Transition Back

 “Art of the Soviets – Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917-1992” edited by M.C. Bown, B. Taylor, 1993 Part 2 of the review:

1937 Soviet Pavilion in Paris

The author describes the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exhibition, the first time anything major was shown outside the USSR. It was a soaring construction along the walk to the Eiffel Tower, topped by a familiar and massive male worker with a hammer and a female peasant with a sickle raising their tools together. Across the lawn was the Nazi pavilion, also gigantic in size. Inside the structure, which implied Utopian dynamism, were statutes of Stalin and Lenin, a model of the unbuilt Palace of the Soviets, a full-bodied display of socialist realist art in massive frescoes and paintings along with wood sculptures, water colors of Soviet construction, theater designs and textiles from Tajikistan. Images of Stalin dominated many paintings, giving visual proof to the 'personality cult.' Soviet modernists like Tatlin, Rodchenko, Malevich and others were not included. The author says the pavilion showed Soviet art to be “developing backwards... to a nineteenth Century Beaux-Arts tradition.”

Soviet Pavilion in Paris, 1937

At the same time the show trials of the opposite groupings in the CPSU were going on, as Zinoviev and Kamenev had been executed. Tukhachevsky, two military marshals, 11 Commissars of Defense, 13 of 15 Army generals and 35,000 officers were executed during the exhibition. Victor Serge, Andre Gide, Andre Breton, Max Ernst and other Surrealists, Boris Souvarine and Trotsky used the occasion of the pavilion to denounce the murders of the Bolshevik old guard and the military staff. Henri Barbusse and Louis Aragon defended them.

Alexandr Gerasimov

The most prominent traditionalist painter in the USSR was Alexandr Gerasimov. He was born in Kozlov, a small rural town in southern Russia, a town with no artists. He had skills as a sketch artist and a portrait painter. After moving to Moscow, he attended art school where he still felt the country-bumpkin and was perhaps treated like one. In 1927 he met the People's Commissar of Defense, Clement Voroshilov, did his portrait, and began his career rise. He did a series of paintings of banya bathers, Russia's version of the Finnish sauna. He painted the famous 'Lenin on the Rostrum,' Red Army soldiers, fellow artists, construction sites, political meetings, peasant gatherings, street scenes – a good number still influenced by Impressionism. His own Rembrandt-like self-portrait shows his skill incorporating light and shade, a style that never changed.

Gerasimov also painted many portraits of Stalin over 17 years and waged battles against any modernist art forms, including non-Russian ones. He decried Spanish Communist Picasso as a 'formalist,' for instance. Gerasimov was a member of the AKhRR, then a key bureaucrat in the Artists' Union in 1937. In 1947 he was appointed President of the official socialist realist art organization, the USSR Academy of Arts. Art outside the USSR was declared knowledge 'not needed' – though Gersimov had taken foreign trips. 'Cosmopolitanism' was denounced and some artists were arrested and died in prison. In the 1950s Gerasimov fell out of favor and after arguing with Khrushchev in 1956, he resigned.

The Non-Russian Republics

The USSR encompassed a vast area and dozens of ethnic groups. The author of this article uses anti-communist verbiage, declaring the USSR an 'imperialist' without understanding the economic roots of the term. Re: culture, the Stalinized CPSU did try to homogenize culture across various lands, but prior to that the Soviets made diverse cultural efforts.

Lenin at the Rostrum - Gerasimov 

The author looks at various painters from the Soviet republics and their styles, some of which broke from Soviet convention. The same squashing of modernists happened in Kiev, Tbilisi, Minsk and Armenia. Some artists in the Muslim republics hid their styles by describing them in acceptable terms. Others in Georgia promoted the realist style, and one became another court painter to Stalin. In 1946 specifically Russian art was promoted  across the Union as the model by Andrei Zhdanov and the USSR Academy of Arts - dispensing with 'great Russian chauvinism' by ignoring it. After WWII Zhdanovshchina enforced socialist realism in every republic, to the point where nearly all art was homogenized.

Tractors and Non-Tractors

The next author looks down on the plethora of realist and cheery 'tractor' art. The problem throughout this book is that socialist realist art is a legitimate style, though certainly bastardized by hagiography of 'the leaders' and a relentless positivity. If you find yourself offended by pictures of workers, soldiers and peasants, or a construction site or farm and prefer Christian icon painting or violent abstraction, then your taste is also being dictated by the 'ideas' of the social structure you live in. Certainly in the 1960s the CIA favored a-political abstract art and promoted it world-wide. The problem in the USSR was complete state control of the arts scene, not socialist realism. Present U.S. art for instance rarely pictures proletarian people doing anything, including working. This invisibility is part of the cultural attitudes of a class system.

After Zhdanov was dethroned in 1954, a more open period started, including a less realistic, darker and less decorative 'severe' art. Another was 'socialist humanist' art centered on humans doing human things. In a way it was a reaction to what had come prior. Under Brezhnev artists in the 1960s and 1970s began to look back at the history of the USSR and world art. Foreign sources were no longer off-limits. Valdislav Zimenko, a critic, pointed out that Lenin had called for links to the great art of the past, but not as imitation or nostalgia. The period was predictably declared 'developed socialism,' and every person could be a Renaissance man. Some began to paint inspired by Renaissance styles, Russo-Byzantine art, naive, primitivist and Christian themes. Montage, photo-realism and surrealist influences appeared, along with a new kind of historical painting. Tatyana Nazarenko was one of the most versatile of this group while Bakhtin was one of the chief promoters of the poly-stylist method. And predictably, conservative and nationalist critics resisted this eclectic view.

Glazunov - Allegories in Leninsburg

Ilya Glazunov

The artist Glazunov (b. 1930, d. 2017) did not become popular through official channels. He saw the end of the Zhdanov restrictions and became the portrait painter to the famous, the prominent and the official, extending far beyond the Soviet Union. He painted Gina Lollobrigida, Leonid Brezhnev, Fellini, Gandhi, Allende, Kurt Waldheim and so on. He was the Andy Warhol of the USSR, not quite as original, but accused of being a thief of others' styles, creating Russian kitsch on a massive scale. He painted a wide range of traditional panegyrics to Soviet achievements and so evaded official condemnation, even after a painting of Stalin soaked in blood. His partly traditional, partly popular and partly original style made him the most popular Soviet artist of his time.

