The Invisible Government of "Clean" Coal

“Propaganda,” by Edward Bernays, with an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller, 1928/2005

This book, a classic 1928 primer on media manipulation, is one of the origins of Noam Chomsky’s “manufacture of consent.” This phrase was first used by Walter Lippman, who was one of Edward Bernays’ heroes. Bernays is a product of early U.S. Twentieth century positivism, an atmosphere of ostensible science, uplift, moderation, intelligence and expertise.  In this thin book, Bernays in essence sells the job of the ‘public relations counsel’ to American and even international political campaigns, the government and corporations as something as necessary as corporate legal counsel.   And nowadays, everyone has one - so he won that argument.

The term ‘propaganda’ originated long ago in an office of the Catholic Church, and until World War I, it had a relatively straightforward meaning.  However, after that war, in which deceptive government propaganda was used to entice Americans to support a horrible slaughter, the term fell into disrepute.  Remember ‘the war to end all wars’ and ‘the war for democracy’ and ’Huns’ and ’Prussian barbarism?’  Those were propaganda phrases.  Nowadays, even when using propagandistic methods, no corporation or government ever admits to it.  That was for the “Russians,” you see.  “Americans” never do that.

Mark Miller points out that Bernays own record had its ups and downs.  He finally abandoned work for tobacco companies in the 1970s when the toxic effects of tobacco were finally well known, but he also promoted the 1953 invasion of Guatemala for United Fruit, as well as selling a lot of Lucky Strikes before that. 

In theory, the question is, what predominates – appearance or material fact?  Many leftists believe that the ruling class will always be in power due to their massive propaganda apparatus, which extends through newspapers, TV, radio, magazines and into the internet.  Most Marxists, on the other hand, do not believe that illusions are permanent if material facts continue to contradict them.  Statistics show that decreasing numbers of Americans believe the government, journalists, corporations, political parties, religions or advertising tell the truth anymore.  This slow, quantitative drip can someday turn into something else, if actual, real conditions don’t change.  False consciousness, which the U.S. is swimming in, only works as a temporary palliative.  Of course, how long that period is, is up for argument. 

Bernays actually does call the secret manipulators of public opinion an ‘invisible government.’  His exact quote?  “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society.  Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”  While being homey about his examples of successful propaganda campaigns – around the use of velvet in clothing, or dramatic hats for women (he uses a lot of fashion examples), repeated references to cooking classes put forward by baking companies, soap sculpturing, art competitions, physician recommendations, piano spaces or radio programs about cars, the essential ‘plutocratic’ perspective comes through time and time again.  Bernays, again, and I quote:  “Democracy, therefore, requires a supra-governmental body of detached professionals to sift the data, think things through, and keep the national enterprise from blowing up or come crashing to a halt.”  So if you are too busy to pay attention to social reality, and like some ‘expert’ to do your thinking about finance, politics, the environment or what restaurant to eat at tonight, Bernays is your man.  After all, Johnny has a toothache.

Bernays is not a reactionary.  He approves of the strides women had made; and distains the propaganda of the Ku Klux Klan.  But then, “When the example of the leader is not at hand, and the herd has to think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images …” “Good government can be sold to a community just as any other commodity can be sold.”  Or... “Recently, the word ‘Bolshevik’ has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action.”  Worked for awhile, didn’t it?

Economically, he makes the statement that, “today, supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand.”  They don’t teach that at the University of Chicago.  He turns one of the great clichés of bourgeois economics on its head. 

The key line, I think, is his thought that, “some think ... propaganda will tend to defeat itself as its mechanism becomes obvious to the public.  My opinion is that it will not … unless the propaganda is untrue or unsocial.”  Unfortunately for Bernays, so much propaganda is just that.  The recent flood of negative presidential campaign ads unleashed in U.S. 'swing states' can be counter-productive, as what they tell the viewer is that neither candidate has anything to offer.  At some point, it is very possible that viewers will turn off the ads.

I would argue that the internet and other media are right now breaking down a unified propaganda message by the ruling class.  Opinions not allowed on the network news get a hearing on the internet.  Most people are not watching the U.S. network news anymore, unless they are in their 60s and above - witness the multiple ads for geriatric products on those shows.  The audience for the fake-liberal version of the network news NPR is also aging.  However, that is also why some corporations are attempting to create a ‘two-track’ internet, and governments censor their internet, or use it to further perfect their police state. 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / September 20, 2012

Machu Picchu Speaks Again

“An Anthology of the Writings of Jose Carlos Mariategui,” forward and translation by Harry Vanden and Marc Becker, 2011

Some non-fiction books are read to absorb facts.  Some books are read to bolster a polemic or to refine theory.  Some books are read for affirmation.  Some for background. Some even for enjoyment.  This book is one of those you read that stimulates thinking.  

This anthology is a compendium of 3 fragmentary books and many newspaper articles from the Peruvian Marxist JC Mariategui, from 1924-1930.  Mariategui was instrumental in the founding of the Peruvian workers movement and in a real, concrete and creative analysis of Peruvian society.  Mariategui in essence uses the Marxist ‘method’ to come to socialist conclusions about his country, Latin America and world politics. 

One of Mariategui’s great theoretical contributions is the incorporation of the ‘indigenistas’ – indigenous people – into the socialist project.  Peru had a population of which 4/5s were native Peruvians, descended from the Incas.  The ordinary republican liberals ignored the indigenistas, except in the sense of a vague humanitarianism, charity and social work.  Like Mao Tse-Tung and the Russian Bolsheviks, Mariategui understood that the problem of revolution could not be solved without bringing in the peasant majority.  One of his main continuators, Hugo Blanco, a Trotskyist activist who led a peasant uprising around Cuzco in the 1960s, still leads the “Federation of Campesinos of Cuzco.”  

His second great contribution was to point out that Inca society incorporated many aspects of primitive communism that still existed within the indigenista communities, and that this provided a road for a modern communist movement to appeal to the Peruvian peasantry on the land question.  His solution to the poverty and oppression of the native people and the Peruvian land problem was not social work.  It was the destruction of the feudal land-tenure system which existed in the highlands and the virtual slavery of the large capitalist farms on the coast dedicated to cotton and sugar, and their return to collective ‘Inca’ ownership.  Small individually-owned plots, according to Mariategui, are not viable - and this has been proved given the experience of the counter-revolution in Russia on agriculture (see review of "The Race for What's Left," below).  One example of the "Inca" collective work is the irrigation projects administered by the peasant communities themselves. (also similar to local collective Indian water management as mentioned by Vandana Shiva, reviewed below.) He evaluated the Peruvian capitalist class and saw they could not even complete a bourgeois revolution in land rights, but in fact ceded power to the feudal power of ‘Gamonalismo’ – large landowners who also controlled the local state apparatuses.  He makes equations between the actions of the Soviets regarding the Russian peasant collective ‘mir’ and the Inca equivalent, the ‘ayllu.’ 

