State Department Feminism

Feminists and Feminists

Recently two supporters of Hillary Clinton made disparaging remarks about any woman who does not vote for Clinton.  One was by Madeleine Albright, who supported the invasion of Iraq and enthusiastically promoted the long prior campaign of throttling Iraq with sanctions, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.  Albright said there was a ‘special place in hell’ for any woman who did not vote for Clinton.

Madeleine Albright - 1st Female Sec of State

Feminist #1 Track Record – A Peek:

Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, "We have heard that a half million children have died (in Iraq). I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And — and you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeline Albright replied "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."

I think I know who has a place in hell reserved for her.

Feminist #2:

The other feminist Clinton supporter was Gloria Steinem, who was a founder of Ms. Magazine and NOW and has not been a paid government official like Albright, thank god.  Steinem said that young women who support Sanders were only following the lead of their boyfriends or husbands.  She later apologized about this statement for insinuating that young women were not interested in politics.  Actually, the mainstream official feminist movement is as moribund as this statement.

So what we have obviously are different kinds of feminism.  Anyone who uses the generic term of ‘feminism’ as referring to something good for all women would be mistaken.  There is bourgeois feminism, which is mostly concerned with getting women in high places – on boards of directors, as CEOs, as government officials, as media stars or for higher pay for Hollywood’s leading actresses.  The ‘glass ceiling’ and ‘leaning in’ are their main concerns.  Making your number one objective a woman president in the White House is a perfect example of this kind of feminism, damn her politics.  Can you say Margaret Thatcher?  Sarah Palin?  Hillary Clinton?

Then there is its polar opposite – proletarian feminism.  That is the kind of feminism that benefits working women most of all.  A higher minimum wage – like Sanders’ $15 an hour – is a reflection of that.  Low cost or on-site day care for working women and families.  Socializing housework, or payment for it.  An end to a war budget taking money away from public services, or killing women abroad.  Unionization.  Opposing sexual harassment on the job. An approach to Wall Street that keeps them from impoverishing families and working class people – of which women are the main targets.  A real government-run jobs program and promotion of unionization everywhere, which helps women workers.   An international policy that does not coddle the oppression of women through fundamentalist religion, FGM, theocracy or the destruction of partially secular states.  An end to a block with the most anti-feminist country on earth, Saudi Arabia.

The most advanced form of working-class feminism is socialist feminism, which had a lot of weight in the 1970s. This kind of feminism posits that women under capital will always be second-class citizens.  It posits that capital is invested in wage differentials, the male bribe (you can rape and get away with it!  You don't have to do housework!) and free labor in the care of children, the aged and working class household duties.  Under a worker's government and consequent socialism these permanent features of capital will disappear and women's liberation can become a real possibility.

Of course, there are issues that all types of feminists can agree on, like the right to abortion.  However, the middle-class feminists in NARAL have focused only on electing officials who will decide who is on the Supreme Court – a top-down, bureaucratic feminism.  This strategy has ignored the states doing an end-run around the right to abortion by passing local laws one state at a time.  What is really needed for defending abortion rights is a new movement in the streets and locally, not high-end lobbying centered on 1 election every 4 years.  A massive women’s movement made abortion legal in the first place.  Sanders says he wants to rebuild this kind of movement, but the middle class and bourgeois feminists do not. 

Then there are ‘radical’ feminists who think all men are the problem.  All men are rapists and thugs and are therefore the main enemy.  I.E. the patriarchy is the enemy, not a capitalist system.  Yet capital uses male dominance to ensure lower wages for a majority of women; puts women in a subservient position as a bribe to males, thus dividing the working class; benefits the capitalists by ensuring the family unit or marriage or babies are all a free incubator for future laborers.  This economic view of the financial benefits of the oppression of women is to be ignored.  So you will see radical and middle class feminists targeting all men as the problem, via their genitals or their culture.  Too much testosterone or guns or beer and not enough floor sweeping. The real battlefield is where the toilet seat sits. I.E. the culture wars, liberal style. 

There are even some third-world religious feminists who support Islamic dress codes for women and pretend that it is not required by archaic patriarchal laws or traditions.

