90 more years of black oppression?

"The Bloody Shirt – Terror after the Civil War," by Stephen Budiansky, 2008

The “bloody shirt” was a phrase used by the defenders of racism in the South to hide the bloodshed, intimidation and anti-democratic methods used against ex-slaves and Republicans during Reconstruction. It came from a real incident where an ordinary northern white man named Higgins was beaten by the Klan in Mississippi. The legend was that this same bloody shirt (and there really was one) was taken to Congress and waved in the air by Benjamin Butler, an abolitionist general. (This part never happened, of course.) The ex-Confederates would say ‘he’s waving the bloody shirt’ to make light of any claim they were violent. Asserting all along that they were unjustly accused of barbarism, they insisted that ‘they’ were the victims of ‘nigger rule’ and carpetbagger Yankees. And this inversion of the truth is, even today, the accepted myth about the period after the Civil War.

Thugs Play Victim

If you wanted to know why the Civil War did not end segregation and destroy Klan terror, or promote voting rights and black land ownership, this book explains the brutal process whereby the Confederate aristocracy, while losing the war, won the ‘peace’ - mainly through violence. It confirms Marx’s analysis that a democratic revolution - or indeed any revolution - must become ‘permanent’ in order to fully succeed.

The Civil War did not develop into that ‘permanent’ revolution. The legal end of slavery brought about by the war led for a time to voting rights being granted former slaves. For almost 10 years, the vast majority voted in Reconstruction governments in all the former slave states, as the freedmen outnumbered the Confederate whites. These governments allowed blacks to sit on juries, vote, hold office, own land, travel, build up businesses and generally act like anyone else. And that was unheard of. These governments were slandered by the White Leagues and the Klan (who themselves were led by the South’s most prominent citizens…) as ‘carpet baggers', ‘scalawags’ and ‘nigger rule.’ To the racists in the South who wanted a "white man's’ government,” whites who supported the Republican Party were as bad, or worse, than the black ex-slaves. It took almost 10 years of Klan and White League violence to be successful in overturning democratic rule in the South. These same elements then controlled the South for the next 90 years. Only with the advent of the Civil Rights movement in the 60s was there another attempt to end the rule of the Jim Crow, segregationist South.

Budiansky focuses on 5 different people to tell this story. One was typical of the white people who moved south after the Civil War to make a living. Albert T Morgan, a moderate, non-abolitionist, just wanted to start a business in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Like most Northerners, he had no clue about what was really going on in the South. Until he found out - 'the half has not been told you!' What Morgan discovered was that any white person who had ANY sympathy for black people was first shunned, then verbally harassed, then tricked out of property, and finally assaulted and shot at by the leading citizens and ‘good’ white people of Mississippi. You see, among other things, he had made the mistake of marrying an educated, mixed-ethnicity woman, Carolyn Highgate, of New York state. Morgan was elected several times as a Republican, until armed Democratic Party thugs swung the election of 1875 in the other direction.

Even being a Confederate General was not enough, as James Longstreet found out. Probably the best general in the Confederate Army – actually superior to Lee in some respects - he suggested to his fellow Southerners that they had lost the war, and should accept the peace. He joined the Republican Party. For this impertinent suggestion and act, he was roundly reviled by the whole Southern establishment, to the point where his death went unremarked by the Confederate Army societies in the south. Although every other Confederate general was ‘not forgotten.’ Longstreet fought the "Knights of the White Camelia" reactionaries at Liberty Place in New Orleans in 1874 while leading the pro-Republican Louisiana State Militia. 100 people died or were injured, and Longstreet was captured. While U.S. troops came in the next day and put down the rebellion, this event signaled the end of reconstruction in Louisiana and the triumph of reaction. To this day there is a memorial to the battle in New Orleans, by the river in the French Quarter, mentioning both 'sides' as somehow co-equal heroes.  It has only recently been removed. (2023)

Another was a black man, “Prince” Rivers. He joined the Union Army outside Charleston, South Carolina, ending as a sergeant of the First South Carolina Volunteers. Rivers had great abilities, and went on in to become a legislator and then judge in Reconstruction South Carolina. He settled in a town called Hamburg, across the river from Augusta, Georgia. Hamburg, South Carolina, was later to be the scene of a massacre of black militia and other citizens, led by violent white racists under command of a former Confederate general, Matthew Butler, and a former Confederate legislator, Ben Tillman. This event set the stage for the complete destruction of this black-run town, and the beginning of the end for Reconstruction in South Carolina. Prince Rivers ended up as a coach driver, the same occupation he had during slavery. Hamburg vanished after burnings and floods, and now lies beneath a riverside housing project in “North” Augusta, SC. Even in 2006, a monument commemorating the one white racist killed during the slaughter at Hamburg was mentioned positively during the Centennial of North Augusta. The text of the monument reads, “to the only (sic) resident of Hamburg to be killed in the Hamburg riot of 1876.”

There is a local connection in this book as well. Adelbert Ames’ parents lived in Northfield, Minnesota, and owned the Ames Mill, right next to the dam on the Cannon River, and at one time the original source for Malt-o-Meal. Ames became the Reconstruction governor of Mississippi, where he built schools and universities for the first time, which also included black people. He was forced from office in 1875 after the terrorist Mississippi White Leagues threatened, killed or beat anyone attempting to vote a Republican ticket. They were successful and the “white man's government’ of the Democratic Party took control – for the next 90 years. As the Yazoo Democrat (newspaper) said, “Carry the election, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.”

Even during the 10 years of Reconstruction black people were shot, hung, beaten, driven off land, fired, foreclosed on, their crops burnt, their animals stolen. They were hindered from voting, sitting on juries, going to school, holding office, and generally having much more rights than a slave. White Republicans were killed, insulted, burnt out, mobbed and made the victim of various ‘legal’ stratagems by the white southern aristocracy. Essentially, the Confederate Army and the Confederate government became the Ku Klux Klan, the White Leagues and the Democratic Party. 3,000 freedman and Republicans, including 60 office holders, were killed during this period. The Republican administrations of Andrew Johnson, U.S. Grant and Rutherford Hayes did not send enough troops to the south, nor have any deep commitment to democracy for blacks or even their own Party. And they allowed the South to slip back into the hands of the ex-Confederacy. The United States paid for this.

While this story may seem like ancient history, it is not. In the American body politic the Civil War and black slavery are defining events. Even now, the Republican South is still the most conservative, where workers are the most economically impoverished, with socially retrograde state governments. You can track the movement of members of the Southern Baptist Convention into the north, and where they settle will coincide with extremely conservative politicians being elected in those western or northern rural areas. The day Lyndon Baines Johnson supported the Voting Rights Act in 1966 was the day the Democratic Party Bollweevils started to move into the Republican column, until today the Ex-Confederate South is almost solid Republican. Irony of ironies. So it doesn’t matter what your party label is in these states – only so long as it is reactionary in every way.

The Civil War played a role in fusing fundamentalist Christian religion with racism. After the war, it promoted the rule of a southern aristocracy that has used southern ‘nationalism’ and religion to weld many southern whites to their reactionary banner. The open shop in the south is a testament to that. The South today is still the homeland of the most conservative politicians in the United States – and has been since the end of the Revolution, for more than 200 years. The southern bloc has held back progress in the Unites States for nearly every year of its existence since then. There is a long running argument about even bothering with the "backward southerners," promoted by Democrats like Thomas Schaller. However, social progress in the United States will be far more difficult without winning over working class elements in the southern states. Undermining the influence of the Bourbon corporate capitalists in oil, real estate, military procurement, coal and auto is essential to a national revolutionary strategy.  After all, they still use the slogan of fake oppression - i.e. 'the bloody shirt,' to this day.

And I bought it at Mayday Books!
---- Red Frog, 2/22/03.

A Contract Is a Contract, Unless You Work for Your Money — Letter from UAW member on AIG Bailout Rip Off

This past week Ford workers conceded, yet again, to the demands of the company, Washington and the UAW (mis)leadership. The breach of contract includes a decrease in pay, shorter breaks, no paid leave and forfeiting the Christmas bonus, just to name a few. We were told that we had to make these concessions in order to save our jobs and to qualify for emergency loans. Government policy was to open up our contract to attack our living standards.

Now, at the same time, taxpayer-bailed-out AIG is giving away $165 million in “contractually obligated” bonuses. Tony Rohdin of the Express-Times described this hypocrisy: “Hey, a contract is a contract. Oh, that's right, we ordered the auto companies to renegotiate their deals. We just forgot to apply the same standard to Wall Street. Oops!”

While Ford autoworkers (whom in an entire year make a fraction of what the AIG bonuses are) were put under massive pressure to make concessions, the AIG bonus boys are simply “encouraged” to give back part of their bonus. The bonuses range from $1,000 to in the millions. The New York Times reports that “Seven executives at the financial products unit were entitled to receive more than $3 million in bonuses.” If the 165 million were divided evenly between each of the 400 receiving employees, it would offer $412,500 EACH.

