“The rust-spattered American bloodlands…”

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

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

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

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

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

Livin' Logistics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Frog

December 6, 2019

2nd in a China Series

“Striking to Survive,” by Fan Shigang, 2019

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

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

FURNITURE FACTORY

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

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

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

Confrontations abound

Chinese Government

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

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

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

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

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

December 3, 2019

Capital's Doppelgangers

“The Peaky Blinders,”Seasons 1-5

This BBC/Netflix series is one odd duck – edgy, violent, politically involved and quite hostile to the British secret service.  Pounding British rock and folk music is used in each episode – even Black Sabbath doing ‘War Pigs.'  At its center is a charismatic Birmingham gangster and Romani gypsy Tommy Shelby and his family – Polly, Arthur, Ada, John, Finn, Michael, along with their wives and husbands.  There was a real gang in Birmingham called the Peaky Blinders – named because their hats came to a peak over one eye.  But the real Peakys were penny-ante criminals in the 1880s, not these hardened and brilliant murderers of the 1920s.

Here they come, walkin' down the street...

The reason is nearly every man in the series survived World War I in one way or another, so they know military skills, guns, bombs, tunnel-digging and the like.  Grenades and machine guns are no stranger to them, nor is digging bullets out of flesh. They have a class hatred for those officers who did not fill the trenches and sat in the back lines, and solidarity among themselves because of the war.

The Peaky Blinders go from gambling and fixing races at horse tracks to running gin and whiskey even to the U.S., then on to owning factories and producing vehicles for the English military, trying to launder their gains into legitimate businesses.  Tommy gets himself elected to the House of Commons as a Labour Party member, even while trying to smuggle opium to the U.S.  Born on a canal boat, Shelby ends up in a massive manor house in the country.  Everyone else in the family gets a big house too, though they still go back to the gypsy caravan at times.  In the process the thug Tommy Shelby becomes an agent of the British crown working for Winston Churchill.  He informs on the Birmingham Communist Party, though he has a close relationship with some of its members, including his own sister.  He also informs on the IRA and lastly on the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, an aristocrat and founder of British fascism.

In a sense, this is similar to the series “Deadwood,” which shows the progression from crime to capitalist success – primitive accumulation even in the 1920s.  The effect of the October 29, 1929 market crash on the Shelby’s wealth is severe, which shows to what extent they were integrated into the larger capitalist economy.

Oswald Mosley - British Fascist doing his best Hitler

The series involves conflicts and compromises with a Jewish gang in London; a war against an Italian gang in London and later, the U.S. Mafia; against pro-fascist Ulster Protestant gangsters from Scotland; against local rivals.  These bloody conflicts lead the Shelbys to suffer bouts of depression, PTSD, drinking, rifts, anger and deaths.  Almost every scene involves a glass of Irish or Scotch whiskey and later, cocaine and laudanum.  The British secret services (Section D – and the Economic League) blackmail Tommy into killing for them.  The latter protect Mosley from the gang’s attempts to assassinate him, as Section D sympathizes with the fascists.  A deal with some arrogant White Czarists to smuggle military tanks out of England for the Russian civil war has the finger prints of British intelligence over it.  It almost gets Tommy killed, per usual.

Tommy believes in nothing but making money, but he also has a soft spot for the Birmingham working-class.  He funds two orphanages, eventually gives equal raises to his male and female workers and ‘allows’ the Shelby women to play a large role in Shelby Co. Ltd’s deliberations, especially Polly, the ‘gypsy queen.’  One of the local Communists marries his sister Ada and he ends up trying to protect him.  There are certain current references – an obnoxious priest who is a pedophile; Mosley’s platform is stated as ‘Britain First!’ much like Brexit; a solidarity for the British working class, gypsies and Jews against prejudice.  The British General Strike of 1926 is portrayed evenhandedly.

The head of a Jewish gang in Camden Town, Alfie Solomons, speaks in a thick cockney accent and rakes anyone over the coals hostile to Jews.  He’s hilarious.  “Littlefinger” Lord Baelish from GoT shows up as a killer for the Shelby’s and prospective husband to Polly.  Adrien Brody appears as the sinister leader of a Mafia hit squad and Sam Neill as an ominous Ulster-based intelligence detective.

“Peaky Blinders” is another glorification of the anti-hero typical of modern gangster films.  Tommy is handsome and well-dressed, appearing in the same dandified golfer’s cap, 3-piece suit and watch fob in nearly every scene, as do the rest of the Peakys.  He sleeps with every woman he wants. He is also thoughtful and sometimes kind, but bosses everyone around constantly.  Violence is his métier for ‘making people listen’ - which he has to do frequently.

The glorification of human and clever gangsters is an on-going theme in many capitalist films and television shows.  In fact this theme is so overwhelming as to be deeply significant.  The handgun pointed at someone’s head (frequent in this series) seems to be the star prop of our degraded capitalist culture.  This bloody fascination breaches normal money-grubbing.  It appears as the dark side of the same ‘legitimate’ economy that the rich dominate every day – its shadow, its almost literal doppelganger – hinting that crime and capital are inextricably combined.  The difference is the obvious violence, a violence hidden under normal capitalist functioning but always there beneath the surface.  Churchill’s embrace of the Shelbys cements this link.

As Al Capone said:  "This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and make the most of it."

But it is more than that.  It advertises a route out of the under-class for the poor and downtrodden to essentially rise in class status - even if you have to use violence.  Criminals sometimes dress well to announce their higher role, as the Peaky’s do.  In the old days, both gangsters and businessmen wore suits, which is telling. When the criminals side with the majority, as in marijuana or booze provision, they become heroes. Even robbing predatory banks or casinos seems heroic, as everyone with their head on straight hates banks and knows casinos are a con. (See 2016’s “Come Hell or Highwater” about robbing modern Texas banks.) Thuggery and crime are glamorized to the indigent, to immigrants, to the outcast in place of social revolution. This glorification of crime is in essence a social and material diversion for a part of the working class.