His third contribution was to itemize the semi-colonial/imperial character of the Peruvian economy, in which cotton, sugar, oil and copper were privately owned, and pulled out of the country by firms from the United States and England, the profits exported, and very little left for Peru except as minimal taxes and low wages.  In essence, U.S. mining corporations had replaced the brutal Spanish conquistadors.  Because of the production of these resources by the indigenista workforce, which took them away from local production, food products had to be imported.  Additionally, the Peruvian government now had to go to the English bankers begging for loans from the Peruvian profits exported to London!

On questions of organization, he rejected premature attempts to form a ‘party’ not rooted in the masses, and advocated that all ‘classist’ labor groups be incorporated into one organization - one front.  His style was generally one of polemics against ideas, not people.  He opposed the ostensibly ‘progressive’ but actually bourgeois-nationalist APRA.  In 1928, he was finally part of a group organizing a Marxist and ‘vanguard’ Leninist ‘Socialist Party.’  However, democratic-centralism was not mentioned related to this group.

Mariategui’s education was wide-ranging, and in these selections he writes about psychology (Freud), literature (Gorky), the women question and feminism (Kollantai), ‘race,’ film (Chaplin) and art (Breton).  Here and in other writings, Mariategui shows his close acquaintance with many aspects of European philosophy, especially the French revolutionary syndicalist George Sorel.  Mariategui is notably interested in feminism, and seeks to identify it closely as part of the Peruvian struggle for liberation, and not just an odd, ‘western’ idea.  He analyses the white/ creole/ mestizo ruling and middle classes in Peru, and elsewhere in Latin America.  He describes their attitude as one of looking down on the former black slaves, the indigenistas and any other non-white nationalities like the Chinese, and hence they are more likely to sympathize with the imperialists on even this cultural level.  He opposes Pan-Americanism as a ‘cloak that hides U.S. imperialism” but supported Pan-Latin American unity against imperialism, following Jose Marti and Bolivar.  He followed the revolutions of the time in Mexico and Nicaragua, and also the U.S. military interventions in Haiti, Nicaragua & Panama. 

One section is a refutation of a ‘spiritual socialist’ attack on Marxism by Henri de Man, a Belgian, called ‘In Defense of Marxism.”  His comment on de Man’s approach denounced ‘drug-like Oriental occultism and Asian metaphysics.”  However, Mariategui was also influenced by Catholicism, and incorporated the need for ‘myth’ and ‘belief’ into his struggle for socialism, somewhat similar to the role it plays for Zizek. (see several Zizek books, reviewed below.)  Mariategui was a Leninist in the sense that he believed the working class could not passively wait for capitalism to collapse, but that it had to rise to the historical occasion.  But he adds that in essence, the voluntarism of a revolutionary is driven not just by logic or reason, but by an over-arching myth that can also transform a proletariat.  The anthology links his influence to the development of Latin American “liberation theology’ by Gustavo Gutierrez.

Mariategui’s method is to look at the actual conditions of Peru, and draw his strategy and tactics from that, not from a sterile repetition of Marxist verities.  In this, he actually follows Marx.  American Marxists - especially in the socialist organizations - would do well to follow his example.  ("Red Corner - the Marxism of Mariategui" - is another book about him.)

And I bought it at May Day Books!  xxxxx

Red Frog / September 16, 2012

Summer Reading

“The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown, 2003

Well, this is a summer read and Gramsci would be proud that we even took the time off to look at this historical murder mystery.  But it is not just a period piece or a whodunit.  It is a ‘who will find it?”  The object of desire is, of all things, the “holy” Grail.  Now, before you stop reading about such a hackneyed subject, let me explain.  This book is a bit subversive and it reached a mass audience, especially women.  

Brown’s harrowing chase between cops, innocent accused killers and the dark forces of the Catholic Church’s Opus Dei and the ‘Priory of Sion’ engender sweat-inducing escape after escape, into un-believability.  A possible love affair burbles in the heat of the chase, but goes nowhere.  Famous European sites in France, England, Scotland & Italy make their appearance.  Intricate puzzles are solved by historical knowledge, common sense and code-breaking.  But the heart of the book, to my mind, are the historical and cultural arrows shot at Christianity and the Catholic Church. 

In 2003 the Church had a somewhat more pleasant mien.  Today, the Church is led by Pope Ratzinger, elected in 2005, who headed the Church’s Office of the Inquisition, and who was also a former Nazi youth (don’t these seem to go together?).  Ratzinger has purged and continues to purge all liberal and left-wing elements in the Catholic Church, and blocked with American fundamentalist Protestants to oppose gay and women’s rights on a visceral, political basis.  He also continues to cover-up the biggest organized child abuse scandal in history. 

Brown brings to the surface the centuries-long issue of the ‘divine feminine’ principal that the Church under Peter, and under the first “Christian” Roman Emperor  Constantine attempted to extinguish – through blood and censorship.  The Gnostic verses – or gospels the official church left out of the Bible as being ‘heretical’ like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coptic Scrolls - are part of that history. They were cut out of the Bible by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, which voted on the principals of the Church, including announcing Jesus’ divinity. Brown claims the Priory of Sion is a real organization, which attempted to preserve an alternative story to the official line of the Church.  Dove-tailing a bit with a key part of Brown’s book is James Cameron’s “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” presented on the Discovery Channel.  It claimed, through linguistic, biblical, forensic, archeological, historical and scientific means, that ossuaries filled with bones found in a family crypt below a Jerusalem apartment block contained the bone remnants of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, a brother … and a son.  And the DNA in the bones of the young man matched those of both Jesus and Mary. To my mind, this is a better explanation than the Bible, though of course its been contested.

Brown litters his book with the cultural artifacts of the battle between Church orthodoxy and a perhaps more profound truth.  The real issue is the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth – was he human or divine? 

Brown’s fictional interpretation is that the Priory of Sion – peopled by Leonardo Da Vinci, Bottincelli, Victor Hugo and Issac Newton  – were busy protecting an actual ‘Grail” from the Church.  The Priory was connected to the Knights Templar and the Masons.  The Grail in this version is not a ‘drinking chalice’ but actual proof that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, and they had a child.  The "Grail" is a woman, in essence.  And furthermore, that child went on to have bloodlines in France, the Merovingians.  Most people think the Priory is a hoax, used by a Merovingian dynasty to gain power.  But that, to me, is not the relevant issue. 

