Class Struggle Continues...

“China’s New Red Guards – The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong,” by Jude Blanchette, 2019

This is no real return to the Cultural Revolution.  Instead this book details the decades’ long vacillating fight between left, center and right in China after the fall of the ‘Gang of Four’ in the late 1970s and how it has evolved into a battle over Mao Zedong’s legacy.  What passes for the Chinese left has lost every battle since 1978 – over privatization, over peasant land rights and land leasing, over planning, over capitalist membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), over WTO membership, over the spread of private enterprise and banking.  Yet class struggle never dies if a proletariat exists – it is automatically generated by the contradiction. 

 

There are now over 100 billionaires in positions within the CCP and state apparatus.  This ‘reform’ in 2001 by Jiang Zemin was one of the impetuses for the development of a new left that opposed neo-liberalism and class collaborationism.   

Blanchette is a member of a ‘strategic advisory firm’ in Arlington Virginia, so probably peddles his research to everyone.  He gives an historic account of the fight between the dominant neo-liberal wing of the CCP hierarchy and the ‘left’ – which is variously described as New Left, ‘conservative’ Old Left, nationalist or neo-Maoist.  Most of this left is centered in universities, among some Party intellectuals and economists, in small lecture halls and bookstores and on various sites on the internet like Utopia and Maoflag.  The web-sites are widely read, starting when they first accused some Chinese policies and figures of being neo-liberal.  From this reading, these groups have few real ties with the proletariat, except perhaps in the recent Jasic factory struggle. 

Blanchette understands that praising Mao in a political debate in China is a way to get some protection from censorship, jailing, job losses or worse, as Mao and Marxism still have credence in the country’s history and ideology.  So the handling of the various forms of the neo-Maoist left by the top bureaucracy and PLA is nuanced – sometimes involving repression and sometimes promotion.  The centrists actually use the left to give themselves a role as a balance. Xi Jinping uses them to promote the CCP and national greatness.  Others are jailed. Marxists openly advocating Chinese Trotskyist perspectives on the other hand would be immediately arrested and perhaps shot.

Blanchette points out that there is now a split in the neo-Maoist left between those who support the CCP and Xi and those who want to form a new party to fight capital.  All of this is still framed as disputes over Mao ZeDong’s legacy.  It involves debates about the validity of the Great Leap Forward, the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.  The neo-Maoists find zero problems in Mao’s actions and policies, while Chinese pro-Western market liberals condemn them completely. These are the only two simple views permitted.  Nuanced views that the Great Leap Forward was an example of a justified but adventurist and voluntarist attempt at industrialization or a view that the GPCR was an ultra-left and bureaucratic version of political revolution are off the map. 

Utopia Chinese Website

Blanchette covers in detail the various developments in this ideological struggle, from 1979 criticisms about the ‘feudal idolatry’ of keeping Mao embalmed to China’s attack on Vietnam.  He covers Deng Ziaoping’s early 1992 southern tour to Guangdong cementing ‘Reform and Opening’; the dismantling of a large part of the state sector in 1996 leading to millions of layoffs; the founding of Utopia as a leftist site critical of this vast opening to capital in 2003;  left bureaucrat Bo Xilai’s rise and fall in the CCP in 2012; the split in the new-Maoist movement between Utopia’s support of Xi and the founding of an underground China Maoist Alliance in 2015, and finally the Jasic strike in 2018.

THE NEW COLD WAR

Blanchette calls the Chinese ‘paranoid’ when they worry that the U.S. is trying to undermine China and the CCP.  He ignores the clear U.S. trade war goals in dismantling parts of Chinese planning and what remains of the state-led economy, along with the new U.S. military policy of anti-Chinese military encirclement.  This includes bans on software like HuaWei and now hysteria over something called TikTok. The “New Silk Road Initiative” also worries the U.S., as they see it as competition for U.S. corporations. While China is taking defensive actions in response to the U.S., there is also a large factor of the New Silk Road / Belt and Road Initiative that reflects the need for Chinese capital to expand beyond the borders of China. This is another warning bell for Marxists.

Blanchette considers China to be ‘state capitalist’ without proving his contention. He uses the term ‘conservative’ to describe the Chinese who do not want to open society to privatization and capital, a different meaning than in the U.S. where it has the exact reverse meaning.  The term ‘reform,’ which used to mean progressive, now means the reverse in both countries.  This is a worthwhile book to understand the politics and paradoxes of China, home to the largest proletariat in the world.  A place not to be ignored.