“In return for nearly bankrupting the republic, when their paper transactions make fortunes, they keep their fortunes. When their paper transactions lose money, they keep their fortunes, and expect the heartland to pay the cost. [AIG is] demeaning the value of those who make real things through hard work in the heartland of America, while proclaiming the value of those who barter paper money of decreasing value in manipulated markets [they] then expect the rest of us to pay the price of their failure" (Brent Budowsky, journalist for The Hill).

We are deemed “over compensated” for our labor and consequently, our rightfully earned wages and benefits are repealed. Now, as tax dollars go toward bailing out the greedy financial crooks who are responsible for the failing economy, the administration stands with their hand tied behind their backs. “It’s a contract,” they say. “Nothing can be done.” Where exactly does the government stand in regard to the rights of working class America, the true producers of wealth?

Kate Hammer
Member, United Auto Workers Local 879

http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article12.php?id=1059

Stop Foreclosures! Make the Banks Pay!

STOP FORECLOSURES!

ACORN, the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, the IWW, Economic Crisis Action Group and Homes not Jails are sponsoring a demonstration on Wednesday, March 11, in the basement of Minneapolis City Hall, Room 30, Hennepin County Sheriffs' Office. Take a few hours off work!

That office is ground zero for the foreclosures in Minnesota - over 8500 in Hennepin County alone, according to Finance & Commerce magazine. It is where the Sheriff sells the home from the mortgage holder back to a representative of the banks.

MARCH 11 MASS DIRECT ACTION TO STOP HENNEPIN COUNTY SHERIFF FORECLOSURE SALES. STAND WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS! BRING SIGNS!

Here are some ideas for signs: "Make the Banksters Pay", "Bailout the People", "Housing is a Human Right!" "Stop Home Evictions, "Stop Home Evictions and Foreclosures!" "Moratorium on Foreclosures,"

EVERYONE IS INVITED! Wednesday, March 11. Gather at 9:45 am. Room 30 of Minneapolis City Hall, 350 South 5th Street, Downtown Minneapolis.

Contacts:A. Nurack, ACORN, 651-642-9639, mnacorn@acorn.org
Cheri Honkala, PPEHRC, 267-439-8419, info@economichumanrights.org
Karen Redleaf, ECAG, 651-283-3495, ecag@riseup.net

The Patched Up Obama Stimulus Plan Feb 27, 2009 By Lynn Walsh
In Denver on February 17, Barack Obama signed his ambitiously titled American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It was only three weeks after formally taking over the presidency, though over a year since the onset of a severe economic downturn, which Obama himself has warned could turn into a ‘catastrophe’ unless checked. The $789 billion package is unprecedented in scale – around 5.8% of GDP, spread over two years, compared with Roosevelt’s New Deal package of between 1-2% of GDP. However, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the ‘output gap’, the difference between the capacity of the US economy and its likely actual output, will be $2.9 trillion over the next three years. The CBO comments that the impact of the package will be ‘uncertain’. Out of the package, $281 billion is tax cuts, partly to ‘working families’ but including substantial tax concessions to business and around $70 billion (9% of the total) to adjust the alternative minimum tax (AMT) threshold, to prevent this tax affecting upper-middle-class families. This has nothing to do with economic stimulus, and was inserted under pressure from Republicans, although the AMT would clearly have been amended anyway in the coming months. Additional government spending (repairs of bridges and roads and other infrastructure projects) is to be allocated $308 billion. Included in this is just over $50 billion of additional aid to state governments, though this is a tiny amount given the tax shortfall of many states. California alone has a $42 billion deficit, and the Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is imposing massive cuts and public-sector layoffs. Just under $200 billion of the package is increased benefits, for instance, food stamps, and the extension of unemployment from 26 to 36 weeks. While infrastructure spending will take time to work through to the economy, additional benefits to the unemployed and low-income families will have a much more immediate affect. But there is no provision in the package to ensure that any jobs created will pay union rates or for an increase in the minimum wage. These measures would be far more effective than tax rebates in rapidly boosting demand for goods and services. Republicans in Congress fought to increase the tax cut element and reduce the additional public spending, despite Obama’s attempt to involve them in bipartisan negotiations. In the House of Representatives, where the Democrats have a clear majority, no Republicans voted for the package. In the Senate, Obama managed to win the support of three Republicans, on the basis of concessions, thus avoiding the danger of a filibuster by Republicans. Congressional Republicans are still clinging to neo-liberal ideology, still asserting that tax cuts for the wealthy are the magic remedy for all economic maladies. In contrast, a majority of Republican state governors, who have to grapple with the crisis, have supported Obama’s package. A number of Senate Democrats successfully inserted clauses into Obama’s legislation imposing restrictions on the pay and bonuses of banks and corporations receiving any funds under the TARP bank-bailout program. This new provision prohibits cash bonuses and almost all other forms of incentives for the five most-senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies receiving money under TARP. Although Obama recently denounced the recklessness and irresponsibility of top bankers, calling for a curb on bonuses, the president and his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, actually opposed this measure! Obama claims that his package will create four million jobs. Most economic commentators, however, estimate that it will create between one and three million jobs at most. But even four million jobs saved or created – Obama’s ‘bottom line’ – would be a very limited cushion for millions of unemployed workers. The jump of over half a million job losses in January brought the number of jobs lost since the beginning of the recession in December 2007 to 3.6 million. This means 11.6 million unemployed workers (7.6% of the workforce), but if part-time workers who need full-time jobs and jobless workers who have given up looking are included, the total rises to 21.7 million workers (13.9% of the workforce). Reflecting protectionist pressures, House Democrats inserted a ‘Buy American’ clause into the stimulus bill. This is mainly aimed at ensuring that U.S.-made steel will be used in infrastructure projects. Steel makers’ organizations in Canada and Europe immediately protested at this ‘beggar-thy-neighbor’ policy. The clause was softened in the Senate, with language that the protectionist provision should be "applied in a manner consistent with the United States’ obligations under international agreements". But as Jagdish Bhagwati, an adviser to the WTO, warned, it is still possible for the US to restrict trade within WTO rules: "I would bet everything I have on a trade war breaking out within WTO-consistent rules", he said. There is little doubt that, if serious restrictions are imposed on the use of imported steel, other steel-producing countries will retaliate with similar measures. The ‘biggest imponderable’ about Obama’s package is: "Will the plan work?" (The Washington Post, A Fiscal Gamble, editorial, February 13) It is not only left-Democrat, Keynesian commentators who are skeptical about the likely effectiveness of Obama’s plan. For instance, in a note to their clients, the business analysts, High Frequency Economics, comment: "We remain firmly of the view that the package now in Congress is the bare minimum required. It will ultimately prove too small". Obama’s package, despite its size, is a hastily improvised patch-up job. The stimulus plan does not significantly increase expenditure on healthcare or education. There are no measures which will significantly raise the general income levels of workers and no measures to enhance the trade union rights of workers. Apart from the time-lag before most of the stimulus measures will have an effect, the package has to counter a deepening global downturn and the continuation of the credit crunch. The first installment of TARP, implemented by George Bush and Hank Paulson, has so far prevented a domino-like collapse of financial institutions but has not overcome the paralysis of bank lending. Obama has proclaimed that TARP 2 (the second $350 billion installment) will be much more effective, but so far Geithner’s announcements remain extremely vague. One way or another, the bulk of the debt mountain will be shifted from the private sector to the public sector, with the cost being imposed onto the working class. Fifty billion dollars or more will be used to try to prevent housing foreclosures, but this is primarily an indirect form of support for banks facing a rising number of mortgage defaults. Increasing negative equity (already about 28% of home buyers) and a tsunami of unemployment will mean more and more defaults and foreclosures. The only way to prevent this would be for the Federal government to impose a moratorium on all foreclosures and to subsidize the refinancing of mortgages or a switch to renting at affordable rates. Obama’s huge package will have some cushioning effect, but whether it will actually stimulate renewed growth remains to be seen. One thing is certain, however: the Federal debt will balloon over the next few years. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that (including the current debt plus the cost of TARP and the stimulus package) Federal government debt will rise from 41% of GDP in 2008 to 70% of GDP by 2011. The CBO estimates that after that the annual budget deficit will fall to 2% of GDP. But this estimate is based on extremely optimistic projections: a 4% a year average GDP growth 2011-14 and minimum growth of public spending in line with inflation. If the global slump continues beyond 2010, budget deficits would continue to soar. This would make it much more difficult for the U.S. to finance its debt on global financial markets. http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=1034

Do you know where your money is tonight?