The real issue is the more materialist background to this story.  Brown describes a wonderful collection of historical details that escape most of us.  “Friday the 13^th” is supposedly named after a Friday the 13^th in which a Catholic Pope attempted to kill off the Knights Templar in one fell swoop.  The devil has horns because the goat was a pagan symbol of fecundity, and so the Church turned it into its opposite.  The person sitting to Jesus’s left in the “Last Supper” is a woman – not a man.  Her long red hair and clothing with matching colors to Jesus’ own mark her as Mary Magdalene – who was not a prostitute, but a high-born Jewish woman.   Note that Peter is putting his hand across her neck like … he’s going to cut her head off. Brown wants to show that DaVinci really understood what the Grail was.  Some of the Gnostic verses attribute a very close relationship between Magdalene and Jesus – even intimating she could become the new head of the “Christian” movement.  The cross – and the word ‘crucifix – come from Hebrew words meaning torture.  Think about that next time you put one around your neck.  Mithras, a pre-Christian god, was born on December 25 – which is also the birthday of Osiris, Adonis and Dionysius.  The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Sunday is the Christian ‘holy’ day because the pagan god’s holy day was ‘Sun” day too.  Even Eve’s ‘apple’ is a fantasy.  There were no apples in the Middle East.  However, there were pomegranates, a large, red fruit.  The book is chock full of this kind of thing.

At the end of the book, Brown cannot finally ‘pull the trigger’ on the Catholic Church by releasing the evidence of the real “Grail” – I think out of timidity.  He even makes one of the ostensible ‘good guys’ become the prime evildoer, just to hedge his bets.  If he had done so, the book would have ended in a period of future science fiction – as no one to date has produced more documentation than has already been released.  And that might have been a stylistic problem as a writer.

The "DaVinci Code" film was a somewhat cowardly and dull remake of the book.  Tom Hanks plays a professor who doesn't believe some of the 'divine feminine' stuff he has just written a book about (!). He argues with one character in the key scene in the book about the 'Grail" theory.  This argument is not in the book, nor are other parts of the film, which eventually goes on to portray a 'counter-mythology' that actually goes beyond the book.

However, the impact that Brown’s book itself had was to further undermine idealist Christian mythology before a mass audience – partly through introducing a new myth, but partly through a more historical version of Christianity and the fabrications of the Bible.  Due to fundamentalist religion’s hostility to women’s issues – and certainly the Catholic Church is a proud reminder of that – a book putting a woman at the center of Christian history, which just by accident restores sex to a place of honor, not repulsion, and finally gives a factual, scientific interpretation to Christian history over an idealist fantasy – seems a bit subversive, don’t you think?

P.S. - In the 9/18/2012 Huffington Post, Michael D'Antonio, a religion writers, cites a new document that has just been analyzed by scientists and others.  The ancient Coptic document includes the phrase, "'Jesus said to them, my wife...' using a term that undoubtedly references a woman who was his spouse and not some metaphorical partner." Of course, this is not news, except perhaps to D'Antonio.  But D'Antonio's conclusions are very perceptive about what this would mean for the Christian faith and the Catholic Church.  I.E. the ideological patriarchy of the Church and Christianity would collapse.

And I got it from a co-worker…

Red Frog

September 10, 2012

On Sale While Supplies Last

“The Race for What’s Left – the Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources,” by Michael T Klare, 2012

Klare is a well-known authority on oil depletion, attempting to replace conventional pro-corporate oil historians like Daniel Yergin, author of “The Prize.”  This book extends the analysis of peak oil to other resources - including minerals and food – or ‘peak soil,” but fails to include water.  (See reviews of “Blue Covenant,” on water and "The Party's Over" on peak oil, below) In a sense, every single mile of the earth is up for bulldozing or drilling.  Locally, rumor has it that the site of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in Shakopee has been bid on to provide sand for fracking.  Permits have just been approved by our “Democratic” governor in Minnesota to dig up parts of the Mesabi Range looking for that tiny half-a-percent of useful nickel and other metal in the ore, which will leave behind lakes of sulfuric sludge.  Klare is also someone who is cognizant of global warming, which brackets this discussion. 

Klare, however, is not an eco-socialist, hence cannot identify the struggle for profits under capitalism as a key culprit.  His view is that it is ‘bad’ industrialism, a ‘bad’ industrialism absent any social content, as an abstract ‘fact,’ a supra-class entity, a product perhaps of just ‘bad’ thinking.  Like most people immersed in neo-liberal economic thinking, he is leery of government control of oil exploration and recovery, as if private versions, while also suspect, are merely equivalent.  In the final page he advocates ‘a complete transformation of industrial society, with all finite resources systematically replaced by renewable alternatives.”   What this might mean on a social level is left to the imagination.  But it seems to means replacing ‘black’ capitalism by a ‘green’ capitalism.  If it doesn’t happen, he predicts widespread war, starvation and environmental catastrophes.

In the process Klare’s analysis shatters the notion that we are living in a ‘post-industrial society’ dominated by paper-shufflers and ‘service providers.’ That fantasy is shown to be the lie that it always was, a lie designed to hide the blue-collar working class and the very material roots of society.  One of his key observations is that one of the ‘feedback loops’ of the melting Arctic is that the melt increases the possibility of deep water oil and gas production in the Arctic, which will then result in more melting.  And on and on. The extractive humans are one of the feedback loops. 

Klare’s book is for the most part a factual history of the last attempts to wring the earth of its remaining wealth.  The first section concentrates on common energy sources.  It locates every single project across the globe seeking oil and gas out of any source; seeking minerals of every kind from copper to lithium, and attempting to buy cheap, arable land to grow food.  He points out that energy is what runs industrialism, and oil and natural gas are past peak in all of the major fields of the world.  The only remaining significant sources for regular oil and natural gas are in deep offshore areas – the Gulf of Mexico, off Brazil, Africa, in Asian seas and in the Arctic Ocean. These areas are beset by political and environmental problems that make them somewhat less easy to exploit than sinking a pipe in a Texas prairie or a Saudi sand dune.   The Deepwater Horizon disaster was only the latest example of what oil drilling in deep water can do.  Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 113 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and damaged another 32.  A huge storm off Newfoundland in 1981 sank the massive 15,000 ton ‘Ocean Ranger’ oil platform, drowning 62 workers.  Ownership of various ocean areas in the Arctic, off China and even in the Falklands are claimed by a number of nations who refuse to compromise on boundary lines, which could result in more resource wars.  However, in one typical omission, Klare never mentions the Iraq wars once.