Other reviews on this subject below, use blog search box, upper left:  “Jasic Factory Struggle,” (Ma) “China on Strike,” “Striking to Survive,” “Two Sea Changes in World Political Economy,” (Halabi) “Is the East Still Red?” (Blank) “From Commune to Capitalism,” (Hu)“The End of the Revolution,” (Hui) “The Rise of China,”(Li) “The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism,”(Amin) “The Fall of Bo Xilai,” (Zhao) “Maoism and the Chinese Revolution.” (Liu)       

And I bought them at May Day Books, which has the cheapest new book prices in the city and many books on China from a left perspective, along with writings by Mao Zedong.

Red Frog

December 24, 2019

Music, Music, Music

“Echo in the Canyon,” documentary by Jakob Dylan, 2019 (Netflix)

In his interview Stephen Stills babbles a bit. Ringo Starr poses before his grey high-end sports car.  Regina Spektor seems uncomfortable.  Beck pontificates.  Jakob Dylan does most of the leads befitting the host.  Brian Wilson is still overweight and Michelle Phillips is still cute.  The difficult David Crosby whips his white pony-tail over the LA back country.  Graham Nash comes off like Hugh Grant. Roger McQuinn never takes off his hat.  Tom Petty looks older and wiser.  Jackson Browne seems to be sitting in front of an old Laurel Canyon stone house.  Cat Power is just happy to be there.  Jade, Fiona Apple and Norah Jones get to sing appropriate leads.  John Sebastian, Eric Clapton and Lou Adler get straight interviews.  Neil Young is captured rocking out in a studio, but never talking to the camera.

Jammin' in the Canyon

Yeah, this is a documentary about the folk rock that came out of Laurel Canyon in the 1960s.  It is also a concert film, showing clips of modern artists doing B-sides from the Laurel Canyon folk-rock scene at an event hosted by Dylan.  If you’ve been to the legendary Laurel Canyon Country Store half-way up canyon boulevard, you know the vibe is still there.  Young ‘freak folk’ groups still live in the neighborhood. The Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, even The Association – all get some of their tunes and memories played.  There is no CSN or Joni Mitchell, which is odd - must have been a legal dispute. (C’mon, “Our House”…)  There are no songs by Frank Zappa, who lived in Laurel Canyon too (as did Canned Heat) and recited the lyrics to “We are the Brain Police” to Stills in the middle of the street.  Cool!  But Zappa was not a folkie…

The film makes the point that ‘place’ and time matter in culture, as does cross-pollination.  Ringo reveals that the Beatles were inspired by the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds to do Sergeant Pepper.  One musician hopes the melody inspired by another’s song isn’t theft, and it isn’t.  In a way the film shows how the idea of cultural appropriation is many times bogus, as music, literature, film and art bleed into each other world-wide. Artists are always inspired by other artists.

Mamas and Papas and the new breed

An enjoyable documentary, especially if you lived through this time and informative, especially if you did not.

Other prior reviews on music, use the blog search box upper left:  “Laurel Canyon – the Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Historic Neighborhood,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “Let Us Now Praise the Dead,” “In Search of the Blues,” “33 Revolutions Per Minute,” “The Blues – A Visual History,” “Zappa Plays Zappa,” “Life – the Biography of Keith Richards,” “Daydream Sunset,” “Marie and Rosetta,” “Treme,” “Rising Tide.”

Check out May Day's selection of books on music!
The Cultural Marxist  

December 20, 2019

Happy Solstice!  

WTF Series #10 - A Little Civil War?

Impeachapalooza or the Criminality of the Whole System

Are you carefully following the long testimonies and talking heads on CNN, NPR or MSNBC about impeachment, day after day, hour after hour, week after week? The legal ins and outs? Didn’t think so.  Has anything else happened in the world other than disasters and crimes?  Doesn’t seem so.  What is funny is that Trump withheld military equipment like Stinger missiles that even Obama didn’t want to sell to Ukraine.  So…Trump interfered with U.S. military aid, which was keeping the war against Russia in eastern Ukraine alive. The U.S. is against a diplomatic solution, as they already torpedoed one between Europe, Ukraine and Russia years ago.

This Leader?  Or...