These basic kinds of feminists have been with us for years, in various strengths.  Now Hillary is running.  She is a woman supported by Wall Street, who is temporarily against the Trans-Pacific Partnership until she will be for it again; who was for the Keystone Pipeline as Secretary of State until she was against it; who enjoyed bombing Libya, is still a hawk on Iran and wants regime change in Syria more than defeating Daesh; who is against the legalization of marijuana and has been a long-time supporter of the incarceration state; who wants a stronger military; who goes to prayer breakfasts with Republicans; who supports a corporate version of universal health care; who thought that Obama’s anti-foreclosure program could really work; who has no plan to tackle unemployment; who supports the surveillance state, who loves to creatively ‘disrupt’ every place on earth that opposes the U.S. government… the list could go on.  She was to the right of Obama in 2008 and she still is.

What the bourgeois feminists want you to think is that women should narrow all their political thinking down to one issue – the gender of the candidate.  Which is really not that much different than the identity politicians who want a white president or a rich president or a male president as their prime marker.  This kind of feminism dumbs-down women and is intended to do so.  

The fact that some women are looking at ALL the issues that affect their status as women - and other people’s status too - is actually a measure of maturity.  It is a higher form of feminism. It is an approach that grounds women’s oppression in economic reality, not in the lack of female leaders in a capitalist economy and state.  As everyone knows these females will do the bidding of the capitalist patriarchy when required.  In essence, we are to elect a puppet, a front-woman, a shill, and pretend that this is the only form of progress allowed.

Books on women's issues reviewed below:  "Fortunes of Feminism," "Marxism and the Oppression of Women," "Stitched Up - The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion," "Fashionable Nonsense" and the essays of Alexandra Kollontai.

Red Frog

February 12, 2016

P.S. - Oddly enough, Thomas Frank has just come out with a book, part of which analyzes the type of corporate feminism embraced by Hillary Clinton.  The State Department's big initiative on women was to promote micro-lending, and poured much money into promoting it, with few results. As he says, she has: “a version of feminism in which liberation is, in part, a matter of taking out loans from banks in order to become an entrepreneur.”

Hail Hollywood

“Hail Caesar,” by the Cohen Brothers, 2016

I think I’ve been robbed by the Hollywood capitalists and dream-merchants of $8.  Really.  A real bait and switch.  Much as I like most previous Cohen brother’s films, this is a mess.  This is basically a very professional and processed homage to old Hollywood films and the atmosphere that came with them - and nothing more.  People who might remind you of Roy Rogers, Charlton Heston, Dalton Trumbo, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Hedda Hopper and Zero Mostel makes pseudo appearances. And yes, the Frankfurt school of Marxism is represented by Herbert Marcuse.  The film is rarely funny, but more like a bunch of lame 1950s one-liners in Vegas.  Can we dispense with the self-reverential cameos by famous actors and actresses? Do we yearn for synchronized swimming or sailor dancing or cowboys with lariats?   Can we actually have a point?  No, there is no point.  This is post-modern indulgence at its best.

We need more films from Hollywood about Hollywood

The hero is a Catholic industry executive for “Capitol“ Pictures, who really was named Eddie Mannix.  He’s on-time, tough yet sensitive, dealing with the myriad problems of the film industry.  He spends his long hours keeping the lid on homosexuality, out-of-wedlock births and communism and promoting Jesus and confession.  In the penultimate scene in a Roman sandal film, “Hail Caesar,” Heston/Clooney kneels before Christ on the cross, giving a sincere Christian accolade that even brings the film crew to tears with its impressiveness.  Then he stumbles over the last line, so the scene has to be filmed again.  I swear, these two Jewish guys are doing wonders for Jesus, even when they think they are not.  

A Jewish rabbi, a Catholic priest, a Protestant preacher and an Eastern Orthodox priest walk into a Hollywood studio.  They are brought in by Mannix to back up the idea that this tale of Christ is on the button.  Instead a stupid religious argument ensues, which nevertheless endorses the film – minus the rabbi of course.  Badda badda boom.Yuckita, yuckita, that’s religion! 

Politics is presented by a clatch of geeky Hollywood writers who are in the Communist Party, complaining of being exploited by the studios who take the lion’s share of the profits.  Marcuse, looking like Trotsky, lectures Clooney on the dialectic and even Clooney is won over, as the Commies seem to have everything about Hollywood sussed out.  A front for capitalism, as the ‘study group’ puts it.  Mannix shuts up Clooney about his newfound conviction, telling him instead to ‘go out and be a star.’  And he does.  Then the Cohen’s dispense with the CP’ers by having them row out to a surfacing Soviet sub to show their lick-spittalness.  (Fact check:  The comrades donate their ransom money to the “Comintern,” which had been shut-down by Stalin many years earlier.)

