Calling All Personal Assistants!

“The Servant Economy – Where America’s Elite is Sending the Middle Class,” by Jeff Faux, 2012

After the crash of the capitalist economy in 2007-2008, a flood of books has emerged from the left, tracking the bi-partisan coddling of Wall Street since Carter.  This is another.  One of the main tendencies, as you would expect, are new-born Keynesians and Rooseveltians, who see the limitation of the blue-dog in Obama, Clinton and Cater, yet dig no deeper into the capitalist economy than that.  Regulation and government stimulus spending are the be-all and end-all of their political economy. The other main tendency is Marxist, many of the books of which I have reviewed below. (see “Global Slump,” “The Great Financial Crisis,” “Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism,” “Occupy the Economy,” “Structural Crisis of Capital,” “Zombie Capitalism” and “The Endless Crisis.”)

Faux is one of the Rooseveltians, and if this is your point of view you will especially like this book.  Like many, he gives us yet another historical and detailed run-down of the decay of the U.S. capitalist economy, especially since the mid-70s.  The framework remains the increase in class stratification, the off-shoring of industrial work, the growth in the military sector as an economic bulwark for capital, the weightier role of finance, the ideological dialectic that led both main U.S political parties to embrace different forms of neo-liberalism, and the consequences of this market vision spreading across the world.  All these topics are now almost basic commonsense. 

Given his pro-capitalist bonifides, his pessimism is extreme - which is significant.  He essentially spends the whole book attacking neo-liberalism, and only has one suggestion that he believes will stop the juggernaut – a Constitutional amendment that establishes that Corporations are not ‘persons’ and do not have the same political or economic rights.  Well, if you think this is weak tea for his baleful picture of the increasing levels of austerity that all workers will be facing, you’d be right. 

Faux’s rundown of the Wall Street bankers working in the Obama administration is hilarious, especially given the populist rhetoric we just heard that won re-election. Faux has one chapter engaging in a polemic against various American neo-liberals, from the dreadful Fareed Zakaria on down, which might be of interest if you actually take the suggestions of neo-liberalism seriously.  He has chapters on the coming complete privatization of education and the deceptive ‘education is the solution’ baloney; the insulting way the U.S. auto industry was rescued and the coming ‘grand bargain’ for austerity between the two Parties.  Faux quotes Rupert Murdoch as predicting that education privatization is a $500 Billon dollar market.  The auto bailout structured by leveraged-buyout artist Steve Rattner cost 21,000 workers their jobs, closed 14 factories and 3 warehouses and slated 1,454 dealerships be shut.  Under Rattner, more production went to China, South Korea and Mexico.  As Rahm Emanuel said when the UAW protested:  “Fuck the UAW.” 

Of interest, Faux shows that Jimmy Carter laid the groundwork for neo-liberalism in the Democratic Party.  A southerner from Georgia and a peanut capitalist, Carter explicitly rejected a national industrial policy even when major corporations supported it.  He refused to use wage/price controls a la Nixon to deal with inflation – which was the real reason he lost to Reagan in 1980, not the Iran hostage drama.  According to Faux, the majority of Americans supported price controls.  In a many domestic ways, Carter was to the right of Nixon – a hard thing to say, after all the abuse heaped on that twisted man.  Carter’s breaking of the national miners strike in 1978 should be fresh even in the mind of Rich Trumka.  Carter hired Paul Volcker for the Federal Reserve, who plunged the economy into stagflation by instituting very high interest rates.  Carter started deregulation of certain industries, including airlines, trucking, banking and telecommunications.  Carter actually was the first one to say, ‘Government cannot solve our problems’ in his 1978 State of the Union speech. 

Faux is strong on the issue of the cheapening effect of the ‘digital revolution’ and its role for labor.  Not only is the quality of books, music and art degraded by digitalization, but so is labor, at least under capitalism.   As many studies have pointed out, almost 47 million U.S. jobs are based on digital technology – and given the flexible and movable nature of this technology, these jobs could be theoretically outsourced.  The only ‘safe’ jobs are ones that cannot be digitized – waitresses, for instance, or personal servants.  High-tech technology, unemployment and anti-unionism have gone hand in hand, which is why a certain level of “Luddism” makes sense.  Yet as efforts in certain sectors, like law have shown, training Bangalore Indians to create legal paper based on limited English, a foreign law understanding and other shortfalls might be an exercise in futility. 

But, like housing construction, even ‘safe’ jobs can also be undermined without union protection.  Witness the housing industry. What roofing company in the U.S. uses union labor instead of lowly-paid and slave-driven Mexican workers? 

Faux’s kicker – which gives the book its title – is that service jobs needed by the rich, especially jobs that in England would have been called ‘servants’ – nannies, au-pairs, cooks, maids, gardeners, dog walkers, diet coaches, drivers, personal shoppers, personal assistants, physical trainers, yoga teachers, masseuses, vacation planners, computer assistants, interior decorators - and labor contractors to coordinate all of the above – are predicted to be part of the cheery future of U.S jobs.   Even high-end prostitutes and efficient drug dealers can fit into this scenario!

Here are the ten jobs that the overall economy is predicted to need the most:    Registered nurses, college professors, nurse’s aides, customer-service representatives, restaurant workers, retail salespeople, office clerks, janitors, home health care aides and personal aides.  Except for the first two, most only require a high school degree – and nurses aides only a one-year certificate above that.   Of the first two, 75% of college professors are now working on year-to-year contracts, and are no longer on a tenure track. 

However, Faux is a ‘fellow’ of the Economic Policy Institute of Washington, D.C. and he used to be an economist for the U.S. Departments of State, Commerce and Labor.  That background should tip you off that, while he wrote a book titled the ‘global class war’ he is not a working-class warrior.  

For Keynesians like Faux, ‘government’ in the abstract is the solution, and in a sense, they are quite right.  However, government itself has a class character, as Marx pointed out long ago.  The ‘government’ is not a neutral body standing above the global class war.  As Marx put it in the Communist Manifesto: “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

This rather simple idea stumps the modern Keynesians, as much as we all know in our guts that it reflects reality.  The ‘state’ actually has a class character, and the ‘government’ is allied to one class or another.  What any government does is a product of the class struggle.  Liberal ‘think’ tanks are not the same as actual, or figurative, working-class tanks. If the Keynesians understood this, then they’d see that a government of the working-class is the real, permanent solution to the austerity crisis.  Even during the 30s, the capitalist class still controlled the U.S. government, and was only forced to concede some benefits to the poor, workers and farmers because of the threat of revolution.  Tame house cats like Faux mention the word only once, and in the sense of ‘remote.’  Yet they want the government to change.  It is here that the failure of uber-liberalism is revealed.

Another favorite hobby-horse of the Keynesians is based on Henry Ford’s quote – “There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.”  However, that theory no longer holds.  The owner of a software center in Kiev in the Ukraine does not need to worry about paying higher wages to his staff, if he expects to sell his software in England.  Nor does the auto capitalist in the U.S. need to worry about the wages paid to a car-part worker in India when he outsources Indian parts for American-sold cars.  In other words, as even Faux has started to notice, international manufacturing and international markets – and international imbalances of class - makes this bit of Keynesianism obsolete.  It is the other ‘9%’ of the world population that can buy these goods now, not just local workers.  You cannot appeal to the capitalists with this kind of logic anymore, because they know better.  And appealing to the capitalists is all this is.