Hunter Biden sitting on a board of directors of the key Ukrainian energy company is just business as usual – seeking influence with U.S. politicians by hiring their kids.  Especially in the context of U.S. demands (Trump included) for Europe to use U.S. gas, not Russian gas.

Is this really a ‘high’ crime?  This quid pro quo is more factual than the ridiculous attempt to impeach Clinton in the 1990s for lying about an affair.  As it is, this is political Kabuki, as the Senate will not vote for impeachment.

What else is going on in the world?  What else could Trump be impeached for recently – for real high crimes?  This impeachment is like accusing Al Capone of tax evasion.  I’ll give just a few:

     1.     688,000 U.S. citizens are going to be thrown off food stamps due to new work rules instituted by the USDA and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue recently.   Seasonal holiday workers, workers in Northern Michigan’s tourism industry, and workers with unreliable hours like waiters and waitresses are the kinds of workers hurt by this proposal.

     2.     The Washington Post just dropped a monstrous story on government lying about the 18 year war in Afghanistan in the midst of the impeachment hullabaloo.  After a 3 year lawsuit they gained access to internal military documents similar to the Pentagon Papers that revealed the Pentagon and White House continually made stupid and rosy predictions without any basis, while not even knowing who the enemy was.  This extended over 3 administrations – Bush, Obama and Trump.  So the real default – which any leftist already knew – is that the U.S. government lies on a continual basis.  As Rumsfield said in 2003: “I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan or Iraq.”   The U.S. has spent nearly $1T on the war, while 2,000+ U.S. soldiers have died and 20,000+ have been injured.  Remember, Obama called Afghanistan ‘the smart war.’ (!)  That must be what they teach Rhodes scholars.

3.     Democrats and Republicans, in a bipartisan love fest, just voted for an additional $88B in military funds.

4.     Democrats and Republicans, in another bipartisan love fest, are preparing to endorse the new corporate-slanted NAFTA, the USMCA. 

5.     Denying climate change and actually accelerating it by enabling the oil and gas industries  This might be Trump’s most bloody crime.

6.     Stacking his administration with department heads whose real purpose is to destroy their departments and instead privatize society. Which has been going on for years.

7.     Attempting to overthrow governments that displease the U.S., which is business as usual.

8.     Opening the door to white nationalism and fascist organizations.  His unique contribution.

9.     Supporting the NSA, which is business as usual.

10.  Enabling the rich and corporations, etc. etc.  Business as usual.
11.  Violating the emoluments clause big-time.  Another unique contribution.

FASCISM?
Impressionistic left-liberals like Chris Hedges, Henry Giroux, Paul Street and others think Trump is already a fascist.  By doing this they seem to have little understanding of U.S. or European history or the concepts of the state or class.  What Trump is doing is no different from what many U.S. presidents and U.S. laws did in the past  - remember Asian internment, Latino bracero programs, Jim Crow, the KKK, the Tulsa pogrom, gay discrimination, women not being able to vote, strikes and abortion being illegal, unions forbidden, Marxists in jail etc.?  They are not calling the U.S. fascist over the whole of the 20^th Century are they?!  This is just normal bourgeois functioning in a class society.   

What is different is that Trump has disturbed the bourgeois positivist idea that things are always going to get better. Dialectics and class struggle determine history, not abstract tendencies toward 'the good.'

...this Leader?  (Francisco Franco)

The classical Marxist analysis of fascism is that capital will use fascism when it has no other way to rule.  This impeachment, like the Clinton impeachment, represents a procedural faction fight within the ruling class.  So the ruling class is not united behind actual fascism, behind one policy as yet.  They can still rule through the charade of voting for one of their two parties – the ‘two party system.’  Note this terminology is not really about democracy.  Nor is there any real massive left, as in Germany, Italy or Spain that needs to be crushed.

What is more accurate to say is that the Republicans are trying to control the legal and military system.  They are stacking the courts and judges with Federalist and ‘Constitutionalist’ plants all the way up to the Supreme Court.  Trump has just forced out the head of the Navy in order to tolerate Navy Seals involved in war crimes.  Fascists are already recruiting in the police and now are trying to infiltrate the U.S. military – which is why the ‘sign throwing’ at the Army-Navy football game was indicative.  The military recently dropped screening for 'white nationalists,' which certainly sends a signal.  If Trump can get lackeys of his into positions of leadership in the military, then what is laying out here is more a 'little civil war' than fascism, more Franco than Mussolini.  If Trump loses the election – and at this point he is likely to – this may trigger armed rightists into violence.  So be prepared...