Klare then studies every replacement technology for ‘easy’ oil & natural gas – tar sands, shale gas, extra-heavy oil, oil shale, coal-bed methane gas, coal oil – you name it.  These technologies are popular across the political spectrum.  The Harper government has pulled Canada out of the Kyoto Treaty because of the Athabasca tar sands projects in northern Alberta.  The Obama administration lauded shale gas in 2010, in spite of the dangers to water and soil through fracking.  The Obama administration reopened off-shore drilling in the Gulf, but also off Florida and in the Arctic, both advocated by Republicans.  (Drill, baby, drill.) Venezuela is also investigating the exploitation of its ‘heavy oil’ deposits in the Carabobo area, hoping to get 60% of the profits.  Chinese companies are buying into these technologies all over the world, including the Alberta tar sands. (See review of “Tar Sands – Dirty Oil & the Future of a Continent,” reviewed below.)

Thirdly, regarding minerals, Klare’s story takes you to various formerly invisible parts of the globe, mostly in Africa, where rare and heavy metals used in high-tech, large deposits of copper, bauxite (for aluminum), uranium and iron ore are hidden underground.  The most surprising is Afghanistan.  It is not oil Afghanistan has, but vast deposits of minerals – ‘the world’s largest deposit of copper;’ ‘the largest unexploited iron ore deposit in Asia;” and ‘promising deposits of bauxite, gold, lead, tungsten and zinc, niobium, lithium and other rare earths.”  Klare estimates the minerals to be worth more than $1 trillion.  Now you know why we have occupied this country for 11 years. 

Greenland, Mongolia, Niger, Gabon, the Congo, Guinea, Kazakhstan and Bolivia are all sites of new mining endeavors for minerals, especially rare earths – those used for military, airplane and high tech gadgets, along with the batteries in Toyota Priuses. Here, Klare gets cranky about Bolivia’s Evo Morales, instead quoting corporate opponents of Morales.  Morales wants to not only exploit the lithium-rich brine under the massive Salar de Uyuni salt flat, but also build a facility to make lithium batteries and perhaps even electric cars.  While Klare moans about the ‘resource curse,’ when a country wants to do something about it by not being just a raw materials exporter, he blanches.   The most notorious source of rare earths are the ‘conflict metals’ mined by hand coming out of the Kivu regions in eastern Republic of the Congo, where militias have turned the local populations into virtual slaves so that more throw-away cell phones can be manufactured. 

Last but not least is food, and the land to grow it.  Saudi Arabia and other Gulf emirates were the first to realize they could not rely on the ‘market’ to provide all the food their growing populations need.  As a result, they have bought large tracts in Ethiopia and Sudan to grow rice, vegetables and raise cattle.  Both countries land is for sale to the highest bidder – even at the expense of the nomadic peoples who live there.  The Chinese have now begun to buy vast tracts of various African countries, and many African farmers are being displaced by these projects.    Even India is joining in. It shouldn’t be hard to imagine what will happen in Africa when Africans are dying of hunger, while food in privately-owned massive protected plots is being shipped to Ridyah.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  

Oddly enough, some of the best and deepest black organic soil and also cheapest land in the world, which fell into decay after the 10- year economic collapse starting in 1990, is in Russia and the Ukraine.  Once the large collectives were abandoned, and the land parceled off into tiny 10-acre plots to the farm workers, these plots could not be maintained due to their small sizes, and the land was abandoned.  Now large-scale capitalist agriculture is coming to take their place. And I don't doubt the Russians will be as dubious as the Africans about having their food flown to India or China or the U.S.

In the way this book is written it sometimes actually makes you admire the heroes of capitalist avarice for their technological and financial derring-do, their foresight, their adventurous spirit, in going to the ends of the earth to wring ever last bit of market value out of the old girl.  And indeed, humans are quite amazing sometimes.  After all, a Russian diving sub put a Russian flag at the bottom of the sea below the North Pole.  Beat that.

Klare has many gaps in this book, and they weaken his argument.  Recycling is never mentioned, except obliquely.  It stands to reason that if, for instance, iron ore is in short supply, the existing steel and iron in the world becomes minable.  Indeed, steel recycling is a big business, even in the States.  He brings up the issue of the rare metals in catalytic converters.  If this is true, would not every car, and every catalytic converter, become a ‘minable’ object?  People have been known to steal them off regular cars for the money.  Klare, in his discussion of food and soil, doesn’t mention the shortage of phosphates, which are essential to non-organic, mass-produced fertilizer.  Phosphorus is predicted to run out in 50 years.  There have also been problems with shortages of cement – which is made out of limestone, clay & gypsum – due to the massive building projects all over the world.  Gypsum is not a common compound.  Nor does Klare mention capitalist commodity speculators in his discussion of high commodity prices in the last few years.  Some estimates of the gasoline price run-ups allocate 30% of the hike to speculation, if not more.  Essential commodities should not be subject to market forces – in fact, 70-85% of commodities trading is not done for any other purpose than speculation. 

Lastly, it is not just the environment or ‘indigenous peoples’ or polar bears that are endangered by these practices.  The workers who have to dig up the soil in polluted pits or dangerous underground mines, exist in frozen, brutal conditions on cold and dangerous drilling platforms, or slave away under the sun wading in water to grow rice for Saudi billionaires are also a target of ‘peak commodities.’  They, in essence, will be the ones to decide who actually benefits from these techniques – the world citizen, or the world billionaire. 

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

Red Frog, September 6, 2012

Black Helicopters Make Us Safe

-->

Black Helicopters

Standing outside Mayday Books last week, one of the permanent volunteers noticed an eerie but familiar sight.  He saw helicopters flying over downtown Minneapolis, buzzing low over the West Bank, with soldiers hanging out the windows and doors in full combat gear.  These were both Black Hawk’s and small Huey’s of some kind.  They looked black against the blue sky.  The Star-Tribune, in a late article, reported that these were military maneuvers being done in various cities in the U.S. by U.S. Special Operations Command, in collaboration with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police.  They landed on the Federal Reserve building and buzzed the 5^th Street Towers and the Stone Arch Bridge.  After scaring residents of the city, the SOC finally announced that ‘there was nothing to worry about.’  War games, as they call them.  Activities like this are being combined with unannounced military/police ‘war game’ attacks late at night in Florida and fully-armed troops patrolling neighborhoods in St. Louis and Wisconsin.  Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles have also ‘hosted’ the black helicopters. 