People like Faux sees the problems but has no solution, like many of the books coming out now.  He does not believe that a viable ‘3^rd Party’ can ever succeed in the long run because of U.S. laws, media hatred, and the successful but narrow cultural values each party has based its voting-getting prowess on.  So he ends up being, right now, another reluctant Democrat – which is to say, part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

November 18, 2012

Vandals Behind the Scandals

China:  The Fall of Bo Xilai & the “Chongqing Model” by Yeuzhi Zhao, Vol. 44, October 2012 Monthly Review

Scandals, scandals.  If you believe that Petraeus quit because he had an affair, I have a cold, dark, powerless building in Rockaway, Queens to sell you.  He bashed the Obama administration for abandoning the CIA/State Department station in Benghazi for 8 hours - saying this right before the election.  He was scheduled to go before Congress to perhaps repeat that notion.  Yet the FBI knew about his affair for months.  Ah, to have a Republican in your administration – so bi-partisan.  You reap what you sow.

At any rate, good riddance, war-monger.

An even more important scandal erupted in China in the last months.  This is the downfall of Bo Xilai, the somewhat leftist head of the Chongqing area of China, and the accusation of murder against his wife.  Facts will be hard to come by as the trial of his wife was bereft of them, and resembled more a show trial.  Some are comparing the downfall of Bo Xilai to Lin Piao so many years ago.  The CCP is now accusing Xilai of having billions of yuan stashed away, plundered through his position of power in Chongqing.  Of course, this from a Party which has 90% of the 1,000 richest people in China in its ranks.  If you believe that Xilai was stripped of his powers because of corruption and his wife murdered an English businessman, I have an out-of-date coal mine in China to sell you.

Zeuzhi Zhao, a professor in Canada, has written an article about this significant event in the October Monthly Review. Chongqing is a heavily working-class area, and was a leftist center during the civil war against the Nationalists.  Zhao uses warmed-over Maoist rhetoric, which is the only known leftist current in China, to discuss the strong points of the “Chongqing model.”   She describes an attempt to counter the reigning neo-liberal model of the Chinese CCP leadership by harking back to some aspects of Maoist doctrine – and meaning it. 

In Chongqing, the main television station was taken over by the state from its private owners.  Believe it or not, most media in China is privately-owned.  This station began to broadcast ‘revolutionary’ programs and become more like public television.  The state created a public investment firm that bought 1,160 state companies and returned them to sustainability and employment.  They started a program which allowed 3.22 million rural migrants to become residents of the region, with entitlements to urban benefits.  This is unlike other areas of China, which do not allow rural workers residency permits.  Since 2009, half of all government expenditures went to benefits for ordinary residents.  Xilai supported the idea of ‘common prosperity,’ something opposed to the ‘get rich’ theory of the CCP Central Committee.  Xilai started a popular program called “Striking Black,” designed to rid Chongqing of corruption, aimed at a nexus of party bureaucrats, private capitalists and criminals - using information provided by regular citizens.  As a result, crime and bribery in the region went down.  Xilai started to require Party and state functionaries to make visits to work sites, homes and villages in order to re-familiarize themselves with the population.  “Singing Red’ was a cultural program designed to promote collective revolutionary values through mass singing, plays, public readings and story-telling.

Of course, mixed with these progressive aspects were promotion of private firms and a top-down approach to instituting these changes.  Zhao called it a ‘mixed economy’ approach.  No mass councils or Soviets in sight, of course, given the politics of 'vanguard' society.  

The liberals decried Xilai as wanting to start the “Cultural Revolution’ all over again, and wanting to ‘overthrow the CCP’ or ‘bring in fascism.”  This kind of hysteria only shows how threatened they were.  No wonder Xilai and his wife were ‘disappeared’ along, with their supporters, right before the present Congress of the CCP.

Bloomberg reported on 5/2/2012:  "As Bo rose from a provincial bureaucrat to the Communist Party leader of Chongqing, where he rated a salary of about 10,000 yuan ($1,585) a month, his family’s wealth grew dramatically. His relatives have accumulated at least $136 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on the extended family’s business interests, including those of his wife’s older sisters. Li Wangzhi, Bo’s son by a first marriage, and at least two of Bo’s brothers held positions in banking and industry. Bo’s other son, Bo Guagua, studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts"

If true, Bo and his family, like other Chinese bureaucrats, was also taking advantage of his position.  However, this does not change the fact that his position was to the left of the CCP majority, and of benefit to the workers of Chongqing.

And I bought it at May Day Books, which always has Monthly Review in Stock.

Red Frog

November 12, 2012

Rush Hour of the Karma Capitalists; Gentrification of the Gods

“The God Market – How Globalization is Making India More Hindu,” by Meera Nanda, 2012

If you ever wondered if the dim religiosity of American politics and culture is also penetrating other unequal societies, you have your answer.  Nanda’s book, which reads somewhat like a PHD thesis, posits a temple-state-corporation complex in India, centered ideologically on the merging of neo-liberal thought and a tarted-up version of Hinduism. 

There are American equivalents.  The bi-partisan “Office of Faith-Based Initiatives,” constant public affirmations of Christian faith by politicians, bi-partisan Congressional cabals centered on prayer and politics (attended by our own Secretary of State, Arkansas’ Hillary Clinton, among other Democrats); the tax free status of churches and the wholesale takeover of the Republican Party by Protestant / Catholic/ Mormon fundamentalists are part of the US synergy.  In the corporate field, this book suggests a Hindi extension of “God & WalMart,” (reviewed below) - how Protestant religiosity is used by the Wal-Mart corporation. 

Nanda shines a light on the tele-yogis, invented traditions, the 'secular' government's funding of various Hindu practices, and above all, the myths that come with ‘development.’  The most prominent theory is that ‘increasing science’ (after all, part of India’s resurgence is in IT) will downgrade backward religious practices and ideas and result in a secular society.  Not so.

Nanda shows that the ‘rush hour of the gods’ is happening most of all among the prosperous middle-classes of India, those most involved in so-called ‘advanced education’ and scientific jobs.  Just as our own suburban mega-churches expand in upscale Republican outer-ring suburbs.  There is a revival of Hindu worship practices - yoga, mass chanting and singing, pilgrimages, ceremonies in supplication to various local gods, gold purchasing, temple-building, miracle-cures, rain praying, meditation, astrology, reincarnation, Hindu camps, special diets and private religious colleges.  In addition, there is a large strain of ‘prosperity Karma” running through this explosion of gurus, the most prominent being Swami Dyananda Saraswati.  He interprets the teachings of Lord Krishna to mean that desires are a ‘manifestation of divinity.’  Deepak Chopra, a follower of Mahesh Yogi, called his interpretation of the Yoga Sutras, “Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.”  Chopra famously wears a Rolex everywhere he goes. 

As Nanda puts it, the Indian upper & middle class is not really in the ‘middle’ of anything, but an ’elite of mass proportion – 20-30% of the population surrounded by a sea of utter poverty.’  Nanda estimates that the real reason for this religiosity is partly guilt, partly self-justification, and partly immersion in corporate/government propaganda.  As she puts it, ‘The Indian elite and middle classes display an exceptionally high degree of tolerance for the inhuman levels of poverty and deprivation all around them.”  This could be the result of the reactionary belief in “karma,’ which makes every individual responsible for his own fate down through time.  Of course, this is a society whose caste system is ideologically based on Hindu doctrines, including reincarnation.

