Endgame?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working Crime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The US jobs crisis

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

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

The differences between being a liberal and of the left

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

Big Swinging Dicks?

Liars Poker, by Michael Lewis, 1990

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thirteen

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

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

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

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

The realities of power

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

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

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

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

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

Master of Disaster:

“Reinventing Collapse” – Dmitry Orlov, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog – 3/21/2010

And the pox on social democrats as well:

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

(source essay)

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

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

The inherent flaws in the trade union movement

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

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

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

How to stay awake during Obama speeches

I confess I can't bear to sit through any politician's speeches. But for those who must listen to the speeches of Obama, here is one way to survive the ordeal:

1. Before Barrack Obama’s next televised speech, prepare your “Bullshit Bingo” card by drawing a square. I find that 5″ x 5″ is a good size — and dividing it into columns –five across and five down. That will give you 25 1-inch blocks.

2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:

Restored our reputation
Strategic fit
Let me be clear
Make no mistake
Back from the brink
Signs of recovery
Out of the loop
Benchmark
Job creation
Fiscal restraint
Win-win
Affordable health care
Previous Administration
At the end of the day
Empower (or empowerment)
Touch base
Mindset
Bipartisan
Trust
Inherited as in “I inherited this mess”
Relief for working families
Unprecedented
Accountable (or held to account)
Free market
Reform

Players can make substitutions to this list, but only one phrase can be used in any one block. Alternatives include:

Change (as in “change you can believe in)
Universal health care
Brought the economy back from the brink

3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.

4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout ”BULLSHIT!”

Testimonials from past satisfied “Bullshit Bingo” players:

”I had been listening to the speech for only five minutes when I won.” - Jack W., Boston

K-illusion Kultural Kriticism - Two-Fer

“Empire of Illusion – the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” by Chris Hedges, 2009

Chris Hedges is famous for writing the anti-war book, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.” He has a working-class background, but also found his way into the seminary, so the bit of moralism exhibited in that book comes from a familiar source. In “Empire of Illusion” Hedges follows up with a totally different subject – the dance of shadows that is bourgeois culture. I was expecting a full-blooded analysis of various cultural mirages that work upon the American people, and a defense of reading. After all, entertainment has replaced religion, and ranks right up with alcohol as the ‘opium’ of the people. Instead, the book only partly covers that issue, while mostly being a familiar jeremiad against all things Bush and all things Democratic Party.

Hedges covers some parts of the empire of illusion – for instance, the role of wrestling as cultural marker. Wrestling was first analyzed by Roland Barthes from a Marxist point of view, and so this is an update. Hedges shows how class is now one of the markers in the U.S. ring. Hedges stops by to look at TV and journalism briefly; spends two large chapters on pornography as the unreal and humiliating replacement for sex; analyzes ‘positive psychology’ in its quest to blind people to the condition of the real world, and covers the decay of scholarship in corporate universities, and its replacement by training. All of these things help people avoid looking at the reality all around them. However, the largest sections of the book are redundant attacks on corporate America, abandoning his main topic. For my money, the pornography chapters are the most valuable.

Reading is the source of the deepest ‘formal’ knowledge. Personal experience, the experience of friends and family, scientific experiments, and the experience of organizations are intimate. More formal knowledge comes from incidents covered on television, then in films, or documentaries, and on to reading newspapers, magazines and the net, and finally in massive detail, in books – all make up a spreading pool of knowledge. Hedges says little about this, except to decry the obvious aliteracy, limited literacy and illiteracy of a majority of people in the US – and the dangers this poses to democracy. The fact that no present major figure even discusses this proves his point.

Hedges brushes on the failed culture of bourgeois journalism; the ubiquitous nature and consistently deceptive content of television, such as reality television; the powerful effect of the shared myths in films; and most potent of all - the mass spectacle of sports. These areas seem to fit into the culture of illusion – but, curiously enough, they are for the most part absent from the book. He frequently cites Neil Postman’s excellent 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” showing his book to be in this tradition of sociological critiques of U.S. culture. His frequent lapses into political rhetoric are the only thing that mar this volume.

