U.S. “from finance to technology to entertainment.” In 2021, Nubia listed the top 10 ‘black’ wealthy: Vista Equity Partners owner Robert Smith; businessman David Steward; Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Jay-Z, P-Diddy; business owner Sheila Johnson; Dr. Dre, Rihanna, and Tyler Perry.  This small group of super-wealthy reflects a growing wealth gap in the black community.  It underlines the notion of class in the ‘black’ community and doesn’t promote capitalism, only aspirations!  The ‘black’ upper class is estimated to be 1% of the overall population now.  Making over $200K a year qualifies a person’s role in the upper middle class (UMC) according to estimates.  In 2016 Brookings reported that 7% of the UMC was African American, 9% Hispanic-American, 11% Asian-American, 73% European-American. 

Prior blogspot reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “The Wire,” “Souls of Black Folk” (Dubois); “Elite Capture,” “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now,” “Toward Freedom – the Case Against Race Reductionism” (T. Reed); “The New Jim Crow” (Alexander).

And I bought it at May Day Books! - Red Frog / December 19, 2024

A United Front ... of sorts

 “Worker's Assembly” at the United Labor Centre, Minneapolis, Mn. USA - 12/15/2024

In response to the election of Donald Trump and his anti-labor plans, an assembly of union and non-union workers convened at the Labor Centre in Minneapolis. They somehow rechristened it as a ‘Workers Solidarity Circle.’  It was a united front meeting of sorts, led by the Black Cat Collective, “Red Time” and the Democratic Socialists of America. The BC Collective seems to be a bit of a reconstitution of folks formerly in the IWW.  Individuals from many unions attended:  UFCW, HERE, MFT, CWA, Carpenters, MNA, NALC, MAPE, SEIU, SPFE, UDAM along with some activists from CTUL and PSL that I know of.  It somewhat reminded me of the old Twin Cities Labor Party, which gathered together nearly every labor leftist in the Cities in the ‘90s, though not centered on independent labor political action as was the Labor Party.

The meeting seemed to be a way to blow off steam, to meet other activists, and to prepare in some way for what is coming.  Three Socialist Left groups in the Twin Cities – the Revolutionary Communists of America, Freedom Road and Socialist Alternative – had previously held individual meetings to prepare for the anti-labor assault by Trump, but they were not in evidence at this meeting.

The meeting was chaired by a CWA officer.  Short talks were given by an organizer of the Delta ground workers campaign; an MFT teacher, a HERE member from Northfield and an AFSCME librarian. They spoke about how Trump connected with more workers in various places than previously as the Democrats orientation to war, Gaza, the UMC, Wall Street and moderate Republicans made them seem the ‘establishment’ party.  This in a time of financial stress which ‘Bidenomics’ ignored.  One said that liberals ‘grease the skids’ for reaction, as they did in the election. This is an insight from the struggle against fascism in Germany.    

Other speakers pointed out that 35% of the population didn’t vote.  Some mentioned that the guardrails and ‘buffers’ of ordinary liberal capitalism could come down, such as the destruction of the Department of Education, increasing ‘charterization’ of the school system and privatization of the Post Office.  In addition ‘buffers’ like the NLRB and the arbitration process for unions could be decimated.  No one mentioned the thousands of possible U.S. government workers who could be laid off and replaced by Republican acolytes in various federal positions, per Project 2025.  Instead of disaster capitalism one said we need ‘disaster revolution.’  A speaker agreed and pointed out the need for ‘class struggle unionism’ as a method to eventually end capitalism as a way out of the declining trajectory of world capitalism. 

Then the crowd of about 75 or more broke up into 9 talking groups to discuss 3 questions:  1, why the election of Trump; 2, what this means for workers; 3, what to do about it.  Each group reported back to the assembled some of the points made in these talking groups, which reminded me of some ultra-democratic Occupy meetings except for the organized efforts of unionists to keep things on track.  Thank god. 