At any rate, if you can find a point to this film other than nostalgia for that Hollywood, then you get a fan Oscar.  ( For instance, is that ocean-side house in Malibu the same one as Jackie Treehorn’s in the ‘Big Lebowski?’  No.) I don’t think identifying all the microscopic film references counts.  The self-indulgent film is really ‘all about them’ - meaning ‘all about the Cohens.’  And fuck-all to that.

Red Frog

February 12, 2016

‘You are Rubbish and your Culture is Shit’

“The Football Factory,“ by John King, 1998

This book was heralded as reviving the ‘proletarian novel’ in the U.K.  This is not far off.  King has painted a portrait of British football ‘hooligans’ who fight for their soccer teams in the streets like the teams play in the stadiums.  It centers on cultural pride in your neighborhood and class identity.  It’s mostly white and male and not ashamed.  It’s full of great English and cockney slang, with the most common expletive being ‘c#nt’ – a crude misogynist word referring to men and women who don’t measure up.  It is infused by class hatred and class perceptions, coming down on journalists, careerists, guilty leftists, bankers and yuppies.  A whole list of wankers.  Oh, and the ‘old bill,’ which seems a really mild way to refer to thug coppers. 

Chelsea Play at Stamford Bridge

It is oddly also interspersed with other stories - of one of the mothers of the lads, who works in a laundromat.  And another, an elderly veteran of World War II who liberated a concentration camp and married a Jewish woman, and kicks shit out of some Paki bashers. A journalist who wants to cover and denounce football fights to further her career.   An erstwhile Trotskyist social worker who combines her paternalistic job with identity politics.  A security guard who creates a war-mongering drone game for computers.

Tommy is a London boy from Chelsea, young and a fighter, who ‘tells it like it is.’  When he’s drunk on pints the book runs on stream-of consciousness’ writing, cascading on for paragraphs like a working-class Joyce.  He looks down on the country bumpkins from rural football clubs in the north and midlands of England, who live in run-down shit towns like Liverpool and Birmingham.  The book is peppered with the names of London tube stops covered by surveillance cameras. There transport and fighting take place, as one crew of mostly white wiggers meet up with another for battle. 

The ethnic, national and gender insults run long – but underneath the language there is character.  The bangers hate people who mistreat women.  They generally insult black people but then have some in their Chelsea gang like Black Paul.  The Indians are wimps, but Tommy loves a ‘banger lassi’ and curry and he knows that the Indians will fight too.  They visit Spain during the European cup finals following the British national team and bond with other Brit fans, their former enemies.  In San Sebastian one guy, Vince, decides he just wants to travel away from all the English crap, even though he has no money.  So even patriotism takes a dent.  The book shows how the nationalist Right is able to influence some working-class people, which also makes the book useful.

King himself is not the football fighter he portrays.  You can tell he has left-wing political sympathies and this view infuses the book, in spite of the anti-political views of the street fighters and their ethnic and gender bashing.  All these guys are working jobs and not on the dole, so they have money to travel to matches, hire coaches, drink lots of pissant beer, even calling an occasional taxi or two.  Tommy works in a warehouse but the work is boring, so street-fighting and the adrenaline rush it brings is the antidote.  At one point he gets so beaten up at the hands of Millwall football fans that he realizes he could die – which seems funny when you think about it.  Ah, the ignorance of youth.  Mostly these punch-ups and kick-downs only involve other groups of men like themselves – not civilians.  What is most important is loyalty to the group and their joint identity – that is the highest calling.  A specific micro-identity trumps a more general class outlook.

Cockney Rejects in London having a drink-up

Tommy prefers being single, avoids romance and makes do with one-night stands with drunken ‘birds’ in pubs.  His attempt to date a nurse fails, probably because she senses he’s trouble.  Even he knows that dating a nurse is aiming a bit high.

These are the people that in the U.S. might be called white trash, trailer trash, rednecks or peckerwoods. These are the last ‘acceptable’ insults.  As this book makes clear, demonizing working class people, even when they are white, is counter-productive and does no good.  Liberal whites that do this are mostly middle-class clueless wonders, who have no interest in the class struggle.  Black people that do this have justification.  But ultimately making powerless working class whites a target doesn’t help anyone but the bosses.  The rich really love that shit and they’ll pile on too.  Divide and conquer.  Divide and conquer.  It sets up everyone for a fall.