Non-Conformist Art

The 1950s thaw provided a hotbed for young artists, especially in Leningrad, the intellectual capital of the Union and a perennial source of dissent. The experimental art center GInKhuK was closed in 1927 and its director Malevich arrested for a time. All of the leaders of the defense of Leningrad in WWII were liquidated, which tells you what Moscow thought of that city. Modernist art was rediscovered in the '50s by a new generation, with guidance from the old. With the example of artists like Aleksandr Arefiev, they developed the 'severe' style. In the '60s and '70s an alternative underground called “Gaza Nevski,” used collage, Suprematism, neo-realism and conceptualism to show the darker truths of life in the USSR. They were connected to rock music, protests and housing evictions. By the 1980s their styles became more solid and sophisticated.

Predictably art in the declining USSR adopted characteristics of the declining art in the central capitalist countries – a post-modernist mash of styles, intent and lack of purpose. The author says they were 'impossible combinations' of 'complex ambivalence' showing the “insanity of common sense.” As he puts it “There is no certainty about right and wrong, possible and impossible, true and false.” After the fall of the USSR in 1991, these artists, along with others, became less political. The author guesses they will be absorbed into the world art market. As Philip Roth said, in the West “everything goes and nothing matters” while in Sovietized Czechoslovakia “nothing goes and everything matters.” The same was true in Russia, but now that has changed again.

P.S. - Please visit the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis, which holds the best collection of socialist realist and Russian art in the U.S. It is, appropriately, in a former church.

P.P.S. - Red Frog used to paint in a surrealist style, but now limits himself to colored hand-drawings of cheery, abstract or strange subjects.

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Art of the Soviets” (Part 1); “Adios Utopia,” “Women in Soviet Art,” “9.5 Thesis on Art and Class,” “Ways of Seeing” (Berger); “Desert of Forbidden Art,” “The Marxist Theory of Art,” “Elizabeth Olds and Wanda Gag,” “Art is DEAD,” “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “The Red Atlantis” and for reading the “Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art” by Trotsky, Breton and Rivera.”

And I got it at May Day's excellent cut-out / used section!

Red Frog

4 20 2023

Transitional Art

 “Art of the Soviets – Painting, Sculpture & Architecture in a One-Party State,” edited by MC Bown and B Taylor, 1917-1992 (1993)

Part 1:

This is an erudite and academic collection of articles about Soviet art discussing various painting styles – cubism, futurism, agit-prop posters, socialist realism, naturalism, realism, Constructivism, formalism. It also looks at public sculptures and building methods. The use of 'one-party state' in the sub-title implies that art in 'two-party' states is freer or better … which might be true and might not. The editor's point was that the government had a huge role in artistic scenes for awhile. On the other hand market forces in the U.S. have created a two-party duopoly 'Dollar state' with lots of questionable architecture, sculpture and painting. The authors are not leftists, but they are knowledgeable about the USSR, pointing out a wide range of Soviet art and achievements ignored by anti-communists. These articles do not go into Russian avant-garde styles like Constructivism very much, perhaps because it is so studied.

Public propaganda: The author asserts that the seeds of socialist realism were sown in 1917. He points to Lenin's plan, addressed to Lunacharsky, asking for “monumental propaganda” - referring to sculpture and statues – as proof. Yet the selected statues were of a broad cultural range, and in varied styles. Public sculptures included not just Marxists, but Chopin, Garibaldi, Bakunin, Proudhon and many writers, including Byron and Heine. The plan removed statues of Romanov kings and Russian Orthodox saints – the Confederates, slavers and colonialists of their day. The author notes the sophisticated use of propaganda by the Bolsheviks encompassed sculpture, film, theatre, posters, murals, agitational trains and ships, agit-prop, revolutionary festivals, photomontage – it was a “multi-media propaganda machine.” Tatlin's famous Constructivist spiral model - “Monument to the Third International” was both revolutionary in form and content. It showed the Bolsheviks were not afraid of modernism at the time.

Physical issues: The 'new man' of approaching socialism engendered a focus on physical fitness, non-competitive sports, gymnastics and eventually Stakhanovite workers, able to exceed at any kind of labor. In theatre, Meierhold incorporated move modeling, gymnastics and circus antics in his plays, while designers created sports clothing for women. The 'machine-man' was a trend. These corresponded to the Marxist idea of removing the barrier between mental and physical labor. Later, sports became competitive under Stalin and 'willpower' predominant. According to one of the authors “Lenin was somewhat of a fitness fanatic,” doing daily calisthenics and exercise. The civil war and industrialization made physical exhaustion and emotional fatigue a focus in the army, architecture, work-sites and also within the Party.

Early Artist Org: The AKhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia) was predominant between 1922 and 1932 and was favored by the dominant groups in the Soviet CP. Western analysts have ignored it for political reasons. The organization was molded by the cultural preferences of Lenin, Trotsky and sometimes Lunacharsky, Bukharin and later, Stalin. This involved battles around pre-revolutionary Turgenevism, futurist, realist, revolutionary, naturalist and early socialist realist art. The backwardness of the old artists' group inspired the formation of AKhRR. It's manifesto dedicated itself to the heroism of soldiers, workers, revolutionaries and peasants.

Tatlin's tower in honor of the 3rd International

Lines on Art:

To be noted, the Party still had no line about art, even though Lenin favored accessible, political art. AKhRR was criticized for not going beyond naturalism in its shows. It did gain friends in the Red Army and trade unions. Trotsky called their work “manure for the new culture” - a double-edged dialectical comment. Lunacharsky, while allowing modernism, criticized cubism for its bourgeois abstraction, and naturalism for being a dead mirror. At the time he favored 'agitational' art motivated by the idea, where form and content fuse. In 1925 still no style was decreed by the CPSU in literature or the arts, except to support a general communist world-view. The author contends these aesthetic conflicts created a diverse mélange of groups and styles – mostly naturalist or realist - from all over the USSR, best shown in the massive and pivitol 1926 AKhRR exhibition. It was praised by Lunacharsky as to its breadth and insulted by the modernist critic Novitski as to its archaic amateurism and Tsar-like portraits.