Which is why the Democrats are in such a love fest with military generals, the FBI, the NSA and the CIA now – a love fest that will not turn out well.

In this context, the ‘bi-partisanship’ of Democratic candidates like Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg and Klobuchar should really be called collaborationism.  The word 'bi-partisan' itself reveals that politicians from both Parties are actually on the same page over and over again, ultimately part of the same class project.  Even though the Republicans will have nothing to do with ‘bipartisanship’ (!!) unless it benefits them and the corporations they represent.  Only Democrats actually talk about bipartisanship, which is indicative. The national Democratic Party has even endorsed 3 former Republicans for Senate according to The Intercept.  What threatens this bipartisanship is any threat from the left, even from a moderate social-democratic left.  It has to be destroyed as the present corporate press ban on Sanders shows.  The corporate press will turn to constant vitriol if Sanders gets closer to the nomination.

Impeachment, like Russia-gate, is another failed Democratic Party leadership tactic run by lawyers.  In a way it is their pretense of actually being an opposition party. Instead of looking at the system, they look at moronic actions by Trump. The Democratic leadership prefers scandal over politics, because politics also implicates them.

P.S. - Ralph Nader in Alternet details how the Democratic Party leadership, in a bipartisan agreement, continued to 'fund' the U.S. government days ago.  How?  By giving Trump $1.4B for the wall, weakening the ACA, giving $22B more for the military.  Nader-Alternet-Budget Deal

Other reviews on this subject below, use blog search box upper left with these terms: "Giroux," "Russia-Gate," "Trumpolini," "fascism," "Afghanistan."

Red Frog

December 17, 2019

It's Not All Relative

“The Einsteinian Universe? – A Dialectical Perspective of Modern Theoretical Physics and Cosmology,” by Abdul Malek, 2015

This book is a philosophical attack on present mathematical idealism by a supporter of dialectical materialism.  This is a third in a series by Malek in which he exposes modern cosmology as an idealist hoax unsupported by almost any evidence.  In a way, it has taken the place of failing religions. Einstein came up with his theory based on math, not observation or empirical research.  It led to, among other things, the unprovable assertion of the Big Bang.  To this day, observational cosmology flies a distant second to math, which seems an odd position for a ‘science’ to be in.    

Of interest are several points Malek makes: 

One is that space and time do not exist as physical matter or ‘things.’  They are only the environment in which matter/energy in motion operate.  Einstein’s “Space-Time” is a geometric concept that in practice dispenses with matter and motion and makes space and time 'things.'

Two is that quantum electro-dynamics is dialectical, has been proved right and was opposed by Einstein. 

Three is that no unified field theory has ever been found, nor will it, because the essence of reality is change.  

Four is that Eddington’s 1919 false confirmation of Einstein’s theory is the equivalent of the Tonkin Gulf incident.  No one reads the corrections on page 8 after the parade has started. 

Five is Malek’s focus on ‘causality’ as an undialectical view, which does not understand that everything evolves within itself and in contradiction to others.  Process and flux are the nature of matter in motion.

Six is the constant false resort to dualisms – wave or particle?  Many or one?  Being or nothingness?  The infinite or the finite? – instead of seeing them as unified.  

Seven is Kant’s 1755 philosophic discovery that the universe evolves – it is not a static creation.  Kant’s insight of cosmic evolution was ignored by scientists for years, as they saw (and still see) no connection between philosophy and science.  (Silos are truly useful.)  The sad truth is that everyone has a philosophy whether they know it or not.  Most scientists absorb the philosophy of the rulers of the society they live in.

Malek digs up three new quotes from Einstein showing his idealist bent.  Other quotes are in earlier reviews on this blog.  (Idealism again is not related to wanting some ideal solution – idealism in the philosophic sense means that ideas rule over empirical methods and matter.)

1.     “The natural philosophers of those days were on the contrary most of them possessed with the idea that fundamental concepts and postulates of physics were not in the logical sense free inventions of the human mind but could be deduced from experience by abstraction – that is to say by logical means.  A clear recognition of the erroneousness of this notion really came with the general theory of relativity.”  Einstein, 1933. 