This is a powerful book and should be read by anyone who wants to read about this slice of working-class reality.  As one review pointed out, it is more true than all the sociology essays written about football ‘hooligans.’  That is one of the benefits of so-called ‘fiction’ that is ignored by those who only prefer non-fiction.

Other reviews on the English working class:  “Chavs,” “The Outlaws – One Man’s Rise Through the Savage World of Renegade Bikers…,’ Orwell’s “Coming Up for Air,” and “All Art is Propaganda” and the film “Pride.”

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog / February 8, 2016

Bernie or Burned?

Sanders – A Left View

I supported Harold Washington in the election for Chicago's mayor in 1983. I was a ‘global class war’ socialist but understood that Washington had no bourgeois backing at the time when he ran in the Democratic primary. Washington only had a movement, a mostly black movement.  It demonstrated in the streets of downtown Chicago by the thousands on election night when the Democratic Daley machine tried to steal Washington’s victory through a technical move.  That election and a few others show that to influence a movement, it helps to meet it part way.   I still suspect that Washington was assassinated because of his convenient death by ‘heart attack’ while in office.

Harold Washington, former Mayor Chicago

That campaign showed that occasionally mass radical movements start or happen even within bourgeois party processes.  This is because there is no other outlet provided by the system, so mass anger flows into channels already cleverly laid.  Support for Henry Wallace’s presidential primary campaign in 1944 and his independent run in 1948 in the name of the Progressive Party played the same role. Wallace himself was not a socialist but a pro-FDR left-Democrat running against Truman both times.  He was against Jim Crow and the Cold War.  Wallace was supported by most leftists and even some U.S. Trotskyists in the SWP.  The successful Farmer-Labor Party, of left-wing song and legend, first ran in the Republican primaries for several years in Minnesota before becoming an independent organization in 1924. That is significant too. 

Sanders has opened up a political space for a form of socialism in the U.S., on a national scale – something that has not been seen for many years.  He has made the struggle against Wall Street and the 1% his main slogan, taking up where Occupy left off.  He has pushed for single-payer – the first well-known politician who has made that a key issue.  He’s also come out for ending the racist mass incarceration state and legalizing weed, supporting Black Lives Matter and union rights, ending the deportation frenzy and coming out against anti-labor laws like Taft-Hartley.  The most left-wing unions in the country have come out for Sanders, as well as locals bucking their bureaucratic leaderships. 

Henry Wallace, former Progressive Party Candidate

Sander’s foreign policy positions are still those of a junior imperialist, though he has gone to Clinton’s left on the present situations in Iran, Syria and Libya - perhaps under pressure from his base.  As Clinton cleverly pointed out in one debate, he voted to bomb Libya too.  He seems to be moving towards a position that ‘regime change’ is a dangerous strategy.  Sanders had no compunction, nor did liberal (Muslim) hero Keith Ellison, in supporting Israel’s invasion and destruction of Gaza in 2014.  The list of other imperial votes by Sanders is long.  As they say in the U.S., 'politics stops at the waters edge.'  Which means imperialism is a bi-partisan effort.  What is not noted is that an imperial international plan actually impacts the goals of any national movement.  So Sanders cannot implement many of his ideas without confronting the imperial project.

What is key though is that Sanders, as yet, has no real bourgeois backing. The bourgeois media treats him like a pariah instead.  He has not bought into enough corporate garbage.  Unless you think he is a front for a certain ice-cream brand, this is significant.  His idea of a ‘political revolution’ echoes Trotsky, who called for a political revolution against Stalin.  A real ‘political revolution’ changes the leadership of a class state, but does not undermine its social / economic nature.  In Sanders’ meaning, a ‘political revolution’ in the U.S. means gaining more or dominant power for the working class in a capitalist economy – similar to the power of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden and several other countries.  Unfortunately, the leadership and funding of the Democrats is not like the Swedish Social Democracy, but more like moderate Republicans.  Pursuing ‘political revolution’ by staying within the Democratic Party is a strategy bound to fail.