Nanda maintains that this religiosity leads the majority of religious middle/upper class Hindus into supporting the right-wing Hindu BJP (“Bharatiya Janata Party”), and a soft ‘Hindutva.’  Hindutva is sort of like a Hindu version of theocratic Christian Dominionism.  Soft Hidutva also affects the neo-liberal and formerly secular Congress Party, which now makes public support of Hinduism one of its constant practices, breaking from its secular past under Nehru.  She thinks even this ‘liberal’ Hinduism is creating a Hindu majoritarian attitude that the communalists of violence can draw upon again in the future.  (see “Field Notes on Democracy,” reviewed below)  She notes that, in another PEW survey, Indians said their culture was superior to all others by the highest amount of any nation in the world – 93%.  Which reflects a level of complacency not seen since the last speech by an American politician.  She also criticizes the self-congratulation and back slapping Hindus are doing over the level of IT work in India - which Nanda accurately portrays as quite low-level.

Religion is not only good for business, it is a good business itself.  Where else can you sell people intangibles for actual money?  It is a sustainable business, since the supply of mysticism will never run out…at least, until people stop buying your invisible product.  And for that other ‘product,’ Nanda gives examples of various large Indian conglomerates that link their activities to various Hindu shrines, training programs and schools, even citing Ford Motor Company.

Nanda describes how the Indian government, though formally ‘secular’ according the 1950 Constitution, encourages religion materially through tourism and education.  Because of the prior poor state of Hindu religious shrines and temples, due to the incompetence and theft of the various priests, the government was given legal writ over Hindu religious structures.  This law has given the neo-liberals free reign to promote religion.  Nanda gives many examples of regional governments gifting large tracts of land for free or cheaply to private religious schools, shrines, temple complexes, etc.  Religious tourism is promoted by the government monetarily, as 50% of all tourism in India is for a religious pilgrimage. (!)    

Education in India is being privatized so that anyone that wants to start a school is granted a charter.  It is a model for what could happen in the U.S.  With government help, purely religious schools are being built, as well as those that mix the teaching of astrology and prayers with medicine or structural engineering. 

Nanda ends her book with an examination of various theories of secularism and ‘de-secularism,’ seeming to be quite confused by what is happening in India.  She errs in seeing the U.S., Japan and even Europe as being a ‘more religious’ society now.  The recent PEW survey which showed that nearly 20% of the US population (60 million!) is now atheist, agnostic or unchurched seems to have missed her publication deadline. (see commentary, below, “Congratulations”.)  As did the fact that 50% of people in the U.S. who say they go to church every week were … exaggerating greatly.  She does point out that the Marxists in India did not directly attack religion, especially theoretically, thus failing to limit its effects.  She settles for a theory that modernization 'can' put a dent in mysticism over the long run. 

The problem in her understanding of secularism is that she divorces it from the class structure and from capitalism.  While the first great bourgeois revolutions killed the priests in France and Mexico, burned their churches and promoted rationalism and science in the face of feudal obscurantism, a decaying capitalism will do the exact opposite.  This is the answer to the ‘mystery’ of why current governments promote religion, and take down the barriers between church and state.  After all, "secularism" is not an economic theory.  Neo-liberalism can do nothing else, even while it really puts profit and the almighty rupee at the center of life.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog, November 7, 2012 

Happy 95^th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the overthrow of Kerensky and the Russian rich.  In Spain and Greece, now is the time to start forming workers councils.  To celebrate, workers should seize government buildings in those countries.

Warning - Angry Rant!

BAD CULTURE - SAD CULTURE

In the endless quest for entertainment, I attempt to avoid that which will give me heartburn. It is like food poisoning or wasting your life. Well, can’t always succeed.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

I decided to do a favor for a sad friend and see, “The Dark Knight Rises” with him at the Riverview Theater. It is the latest installment in the Batman franchise. A mistake. We left after 2 hours of punishment.  I apologize for not inflicting the rest of the film on myself.

If you wonder, like me, why a story about some rich man who feels compelled to fight ‘evil’ on his own is so central to some tights-wearing males, you have a point. Who appointed Bruce Wayne? What is some creep with a butler, a big house, some ‘Industries” and a missing “Robin” have to do with this? Yeah, he’s not so friendly with the police, but then he is. He’s like the uber-cop. Charles Bronson. The avenger. A citizen vigilante. One guy? Who flies?

In this case, a group of nuclear-loaded anarchists bust into the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. The anarchists then hold a rally for the citizens in a “Gotham” ball field and tell them they are free. Everyone in the stadium looks at each other and wonders what that means. The crafty anarchists trick thousands of cops into being trapped in an unused subway tunnel. Then they free those in Gotham’s prisons - many of whom later turn out to be innocent. They hold trials of rich people or something like that. Everything is not shiny, rich and new anymore, but grey and poor. Sound like anything current? Yes, you got it, an ‘anti-Occupy’ counter-revolutionary Batman movie. Who would have thunk it? The Commissioner is nailed in the film for jailing innocent people, but, look, we still have to free those cops. After all, the anarchists have a weapon of mass destruction. Or maybe they are Iranian or Iraqi.

I was cheering for the nuclear anarchists, and their masked Road Warrior leader, kept in a hole in the desert in Uzbekistan or something.  That is never a good sign.

The plot is so convoluted, the story so long, that even some beer could not make this dark night make sense.

The Real Appomattox Court House

APPOMATTOX

I decided to do another favor, this time for one of my daughters, who wanted to see the play “Appomattox” at the Guthrie Theater. She wanted to see if this play was appropriate to bring students to. The Guthrie is our ‘flagship’ theater in this heavily-theater town, a stylish, airport of a building on the river, sponsored by who rules Minneapolis. Don’t go. I felt trapped, until LBJ told some fart jokes.

The play is written by an evidently English LBJ acolyte named Christopher Hampton. It was in two parts – one, 1865, the last year of the Civil War (hence the title, Appomattox) and one in 1965 after the Kennedy assassination, when LBJ was president. Mr. Hampton has the most general and clichéd view of the civil war put to stage - all text, no feel. It was like a revolving historical diorama of speeches and quotes, spoken by wooden, dull actors (except perhaps by the one playing Grant), repeating every single word now made famous in quotes from history books. It could work as a diorama for tourists in Gettysburg. And would have put students to sleep, as it was doing to part of the grown-up audience. My daughter scotched the play about here.

Then, after a drinks-laden intermission and a view of the twinkling Mississippi, the second half started. LBJ started swearing and insulting, Martin Luther King started pontificating and speechifying, the playwright hit all the typical liberal cliches’ and pablum, and at least LBJ gave us some laughs. Hampton did the FBI and the CIA a favor by portraying Lee Harvey Oswald as a ‘leftist’ defending Cuba - which was the line of the American secret police about that event. Stunning. He then makes fun of Hoover through the eyes of Johnson for the rest of the play, after propagandizing for Hoover in this manner. I have a question, Mr. Hampton. Why didn’t LBJ get rid of Hoover if he hated him? Or did Hoover have something on LBJ, like he had on everyone else? But LBJ didn’t, and it is quite possible this helped lead to the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. Another 'redneck' made fun of by the Texan LBJ, Alabama Governor Wallace, also appears. LBJ did not force the segregationist ‘cracker’ Wallace out of the Democratic Party in 1965 either. That happened 3 years later.