“The Great Financial Crisis – Causes and Conflicts” -
John Bellamy Foster & Fred Magdoff, 2009

These are astounding times for American Marxists. War and economic collapse are the mother of revolution. Right now we have two ‘small’ wars and one giant economic collapse – and that not limited to one country. Republicans are babbling about Obama being a ‘socialist.’ So socialism, safely buried by its association with Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev and a sclerotic bureaucracy, is once again placed on the table. Though carried by the oddest of flag bearers!

While most people are scratching their heads over the financial crisis, making up various stories to explain what they see unfolding before their eyes, Foster and Magdoff explain this crisis based on long-running observation, for them personified by the American Marxist analysis of Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy and Fred Magdoff. Foster is the present editor of their magazine Monthly Review, and carries on their tradition, which started in the 60s.

To deal with the crisis, conservatives are still pushing to cut taxes and ‘big guvmint’; centrists want to take a bite from the tax-cut pie and the Keynesian pie too; while liberals think that lots of government spending will bring the ‘good times’ back.

Think again. John Maynard Keynes, the present patron saint before the fall of Saint Thomas Friedman, inspired Roosevelt to blunt the depression in the 1930s by using his approach to contain the fall in unemployment, the financial situation of the banks, and the productive character of manufacturing firms. Of course, Roosevelt borrowed most of his specific New Deal programs from real populists like Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long. A cigarette-holding East Coast patrician, Roosevelt was elected on a program of mild ‘improvements’ to counter the effects of the depression. While the Communist Party has put him on their banners, Roosevelt only did what he had to do to save capital – the ‘enemy,’ as they say, was at the gates. His solutions gave capitalism a 'human' face.

However, as Foster and others point out, what really ended the depression was World War Two, which boosted war-time production 6 times, far above the drop in production that had developed in the recession of 1938 under Roosevelt. The whole economy was virtually put under government control.  Of course, liberals can’t face this. So the present worship of Saint Keynes as their savior. They hope that blunting this recession/depression will be sufficient. After all, what other choice do they have? Nationalization, without compensation, with workers control? We are at an actual situation where the banking, real estate/land, health care, auto and oil sectors of the economy should be nationalized. These are, of course, the pre-cursors to the workers state. So for liberals this is impossible.

Foster carefully analyses the 50s and 60s, and, like his predecessors, calls it a “golden decade’ but an EXCEPTION to normal capitalist development. Due to the destruction of competing productive forces in Europe during World War Two; the technological development of cheap oil, roads, suburbia and automobile technology; and the strong position of the U.S. military - the United States economy flourished for 25 years based on these exceptional circumstances. This all came apart at the beginning of the 70s, when stagnation overcame the U.S. economy. The imperialist boom was over. Vietnam was a defeat, on the battlefield and economically; the oil embargo showed the fragility of the oil economy, and the fall of the dollar were all symptomatic of an underlying malaise in the United States, a stagnating economic situation not seen in 25 years. That situation continued through the 70s, until financialization slowly took off.

The rulers at the time, quite clearly, wondered what to do. Nixon decided with his Treasury Secretary to abandon a ‘production’-based economy, and send work, instead, off-shore or across the border. It is no accident that Nixon was the one who lead 'detente' with China - which weakened the USSR, and eventually lead the Chinese to become our industrial heartland. Every production worker in the U.S. knows what that decisions meant. To substitute, the U.S. slowly started to build up FINANCIAL capital as a solution to the drop in profits from production. This is when financialization began to grow to dominance in the U.S. economy. Financialization is a phrase first popularized by Sweezy, Magdoff and Baran, according to Foster. However, I suspect there are prior Marxists who pointed to financialization as the final phase of capital. At its peak in 2005, the financial sector (FIRE – Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) of the U.S economy produced 40% of the profit, while the productive sector making actual things or goods, brought in 18%. The tables had turned.

However, with the domination of the financial sector has come a more robust and international bubble economy. Just as the jet plane allows disease to spread around the world at lightning speed, so the international capitalist markets allow a contagion from one market to infect all the others, in hours. This actually is not what was predicted by the Marketeers.

As we watched, the real estate bubble, created by rentier capital, was securitized by Wall Street, i.e. financial capital. Wall Street sold this new product around the world over 6 years, transferring the finance bubble from the tech economy to the sub-prime/CDO economy. In their enthusiasm for debt, and belief that bubbles never pop, the international banking sector over-leveraged themselves up to 43 times, which included decreasing the assets on hand in case of an old-fashioned ‘run’ on the bank. Encouraging debt, of course, is the core of finance-driven development. The banks backed financialization in Eastern Europe and other countries, and downplayed production, so as to impoverish them again through interest, rent and debt.

Now we see virtual bankruptcy of most of the largest banks in the U.S. – and many in the rest of the world. The recession, which may turn into a depression, is still accelerating across the globe. What Foster reminds us, in his last chapter, written in December 2008, is that it is the failure of the capitalist economy at its productive ROOT which has lead to this situation. In a quite interesting polemic with groups of left-liberals who assert that re-regulating finance capital and emphasizing productive capital will regenerate society, Foster and Magdoff assert it is precisely both financialization AND capitalist productivity that have failed. Hence the “stagnation” thesis that they embody seems to be more radical then the ‘re-regulation’ hypothesis.

One of the books few weaknesses is that they do not detail the specific roots of this stagnation – only hinting at over-production and the falling rate of profit – both classical Marxist categories. I think this was not within their purpose, however.

The main weakness of the book is its almost exclusive focus on the U.S.  Foster and Magdoff only hint at the way imperial capital can blunt recessions by ‘exporting’ misery overseas – soaking the working, middle and farm classes in other countries to pay for their crisis. Just as they do to the domestic working class on a lesser scale. One characteristic of the 50s-60s that Foster somewhat ignores is this spread of U.S. imperial capital around the globe, while every other national finance sector was still weak.

Foster does assert that the particular conditions of the '50s-'60s cannot be copied. He does not think that the internet (and, I suspect, though he does not address it, the ‘green’ economy) can substitute for the automobile and cheap oil. He does not think that U.S. military dominance will increase anymore - especially with the limited failure in Iraq. And he does not believe that increasing the productive side of U.S. capitalism again will work. On this latter, Obama and the Gore faction are counting on the ‘green economy’ to revive capitalism. Seeing as ecosphere and human survival also depend on a ‘green economy’, this is one of the most logical ways to try to get out of the crisis. I, too, however, doubt that it will work in a capitalist framework.

This books is short, clear and well-written - the best book-long analysis of the underlying cause of our present predicament. The graphs are illuminating, the rhetoric is minimal, the approach is factual. It proves once again that Marxism is still relevant, still scientifically perceptive, and still has some answers which people are looking for.

Red Frog – 2/17/09
--- and I bought it at May Day books!

Is the Apocalypse Coming?

“The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy – 2006

Cormac McCarthy is best known for penning the novel, “No Country for Old Men,” which the Cohen brothers made into a movie of the same name. Essentially, McCarthy has one major theme in his best novels – the brutality of life, and efforts to deal with it. “Blood Meridian” is his most famous – based on the actual history of Texas and Mexico when a group of convicts lead by John Glanton slaughtered and scalped their way across the country, while working for the government. This book contains far more of the reality of Manifest Destiny than the nostalgic, though apparently ‘realistic’ western novels of Larry McMurtry like “Lonesome Dove.” McCarthy also completed a “western trilogy’ as his version of the history of that time, a trilogy I have not read yet.

As Mike Davis pointed out, the bloodletting of the 101st Airborne’s Tiger Force in the Vietnamese Central highlands in the 60s, which also featured scalping and wholesale destruction of civilians, was no different than the western history McCarthy brought alive. Brutality seems a constant, especially when connected to imperial warfare or attitudes.

“The Road,” however, is science ‘fiction’ about a post-apocalyptic future. It is the story of a self-reliant man and his young son trying to find warmth and ‘good’ people in a world destroyed; burnt to the ground, gutted, inhabited by cannibals due to the lack of food - full of rain, wind, dim sunlight, ashes, empty houses, dead trees, gutted animals and corpses. It is never clear exactly what destroyed the world, but from McCarthy’s descriptions of human vices, it was probably something typically dark and… human. It is a great American novel. And it was written relatively recently, in 2006. It has also been turned into a film, though I have not seen it yet.

What I would like to address is science fiction. The bulk of science fiction that I am familiar with in this country portrays the future as either a medieval high-tech kingdom, or a completely devastated landscape, full of violence and barbarism. The former is laughable in that the technology goes along with completely assbackwards social relations – as if the science making the technology possible – and reason itself – were invisible, trumped by some cretinous hierarchies full of knights, kings and wizards. This vision of the future is usually on various other ‘planets’ – “Star Wars” and “Dune” are good examples. The Star Trek series was actually ‘progressive’ in a odd sense, given it’s choice of multi-ethnic crews, women and ‘reasoners’ like Spock, and not enthralled with the Middle Ages.

