Have you Forgotten Your Roots?

"In and Out of the Working Class," Michael D Yates, 2009

Yates is a well-known left economist in the U.S., one of only two Marxists to hold that position in the professoriate, according to him. Which shows you the complete control capitalist economics has in this ‘free’ country. He’s from a working-class background, and this background formed a touchstone for him through-out his life. Unlike some ‘working class boys done good,’ he did not betray his roots.

Yates grew up in a factory town centered around Pittsburgh Plate & Glass, not far from the mining town where he was born, and where his family lived for many years in Pennsylvania. This book is a collection of essays and fiction he wrote which revolve around the issue of class - the dirtiest secret in America. He is one of those increasingly rare people who basically jumped classes via education, or, in his description, went to the top of the 'aristocracy of labor.' Yates eventually got a PHD, worked as a professor for 32 years, taught working-class people at labor extension services and at union educationals, even prisoners at a local lock-up. However, he never himself worked in the factory or a mine, leaving that to his father, who worked at PP&G, and got emphysema from silica and asbestos dust.

Yates tries his hand at fiction in this collection, and several chapters are fictional situations that closely parallel his real life. In the real world, Yates tried to organize a union for professors, and further discovers the absolute personal politics inherent in academe; helps with organizing a union for college staff; ponders over the best way to teach Marxist economics against the religion of bourgeois ‘macro-economics;” teaches bored middle-class children from the Pittsburgh suburbs about surplus value; confronts the racism in his home town; talks about his time in a strict and robotized Catholic college; and eventually retires from teaching after a nervous breakdown. For a left academic, this book is a must-read. Let me quote one paragraph which shows what Yates was up against regarding his students:

“The enthusiastic first-generation college students we once taught disappeared with the mills. We replaced them with mediocre and uninterested youngsters from the middle-class suburbs of Pittsburgh. These students were not my cup of tea. They saw college as a place to party and a way-station in between high school and the real world. They expected to get a degree, and the better job and money that went with it, simply because they had purchased their place in our classrooms. If they didn’t do well with minimum effort, it wasn’t their fault. The ‘product’ … must be defective. They resented learning and made their disdain obvious.”

Yates enjoyed teaching working class people in his labor-education service classes, or even mostly black prisoners, because they actually understood the world and theory better than the careerist students he normally met. Surplus value is not so complicated when you realize the owners of your corporation are getting paid many times over what a normal 40 hours would bring, even at the best pay. Class is not a foreign concept when you cannot afford a car.

Yates worked for Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers (UFW), and this chapter is the oddest of the book – but true. Yates was on the UFW staff as a professor, working on education, legal and labor issues for the union, and living in a broken-down ranch in California where the union headquarters was. However, there were complaints about the way Chavez ran the union, including from Yates. It was basically a personalist bastion, with no democracy. Chavez’s relatives and children held power with Chavez. One day the union staff had a meeting, and Chavez accused several complainers of being company spies, and threw them out. No facts, no due process, no nothing. Yates was not dismissed or arrested, but his innocent friend was, and Yates left the next day in sympathy. To this day, the UFW is a shadow of its former self, destroyed by Cesar's fame.

Yates ends the book with a cheery fictional cliff-hanger about a new union activist who gets fired, but who wins a 40 to 1 shot at the horse track, and with it thinks he will be able to defeat the company, and continue in the union, perhaps even running for its presidency. But the overall tone of the book is somber – being a Marxist in America is like being an Eskimo in Dallas, and it takes a personal toll on Yates. Better to just think of food and drink, entertainment or family, because that is all the system hopes to leave us with. Yates now drives around the U.S. in an RV, and is a full time associate editor at Monthly Review. So there is life after work.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog

June 19, 2011

The Poverty of Philosophy

Film: “Tree of Life” – Terrence Malick, 2011

Malick is one of these American film auteurs that is somewhat of a hidden legend, like JD Salinger or Marlene Dietrich. His first film, ‘Badlands,’ was a re-creation of the Charlie Starkweather mass murder spree in Kansas in the late 1950s, starring Martin Sheen and Sissie Spacek as young actors. The film is one of the great American movies. Malick followed with ‘Days of Heaven,’’The Thin Red Line’ and a few others that degraded in quality from his first.

Nevertheless, many critics and film-goers eagerly awaited Malick’s new film, “Tree of Life.” It won the Palm D’Or in Cannes, and film reviewers have written turgid, confusing descriptions of this film that make it out to be some cross between the Bible, ‘Texasville’ and ‘Solaris.’

Well, it’s really a very simple film. The film, based partly on Malick’s own childhood in Waco, Texas, is a meditation on the death of a son and brother. It essentially poses the problem of death / evil, and asks ‘God’ why this happened to such a young, innocent person. The two forces of the film are ‘grace’ and nature. Nature took the son, and now the parents (one in particular) and the brothers (one in particular) search for ‘grace’ to accept the death. In the process we see nature in all its ferocious beauty and power through time; and childhood in all its rosy hues and memories – and crises. In that childhood, the father, played by Brad Pitt (yes, that Brad Pitt) is a dictatorial parent, who eventually apologizes for his behavior (achieving ‘grace’ himself). And in the end, the film also ‘accepts’ the death of the son and brother. As the magic mother says, and I paraphrase, “I give him to you” while two angel-like women hover around her.

So, evidently, two forces of evil in the world – ‘human nature’ and death – are overcome by love and acceptance.

History plays a minor role in this film. The father and one son attempt careers – the son, played as an older man by Sean Penn (yes, that Sean Penn) succeeds, while the father eventually fails. At the end, the family is evicted from their Eden-like house in Waco due to his job loss. The children play in DDT fumes. The father and brothers visit black folks grilling food, which reminds you that 1950s Waco was segregated. Scenes of corporate American board-rooms remind you how life goes on now. But history is relegated to the sidelines. History is ignored, actually. And since no one lives in a time ‘outside history,’ this is a calculated deception. Even the father’s authoritarian style is actually straight out of the 50s.

History is irrelevant to the main thrust of the film, which is the images. And the images stand in for the beauty of life. Images of evolving ‘outer space,’ underwater life, volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs on beaches and along rivers, desert formations, star fields, cloud patterns and volcanic plains are interspersed with the gauzy, impressionistic family story evolving in Waco. Malick succeeds in evoking childhood quite well. The film is beautiful in a somewhat labored way, and it reminds every viewer that what we see, hear, smell, feel and touch every day are wonderful delights that should never be forgotten; moments that we should actually immerse ourselves in. For they may never return.

But as a philosophic film it fails. The massed classical choirs accompanying the evolving universe should be a tip off. Quotes from the Book of Job, phrases of ‘Why, God”, “Amens’ and southern Texas religiosity bathe the film throughout. The philosophic answer is actually a Christian message, diluted as it is. “God” is forgiven. His natural world is beautiful. Say “Grace.” Amen. As if the death of this boy was part of God’s ‘plan’ in the first place; as if God was actually involved in a specific drowning or death in Vietnam. This is a reactionary fantasy. So this film rates as a ‘deep thinker’ film for bourgeois critics, but when you look at what it is saying, there is much less than meets the eye. Sort of like the ‘meaning’ of the obelisk in “2001-A Space Odyssey.” Nada.

Current debates among film critics over ‘low’ versus ‘high’ culture (with this film in the “high” culture category…) ignore the fact that some so-called low culture is actually more progressive and emancipating than some so-called ‘high culture.’ Which, given the a-political bent of most film critics, is a completely confusing dialectic to them.

And I saw it in Uptown,
Red Frog, 6/11/2011

Poetic Fact

North Star Country,” by Meridel Le Sueur, written 1945, 1998 Edition

Sometime C.P. author Meridel Le Sueur, our female Whitman, our prose Carl Sandberg. Historical pastiche, cutout, mosaic, montage, a writer’s canvas of collages. The down-home history of the ‘upper’ Midwest, of the central west, of the cold place of lakes, of the 5 Lakotas/ Minnesotas/ Iowas/ Wisconsins, from first white step to last big war. History of cruelty to the native tribes; rebellion in a near place. History of the strengths of the first whites. Plows and eats and plants and trees. Steam engines and pie tins. Hollers and reels. Wagons and timber. Corn and winter. 38 Santee hung. Acres plowed, bottom lands that never bottom out. Democracy rooted in a new country. Freedom’s people.

Minnesota. The North Star State. South Canada. The capstone of a continent. Where the waters divide.

But it doesn‘t stop there in a rosy, earthy, Minnesota memory. Its not all jack-a-wallop poetry. There is a human snake in paradise. It would be an insult to the snake to blame him. Railroad barons, timber kings, ore thieves, big mansions, small money-mad minds. Poverty-stricken timber-jacks. Bunions. Exhausted field hands. Foreclosures. Farmers buying farms for a $1, guns up. Roads of hoes. The unemployed. Strike killers, machine-gun cops, 2 dead, 65 wounded. And sent to war, all together, in the end.