The plays sole strength is showing that LBJ still had aspects of a southern New Dealer about him. This is why he yielded to popular pressure – riots, strikes, sit-ins and marches at home and the opprobrium of the whole world, including the USSR abroad - and adopted the voting rights and civil rights bills, as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Of course, the hook was that meanwhile guns and butter LBJ was sending Marines into Vietnam. The rest is bloody history. Hampton wears an LBJ T-shirt in the printed promo brochure, so we know he didn't volunteer to go to Vietnam to help LBJ out.

This play could have just been called “Lyndon’ and expanded around that. As it was, it was a pastiche and a traffic accident.  The black people were stereotypes.  The running joke was that the wives and the aides of these ‘great men of history’ really had the power. The two token ‘radicals’ in the play, John Lewis of SNCC and Frederick Douglass, had almost no role – playing walk-ons to the ‘great men’ like Lincoln and King instead.

Hampton’s basic point was that the civil war did not solve the issue of slavery and oppression in America, even after a 100 years. However, nor did the 1960s. The position of black people at the bottom of the U.S. economic hierarchy has now not changed for 147 years – even after so many ‘great men.’ If this punk writer had been serious, this might have been his real point.  As it was, this little fact the adulator did not make.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

This film was the best of the three. I chose to go to this myself, based on the massive buzz. It is a cross between the style of Terrence Malick’s surreal “Tree of Life” (reviewed below), the class atmosphere of Winter’s Bone and the theme of Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke.” It is the spotted story of a tough 6 year old black girl named “Hushpuppy” who deals with a Katrina-like flood on her island in the Mississippi River delta. While handling a drunk, violent father, a missing mother, a burning shack, being left alone and homeless, being hungry, then a dead dad, and monstrous wild boars the size of semi-trucks. Clueless white people actually brought their children to the Riverview Theater to munch on popcorn, pop and candy bars and watch this, because they thought it was a child’s film. Global warming caused this film, not Disney.

At the end of this story, there is only an emotional residue. Like a bad dream. I mean a really ‘bad’ dream. Flashing images. Fear. Disgust. But she’s a tough, plucky feral child, sort of like the kid in Road Warrior II. And we are supposed to be cheered by that. Too bad she’s not real.

This film provided the basis for an essay by film ‘theorists’ who argue that America has become such a 3rd World country that ‘magical realism’ is no longer foreign. This is how the powerless handle bad facts – through magic and poetry. It used to be confined to fucked-up little countries outside our borders, but it is now invading our ‘own’ psychic terrain. Those guys should have seen “The Dark Knight Rises.” Their pessimism would have been cured.

Red Frog
October 31, 2012
Happy All Hallows Eve
Happy Dia Dos Muertos

The Oligopolists Unite

“The Endless Crisis – How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China,” by John Bellamy Foster & Robert W McChesney, 2012

Live in the U.S.?  Hoping to go back to the 50s?  Hoping the good times will return?  Is history circular?  Does it oscillate?  It is like a pendulum?  Is it purely linear?  Does it always get better?  Do you know?  In this book, supporters of the Monthly Review tendency, probably the most vital in U.S. Marxism on a theoretical basis presently, extend their analysis of what happened in the U.S. in 2007-2008 to the whole world.  Historical economics, they would agree, is dialectical – and now it has fully entered the international stage, which, barring the discovery of another livable planet, should be the final stage of capitalism.  They call this final stage, “international monopoly-finance capital,” a mouthful, but still accurate.

This book is a continuation of Foster’s first book on this subject, “The Great Financial Crisis,” (reviewed below), and of course, based on the seminal work of Baran & Sweezy, “Monopoly Capital.” (Also reviewed below.)  One of its pluses is that it is a very good overview of economic debates within the left, and also against bourgeois economic theory since the turn of the century.  It is written, like all their books, in a clean, clear prose, with lots of repetition to make the points.  The authors go back to Marx frequently to show how his ideas were germinal in their analysis.  The authors pay special attention to the issue of growing world-wide monopoly (oligopoly) among multinational corporations in most industries.  They contend these oligopolies actually destroy the price theory of capitalism.  I.E. oligopolistic corporations do not compete through price, as it is too destructive, but only through advertising, squeezing labor costs and other efficiencies.  As such “prices” are not set by the market, but by the oligarchs and their pursuit of profit.

Concurrent with this is the thesis that the apparent conflict, let us say between several massive world airlines, software, plane or auto manufacturers, is a reflection of the oligopoly in those industries, and nothing more. Foster/McChesney present much data to back up their claim that the expansion of multinational corporations world-wide has led to larger oligopolies, not the ending of oligopoly, or monopoly, as is the blinding myth presented by bourgeois economics. 

Oligopolies, due to their dominant position in the state, in the political system and in the economic system, are able to increase profits to the point where they see no need to expand production.  Hence, the MR thesis that ‘over-accumulation’ of profits and surplus value by oligopolistic multi-nationals leads to economic stagnation.  This stagnation is dealt with instead by playing in the financial casino markets – the ‘only game in town,’ as I once called it.  They also point out that the attempts by U.S. & European governments to prop up the financial firms is an acknowledgement that finance capital IS the most profitable sector, and that particular ‘goose’ should not be killed. 

The authors say kind words about Keynes on this subject, showing him to be close to Marx on the growth of finance capital.  (Keynes never read Marx…)  Marx predicated that sometimes his famous theory – M-C-M+ - could just be – M-M+ - meaning that money would just make more money, and avoid producing any commodity whatsoever.  This is an elegant picture of financialization, one which Keynes agreed with.  Krugman, America's leading "Keynesian," has read Marx, however, and does not have that excuse.  The authors point out Krugman’s support for ‘globalization’ and low wages (like Thomas Friedman, his ostensible opposite…) places him as a loyal supporter of world capitalist expansion.  Krugman’s liberalism always stopped at the border’s edge anyway.

These theories bring up a key question.  The authors repeatedly talk about a ‘new invention’ that might mitigate the stagnation thesis.  Marxists in the past have cited the steam engine, the railroad and the automobile as key inventions that spurred capital from the outside, as it were.  I would suggest that the computer – ‘the digital revolution’ as even they call it – has done so since the early 1980s, the period they focus on.  It has enabled globalization, the increase in unemployment, the increase in corporate size and the increase in surplus value due to its spurring of productivity.  The authors are aware of some of these effects – but barely.  They do not admit that without the invention of the computer and extensive digitalization of so many areas, much world industrial manufacturing would not exist. 

Of note, the most profitable sector in the world now is technology infrastructure, which is definitely digitally-related.  In 2012, of the top 10 firms in U.S. market value, 5 are digitally-related – Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google & AT&T.  Apple, Microsoft and IBM are in the top 10 firms in profitability. (CNN Money)   I do not know what percentage the industries connected to digitalization have overall – software/ tele-communications/  internet sites/ tech infrastructure/ computer-phone-etc. hardware manufacturing – but without their existence industrial production in the world would be much smaller. It is literally dragging every other sector into its orbit.  Even cars, toasters, washing machines and refrigerators are being digitized. Newspapers are disappearing, as digitization affects all media and all entertainment.  Travel agencies have disappeared. Schools are getting more internet-based.  Anyone that cannot work a computer cannot get a job in many industries, even blue-collar ones like machinists and automobile mechanics.  To me, the authors, in their desire to proclaim industry dead and financialization supreme – ignore the very real existence of this new industrial sector. 