2.     “Many physicists maintain – and there are weighty arguments in their favour – that in the face of these facts (quantum mechanical), not merely the differential law, but the law of causation itself – hitherto the ultimate basic postulate of all natural science – has collapsed.” Einstein, 1934.

3.     “How can it be that mathematics being a product of human thought which is independent from experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” (As you might understand, the number 10 is actually a product of our own hands and toes.  Mathematics is based on making physical reality into numbers, shapes and concepts - it is not independent.)

Welcome to Pandora

If you wonder why cosmologists prattle on without evidence about time travel, multi-dimensional and multiple universes, hyper-space, dark matter, string theory, god particles and ‘theories of everything,’ join the club.  Engels, Marx and Lenin were part of a tradition that goes back to Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Kant and Hegel, who understood that material reality, empirical work, evolution or dialectics could understand the universe, society and nature.  Malek knows that modern capitalism sees the theory of relativity as useful and hence back it up in myriad ways… with money, grants, professorships, publication, telescope time, jobs and acclaim.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider, partly inspired by Einstein's theories, has cost $9 billion as of 2010 and now a larger one (the future Circular Collider) is planned to cost $22 billion - that is before massive cost overruns. The building of a the new mega collider indicates that the first one did not really prove useful.  We might compare these colliders to the building of the pyramids by modern pharaohs – monuments to their glory.  They are the largest scientific projects ever built.

One of the last predictions made by Einstein was that his whole theory might be a ‘castle in the air.’ Physicist Freeman Dyson said that “The ground of physics is littered with the corpses of unified theories.”  Malek agrees and thinks this will be Einstein’s epitaph if actual science returns in the field of cosmology.

P.S. - Sabine Hossenfelder disses the Mega Collider project in 9/2024 as a bad idea. Mega Collider - Bad Idea

Other reviews on this topic below, use blog search box, upper left:  “The Philosophy of Space-Time” and “The Dialectical Universe – Some Reflections on Cosmology” (both by Malek) “The Big Bang Never Happened,” “Seeing Red,” “Reason in Revolt,” “Big Bang Goes Boom!,” “The Big Bang Theory is a Situation Comedy,” “Ten Assumptions of Science,”  “Marx and the Earth.”

And I bought it at May Day’s excellent cut-out / used section!

Red Frog  / December 13, 2019

The Poverty of Statistics

“The Lie of Global Prosperity – How Neo-Liberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation,” by Seth Donnelly, 2019

Anyone paying attention recently noticed last Friday’s stock orgasm on Wall Street in response to the new U.S. unemployment number, which is now at 3.5%.  This is called the U3 number yet the press does not note the U6 number, which is called the ‘real unemployment rate’.  U6 is not purely based on those collecting or filing for unemployment insurance. It attempts to include people not filing but still unemployed, as well as under-employment and part-time work.  It does not include those on disability, welfare, criminals, those forcibly retired and those in prison.  U6 is usually about double the ‘unemployment rate.’  Nor does it rate the quality of the jobs gained.  Confused?  You should be.

 

Accompanying this was liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz, who criticized the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a totally inaccurate way to describe economic progress. GDP only describes the crude production of goods in each country and is the favorite number for capitalist economists.  Another bogus statistic is the official inflation numbers which are based on a ridiculous basket of food goods from the 1950s.  It ignores other sources of inflation like school, medical costs, child care, transport or housing.  Similarly poverty stats in the U.S. are manipulated and inaccurate, based on estimates from the 1960s that ignored everything but food.  If the same methodology was used as in the 1960s, the poverty level would be 3 times higher, according to the Congressional Research Service.  The statistics about world poverty are also deceptive, as this book argues.

What is going on? 

Capitalists play with statistics in order to hide the actual state of the economy because this props up their rule.  There is a reason that every news program touts the numbers on the financial markets every single day, even though just 52% of the population own stocks and 86.4% of these investments are owned by the top 10% of the population.  For the wealthy, market indices are their basic and only economic indicators.

U.N. – World Bank Figures

Donnelly does an analysis of a world poverty ‘victory’ proclaimed by the U.N. and World Bank in 2015.  They claimed that nations and neoliberal methods had halved poverty in the world since 1980.  The Economist and other corporate financial press trumpeted their findings. This figure included the most reductions in China, which is not a fully capitalist country, though that issue is not dealt with in this book.  Nor did class struggle have a role in how the World Bank and U.N. thinks any increase was made, as they assume it is a ‘trickle down’ from GDP.