The other version of the future, however, has become dominant. Some older books about the triumph of fascism in the U.S. – both Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” (already reviewed in these pages) and Jack London’s “The Iron Heel” come to mind, are not ‘science fiction’ but they deal with the same theme – a theme of barbarism. 1931s “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley and George Orwell’s famous dystopian 1949 novel, “1984” (Orwell was a socialist) are the historical ancestors of this type of fiction.

However, in the cheery U.S., things did not pick up until later. Since Phillip K Dick published, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” in 1968, post-apocalypse is the place to be in science fiction. I am sure people more familiar with the genre than me will be able to come up with many examples. Dick’s book was followed by the Road Warrior film trilogy (presciently focused on the fight for oil in a depleted world) starting in 1979-1981; the film “Blade Runner” done in 1982, based on Dick’s book; the Terminator series, starting in 1984; and now a plethora of similar fare –the Matrix trilogy, and now most recently, “I Am Legend.” All of this indicates this type of story is hitting a nerve.

From the anarchist left, Edward Abbey wrote two books about the fight against fascism in a hopeless post-apocalyptic world destroyed by environmental decay – “A Novel (Plume)" and again in “Good News.” These books are far different than the "Monkey Wrench Gang" (also reviewed in these pages.) The very gifted and hilarious writer, left-liberal T. Coraghessan Boyle, wrote 2000s “A Friend of the Earth," about the environmental destruction of the world. While the rain never lets up, a group of people try to save rare animals like lions in their homes. McCarthy’s “The Road” is the latest in this tradition. It combines environmental catastrophe and barbaric human relations.

McCarthy is a writer of spare power. He tends to lean towards 18th and 19th century words, and enjoys long sentences in that same tradition; makes up many new words, which look somewhat like some other, more familiar, words; and creates words that we normally use hyphenated or separately -portmanteaus. He uses repetition in “The Road’ to increase the power of the vision. He attempts Biblical cadences. Because of his attempt at universality, you cannot tell what part of the country he is writing about, except it is somewhere in the U.S. – first it seems it is in the west, then it looks like the southeast. Only one town is mentioned – Rock City. In Tennessee?  They are heading 'south.'

McCarthy, at the same time, is not always a factual literalist. He is interested here, I think, in creating a myth of the creation of the new world out of the … literal ashes of the old. The Son and the Man (there is a hint of Christian iconography - the young Son seems to be the most sympathetic to the pathetic, thievish people they meet) constantly travel, and rarely stop, but stay on the road instead. It is not clear why they continue on the road, as there is no evidence it will get warmer by the ocean they are heading towards, or by going south, or that they will find ‘good’ humans by following it. In fact, it is very dangerous to be on it. They leave several places that have plentiful food – one a quite well stocked underground bunker - to cram some of the goods, instead, into their shopping cart, which they push down the dark, cold, dangerous, ash-covered highways.

This constant vision of a destroyed world – whether by atomic radiation, disease, environmental catastrophe, economic collapse, war or the triumph of fascism – reflects a deep fear running consciously and unconsciously through U.S society. It reflects a circular view of history, and and, at the same time, a 'terminal' view of history. But also a view that admits no optimism – no “utopia,” only a “dystopia.” “Utopianism” to the conventional modern mind is completely out of the question - utopianism is for light-minded fantasists and other cloud-dwellers, EVEN in fiction and science fiction. The prevalence of Christian Armageddon philosophy (the “Left-Behind” series dwells on the collapse of society) in the U.S. right wing indicates that this strand crosses the traditional political spectrum.

On the other hand, Soviet science fiction did not have such a sour view of the future, but instead speculated about what it would be like to live under high-tech communism, where conflict is disappearing, and where life has become less arduous. Now, the future is seen by bourgeois science fiction, including McCarthy, as almost wholly negative. “Salvation” is either through the imaginary mechanism of “the Rapture” or through the few remaining “good” people banding together to fight the ‘bad” people – sort of a moralistic tribalism. Which is what the rapture is about too. In essence, the bourgeois solution to apocalypse has nothing to do with preventing it in the first place. It does not understand the source of the apocalypse, or the forces strong enough to stop it. It believes that the worst of humanity will triumph. It now only has to do with weathering its inevitability, with 'adaptation.' In a sense, these people are already getting prepared for the results of … peak oil, global climate change, economic collapse, ethnic war, and global war. Of course, warning of it can act as a deterrent, and I feel that this is McCarthy's purpose.

There are other responses, however. Trotsky said that human history would not automatically lead towards utopia or communism. The choice Rose Luxembourg gave us, either “Socialism or Barbarism”, relates to the conscious development of the working classes, and not some automatic process. 

The action of the working class is necessary again. With the collapse of Freidmanite capitalist finance, and the bankruptcy of the major banks, insurance companies, hedge funds and the auto industry; with oil hitting a production peak a year or two ago; with world carbon levels above the point of no return; with a massive world recession in the making, with fascistic religious and ethnic war being promoted everywhere – revolutionary action is again urgent. We are presently even farther along in the development and decay of capitalism than we were in the 1930s. The election of Barack Obama is a step of bourgeois ‘hope.’ If Obama cannot rescue the present system, then the next people up on stage are the revolutionaries of all stripes, and the masses of people who have lost faith in the present system. This does not, anymore, seem an extreme statement to make.

-- Red Frog, 1/18/2009 - I did not buy it at Mayday books though we carry it.  Mayday has many progressive novels in stock. Buy one!

Gandhi Says...

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is done under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? (and you can add terrorism to that...)

--Gandhi

Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize Address

I have posted the link of a Nobel Prize lecture presented by Harold Pinter in 2005 below. He starts by talking about literature but this is merely preamble to discussion of US foreign policy.

http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=620

Alternatively, the lecture can be read here:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html

And Paul Craig Roberts refers to it extensively in his most recent essay here:

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/081228_silent.htm

BUST THE BAILOUT!

Bust the Bailout!

Lunch Hour Protest, US Bank, 800 Nicollet Mall, 12:00 Noon, December 3, Wednesday -

U.S. Bank is receiving $6.6Bn of the massive $700Bn (or $7.5 trillion) bailout passed by a bi-partisan Congress, even though the bank was not having financial difficulties. Wells Fargo got $25Bn. Meanwhile, people are still losing their homes all over the metro area. Foreclosures and mortgages are at the financial heart of the present financial crisis. Make the benefits trickle up, not down!

Tell U.S. Bank to use this windfall to help the community by enabling homeowners and tenants to stay in their homes, not to enrich their shareholders, pay higher executive bonuses or buy other entities. Remember, this money is OUR tax money, and we have very right to make demands of U.S. Bank management about how it is used.

Sponsored by Economic Crisis Action Group

Time for an Economics Primer!

CRASH COURSE ON THE CRASH

What led up to this economic crisis?  Whose fault is this, and why did rich bankers get bailed out?Crash Course on the Crash is an educational event to help the community understand the complex world of the US economy. People's economist* Karen Redleaf will explain the ways deregulation and complex financial dealings have led to the downfall of financial institutions and massive home foreclosures.

A panel of representatives of groups most affected by this crisis will discuss their experiences... ACORN, Welfare Rights Center, Poor Peoples' Economic Human Rights Campaign, Dave Riehle.

Music provided by internationally-known folk singer Larry Long. Get involved in taking back our economy! Plans to picket Wells Fargo, US Bank, Hennepin County Sheriff's sales and evictions in the works.

Saturday, November 222:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.  Walker Church3104 16th Ave S, Minneapolis. Childcare and snack provided. Tabling and social hour following event. Organizations wishing to table at this event can call 651-644-1173 for more information.

Sponsored by Economic Crisis Action Group

*Karen Redleaf holds undergraduate and masters degrees in economics. She worked for years as an options trader and hedge fund researcher in the financial industry until she quit in disgust. She specializes in explaining economic concepts in plain language.

Election Results Just In!!!!

November 4, 2008 -

U.S. Capitalism Wins, U.S. workers lose!

Stay tuned for details...


From the gang at MayDay ... Craig, Tom, Earl & Co.

An Insider's Look at Big Pharma

Book Review: The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It, by Marcia Angell, M.D., 2004

“Prescription drugs are an essential part of modern medical care. Americans need good new drugs at reasonable prices. Yet the pharmaceutical industry is failing to meet that need. There is a widening gap between its rhetoric and its practices. Driven by its lust for profits, it seems almost bent on eventual self-destruction. Its current way of doing business is not sustainable. …Those who pay for drugs – government, insurers, and individuals – simply do not have the money to continue to support the industry in its present form. And the public is angry.” --- from Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies.

In this revealing exposé of the drug companies, Dr. Marcia Angell brings to light questions that American consumers of pharmaceutical have been asking in recent years. Why are drug prices so high? How effective are the new medications being advertised by drug companies? Have the drug companies gotten too powerful and corrupt?