The author concludes that AKhRR's 'mass-ness' was “a reworking … of Russian nineteenth century painting within the framework of a class-conscious engagement with … Soviet reality.” A transitional method, so to speak. The prescient debate included insults by some against impressionism, cubism, dada and futurism as 'decadent' or 'bourgeois' western products. In 1932, after the victory of Stalin's faction, the CPSU decree “On the Reconstruction of Artistic and Literary Organizations” initiated Party control, and demanded some form of socialist realism. In 1934 culture potentate Zhdanov said that “art had to be socially relevant to the mass viewer … understandable and instructive ideologically.”  It became official policy.

Socialist Realism: The author thinks socialist realism used the old methods of allegory and iconography to convey its messages of national social planning.  It portrayed everything 'marching forward' as part of the 5 year plan; baptized progress with the color red; portrayed ideal physical bodies; idolized Stalin and Lenin, along with many icons and symbols of October like the hammer & sickle; used visual cues to show zeal like blowing hair; brought the viewer into the picture by portrayed a side character also watching the action. This author says many of these are 'pseudo-religious' methods. He looks at 4 socialist realist paintings for proof.

Views on Art: According to Lunacharsky Soviet artists should help to create 'the new man' and the future. Lenin opposed Proletcult's leader Alexandr Bogdanov who believed all art had to be made anew. Lenin followed Marx, who felt that a workers' state would absorb the high points of bourgeois culture, so starting anew was impossible. Lunacharsky agreed, but rejected European cubist / futurist, even Impressionist styles as too abstract for Soviet citizens. His views were important, as Lunacharsky was the first Commissar of Education & Culture, but lost his position to Stalin's faction in 1929. He became another commissar erased from Soviet history and the Kremlin Wall, only to have a revival under Khrushchev. He, too, is a transitional figure.

1926 Film Poster

Architecture: The author rejects socialist realist architecture as limited to the Stalin period. Large Soviet buildings are sometimes called 'brutalist' but the same style occurs in the west. It claimed to be a method, not a style; it sought to unite progress with tradition. It was summed up as 'National in form, socialist in content' – which indicates that Russianism had replaced internationalism. Nothing major was being built until about 1924 due to materials' shortages - and then the debates started between the main modernist Constructivist and socialist realist tendencies. In 1932 the debate about the never built “Palace of The Soviets” led to asymmetrical and unadorned methods being ruled out and socialist-realist monumentalism endorsed. This is prior to many environmental understandings, though Soviet apartment buildings efficiently shared inputs – electricity, heat, space, etc. Besides buildings, industrial cities were planned, laying out worksites, shops and living spaces in a logical order, as coherent wholes. Are these '15 minute cities'? They might be, as the car culture was not dominant. Old cities like Moscow and Kiev were partly re-designed in certain areas, trying to modernize the legacy of the Russian Czar and village.

The first real architectural project was the superb Moscow Metro, which a range of architects worked on, including Corbusier. It opening in 1935 with revolutionary art and sculpture added later. After WWII many more building projects started around the country, principally low-rise housing using local and environmental styles, much of which the author calls 'excellent.' The last gigantic socialist realist experiments ended in 1952 with Stalin's death – a series of huge, high buildings in Moscow. In 1954 Khrushchev, who'd worked on the Metro, denounced the socialist realist style as economically expensive, a waste of materials and inefficient due to heat losses and little usable floor space. And that was it.

End of Part 1 review. Part 2 to be posted on Thursday.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Adios Utopia,” “Women in Soviet Art,” “9.5 Thesis on Art and Class,” “Ways of Seeing” (Berger); “Desert of Forbidden Art,” “The Marxist Theory of Art,” “Elizabeth Olds and Wanda Gag,” “Art is DEAD,” “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” “The Red Atlantis.”

And I got it at May Day's excellent used/cutout section!

Red Frog

April 20, 2023

Drunk on Debt

 “The Debt Trap – How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe” by Josh Mitchell, 2021

One way capitalism is able to survive is by making debt universal. This riveting story, written by a WSJ reporter with a working-class background, shows how a former 'private / public' entity like Sallie Mae increased college costs, made inequality worse and youth debt overwhelming. The story could have been written by Michael Lewis its so funky. It is the dialectic of a rentier economy drunk on loans and debt.

Mitchell tracks the convoluted history of college loan programs, starting in the 1960s with Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society. Johnson got a small loan to attend college in Texas in the '50s and because of this, he pushed for some kind of aid to middle and working class students. At that time only 1 out of 10 went to college. In the 1950s the Sputnik successes by the USSR made the U.S. realize it was falling behind in science and technology. This cold war added steam to Johnson's idea. The push was on to better educate more of the population.

AUNT SALLIE MAE

The student loan industry story is a Rube Goldberg patchwork that created the twisted atrocity that is 1972's Sallie Mae (the Student Loan Marketing Association - SLM). First they tried a limited, means-tested program run by private banks, calling it the Guaranteed Student Loan program.  It benefited the middle and upper classes but after awhile, the banks and investors weren't lending to students, as the profit was too low and the money ran out. They fiddled around with other patches, while of course turning down a public funding option.

Then they found a reliable money pot for the program. A so-called private/public entity would 'borrow' federal money via a discount loan program (The Federal Financing Bank) at the Treasury Department, and be technically 'off the budget books.' This is similar to the Fed's discount window for the big banks. It gave a guaranteed interest rate of 3.5% profit to the banks; a 100% federal backup for any defaults and the loans would be universal. This created a logic for every college to raise tuition above the inflation rate. For instance, for-profit 'trade' and technical schools, some mail-order, were 90% funded by federal loans. This became Sallie Mae - a private company owned by banks and colleges, who also had majority control. It eventually traded on Wall Street, so it enriched private shareholders too; and finally went fully private.