Donnelly counters their arguments by undermining the many games they play with statistics.   The World Bank now cites $1.90 a day as the global poverty line.  That is $393.50 a year. In the 1960s they originally picked $1.00 a day, using government figures for 6 of the poorest countries in the world and translating that through purchasing power parity (PPP).   So initially no actual independent calculations were made from a broad range of countries.  Donnelly’s on the ground experience in Haiti opened his eyes to how this number was meaningless.

PPP is a convoluted and manipulated number that ostensibly compares prices in all countries, but it does not correspond to international exchange rates.   The PPP is consistently lower than these exchange rates, which should be a yellow flag.  PPP is based on a 2011 traditional ‘basket of goods and services’ that is weighted to prices for services – while in poor countries food is more expensive.  Independent researchers and institutions have shown that the U.N.’s PPP is set too low so that fewer people seem poor. 

  

Probably above $1.90 a day.

Donnelly brings in more accurate estimates of poverty, hunger, inequality, the urban and rural divide, school enrollment, water quality, slum-dwelling and price comparisons, which show all of these are at much worse levels than the 2015 U.N. / World Bank estimates. For instance the U.N.s estimates for hunger come with flawed assumptions about height and calorie intake. These more accurate figures come from the PEW Research Center, Oxford’s Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI), UNICEF, OxFam, the Maddison Project, various independent researchers, even the Financial Times, Credit Suisse and the Indian Government.  The MPI indicated that about $5.00 a day was more accurately above the international poverty line, not $1.90.  The exception to this dark picture are diseases, since vaccines and inoculations have stopped some deaths from diarrhea, malaria and HIV/AIDs. 

For growth of a middle class, the only increase is in China and India according to Donnelly.  Here again, ‘average’ incomes are deceiving.  You put a billionaire and a janitor in the same elevator, the average wealth in that elevator is a bit above half a billion.  China has the most billionaires in the world now at over 400, with over 100 in the CCP or leading political bodies itself.  The 100 richest people in India are all billionaires.  Outside these global south countries Donnelly claims a real middle-class is not growing.  I would contest that idea, but he does not really go into detail.    

IMPERIALISM behind POVERTY

Donnelly’s second chapter is a short, factual section on the recent development of imperialism since 1944's Bretton Woods agreement through the 1970s Saudi Arabia agreement linking oil and the dollar and on to the various structural adjustment programs of the 1980s.  He shows how capital exploits the global South, something hidden by the World Bank and U.N.  He cites three main economic factors actually creating global poverty:  1. the U.S. dollar standard subsidized by Saudi Arabia and oil, which weakens global south currencies, increases prices of imports and allows the U.S. to control the world-flow of cash; 2. labor and land exploitation by international capitalist corporations that include exporting food; 3. massive national debts by southern countries owed to core imperial banks.  For instance, rural subsistence farmers might have a lower 'monetary' value outside the commodity economy, but actually have access to more food than a slum dweller.  But now small farmers are being squeezed and liquidated.

This creates what Samir Amin called ‘imperialist rent’ and what Marx called ‘surplus value,’ both paid by the proletariat to the core imperialist economies.  Lenin of course named imperialism ‘the highest stage of capitalism’ in the early 20^th century, so the only difference now is the much greater infiltration of capital into nearly every nook and cranny of the world.

For other reviews on this subject below, use blog search box, upper left: “Value Chains,” “Planet of Slums,” “The Long Revolution of the Global South,” “The City,” “The Open Veins of Latin America,” “Famished Road,” “Last Train to the Zona Verde,” “Blood Lake,” “American Exceptionalism,” “The Race for What’s Left.” 

And I bought it at May Day Books, where you will get the greatest discounts in the Twin Cities

Red Frog

December 10, 2019

“The rust-spattered American bloodlands…”

“Hinterland – America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict,” by Phil Neel, 2019

This book illuminates what is going on in what the author calls ‘the hinterlands’ – U.S. areas beyond the chosen central cities dominated by capital.  These mostly U.S. coastal cities are now surrounded by suburban areas of logistics, small factories and growing poverty (the near hinterlands), then extending along transit and interstate lines through exurbia (the middle hinterlands) into the far hinterlands, mostly rural and mostly ignored.  Neel grew up in a rural part of Oregon and his reflections, poetic and literary at times, show an understanding of what is going on in the intermountain west of blasted towns and dying industries.  He spent time in Seattle with Occupy and visited Ferguson, Missouri during the riots and tries to give a geographic understanding to the new conditions of riot and resistance.