1922 Farmer Labor Party convention in Minneapolis

Sanders is a bit like a modern Father Gapon.  He is telling the Capitalist Czar that the workers and peasants need more.  As Oliver said, "Please sir, can I have some more?"  The question is, as usual, will Sanders’ supporters continue in any sense after this election?  I somewhat doubt it, as I also doubt that Sanders will ultimately win the nomination against the Clinton / Democratic corporate machine.  Sanders himself has not made any attempt to form a political organization yet. And that is also key.  But the possibility is there.  The Green Party under Jill Stein may end up getting my vote in the general election.  However the Green Party is a stagnant organization that can only grow if it unites with other forces on the left.  Merely running candidates year after year on its own is not sufficient.
 

Bernie Sanders in Selma, AL Recently

In this particular primary fight, standing aside is sectarian and abstentionist.  The position taken by Socialist Alternative – giving active critical support to Sanders in the primaries – is the closest position to actually moving the U.S. situation forward.  (Socialist Alternative was birthed in the conditions of European Trotskyism, which is more attuned to mass organization than the U.S. Trotskyist tradition based on Cannon.)  I will be voting for Sanders in the primary, well aware of his pro-imperialist Jr. foreign policy and his many limitations. I will not support Clinton in the general election, nor will many who support Sanders.  Sanders is a sheep-herder, but he is also a pyromaniac – he has a dual role.  We’ve seen movements and initiatives within the Democratic Party before – McCarthy, McGovern, Jackson, Dean, Kucinich, Obama – that go nowhere over and over again.  This one, because of economic conditions and Sanders’ social-democratic views, is unique.  It has a chance to result in something more, if only in increased disgust with the Democratic Party and U.S. conventional politics. 

Hjalmar Branting, 1st Soc Dem Swedish PM, 1920

If Sanders is not nominated, which is likely, real socialists should have a very definite plan to offer the Bernie movement.  That is asking them to work for and form an independent mass Labor-Populist party and a united left-front as a spark to win it.  If Sanders’ supporters are actually serious and not just internet warriors, without these two things there will be no political revolution ... let alone the social revolution desired by socialists.  It will leave neo-liberalism in place again under Clinton II or Trump I, as it did with the election of Obama. 

If Sanders is nominated and by some weird chance he wins the general election, I think the only thing that will wait for him is a bullet.  Knowing Amerika, that is.

Red Frog

January 31, 2016

The Cliff-Hanger Notes

“Understanding Class,’ by Erik Olin Wright, 2015

If you missed advanced sociology, this book is for you.  I was trying to find a book that describes the specific nature of the class structure in the U.S. and this book only touches on that.  It made clear that a material problem for revolutionaries in the U.S. is the complexity of the class system, which has many layers even within classes, layers that are also partially permeable.  This is the material reason why working-class consciousness is so weak and fragmented here.  Wright calls this problem that of a “contradictory location within class relations.’ 

Version of a Tear Drop Class Diagram, perhaps a bit dated.

Instead this academic book concentrates on the various sociological theories around class, but from a Marxist point of view.  Wright is a mild-mannered left Social-Democrat from Madison, Wisconsin and takes on various neo-liberal, progressive and down-right reactionary theories on understanding class.  He includes Piketty, Standing and Weber in his theory review, then presents his own.  He makes the quite interesting point that capital will undermine its own long-term profit interests (and is doing so) in the pursuit of complete domination over labor.

Wright’s overall position is to find a ‘socially positive compromise’ within capitalism that will benefit workers the most.  Think Sweden or Germany.  He also attempts to integrate other theories of class into a Marxist paradigm – and I don’t think he fails.  The Marxist position, in Wright’s understanding, is the most systemic and encompassing, but he tries to borrow from other theories that are based on solid evidence.  I’m going to describe each chapter in which Wright challenges in a polite way some more conservative theories on class.  You’ve run into people parroting these ideas, even though they might not know where they come from.

1.      Wright first takes on the grand-daddy of bourgeois sociology – Max Weber.  Essentially Weber did not believe that the working class was exploited under capitalism.  Weber believed that class was exclusively summed up by status - the market skills and background employees brought to their jobs in a complex society. You know, ‘cultural capital.’  In essence, workers charge the bosses ‘skill rents.’  Wright agrees on a lower level that this is true of aspects of class, but points out that Weber’s formulation ignores the overall nature of the economy. Weber believed in a ‘rationalized’ economy which required ‘efficient’ employee functioning.  This would allow economies to survive.  Weber thus endorsed capitalist managers directing all the work of employees and opposed self-management or cooperatives or even co-determination.  By extension unions, work councils, labor, socialist or revolutionary parties - all impinge on Weber’s idea of ‘rationalization.’