The people who gained? The banks, investors and colleges / universities. The ones who lost? The students and the taxpayer. It was a giant shuffle of Fed money 'for a good cause' into private hands, presided over by the Congressional House Sub-Committee on Education. Mitchell focuses on the key individuals at each twist and turn, but this hides the fact that they all danced to a profit tune. He peppers the book with tough personal debt stories to illustrate his points.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Of course, we know the rest, as its still going on. Elite colleges and universities – the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters – led the way and became ridiculously expensive. Under Reagan, schools became profit centers and students 'consumers.' The educational institution's role was no longer to benefit the public, but really the private pocket. Colleges went on administration, building and amenities' sprees to justify their increases, and engaged in price fixing tuition for certain students – not the most in need. Blue collar workers, practical skills and unions were getting pummeled, underpaid, insulted and laid-off, so traditional college seemed the best bet to cross some kind of class divide.

Luxury Dorm at U of Alabama

Au contraire! The government paid the interest while students were in school, but in the 1990s that interest was now added after they graduated. Nor were Pell Grants covering as much tuition – and still don't. Then the program appeared in the federal budget, as government accounting rules had changed, and its inequities were no longer a secret. The key rub? It was impossible to claim that every student could pay back a loan with a quality job, never mind how long that might take. So it was not the sure-fire 'the investment' it was made out to be. The program was becoming so bad that, according to Mitchell, Bill Clinton – of all people - rode to the rescue, torpedoing Sallie Mae with a Direct Loan program (DLP) from the Treasury, cutting out the banks and Wall Street. It was the dreaded public option again.

Well that couldn't fucking stand. Clinton, the good privatizer that he really was, agreed to let Sallie Mae go fully private. A corporate shareholder coup in 1996 took over Sallie Mae, which ultimately allowed them to directly lend to students, competing with the Direct Loan program. Previously they had to buy the loans from the banks. By offering freebies, discounts and aid to colleges with their prior profits it took back market share from the DLP. At the same time, Clinton forced the ABA to accredit 'for profit' law schools, where advanced degrees were loan gold.

A LONG LIST of GOUGING

Sallie Mae (SM) then started to securitize student loans for sale on Wall Street … much like the housing loans that brought down the banking system in 2008. They made a deal with for-profit / on-line schools that charged more, had sub-standard quality and catered to 'adult' students who perhaps could not get into a regular school. SM created a private loan program to fund the 10% of tuition that these schools could not legally pitch. The University of Phoenix, an on-line school, had 70,000 students in 1999, and was the largest single sales outlet for SM dollars, far more than Trump University. By 2003, U of Phoenix had 225K students. In 2006, according to Mitchell, 27% of all federally insured loans were with Sallie Mae – $142B or a third of all student loans in the U.S.

While Mitchell focused on Sallie Mae, the book encompasses a whole sector and profit approach. For instance, in 2005 Congress removed restrictions on how much MA / Ph.D / JD / Med / MBA grad students could borrow from federal programs (Grad Plus), and increased their interest rate. They had a low default rate at the time because of the jobs they 'mostly' got. So even with 'public' involvement, there was no control over what colleges were doing. Nothing was planned within the whole education sector.

Sallie Mae was going to abandon the stock market and go private in 2007, which would make their operations secret. The government said no, cut the subsidies the feds paid to banks to originate, extend and service student loans and sunk the deal. Then 2008 hit and SM had large private loan defaults on all the 'no questions asked' loans they'd made, especially at for-profit internet schools – akin to the 'no paper' mortgage loan racket. In summer 2008 Republican Bush bailed out 'too big to fail' Sallie Mae partly for those securitized loans.  A formerly swashbuckling capitalist concern, it was now revealed as a failure.

Obama responded by cutting fed insurance for private bank student loans, an expensive form of corporate welfare. But then compounded the problem by pushing college on every unemployed person, as part of the alleged American 'meritocracy.' And how would that be done? Loans, interest and debt, LID. The purpose was to get working-class African-Americans, Latinos and European-Americans into school. The upshot was to create massive debt, a contradiction - instead becoming a 'ladder down.' Black and Latino students and HBCs were the hardest hit, as they needed the most loans, since the class and color caste system still existed. Even the higher-interest “Parent Plus” program, which stuck relatives with student loans, was getting high defaults...passing debt upwards to the old. In Obama's two terms, student debt hit $1.3 Trillion dollars. In response, he extended the debt repayment schedule to 20-25 years and reduced the rate to 10%, which actually increased debt due to the longer term.  He left in place the original problem.

Mitchell looks at a for-profit law school chain, Infilaw and the Disneyfied University of Alabama for more examples of how debt reverses the financial opportunities possible in education. The involvement of Wall Street equity groups in for-profit schools was usually a sure sign they were primarily money-making institutions. Alabama hired consultants to vet each prospect on whether they should be offered discounts (merit aid), primarily based on if they might be 'shopping' other schools. Mitchell calls its an airline pricing system. They spruced up the campus to look like a Disney theme park, as many parents decide in the first 20 minutes about a school. They solicited out-state and more lucrative students to bulk up their ratings.

The debt slave march

A BANKRUPT SYSTEM

And then there's bankruptcy. Studies showed that 4 in 10 students earned the same as those without college or debt. By 2016 8 million had defaulted on student loans, yet the loans were no longer dischargable in bankruptcy. If you include the status of 'forbearance' 4 in 10 weren't sending in checks. 17% of borrowers owed more than $50K in 2014. Borrowers from the Guaranteed Loan Program were not eligible for the income-based repayment of 15% of income. 'Forbearance' status still accrued interest.  A consolidated loan lengthened the payback and increased interest payments. Indebted borrowers were trapped, even to the point of having their Social Security checks garnished. In 1976 Congress decreed that government-backed student loans could rarely be discharged in bankruptcy, based on a vague 'undue hardship' claim. In 2005 private loans joined that category. Bankruptcy judges began to revolt against the legal constraints while taxpayers were covering the defaults. Under Trump, the student loan bubble burst according to Mitchell. Yet nothing changed.