One of his key insights is about rural right-wingers like the Patriots, Oathkeepers, 3%ers and various kinds of Christian Dominionists and Sovereign Citizens that ride the rural Northwest. In one county in Oregon’s Rogue Valley the state is now so weak due to layoffs that rightists are offering protection as a new police force. These groups are also trying to provide other social services, as the local economy and governments nose-dive.  For leftists paying attention, that means the beginning of ‘dual power' and activities similar to programs run by the Black Panther Party or Occupy.  These rightist groups get their support from the sprawling European-American exurbs and hinterlands.  He makes the important point that these movements are led by local businessmen not poor proletarians.  Because these bosses show ‘strength’ they can lure the local working-class into supporting them.  Most rural workers are actually tuned out of politics - apoliticals who don’t vote and are instead patching together scanty and sometimes illegal livelihoods.  The phrase he uses several times is:  “political support follows strength.”

This is well known to Marxists, as vacillating people follow those with the best organization.  Neel maintains the present left ignores the issues of physical and social power, instead focusing purely on program and in this way fail to attract support.

The other insight Neel has is something the rebellions against the racist police murders in Ferguson, Missouri and Baton Rouge, Louisiana heralded.  Ferguson is not a central city but instead a failing near hinterland suburb of St. Louis in which both the geography of dispersed streets and dispersed state power meant the rebels could hold out for a long time. The mostly whitish government lived on fees and tickets from the darker population due to their falling budget.  The rebels were able to resist both police and national guard state power, as well as the soft-power brought from St. Louis – NGOs, liberal politicians, black misleaders and pacifists.  For instance Jesse Jackson was booed when he got to Ferguson. Neel calls this a new turn in the class-based hinterland geographic resistance to capital’s racism.  However, his narrative is not able to fit Baltimore’s rebellion into that geography, nor Cairo’s.

Livin' Logistics

As to the uprising in Cairo, Egypt, Neel points out the street-fighting role of football ‘Ultras’ – people used to violence who were able to combat Egyptian police and thugs hired by the government, leading the larger crowd.  This led to citizens’ committees taking control of many proletarian neighborhoods in Cairo for a time.  His attitude towards these football ‘ultras’ (who appeared in other European 'square' revolts) seems to favor some kind of U.S. ‘black bloc’ tactic - though he never says so explicitly.  He also points out that the urban gangs in Baltimore actually worked with police against the street rebellion against another police murder.

Occupy Seattle moved out of a central city park to a college campus park and then slowly disintegrated due to anaconda pressure.  I.E. a combination of police actions and relentless but low-key opposition by the government and school. Neel describes the somewhat dystopian near hinterlands south of the city of Seattle inhabited by the dispossessed working class and a familiar sprawl of logistical warehouses, ports and freeways.  He sees this area as the coming battleground where global supply chains can be crippled, the population is not friendly to the state and repressive power is weakest.

What Neel doesn’t mention is that in order to develop a real opposition in the U.S. it must take permanent organizational forms, not just spontaneous and short-run rebellions.  Nor does he mention the need to be inside ‘the final wall of the fortress.’ I.E. the tactic of the strike is never mentioned.  Strike and riot can be combined, as we've learned from the French and others.  Neel is an anarcho-communist, so this doesn't occur to him.  He does note the polarization in the working class between the decreasing number with decent health care, housing, pensions and 401Ks versus those who work for weekly wages and few benefits, but he can’t seem to bridge that gap.  Which is admittedly a rather large one.

Among his many well-written poetic impressions, Neel points out the odd character of the present:  “There is no final crisis, just the management of a wider collapse.”

This book blends with other recent books on the subject that look into conditions in the rural and marginal U.S.  Other reviews on this topic below, use blog search box upper left:  “Riot, Strike, Riot,” “This Land,” “On New Terrain,” “What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?” “Angry White Men,” “Damnation.” “Red State Rebels,” “The Invisible Committee,” “The Football Factory,” "Value Chains."  