All of this is possible preparation for martial law or urban combat.  There is no other reason for this kind of ‘training.’ 

NPR Completes Editorial Assassination

Early this morning NPR had a story about the attempted assassination of the new Parti Quebecois premier of Quebec by a fascist, who killed two other people.  The host, after insinuating that the Parti Quebecois was some kind of an extremist bunch, then asked his reporter what happened. After a very short description of the attack, the reporter went into a very negative description of the Parti Quebecois, alleging it was going to bring the Pope back to Quebec, separate immediately and raise chickens in the streets.   There was no background – nothing about how the Liberal Party had dug its own grave by raising tuition and outlawing public gatherings in Montreal.  Nothing about the actual nature of the Parti Quebecois as a traditional European social-democratic party.  It was almost as if the news – a fascist shooting – was not so important as ‘perhaps this guy had a point.’ NPR is a neo-liberal news outlet which can only do a reliable job of cultural programming.  The rest of its ‘rep’ – news without the spin – is a complete lie.  It can be a full-time hobby to sit down with almost any NPR news item and dissect it's bias, usually in a right-wing direction.  But that would be a sad hobby indeed.  I prefer to just turn it off.

Yes, those evil Frenchies in Quebec.  I’m going to stop eating French fries - again.

Rahm Emanuel Sent Back to Chicago

The Democratic Party sent Emanuel back to Chicago so he wouldn’t get in the way of any cameras in Charlotte.  After all, he has a possible massive teachers’ strike to contend with.  Emanuel, Obama and Arnie Duncan have all enabled the destruction of the public school system through the new version of ‘vouchers’ – charter schools - and neo-liberal attacks on teachers, seniority and pay.   Can you tell the difference between the Democratic plan to privatize the American school system and the Republican one?  Probably only at the rate each will be applied.  Of course, don’t tell that to the leadership of the national teachers unions.

Support the Chicago Teachers and send Rahm back to Charlotte - permanently.

P.S. - 25,000 Chicago teachers and other school workers finally went on strike Monday.  This event, like the Wisconsin occupation of the Capitol, like Occupy all over the U.S., is round 3 in the most recent fight between the ruling class and the working class in the U.S.  And it is only fitting that the arrogant neo-Liberal Emanuel is the focus of the teacher's ire.  This is a strike with national implications - and national repercussions.  Romney came out to back Emanuel up. The whole country can now see that when it comes to education or unions or teachers - both Parties stand against them, and for privatization.  Victory to the strike.

Red Frog, September 5, 2012

The Terrorism Spectacle

“Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,” by Deepa Kumar, 2012

Kumar is an associate professor at Rutgers, who writes from a mostly leftist point of view.  She carefully traces the history of Western fears of the Islamic religion, from the Crusades to today, both outside and finally inside the U.S., and how this has been used as a political tool to justify war, oppression and occupation.

This books tracks like you might expect.  Most of it is not news to any leftist who has followed the situation, from the over-the-top response to 9/11, the illegitimate wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the various U.S. mosque controversies, the ginned-up arrests of domestic ‘terrorists’ and now the fascist killings of Sikhs.  Remember, after 9/11, 90% of the population stood behind George Bush.  That includes a whole lot of Democrats.  Democrats say they oppose Republicans, but when it counts, they support them in office at the numerous times of ‘national crisis,’ invite them into the cabinet, let them run economic policy and let them set the military agenda too.  Kumar would agree with the points made in “Democrats – a Critical Study,” (reviewed below) – the differences between Democratic ‘realists’ and Republican neo-cons is one of tactics, not strategy.  Both parties agree on the main view, which is to militarily and economically dominate the world, especially the Middle-East. 

Kumar draws a line directly from Islamophobia – anti-near or middle Eastern racism - to support for imperial actions in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to reinforcement of the security state here at home.  In this, Islamophobia, of the crude or suave kind, of obvious Republican kinds, or subtle Democratic kinds, is key.  She contends that the extreme Islamophobes are part of the think tanks, political parties, security apparatuses, corporate funders and media of the United States,and are not some fringe element.  They consistently connect with mainstream and liberal figures, just as Joe McCarthy came after FDR’s Smith Act.

The main problem in the book is that it is written mainly as a local, politically-correct ethnic criticism, and not as a class or materialist criticism.  What I mean by this is that it slides over the very real dangers that ‘political Islam” (her term) pose to leftists and workers movements in Iran, in Algeria, in Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and other places.  For instance, the slaughter of the left in Afghanistan and Iran was carried out by the forces of political Islam, and killed far more people than died on 9/11.  It also slides over the economic roots of the types of fundamentalist religion in certain countries, like Saudi Arabia’s Wahabbism.  In other words, what can a nation based initially on raising dates, herding camels and trade, and then the late discovery of oil, have as a culture - or have as a domestic working class movement?  Wahabbism is actually a spear aimed at the heart of any movement to take back the oil fields from the sheiks – a movement that would have to grow out of foreign workers nowadays. 

On the issue of the Enlightenment, Voltaire and atheism – it is not Islamophobic to make jokes about or criticize the Koran, mullahs, Sharia or hijabs as religious topics.  If we can make fun of the Bible or the story of Siddhartha or Mitt’s magic underwear then it stands to reason that other religions are not immune.  This should not be equated with invading or occupying countries, seeking to put Muslims in jail, burning a mosque or planning a drone strike.

Her American localism compels Kumar to equate the ‘red’ scare with the present ‘green” scare. This is somewhat irritating.  The American red scare was against the USSR, China, the Communist Party, other leftists and especially advanced unionists in the U.S.  The green scare is not against a political ideology or a class, but a national/ethnic group of people based on religion.  While the two ‘scares’ might serve the same purpose, the content of the two is different.  Nor are people from the Middle East all ‘Muslims,’ because that plays into the identification of a religion, Islam, with an ethnic group, a tactic even Kumar decries. Nor are all Muslims even Arabs.  There should be no combination of religion and ethnicity.  It is like calling all Americans ‘Christians,” or refusing to make fun of Catholicism because Latino immigrants are ostensible Catholics. 

I am going to bullet-point some of her more interesting points. 

1. The Catholic “Christian” Church was far more intolerant and reactionary than Muslim mosques.  Crusaders ransacked whole cities like Constantinople and Jerusalem, butchered civilian populations, killed Jews and even some Christians they didn’t like.  English hero Richard the Lionheart beheaded thousands of captive Muslim soldiers after a battle, for instance.  (See review of “Dark Side of Christian History,” below.) On the other hand, Muslim societies allowed Jewish temples and Christian churches to exist, as long as they paid taxes.  Some so-called heretics even escaped from the European Inquisition to live in Arab and majority-Muslim lands. (The latter is her term, I think a useful one.)  The City of Cordoba in Spain, under Muslim Arab occupation, became a site of higher learning that existed in spite of the dark ages brought by Catholic Christianity over the rest of Europe. 