Our own prose poetess, Le Sueur.

And I bought it at Mayday Books,
Red Frog, 6/10/2011

The Place is the Thing

“In Search of the Blues,” Marybeth Hamilton, 2008

This professorial work by a former punk girl from LA sets out to debunk the idea of the ‘Delta Blues.’ In the process, she creates a good history of white attempts to understand the origins of the blues, while failing in her overall thesis. Just as the real ‘crossroads’ of the Robert Johnson song can only be guessed at.  Highway 61 & 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, now a dreary intersection of gas stations, furniture stores and rib joints might be one, but most pick the rural intersection below the Dockery Plantation and a cemetery near  Cleveland, Ms.  So the origins of blues music is like a dark, cracked mirror.

W.C. Handy said in 1895 or 1903 he met a man playing guitar with a knife slide in the railroad depot in Tutwiler, MS, just south of Clarksdale. The man was singing an odd, plaintive music with the refrain, “Goin’ where the Suthern cross the Dog." Handy maintains that this is the first time he heard ‘blues music.’ Handy himself later composed some of the first songs with blues in the title - “St. Louis Blues” and “Memphis Blues,” in the key of G, based on stomp tunes about levees and cane plantations he heard in Cleveland, Mississippi. The sheet music and 12-bar pattern of Memphis Blues was published by Handy in 1912. However, as Hamilton points out, the first commercial blues recording was “Crazy Blues,” by Mamie Smith, put out in 1920, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and was a national sensation. Hamilton doesn’t believe Handy’s story, and so invents her own.

Hamilton’s theory is that the “Delta Blues was not born in the bars and dance-halls of Mississippi.” The Delta Blues was ‘discovered’ or “invented by white men and women, as the culmination of a long-standing fascination with uncorrupted black singers…” As proof she says that in 1941 all the jukeboxes in Clarksdale carried black music you would have found in Chicago or New York, and no local singers. Of course, this only proves what was popular at the time, and what would promote business in a bar or club. Or even what was available. A scratchy song singing ‘hell-hound on my trail’ is not what people might want to listen to after a hot, exhausting day at work, even in 1941. Nor was the blues necessarily a music that had a mass black following for a long time. Like all music, other styles came in to replace it. Nor does a style have to be popular to be valid. However, as Hamilton herself admits, in the 1920s ‘race’ music, much of it blues, was everywhere.

A better guide to where the blues came from – i.e. ‘who’ invented it - is an annotated map of the Delta, and Mississippi itself. Who was born or lived in the Delta? White people? A few, and also Robert Johnson … and Willie Brown, James Cotton, Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, David “Honeyboy’ Edwards, King Solomon Hill, John Lee Hooker, Mississippi John Hurt, Elmore James, BB King, Albert King, Big Daddy Kinsey, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Little Milton, Furry Lewis, Magic Sam, Charlie Musselwhite, Charlie Patton, Junior Parker, Pinetop Perkins, Jimmy Reed, Son House, Skip James, Otis Spann, Hubert Sumlin, Sunnyland Slim, Ike Turner, Muddy Waters, Bukka White, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howling Wolf … and many others. Even WC Handy lived in Clarksdale for awhile.

Here is one map. Others are sold at the Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi: http://webpages.charter.net/davidmmiller/deltabirths.htm.

I think Ms. Hamilton has gotten the word ‘invent’ and the word ‘discover’ – or actually “re-discover” - confused. Or even the word ‘promote.’ Music explosions are many times located in actual places – San Francisco/Haight-Ashbury birthed psychedelic music; Laurel Canyon in LA housed folk rock; NY/Greenwich Village promoted the folk revival and punk music; Seattle begat grunge; Detroit created Motown; Chicago produced the electric blues; Harlem made black renaissance music; Kansas City/Vine Street hosted dance jazz; New Orleans / Storyville / Basin Street launched Dixieland, a certain kind of blues and the original jazz; Nashville/lower Broadway saw country; Austin, Texas countered with outlaw country; Memphis/Beale Street generated rock & roll, Rhythm & Blues and rockabilly; Macon, Georgia played a role in southern rock, etc. The argument is not that no one outside of these areas is involved, but rather that the ‘heart’ of the music originates from a very real place, among a group of people that knew each other. Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lightin’ Hopkins, for instance, were from Texas, and Blind Willie McTell from Georgia – but that only emphasizes the main point.

The Mississippi Delta – so-named because it was created by regular flooding of the river north of Vicksburg into the flat plains east, extending nearly all the way north to Memphis – was just such a ‘place.’ And the place IS the thing. That ‘place’ was filled with what we northerners call ‘farms’ – but which are still called plantations. After the Civil War, these very large plantations were farmed either by sharecropping or by direct, paid stoop labor, not much different than in slavery days. This is the proletarian roots of the delta blues – a material basis which many modern blues fans ignore. Many bluesmen worked on plantations, or became singers to escape plantations. After all, what is more alluring – working all day under a hot sun doing back-breaking work – or drinking, traveling, singing, playing guitar and having sex? Not a difficult choice if you can sing and play.

Black theoreticians have always focused on the blues, so there was no need for white people to invent it, or even discover it. Frederick Douglass discussed slave songs long ago. WEB Dubois wrote “Souls of Black Folk” in 1903, and talked about ‘sorrow songs’ - work songs and field hollers; LeRoi Jones wrote “Blues People” in the 60s - and who can forget Cornel West, the ‘bluesman / jazzman’ PHD of our own time?

The real story here is the re-discovery of the blues by white people, which culminated in the 1960s. Hamilton bases her history on chapters about certain key individuals or groups of individuals who attempted to dig up the blues, or specifically the “Delta Blues,” and it makes fascinating reading. As is predictable, any study of black people in a reactionary and racist nation is bound to have political ramifications. Art is never isolated from politics.

Proper academic Howard Odum set out from Faulkner’s Oxford, MS in 1907 to catalog ‘the social and mental traits of the Negro,’ in a world not far removed from the Civil War. Odum rejected spirituals as the actual music of black people, given the Christian origin of the music. Instead, he attempted to record using a ‘grapho-phone’ invented by Alexander G Bell, which recorded on wax cylinders. In the process, he came upon traveling singers with songs made up of a three lines, two repeated, using slides of different types, and the word ‘blues.’ His recordings were not saved, but he remembered the lines, and compared them to blues songs of 1925, making a number of almost exact comparisons between his written and remembered lyrics. Odum later gave up the study of black music, as he could not handle close association with the itinerant players and their ‘rotten’ themes and activities.

Hamilton spends time discussing the effect of ‘recording’ on music, and also the intervention of white investigators. Zora Neale Thurston observed that spontaneous music and singing in a community were drowned out by the appearance of the 78 rpm record and later, radio. Folk culture was damaged by contact with these machines and people – at least to some folk analysts like Thurston. Others maintained that folks culture continues under different conditions, which was the position of the left at that time.

The next major white investigator of black folk music was Dorothy Scarborough. She, I think, is the model for the academic in Appalachia searching for ‘old time’ music, profiled in the film “Songcatcher.” As the grand-daughter of slave-owners in Louisiana, she remembered fondly the songs, lullabies, spirituals, and work music of the black people she grew up around. Scarborough decided in 1921 to begin an academic search for ‘uncorrupted’ black folk music prior to recordings. Her method was to contact almost exclusively other white people who’d had plantation experiences, and thus acquired many of her lyrics and songs from them - instead of talking directly to black folks. Occasionally an ex-slave who reminded her of the ‘old Negro’s’ she remembered did sing to her. Like Odum, she also used a version of the wax recorder. This all became the book, “On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs.” In it, Scarborough attempted to bring back the songs of the ‘old time Negroes’ and, indirectly, the ‘good times’ on the plantation. Scarborough called the blues ‘barbaric,’ ‘jerky’ and like a ‘cripple dancing.’ It is no wonder that she gave up the study of black music, and switched over to Appalachian folk songs, after her sympathetic take on ‘old’ Negroes butted up against the actual ‘new’ Negroes of the 1930s.

And now we come to the most famous white ‘song hunter(s)’ of all – John and his son, Alan Lomax. John Lomax first recorded cowboy tunes in Texas, then turned his attention to black song – and specifically those found in prisons, ostensibly because they were isolated places. Lomax got a job with the Library of Congress to record and he did just that, using bulky equipment invented by the Library technicians installed in their car trunk. With it, Lomax meant to take ‘sound photographs.’ In the classic story, Lomax and his young son Alan went to Angola prison farm in Louisiana in 1933, and asked to record the inmates. After fruitless recordings of mediocre material, a ‘trusty’ was introduced to them – a killer, Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. Lomax recorded Leadbelly and was astounded at the quality of his voice, and the tunes he had written, or remembered – some of them blues, some of them more like straight folk songs. Leadbelly was paroled because of his singing, and later worked for Lomax as a guide. At one point, Leadbelly told Lomax he was tired of visiting ‘correctional’ institutions, and so Lomax took him to New York.