“Culture of Fear – Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things,” by Barry Glassner, 2009

This book links to Hedges book in the sense that they both talk about how bourgeois culture’s nearly full-time role is to hide the realities behind the scenes. The Wizard of Oz is a powerful ogre until his curtain is pulled aside. Both Hedges and Glassner attempt to pull back the curtain of U.S. culture. Glassner has a more scientific approach and keeps on topic. He catalogs in a factual manner all the ‘mis-direction’ that the American media issue to hide the reality that cannot speak its name. That reality – poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, lack of health care, the tyranny of corporations, lack of democracy, war, foreclosures – cannot be feared, because fearing them would make the population face their real problems. To avoid this is the essence of creating fake problems, which mostly lead people to ‘blame the victims’ or concentrate on the wrong things.

Glassner essentially describes the press-driven scares of the '90s, and shows how they bear little resemblance to reality by citing science and facts. Fear of decreasing crime, fear by whites of black men, hatred of teen-age moms, fear of ostensible killer children, mysterious ‘metaphoric’ microbes, road rage, Gulf War syndrome, infrequent plane wrecks, asbestos, house mold, foreign terrorists, illegal drugs, ‘political correctness,’ breast implants, date rape drugs, rap music, child abduction, cyber-smut, pedophiles, Halloween candy – all these outsize fears come in for a lashing. He is an equal-opportunity critic – liberal fears like Gulf War Syndrome and breast implants also get lambasted,

Glassner thinks there are 5 things that make a good ‘fear’ story in the U.S. 1, it has to have some anecdotal evidence – tearful mothers, catching personal testimony. 2, it has to have some shaky but repeated secondary scientific ‘authority’ to promote it. 3, it has to be endorsed and repeated by important news or political persons. 4, it has to have some statistic that looks good on the surface until you look under the hood. And 5, most importantly, it has to reflect some more deep-seated concern that the fake fear displaces, and therefore hides.

Take implants. While, according to Glassner, most science indicated they were not responsible for the many serious and varied problems they were blamed for, feminists used this matter to attack the masculine medical industry, which would insert bags into womens’ bodies for men’s pleasure. This was at a time when the issue of abortion was being hammered by the Right, and the ability to have an abortion was starting to disappear. People angry about the Gulf War could direct their anger about the war into the GWS issue – and not the issue of imperialist militarism. According to Glassner, GWS had no definitive medical insignia. I myself think Gulf War syndrome will show up in latent cancers, based on exposure to radiation from depleted uranium, so I am not as happy as Glassner to call it a fraud.

While these two were liberal issues, most of the other issues are conservative ones. The constant talk about crime, for instance, even when statistics show it is declining, indicates that ‘fear’ and the local news are twins. Television is crowded with programs that feature various grisly murders and the ‘heroic’ people that solve them. Fear of other people is at the heart of most conservative scares. It is designed to get people to distrust anyone other than immediate family members and friends, and break down any social solidarity that might develop. These fears are just part of the culture wars waged by the Right. It is what they point to as the ‘decay’ of civilization. Glassner would agree – but it is not these ridiculous issues that are ruining the U.S.

Glassner shows a bit too much faith in any scientific testing – even going on to say at one point that tests on their own products sponsored by the medical industry are as accurate as any other. Anyone familiar with the practice of science in the United States knows that even scientists can be bought; can alter statistics; can structure a test to prove a pre-determined point. Skepticism when it comes to corporate ‘tests’ is a necessity, as it has been shown that companies have changed or hidden results. But for the most part Glassner stays on-course, and teaches us to be wary of the fake fears promoted by politicians, neurotics and the news media.

And I bought them at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, 2/25/2010

Worker restiveness in Europe

As Mayday's distinguished (albeit unpaid) foreign correspondent in Europe, I suppose I should cite this article in today's Independent:

A wave of industrial and social unrest is building across Europe as workers
resist attempts by governments and private companies to impose austerity
policies, drive down wages and rescue some nations from near-bankruptcy.

Huge protest rallies took place in cities across Spain last night; today
a general strike could paralyse Greece while industrial action at French
airports and oil plants as well as the narrowly averted stoppage at Germany's
Lufthansa promise to be just the start of the greatest demonstration of public
unrest seen on the continent since the revolutionary fervour of 1968. Europe's
industrial economy is not clear of recession yet either and with unemployment
rising and demands for austerity growing, Europe's workers are becoming
increasingly restive.