Some things brought up in the smaller meetings:  Somalis, unionists and Latinos voted for Trump in much larger numbers. Others suffered from apathy or non-involvement in politics due to disgust.  Labor and leftist activists could be targeted as ‘terrorists’ by the government.  Health care will be decimated from the top by RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz.  Immigrants in factories will be assailed by ICE round-ups. Physical threats against the Left and even unions by militias will increase. A national ban on abortion is possible now.  The muzzling of speech is already happening, witness Gaza protesters.

More:  This trend in the U.S. is part of an international move by capital across the globe, presaging the end of neo-liberalism.  The capitalist faction fight represented by both major Parties has weakened their hold on national politics, leaving an opening for the actual Left. Liberal and centrist institutions are already folding in the face of Trump, starting with the courts and then media like ABC and the LA Times.  A coming postal worker’s strike over wages may be the first flash-point.  Physical defense might be necessary in the future. And so on … touching on many other issues.

Announcements were made at the closing of the meeting, including a massive vote for flight attendant unionization on the horizon.  This Assembly or Circle, or whatever you want to call it, said they will try to have a general meeting 4 times a year, and will also plan actions and events in between.  I think it is imperative that a United Front of every Left class struggle organization be formed to oppose the coming assault on labor institutions, rights and power, along with social gains.  This meeting was a small step in that direction and is perhaps being replicated across the country. 

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive using the terms: "May Day" or 'union' or 'united front.'

Red Frog / December 16, 2024 

Opiates of the People and the Corporations

 “Quick Fixes – Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21^st Century Binge” by Benjamin Fong, 2023

This book surveys various addictive drugs, legal and illegal, from caffeine to fentanyl, and their working relationship with capitalism. Fong sees illegal drugs and the gangs that sell them as still following standard capitalist business models. Fong is a prof at Arizona State U who got his Ph.D in religion at Columbia, has written for Jacobin, and runs the “Center for Work and Democracy” so you can guess his orientation.  Fong does a mini-history of each drug from its popular ‘medicinal’ uses in the U.S. in the 1800s – like opium, cocaine and cannabis - to demonization and the drug war of the 1920s, then to resurrection as ‘medicines’ or legality at various points in time.  One thing is clear – each has played a role in how capital functions – as a profit center, a club against dark-skinned, ‘foreign’ people or radicals, a secret government funding source and especially as methods of social pacification, escape and work speed-up. They have also been used to medicalize social issues and problems. Here are glimpses into his chapters.

CAFFEINE

As I write this I’m sipping some coffee, and you might be too.  Let’s start there.  Coffee, and the stimulant caffeine, is the drug delivery vehicle capitalism runs on. The cheap coffee in every factory or warehouse vending machine or the free coffee in white collar office ‘kitchens’ attest to this.  The Stanley© thermos for truckers and construction workers is their portable cousin. In England tea took over as the stimulant of choice.  All the while coffee plantations decimate jungles and forests.  It was at one time cartelized as a defense against Castroism and communism, and price supports were instituted until 1989, when coffee prices collapsed for 5 years.

At one time in the late 1800s coffee-houses were sites of conviviality and subversion; now they are arid places where people tap on keyboards, ‘alone together.’  This corresponds to the drop in social connections brought about by hyper-capitalism.  The same thing happened with alcohol and ‘the bar’ where you face the booze bottles and the bartender, not other people.  You, too, can be just like Charles Bukowski at the 'bar.' 

NICOTINE

The tobacco companies, which later bought major processed food companies, hid the dangers of smoking for years.  Their lies, power and delaying tactics have later proved fruitful to oil and gas, pesticide, chemical and yes, processed food, corporations.  They made science into “fair game in the battle of public relations.” Cigarettes were once marketed as liberating for females by Edward Bernays.  They were sexy, thinning, healthful and calming.  They certainly do that until you need another cig.  They were sold as a cheap diversion.  Now they are marketed across poor countries and sales are booming.  In the U.S. cigarettes are now seen as ‘down-market,’ as class marks every kind of drug as licit or illicit.  Why do you need to stay calm under capitalism? Of course you do!  Yet Fong claims smoking kills more people in the U.S. than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined.  Of most humor, the tobacco companies accused worldwide efforts against cigarettes as Western ‘cultural imperialism.’  You see, lungs are ‘cultural’ – at least according to Judith Butler and the Marlboro Man.