Leadbelly performed for many audiences in New York. However, Lomax considered Leadbelly to be a low criminal, and refused to give him the money he’d earned at shows or as an assistant. He tried to restrict his movements in the city, racist bad-mouthed him, and at some point, Leadbelly had enough and left. This incident brought a parting of the ways between Lomax and his son, Alan, who started his own career of recording, but increasingly tied himself to the Marxist movement of the time. Alan was instrumental in the 1941-1942 recording of the Library of Congress disc, “Negro Blues and Hollers” – recorded in the Mississippi Delta. Lomax Sr. almost never found fault with Jim Crow, or the massive amount of black people in prisons in the South. And this ideological problem, which affected Odum and Scarborough as well, finally came home to roost. Lomax Sr. was supported by Thurston, the most conservative of the black cultural figures of the time. But Richard Wright, who grew up on a plantation just east of Natchez, MS, attacked Lomax Sr. in the pages of the “New Masses” as a patronizing racist. Leadbelly eventually came back to New York and became part of the left-wing folk revival, playing with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and others. Not surprisingly, Lomax Sr. also hated Woody’s voice and songs.

The next group of white people to investigate the blues were a group of New York record collectors interested in jazz – Frederic Ramsey, Charles E Smith and William Russell. Smith was a Marxist, Ramsey an owner of a record exchange, and Russell a patrician. They discovered the 'Father of Jazz’ – Jelly Roll Morton – attending a run-down bar in Washington, D.C., and afterward collaborated on the book, “Jazzmen” for the Federal Writers Project in 1939. That book was a response to the positive hysteria over Bix Beiderbecke, a white jazzman from Iowa - a book that insinuated that white people were the best jazz players. In response, in "Jazzmen," the trio detailed the history of Basin Street and Storyville, an all-black neighborhood of flophouses, whore-houses and bars in New Orleans, next to the French Quarter. And how jazz … and perhaps blues … were invented there by black men - Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and especially, King “Buddy Bolden,” a cornet/trumpet player. Bolden was credited with starting the first jazz band in New Orleans. Oliver and Morton recorded in the 1920s, but they had played the city prior to that. One somewhat unreliable source from Bolden's band had them playing in 1895-1896, which seems to most far too early. Bolden had a song called “King Bolden’s Blues,” which is also translated as the “Funky Butt.” (A blues/jazz bar with that name is still on Basin Street, I might add.) The trio got this history down, partly through Morton’s talk recordings with the Library of Congress. Morton used the terms ‘blues’ and ‘jazz’ interchangeably, and recited lyrics that were straight out of a blues song. As Hamilton notes, most blues purists do not think that jazz is related, but there was, at some point, a relationship, before the branches … branched.

The last white individual is the so-called inventor of the Delta Blues, according to Hamilton. He was … a fanatic 78 rpm record collector from New York named – drum roll – James McKune. McKune was an alcoholic homosexual, who died in New York in 1971 nude, in an alley. Between 1944 and 1950s he became the leading blues music collector in the country, leader of a group of New York collectors called the Blues Mafia, keeping only the best and most rare music – 300 discs - under his bed in boxes at the Williamsburg YMCA. McKune discovered and promoted the earliest rural blues singers like Charlie Patton, Son House, Skip James and Robert Johnson to his group, and, according to Hamilton, set the stage for the ‘birth’ of the Delta Blues as a taste-maker. His promotion was purely aesthetic, not political, as befits conservative American culture.

However, it seems accurate to point out that Patton, Johnson, House and James were the earliest and also highest quality / unique singers, players and composers, and, as such, had a legitimate claim to borning the tradition. The fact that they were black, were from the Delta, and nearly all dead does not mean McKune sucked them out of his thumb. McKune recognized them. Hamilton does not mention a word about the British lads who brought blues out of these shadows to a mass white audience – John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Robert Plant. Together with American’s like John Hammond & John Fahey; locals like John Koerner, Dave Ray & Tony Glover; and blues bands like Paul Butterfield and Canned Heat – you could even claim, like Hamilton – that they too ‘invented’ the Delta Blues.

For her next book, Hamilton should center on the invention of rock & roll. One story I’ve been told was that Ike Turner wrote the first rock song, “Rocket 88” in the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Another is that Fats Domino recorded the first rock song "Fat Man" in 1949 at J&M Studio in New Orleans.  But then she probably thinks some white tastemaker – like Sam Phillips - really invented those songs and rock and roll.

And I bought it at Square Books, an independent bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi
Red Frog, May 31, 2011

Malcolm X Lives

“Malcolm X – A Life of Reinvention,” by Manning Marable, 2011

Manning Marable’s last book corrects some of the inadequacies of the “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” by republican Alex Haley, and also indirectly Spike Lee’s movie, “Malcolm X” - which used the Autobiography as its guide. Lee ate ‘whole’ the work of a black Republican. Which is like trusting a segregationist southern conservative like Robert Penn Warren to write a fully honest book about Huey Long, a southern radical populist. (See review of "All the Kings Men,' below.) Both Malcolm and Long were assassinated in reality, and later, in print.

Overall, this book sheds new light on Malcolm – shorting the criminal experience, unlike Haley or Lee, and going into great depth into Malcolm’s last year, when he traveled to Africa and the Middle East. Marable had access to Malcolm’s diary, and this obviously gives the book a wider dimension during this period and earlier. Marable delves more deeply into the political changes wracking Malcolm, and its corrosive effect on the two small groups he started after leaving the Nation of Islam – the political OAUU and the Islamic MMI. He describes the conflicts between the two, and the middle-class character of the OAUU at its outset. Marable focuses on Malcolm’s strategy of bringing the U.S. before the U.N. on charges of racism, which was obviously of great concern to the U.S. government. He is also not shy in mentioning Malcolm’s ties with the Socialist Workers Party and George Breitman. Marable points out that much of Malcolm's travels were paid for by conservative Saudi religious organizations, which was a revelation to me. And from a personal point of view, Marable paints the wedded relationship between Malcolm and Betty as awful. Betty basically raised 6 children mostly alone.

The 'headlines' on this book refer to its description of Malcolm's supposed homosexual and out-of-wedlock encounters, all of which are thinly sourced and for the most part irrelevant. But that is all the Right can talk about.

Figures like Amiri Baraka and others find both factual and interpretive errors in this book. (25 factual errors according to Herb Boyd.) Baraka is the most vociferous in claiming Marable, a social democrat, tries to make Malcolm into a less revolutionary figure, and more like a social-democrat. Of course, Malcolm is one of those people who act like a mirror to the beholder. Baraka also questions the inclusion of interviews with Nation of Islam members, who hated Malcolm. Marable does say at one point that Malcolm had moved away from defensive ‘violence,’ towards a more traditional position of supporting voting rights only, which was obviously untrue. Nor does Marable dwell on the social or economic consequences of following “Pan-African” socialism in the United States. This was the philosophy that Malcolm adopted after revolutionary black nationalism seemed somewhat limited to him. Nor does Marable dig deeper into government ties with Malcolm’s assassins. Marable does point out that Malcolm believed Black people needed their own political party, and could not work through either the Democrats or the Republicans. Which would be hard for a social-democrat to swallow, of course, so this reflects an honest portrayal.

What strikes one most strongly in this book is Malcolm's class character. Malcolm X / Malcolm Little was a proponent of the ‘field negro.’ And what this means is that he eventually came into conflict with both the petit-bourgeois leaders of the traditional civil-rights movement, AND also with the petit-bourgeois leadership of the Nation of Islam (NOI/Nation). The NOI was really a partial continuation of the Marcus Garvey movement, and in the 50s and early 60s a repository, in its odd way, of black nationalism. But it was a conservative movement, mired in religion (mirroring the Christianity it was born out of) and really focused on starting small black businesses. The petit-bourgeoisie has two wings, and the Nation was the wing of the proprietor, not of the academic / preacher / non-profit operator. The black masses, who were neither owners nor had a sinecure at a church or university, had a spokesman in Malcolm, who owned nothing and never graduated from high school. In a basic sense, Malcolm was a proponent of the black proletariat.