During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, most notably as its editor-in-chief, Dr. Angell has been witness to the ever-increasing power of the huge pharmaceutical industry, known as big pharma, and the weakening position of the American drug consumer. In writing this book, one central aim was to debunk big pharma’s repeated assertion that high drug prices are necessary to fund their research and development (R&D) of new drug production. According to Dr. Angell’s research into the practices of the pharmaceutical companies, the amounts spent for the heavy advertising of drugs outstrip R&D by a long shot, as do the astronomically high profits garnered by these companies.

By way of comparison, big pharma spent 14% combined worldwide sales on R&D, but had a profit margin of 17% of sales, a whopping profit margin that compares extremely well to other industries. More surprisingly, the drug companies spent 31% of sales on marketing and administration, most of which is represented by the marketing of their drugs to the public. Clearly, as Dr. Angell asserts, the drug companies could cut into advertising or profits to bring down drug prices. But in this industry, securing high profits is the ultimate goal.

Once we learn that R&D is small compared to marketing and profits, Dr. Angell then emphasizes that R&D still amounts to a lot of money – about $31 billion per year. What do we get for this money, which we supplied to Big Pharma by paying high drug prices? As it turns out, not very much. Despite the hyping of their innovative drugs, most of the new drugs promoted by big pharma today are what Dr. Angell calls “me too” drugs. “Me too” drugs are slightly changed variations of already produced drugs. For example, there are today five different anti-depressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – SSRIs) that differ by a molecule or two, produced by different companies. Dr. Angell’s argues that these drugs have not been shown to be improvements over one another, since they have not been tested against each other. In clinical trials that are increasingly controlled by the industry, the drugs were only shown to be better than a placebo. Instead, we have no idea how they compare. And we have no idea if the money spent on their clinical trials was worth it. Nonetheless, the drug companies spend billions of dollars to convince us that their drug is preferable and worth its high cost. Meanwhile, there is a generic version of Prozac on the market that costs a fraction of what the other SSRIs cost.

Probably most revealing in Dr. Angell’s research is the sheer concentration of power held by big pharma. These companies have secured unprecedented power in D.C., employing an army of lobbyists that greatly influences the policies of Republicans and Democrats alike. In the 1980s, with passage of Hatch-Waxman, big pharma was able to extend the life of its patents and FDC exclusivity rights, the time that a company can produce a drug without competition from low cost generics. Also, with their growing marketing power, the drug companies have been able to organize “educational” activities for doctors at medical conferences that claim to educate medical practitioners on their drugs. However, these seminars are really marketing opportunities that use third-rate research to push unapproved uses of drugs. During these “educational” seminars, doctors and what the industry labels “thought leaders” receive kickbacks, lavish dinners, and entertainment. Big pharma’s power has gotten so big, it can determine through its marketing arm what doctors prescribe and even how studies of its drugs are conducted in clinical trials.

In response to big pharma’s problems outlined in her book, Dr. Angell recommends six very reasonable reforms of the industry:
1. All new drugs be tested against older similar drugs, not just placebos. This requirement would ensure that the industry not waste important resources on “me-too” drugs.
2. The FDA should be reformed as an independent agency, supported by the public and not by compromising user fees paid by the company for every drug approved. This reform would counteract the industry’s current influence.
3. An Institute for Prescription Drug Trials should be formed as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which would eliminate the overwhelming power big pharma has over the clinical trials of its drugs.
4. The length of time companies have for monopoly exclusivity rights should be lessened from its current twenty years, with the change that the clock start ticking when drugs come to market. Having the clock start at when the drug is brought to market, not when the drug is first patented, would help ensure that the clinical testing stage not be shortchanged. Lessening the time companies have for exclusivity rights will help lower costs by allowing generics into the market sooner.
5. Big pharma needs to get out of the medical education business altogether. What counts as education for big pharma is really marketing. Medical institutions need to take responsibility for medical education of drugs, not drug companies.
6. Big pharma needs to open the books on resources spent on R&D, broken down on how much was spent on each drug, and how much was spent on each stage of its research. Likewise, the public has a right to know how much is spent on marketing and administration, broken down in great specificity, so that drug companies are unable to make false claims in justification of high drug prices and ultimately hide important information from the public.
7. Lastly, drug companies need to establish reasonable and uniform pricing. The current system, which charges the poor and most vulnerable the highest prices and gives discounts to larger buyers, allows for too much fraud, kickbacks and price gouging.

What is not considered in her last chapter on reform is the possibility of nationalizing this very important industry. My guess is that Dr. Angell believes that her reforms are sufficient, and moreover to achieve their approval, we would need a powerful movement demanding them. If these reforms were not on the agenda, she might say, neither would be nationalization. However, it could be argued that the very reason that these reforms are impossible in the current political climate is that an industry we rely upon for our health is in the business of making a whopping profit and using its muscle to determine the political process. As with the health care system, where we need to take out the private insurers, the drug companies that distribute our drugs should be nationalized under worker and consumer control. Afterall, as Dr. Angell reveals, the real work of bringing these drugs to market is already done by government institutions, taxpayer-funded universities and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Nationalizing the drug companies would be one guarantee of Dr. Angell’s reforms and make the industry directly accountable to the people.

Dr. Angell ends her book encouraging a movement to bring about change. She writes, “The pharmaceutical industry has enormous clout, but what finally matters most is concerted public pressure.” One way for the public to begin building that movement is through education. Reading The Truth About the Drug Companies is one step to building that movement.

Spanish Revolution discussion

New Book, Author Visit

Movie Review: Religulous, by Bill Maher

Move Review: “Religulous” by Bill Maher, 2008

Religion has played a large part in the offensive by the U.S. right-wing for many years, since Operation Rescue started picketing clinics in the 80s. Christian fundamentalism forms the ideological core of the Republican right. The other Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam, have been used by the Israeli right wing and the fundamentalist Jihadi Islamic right wing to justify their politics too. In essence, religion is being used as politics by other means, while claiming to be ‘God’s word.” This, of course, is not a recent development.

Bill Maher, the left libertarian comic who use to pray to ‘God’ to get him out of fixes in the 90s, has now turned against his former ‘get out of jail free’ card. His father was Catholic, and he grew up that way until the family left the church due to the prohibition against birth control. Only much later did he find out his mother was Jewish, which was why she didn’t go to mass.

This movie is like Michael Moore or Borat going to the Creation Museum in Nashville – an extension of the left-wing confrontational documentary. Maher stuns, as he doesn’t always interview people like a polite shmoo. When he rams them upside the mind with an agnostic comment, they are usually rendered speechless. This happens over and over again, like him asking the fundamentalist Christian who ‘saves’ gays if he got a hard-on embracing Maher? Or coaxing a Congressman to say that “You don’t need an IQ test to get in the Senate” after the congressperson endorses creationism. Or catching an Islamic guide at the Dome of the Rock mosque feigning tolerance, while forbidding Jews from visiting the mosque. Or an ex-Jew for Jesus hoping the world will be destroyed so ‘he’ can be with Jesus. And don’t get Maher started on Mormonism – which doesn’t have a single historical or archeological fact to support it. He interviews two former Mormons who had to suffer banishment from their families to leave the church.

Maher doesn’t look into Hinduism or Buddhism or Shinto, as probably it would make the film twice as long, but he does interview dozens of practicing Western religionists to highlight their absurdity. Maher’s own position is ‘agnosticism’ – as he says, his position is ‘doubt.’ However, there is not much doubt that God does not exist. God is a hypothesis, that, while possibly true, has no evidentiary backup, as they say. Maher is a comic and social critic, but not a hard-core atheist, so his ‘get out of jail’ free card in US society is this ostensible ‘doubt.’ However, when was the last time in recent U.S. history that ANY public figure was allowed to doubt God? We’d have to go back many years to Paine, Twain, Ingersoll and the broad tradition of American freethinkers to find anything comparable. For instance, Sam Harris is hardly recognized in the U.S., and rarely interviewed – so more power to Bill Maher. When old Larry King talks to Bill Maher on CNN about religion – that is remarkable. Of course, if Bill wasn’t funny, he probably wouldn’t be on.

Atheists and agnostics are now 16% of the population – about 48 million out of a population of 300 million. More than Jews, Muslims, gays, African Americans – even more than the 41 million Latinos in the U.S. Yet they are invisible, ignored and disliked by the mainstream political parties. Quelle surprise!? Well, they never interview peace activists or union activists or socialist economists either. No surprise at all. It is part of the political homogeneity enforced in this suffocating culture.

For the stumbling centrist Christian who doesn’t understand why the agnostics and atheists are PISSED, this is a good film. Maher calls them, at the end, ‘fellow travelers’ to the fundamentalists of all stripes. His ending point is that what we now experience as religion in the public field is a ‘counter-indicator’ for human survival and peace. (As if it has ever been much else.) Since the middle ages it mostly throttled human progress, and not much has changed to this day.