An excellent book on the privatization of higher education. Mitchell's solutions? He suggests 1) colleges directly loan to students, putting skin in the game; 2) have accurate risk accounting for every recipient of a student loan; 3) Congress should write off loan interest; 4) make community college free; 5) promote apprenticeships; 6) stop subsidizing grad school; 7) get cities to pay for local schools. He does not endorse free college, any planning or control over higher education or college endowments, creating state banks, labor action or other forms of socializing education, such as going after privatization and capitalism itself.

P.S. - A good number of strikes against corporatization have occurred at universities in the U.S., with the recent Rutgers' strike winning good pay increases for adjuncts, lecturers and other debt-ridden, poverty-stricken faculty.

Prior blog reviews on this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Debt & Capital – A Confluence of Factors,” “Debt – the First 5,000 Years” (Graeber); “J Is For Junk Economics” (Hudson); “The Deficit Myth – Modern Monetary Theory,” “A Marxist Education – Learning to Change the World,” “Capitalism on Campus,” “The Nordic Theory of Everything,” “House of Cards,” “Who Gets Bailed Out?” “The Big Short,” “Flash Boys and “Liar's Poker” (all 3 by Lewis); “The Wolf of Wall Street” (Scorsese).

And I got it at the Library!

Red Frog

April 13, 2023

The Permanent Struggle

 “Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution – Voices from Tunis to Damascus,” edited by L. Al-Zubaidi, M. Cassel, 2013

These are revealing first-person accounts of the uprisings in various Arab locations during the so-called 'Arab Spring' – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They were, broadly speaking, pro-democratic revolts against various forms of 'elected' authoritarian, dictatorial and theocratic capitalist governments. These activists are intellectuals, students or writers, evenly split between men and women, writing in a personal and literary style. In Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, leaders were overthrown – yet all retained or gradually reinstalled another repressive government. The overthrow in Libya, with the help of NATO bombing, descended into chaos. The rebellion in Syria was taken over by jihadis. Other rebellions failed to oust anyone.

These rebellions are a foretaste of things to come. They prove the Marxist adage that democratic tasks cannot be achieved by any faction of the bourgeoisie or its state. It also illustrates the fact that any kind of 'revolution,' even a political one, is a continuous process. To be successful it should aim for a social overturn in the ownership and relations of production, not just exchanging one bourgeois politician for another – enchanting as that may seem. Most of these documents were penned in late 2011, so these are snapshots of that time. 

Tunisia – January 2011. A proletarian student activist and leader, Malek Sghiri, organizes students against the dictatorial Tunisian government and participates in fighting and driving out police from his poor home town of Tula. His parents and grand-parents are long-time rebels. He himself is some kind of former Marxist attuned to the Tunisian labor movement. He is arrested in Tunis, locked up and tortured in the Interior Ministry, only to be freed after the corrupt President of Tunisia, Ben Ali, flees the country after the all-country rebellion. He is wary of the success of 'the revolution' because some of Ben Ali's allies and fake revolutionaries still speak loudly. Tunisia has the first election in its history, but Sghiri knows conservative, identitarian and Islamist forces are bent on regaining power. His youth organization calls for the revolution to continue...

Egypt – 2008. A sometime expat from Cairo, Yasmine El Rashidi, returns to a crumbling Cairo, full of unemployment and the veil. The summer of 2010, a broken legal system, violent police, government corruption, increasing crime, inflation soaring and above it all, record heat – up to 50C. The November election saw candidates being disqualified, the press curbed, opposition candidates jailed, and a wave of thugs attacking opponents, with Mubarak's party winning overwhelmingly. An Islamist attack on Christians in Alexandria in January 2011 sparked a national mood against Mubarak and his useless government, uniting disparate elements. She shows that this moment of revolt was in the making for 30 years since Mubarak's ascendancy after Sadat. She describes bits of the 18 days of revolution and bloodshed in and around Tahrir Square, which resulted in Mubarak's resignation.

Libya – 2005 - A boy escapes Gaddafi's Libya, full of roving 'revolutionary' thugs, and lands in London. His name is Mohamed Mesrati. His family applies for asylum and finally gets it after 3 years. He considers his family part of a long line of artists, intellectuals and communists crushed by the regime at various times in its past. He goes to school in England. When the revolt breaks out in February 2011 against the state-nationalist government, he backs it via the internet, creating a FB page and communicating with his contacts in the country. His friends in Tripoli are eventually killed in the fighting. He supports the intervention of NATO jets, but has nothing much to say about what happened to Libya after that point. He does understand that Libya has never had any kind of democracy in its history.

Algeria - 2011 - A literate mother in Algiers, Ghania Mouffok, takes her son to watch demonstrations against the elected authoritarian Bouteflicka, who has held power for 20 years. His cops are the inheritors of the bloody 1954-1962 anti-colonial struggle against France – and are now turned into their opposite. The Robocops turn back the demonstrations in a country she describes as Mad Max – a cross between gasoline and beer. She remembers 500 red berets dead in 1988, dying in urban battle in her Algiers neighborhood – her quartier populaire - against the government. She has no patience for 'allies' like NATO. Other Arabs wait for Algeria to rise against its dictatorial president, but to her Algeria is too ruined, too exhausted, except for the young.

Yemen – 1990 - A young boy, Jamal Jubran, is brought from Eritrea to Sanaa. As a child he experiences violent colorism against his darker skin and language. As a young socialist journalist, he watches the ill-advised 1990 unification between state socialist South Yemen and tribal, rural North Yemen. It turns into a dictatorship of the head of North Yemen, Abdullah Saleh, who jailed, expropriated and abolished Southern civil society. He finished off any remnants of socialism by war in 1994, then dumbing-down Yemeni society into an Islamist dictatorship. Jubran continues to write articles against Saleh and his son. In 2011 students first went into the streets calling for Saleh's overthrow, later joined by young workers and tribalists. Dozens were shot and killed by snipers in 'the Square of Change” and other squares. Saleh was eventually forced out after 9 months of killing by international pressure. However his son and Party still remained in power.