Marable exposes the real character of the NOI in the book. They were culturally odd – for instance only allowing members to eat once a day; regressive when it came to the issue of women; their leaders were secretly addicted to money; they were outside the normal Islamic theology, and most prominently, they were violent towards their own members. Two sons of Elijah Muhammad rejected the NOI’s weird theology for a more traditional Islamic interpretation, as did Malcolm. Members caught smoking weed or tobacco, or committing other petty infractions – like eating more than once a day – were beaten by the Fruit of Islam (FOI). The Fruit was the internal security apparatus of the Nation. However, it seems to rarely have been consciously used against anyone but NOI or former NOI members to keep them in line. Some of the assassins of Malcolm were from the Newark FOI. Sometimes the NOI/FOI instinctively defended themselves from police attacks. But the Fruit was not used consciously or pro-actively against the police (which Malcolm wanted to do in Los Angeles after Nation members were killed by police, but was forbidden by Elijah Muhammad) nor against white racists, or other reactionaries.

Malcolm was converted to the NOI in prison not by an Nation member there, but by his own family, which had joined in Detroit, and who later denounced him after he left the Nation. The man he met in prison was a non-Muslim, an atheist, who encouraged him to read about black issues. The biggest point of conjecture over Malcolm is what would have happened if he’d come to politics in some other way than the through the Nation, which was both an energizing and crippling form of political birth.

Lastly, the assassination. Marable goes into greater detail on the assassination. Every group should study it, for it is a textbook of mistakes and methods. Everyone in the MMI/OAAU thought that audience members coming to the event at the Audubon needed to be frisked. Only Malcolm disagreed, and here was the essentially anti-democratic and personalist nature of the organizations, because he overruled his supporters. Malcolm’s inexperienced security detail was instead scattered about, not in front of the stage. When a diversion happened in the back rows, they moved towards it. This left Malcolm alone on stage, with no bullet-proof vest and no protected podium. The shooter just had to stand up, step forward, and shoot, with no one in front of him.

Police infiltrators in Malcolm’s group had found out that there would be no check for weapons at this meeting, and this information was obviously transmitted to the Nation. The police escort that was usually present disappeared from the front of the building, and the officers in the building were in another ballroom. The ‘official’ ambulance took a half-hour to arrive, even though there is a hospital across the street, and Malcolm’s men eventually had to get a gurney themselves. Police allowed a dance to occur that night only 4 hours after the shooting, and effectively destroyed much crime scene evidence in doing this. Only one of the real shooters was captured, and two other men not connected to the crime were convicted with no evidence. In other words, most of the real assassins were not pursued, much like the other political murders in the US in the 60s. The police work was a transparent joke.

Marable does not delve deeply into government/FBI/CIA involvement in the assassination, other than showing they provided information to the NOI and possibly shielded the real assassins. The government in this case evidently did not need their own assassins, but knew they could count on Nation members being enraged over Malcolm’s focus on Elijah Muhammad's sex scandals. I understand the FBI had an agent in the New Jersey mosque which committed the hit, and that agent could have quietly guided the NOI men involved. Any further information on this topic would be appreciated

Altogether a must read to further your understanding of Malcolm Little and the black revolutionary movement of the 60s and today.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, May 21, 2011

Zizek Says: Wage Theoretical Class War Now!

“First as Tragedy, Then as Farce,” Slavoj Zizek, 2009
 

This is one of Zizek’s shorter books - he goes light on the Lacan/Freud and the Hegel/Kant. His books are sort of seminars, where the professor rambles around the stage for hours, riffing on various ideas, and you get your gold pan out and glean for nuggets. However, sometimes he goes back to Philosophy 5.0:

“Badiou’s ‘subtraction,” like Hegel’s Aufhbung, contains three different layers of meaning: (1) to withdraw, disconnect; (2) to reduce the complexity of the situation to its minimal difference; (3) to destroy the existing order.   As in Hegel, the solution is not to differentiate the three meanings (eventually proposing a specific term for each of them), but to grasp subtraction as the unity of its three dimensions: one should withdraw from being immersed in a situation in such a way that the withdrawal  renders visible the ‘minimal difference” sustaining the situation’s multiplicity, and thereby causes its disintegration, just as the withdrawal of a single card from a house of cards causes the collapse of the entire edifice.”

OK, you can stop laughing now. I think that could have been said in a simpler manner, but we are not philosophers.

This book actually builds to a somewhat unique proposition, which is not always normal for a Zizek book. That we act “As If” (Zizek always capitalizes the Important parts…) economic and environmental collapse were Actually going to happen, and not act ‘as if’ we had time to watch it happen.   You know, the famous phrase, ‘Well, let’s wait and see."  The paralysis of the will afflicting the Left in most parts of the advanced capitalist nations (and most impoverished ones, but not all) is a prime enemy. Zizek proposes what could be termed a communist / ‘voluntarist’ solution, or perhaps a far-seeing solution – to advocate, plan and propose as if these developing situations are NOT mirages.  Communists are children of the future, not children of the present (as are the liberals) and not children of the past (as are the conservatives.)  And as such, they have a unique ability to see forward. In other words, the people who understand that these events will occur, and actually understand they are already occurring, will be the ones who survive.

As Michael Ruppert says in the film “Collapse” about the people on a ship like the Titanic: There are three kinds of people on this ship:  1, the deer-in-the-headlights crowd; 2, the let’s do something to save ourselves crowd; 3, and the ‘nothings going to happen, so lets have a Martini’ crowd.  The bourgeoisie and the Right are in the last group.  The helpless liberals, centrists and apoliticals are in the first group.  Because liberals don’t actually believe that the economy or the environment ARE going to significantly change.  Most rooted, proletarian people are in the middle group.  And that is the group that will take action.

Zizek puts it this way, “Critical Leftists have hitherto only succeeded in soiling those in power; whereas the real point is to castrate them…” and “Liberal-democratic moralistic blackmail is over…our side no longer has to go on apologizing.  The other side had better start.” Zizek instead advocates a ruthless undermining of bourgeois ideology, which is the majority of this book. He quotes Marx about the ‘historicism’ of bourgeois ideology, which posits all other social systems as limited and historical, while capital will last forever. Zizek points out that capitalism ‘de-totalizes meaning’ – meaning it renders critical thought useless, and instead celebrates ‘efficiency’ alone.  Another Zizek: “Who needs direct repression when you can convince the chicken to walk right into the slaughter-house?” (Apologies to the meat-eaters.)  The ‘self-propelling circulation of Capital is the ultimate REAL in human life,’ according to him, and ‘money’ now the fifth element, after fire, water, earth and air.  Zizek: The ‘denial of ideology only provides the …proof that we are more than ever embedded in ideology.’

Of course, the key question is, what are the limits of ideology? And ultimately, there are no ‘limits’ - only a counter-ideology based on reality.   Zizek believes that advocacy of Communism is on the agenda, not ‘socialism’ (which he now no longer believes reflects the ‘lower phase of communism’) or liberal democracy, which has failed.  He discusses Berlusconi as the ultimate capitalist bourgeois-democratic fraud who yet retains power, and the parallel commodification of environmental or social concerns as safety valves.

Zizek also opposes Muslim movements that seem ‘anti-imperialist’ (and are seen that way by certain Leftists) because they ultimately oppose Enlightenment values, and celebrate obscurantism and repression.  Yet at the same time, they can reflect class tensions, absent an active Left (which has been mostly killed…) such as in Afghanistan.  In this context he highlights anti-religious Middle-Eastern movements, like the Qarmatians, a Bahraini secular, communist group that seized the Black Stone from Mecca, signaling the end of the “Law” many years ago.  Their rise was precipitated by a slave rebellion in the Basra marshes by the Zanji – 500,000 slaves over 15 years - that preached the radical egalitarianism of the Kharijites in the face of Islamic slave ideology.


Zizek understands that Obama will become “Bush with a Human Face,” but nevertheless does not denigrate the excitement of millions upon his election, as if some kind of corner had been turned.  He also refers to Kant’s excitement concerning the French Revolution, and compares the two.  This excitement reflects the true liberationist feelings of the majority of people when tyrannies fall, as if a weight had fallen from the head of the human race.  Zizek goes back to his concentration on the Haitian revolution, which took the slogans of the French Revolution at good coin, and freed that island from colonialism and slavery in one fell swoop.  The Haitian rebel army sang the Marseilles upon the approach of Napoleon’s troops, thus flinging the revolutionary song into the face of the now counter-revolutionary force.  However, because the Haitians could not continue the revolution, a black landed-aristocracy grew up to control the island – an aristocracy which eventually made peace with French and then U.S. imperialism.