I don't want to do an extensive copy-and-paste but I recommend the article be read in full to grasp the dimensions of the European crisis. The political arrangements that lie at the foundations of the capitalist system at any point in time tend to be makeshift and ad-hoc, jettisoned when they no longer work. This applies to Europe with the same strength as it does to the US. As I see it, there are two aspects. The first is how Europe will fit into a fluid and changing global economy -- one which incidentally it's crucially dependent on for trade. The second is what will happen (and is happening) in Europe itself. My humble opinion is that the "Club Med" countries -- the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) -- will leave the Eurozone (but not the EU). The inner core will be "Mitteleuropa": Germany, France, Benelux, Scandinavia, Austria. The eurozone was built on a dream of a united Europe -- a fairytale. The present strains between Northern Europe and Mediterranean Europe show how absurd the dream was. Worker restiveness in Spain and Greece is a symptom both of the unworkability of that dream and the global economic crisis that has demonstrated the flaws of the conception of Europe.

A country of serfs

I read the articles of Paul Craig Roberts with keen appreciation; he has a knack for explaining seemingly complex things in pellucid and succinct fashion. Here is an excerpt from his latest:

Policymakers who are banking on stimulus programs are thinking in terms of an economy that no longer exists.... The U.S. labor force is being separated from the incomes associated with the goods and services that it consumes. With the rise of offshoring, layoffs are not only due to restrictive monetary policy
and inventory buildup. They are also the result of the substitution of cheaper
foreign labor for U.S. labor by American corporations. Americans cannot be
called back to work to jobs that have been moved abroad. In the New Economy,
layoffs can continue despite low interest rates and government stimulus
programs.

To the extent that monetary and fiscal policy can stimulate U.S.
consumer demand, much of the demand flows to the goods and services that are
produced offshore for U.S. markets. China, for example, benefits from the
stimulation of U.S. consumer demand. The rise in China’s GDP is financed by a
rise in the U.S. public debt burden.

Another barrier to the success of stimulus programs is the high debt
levels of Americans. The banks are being criticized for a failure to lend, but
much of the problem is that there are no consumers to whom to lend. Most
Americans already have more debt than they can handle.

In short, the stimulus programs are a complete crock. Now where did I stash my whiskey bottle?

Arm A Gettin’ -- Out

“Ecological Revolution,” by John Bellamy Foster, 2009

Marxist theory has been crossing the desert. Recent Marxist theorists either make contributions so minuscule as to go unnoticed, or make academic ones that barely register in the real world. Anyone who can point to a major contribution by a recent theorist, other than the group around Monthly Review, gets a free drink from me.

Foster, on the other hand, has made a massive breakthrough. Essentially Foster illustrates the strong environmentalism in the work of Marx and Engels; and Foster uses these insights to show that the present environmental crisis cannot be solved under capitalism.

Bourgeois ecologists like Al Gore, petit-bourgeois ‘deep-ecology’ theorists and crude productionist Marxists inspired by the Soviet Union in the 1930s all oppose the idea that Marx cared about sustainability.

Who said this?
“The private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all existing societies taken together are not owners of the earth, they are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias {good heads of the household}.”
-- Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III. This is not the ‘young Marx’ but the mature Marx speaking.

Or this?
“…it {is} intolerable that ‘all creatures have been made into property; the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth – all living things must also become free.’ ” Black Elk? Some hippy? No, Marx, approvingly quoting the peasant revolutionary Thomas Muntzer.

Marx observed that capital introduced alienation, not just of labor, but between the earth and society. Both the soil and labor were exploited for essentially private profit. Marx, basing his work on Liebig, a German soil chemist, wrote extensively about how soil was exhausted in order to feed the cities, and then the human waste of the cities, instead of being recycled, was thrown in the Thames, polluting the water. He pointed out that the soil of Ireland had been used up for the profit of London. Capitalists scoured the battlefields of Europe for bones, and islands in Peru for guano, until they discovered how to make artificial agricultural fertilizer. And this chemically-based fertilizer, Foster points out, is a non-renewable resource. As is the oil used in the agricultural machines. Foster illustrates how Marx observed that capital creates a ‘metabolic’ rift between society and nature.