Red Frog – 10/13/2008
And I did not buy it at May Day books!

Obama Girl in the OC

“Commie Girl in the OC”, by Rebecca Schocnkopf, 2008

Rebecca Schocnkopf got a nice blurb from Mike Davis, a real LA Marxist, on this book. This book is published by Verso, an English house which publishes a lot of left wing literature. And you gotta love that title! Makes us seem almost human.

Well, it is more like “Obama Girl in the OC” really. Even a liberal Democrat in Orange County comes across to the uber-conservative denizens of OC as a ‘communist.’ They can’t tell the difference. Think the black use of the word ‘n*gger.’ I’ll take your insult and make it my own!

Schocnkopf works for the alternative “OC Weekly,” and the book reads like a series of newspaper columns. Orange County is the kind of place that gave birth to the John Birch Society, then went bankrupt in 1994 investing in risky and obscure Wall Street Securities because of their own lovable Proposition 13. Sound familiar? A place where television demands we pay attention – to their housewives or their choppers or their rich teenagers. Evidently, it’s cheaper to film there for Hollywood. A place that was the headquarters for the main mortgage companies involved in the sub-prime meltdown. Sick of these fucks yet? Schocnkopf, however, humanizes the place, at least showing us that not everyone in the OC is a reactionary Barbie doll with a giant house ready to burn down.

There are real people here and there, sandwiched between the upscale Republicans. And Schocnkopf is one of the more real, with her insecure self-image and crushes on lame politicians, her love of free journalist food, her strange child, and her commie mom. One of the most touching stories is that of the female owner of a local rock club, Linda’s Doll House, making the decision to close the place. The bar played a role in community- keeping people sane in a culturally inhospitable environment. Schocnkopf writes about porn stars, local politicians, Arnold and Sacramento, roller skating, women-drinking, NASCAR, American Idol, namedroppers and namedropping, OC comedians, embryos, homelessness, the War on Xmas, AIDs, anti-marijuana campaigns, local rock ‘stars’ and you get the idea. Liberal comedy over the culture wars, like Molly Ivins, but without the focus. Cultural studies majors should pay attention.

Schocnkopf only writes about workers once – drunk ones at the Doll House. Not much for a Marxist. She’ll have to work on that.

And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog – 10/12/08

Upton Sinclair Lewis

Book Reviews: The “Two Sinclairs”
The (uncensored) Jungle, by Upton Sinclair and “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis

Odd how many leftist fiction writers there were back in the ‘old’ days. We’ve certainly grown up, haven’t we? Why, we can now choose a wide array of books about deep personal problems, addictions, mental illness and criminal behavior. Or, for the high-brow audience, perhaps a delightful and intricate, oh so erudite, mousetrap mediation on individual or historical curiosities. It can’t get any better than that!

I exaggerate about the state of modern 'recognized' literature, but not much.

These two books were written at different times in history – “The Jungle” in 1906 and “It Can’t Happen Here” in 1935. However, both reflect periods of immense working class activism, which is probably why they became subjects of literature, and what links them together today.

THE JUNGLE

“The Jungle” is the most well known. It has been referenced as THE source for Teddy Roosevelt-era regulation in the meat and food industries to protect consumers from tainted or inaccurately labeled food. However, the thin version of The Jungle that ‘might’ have been read in high school was actually a censored version, missing almost 5 chapters, or 1/3rd of the book. The publisher Macmillan demanded the cuts of Sinclair, a Socialist, as they wanted a muckraking book on the meat industry, not a muckraking book on treating workers like meat. Because, of course, the ‘jungle’ is the society created by capitalism, in which the packinghouse and slaughterhouse workers work. As Sinclair says, “The jungle is not the packing house or Chicago … it is Civilization.”

The unexpurgated edition was first discovered by Gene DeGruson of Pittsburgh State in Kansas in 1980. DeGruson’s work was based on versions serially published in the Socialist “Appeal to Reason,” newspaper, which were found molding in a basement in Girard, Kansas. In the introduction, an analysis of the texts by Kathleen De Grave, also of Pittsburg State, shows most of the cuts were related to removing explicitly Socialist and working-class problems from the book. This Sharp Press edition is the first time the uncut version has appeared in paperback.

This book stands as one of the preeminent Socialist novels in American history, or perhaps THE preeminent one. It has recently inspired Eric Schlosser to write “Fast Food Nation,” an update of The Jungle, though without the specifically Socialist analysis. Schlosser shows conditions, especially in the slaughterhouses of factory meat, haven't improved much. Sick cows are routinely turned into food. Full of corn and antibiotics, they are the 'normal' fodder of the modern slaughterhouse. Schlosser also shows the lives of the undocumented and low-paid non-union workers, where overtime, accidents and abuse are common. Since the defeat of the packinghouse workers unions in the 80s during the P-9 strike in Austin, conditions in the factory meat industry have only grown worse.

This is the hardest book I have ever had to read, because of the amount of human misery contained within. Sinclair takes a giant Lithuanian immigrant farm boy, Jurgis, and throws at him everything capitalism can throw – poverty, prejudice, hunger, injuries, death, prostitution, the abuse of children, jail, homelessness, alcoholism, crime and a corrupt political system. It is clear that the brutality shown to the animals in the slaughterhouse is the same brutality shown to the workers. Gruesome scenes on the kill floor - where you have to eat your lunch as splashing blood gets in your food - don't take a back seat to shivering vagrants, crippled children, crooked bartenders, brutal police and sly real estate agents.

Jurgis, of course, eventually becomes part of the mass Debsian Socialist movement in Chicago, which was leading strikes and winning votes during that period across the United States. In that, it has an 'uplifting' ending - though he has to watch his wife and son die in the process. As such, you realize there really is no such thing as a 'happy' ending.

IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE

Sinclair Lewis was a different kind of Sinclair – a mild reformist or socialistic liberal, but an honest observer at that. He, of course, gently ridicules Upton Sinclair in this book, but also shows great affinity for the Grange and the Farmer Labor Party. Lewis is most famous for his novels making fun of small town boosterism and insularity - Babbitt and Main Street.  Lewis was sort of a an inspiration to Garrison Keillor. However, the novel “It Can’t Happen Here” is rarely taught or mentioned in regard to Lewis, because it is far more radical.

“It Can’t Happen Here” is about the coming of fascism to the United States, and is far better regarding detail than Jack London’s “The Iron Heel.” The title, of course, refers to the clueless liberal that can’t imagine really bad things going on in this country. Sinclair is hilarious in his depiction of the different types of political animals in this small town in New England, Fort Belulah … people that eventually have to choose sides, and become either fascists or resistors. Lewis’ version of fascism is not foreign or "Germanic" at all – it is part religious, part patriotic, part conformist, part greedy and part a longing for a ‘strong man.’ And behind it all, all corporate. These people are recognizable Americans. It is nothing different than the instincts we see now among Republicans or the religious Right. The instincts are compounded in his depiction of a classic fascist formation - rabid armed force in the form of a brown-shirt militia, ironically called the “Minute Men." In the book, the descent into fascism is a gradual process, not a sudden shift. The head of the U.S. fascist movement – Berzelius Windrip - is brought to power by a ‘vote’ of the population – just as Hitler was appointed chancellor in Germany. And then things start to change drastically.

Lewis’ small town newspaper editor Doremus Jessup eventually joins the underground resistance, which, it becomes clear, is the only way to fight fascism. He goes from town to town and safe house to safe house, organizing across the northern part of the country. Canada plays a role in this book - as it did as an escape hatch for anti-government native Americans prior to the Civil War; in the anti-slavery fight in the 1860s, and the anti-war movement in the 1960s - as a rear base for the opposition to U.S. fascism. He ends the book with Jessup holed up in a cabin in northern Minnesota, on the run from the brownshirts. Jessup is kind of a picture of Lewis – truly a middle-class individualist liberal, antagonistic to communists and other radicals, but understanding that only underground work and armed defense will suffice to oppose fascism. He does not join the fascists, nor does he collapse in fear. The key working class character in this book, however, is shown as prone to fascism. The leader of the Minute Men in Fort Beluah, Shad Ledue, is Jessups’ former gardener and handyman – his ‘hired’ man and an “Irish-Canuck.” Other workers, socialist and communist, are not so highly profiled, except as they bicker endlessly about who’s right.

This book wears well even now, and continues to address the problems the U.S. population faces. Some people on the left, of course, are always howling about fascism being 'here', because they do not have a scientific analysis of fascism. It is the unrestricted rule of capital – and I stress the word ‘unrestricted’ – unimpeded by court, law, ethics or force of arms. Presently, we are losing more and more legal rights, so the gradual slide towards authoritarian rule is already somewhat advanced.