Yet the digital revolution doesn’t change some basics.  It has created oligopolies in every area – Verizon & AT&T; Microsoft & Apple; Intel & AMD; IBM, HP & Lenovo; Cisco & Qualcomm, etc.  It is rife with planned obsolescence and the ‘wit’ of advertising fetishism – just look at any Apple product.  Employment in these industries, like the finance industry, is not as extensive as in automobile manufacturing.  And the digital revolution is now beginning to slow down, no doubt.  Digitalization is no panacea for capital, but it is still the single manufacturing event that has breathed life into that sector, and produced massive profits, which also have gone into state capture and the Wall Street/ City/ Bourse etc. casino.

As Foster/McChesney point out, the unfettered rule of the multinationals is creating the largest working class in world history.  Marx noted this long ago, as capitalism creates workers alongside surplus value.  As of last year, there are now more workers in the world than any other class, and the majority of people now live in cities.  To those who think the working class disappeared – just look to the global South, where according to the authors, the numbers are now 71% of the world total.  Alongside the absolute increase in the world working class is the pauperization of that class, its ‘precariousness’ (See reviews of “The Precariat,’ “Planet of Slums,” and “Tropic of Chaos,” below).  Foster/McChesney even quote Marx in detail on the part-time nature of many workers in the reserve army, undermining any thesis that this is a 'new' class, unexpected by Marxism.  The ‘reserve army of the unemployed’ and semi-employed is one of the largest armies the world has ever seen.  It is essential to the process of monopolization.  So too is the monopolization of the political contours of each country.

As Foster/McChesney note as an aside, in the U.S. and other countries like India, two parties of the oligopoly compete for our votes, mirroring the economies on which they sit.    

As is typical, Foster/McChesney ignore the role the workers’ state economies played in stabilizing the world economic system in the past.  Their ending (minus some effects of the weaker markets and role of the state in Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and China), is noted here only in the context of expanding the range of capital’s ability to directly exploit millions more workers. Central Europe is now a low-wage colony for western European capital, and China's workers have become one for the U.S. They go into great detail at the end of the book on why China will not pull world capitalism out of its decline. The reasons are legion - increased labor and farmer struggles, the massive bubble in Chinese property values and construction overbuilding, the domination of the private 'shadow banking sector,' an extreme disparity of wealth, where 250,000 families control 70% of assets - and the very real, impossible limitations of escaping an export model with an internal consumer economy based on very low wages. For more on this, read Minqi Li's "The Rise of China." (reviewed below.)

The MR crew point out that the upshot of the multi-national takeover of the world economy is that their problems of finance & debt; their methods of paying low wages; their political tactics of divide and conquer of the world’s workers; their rape of the environment - is being visited on almost every citizen in some way.  It is not sustainable or long-lasting – it is a perversely disruptive gold rush that destroys much of what it touches.  Only the oligarchs and their footman benefit.  Which is why there is a possibility that a world-wide revolution is more possible now than in the past, given the broad and simultaneous nature of capital’s effects. 

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

October 28, 2012

The Trickledown Counter-Revolution

“Walking With the Comrades,” by Arundhati Roy, 2011

Arundhati Roy is an internationally-known woman journalist and novel writer, famous for her romantic novel set in Kerala, “The God of Small Things.”  I’ve reviewed her last book of journalistic writing, “Field Notes on Democracy,” (below) and this is another in that line, except focused on the Naxalite rebellion in the forest regions in central India, involving the Communist Party (Maoist). 

As a journalist, Roy was invited in 2010 to spend time with the guerrillas.  She interviews many comrades, walks for days, her only cover a blue tarp, and doesn’t complain much.  She attends a giant rebel celebration, Bhumkal, that goes on all night, consisting of mass singing and dancing.  Later, other journalists are killed by police for covering the rebellion.  Roy's picture was flashed on TV later as a “terrorist supporter” because she did not condemn a successful Naxalite raid on a police camp.  Journalists are not allowed to enter the tribal forest zones by the government, and as Roy points out, the government may be preparing a “Sri Lankan Solution.”  That consisted of killing thousands of Sri Lankan rebels behind closed doors.

This book is the stone-cold accompaniment to Michael Klare’s “The Race for What’s Left.” (reviewed below) The reason the forest peoples of several India states – Andra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chittisgarh, Orissa, Jarkhand and West Bengal – are in armed revolt is due to the government signing ‘memorandums of understanding’ with various Indian and international mining consortiums to dig out trillions of dollars of bauxite, iron ore and other valuable minerals, with the government getting a tiny 7% royalty. Besides stripping the land, forests and mountains, massive dams are needed to produce the electricity to make aluminum out of bauxite. For all these reasons, the Indian neo-liberal government has undertaken to remove millions of adivasi tribal peoples who live there.  And the only way to do it is through violence.  60 million people have already been displaced. 

Roy points out that handing over the land to these corporations violates India’s own 1950 Constitution.  However, laws are made to be broken, especially when they conflict with the goals of the most powerful corporate forces in India.

In response, the forest peoples have begun to make common cause with the Maoists, who have been waging guerilla warfare since the peasant rebellion in Naxalbari in 1960.  Hundreds of thousands are now organized in militias, the “Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army,” cultural groups and women’s organizations.  The guerrilla movement is using revolutionary violence to defend the adivasi way of life - to stop the destruction of homes and lands, the rape of women, the thievery, the killing of anyone who stands up to the police, the fascist “Salwa Judum” and now more frequently, the army.  These government forces basically take orders from the mining companies.  As Roy puts it, what else can they do, call an "indefinite hunger strike?” 

Nor is there anyone to vote for, as the political process, as in the U.S., is completely controlled by the ‘liberal’ Congress and rightist JHP parties, both of which support the mining corporations.  Roy has a funny, capsule view of the Congress Party, which is somewhat equivalent to our “Democratic” Party.  Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul are charged with running the Congress Party’s “Department of Compassion and Charisma” while the neo-liberal Congress economist Manmohan Singh takes India towards complete corporatism behind that screen.  Another of the neo-liberal ‘coven,’ P. Chidambaram, lecturing at his alma mater, Harvard, as quoted by Roy:  “Democracy – rather the institutions of democracy – and the legacy of the socialist era have actually added to the challenge of development.”  (India used to be more state-driven, and ‘development’ is what this all is, you see.)  Does this remind anyone of anything here in the U.S.?

As the stale vacuous argument about ‘violence versus non-violence” goes, no one considers the role of defensive violence. (See our review of “Non-Violence Protects the State", below.)  Almost no one except extreme pacifists believes people do not have a right to defend themselves.  Even a radical journalist like Roy understands there can sometimes be no other choice. 

Most interesting is that 45% of the guerilla army and militia are women.  India as a whole is one of the most chauvinist societies in the world.  Many tribal Indian women live lives of quiet desperation – as one women pointed out, in her village, even on a trivial level, ‘girls are not allowed to climb trees, or they will be fined; if a woman hits a man who has hit her, she is fined one goat; women are not allowed to go hunting or get the best parts of the meat; women are not allowed to eat eggs.”  To the police, a short ‘bob’ haircut is a sure sign a woman is a Maoist, and she might be killed just for that. 