2. Kumar insists that the Muslim faith had a ‘reformation,' which did not involve wars like the Catholic/Protestant wars.  As a result, there was always a division between the bazaar and the Imams, the Caliph and the Sultan, between the armed forces and the cultural/religious forces.  Her proof for this, however, seems scant, although indeed, I don’t think an equivalent to the 100 years war can be located.  Recent fighting in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq between Shia and Sunni reflects economic and political forces primarily – but without the religious dimension, they would not be so successful.  It is as if the Irish inter-Christian conflict of the past had been imported to the Middle East on a giant scale. If she were right, there would not be so many attempts at Muslim 'theocracy' or Shia/Sunni fights in the present world.  As the most glaring example, the new "Constitution' of Egypt proposed by Muslim Brotherhood delegates enshrines Islam and Sharia law.  Theocracy, theocracy.  Secular representatives are opposing this proposed Constitution of course.  Will Kumar?

3. Muhammad was a merchant, and Islam was his way of uniting the tribes of the desert economically.  Merchants are supposedly held in high esteem in Islam. Curious, that, and perhaps a route of inquiry.

4. Kumar quite rightly places the recent rise of ‘political Islam’ in the context of a rise in all political fundamentalisms – Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist.  She does not really explain why religion in general is now resorting to violence, intolerance, conservatism or political organizing, except to cite the failure of nationalist, socialist and neo-liberal projects in many nations.  There might be other causes – perhaps orthodox religions are fighting for their ideological/political/cultural lives.

5. She highlights the excruciating failures of the Middle-Eastern Communist Parties, which supported every twist and turn of Soviet policy.  One day they supported the establishment of the State of Israel, and the next, supported war on Israel.  One day they endorsed opposition to bourgeois nationalists, and the next day, uncritical and unending support for bourgeois nationalist/state capitalist forces like the Baath Party.  The rise of Hamas among Palestinians and the fall of the PFLP and the DFLP can also be traced to the lumpenization and precarious nature of the Palestinian population over time, weakening its working-class component.

6. Kumar tracks the 30 years of clear support that the U.S. and Britain gave to Islamists, from FDR in 1945 to Carter and Reagan in 1980s, to Clinton in Bosnia in the 1990s.  The first break in this alliance was the victory of Khomeini in Iran, which led to the concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ political Islamists among the American political establishment.  Prior to this, the Muslim Brotherhood and others were seen as political counter-weights to Nasser, Mossedegh and the various Communist parties.  There is even evidence that Israel politically supported and funded the Muslim Brotherhood as a counter-weight to the PLO.  And of course, who can forget Carter and then Reagan, along with the CIA, taking Osama Bin Laden into their financial and political arms in Afghanistan, and helping create the international jihadist movement. 

7. Israel’s Likud supporters in the U.S. are at the heart of many Islamophobic organizations.  (see review of “The Holocaust Industry,” below)

8. Kumar ignores the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the local Communist Karmal government there.  This is part of her glossing over what ‘political Islam’ means to the world’s workers. Many members of the Afghan Communist Party were teachers, who tried to teach girls.  They are all dead now.

9. Kumar singles out a fellow named Bernard Lewis, a prominent Princeton professor and neo-conservative, for the recent development of the ideology of ‘Orientalism’ – the ostensible ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis upon which the Islamophobes base their politics.

10. On the issue of sexism, Kumar makes a point that every religion in the world is sexist.  True. However, fundamentalist political Islamists are seen across the world executing adulteresses, sometimes supporting female genital mutilation, beheading people having parties and dancing (something that happened this week in Afghanistan), tolerating acid thrown in the face of divorcing wives, not allowing women to drive, female social separation, honor killings, forcing women to wear hijabs, etc.  In India, political Hinduism endorses female infanticide, shunning of divorced women and honor killings too, but the list seems not quite so long.  So while imperialism uses this issue to back up imperialist intervention (and bourgeois feminists happily get on the bandwagon, as they did over the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan or Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan, and Obama’s continuation of it), it is still a real issue that the working class would have to deal with severely.  Even our own Christian fundamentalists rarely go to these lengths. In other words, to put it blandly, the severity of female persecution under some forms of politicized religious fundamentalism varies.

11.  One of her contributions to a materialist analysis of political Islam is highlighting the role of the Saudi-based “Islamic Banking” system, which allowed funds to be spread to political Islamists throughout the Middle-East.  Western banks – Citibank, Chase, Price Waterhouse, Goldman - enthusiastically cooperated with them

12. Kumar has a nice directory of the members of the right-wing ‘hate Muslims’ clique in the upper reaches of bourgeois political society – think tanks, media, the government, the political parties, academe. 

13. She details the times when military defense of ‘political Islamic’ forces are necessary – the invasion of a country like Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan or Gaza for instance.  But she does not believe that should extend to romantic or full political support of these movements, cheer leading best done by some left organizations in the U.S.

14. Kumar makes the excellent point that neo-conservatives and neo-liberals want to destabilize their opponents – they do not really want to ‘nation-build.”  This is exactly the experience in Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and now Syria. This fits well with Naomi Klein’s analysis of the ‘Shock Doctrine.’ (reviewed below.)  Leaving a society in a shambles is the real goal.  Claims of liberating females, protecting civilians, democracy, stability, etc. are merely window-dressing for propaganda purposes. Kumar points out that Clinton, Carter and Obama’s ‘humanitarian imperialism’ is just one tactic, along with the Bush’s strategy of unilateralist imperialism, to achieve a greater aim -  control of oil, control of waterways, control of economic inputs, social classes, resources, military superiority, etc.

15. 50% of all Muslims in the U.S. have been affected by police investigations into members of their families.  Kumar describes security services like the FBI, CIA and DHS as being motivated by an ‘every Muslim is a potential terrorist’ approach.  This has resulted in Minneapolis Somalis being forbidden from wiring money home to their families in Somalia.  It has also led to indictments of local Somalis for recruiting young men to fight with Al-Shabbab in Somalia against the American-supported Ethiopian Army, which occupies part of Somalia. 