Oddly enough, while Weber denounces the ‘political incentives’ that might exist under socialism, he embraces the idea that workers under capital must treat labor as ‘an end in itself’ – another kind of political incentive, i.e. the Protestant work ethic.  Weber does understand class position in the same way as Marx, in its relation to production and influence by materiel forces.  Wright insists that the idea of ‘exploitation’ hovers in the background of Weber’s analysis but this looks dubious. Weber even theorized that slaves were not an exploited class, and if you can’t see that, you can’t see much. 

2.      Next up is Charles Tilly.  Tilly’s jargon-heavy theory is that inequality might affect categories of people by gender, by ethnicity, by nationality, by language, by religion, by age cohort.  But this is only to enable and stabilize exploitation.  Tilly thinks that it is primarily organizations that construct this exploitative inequality, which includes corporations, businesses and government entities.  It is there you will find the various forms of inequality – exploitation, opportunity hoarding, hierarchy, ownership.  These result in categorical inequality, but also self-perpetuating social-Darwinian success for that organization.  Tilly subsumes identity politics into class issues and opposes individualist understandings as ‘micro-level’ approaches to these macro-level problems. 

Wright agrees with much of what he says, as Tilly merges Weberian and Marxist ideas in his theory, but criticizes him for making identity issues into ‘individualist’ issues when they are not. 

      3.   The third sociologist is a guy named Aege Sorensen. Sorensen also embraces an exploitation / economic version of class over the ‘life conditions’ version of class that is the most common.  Wright oddly agrees with Sorensen that you can avoid talking about the labor theory of value when discussing exploitation.  Instead, according to Sorensen, the key to exploitation is ‘rents.’  Now the discussion gets completely ridiculous.  You are thinking Sorensen is going to talk about landlords or banks gouging apartment dwellers or homeowners; or high-class French vineyards and corner restaurants selling their wares for a maximum profit because of their primo real estate location.  Noooo!  Sorensen basically believes that workers charge the bosses exorbitant ‘rents’ for their skills - and so the workers exploit the capitalists.  Yes, you heard it here. 

            Sorensen thinks that unions negotiate ‘solidarity wages’ which gives lower-skill workers a bonus, to the detriment of every one else.  (Has this guy been in any unions?  It is the high-end workers who get the best deal in contracts…)  High minimum wages also gives low-skill people an edge, as does a welfare state.  As a result, all these effects create a ‘rent’ paid by the capitalists and petit-bourgeois to workers, who become ‘an exploiting class.’  Essentially Sorensen turns society on its head.

Wright points out that all of these ‘rents’ are actually mitigations of capitalist and rentier exploitation. Sorensen bases his ideas on a world of ‘perfect competition’ which does not exist.  Additionally, people can be oppressed without being directly exploited – like the unemployed, indigenous people or other excess populations who are not needed for any economic role.  As Wright sardonically says, racists said ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’ but the bourgeoisie doesn’t say, ‘the only good worker is a dead worker.’  (Unless they are on strike in South Africa…) 

     4.      Michael Mann is the next up. Mann doesn’t believe that classes exist unless they act ‘for themselves.’  He does away with the concept of the Marxist category of class ‘in itself’ - or even analyzing classes as they exist - unless they form into social forces and class actors.  To Wright, class locations, relations and structures are still important, while Mann thinks that this version of class analysis is only ‘on paper.’  Mann theorizes that only when a class expresses ideological, political, military or economic power does it really count or exist.  Mann then oddly describes the ‘self-action’ of the American middle class / petit-bourgeois in the 20^th century – professionals, small business men and corporate managers – and calls them class actors.  Marx said that ‘history was the history of class struggle.’  Mann thinks that this struggle came out of nothing. 

    5.      The next are two theorists, David Grusky and Kim Weeden, who believe that the only way to look at class is through job occupations or what you could generously call ‘micro-classes.’ They have come up with more than 126 job occupations that supposedly explain class society.  Wright puts them in the micro-level sociological camp of Emile Durkheim, and thanks them for their meticulous empirical research.   If you wanted a sociology of class that was limited to lifestyle, taste and social attitudes, their research might be useful.  This is what Sarah Palin understands class to be.  Wright compares them to a level of game theory.  Marxists question ‘what game to play.’  Institutional theorists question ‘what rules to use’ in the already chosen game.  And situational theorists like Grusky/Weeden look at the moves to use within the rules of the fixed game.  As Wright says, “It is the class analysis for the era of triumphant neo-liberalism.”   