Roy is not a Maoist, and is well aware that today’s comrade can be tomorrow’s thug.  She tracks the inconsistent politics of the Maoists, while praising their toughness and resilience.  As she puts it: “ ..their doctrinal inflexibility, their reputed inability to countenance dissent, or work with other political formations, and most of all their single-minded, grim, military imagination make them too small to fill the giant pair of boots that is currently on offer.”  The Maoists represent many of the forest peoples, “‘the most militant end of a bandwidth of resistance movements fighting … the mining cartels.”  But they have no roots among the Dalit ‘untouchables,’ the working classes in the city, farmers and the agricultural working classes outside the forests.  Roy dismisses the other Communist Parties in India, which have failed at revolution, and become in one case in West Bengal new defenders of exploitation, and calls for "a more vital and genuinely Left movement in India" that will encompass many movements.

What is most interesting about Roy’s reporting is that she notes that across the spectrum, from liberals to Communists, all have rejected, at least theoretically, the neo-liberal turn of the dominant Indian political caste.  And that all the rebellions happening throughout India at various levels over land, dams, water, hunger, unemployment, government repression and corruption, Hindu revanchism, imperialist edicts and the endless occupation of Kashmir might come together, sparked perhaps by more mass atrocities against the forest peoples and against the Naxalites. 

 

After all, it was the World Bank, the IMF, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher that instituted the reign of neo-liberalism across the world, which ‘trickled down’ to India.  So our responsibility in the U.S. is not so far away.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / October 21, 2012

Atheists, Agnostics, the Unchurched. Congratulations!

Atheists to Talk at May Day Books

Yesterday, the PEW survey of religion found that self-described Protestants in the U.S. had dropped below 50% of the population, and secularists were increasing.  Self-described Protestants now are 48% (from 53%), while the 'religiously unaffiliated' category rose to 19.6%.  That is an 'un-churched' increase of 5% in 5 years, or more than 60 million people - far more than identify as Muslims, Jews or Mormons, faiths we never hear the end of.  Catholics dropped by 1%, while some 'other' faiths saw tiny gains.  This 'non-affiliated' category is more common among the youth and among Democrats. To all those people whining about the 'new Atheists' and their 'deleterious effect' - they should eat their words. 

The Unchurched

It is clear that most of the erosion in the U.S. is not from Catholics, but from Protestants, or those brought up Protestant.  This follows similar recent findings in Germany, where you cannot find a person who believes in God under 28 in the formerly Protestant eastern Germany, while the Catholic south and west of the country is still far more religious, and home to the ruling "Christian Democrat" party of Angela Merkel.  This continuation of membership is not surprising, considering the lurch to the right by the Catholic Church in the last few years under Pope Ratzinger.

The U.S. Catholic Church is now in a highly-publicized fight with the older "Nuns on the Bus" (mentioned below in "Reflections on May Day," ) about their work for the poor.  The nuns were inspired by 1962's Vatican II, for Christ's sake, while younger nuns - the few that exist - are reported to be more about praying, fasting and penance.  And can we forget the U.S. bishops highly-publicized fight against gay marriage - which makes them allies of the Mormon Church and the Protestant fundamentalists.  This and the Catholic child abuse scandals all over the world, and especially in Germany, have for instance led  to 100,000 Catholics quitting the German Church every year. I actually see the end of the line for this Church that thinks of itself as 'eternal' - especially in countries with higher standards of living.  Recently the German Church - which is one of 3 religions recognized by the German state - received over C8 billion Euros in donations collected by the German state through taxes.  They announced they would only give absolution, marriage, funerals, confession, etc. to those who pay through this method or other methods.  I.E. you have to pay to play.   Sound familiar?

Many older Catholics were brought up thinking the Church was some kind of bastion of progressivism - a Dorothy Day or Liberationist Theologist around every corner. Au contraire.  Open your eyes. Dorothy Day is dead, and Liberation Theology has been banned.  From the outside, this former liberal Protestant saw private schools run by punitive nuns, sexual repression, chauvinism, a bizarre high-church cult, and absolutely no 'gain' in educational quality.   Every disgruntled Catholic should quit this church.

Of course our Muslim brothers are not much better - even 'liberal' Muslims are still culturally conservative and saturated in their religion, while the political Islamists are busy attempting to kill teenage girls who are for education.  Local Somalis get uptight around your tiny Satanic dog, but the women still drive - while in Saudi Arabia even rich women are not allowed to do that.  Right-wing Hindus?  Remember the periodic religious pogroms in India which resulted in the death of thousands of Muslims or Christians? (see Arundhati Roy's "Field Notes on Democracy," reviewed below.)  Heaven help an atheist in a place like that.  At least atheists don't have a language, style of dress or skin color - or they'd be dead targets too. 

While it is obvious that all the 'unchurched' are not on the same page ideologically, the fact that so many are not going to church, are not paying money to churches, are not following some preacher, some priest or some Inman - means that they can let logic and material reality have a bit of a role.  Many people are 'spiritual' - you find that vague description a lot - but what this means other than being theoretically impoverished, I do not know.  I myself have been an atheist since I was a little boy.  Having a father die when I was two didn't strike me as quite the thing, nor did it impress my mother about God's mercy or whatever.  

However, atheism by itself misses the point.  Religion is not just a topic of intellectual contradiction, as so many plain atheists think. It has material roots in class society.  Class society needs a 'religious' illogic in order to justify itself and its ideas, and a religious illogic in order to hand solace to those who will find it nowhere else - certainly not from them.  But above all it is the power of long-standing material organizations, large buildings in every neighborhood, whose tax-free pulpits preach their doctrines, support war, support reaction, support capitalism.  The organized conservative churches are one of the main pillars of the Republican Party, while liberal ones steer 'reasonable' Christians into the tender embrace of the Democratic one.

So congratulations to the freethinkers out there.  Enjoy Sunday morning.  Or Saturday morning.  Or Wednesday afternoons.  Or every other religious holiday.  Or all the banned foods and drinks.  While doing so, you can read our reviews, below, of "American Theocracy," "Da Vinci Code," "Dark Side of Christianity," "God & Walmart," "God is Not Great," "The Handmaid's Tale," "The Holocaust Industry," and "Islamophobia."

Mayday Books will be hosting talks and a reception for the authors of the newly published book, "Atheist Voices of Minnesota," on October 24th Wednesday, 7:00 PM, at Mayday, hosted by George Kane, sponsored by the Minnesota Atheists.

Red Frog
October 15, 2012

War is Personal! And That's All.

"The Yellow Birds,” by Kevin Powers, 2012

This book has been hailed as the first and best U.S. book coming out of the Second Iraq War.  “Jarhead” was written by Anthony Swofford based on the First Iraq War, and is arguably the best of that war.  We have already reviewed one other book written by soldiers involved in war, Paul Zerby’s, “The Grass,” (reviewed below), about U.S. involvement in Korea.

The book is centered on actions around Al Tafar in Iraq.  Al Tafar is a distance from the Tigris River in far northern Iraq, peopled mostly by Sunni Turkomen. While Powers does not mention it specifically, U.S. Operation “Black Typhoon” in September 2004 secured the city for a time, but emptied the city of residents and was protested by the Turkish government for the excessive killing of ethnic Turkmen by U.S. troops.  The city was later lost to Iraqi rebels and had to be ‘retaken.’