The news that Bush has recently called for deployment of the battle-ready 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division, to put down ‘civil unrest,’ including using ‘non-lethal means,’ should make anyone pause. It has been illegal under The Posse Comitatus Act since the end of the Civil War for troops to be posted as a standing force of law enforcement inside U.S. borders. However, this deployment is supposed to be permanent! It was authorized by the Defense Authorization Act of 2006 – a law supported by the Republican Party and many liberals like Kennedy, Warner and Levin. Only a small minority of Democrats like Patrick Leahy warned against it. The preparation for possible fascism or repression is already bi-partisan.

Red Frog
9/27/08
… and I bought them at May Day books!

Students Take the U

“Take the Streets” by Ed Felien, 2008. (See advertisement below review.)

According to reports, Eddie wrote this short chronicle of the local anti-war uprising at the University of Minnesota in May 1972 right after the events. The uprising was in response to Nixon’s escalation of the air war in North Vietnam, and the mining of Hai Phong harbor. It might have been sitting in a shoe box every since, but we’re glad he finally published it. It is on sale at May Day books, and Eddie will give an ‘author talk’ on Sunday, Sept. 28 at 3:00 p.m. at May Day. Be there!

Millions participated in the events of 1972 – they were the largest demonstrations against the war in the U.S. If you were here locally in 1972, or even if you weren’t, and you want to compare events then and perhaps events at the RNC in August, this is a useful book. While liberals and even some radicals pooh-pooh barricades and confrontations between protesters and police, events like this are actually crucial tests of power between opposing sides. Most people don’t think taking and holding an intersection or street is ‘much’ or should be valued, but it is actually a small form of ‘dual’ power – just as a factory, building, neighborhood and land occupations can be forms of ‘dual power.’ Blocking traffic is a small thing, but it nevertheless calls into question the PHYSICAL control of the society by the armed forces, starting with the police. At bottom, when everything else breaks down – bribery, propaganda, gradualism, inertia, etc. – physical control is all that is left to the ruling powers.

Felien and the radicals at the U in 1972 understood this instinctually. The anti-war movement took and held Washington and University Avenues for several days, ultimately using barricades. Felien details each confrontation - the throwing out of the Army recruiters in Dinkytown; the attack on Romney and the new Cedar Square towers on the West Bank; the occupation of Interstate 94 at rush hour; and the back and forth between the police, Guard and protesters over control of University and Washington Avenues, including the key building, the ROTC building. The most interesting event to me (I was a participant in SDS at the time) is the stopping by students of a delivery of crates of M16s intended for the Guard! After some confrontation and discussion, the truck turned around. The book ends with the large march of 12,000 to the State Capital, which included a sizeable SDS breakaway march, and then the occupation of Johnston Hall by the Attica Brigade, the last ‘action’ of the uprising. I hesitate to call it an insurrection, as Felien does, as that is hyperbole. It was a ‘non-violent’ revolt if you will, and certainly, like the RNC, the main sources of violence were the police and Guard.

Eventually the Tactical Squad and the bulldozers removed the barricades. However, anyone who was there saw a local police department and local political leadership which was over-matched for a time. And that is something you do not forget.

Various characters make an appearance in the book. Paula Giese, a professor at the U and a key activist, was constantly armed with facts to throw at the U administration. She played a leadership role at many key times. Malcolm Moos, the ‘liberal’ president of the University, who nevertheless allowed ROTC, military recruiters and secret military research on campus, and tried to pretend that he was against the war, but did not support ‘radical’ methods. Charles Stenvig, the right-wing Daley/Rizzo type mayor of Minneapolis, staked his fame, much like Fletcher, on his rough handling of protesters. However, his TAC squad finally got tired and had to retreat. Marv Davidov was involved in events, leading a march against Honeywell, manufacturer of weapons for Vietnam. Clergy and Laity Concerned also appear, mostly as advocates of abandoning the barricades. The YSA/Mobe, who Felien calls in typical insulting Maoist terminology, “Trots,” appear as the advocates of only one tactic – large peace marches to remote locations. SDS and folks like KK Washington are mostly praised, as are the VVAW and what Felien likes to call the “Richter Red Devils” – street kids who hung around the old Richter’s drugstore on the West Bank. He praises them for being at the heart of erecting and defending the barricades. Interlarded between the text are pictures from the Minneapolis papers, The Daily, old leaflets and photocopies of odd SDS stuff like “Moos Money” – which you could use to get a sip of Moos' own whiskey.

Felien also has a section on events that lead up to the agitation on campus, including left opposition to a U corporate agenda called “Toward 1985 and Beyond” proposed by the U administration. The plums of this plan? Increased tuition, liquidation of the Humanities department, cutting of staff, raising the bus fare – it was a forerunner to the land grant institution becoming a phony “Harvard of the Midwest.” This document would be familiar to anyone who goes to the U today.

This is a valuable and local history that could have been lost, except in our memories, and Felien is to be congratulated for finally publishing it. I only have one beef – Felien should learn how to spell the term Trotskyist. In a way, the national left was bifurcated by skills – the YSA/SWP knew how to have large peace marches, SDS/PL knew how to engage in more militant direct action and organize unions, and groups like NAM had a more intimate, organizational approach that lead to things like the Constituent Assembly – the democratic organization that grew out of the student strike events. An actual revolutionary party would be able to carry out all these activities, and more. And that was, perhaps, one of the missing ingredients.

Participants in the events at the RNC will notice how polite and sometimes calm the Guard, administrators and even police could be in 1972. You might also notice that the numbers of protesters in 1972 were larger than the numbers at the RNC. Participants will also notice how the police and Guard in 1972 were nowhere near as well armed or numerous as they are now. 36 years and millions of dollars later, and our forces of repression are far … more … repressive. That is what the study of even local history teaches us.

--Red Frog, and I bought it at May Day Books!
9/25/08

This Sunday!

Please join us to welcome a new book by local long-time activist Ed Felein:

Warning, Warning, Mr. Robinson

As you may already know, our main Mayday Site was taken down right before the RNC due to a destructive virus discovered, or ostensibly discovered, by Google. We are preparing a new expanded site, using a new program, hosted by a new computer, and will try to get it cleared by Google.

We do not know if this was 'cyber-war' by the government, but the assumption is probably accurate. Anyway, the blog is still running, as you can see.

On another note, congratulations to Minneapolis, as the most literate city in the United States, based on various records by Jack Miller and the NEA. Congratulations to St. Paul, now number three most literate city. Seattle fell to number two. So we are also the most literate metropolitan area... And you wondered why a bookstore would try to survive in this two-horse town? The south had one city, Atlanta, on the list, at #8. The rest were on the coasts, or in the northern states.

RNC Again

... or rubber 'bullocks', bean bag electric chairs, Cossacks, motorcycle lice, bike copperheads, very large white tie-wraps for ankles and wrists, 3 foot wooden luncheons, Sheriff Thug Fetcher, snow-plows, the Department of Homeland Insecurity, the Very Secret Out of Service, 8 foot wire mesh protest and detention chicken cages, pulling the plug several times to protect and serve the ruling class, or really rage against the machine.

Summer Vacation ends with a ... Bang

After the longest week most of us have had in a long time, 'fall' is upon us. The summer 'vacation' is over, and book reviews will be starting again.

Let us know what you did at the end of your summer vacation - i.e. the week in hell that was the RNC. Mini-police state donuts? Tear gas on a stick? Patriot Act II. 3,500 thugs. Detention hell. Report this!

Demonstrate against the RNC!

Join us in the Twin Cities







PS to Red Frog. I work on a Mac. Let's chat!

"People's History of the Vietnam War"

Book Review: “A Peoples’ History of the Vietnam War”, by Jonathan Neale, 2001

This book is part of a series of peoples’ histories, edited by, who else, Howard Zinn. These books take the view of ordinary people, as distinguished from the ‘great man’ histories, mostly typical of bourgeois historiography. Besides Zinn’s own groundbreaking volume on the United States, it also includes probably the best book every written on the U.S. Civil War, predictably titled “A People’s History of the Civil War” by Georgia professor David Williams. The latter includes the well known struggle in the North against the aims of the northern capitalist class. But its central narrative is the almost unknown majority mass struggle against the war and the planter aristocracy by white southern workers, sharecroppers and small farmers. A taste of this was seen in the film, “Cold Mountain.” This book puts to rest the myth of the South united under slavery, propagated by apologists for the Confederacy. A myth many northerners also buy into.

No such grand feat is accomplished by this volume by Neale, who is a writer and also supporter of the Schactmanite International Socialist Organization (ISO) at Amherst. However, it includes some valuable and oft-overlooked aspects to the Vietnam war, even to those familiar with the basic story. Neale has to compete with books like “Working Class War” by Christian G Appy. To do so, he attempts to talk about the Vietnamese side as well, applying a class analysis all around. Neale himself is a PHD graduate of Warwick University in England.