ALCOHOL

Fong notes the huge omnipresence of beer, wine and alcohol in U.S. and U.K. societies in the 1700s-1800s.  Like Engels, he notes its role in sociability and also oblivion after the harsh conditions of early work.  The English ‘pub’lic house was its pinnacle. Alcoholic drinks appeared at breakfast and substituted for unpotable water.  It was part of a ‘gift economy’ for its role in social rituals, including church.  But in the 1900s the Temperance movement understood that drunks didn’t make very good workers in an industrial society, so they pushed prohibition.  Prohibition was a form of labor discipline and was accompanied by racialized attacks on other drugs used by workers. The national KKK endorsed, which made it official. The middle class avoided being targeted, and low-end saloons and taverns took the brunt. Yet highly alcoholic ‘patent medicines’ were exempt – I guess for 'wellness' reasons.  It was a first act in the War On Drugs.

After Repeal alcohol, like coffee, became part of consumptionism.  Your brand marked your cultural status.  AA made the personal responsibility for being a drunk clear – it had nothing to do with the pressures of home or society, and let the producers off the hook.  It was your problem exclusively.  MADD was even financially supported by liquor companies for the same reason. 

OPIATE ‘PAIN KILLERS’

Opium morphed into morphine, which then led to heroin, which became 50 times stronger with fentanyl.  And yet in the 1800s opium derivatives were available in hundreds of products in the U.S. without a prescription.  This happened at the same time the British forced the Chinese into being an opium ‘paradise’ through two colonial wars.  Only later in the 1900s did the anti-drug crusade demonize these drugs as ‘Chinese.’ In fact the term ‘hip’ is derived from the posture of opium addicts lying on their sides, on their hips, puffing on pipes.

Thomas de Quincy, in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater, made opium an esoteric way to happiness for those with psychic ailments.  The CIA made opiates common currency in Thailand, Central America, Marseilles and Afghanistan.  Henry Anslinger, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, had 1 in 5 of his agents both regulate and deal heroin.  This was the agency that hounded Billie Holiday to death and pushed 'Reefer Madness.' When Big Pharma took over opiates, Anslinger protected their legal monopoly. Later Joe Biden played a key role in civil forfeiture laws, allowing police to seize any assets on probable drug causes, a nice funding source for law enforcement. Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers round out this tale of corporate drug dealing. 

AMPHETAMINES

The Nazi’s doped their Blitzkrieg soldiers with amphetamines.  The U.S. military still uses vast amounts of  ‘energy tablets’ to keep soldiers up for long stretches, raising their attention level and maxing out their energy. This is the U.S. version of the Viking ‘berserkers.’  This medicating of U.S. troops has happened since World War 2. According to Fong, the U.S. military stacks their aide stations with a cornucopia of other drugs, including Viagra.  But these drugs are also useful in a hyper-active 24/7, on-call, over-time, double jobs, double-shift, unpredictable schedule, short sleep, work life.  They make you ‘thin, smart and peppy’ to use Fong’s phrase.  Meth on the other hand is reserved for working-class rural white people down on their luck.  There are now 6,000 amphetamine products on the market.  In 2008 37 million U.S. citizens used amphetamine-like drugs just to keep up with the crushing speed of capitalism.

PSYCHOTROPIC ‘BRAIN’ DRUGS

Fong notes that medications for diagnoses like neurasthenia, anxiety and later depression used to be understood as responding to the conditions of society.  Now they are meant to address something wrong in the brain.  So the theory moved to the right, away of social and real causes understood up to the 1970s, to individual biological brain problems a pill could cure. Sedation was the answer! The bible of the medical industry, the DSMMD, explicitly began linking each diagnoses to a chemical solution, though many medical professionals have now rejected its validity.  Nevertheless this was a huge boon to the medicalization of every human emotion, and Big Pharma profited from this.  Even grief after a death was described as something that needed to be ‘cured’ with medication.  No longer would we have to worry about what effect poverty or long hours or the high speed of life entails.  Take a pill!  This method has slopped over into the vitamin wellness industry and Big Pharma's other cures, like heart disease, diabetes, stroke, overweight and the rest.