Kumar cites the successful mobilizations against the burning of the Koran in Florida, against the opposition to the Muslim center in Manhattan, the activities of some anti-war groups and coalitions, the efforts of OWS, and the protests over the NYPD’s racial profiling efforts as the answer to Islamophobia, not the Democratic Party.  She cites the disillusionment with Obama’s policies among Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans and middle-easterners.  She also cites Minnesota representative Keith Ellison (first Muslim in Congress) for standing up to ‘Islamophobia.”  She would be interested to see a video of Ellison refusing to condemn the shelling and invasion of Gaza by Israel, so as to stay in tune with his fellow Democrats. On the other hand, she would have been heartened to see earlier this spring, in the streets of Minneapolis for the first time, the uniting of a Somali protest against Wells Fargo over their wire policy with a protest by Occupy Minneapolis against that same bank for foreclosures. 

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog

August 29, 2012

Not the First Draft of the Port Huron Statement

“Boarded Windows,” by Dylan Hicks, 2012

I don’t usually review non-political books.  They are most of the time self-indulgent or inward – two characteristics this country is already awash in.  And this book is both.  However, this author is also a local musician and writer, talks about Minneapolis and the Midwest, and he’s immersed in popular music.  In addition, he can write well, on some phrase occasions. 

Boarded windows close the narrator’s years-long association with two women who had figured prominently in his young life during the 1970s and 1990s.  The narrator is an ostensible orphan, either sold to his foster-mother by a living mother who ‘wanted her weekends back’ or inherited from a drug-addled dead mother.  The focus of the book is Wade, a handsome native-American - musical, drug-dealing, opinionated, aesthetic - who might or might not be the narrator’s father.  Wade tells stories, seduces every woman in sight, bullshits genius, and drifts away to be a country DJ in Berlin.  Wade and the narrator trade high/low cultures references like two totally unreal people – but you will assuredly be impressed. 

Don’t we love orphans?  Or bullshitters?  Perhaps not.  What gives this book its charm is the saturation with which music inhabits the spaces of every day and every conversation.   Real and imagined musicians, old records, playing in bands, instruments, music gear, sing-a-longs, car tapes, remembered concerts, significant LP purchases, liner notes and used record scrawls, band vans, record collectors, music style showdowns, working in records stores, studios, bad poetry, good poetry, critics, conversations, vinyl clutter – its all here.  Hicks is a musician, after all, and this has formed the ground of his life, and of many in Minneapolis. 

Sex, masturbatory and consensual, is also a sub-text, and Hicks isn’t afraid of it.  It becomes part of the scenery, not the scene itself.

What gives this book its reality is that it reminds me of the low-key, poor, relaxed life many led in the 1970s in Minneapolis.  Money was invisible.  Shitty jobs were the norm.  Shabbiness was genteel.  Sex was there.  Living quarters were what you got. Music got you high.  Cars rusted.  Snow fell.  Not everything worked or was expected to work.  And we didn’t die from it all.

I am not quite sure that is the truth anymore.

And I bought it from May Day’s growing music book selection!

Red Frog, August 25, 2012

The Donkey In the Room

“The Democrats – A Critical History," by Lance Selfa, updated fall 2011 

There is really only one major political question in the United States.  It is not ‘peace’ or ‘union rights’ or ‘economic polarization’ or ‘health care’ or ‘unemployment’ or 'the environment' or the right to smoke marijuana.    Every single one of these issues, and every other, flows back through the contradiction of the Democratic Party and its role in being the graveyard of progressives and progressivism. 

Without solving this question, ultimately, all other questions will not be resolved either, except almost always in a bad way.  This issue is the real Gordian knot – a knot that literally cannot be untied, only severed. 

Selfa is a socialist activist who traces the history of the Democratic Party’s role in American history since before the Civil War.  Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, LBJ, Carter, Clinton and Obama are put under the microscope, and the few progressive things they were forced to accomplish are embedded in their overall role as representatives of the rich.  As the ‘second most enthusiastic capitalist party’ he shows how the Democrat’s claim to represent the working class or blacks or Latinos or women, etc. cannot be fulfilled, as they have been dominated by capitalists since their inception.  Essentially, deception is integral to their existence as the party assigned to take over when the Republicans grandly fuck-up, or as the party designated to co-op or buy off progressives and weaken mass struggles against the system.  The Democrats trade costless 'culture war' politics with their base for an unspoken agreement not to touch the true sources of capitalist power - the military, Wall Street and the police state.  As traced by Selfa, Republican and Democratic administrations flow into each other quite well.  The genius of American capitalism is that, instead of having one party representing capitalist interests, it has two! And then they call it a 'democracy.'

Selfa is somewhat sketchy on the economic forces that have owned the Democrats since the beginning, as it is not his focus.  He specifically points out minority or even majority factions of the capitalist class that back the Democrats when it is in their interest – the last being the support given to Obama in 2008 after Bush’s disastrous 8 years, lead by the FIRE sector. He does not mention the Kennedy assassinations or the CP's decades-long support for a 'popular-front' block with the Democratic Party either.

In this book, of particular interest  is how the labor leaders’ alliance with the Democratic Party in the late 1940s necessarily involved craven subservience to their racist Dixiecrat wing.  In the 1940s this derailed the labor movement’s attempt to organize the South at a time when labor was quite strong.  The working class has paid for this historic and racist blunder with years of plant closings in the north, and low wages and poor health in the south.  Now the ‘southern plan’ is coming to a northern state near you.

Just to focus on one president, Jimmy Carter is known through corporate propaganda as a hammer-pounder for Habit For Humanity and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for the Camp David accords – when he’s not wearing sweaters or admitting he thinks about sex with women other than his wife.  Selfa takes Carter apart, piece by piece, showing him to be the forerunner to both Clinton and Reagan.  Essentially the 1970s recessions, gas shortages and labor strikes impressed upon capital the need for a new way of doing things.  This gave rise to the ‘New Democrats.”  According to Selfa, Carter was backed by Atlanta-based Coca-Cola and ‘free traders in the Trilateral Commission.”

Carter, among his reactionary accomplishments, initiated the “Carter Doctrine,” which declared the Mideast to be vital to American interest, thus allowing for the projection of U.S. military power into the region.  The Camp David accords were actually an aid to Israeli expansionism, by removing the need for a war by the Israeli state on two fronts, and was understood as such.  Carter reduced domestic spending for the first time in many years; signed the Hyde Amendment; proposed a tax plan that cut taxes for the wealthy, while boosting social security taxes; bailed out Chrysler by making the UAW take massive concessions and called out the Army in invoking Taft-Hartley regarding the 1977-1978 UMW coal miners strike.  Carter increased the military budget, re-instituted the draft, created the ‘Rapid Deployment Force’ and boycotted the Moscow Olympics over the Soviet move into Afghanistan - after secret and extensive U.S. funding of the Afghan mujahedeen and Taliban.  Carter, incidentally, was also the first aggressively ‘Christian’ President in many years, another nod to the regressive traditions of the South.