Pearl Square - Bahrain

Bahrain – 2011 - In 1783 the Sunni Al-Khalifa tribe invaded the Bahraini islands and dominated the indigenous Shia. In 1971 Bahrain became independent from Britain, but in 1975 parliament was dissolved. In 2001 the King created an Islamic 'constitutional monarchy.' In February 2011 an uprising took place against the monarchists calling for representative government - first a 'reform' and then the downfall of the regime. Ali Aldairy is a Bahrani intellectual who supported the occupation of Pearl Square against theocratic ethnic sectarianism. As an 'intellectual' he descended from his ivory tower and reported events in person on Twitter©. The regime's police attacked protesters in Pearl Square, killing 7 and injuring many. A few days later police attacked funeral processions with live ammo. Only one paper reported on this and was closed down, while the others claimed it was an Iranian plot. After a period of unrest and then calm, in March Gulf military forces led by Saudi Arabia occupied Bahrain and Pearl Square, followed by severe repression against known rebels.

Saudi Arabia – 2011 – The most cruel and backward theocracy in the Gulf has no general rebellion and Safa Al Ahmad is ashamed. She wants to free political prisoners and allow women to drive, but sect and gender rule in Saudi. In Saudi, youth are taught that to revolt against even an incompetent ruler is against Islam and faith. So she goes to Cairo, Bahrain and Libya. In Libya she finds the conservative 'rebels' in Benghazi are partial to Islam and monarchy... sort of like Saudi. In Saudi, only the eastern Shia have the guts to protest, and they are later arrested, killed, detained or fired, with cities like Qutif militarized. She notes the Saudi Shia sheikhs are far behind their youth. Like other Middle Eastern governments, the Saudis routinely accuse oppositionists of being terrorists, criminals, drug users, gunmen or agents of other countries.

Syria – Early 2011 – Khawla Dunia knows Syrians have been afraid for years. So when demonstrations start in the city of Daraa against the anti-democratic Syrian state, she is surprised. The regime repressed any political party not theirs, including the Left. Daraa was the site of a protest by parents against the detention of children who had scrawled anti-regime sentiments on a wall. Daraa was blockaded and other cities came out in protest. In Damascus nearly every demonstrator hid. Many demonstrators were killed in Douma, Baniyas, Latakia and Homs by police, army or vigilante thugs, the shabiha. Some of these cities she visits to see what is going on. After months of demonstrations in late 2011 armed militias form and an actual civil war starts. Some of the most powerful were Salafist militias secretly aided by the U.S. She has little to say about this later development, as her document is dated in July 2011.

A valuable collection that allows you to peek into the different types of revolutions in these countries. It makes you wonder what will it take to break the stranglehold of repression in the Middle East.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution” (Prashad); “Slave States – the Practice of Kafala in the Gulf Arab Region,” “Saudi Arabia Uncovered,” “FGM,” “Lipstick Jihad,” “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire” “Rojava,” “God is Not Great” (Hitchens); “What is the War on Terror and How to Fight It.”

And I bought it at May Day's used/ cutout book section!

Red Frog

April 10, 2023

Boot Trapped

 “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream” by Alissa Quart, 2023

Quart is a colleague of the late Barbara Ehrenreich, focused on poverty and the attitudes towards poor workers. This book is a partly enjoyable tour through the origination and development of the U.S. 'pull yourself up by your bootstrap' ethos; the 'self-made' man; the pioneer; the individualist. Quart ignores the materialist root of the bootstrap ethos in small and large scale capitalism, as if it is just an 'idea' floating above social production. The flip side of this ethos is a moralistic hatred of poor workers and anyone who struggles, as best verbalized by the Republican Party. Her main purpose in this book is to confront this hatred. Quart is a Sander's Democrat and does not pinion the Democrats' role in promoting meritocracy, which is a sophisticated name for 'bootstrapping.' In fact she doesn't even use the word meritocracy.

As most know by now, the origin of the phrase 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' is sarcastic, as it is impossible to pull your whole self 'up' by pulling on the straps at the side of one or a pair of boots. You might be able to get one boot up one leg, but that is it. This phrase has become like the game Monopoly©, which originated as an attack on real estate speculation, only to become a celebration of it.

The HEROES of BOOTSTRAPPING

Quart takes apart the 'self-reliant' mythology of the American transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson was wealthy via his dead wife's money. He hired Thoreau to do various jobs, so they were not out scrabbling for mushrooms in the woods. They both had a large circle of gentlemen friends – some regularly visited Thoreau at his shack on Walden Pond, a short walk from Concord. They were in no sense 'alone' – just petit-bourgeois intellectuals promoting themselves. Emerson was especially vile in defense of self-reliance, saying giving a dollar to a poor man was 'wicked' and called philanthropists 'foolish.' “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its (individual) members.” Emerson considered dependent people to be mediocrities. This while he depended on a dutiful wife, a bond servant, his collaborators at the Dial and even his help-mate Thoreau, who he cruelly made fun of at his funeral.

THE WILDERS

However Quart's arrow misses the mark on the Little House on the Prairie book series, an account of European pioneers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota. Quart accurately points out that the 'guvmint' Homested Act, a massive government giveaway of native land, allowed the Wilder's to make a life. She knows that some of the books' references to native Americans are backward. But she pretends that the books celebrate hardy individualism and nothing else. The Wilders worked with their neighbors; Laura went to school, played with friends and later became a school teacher; the family went into town on a regular basis, including church. This is a normal rural life, which Quart might be unfamiliar with.

Her main negative facts seem to come from Laura's daughter, Rose, who used the books to launch a TV series and was a libertarian right-winger. Quart says Wilder 'hated taxes,' but has no proof of a disdain for FDR, though that may be true. The problem is, like many works of art, the book series means many things to readers – it is a history, a family story, a children's book, a romanticized, sepia-toned look at European pioneer life in the west. It is not just a paen to 'rugged individualism' - and perhaps not even that.