    6.     Thomas Piketty is next.  Wright nods to the importance of his massive work on inequality, “Capital.” Wright points out one main disagreement, as others have done, that Piketty does not describe what capital actually is.  Piketty says one of the great sources of inequality is the super-salaries of corporate managers, and calls this ‘labor.’  Yet those wages are not from ‘labor’ but from their power positions running capitalist firms, basically gorging on the firms’ profits.  Or as the jab goes, ‘having their hand in the till, not on the tiller.’  Piketty also confuses home ownership with ‘capital,’ which are two different kinds of assets.  These are examples of Piketty confusing different sources into a generic ‘capital.’

     7.    Next up are two theorists, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters, who argue that class does not exist in the U.S., as ‘social classes are dissolving.’ This in spite of all the empirical evidence to the contrary.  This is a familiar argument made by Republicans and many Democrats, and Wright takes it apart. 

     8.   Next is Guy Standing.  He is the lead theorist of the ‘precariat,’ – the marginally unemployed, migrants and denizens who have few legal rights and educated temp or ‘gig’ workers.  Standing calls all these a separate class from the working class.  Needless to say, Wright easily dispenses with this formulation (along with Standing’s other odd ‘class’ definitions) by showing that the material interests of the precariat and proletariat are close – hence they are not separate classes, but different layers within one class.

Wright thinks for the ‘foreseeable future” (how long is that…) socialism is an impossibility.  So as an alternative he creates various game theory graphs describing ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ social compromises within capitalism.  He promotes union co-determination, cooperatives, ESOPs and union-based ‘solidarity funds,’ while advocating policies to redirect financial investment and for governments to build productive local economies.   In this context, Wright thinks the Swedish/German model of social compromise benefits both capital and the working class the most. 

Wright admits that the years between WWII and the advent of neo-liberalism (1945 to 1975) might be a ‘blip’ in the historical record of capital, but soldiers on anyway.  He also admits that the social-democratic model, even in Europe, is under attack from neo-liberalism and decaying swiftly due to financial and social conditions.  This however does not shake Wright from his political perspective. 

“Capital in the 21^st Century” by Piketty reviewed in two segments below.  “The Precariat” by Standing is also reviewed.  Other valuable books reviewed are: “Annihilation of Caste,” “Understanding Class,” “The Servant Economy,” “Rich People Things,” “The Liberal Class,” “In & Out of the Working Class,” “Behind the Kitchen Door” and “Class Lives.”

And I bought it at Mayday Books!

Red Frog

January 30, 2016

Trumpolini?

Sketch by Eric Leon Gibbs

The Psychedelic Insurrection

The Long Strange Trip:  Fare Thee Well!

Everything isn't totally political, like the universal of music.

If the recent concerts celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Grateful Dead are any indication, they help make the claim that the Dead are the preeminent U.S. rock and roll band of all time.  The San Francisco sound of the ‘60s and ‘70s – steeped in drugs and rebellion – rose above Los Angeles, New York, Detroit or Chicago as the homeland of the most distinctive and inventive form of rock in that period.  Classic LA rock died with Jim Morrison and limped on with CSNY and the more commercial Eagles; the Velvet Underground were the preeminent New York band of the period and disappeared after a few albums; original Chicago bands like Blood Sweat & Tears, Butterfield and the Electric Flag could not keep up.  Bands like Creedence Clearwater and the Allman Brothers went big, but then Creedence collapsed and the Allman’s carried on, but not with the same impact.  Other bands from San Francisco – Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, Moby Grape, Country Joe & the Fish, Quicksilver, It’s a Beautiful Day, Steve Miller, Mother Earth, Santana – did not quite have the staying power or mass appeal.  

Grateful Dead in Haight-Ashbury

Singer songwriters like Dylan and Neil Young were the best of their class; Springsteen is one act that 'could' challenge the Dead, but he'll never get there. 

The Dead’s Fare-The-Well concerts around the country this 2015 summer, ending in a three night stand at sold-out Soldier Field in Chicago, were a fitting crescendo.  The Dead and the shadows of its long litany of deceased players rose above all this - carrying its sound and cultural impact through 5 generations.  Playing with them at the Chicago concerts were Trey Anastasio of Phish on lead and Bruce Hornsby on piano, joining original members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kruetzmann and Mickey Hart, along with Jeff Chimenti on the dangerous keyboards.  The ghosts of Jerry Garcia, PigPen, Brent Mydland, Keith Godchaux and Vince Welnick hovered over the concerts. 