Zizek ends by again repeating that, “We are the ones we have been waiting for” and “There is no big Other to rely on” and “We must begin from the beginning’ again.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog, April 28, 2011

Another God That Failed

"Death of the Liberal Class" – Chris Hedges, 2010

Met a real Democratic Party ‘liberal’ lately? Do you think they care about poverty? Or war? Or foreclosures? Or unemployment? Or even the environment? Most of them are economically very comfortable, and their wallet speaks for itself. But they do spend a lot of time telling you how stupid the right-wingers are, and how Sarah Palin is a loser. Or Glenn Beck. Or any number of obvious targets. And how bad Islam is. And that is it. That is the extent of their 'outrage' and knowledge. It’s more about cultural politics than anything else - a mirror reflection of the religious right's focus on culture instead of essentials.

Chris Hedges is an enraged, former member of the liberal ‘class.’ He was the son of a protestant preacher, a Master of Divinity at Yale and a former long-time journalist for the NY Times. According to him, the liberal class are the journalists, professors, artists, religious clergy, labor union leaders and members of the Democratic Party who have betrayed the working class and the majority of the population, and have instead grown to love, or at least compromise with, the ‘free market.’ And in the process, sold their soul to the devil. His moment of truth was when he publicly opposed the Iraq War at a commencement address in 2003, and was fired from the Times for it.

Hedges wants to borrow parts of Marxism – without Marx, of course – to reinvigorate a moralistic, left opposition to corporate control. As he puts it: “We have to learn again to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed.” He should start with the title of his book. Hedges liberal 'class' is really only a part of the American petit-bourgeoisie - the non-business professional side.  Hedges describes the present weakness of the liberal faction as similar to historical situations like Weimar Germany and pre-revolutionary, Checkovian Russia. To Hedges, capital needs a strong liberal segment, but when that class disintegrates or becomes house-broken, capital’s worst elements are no longer internally restrained.

Hedge’s book is part of a trend attacking liberalism. 2006’s “Disappearance of the Liberal Intellectual,” by Eric Lott and 2006’s ‘Strange Death of the Liberal Intellectual,” essay by Tony Judt were predecessors. In a way, this book is the liberal’s “God That Failed.” Though it is odd that the term 'neo-liberalism' is not used in this book, I think Hedges is correct in seeing liberalism itself as the dead thing. Hedges always sides with small groups and heroic individuals (a la Camus) or intellectuals (Tillich, Neibur) as the main alternative to corporatism and fascism. He identifies the liberal slide into corporatism beginning with the First World War, a war which froze or destroyed the building populist, labor and socialist movements. The liberals enlisted on the side of Wilson’s ‘war to end all wars’ and the ‘war for democracy.’ As usual, these wars were couched in ‘humanitarian’ and ‘progressive’ slogans. And, as always, the liberals believed them.

In separate chapters, Hedges takes on the permanent war society promoted by the liberal faction. He takes on journalists who merely reprint the statements of government officials and think tanks, and no longer report on facts; artists who have no interest other than providing entertainment; clergy who are too timid to speak against right-wing religion and war and have retreated into ‘contemplation;’ professors who focus on microscopic issues to avoid conflict; labor officials who cannot break with liberalism and have betrayed their members. And as he calls it the ‘worst of the bunch,’ the Democratic Party, which makes betrayal a standing requirement. He defends the pariahs of American society – courageous truth-tellers like Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, IF Stone, professors Richard Goldstone and Norman Finkelstein, journalist Sydney Schanberg and others. Hedges prefers intellectuals who not merely describe the world, but also the world’s contradictions. Of course, it has been said that the first duty of philosophy is the criticism of God and religion. And Hedges has a pronounced moral slant which looks for all the world like the musings of a former seminarian.  Maybe he's a Christian socialist?

Downplaying Labor

Hedges, to my mind, generalizes frequently, and while hilariously correct in many instances, misses details that do not fit into his schema. Like labor. He says that the whole labor movement has been lost since 1948’s Taft-Hartley. And indeed, Taft-Hartley represented a severe counter-attack by capital against the brief spring in the 1930s. As did the anti-communist purges in the unions (and the Farmer-Labor Party), as well as the McCarthyite movement which accompanied it. The 1948 Progressive Party’s Henry Wallace campaign was the last gasp of that time. However, labor still held some kind of clout in American society until well into the 1970s. Labor’s second moment of political truth was really Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers – a seemingly skilled and white collar union. It’s third was Clinton’s passage of NAFTA. And its fourth is the present attack on public unions. In fact, it could be argued that labor activism in the 1970s lead to Reagan’s action (preceded by Jimmy Carter’s calling out the troops on the miners strike in 1978, thus signaling Democratic Party support for anti-labor measures…). The book, “Rebel Rank and File” chronicles the 1970s period of labor activism, mostly from below. Steve Early’s new book, “Labor’s Civil War” also covers this period, much of it inspired by activists from the left. So while Hedges wants to celebrate certain parts of the Marxism, he doesn’t seem to extend it to a thorough understanding of the working class movement.

Downplaying the Left

Hedges calls himself, at times, a socialist, of sorts. That is certainly commendable. In this book, however, he does not. He largely dismisses the 1960s-1970s new left’s concern with the working class, stereotyping the new left as a ‘mirage,’ as being only transient cultural rebels. Au contraire! Here is Hedges: “Only a few hundred radical Maoists, many of them living in communes in cities such as San Francisco, broke with SDS and took jobs in factories … but they were a tiny minority.” Other than this Life Magazine description of the left, he’s is definitely wrong. In SDS, one large section lead by Progressive Labor formed the “Worker Student Alliance” and encouraged students into the labor movement. After the split in SDS, every left grouping in SDS went into the factories except the Weathermen. Black leftists went into the factories in Detroit and other cities. The SWP, an ostensibly Trotskyist formation, turned to labor a little later, and sent their cadre into the factories too. I know of no faction that did not, except the social democrats in DSOC/DSA. This represented thousands and thousands of activists. But the ‘left’ as it exists seems to be a political opponent of Hedges, and therefore he has to minimize what it did. Certainly, ‘liberals’ and social-democrats were not going into factories. They were busy getting prestigious white-collar jobs and sucking on their wine glasses. They were busy blocking with the union leaders who had made their peace with capital. Hedges himself never clocked in at a factory – or even thought of it.

Downplaying the Mass Movement

Hedges does say we need to "…nurture, from the ground up, a social ethic, a new movement.” Hedges, like his other books, revisits the various progressive ‘stations of the cross’ – Thomas Merton, Deitrich Bonhofer, Father Berrigan and Dorothy Day – to illustrate what ‘true’ opposition to decaying capitalism means. However, he also talks about being like the ‘medieval monks,’ who had to preserve a ‘the moral culture’ for the future, in agricultural communities. Other than the obvious absurdity of in-grown theocrats carrying 'civilization' on their backs, Hedges here lays out a perspective of isolated communities creating fortresses of resistance. At the same time, Hedges says: “The fantasy of wide-spread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.” He makes no mention of creating a new populist labor party to contest for power. Well, then, is the only role of a movement to hand out bowls of soup? Hedges, to his credit, does not disown self-defensive violence by classes and communities. However, he denounces Marx as ‘violent,’ as if defending yourself is not exactly what Marx advocated.

Of course, this is the key question. Various people looking on the present reality either throw up their hands (party on!), advocate retreat into protected dugouts, or theorize about complete overthrow. Hedges, like most commentators outside the revolutionary left, tends to come down on the middle alternative. At any rate, his book is a welcome addition to the literature against the not-so-hidden enemy – liberalism / neo-liberalism. Capital has two main ideologies, and sometimes the whispers of 'friends' are more insidious than the howling of overt enemies.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog, April 17, 2011

The Play! See It Before Its Over:

“Oil! & The Jungle,” adapted from Upton Sinclair, directed by Kym Longhi and Karla Grotting, 2011

Theater in Minneapolis is mostly middle-class entertainments, exemplified by the Guthrie, or trivial hipster indulgences like the “Fringe Festival.” However, given we are the Number Two theater town in the U.S. by population, there are other choices, from Intermedia Arts shows to the productions of August Wilson at Penumbra or the Pillsbury Theater, or the left-originated Mixed Blood theater and Frank Theaters. Please add the University of Minnesota Theater to the list. Because labor and socialism almost never get their due.

This play is adapted from the text of Upton Sinclairs two best novels, “Oil” and “The Jungle.” (Both reviewed below) Anyone who has read The Jungle knows it is a completely unforgiving description of ethnic working class life in turn-of-the-century Chicago. Oil! is a more nuanced panorama of social life in California around the time of the First World War and after, centering on the budding oil industry there, from the point of view of the new oil elite. “There Will Be Blood,” the excellent film starring Daniel Day Lewis, was based on Oil!, but did not really follow the text.