Marx again, Capital, Vol. 1:
“All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in raising the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility... Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques … undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.” Soil condition was the key environmental issue of the day, as it directly related to the issue of food. However, according to Foster, Marx did not just concern himself with soil issues, but deforestation, desertification, climate change, the elimination of deer from the forests, the commodification of species, pollution, industrial wastes, toxic contamination, recycling, the exhaustion of coal mines, disease, overpopulation and the evolution and co-evolution of species.

Foster then lists the contributions of dozens of other Marxists and socialists to environmentalism, showing that the socialist tendency made the original environmental critique. William Morris, Henry Salt, August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, VI Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, VI Vernadsky, NI Vavilov, Alexander Oparin, Christopher Caldwell, Myman Levy, Lancelot Hogben, JD Bernal, Benjamin Farrington, JBS Haldane, Joseph Needham were all Marxists and socialists that made contributions to environmental theory. The dedicated environmentalist Lunacharskii was appointed by Lenin to be in charge of conservation for the USSR. In 1919 Lenin set aside in the southern Urals the first nature preserve in the world for the exclusive study of nature. Conspicuously missing from this list is Leon Trotsky, and this author will attempt to see if this is a political omission or a factual one. Foster indicates that in the 1930s in the USSR, Lysenkoism and bureaucratism throttled the dialectic as applied to nature, and environmental thought died out among those influenced by this strand of Marxism.

Even today, it is nations and areas with a strong socialist currents – in Cuba, Venezuela, Kerala in India, Curitiba & Porto Alegre in Brazil, and Evo Morales in Bolivia – that are making the largest strides towards sustainability. Even China – which was built on a ‘productionist’ view of development – has decreed almost a trillion dollars be spent on wind farms and solar production, and they are now the leading solar producers in the world. The government shut down 100s of coal mines at the drop of a hat. They outlawed plastic bag production by decree. They made it mandatory that every new office building now built be LEED certified. While these steps alone cannot stop global climate change, they indicate what an economy not thoroughly controlled by capitalists and the 'market' can do.

Right now bourgeois environmentalism consists of finding a technological ‘silver bullet’ to ‘solve’ the environmental crises of global warming, dying species, non-sustainable agriculture and fishing, peak oil, chemical contamination, water and nitrate shortages, among others -all within the confines of the market. Bourgeois economists interested in the environmental crisis, all advocate a ‘go slow’ approach, so as not to injure capitalist profitability. This is the approach of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. This was their position at Copenhagen. This is what is behind the ‘cap & trade’ system they advocate, which will make carbon a commodity, affordable to wealthy corporations, but do little to slow climate change. And who is behind this new form of derivatives? Goldman Sachs is already operating a carbon-trading desk. They want to make everything in the world - water, air, the weather - a commodity. And if this does not work, their plan is to build 'fortresses' around their centers of wealth - on a national, regional or even a local basis, when ecological deterioration gets too great.

To give you an idea of where these people are coming from, here is a quote from Larry Summers, Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary, World Bank chief economist, and one of Obama’s chief economic advisors: “The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”

Building on Mike Davis' investigation of this "Planet of Slums" (reviewed below) you could even say that the health of the environment is measured by the size of capitalist cities. As capitalist agricultural methods like mechanization, chemicalization and monopoly increase; water, air, soil conditions deteriorate; and pollution spreads - more and more traditional farmers and peasants see their livelihoods destroyed, and are forced to move to the cities. In the U.S., small farmers were ruined in the depression and Dust Bowl, and continuing corporatization of farming has done the same to American agriculture, ruining small farmers and depopulating the rural areas - though perhaps without the same dire conditions as faced in Bangladesh, Mexico City or Kinshasa. In contrast, Marx always advocated spreading the population and solving the contradiction between town and country. Instead, the contradictions are getting worse.

For bourgeois environmentalism, the health of immediate capitalist profits is primary over the environment. And this will never change, up to and including any ecological collapse. I quote from Foster: “We should not underestimate capitalism’s capacity to accumulate in the midst of the most blatant ecological destruction, to profit from environmental degradation and to continue to destroy the earth to the point of no return…because the system does not have an internal (or external) regulatory mechanism that causes it to reorganize. There is no ecological counterpart to the business cycle.”