Why were they the best?  Exercises like this are probably stupid but nevertheless I’ll give it a try.

Covers:  The Dead were the greatest cover band in the U.S. – doing Dylan, Stones, Beatles, Chuck Berry, blues and country; and dozens of other roots songs written by others, and making each one their own.  Listen to the Dead do “King Bee” and compare it to the Stones version, and you’ll know who did it better.  They respected their roots, unlike musicians who think everything must come from them alone.

Influences:  The Dead combined influences from blues, folk, blue-grass, country, jazz, Americana and electronic / experimental music into a unique American amalgam, bar none.  Nothing synthetic or sterile about their approach.  They had a repertoire of nearly 700 songs and only one top-40 hit, which made them a decidedly non-pop phenomenon. You rarely hear about the Dead from any corporate source, as they started as a completely 'underground' band whose work was promoted by word of mouth.  They didn't get much promotion except by the formerly underground press like Rolling Stone, and it went on that way for years.

Drugs:  No other band made marijuana and other drugs an accepted part of their shows.  In Chicago 2015 the smoke still billowed.

Visuals:  The Dead were known for their iconographic visuals.  The dancing bears; the skull and roses, the lighting-bolt through the red, white and blue skull; the Jester; dancing turtles; Uncle Sam skeleton and Captain Trips.  They relied on excellent light shows from the first to the last.  The Stone’s tongue symbol pales in comparison. 

Improvisation:  They perfected the improvised and jazz-based ‘jam’ form of rock.  Each concert was similar to a jazz performance in the sense that base songs were many times used as springboards for something else.  Songs flowed into each other and transitions between songs were many times improvised.  They put the ‘psych’ in psychedelic. 

Dancing:  Most Dead concerts had people dancing for hours, like some St. Vitus ceremony.   The concerts were the equivalent of a roots-based ‘rave’ that went closer to public ecstasy than almost any other band could muster. 

Live performances:  The most prolific band in history, playing more concerts than any other.  Ultimately their audiences were full of people of all ages and classes.  The Grateful Dead itself played 2,318 concerts.  The Dead, Further, Phil Lesh & Friends, Dead & Company, The Other Ones, Ratdog, Rhythm Devils and other spin-off bands have played many more.  Garcia himself had several bands like Old & In the Way.  As a result they have the most recorded concerts of any group of musicians, as chronicled by “Dick’s Picks” and many others.  They had the most loyal live following of any rock band.  Nearly 25 million people have seen their shows.

Technical:  The Dead were the first rock band to control the recording of a studio album, their second - “Anthem of the Sun.”  Owsley Stanley, of LSD fame, designed their ‘wall of sound’ which linked every instrument to around 5 to 10 speakers.  It was so massive they eventually stopped touring with it.  Sound was always important to the Dead – they wanted it as close to perfect as they could get. 

Industry innovations:  They were the first band to try to start their own label and to sell tickets to their own shows, to cut out the profiteering middle-men.  They were, of course, a money-making machine if they toured, but played many benefits too.  They had a huge crew that were not just minions and took fan outreach seriously. They were the first band to allow taping by the audience.  They were fluid and welcoming and so they invited many people to be part of the band – for a long period or just a few shows.  Notable members or players were Donna Godchaux, Bruce Hornsby, Warren Haynes, Joan Osborne and Branford Marsalis, but many others came on-stage.  

Cultural:  They were a living link between the Beats like Kerouac, Ginsberg and Kesey and the hippies.  Their song “Cassidy” celebrates Neal Cassidy, who drove the bus named Further in the book “On the Road.”   They attempted to continue this legacy until the end, though members like Bob Weir became millionaires in the process.  Nor were they spot-light hogs.  The had the sense to walk away from Altamont because they could tell it was a bad place to be in. 

In a way they were part of a ‘cultural revolution’ that continues to this day.  Given right-wingers still denigrate ‘hippies,’ as do centrists and liberals, those 50 years are proof of a very powerful cultural thrust that hasn’t stopped yet.

Be Kind & Fare Thee Well

The Culture Vulture

January 26, 2016