And I bought it at May Day Books for a bigger discount than you will get anywhere else in town!

Red Frog

December 6, 2019

2nd in a China Series

“Striking to Survive,” by Fan Shigang, 2019

This book is an explanation and oral history of two recent strikes in the Pearl River Delta around the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province, the center of Chinese factory production.  The two strikes are based on attempts by management to relocate to an inner, cheaper part of China.  The workers are not afraid to take militant action to try to get some severance from the capitalists who run these plants.  Neither factory is in the public sector.

The book reflects the many strikes and labor disputes occurring in this region in 2013-2015 and is a sequel to an earlier book covering a prior period (“China on Strike” - reviewed below).  The capitalists know they can pay lower wages if they move, as the workers in the Delta have gained some material advances over the years.

FURNITURE FACTORY

The first factory is owned by a firm in Hong Kong and makes furniture for outfits like Wal-Mart.  The 400 or so workers in this plant go on strike for 2 weeks and are eventually defeated in their demands.  Chief among them is getting 1600-2000 yuan per year severance for the years they worked in the plant, but they also concern unpaid heat bonuses and unpaid pensions.  Instead the bosses offer a maximum of 500 yuan per year, while their other demands are ignored. (500Y is about $56.)

The strike is first led by some of the longer-serving senior staff called foreman, who are really lead workers.  These form a group of delegates, as the government demanded delegates be selected. Then active workers from the plant get engaged, especially a Mr. Yu, along with some aggressive older women workers.  Mr. Yu runs a micro-blog, hands out leaflets and studies Chinese labor law.  He becomes one of their chief spokespeople.  He is eventually detained for 1.5 years while other ‘ring-leaders’ are detained for a few weeks.

The strike starts when the workers block a truck taking equipment to the new factory and hold it under guard.  They occupy the plant and shut down all production, blocking shipments.  They at times seize and hold individual police, company lawyers, government representatives and even the boss for short periods, which shows how tough they could be.  Local governmental bodies pretend to sympathize, but side with the factory owner. The local All China Confederation of Trade Unions plays no role. Private thugs appear.  The riot police are called out several times on the workers as they demonstrate at the local government office or block roads, leading to arrests and some beatings.  In these confrontations, the women workers are in the front line to protect the men. The workers make one strategic concession in order to ‘bargain in the good faith’ but get no concrete gain for it, and loose their leverage. 

Confrontations abound

Chinese Government

Of most import is the role of different government bodies, which use various tactics to undermine the strike.  The tactics are not quite as bloody-minded as many governments in the global South however.  This is significant and shows that Chinese labor is stronger. I think this is a partial reflection of the class character of the Chinese state, though the authors consider China capitalist through and through.  Some defenders of China think that the economy is an example of an ‘NEP on steroids.’  However the original NEP encouraged low-level domestic capitalism and market forces, but it did not invite European capital into Russia to set up factories - among other openings to overseas capital.  So this is something new. The long jailing of Mr. Wu certainly shows that the government understands the benefits of punishing real labor leaders, reflecting a bureaucratic and pro-capitalist view.  This must be what ‘Socialism with a Chinese characteristics’ really means.

The way the strike developed reflects the spontaneous and unorganized nature of labor protest in the Delta, which is sometimes sophisticated but at other times naive.  Delegates fear being identified and claim they are only transmitting information about negotiations, so there is little leadership. Plans are ad hoc and short term and the workers think the strike will be short.  The workers are hungry and get tired from the conflict.  There is a certain level of trust in the statements from the government and the capitalist owner, which boomerangs against the workers.  They expect help from government bodies and get none.

I will let you read about the other strike when you buy the book.  Suffice it to say that it consisted of two sequential strikes, both ending when police flooded into the occupied factory.  Both strikes were spurred by an activist minority and had appeals to various levels of government which were ignored.  Tactics to divide the workforce were common.  Essentially this book shows in factory relocations in the Delta, the workers are waste to be thrown out in order to protect the profits of offshore capitalists.

 Other reviews on Chinese labor and politics below, use blog search box upper left:  “China on Strike” (first in this series); “Two Sea Changes in World Political Economy,” “Is the East Still Red?” “From Commune to Capitalism,” “The End of the Revolution,” “Jasic Factory Struggle,” “The Rise of China,” “The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism”(Amin); “Southern Insurgency.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 3, 2019