This play is a monster, in its own way. Using violent motion, acrobatics, multi-media, music and song, dance, text, carefully-constructed balletic movement, Brechtian acting, satire and socialist politics, it creates a new visceral whole. Even if you have not read these books, the message is staring you in the face. The set itself is a facsimile of the class structure, with the rich above and the workers and poor below. The “Oil!” world squats over the “Jungle” world. Some people go up or down a few ladders occasionally, but the two worlds are definitely separated by distance, and only joined by … money. It is on the spiral ladder that the limited class interactions take place. The play links present events to Upton Sinclair’s past - oil wars, the CDO derivatives crisis, present unemployment, the housing foreclosure crisis, the BP oil disaster, the on-going buying of presidents and the continuing brutal treatment of animals and humans in slaughterhouses, making this play not a mere historical artifact. At one point, the Marxist agitator from the Oil/Jungle (probably Eugene Debs) says, “It is up to you.”

This play could not have been performed by an older group of actors and actresses, due to its physicality. It would only be at the University that you could find the youth, energy and numbers to make this real. The large ensemble is lead by talented seniors. One senior acts in two roles at once, as the “Dad” in Oil! (using a dummy), and also as Bunny, his son. Others play multiple roles, as well as singing. An excellent job is done by all.

Warning! If you suffer from depression, are easily overwhelmed, are hard of hearing, are squeamish or prudish, expect a linear story, or are conservative in your politics, this play might not be for you.

This play is sponsored by Mayday Books.

Last 4 shows – April 13, Wednesday@7:30 PM
April 14, Thursday@7:30 PM
April 15, Friday@8:00 PM
April 16, Saturday@8:00 PM
$10-$18. Call.

And I saw it at … Rarig Thrust Theatre on the U of M West Bank.
Red Frog, 4/11/2011

“Freedom’s just another word ...” for wasting time

“Freedom – A Novel,” by Jonathan Franzen, 2010

Reviewers gushed over it – Updike, Thomas Mann, Tolstoy! Book clubs, on-line and off, made it their centerpiece. It went to #1 on the NY Times sales list for weeks. It was hailed as the best book of the year, and perhaps for 10 years before that. Oprah selected it for her book club, christening it a ‘masterpiece’ - even after being insulted by Franzen for her embrace of his earlier book, ‘The Corrections.” It burned up Twitter. Obama was seen reading it, unlike the book "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent,” given him by Chavez. The literary establishment had found a book they almost all liked, which is significant in the world of cultural politics and the middle-class cultural spectacle.

For that reason, it took me awhile to stomach opening this 562-page book. But authors, above all, write for themselves, and hence are not passive participants. After all, a guy who insulted Oprah couldn’t be all bad.

It dawned on me that the title is not an accident. “Freedom” is a generic term at this point in history, and certainly the characters in this book do not use their ‘freedom’ well – nor, I suspect, does Franzen think Americans use their freedom well. The characters spend it on jealousy, depression, drinking, sex, money-grubbing, fame, stupid politics and one doozy of an ‘environmental’ plan that involves mountain-top removal. Sort of like Homer Simpson as a ‘green’ job worker.

This book is full of accurate satiric comments on various cultural habits of present times, and these comic moments form little oases that carry one through the book. Without them, I don’t know if I could have made it. “Freedom” has been described by some as ‘political.’ And indeed it reflects the politics of the 9/11 - Iraq war era well, as reflected in several households – a middle-class one, a working-class one, and a ‘hipster’ one. War and the environment take center stage. The book is first set in St. Paul on Ramsey Hill in the late 80s, and in Grand Rapids, in a motel and cabin, then trails to Washington D.C., New York and West Virginia, so the local references work the same way they work in the film, ‘Factotum” – giving us all the ability to name-check.

Walter Berglund, the main protagonist, grows up in a working-class/small businessman family, and flees its northern Minnesota crudity to become a political correct liberal. He marries a jock girl, Patty, from an upper-middle class family out of Westchester County, NY (where else?), and the tale of their bad marriage forms the emotional center of the book. Walter eventually comes up with a scheme to save the ‘cerulean warbler’ by strip-mining a chunk of West Virginia, which is then supposed to be ‘reclaimed’ for all time for the bird. Of course, this is a transparent sleight-of-hand by some oil man to cover his tracks. Walter is aided in this project by a beautiful young Bengali women, Lalitha, who he falls in love with as his marriage falls apart.

Walter and Patty have a son, Joey, who leaves the family home and moves next door with a working-class family so he can have sex with their passive daughter, Connie. Joey later comes up with his own cock-eyed scheme, as a 19-year-old, to sell rusted Eastern European truck parts to the U.S. government in Iraq. And succeeds! Joey is torn between the sexy airhead sister of his rich college roommate and his real connection with Connie and her family. Through the whole marriage, Walter’s friend Richard, a magnetic punk-rock musician, completes an emotional ‘triad’ with Patty and Walter. Richard goes on to some success as an alt-country musician, and then as a film scorer. The book is book-ended by ‘autobiographical’ soliloquies by Patty, explaining her life and her self. And ends with what I consider a parachuted ‘happy’ ending. How a book ends is testimony to an authors toughness and truth-telling, and here, Franzen show cowardice and dodges the bullet.

In this book the working-class is depicted for the most part as a bunch of loutish, right-wing, obdurate drunks. This is pretty typical for middle-class writers. Connie’s mother’s monster-pickup boyfriend cuts down almost every tree in their yard, for instance. The middle-class is shown as ultimately sensitive and kind, though misguided and inept. Richard, the bohemian, is supposed to be the ‘truth-teller’ (Richard makes Marxist noises every now and then…) and for the most part, he does that - though he is ultimately most concerned about his music career and his sexual conquests. However, in the end, every character is a comic/cosmic joke, given the overall war and environmental concerns that Franzen evidently has. And here, I think, is the ultimate point. No one is up to the task of dealing with what the system is ultimately doing. In essence, they are not using their freedom well.

Most reviewers wallow in the personal stories of this family, as if the meaning of this novel was purely intimate. It strikes me that Franzen is not exclusively 'that kind of writer' - but since this is the road to success in the U.S., perhaps he will become more like 'that kind of writer.' None of these people are exactly likable, or reliable, but they do strike you as people you might have met at one time. And that is what makes this book a little like a deep rabbit hole, from which you will enter on one end, and come up miles away, in another.

And I bought it at the independent bookstore, Cheap Books

Red Frog
4/3/2011

Gaia II

“Planning Green Growth – a Socialist Contribution to the Debate on Environmental Sustainability,” by Pete Dickenson, Socialist Alternative, 2003.

I asked some of the local Marxist activists if there was a somewhat ‘comprehensive’ analysis of the issues of global warming and peak oil by activists (not theoreticians or academic Marxists.) I was pointed to a pamphlet by an Australian member of Socialist Alternative, Pete Dickenson, dated in 2003. Just the dating and the distance of this pamphlet assures me that local activist organizations might be less than informed on this issue. They are probably in actuality relying on something they read from 1926, not anything relevant to today’s science and situation.

I asked this question because of a long line of somewhat bizarre comments on environmental questions by ostensible Marxists over the years. The latest was something about people who grow food ‘locally’ or source ‘locally’ are nothing but Maoists, and doing that is similar to the ‘back-yard furnaces’ of the Great Leap Forward. Well, if you can’t catch the difference between an onion and a small block of pig iron, I can’t help you. 

 Right now, in the City of Havana, there are enough small gardens (“huertos populares”) to feed much of the urban population. This resulted from a relaxation against small farm ownership and production in that city. Due to the lack of phosphate fertilizer and oil, these gardens are mostly organic. The films "The Power of Community" & "The Greening of Cuba” are a good introduction to this topic. Detroit, courtesy of the experience of aging black sharecroppers, is now the leading urban garden city in the United States – of course because of poverty and an increase in abandoned land. I also recommend the excellent 2008 film on Latino/Black gardening in Los Angeles, “The Garden.” And the comments of Dimitry Orlov on how Russians survived the collapse of the Russian food economy brought on by counter-revolution and privatization – with two words, “kitchen gardens.” (His book “Reinventing Collapse” is reviewed below.)  

People are trying to build a system of urban and nearby food sources (Community Supported Agriculture - CSAs) because they see a potential collapse coming in the United States itself. To think we will always have food delivered from Chile is somewhat naïve. After all, that is what the Haitians were told to do.

I suspect most of the people making these comments have been no closer to a farm than a highway through Wisconsin, and think food comes from the supermarket. Of course, we cannot totally feed ourselves from our backyards or CSAs. But backyard gardens and larger farms are not mutually exclusive, but dialectically inter-related. The two together provide increased food security for the population, link the two areas intimately, and spread rural skills to urban workers, and visa versa. In fact, the growth in small farmers in the Midwest is almost totally through CSAs and organic farms.