Foster’s work provides a revolutionary tool to undermine the capitalist system, and restore the earth. Capital cannot survive without profiting from 'growth.' It literally cannot live in a finite world - a limit which it has reached. Without seeing the intimate and undying link between capital accumulation and non-sustainability, no environmental movement can succeed.

And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, 2/14/2010

A Fellow Commodity Wants to Warn You...

NOTHING IS TOO GOOD FOR THE RICH !

supreme court rules...Money talks........shit walks.

“...the Supreme Court will remain what it has been during the greater part of its existence of the United States—a bulwark of the propertied class against the propertyless”.
“...(It is)... an ILLUSION that it is an impartial and objective body composed of apolitical men with a deep and abiding sense of justice, dedicated primarily and at all times to the defense of the liberties and freedoms guaranteed to all by the Bill of Rights”.

The above brief excerpts are from “The SUPREME COURT, Watch dog of Capitalism”. Socialist Labor Party 1971

----------FellowCommodityDooley
2/8/2010

Stop It: The Play’s Not the Thing

“Rock and Roll,” by Tom Stoppard, first produced June 2006, England – Park Square Theatre, St. Paul, 2010

Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia, and his real name is Straussler. He’s written several plays about events in Eastern Europe, mostly from the position of an anarchist or perhaps petit-bourgeois intellectual. Before it opened, this play had ‘good vibrations,’ as it were. It was ostensibly about the Plastic People of the Universe, an underground rock band in Prague that just wanted to play rock and roll. The resistance of the Plastics helped mobilize youth against the Husak regime. Husak was put in power after Alexander Dubcek was deposed by the 1968 Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.

Czech band Plastic  People of the Universe

I saw the Plastics at the Cedar last year, and they were great. Four of the original members played. They are gaunt, tall, serious rockers. They exude more gravitas than 99% of most American rock bands. They do not speak much English. They are self-taught musicians. They refused to cut their hair, change their lyrics or their heavy, experimental, edgy sound, no matter how much pressure was applied by the secret police. For this they were repeatedly jailed by the Husak regime in the 70s for refusing to play what they were told.

The play, however, is really two plays in one. One play is about the situation in Czechoslovakia, seen through the eyes of three people - a British Communist intellectual, a Plastics fan and an intellectual dissident close to what becomes Charter 77. The other play is about, yes, Syd Barrett, the demented genius behind the early albums of Pink Floyd, And also about several generations of English Barrett fans - presumably including Stoppard. Barrett left Floyd, recorded two great, invisible solo albums, lost his mind, then retreated to the streets of Cambridge, England for many years as the village ‘crazy.’ Neither the Plastics or Barrett really ever make an appearance. The play constantly alternates between a drawing room in Cambridge and run-down apartment in Prague, but it is the spirit of Barrett as a Greek “Pan” that entrances the play and the players, not the developments in Prague. The professor’s daughter and grand-daughter become protectors of the errant Barrett, and he is the unseen presence that animates the English.

Not one song by the Plastics is used in the whole play. Hard to believe. There is not one nightclub, but many spun records. Music by the Stones, Floyd, and the Velvet Underground (the Velvet Revolution, remember?) play instead. Instead of creating a parallel between a Plastics fan in Czechoslovakia and perhaps the insurrectionary spirit of a Stones fan in Britain listening to “Street Fighting Man,” or of British pirate radio – Stoppard for the most part clearly comes down on the side of this wonderful life in Britain. His Cambridge ‘don’ and Communist professor stays a ‘Tankie’ (supporter of the ’68 Soviet intervention) until finally deciding to back Charter 77 ten years later, after the Plastics are again jailed. Rock is not to be taken seriously by 'intellectuals,' so it is interesting that it is the subject of this play. This play is an attempt to show the liberating effects of rock and roll by a clear fan, Stoppard, but it fails because it doesn’t really link politics and rock.