DOMINO EFFECT

Neale makes a convincing case that the domino effect, pooh-poohed by liberals, was actually an operative factor. The war against the Soviet Union and China, the ‘cold war” behind all these events, was a war waged to prop up world-wide U.S. hegemony. Neale himself thinks the cold war was a war by the U.S. against other ‘capitalist’ powers. This analysis is the long running weakness in the book. It makes the Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions out to be, yes, ‘capitalist’ revolutions, lead by the bourgeoisie! Those clever, progressive capitalists … ! In effect, he diminishes the actual global class war that was raging between classes.

Neale contends that the domino theory is real. Anti-communism had been the glue that welded U.S. employers and the government together against the labor movement here at home. They used anti-communism to successfully ‘declaw’ the movement of reds in the '50s. McCarthyism actually existed long before McCarthy, starting under Truman and J Edgar Hoover, and was mostly directed at the labor movement. 3,000 longshoreman lost their jobs due to it. Here in Minnesota, chubby Hubert Humphrey helped purge the "Democratic" Farmer Labor Party of reds and leftists. In addition, the military ‘draw’ in Korea was still fresh in the minds of the U.S. ruling class. The Cuban revolution had just turned to the left. The U.S. was afraid a success by the Vietnamese could spill over into Cambodia and Laos.

Neale brings up Exhibit D, much forgotten, the peoples’ movement in Indonesia, where a mass Communist movement contested for power. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its labor and peasant allies were drowned in blood by Sukarno in 1965. Over half a million people were slaughtered by the government army and their right wing Muslim allies. The spine to do this was put into Sukarno by U.S. military support of the various South Vietnamese regimes. 450,000 U.S. troops were within a day’s flight sitting in Vietnam. And orders from the CIA, of course, as Indonesia was far more important to U.S. imperialism than Vietnam. Liberals shed no tears over this slaughter – they approved it. They never mention it.

And of course, Laos and Cambodia did fall. We must recall Che Guevara's call for "two, three, many Vietnams." The eventual military defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam is the cause for the ‘Vietnam syndrome’ that still exists – a seeming reluctance by the majority of the American population to die in a foreign war. It is still in effect, even through two Iraq wars. Yes, folks, it was quite a defeat. There was a domino effect.

TONNAGE

Anyone who reads about the war in Vietnam, the American war, knows that ordinary Vietnamese peasants and workers had to contend with the most aggressive military tactics and ordinance known to mankind. According to Neale, 1.5-2 million Vietnamese peasants, Viet Cong and NVA died in Vietnam alone, though the Vietnamese own numbers are higher. Neale puts the total for all countries at 3 million. The numbers are staggering, of humans and animals dead, wounded, crippled, ecosystems destroyed, poisons unleashed, buildings razed, dikes broken, paddies flooded, bridges bombed, across three countries - Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In Cambodia several hundred-thousand peasants died under bomb attacks approved by the U.S. and the Lon Nol government, nearly a tenth of the population. The Plain of Jars in Laos was made a wasteland. Schools, hospitals, churches, pagodas even leper colonies in North Vietnam were repeatedly bombed and strafed by John McCain and his compatriots. Neale cites eye-witnesses at one leper colony, which suffered 36 bombings. Anti-personnel bombs holding 180,000 darts a piece were dropped. The U.S. dropped 8 million tons of ordinance in all sectors – 3 times the weight of all bombs dropped by ALL sides in World War II. Yes, read that again. 3 times the weight of all bombs dropped by ALL sides in WW II.

And why is it that to defeat fascism in WW II or the U.S. in Vietnam, millions had to die? While to defeat the dreaded USSR, hardly anyone died in the counter-revolution led by Boris Yeltsin? Think about it.

The point of all this was break the will of the population to resist. It didn’t work, but it wrecked havoc on the Vietnamese people. The book, “Sorrow of War”, by Bao Ninh, a north Vietnamese soldier, is the most poignant description of that misery, and one of the great books every written about war. You can buy it from crippled Vietnamese soldiers on the streets of Hanoi to this day.

CHINA

For all the blowhard reactionaries who still think we should have ‘escalated’ the war in Vietnam, there was one ace in the hole held by the Vietnamese resistance movements that is relatively unknown. To his credit, Neale brings is up. China had troops in north Vietnam, seeded in various locations, working some anti-aircraft guns, barracked in others. A large scale invasion, a nuclear attack, a mass parachute drop – any event like this could have precipitated the involvement of China, and if China had been attacked, the Russians could also have become involved. Both countries were supplying Vietnam with weapons and aid. This is why it never happened. So it was not just the ‘little’ Vietnamese people against the ‘big’ Americans, though that is most of the story. It was a global class war front against the United States.

RESISTANCE

Neale has chapters on the resistance at home against the war, and the resistance within the military. He cites the 1969 anti-war march of 500,000 as the biggest march in U.S. history, bigger than the anti-poverty march headed by Dr. King. This is familiar territory for most readers, so I will not repeat it. Neale’s chapters on the resistance in the military reminds us of how broad the military opposition was – to the point where the draft army would no longer fight – something the brass and the government knew in 1970-71. 93,000 mostly working-class soldiers deserted between 1968-1972. There were hundreds of anti-war newspapers on every military base in the world, the names of which Neale details. Navy ships had their own, like the USS Coral Sea and the USS Constellation. Even the Air Force, the aristocracy of the military, had anti-war activists. One fighter pilot and one B-52 bomber pilot refused to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong during the Christmas bombing campaign in 1972. The B-52 crews at Guam and U Tapao in Thailand had such bad ‘morale’ that many bombing flights were canceled.

These are the airmen we should celebrate, not John McCain. McCain was the son of a long line of brass, and still thinks he should inherit the U.S. military. He was born with a silver sword in his mouth. May he choke on it.

INTERNAL CLASS POLITICS

After the success of the war against the Americans, the Vietnamese still did not have peace. They intervened in Cambodia in 1978 to defend themselves from constant cross border raids by the Khmer Rouge, and defended themselves from a Chinese border incursion in 1979. Only in 1989 did peace come to the Vietnamese when they pulled out of Cambodia after the fall of the USSR, whose proxy they had become. They have now been at peace for almost 20 years, an unheard of luxury and a great source of happiness for the Vietnamese people.

Neale covers the red thread of the story of rice and land, which is the heart of Vietnamese relations in the country-side. There was a small working class in the cities, in which some Trotskyists were active. Trotskyists were also working on some of the rubber plantations in the south. The Trotskyists took part in the Saigon general strike of 1938 and participated in the Saigon revolt of August 21, 1945. However, the bulk of the population were landless or commune peasants. The French always supported local large landlords against the collective property of the villages, or the smaller landholders. The French extracted extortionate rice levies and tax levies, subsuming poor peasants into debt or sharecropping, or into wage labor, in order to pay the tax. Large landlords then got larger. This was the main reason the Communists and Viet Minh were able to gain solid support in the rural areas, because when they took power in an area, they threw out the landlords and distributed the land, while lowering taxes. The overwhelming growth of the Viet Cong in the South was due to this same policy.

In spite of this, Neale’s theory is that the Vietnamese Communist Party was dominated by intellectual ‘mandarin’ cadres closer to ‘progressive’ landlords than peasants. While they became revolutionaries of sorts (I guess), once taking power they treated the peasants much like the old landlords of yore, taxing them of their rice beyond endurance. As a result, the Vietnamese cooperatives during and after the war, while modeled after earlier Vietnamese rural forms, were impoverished by demands from the urban ‘state.’ Neale calls this ‘state capitalism.’ Later, land divisions in 1988 resulted in many old landlords with friends in high places regaining much of their land.

I find this argument unconvincing. I have seen the village Ho was from, and it is extremely modest, just outside Hue. I would not call these people ‘very’ mandarin! It is possible that the peasants could have been supplied with urban goods, education and health care, in exchange for their rice levies. I think it was a program of uber-industrialization and forced collectivization, based on a Stalinist model, that resulted in the impoverishment of the peasantry, and not the presence of an alleged ‘state capitalism.’ The fact the landlords were able to regain some land after the land dispersal in 1988 reflects a lack of democracy under the Vietnamese workers state – the bureaucracy has always had close ties with businessmen, as we have seen over and over again. Nevertheless, Neale’s history of the development of Vietnamese rural relations is extremely factual, and brings a relatively untold story to U.S. readers.

As a response, Neale reports that strike levels since the '90s, outside the official unions in Vietnam run higher than in bourgeois democracies, including our own paradise of labor. A recent strike over rice in northern Vietnam against a Taiwanese clothing factory made world-wide headlines. Perhaps the storied patience and 'labor peace' promised to our lords of capital in the lowly 'third' world is ending. This shows the Vietnamese working class is mobilizing again. Their history would predict nothing less.

And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog, 6/24/2008