So I read this pamphlet, waiting for the great bolt of intellectual lightning to strike. And it didn’t. Let’s quickly look at one of the ageing points this short pamphlet makes – after all, just the title - “Planning Green Growth” sounds likes something out of a 5-Year Plan. I was excited! Comrade Trotsky speaking from the grave!

Ah, no. Dickenson’s pamphlet is earnest, optimistic and lacking in key facts. There is not a word on peak oil. There is not a word on how quickly the environment is already changing, and the effect it is having on the world population. There is no understanding that ‘solar, wind, wave and other alternative energy methods’ cannot produce as much energy as oil, coal and nuclear. There is not a word on population growth. 

Dickenson argues that socialism is not based on constant growth as a target,( true…) which is why it is superior to capitalism in this respect. But then, in a key passage, he says, “assume that consumption under socialism will be 50% higher than the current level in the advanced industrial countries, which will provide a standard of living currently enjoyed by the middle-classes in the richest capitalist country, the USA.” If I understand this convoluted passage, at that level, my friend, the earth would be used up quite quickly. As it is, it is already being used up, even without this level of consumption. Dickenson does say that this ‘level’ might be above the ‘bio-physical’ limits of the planet, but refuses to make a decision as to whether that is true or not. As a result, Dickenson theoretically does not account for any limits. And hence, the somewhat Pollyanna tone of this pamphlet. Of course, it was written in 2003.

The key thing that socialism should provide is healthy food, clean water, good clothing that does not fall apart, and actually works, shelter that shelters, education for all, health-care for all, a consistent source of sustainable energy, necessary transportation, leisure time, non-alienated work and culture. If these economic and social basics could be provided for the whole world population – EVEN IF they were lower than the present American ‘middle-class’ – this would be an enormous gain for the world proletariat. As a casual conversational target, my guess might be the life-style of the American working class in the late 40s-early 50s could be a real target. This is, of course, before the full development of the internal combustion car economy.

The workers states provided some of these benefits after the social revolutions there, but not all. The workers states always suffered in comparison to the US and Western Europe in consumer goods, and this was one reason for their downfall. However, this was not just a failure of bureaucratic planning, but also a reflection of how much useless production a planned economy might not engage in. However, they too wrecked the environment even so. Vassily Leontiev, a Soviet GOSPLAN economist in the 1920s, was one of the first to attempt to integrate environmental costs into any economic model, yet this was never applied in the USSR. Anyone wanting to look at the exhaustion of the oil fields around Baku will see the horror tale writ large. Or the decimation of the Aral Sea. 

This problem in Marxism is what I call “crude productionism.” The Marxists who hold this idea equate simple increases in production, any kind of production, done no matter what, with a healthy society and environment. At one time, this kind of thing made more sense. But alone, as we have learned, it is no different than the growth-for-profit model of the capitalist business cycle in its effects on the biosphere. And that biosphere includes us.

And I got it on the U of M campus,

Red Frog, 3/27/2011

A Word suggested by William Golding ...

“The Vanishing Face of Gaia - A Final Warning” by James Lovelock, 2008

James Lovelock is a scientist famous for inventing the apparatus that tested the atmosphere for ozone depletion, and warned of the consequences of that event. He is an Englishman who lives in the Devon countryside with his wife.  In this book, Lovelock switches between the disconnected ramblings of an aging conservative and a brilliant scientist dwelling on valid themes. Lovelock so frequently contradicts himself or makes factually ignorant statements that I’m not sure which we have here. You must separate the wheat from the chaff.

Gaia is a brilliant concept Lovelock came up with in the 1960s (no surprise here…) which refers to the totally interconnected nature of all things – humans, rocks, the atmosphere, the ocean, animals, plants, fire, human structures, energy sources – and how they are all one organism scientifically. This is not a religious concept but a scientifically observable one. I think his concept makes perfect sense, as it breaks down various isolated scientific disciplines, and instead explains what is happening on the planet ‘holistically.’ In essence, everything on the Earth, and ‘in’ the Earth, is Gaia. This theory allows Lovelock to bridge the gaps between biologists, climatologists, geologists and other scientific disciplines. As this applies to global climate change, it means that the earth as a whole is a 'self-regulating' system, so any disruptions in the dynamic system - such as excess carbon - will affect and be affected by nearly every part of the environment. And that environment will react. Lovelock contends that most Gaia predictions have been born out by testing.  I’m again going to bullet-point his main issues. I do this because many of these books are full of facts and ideas, and certainly not elegantly-crafted pieces making a central point. Lovelock wanders all over, repeating himself, and repetition is not a pretty thing:

1. Lovelock points out that the IPCC panel (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that issues UN reports on climate change is affected by political pressures and limited computer modeling programs to downplay the threat of global warming. Factual, scientific observations, even in 2007, showed their predictions erred far on the conservative side. The process of global warming is happening much faster than the IPCC is predicting.

2. The IPCC recommendation that 450 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere is acceptable is too high. Lovelock understands that the earth system can go from gradual change to sudden, irretrievable change in a very short period. The computer models used by the IPCC leave out many variables, and do not account for various multiplier/feedback effects. At 450 ppm he believes we are already past the point of no return. (Bill McKibben says we have to bring it back to 350 ppm. We are now at 385 or perhaps higher…) Lovelock created a more correct model called "Daisyworld" which more closely resembles what is actually happening on the planet.

3. Lovelock feels we cannot stop the slide towards a hot planet – 9 degrees hotter, given what he sees as the various human ‘weaknesses’ in favor of the status quo. He suggests we prepare to adapt to a hotter planet with higher seas by protecting various islands (England, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan…) and areas on the top and bottom of the earth that will survive the full effects of climate disaster. In a sense, creating protected enclaves. The vision he has is of nuclear-powered, dense cities, surrounded by walls, with green valleys that fade into red deserts. Sort of a sci-fi vision of the planet, come real. Or “Children of Men” - with a few children.

4. There are too many people for the carrying capacity of the planet. Lovelock says, “a massive natural cull of humanity" could occur to bring ‘Gaia’ back into balance. Mass migrations and conflicts are inevitable due to climate change.  That is the bad news. As to solutions? This is where it gets dicey. Lovelock says:

1. Nuclear power and thermal solar are the only solutions that will provide enough energy to maintain the present standard of living. A solar thermal block 3,600 square miles (60 miles by 60 miles) in the Southwest, given DC transmission lines, would provide enough electricity for the whole United States.

2. The coal industry has provided a haze of ‘soot’ across the globe that has blunted global warming, reflecting sunlight back into space, at the same time as it is injecting more carbon into the atmosphere. So if coal plants are shut down without some replacement for the ‘soot’, that ‘soot’ floating in the air would disappear, and solar heat would grow even more intense.

3. Lovelock rages on and on again against wind power (and even solar cells) as a conspiracy by evil businessmen to just make money, and to lull us into a false complacency. (Presented by the Al Gore wing of the ruling class, I might add, as the solution.) He claims wind towers take up too much room, use too much concrete and would obscure his pristine view of Devon. However, he had a complimentary meeting with the head of Duke Energy in 2008, a large coal producer. And it is no secret that there are massive profits in nuclear power for firms like GE. Some could see Lovelock as a shill for the nuclear and coal industry – but I think he’s just somewhat clueless, to not see there is money to be made no matter which way you turn. One nuclear plant uses far more concrete than many wind farms. And wind farms can be scattered – the whole area is not off limits to land use, as he imagines. He does support wind farms in the US Midwest – but only there. (The wind only blows steadily in the Midwest, you see.) And in a somewhat ridiculous passage, certainly not in merry old England. (“I must declare a special personal dislike of large wind turbines onshore.”) However, he is right that wind power cannot provide all the energy that nuclear or coal can. And there is the rub.

4. Lovelock is a big supporter of nuclear power. To argue his case, he claims that only 75 people died at Cherynobyl, ignoring the thousands that got cancers. According to observers, an area the size of Switzerland, or 16,000 square miles (41,000 square kilometers) around Cherynobyl, is uninhabitable for the next 300 years. He says that the objections to nuclear are 'trivial' – but he seems never to have read a word about nuclear contamination of groundwater coming out of plants like Hanford Nuclear Reservation (mentioned in St. Clair’s book, “Born Under a Bad Sky,” reviewed below) or the end-of-its-life Vermont Yankee plant. Here is Lovelock on nuclear power: “inexpensive”; “The falsehood that they are uniquely dangerous” and the best; “It is sad…that so many… still oppose nuclear on grounds as insubstantial as a fear of hellfire and Satan.” He even has a paragraph making fun of people worried about a small earthquake in Japan that released a tiny bit of radiation in 2007. What could happen? Recent events in Japan indicate that building a nuclear plant on a fault line, near an ocean, is really not a good idea. The problem with nuclear is not their rampant problems – it is that when you have one – it is a doozey. And we cannot overlook the direct connection between peaceful nuclear power and it’s wartime cousin – they are connected industries. Lovelock seems to think their connection is accidental. Lovelock, with some justice, makes fun of people who think radiation is always evil – as there is radiation everywhere. Some people are looking at ‘micro’ nuclear plants that might power only one town. At any rate, the key thing here is to understand our energy situation, not just from a Pollyanna view or a wood-sprite point of view.