The play, of course, shows how the Stalinist position of ‘socialist realism’ or ‘folk art,’ at the expense of all other styles, undermined the Czechoslovak workers state. Czech youth and intellectuals like Vaclav Havel united on the demand for ‘freedom of music.’ Havel was himself a poet and a rock fan too. Really quite a simple thing to grant, you’d think. The transformation of the 'don' from the most die-hard supporter of the bureaucracy to an anti-capitalist anti-Soviet dissident is the intellectual thread that connects the play together.

However, the play also unintentionally shows the commodification of even ‘rock and roll’ by capital. The play ends with a performance by the Stones in Prague; not a performance by the Plastics in London. That is significant. The Stones penetrate the eastern bloc. And bank capital (not 'tank' capital) penetrates the eastern bloc. But not visa versa. The Stones were at one time problem-children, even for western capital. Now, from 40 years later, they are just another product sold to entertain the aging youth. After all, our greatest opium is not religion – it is entertainment.

And I didn’t see it at Mayday Books….
Red Frog, February 8, 2010

Obama's first year

An edifying essay by David Michael Green on Obama's first year:

Barack Obama has now, in just a year’s time, become the single most inept
president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my
lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been pissed away so
rapidly, and what’s more in the context of so much national urgency and
crisis. It’s astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in
a single year.

It was hilarious, of course, when Michelle Bachmann invoked the Charge
of the Light Brigade at a rally against “Obama’s” (has he ever really owned it?)
health care “initiative” (isn’t that too strong a word to use?), quite oblivious
to the fact that the actual historical event was one of history’s greatest
debacles. Obama, on the other hand, seems to be actually reliving the
famous cock-up in the flesh. Except, of course, that he doesn’t really
“charge” at anything. He just talks about things, thinks about things a
real long time, defers to others on things, and waits around for things to maybe
happen.

There may have been presidents in the USA's chequered history who've been even more incompetent, mendacious, indecisive, and lacking in ideas and conviction -- Warren Harding, maybe? But like Green, I think Obama is the most pathetic and worthless little sh!t who ever got elected to the presidency. Of course, being a Marxist, one must be careful to see things systemically. A pathetic and scummy little sh!t like Obama is a simply a product of a corrupt and mendacious political system, itself a part of an extortionate and militaristic plutocracy. Christ, I could use a stiff whiskey right now.

Labor, Part II: Trumka

One of the few bright spots in the recent development of the labor movement is the election of Rich Trumka as president of the AFL-CIO. A quick view of the succession of AFL-CIO presidents, from Meany to Kirkland to Sweeney to Trumka, shows that the political views of each gets 'a bit' more leftish. This corresponds to the increasingly weak and desperate state of the labor movement - though of course lagging behind the real situation.

Trumka is a veteran of the ferocious Pittston strike in the 80s. He was president of the United Mine Workers and led the UMW into the Labor Party in the 90s. The UMW is a blue-collar union of workers actually making goods, not moving paper or providing labor services. The recent demonstrations in Chicago against the bankers convention there were the biggest mobilization labor has had in awhile - and it was highly visible. Trumka just today warned the Democrats that a bad health plan and a lack of financial regulation will lead workers to stay home in droves in 2010, as they did in 1994 under Clinton. He pointed out that workers at that time did not see a dimes worth of difference between the Party's practice, in spite of the Democrats happy labor sloganeering.

Trumka could help lead to a new attitude towards labor's electoral and strike practice. Watch Trumka.

Red Frog
1/11/10

When slowdowns

Mao Ma, Mao Ma, Mao Ma, Ma Mao, Get a Job

“Embedded With Organized Labor,” by Steve Early, 2009

This is the first book on labor reviewed on these pages. This is not an accident. Like a bad marriage or a war, looking back on a long string of defeats or miseries is not something anyone relishes. I spent the mid-70s to the early-90s mostly as a union ‘rank-and-filer’ in Chicago and Minneapolis, so this is not an abstract story for me. The labor movement has been beaten senseless. It has puked on its shirt before the whole nation time after time. Even the singing of innocuous songs like “Solidarity Forever” now grates. Because ‘solidarity’ is almost, actually, never. Labor clichés, like Marxist cliché’s or anarchist clichés, need to be banned for awhile. We need to go back to … facts. Ruthless facts.