The plot is simple.  Two young Virginia boys enlist and end up in Al Tafar, Iraq in 2004, and one dies, interspersed with the scenes of preparation for war, and the consequences of war.  There is the fatherly but rough and crazy sergeant; the German whorehouse; the sad and almost invisible Hajjis, the alcoholism, the fear, the need to be a man, the depression, the desperate acts – one hinging on a stupid promise made to a mother – and the familiar theme, ‘war is hell.’  Tom Wolfe, a non-vet who figured that if he wore a white suit all the time people might mistake him for Mark Twain, heralded this book as the “All Quiet on the Western Front” of this war.

Let us assume it is.  Why is there not a drop of politics in this book?  Why are we on war #47 and writing about war has not gotten past, let us call it War #1?  Why is war still primarily a private and internal matter of crushed poetry and bloody silences?  Why is this war, a war draped in politics since its beginning, now a springboard for one individual’s post traumatic stress syndrome?  In a sense, the war is ‘aestheticised’ and purely individualized.  Trauma is filtered through art until the trauma weakens.  Even the central event of the book does not ‘seem’ believable, but more poetic.  As such, there is something oddly artificial at the heart of the book, and that shouldn’t be.  Powers is a graduate of the MFA (“Master of Fine Arts”) program in Austin, Texas.   Politics is not what they do in MFA programs, evidently. 

There are some fine lines in this book, there is no doubt.  A description of war given to some useless, embedded reporter as, and I paraphrase, ‘constantly existing in the moment just prior to a violent car crash’ captures something. Powers’ brutal sentiments are present: “We were unaware of even our own savagery now: the beatings and the kicked dogs, the searches and the sheer brutality of our presence.  Each page was in an exercise book performed by rote.  I didn’t care.”  Powers commenting on the ‘yellow ribbon’ mania – “…you have bottomed out in your spirit but yet a deeper hole is being dug because everybody is so fucking happy to see you, the murderer, the fucking accomplice, the at-bare-minimum bearer of some fucking responsibility, and everyone wants to slap you on the back and you start to want to burn the whole country down, you want to burn every goddamn yellow ribbon in sight…”

War will never end until books about war are actually more than this.  Of course, the books reflect the soldiers.  The soldiers who went to war in Iraq were not a slice of the general population, but a self-selected group of mostly rural working-class and poor people who had specific economic, emotional or political reasons for enlisting.  This is why the U.S. government does not want to draft soldiers anymore, but prefers private volunteers and mercenaries to ensure a military force as compliant as possible.  War and the services do not really allow this in the end, as the effects are brutal on everyone involved, no matter the intention they first had.  Soldiers, even volunteers, will one day organize against the military of constant war, and when that happens, the continuation of wars will really be in doubt.

However, this books shows how far we have to go. 

P.S. - October 10, "Yellow Birds" was nominated for a National Book Award.   Prescient, hey.

And I did not buy it at MayDay Books, which has a large selection of books on war.

Red Frog / October 7, 2012

2012 Winter Palace in Madrid?

“All Power to the Councils! – A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919," edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn, 2012
   

What giant park in a capitalist city contains two memorials to two assassinated revolutionaries?  It is certainly not Central Park or anywhere in the U.S.  Along the Landwehr Canal in the Tiergarten in Berlin is a memorial to Rosa Luxemburg, at the spot where she had her arms tied behind her back, a rope put around her neck, where she was shot and then dropped into the canal.  A few hundred yards north is a memorial to Karl Liebknecht, shot there by another group of soldiers under orders of the ‘socialist’ Social Democratic Party (“SDP”) in 1919.  They were only the most prominent of many German revolutionaries murdered or killed in the 1918-1919 November Revolution, which ended the creaking Hohenzollern monarchy, but failed to establish a workers’ council republic.  Essentially, a February revolution without October.  Kerensky, not Lenin.

The ‘socialist’ SDP majority were the same ones who in August 1914 endorsed the German instigation of World War I, which split the Marxists in Germany, and led to four years of crushing death and misery for the German working classes and others across Europe. 

Of all the ‘what ifs’ in history, this failure led to the most drastic consequences – the subsequent rise of the Nazi Party and World War II.  Any failure of the Left emboldens the right, and when it involves the “Left” splitting and attacking each other, it increases the culpability of the wrong party.  A successful German revolution could have lead to stronger working-class uprisings all over Europe and possibly prevented the rise of Stalinism in the USSR.  The Hungarian Soviet in 1919 and the workers councils in Italy in 1920 were part of this same movement.

The present ‘American SDP’ is called the Democratic Socialists of America (“DSA”), who should really be called the Democratic Capitalists of America (“DCA”), in tribute to their now 88 years of blocking with the capitalist class.  Congratulations, DCA!  DCA members are found in the various commentariat magazines like “In These Times,” “Mother Jones”, “The Nation,” “Salon.com,” in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, in various activist groups and in the staffs of some trade unions.  They play an essential role in policing the Left and providing a transmission belt for reformist ideas to penetrate various rebellious movements.  At the same time, they parade as ‘friends’ of the movements, which as Malcolm X pointed out, is sometimes more dangerous than open enemies. 

This book is comprised of primary sources – anarchist, Marxist and blends of the two.  It puts you in the streets with the rebellious red sailors of northern Germany, who had seized the German fleet in the Baltic, occupying the towns of Wilhelmshaven, Kiel & Bremen; with the council communists of Brunswick and Munich/Bavaria; at the seizure of the SDP paper’s building in Berlin; following the repression against the so-called Spartacist rising in January 1919 in Berlin, seeing the development of  the Ruhr Red Army, based on a general strike and the factory councils in the industrial Ruhr valley; and with armed KDP militias in Vogtland near the Czech border which operated on and off into 1921.

We learn that the KDP (Communist Party, former Spartacus League) sabotaged a united declaration of the Bavarian Council Republic, and played a sectarian role at times.  We learn that some of the anarchists supported federalism, and had no centralized, coordinated response to the national counter-revolutionary activities of the SDP and the German military staff.  We learn of the “Red Stewards’ – working class radicals active in the factories that opposed the slaughter of World War I, and who drew close to the Spartacus League.  We learn that the revolutionaries banned SDP and trade union bureaucrats from the councils in places.  We learn of the revolutionary Germans’ support for Lenin & Trotsky in the concurrent civil war against the White armies in Russia.  We see the hesitations, confusion, half-hearted measures, delays and misplaced trust of a revolutionary process extending over 6 months, involving soldiers and sailors, peasants, workers, the petty-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, and layers of each class and group, and their political parties. 

The main political issue was choosing a council republic, involving mass, democratically-elected workers, farmers and other strata, or a parliamentary system based on occasional voting, dominated by inflexible Party structures, the bourgeois press and money.  For awhile, the two systems existed side by side in Germany as a kind of dual power, but the trajectory of the revolution went towards the conventional, with the help of a lot of killing by the Freicorps and White Guards.  As Luxemburg noted, the elected legislature had been the form of power the bourgeois class chose in its fight with the feudal aristocracy.  The SDP leadership chose the former, the revolutionaries across the board – even some SDP rank and file – chose giving power to the councils, a new form of mostly working-class power.  As many writers noted, including Luxemburg, councils are the natural outgrowth of revolutionary situations, when the population itself gets involved in politics, not leaving it to others or occasional voting. 