5. Lovelock used to be a socialist in his youth, but now he yearns for a ‘Churchill’ to lead the struggle for little England against global warming. He even has a kind word for Obama and Al Gore (who was one of the 'first' to figure out global warming in 2004, according to Lovellock. Just like Gore invented the internet.) Lovelock does not think the ‘profit system’ is the problem – but never names names as to ‘who’ is holding back the fight against global warming. Not one oil or coal company gets a nod – just evil environmentalists and human nature.

6. There is a bit of truth in what he says, because ‘big’ Green groups actually hinder the fight against global warming by supporting corporate economic, environmental and political policies. They lull people into thinking carbon trading will somehow stop the process. However, Lovelock seems to loathe everyone who is an environmentalist – not just big Green groups or profit-seeking ‘green’ businessmen. The truth is, a technological fix is not possible. Lovelock sometimes believes the technological ‘fix’ is possible; and then sometimes he believes we should just start setting up our protected islands. I think he wants to do both.

7. Lovelock has no concept of peak oil or even peak gas (see fracking). Lovelock: “There are huge reserves of coal, oil and natural gas.”

8. To slow or stop global climate change, he suggests:
A. putting sulfuric acids or other materials in the air to re-create the ‘cloud’ now provided by coal plants – mimicking the effects of the eruption of Mount Pinitubo, which cooled the planet for 3 years.
B. Hang a sun-shade in space ten miles in diameter. Yes, you heard that right.
C. He thinks churning the ocean water with floating pipes can bring more algae to the surface, which will absorb carbon.
D. He wants to create low running clouds across the surface of the earth by spraying seawater in the air, thus cooling the surface of the earth.
E. Sequester carbon underground. One way to do this is making ‘char’ out of carbon, which is almost inert.
F. Create ‘Artificial trees’ out of treated concrete and rock that would remove carbon dioxide from the air.
G. Pay people not to cut down forests, not plant fake forests in empty places, and to let the empty places grow up naturally.
H. Use naturally occurring photo-synthesis to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. He is not clear on this.

9. Lovelock supports vegetarianism/veganism because he knows that domesticated animals – and the food they eat – are a significant source of global warming and hunger. He even comments about pets being sources of carbon dioxide and an extravagance.

10. And then:: “We imagine that …organic food” is "fundamentally different and better in quality than what is manufactured.” (Notice the word ‘manufactured’ used un-ironically.) We 'imagine?' Most studies of the two show that organic is better for human health, for soil health, and is less carbon-intensive. But Lovelock seems not to have studied this topic either.

Lovelock has not a word about how our profit economy encourages the destruction of the environment. Taking from nature is seen as ‘free’ on the capitalist books. (See the review of “The Ecological Revolution,” below.) Unfortunately there is a cost to every withdrawal. At some point, the biospheric-bank will become depleted, and Gaia will be forced to make adjustments – as it is already doing.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!
Red Frog 3/23/2011

“The John Brown of Mississippi”

“The State of Jones – The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy,” by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, 2010

1862. Starving, exhausted Confederate soldiers ordered by pompous, aggressive plantation aristocrats into frontal assaults against fortified union positions at Corinth. 1862. A frightened, wet, cold, dirty deserter from the Confederate army, hiding in Mississippi’s Piney Woods swamp, waiting for a slave woman to bring him a plate of food. 1863. A prominent businessman and Confederate tax assessor shot through his own open window in Jones County, Mississippi. 1864. A 6’4” long-haired Mississippi man with a triple-loaded, double-barreled shotgun, standing on the edge of the woods with his relatives and neighbors, waiting for a group of Confederate cavalry to pass and meet their doom.

Welcome to the class war in the Confederacy. Contrary to the myth of the Confederacy promoted by reactionaries, the majority of southerners opposed the war when it started, but were not allowed to directly vote. Resistance to the vote for secession, the subsequent war initiated by the slave-holders and the draconian policies of the failing Confederacy against their own people far surpassed anything in the North. And until recently it has been a well-hidden secret – especially to southerners. The only glimpse we have seen of it in popular culture is the film “Cold Mountain,” set in North Carolina. After the Confederacy passed the "20 Negroes Rule" (which allowed planters with 20 slaves to avoid the draft) many class-conscious and non-slave owning southern men became deserters.

This book, a well-written and almost novelistic history, takes you inside the Mississippi resistance by poor yeoman farmers in 6 counties in central Mississippi, led by a Confederate deserter named Newton Knight. It really answers the question of why Jeff Davis’ slave-holding class lost the Civil War. What would happen if you gave a war and people stopped showing up?

Knight hated the rich people in his county who stole from poverty-stricken farm wives, to both line their own pockets and to ostensibly feed the Confederate Army. Knight, like his fellow farmers, had nothing in common with large plantation owners who owned hundreds of slaves, and who continued to produce profitable cotton while the population starved. He refused to own slaves himself, and actually lived with a black slave / freedwoman named Rachel during and after the war, while also being married to a white woman, Serena. Knight, his neighbors and relatives, took control of six counties in south-central Mississippi, and ran the Confederate authorities out through carefully-planned guerilla violence. In the process, they were helped by black slaves and runaways who thronged the swamps that were a favorite hiding-place. His group, the Jones County Scouts, declared their allegiance to the Union Army. They met with union officers when Sherman's generals marched just south of Jones County, and also along the rivers, as some supplies were delivered by union boats. They defeated every Confederate incursion into the area, even by the most well-trained and violent Confederate units, mostly by knowing when to fight, and when not to. Newton claimed his troops were in 16 large engagements, and many smaller ones.

After the war, Newton later applied for a pension from the Union Army, but was denied because thick-headed northern legislators could not believe a southern man would fight for the North.

After a short period that can actually be called ‘reconstruction,' the violent racist businessmen of Mississippi and the demobilized Confederate Army (now known as the Ku Klux Klan), with help from northern racists like president Andrew Johnson, made the lives of black people and southern Unionists a living hell. In this few years of true Reconstruction, the vote and the Union army allowed black people and Unionist southern whites to hold democratic power, and begin to institute education, infrastructure improvements and democratic rights.

During Reconstruction, Knight had been an officer of the Mississippi government, as an officer of the peace and as a tax collector. He built a school for black children, but when black children were not allowed, the school mysteriously burned down. Later one of his nieces came back to Ellisville and started a school for black children, which was discovered by racists, and also burned down. He fathered many mixed children before his second ‘wife’ Rachel died. Serena eventually left him as well.

Because they could not actually win an election, the Klan and the prominent citizens of Mississippi used killings, burnings and terror to change the tide. Even U.S. Grant refused to call out troops in Vicksburg in the 1975 elections. In Vicksburg, neo-Confederate Klansman and “White Liners” killed dozens, ran the Unionist mayor out of town, and controlled the ballot box. So Grant lost the city he had so well-won in 1863. The famous Adelbert Ames, the Unionist governor of Mississippi (and probably the best governor that benighted state has ever had…) was threatened and lost the election, after making the mistake of disbanding the armed black militia. The “Black Codes’ were reintroduced, and black people faced up to 90 years without the right to vote, to own land or a business, or to an education. They had the ‘right’ to be poorly paid sharecroppers, and to be killed at will. It was slavery without the name.

Because of their history, and the failure of Reconstruction, the many members of the Knight family were shunned by local whites, and grew apart from the larger community, eventually inter-marrying. At some point the mixed family members, even the ‘white’ Newton, were declared all “Negroes” by the Mississippi census. They were known as the ‘Knight Negroes” to their deeply racist neighbors. Even some of the men Newton fought with could not stand against this tide, and shunned him too. Newton died in 1922, and in 1948, one of Newton’s nephews was put on trial for the ‘crime of miscegenation,’ as he was partly black. Since the evidence was so old, they could not convict. However, it shows you the vicious lengths the racists went in their crusade.

If there is anything this book teaches, it is that the divisions reflected in the civil war are still at the heart of the present struggle between the working class and the rich. It also teaches Knights lesson – that the only thing these people understand, ultimately, is a well-packed shotgun.

This story will soon be a film by Gary Ross, to be released in 2012.

And I bought it at Malaprop’s Books, in Asheville, North Carolina
Red Frog, 3/9/2011