ALGER

The Horatio Alger story is still with us – 'rags to riches.' With pluck and tenacity you too will succeed. Even in 1946 newspapers insisted that the guvmint GI Bill was part of a Horatio Alger story ... which it was not. As Quart points out, Alger wrote voluminous YA fiction during the late 1800s that always had a well-off older man help a young urchin find wealth. So the boys were not 'self-made' or only relying on hard work. The hidden side of this is that Alger, a son of a preacher and himself a parson, molested 2 young boys in his church and was fired for it. He later befriended young street kids in New York, basing his many stories on them. He gave them money and food, took them to his home and two he adopted. But what he did with these poor kids in private, no one knows. So, a very creepy back story to this 'American' myth.

RAND

Then we come to the rabid anti-communist Ayn Rand, a libertarian hero of the Right, a child of Russian privilege. Many noxious internet billionaires love her dreadful pot-boiler books – NASDAQs Travis Kalanick, Uber/Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel; Twitter's Jack Dorsey (who has now morphed into Elon Musk); Apple's Steve Jobs; Whole Foods' John Mackey; Lulumon's Chip Wilson; investor Mark Cuban; and Federal Reserve fuck-up Alan Greenspan. Thatcher agreed with Rand when she said “there's no such thing as society.” Really Maggie?

Quart discusses these billionaires' “rich fictions” of 'the makers' who claim they built businesses completely on their own and the attendant fabrications of girl-boss feminism. As an example, fake self-made man Trump was propped up by a rich father, and played the banking, legal and political system as part of New York's elite. This explains why he's still never been convicted of anything, even though he's a serial lawbreaker. While surveys and Piketty say that 60% of the Forbes 400 inherited their wealth, that is ignored by many fans of the meritocracy.

VARIETIES of ME

The last chapters of the book address familiar territory. Quart believes that some people tolerate the rich because of the “just world hypothesis” which posits the social structure can't be wrong. She interviews Trump supporters who are under economic strain and reject the upper-middle class angle of so many Democratic politicians, especially one failing farmer. The pandemic played a huge role in damaging many small businesses like his and they are the main voting base of the Republican Party. She looks into corporate mindfulness and “zen incorporated” methods as a solipsistic way to pacify employees and make their individual attitude the real issue. She looks at the “dystopian social safety net” of GoFundMe - an extension of the failed charity system. The majority of pleas on GoFundMe are for medical expenses – logical in a country without socialized medicine. She interviews mothers about the glaring absence of affordable or free day care, an insult to workers and their children. She dissects the inadequacies of side-gigs, side hustles and app-driven temp jobs; Instacart, Uber and Uber Eats, Lyft, Task Rabbit and the glory of two jobs, or one long, crappy one.

She has chapters highlighting billionaires who want to pay real taxes, or help those less fortunate own their own trailer homes. Some are part of an organization called 'Patriotic Millionaires.' For the working classes, she supports mutual aid, volunteering and worker ownership, but mentions nothing about the labor movement, political action, capitalism or socialism. While exposing the 'American Dream' as a con, she substitutes a cuddly liberal version of it. 

Throughout the whole book there is a philosophic rub: The individual and society interrelate; neither is dominant at every moment. Certainly the myth that humans are totally self-reliant is an obvious joke; but neither are they only automatons of society, though its influence might play the predominant role in the end. This, like many simple dualisms, is false. Opposites actually interpenetrate, even if one eventually dominates.

Her method of mainly focusing on thought substitutes for a materialist look, as capitalism molds behavior. Rabid individualism is a success strategy for some in a competitive capitalist marketplace, or a survival strategy. It is also a natural fact, as we survive, get sick, are injured and die as separate, physical individuals. We must remember that one reason Marx celebrates socialism is that it will release the creativity and energy of every individual – made possible by the social context of reduced labor time and the provision of all social needs. Quart is a pro-Sanders Democrat with some valuable research. Her best is in the cultural analyses at the beginning of the book, but the book still fails to actually liberate anyone from 'the American Dream.'

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Mean Girl - Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed,” “Rich People Things,” “3%” “McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality,” “The Ego and Its Hyperstate,” “Winners Take All,” “The Happiness Industry – How the Government and Big Business Sold Us on Well-Being,” “Psychology and Capitalism: The Manipulation of Mind,” “Keywords – the New Language of Capitalism.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

April 6, 2023

Fash Bash

 “The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion” by Tansy Hoskins, 2022

This is an update of Hoskins' previous 2014 book “Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion.” It is motivated by the devastating April 2013 building collapse of the Rana Plaza clothing factory in Bangladesh, which killed 1,134 workers. Like any good Marxist, Hoskins takes a holistic approach, looking at the world ecology of fashion production under capital. It includes updated information on oligopoly in the textile and clothing sector; the damage against labor caused by the pandemic; internet & magazine propaganda; the flaws of 'ethical consumerism'; present labor conditions, including for models; fashion's built-in waste, ecological damage and pollution; the torture of animals - even crocodiles - and the psychological ramifications of fashion, especially for women.

Hoskins believes that clothing can be freed from the profit cycle and made more creative, longer lasting and less toxic as a social good, not a destructive and privatized money-pit. She does not think, as the socialist caricature goes, that everyone should wear identical, shapeless or worn clothing like a civilian army or Mao suit. Socialism is not the same as a military barracks, as the transgender model Andreja Pejić might have put it in her foreword to this book. Hoskins points out that high-end fashion produces more carbon per item than fast fashion, so she includes both luxury brands and 'High” Street (which in London means mainstream retailers...) in her analysis. Perfume and lipstick are actually the highest-profit and largest-selling items for Chanel, Prada, etc. - spreading their brands to the hoi polloi. Hoskins is a journalist and activist who has been involved in organizing protests in Britain against the fashion industry with XR, a model's union and anti-war / anti-nuke organizations. She seems to be close to the British SWP.

Hoskins does not discuss Youtube, Instagram, Tik Tok and U.S. competition reality shows like Making the Cut, Project Runway and Next in Fashion in her survey of fashion promotion. She is based in the U.K. which might explain the latter. She also does not mention Brexit.