Steve Early’s book is actually a book of book reviews, although the sections seem somewhat disjointed. He has read almost every recent book concerned with the labor movement. This volume is invaluable as a readers’ guide for labor activists and anyone else who understands that without labor, there will be very little change. It is appreciated that he only dwells briefly on the classics of American Labor history. Our infatuation with the 30s and the Knights Of Labor etc. blinds us to our own recent history and the present configuration of American and world capital. Early does not read as a zombie, but as someone who has definite ideas about what is needed for labor to come back from the dead. He has been there too.

Early’s reviews go from general, high-profile books down to academic volumes concerned with the twists and turns of Sweeny and the “Change to Win” coalition. Barbara Erenreich’s book “Nickel and Dimed’ comes in for review as one of the former. Early compares it to George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London," and Jack London’s “The Abyss” - quite high praise. Early reviews “Revolution in the Air” by Max Elbaum, (also reviewed in these pages, below) pointing out its bizarre Maoist infatuations, and reaffirms that Elbaum does not really cover Maoist labor activity. Early seems to be a class-conscious labor activist, not really wedded to any one Marxist strand, close to the CLR James view of the importance of actual working-class practice. (CLR James is reviewed below too.) He also seems to be a sympathizer of the International Socialists, based on their work in TDU and Labor Notes, but he is not dominated by any one ‘line.’

After a short section on historical labor literature, Early scans Linda Chavez’ anti-labor books, probably as his version of ‘fair and balanced.’ Chavez once worked for Albert Shanker and the AFT – a cold-war, uber-white-collar union leadership. In a way, the teachers’ unions replaced the AFL building trades as the unions of ‘privileged’ labor. Chavez is their bastard child. Her account follows the right-wing reign of Meany-Kirkland and its domination by staffers from Social Democrats USA. She spends much time showing her fondness for neo-conservatives, and red-baiting the Democratic Socialists of America around John Sweeney, a closet member. As a former ‘labor’ leader, she spends most of her time attacking even the idea of labor unions.(!)

As an antidote to cold-war ‘unionism,’ Early reviews “SingleJack Solidarity” and “Punching Out,” both books concentrating on a rank-and-file unionism, and attacking the ideas coming from, for instance, the leadership of UNITE-HERE, that bigger is better. The authors are former supporters of the Workers Party of CLR James. They criticize the idea of ‘social unionism’ represented by Reuther as not much different than ‘business unionism,’ because both of them were thoroughly top-down. Early also later reviews Staughton Lynds two books on modern rank-and-file activism, “The New Rank & File” and “Personal Histories of Working-Class Organizers,” including leftists who ‘colonized’ various work sites.

Believe it or not, someone has written a book on Tony Mazzochi, called “The Man Who Hated Work.” Mazzochi was legendary as the conflicted founder of the Labor Party; head of OCAW and friend of Karen Silkwood; fighter for OSHA and environmentalism; supporter of various social causes, who helped organize “US Labor Against the War” and started working-class book clubs. Early considers Mazzochi to be a unique individual in the American labor movement, combining an affinity for the left with an ability to remain connected to the rest of the labor movement.

Regarding black labor activism, Jacqueline Jones has written a descriptive book on the long history of discrimination and racism in the US labor movement, “American Labor.” “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel” covers the history of black workers influence in the steelworkers union, up to the Sadlowski campaign in the 1970s and the rust belt turn in the 80s. Another book, “Left Out’ details the influence of non-white workers in the labor movement, even quoting WEB Dubois, who points out that the CIO became a ‘major racially egalitarian force in American life.’ “Beyond the Fields” is a book covering the UFW campaigns from the 1960s to the present. It shows how the UFW, lead by Cesar Chavez, functioned as a social movement, not just a union, and owed much of its success to that. There is a chapter on the short-comings of Chavez, who towards the end got rid of any democratic life in ‘his’ union. A member of the “Change to Win” coalition, the UFW is now down to 6,000 members in 2007.