All of these actions continue to haunt us today.

Selfa examines recent efforts to move the Democrats ‘to the left’ from the inside of the Party.   He also addresses the rationalizations people use to actively support Democrats, in spite of their dreadful history.  This history every generation somehow has to learn and experience – again and again, as if a part of the American population had collective amnesia.  Selfa covers the history of Michael Harrington and the Democratic Socialists of America, (“DSA”) and their failed attempt to work within the Party.  DSA called the Democrats the ‘left-wing of the possible,’ - and now, in a choice quote from DSA,"...there now is no 'possible' to be a left-wing of."  Selfa also covers more recent groups like “The Progressive Democrats of America” (“PDA”) which evolved from a post 2004 fusion of  Kucinich/ Dean/ Sharpton Democratic activists and DSA.  All of whom went on to support the Kerry campaign, which opposed every idea they had.  Both William Winpisinger, former head of the old IAM, and John Sweeney, former head of the AFL-CIO, were members of DSA.  The “Progressive Caucus” of the Democratic Party, involving people like Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers, also are a part of the fake left within that organization. The Progressive Caucus, for instance, all voted for the formation of the Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission, organized to come up with ways to 'cut the budget,' Social Security, Medicare and enforce austerity. 

Essentially the Democratic Party is not a membership organization, and, as such, cannot be changed democratically. It has no meetings, no members, no voting by the grass-roots. Without overthrowing the permanent funders and party bureaucrats who dominate it, the Party has proved impossible to change.  PDA’s job is to ‘keep the hope alive’ that the Democratic Party will ever be anything but a more effective evil. (Phrase courtesy of Glen Ford.)

In my eyes, the lesser evil is a transmission belt for the greater evil.  It’s like in wrestling - we are fighting a tag team that should be called “Hard Cop, Soft Cop."  You know, one cop has a crew-cut, bulging biceps and a cruel look on his face, while the other cop's hair is longer, he's polite, wears a tie and smiles occasionally.  Elections should not consist of placing these two cops in either corner and watching them fight from the sidelines while cheering one or the other. The Democrats are actually the true enablers of the Republicans, not their opponents.  They are a tag team.  The 'fight' is a staged show for the voting cattle of both parties, prepared for us by the entertainment news media - as real as the wrestling it is modeled after.

Every single time independent political action has become a mass force in American politics, the Democratic Party stepped in to destroy it.  You can go back to the Populists at the end of the 19^th Century, who made the mistake of fusing with the Democrats, thus destroying their organization.  Or the labor leaders who sold out the move for an independent labor party in the 1930s to become Democratic Party boosters.  The sad demise of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party’ through its 1944 fusion with the Democrats is also a funereal memory.  The support for Truman’s lying pledge to ‘oppose Taft Hartley’ led the majority of unions to back Truman instead of Henry Wallace in 1948.  Then Truman used Taft-Hartley 12 times against the unions.  The sad campaigns of Jesse Jackson in the 80s were the last time anyone had a hope that a 'mass movement' of some kind would be able to affect that Party. What did the Rainbow Coalition win from the Democrats?  A few staff positions in the party and government.  

In the 1990s, though not mentioned by Selfa, Labor Party affiliates like the UMW, ILGWU and other national, regional and local unions were threatened by John Sweeney (a DSAer, of course) that if they actually ran independent labor candidates, they would be thrown out of the AFL-CIO.  Recently, in response to the Green Party’s success in the 2000 election, the PDA helped create a fusionist wing in the Green Party which virtually destroyed that organization. Of course, the Obama election enthralled millions - and left not one bit of progressive organizational residue.

Locally ex-Maoist and newspaper owner Ed Felien was elected back in the 1980s as a city council member from the “Farmer-Labor Association,” an organization within the Democrats attempting to move it to the left.  He was set up and destroyed quite handily, and yet still cheers for Democrats like millionaire Mark Dayton on a regular basis, and has recently proposed another episode of 'deep entry' into the Democrats.  Now Green Party member Cam Gordon, according to some other Greens, has made a deal with the Democrats, and they have left him secure in his seat in the 2^nd Ward.  This is after other Minneapolis Greens lost to Democratic gerrymandering and criminal set-ups similar to what happened to Felien. 

Selfa understands the web of organizations that promote the Democratic Party – NOW, NARAL, many ‘Big Green’ groups, AFL-CIO funding committees, Move-On, the Communist Party, DSA/PDA etc. – will sacrifice their own goals to maintain an alliance with the Democrats.  Even ACORN met its demise in this manner.  This is their road to ‘power’ – truly an addictive choice.   They face an actual choice – real progress or continuing subservience to capital through the Democrats - and they make the wrong choice almost every day.  Selfa points out that it is only through mass struggle (not just wine brunch ‘pressure’) that the Democrats came up with the New Deal or the Great Society.  This is no chicken and egg question. The on-going failure of the American left is the inability to go beyond independent militant struggle to independent militant politics.  Political and economic independence are key – not fealty to the Democratic Party.  A political price for betrayal must be extracted.

Of course, the problem here is that friends, relatives, co-workers and many activists are not ready to give the Democrats the heave-ho, or at least not in public.  This creates a personal pressure to conform, and shut up. On top of that it has been obvious from the beginning that ANY opposition to the Democrats will bring forth the wrath of the capitalist donkey gods. The Democrats come after true independents with the propaganda version of a 50-caliber machine gun, plus every dirty trick in the book.  Recently a Wisconsin union officer who had contact with the Campaign for A Mass Party of Labor was turned out of his union job within months of discussing his ideas about independent labor politics.  This is nothing but a modern version of McCarthyism / Humphreyism, and shows how the Democratic Party polices the unions. Subsequently the Democratic Party once again puked on its shirt  - and everyone else - in Wisconsin during the recall campaign, a campaign which replaced independent strike or political action.  The Democrats virtually killed the Wisconsin movement. 

This is why you know you are hitting their sore spot, the spot where they live, and ultimately, the ‘spot’ they cannot survive without, when they still go ape about Nader or independent political action of any kind.  The Democratic Party is the Achilles heel of the whole capitalist political structure, the lynchpin that keeps the flywheel of ‘business as usual’ from flying off the applecart. Pull the pin!

And I bought it at MayDay Books!

Red Frog

August 19, 2012