LABOR CONDITIONS

Some of the richest people in the world own fashion brands.  Bernard Arnault, chair of LVMH, is now the richest person in the world.  LVMH owns Vuitton, Dior and Moet-Chandon, Fendi, Givenchy, Mark Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Birkenstock and others.  Clothing is not a minor issue, it is the 4th largest industry in the world, valued at $2.5T in 2021, encompassing 60 million workers.  This might omit the number of peasants and farmers that contribute. Hoskins doesn't divide the world into a simple global north / global south dyad, as there are now poorer workers in the former and middle and upper classes in the latter. Again, class raises its ugly head in the context of imperialism. 

Class also comes out in the selection of thin, white models; on the exclusive covers of fashion magazines; in the celebration of high-end fashion houses with fascist pasts: Chanel, Boss, Balenciaga, Vuitton, Dior; in the over-the-top prices; in the snobbism of looking down on the great unstylish and the great unwashed. Even limiting criticism of fashion to 'fast fashion' is classicist, since many blue-collar workers are forced to buy cheap clothes.

The book excoriates capitalist fashion in many contexts, using quotes by Marx and others. For me and people who are already socialist, it gets a bit tiring. But then Hoskins is one of the few or perhaps only Marxists who looks at clothing.

Clothing factories can pick up and move easily, which they do frequently, leaving workers in the lurch.  Many still use home-based piece work to provide product.  Without local and international government political power brands would not be able to solicit protection for their profits. Hoskins tracks how the safety pledges after Bangladesh's Rana Plaza collapse actually led to lower wages and more repression against unionists. In 2012 a fire at Ali Enterprises in Karachi, Pakistan killed twice as many as Triangle Shirtwaist, 259 people. Ali had just been certified by high-end quality auditors. In Myanmar the military junta is the perfect accompaniment to union busting, black lists, killings, violence, rape and firings of textile workers. Uzbekistan uses forced and child labor to harvest cotton – a water-hungry crop that has destroyed the Aral Sea. In Indonesia and Haiti, governments dropped enforcement of a minimum wage, which helped clothing firms. China contains many viscose factories that threaten workers' health and the environment. Countries like Guatemala and Cambodia are not far behind.

Models face health dangers at work – anorexia when forced into size 0s; klieg lights that burn corneas; hair dyes that make hair fall out; toxic makeup; sexual assault. Young women make up the majority of textile workers and models, so sexism is profitable, not just a nasty opinion.

SOLUTIONS?

Hoskins favors indigenous fashion, which might be a way of saying actually sustainable, long lasting, locally produced / sourced and perhaps hand-made. She questions whether protest dressing is rebellion: zoot suits, punk, Afros, hippie dress, men with long hair, black bloc style, indigenous dress, red kerchiefs, camouflage, keffiyehs, hijabs etc. Regarding hijabs, she wrote before the massive anti-hijab revolt in Iran, so only considers hijabs as a 'cultural' defense to 'the West.' She concludes a style is subversive if it spreads and holds political meaning as part of a movement - but it can also be easily co-opted by fashion houses, and has been. Hoskins says attempts at reform on clothing are on 4 fronts: 1) consumers; 2) government-led reform; 3) the mostly verbal efforts of corporations; 4) international labor action.

#1 – Consumer change. Ethical fashion has grown, but is still a very small segment of the market, at $6.3B. And no matter how many sustainable labels are slapped on clothes, none of these labels are regulated and it's become another marketing tool. Even Stella McCarthy is stumped. Linguistically processes are sustainable, not a pair of jeans. Though ethical consumerism has risen as a market, actual textile conditions have gotten worse - because capital is still in charge. She thinks individualist consumerism alone cannot change society in a significant way, as it is only a means to an end, not the end in itself. She sees it as one of three methods to use.

#2 – Political change: It is only possible by united, organized action around: free-trade agreements, corporate and wage laws, land and union rights, taxation and war (she does not mention war...), migration and environmental issues. When this doesn't work...

#3 – System change. As anyone following politics and economics knows – regulations, law, enforcement, taxes and bourgeois political parties are all fungible as the monied, powerful and entrenched structural forces of capital exert pressure to get their way in the fashion industry and every other. They can pass, ignore, whittle down or end any law, by fair means and foul, by money, by an election, a Supreme Court ruling, regulatory capture, an authoritarian ruler, a fascist mob or a military coup. This is why Marxists fight for reforms and transitional demands, but as steps towards a social overturn, as 'Frankenstein' will not otherwise die. Hoskins does not directly call for socialism, but “a new, equitable way of living” - whatever that is.

Britain supports voluntary corporate social responsibility schemes (CSR) re the textile and clothing industry, leaving it up to capital. Hoskins points out that even in Leicester, England, multiple immigrant sweat shops still operate, able to skirt U.K. law in multiple ways. She maintains that class struggle labor organizations in the textile sector world-wide have the best record of protecting workers and the earth – not bourgeois politicians. But even labor protections can be rolled back under capital.

Concluding, Hoskins thinks dress in a revolutionary, post-capitalist future will: 1) democratize the design and production of clothing; 2) socialize the 'profits' and ownership; 3) degrow production and consumption; 4) de-carbonize energy and materials; 5) use automation, robots and job rotation to shorten hours; 6) harmonize production, nature and the future; 7) be as local as possible; 8) perhaps have a universal 'pause in production'; 9) promote waste-picking, repair, recycling and reuse; 10) be culturally open and culturally sensitive (I paraphrase). 11) end classism in clothing. 12) be internationalist. 

If you have not read her earlier book Stitched Up, this valuable book will contribute to a left understanding and activism around the massive fashion industry. If you have, it still adds to your knowledge, as 60% of the information is new.

P.S.  Guardian on Rana Plaza anniversary:  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/24/10-years-on-bangladesh-rana-plaza-disaster-safety-garment-workers-rights-pay

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion” (Hoskins); “Fashionopolis – the Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes,” “Shopping World,” “Worn – A Peoples History of Clothing,” “Inconspicuous Consumption,” “Cottage Core.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

April 3, 2023