Early then takes up theoretical questions, reviewing “The Working-Class Majority” by economist Michael Zweig. Zweig directly attacks the idea that the ‘middle class’ is the majority in the United States, and that this phrase means the same thing as ‘working class.’ Zweig contends that this verbal ‘switch’ so beloved of politicians and bad journalists disappears the working class from existence - although, according to him, the working class is 62% of the labor force. The book “Striking Steel” also makes the same point, though in a more personal way, attacking the domination of the professional middle class in culture and politics, and pointing out that the exceptional period of the 50s was the high point of working-class life in the U.S. And, I might add, never to be repeated. Early also covers the ILA dock-workers campaign of the ‘Charleston 5’ in the book, “On the Global Waterfront.” The remnants of the Labor Party in South Carolina were deeply involved in this campaign.

In two sections, Early reviews a number of books, both laudatory and critical, on the Sweeney “New Voice” leadership of the AFL-CIO, and the politics behind the recent split of the “Change to Win” coalition, and their leader, technocrat Andy Stern. Both situations involved an influx of more middle-class, college-educated activists into staff positions. As someone who had zero faith that Sweeney would change anything vital, it is interesting to read about the small changes that did happen when Sweeney swept the cold warriors of the SDUSA out of Solidarity House. Early feels this event was largely based on the Ron Carey victory in the Teamsters Union election immediately prior to Sweeney’s election.

The hardest part to read is Early’s section on labor’s strike defeats. If the words “Phelps Dodge”, “P9”, “International Paper”, “AE Staley”, “Caterpillar”, “Bridgestone-Firestone,” “Decatur”, “Ray Rogers,” “Overnite”, “6.5 years”, “camos” and “Pittston” bring out a certain pain, then you know what I am talking about. The central book Early reviews is “Three Strikes” by Chicago Tribune reporter Stephen Franklin about the ‘war zone’ in central Illinois around Decatur in the early 90s. This section mentions our own home-town hero and labor academic, Peter Rachleff, and his book, “Hard-Pressed in the Heartland,” about the Hormel strike, a defeated strike Minnesota labor activists were intimately connected to. 2003 saw only 14 strikes in the US, involving 129,000 people.

Early has somewhat disjointed sections on books about labor and environmentalism, prospects for future labor activism, labor law reform (including Chicagoan Tom Geoghegan’s book, “Which Side are you On?”) and in-plant strategies, international unionism, workers organizing outside unions in workers centers, immigrant labor activism, and again revisits SEIU and Andy Stern, in very illuminating pages. The section on Stern is dense, and reveals what “Change to Win” is really about – technocratic changes, top-down unionism, mergers and cooperation schemes with various managements.

Early ends his book in a most obvious, yet odd way, describing working-class literacy and book efforts in unions and out. He details the efforts and non-efforts of various union activists and internationals to promote reading about labor. Tony Mazzochi started a book club as one of his first acts of labor involvement. To focus on such a basic reality like this makes reading Early’s compendium of reviews such a pleasure.

And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, 1/6/2010

Book Club at Mayday Books?

We've had requests for a book club at Mayday in the past, with intermittent success. Let me know by commenting if this idea appeals to you and what you might like to read and discuss with a group at Mayday?

The origins of the state

This notion of a "workers' state" continues to bother me (though my apprehensions may be misplaced). As I understand it, the state originated with Babylon, Sumeria, Lydia, and Assyria. The idea was to expropriate agricultural surplus from peasant communities and use it to feed standing armies, which could then be used to invade other peasant communities (a "virtuous circle" of military expansion). The expropriation was carried out (if memory serves) through the introduction of coinage -- i.e., a monetary economy -- which allowed for taxation and caused, inter alia, the instant impoverishment of the peasantry. Anyone in the neighborhood not organised along state lines quickly got invaded by these proto-states and incorporated into these structures. Thus, the state itself was born as a military entity, and organised to channel resources from peasants to armies, rulers, a priesthood, and an aristocracy. In passing, it goes without saying that the state has been in the hands of different oligarchies at different times -- military rulers (like Sargon, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar in ancient times) or the modern capitalist bourgeoisie that we're lumbered with today. But regardless of the era and regardless of the nature of the ruling oligarchy, it has always served as an instrument of armed might, coercion and extortion. Whether it can ever be anything else -- such as a "workers' state" -- is what I'm wondering about.

Nice poster!