Bourgeois democracy in many countries, including Spain and the U.S., is at a new low, dominated by corporate money, bought-off representatives, a sclerotic Party system and a corporate media with no interest in any issues but the horse race.  U.S. congressional and presidential politics essentially have little to do with real democracy.  The German example of a council government, based on workplaces and geography, shows the ‘way forward’ to a democracy of the majority.  “This” is what democracy actually looks like. 

And I bought it at the Anarchist Book Fair – but it should also be available at May Day Books.

Red Frog

October 3, 2012

We Are Bill Murray

What is to be Organized?
   

I have a modest proposal.  It’s not about eating babies or the rich.  It is about how the Left might organize itself.  Right now, lets look at the terrain.  We have literally hundreds of political, social and cultural groups organizing on different issues – or the same issues - all over the U.S.  You may be a member of several.  You may be active.  You may just give money or participate in an event occasionally.  Or you may just read stuff on the internet and wish you were. 

Being an activist in the present situation in the U.S. is a mostly thankless task that only people especially ‘driven’ take up over a lifetime.  It is like becoming a musician or a painter or a long distance runner.  A calling.  Internal forces and external events combine to create a certain kind of person, a distinct and tiny minority presently.  The ‘usual suspect,’ you know.  So popular that if radicals had a skin color and an accent, they’d never get hired.  But we can usually 'pass' right now.

Working over a lifetime in a small grouping is not something most people want to do.  Yet the point of all this activism is to spread the ideas and organization, and eventually attain enough power to change some aspect of society, or perhaps all of it.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes there are small, medium and occasionally massive breakthroughs.  Sometimes it doesn’t matter – because it is the struggle that counts, even if the majority of people are busy worrying about their personal lives and not their social lives.  Existential, you see.

However, if you really care about social change, this is not sufficient.  It hasn’t worked as a social solution.  How can the Left in the U.S. – and by this I mean all the socialist and anarchist organizations, all the truly radical activist community and labor groups, all the ethnic or cultural radicals – actually build a force powerful enough to challenge the social strait-jacket?  The relegation to the edges? The capitalist class?

It is pretty obvious that if all of these groups found some common independent platform and independent action program to agree on, and formed one organization, or ‘front’ – then the working class – which is the class we really represent – would have the beginnings of political representation.  Something not presently available within the Democratic Party.  It would draw other groups within the class and other classes to it.  The organization could start as an activist front; a socialist front; an anti-capitalist front, a 'classist' front, a populist labor front, a Black / Latino front, or some other formation.  It could aim to build a mass oppositional force that represents the majority of the country – the 90% or the 80% - not the corporations, the rich or the upper middle class.   All the groups could still exist, but they would have a common organizational structure linking them all.

I think there is enough agreement to form an organization like this - though there are some groups that, by their history, would not agree.  There are enough people in Minneapolis right now that would ‘join’ right away, and could form a fairly large group.  Of course, there is the human factor.  Many of the present leaders of various groups are committed to power in their little or medium-sized group, but are barely seen as leaders by anyone else.  The small-group mentality extends across the board.  Many groups live in a fantastical ‘linear’ world where each group will spring into prominence as the situation becomes radical.  Yet we know that spontaneous events rise … and then fall.  We’ve all lived through them.  Each group has its moment in the sun. And then the sun usually sets. So if the ‘leaders’ can’t agree – nothing happens over the long run.   

Let me give an example of the failure of the American Left when they did not ‘seize that moment.’  I am sure you have your own examples.  The most radical section of the American labor movement formed, under the initiative of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, the “Labor Party” in 1996 in Cleveland, OH.  This group eventually came to represent over a 1 million workers.  Yet at their first convention, the Labor Party refused to run candidates.  They wanted to be ‘educational,’ create an organization, work on single-payer and form a pressure group on the Democratic Party.  At the Pittsburgh convention 2 years later, they finally allowed the possibility of actually running someone, but no one actually ran.  By 2000, the only person running was Ralph Nader (who had spoken at both Labor Party conventions) and many Labor Party activists supported Nader.  The Green Party took off, while the Labor Party withered.  Of course, now the Green Party is withering.

The Labor Party failed to seize the moment of massive weakness in the American political system – Clinton’s attack on labor through NAFTA.  Part of this was due to being threatened by the Social Democrat in DSA in the leadership of the AFL-CIO, President John Sweeney, who said they would be expelled from the AFL-CIO if they ran anyone.  The other part was that they did not want to go through a fight with the most powerful forces in the U.S.  And the Democrats are one of them.  At the time, labor activists in Minneapolis did not understand the moment had passed.  But it had.  

What was the real result?  The ever-rightward drift of American politics, now concretized in a Republican Party not much different from the John Birch Society and a Democratic Party that is a re-incarnation of moderate Republicanism.  These are the wages of failure.

The Labor movement will never truly become aggressive until it feels it is not alone.  Or at least a wing of it feels that way.  Without some large formation working to its left, or inside it, it will not move - unless some kind of catastrophe happens perhaps.  Who's waiting for catastrophes?  Many.  And we may get them, but not of our choosing.

Moments pass.  They are precious.  Without the right organization or intent, revolutions pass.  Opportunities go by.  History flows along.  Time passes.  Quietude returns. And then everyone has to learn almost everything all over again later when ‘shit happens’ again.  It is like a giant version of Groundhog Day, with Bill Murray barely able to advance each day.  We are Bill Murray.

This process is dialectic.  Eventually people figure it out, just as Bill Murray did, and push back.  Capitalism is in trouble right now, world-wide, but as we know, they can worm out of most situations like Houdini.  After all, they have the money, guns and propaganda.  Yet if we are unprepared for their next ‘heart-attack’ – similar to 2008 – and all we have is our hundreds of little organizations – they will escape again, and the working class majority will be left behind again. 

The U.S. has a history of mass left populist organizations – the Populist Party, a formation joining the Knights of Labor and the farmer-based Grange; the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs; the Farmer-Labor Party, combining unions, farmers and middle-class intellectuals; the mass movements of the 1960s and 1970s based on various strata of the population.  Yet since the rise of financial capitalism and the planned destruction of unions and working class employment in the North in the 1980s, there is little experience with long-running mass movements.  This is almost no organizational residue from these periods of any size.  The labor struggles against givebacks and plant closures in the 1980s, the Jesse Jackson campaigns, the anti-intervention protests centered around Central America never grew to truly mass status or permanent status.  The biggest has been the anti-war movement against the second Iraq war, which combined with world-wide protests against that bloody idiocy.  Yet, capital produces war like beer produces urine.  Even Occupy never became a truly mass movement. It is only the labor unions and the labor movement that have endured, which is why they have been under relentless attack for 35 years.

So my proposal is less ‘waiting’ and more openness to cooperation, more openness to close collaboration, to raising our sights, every group actually working together in a permanent formation that seeks to make it easier for people to be ‘activists.”  No one wants to be an activist in a tiny group except the truly committed or the ‘passers through.’  It has to be made easier for ordinary people to join, and stay.  Continuing the present trajectory will only result in putting our faith in events alone.

After all, 'workers of the world unite' is not just for others consumption, but also our own.

Red Frog

September 29, 2012