PSYCHEDELICS

Fong’s focus is on LSD, but also psilocybin, peyote and MDMA.  He starts with the familiar story of the CIA’s MK-Ultra program of LSD and mental torture, which the CIA cleverly blamed on China.  His rehash of the 1960s is a Time-Life view focusing on Timothy Leary, dropping-out, the Yippies and “New” Leftists like the Weathermen. He quotes upper-class dolts like Joan Didion and centrist liberals like Scott Gitlin to make his points.  What he misses is that most ‘new’ Leftists became ‘old’ Leftists.  He does note that psychedelics work as pacification, inwardness and escapism, sort of like Soma from Huxley’s Brave New World.  They divert people from engagement in social struggle, though humans naturally need a break. Now they are used by a corporate elite ‘micro-dosing’ as a way to generate new ideas for capitalist functioning.  One day he predicts they may be prescribed for depression and anxiety, much like psychotropics Valium and Prozac, so they have immense profit potential.   

ZOMBIE DRUGS

PCP and Ketamine make their users passive and zombified, like too much alcohol makes people fall asleep.  Useful in any pacification program.  Is this what Pink Floyd was talking about in the song Comfortably Numb?  No.  But I do think this is what the Ramones were talking about... I Wanna Be Sedated!

COCAINE & MARIJUANA

Powder cocaine is the drug of irrational overconfidence according to Fong, a perfect fit in a hyper-competitive work world like Wall Street, but also a great party escape.  Crack on the other hand was class-targeted, a poor-person’s escape, and even Daniel Moynihan pointed out that blaming crack took the politicians and capitalists off the hook. Marijuana and hemp on the other hand is relatively benign and useful, yet they have been banned since the 1930s until recently.  The former is still nationally a ‘Schedule 1’ drug.  Its current partial legalization wasn’t possible until medicalization preceded it according to Fong, something that benefitted the drug companies.  Now it is benefitting state coffers and private entrepreneurs.  Yet in his distain for Boomer hippies, Fong ignores the role of marijuana arrests in the incarceration state. 

So that’s bits of the book.  I’m not sure you’ll learn anything unless you are pretty unfamiliar with drugs in the U.S. Fong says that with the decay of neo-liberalism as a dominant capitalist ideology, something else is taking its place.  The punitive solution has not worked, certainly.  “Drug policy is not about drugs” – it’s about society, so a ‘drug policy’ misses what is really at issue. He thinks improvements “in jobs and healthcare” will mitigate the need to take drugs or to demonize them. He opposes blanket and simple legalization as libertarianism, as it allows profiteering and addiction to continue.  He sees most of these drugs as being pleasurable but also having negative personal effects.  

Drugs will continue to mask capital as the stress, poverty, long hours, loneliness and exploitation continue. Drinking and cigarettes are both related to the stress put on the working-class. Then he agrees that decriminalization should proceed, with addiction counseling, safety, knowledge, de-stigmatization and the like. So he ends by recommending a federal jobs guarantee and Medicare For All as associates to decriminalization. How these forms of semi-transitional socialization will come about is left unsaid by Fong.  This is always the weak part of all these kinds of books.

Prior blogspot reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Drugs,” “Alcohol” or “An Insider’s Look at Big Pharma,” “Drug War Capitalism,” “Lost Connections” (Hari); “We Own This City,” “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” “The Marijuana Manifesto” (Ventura); “American Made” (Spinelli); “The Long, Strange Trip,” “Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety” (Kuhn); “The Outlaws,” “Yesterday’s Man,” “Hillbilly Elegy,” “Painkiller,” “The Truth About Drug Companies,” “Hollywood” (Bukowski), “Bar None Rescue.”    

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / December 12, 2024