“At the base of every great fortune is a great crime” seems to be the link, a saying first suggested by Honore Balzac from “Le Pere Goriot” in 1834 but later reported on at a London dinner in 1912. This was followed by many similar quotes afterwards, including in “The Godfather” and in C. Wright Mills’ “The Power Elite.”  Of course Marx also understood this idea, as his theory of ‘primitive accumulation’ makes clear.   Balzac’s exact translation was:  “The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.”    Which is exactly how the Shelby family function.

Other reviews of streaming series below, use blog search box upper left:  “Game of Thrones,” “Deadwood,” “The Golden Age,” “Treme,” “Fargo,” “Damnation,” “Bad Cops,” “Mayans,” “Rebellion,” “Handmaid’s Tale,” “Comrade Detective.”

The Kulture Kommissar

November 29, 2019

Political Neglect...

What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?

I lived in two small towns for a total of 13 years as a kid, so I have not forgotten these areas.  14% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas.  Thomas Frank, in his famous book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” pointed out that rural areas in Kansas were getting hammered by neo-liberal capitalism and still thought guns, gay marriage or abortion were the key issues to be concerned with.  This while rural and small town hospitals, farms, schools and businesses were closing or going bankrupt, and while young people left for the city.

Ghost town in Texas

That was 2004.  15 years later and the situation in the rural and small town U.S. is even worse. Farms have continued to increase in size as smaller farmers and ranchers bail.  Farm bankruptcies have increased, especially during Trump’s present trade war, while loan delinquencies are increasing too. Both are the highest since 2011.  Farmer suicides are up. The meth and opiod drug epidemics are hitting these areas especially hard, while obesity is high and life expectancy is lower than urban areas.  Doctors and dentists do not want to practice in places with a shrinking population and no money. Rural schools are smaller and more limited, so the education they provide is of a lower standard.  Schools are consolidating, so children have to go longer distances.  These areas still do not have adequate fast internet.  Bus service has disappeared so everyone is overly-dependent on cars and gasoline.  Of course, the poorest rural regions are in the Mississippi Delta, the Rio Grande borderlands, reservations like Pine Ridge and the hills of Appalachia.  Nearly all of these are predominantly non-European Americans.

Corporations like Monsanto dominate the seed and pesticide industry and sue anyone they want while Wal-Mart destroys small local businesses.  Wages are low, poverty is increasing, unemployment is up and the population is aging.  Land prices are high, so young farmers have difficulty buying in.  Farm equipment is extremely expensive, driving debt. Year after year the U.S. Farm bill and subsequent federal aid is dominated by corporate agriculture, which is true even for Trump’s present trade war ‘aid’ program, giving 60% of the aid to the upper 10% of farms.  Towns with one manufacturing or food processing plant lose it to robotics, Mexico, the U.S. south or overseas.  Some small towns do not even have sewage treatment plants.

·        13,000 total farms disappeared in 2018.

·        95% of poverty in the U.S. is in rural counties.

·        Since 2005, 120 rural hospitals closed and 673 more hospitals were vulnerable to closure, especially in the U.S. South and areas with unhealthy populations.

·        Since 2005, 2,700 rural schools have closed.

·        Bankruptcies are up 24% this year. (Farm Bureau)

All this while the view of what is desirable food is shifting in the U.S., though not in rural areas.  The recent bankruptcy of milk producer Dean Foods and its court sale to Dairy Farmers of America (a milk oligopolist) is proof of this.  So is the protection of hog waste lagoons, the hiding of animal cruelty and the rabid fight against meat, milk and cheese substitutes.  Agriculture in the U.S. is still mainly based on plant monocultures and heavy pesticide use; antibiotics routinely given to animals; artificial fertilizer; destructive industrial cow, hog and poultry industrial ‘harvesting’; intensive technology; ground-water depletion; heavy carbon inputs; cheap migrant labor and corn grown for gasoline and animal feed, not humans.  Just eating at small town cafes tells you the story – the quality is low, the food is retro based on fat, salt, sugar and heavy meat.  It is like the 1950s never ended.  And yet they did.

Medicare for All won't work if there is no hospital

Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp have had ‘Farm Aid’ concerts since 1985, yet charity efforts have not stemmed the tide. What rural areas need is a revival of left-wing farmer and land populism, not right-wing culture wars from the same people that are destroying the rural U.S. This revival will be more difficult than the days of the Farmer’s Holiday (Iowa), the Farmer-Labor Party (Minnesota and Wisconsin), the Non-Partisan League (Dakotas) or the southern Tenant Farmer’s Union in the 1930s.  This is because the number of small farmers is far less. As an example, the present Farm Bureau has been captured by large corporations, large farmers and large ranchers.

The only increase in small farming is in agro-ecology, organic, vegetable, bison, marijuana and hemp farming, along with indigenous ricing.  These farms use lower acreages than the large farms dominating the rural U.S.  The other positive increase is the development of wind and solar farms, which also might push farmers to the left.  There are still organizations and unions for farm and food workers, as well as Latino and ‘black’ farmers, along with indigenous reservations, which have their own plans for land, animals and food.

Interestingly, the 1850 Communist Manifesto had points about these issues.  It called for “improving the soil under a common plan;” reducing the division between town and country and spreading out populations concentrated in urban areas.  It also called for socializing land – taking it out of the hands of market profiteers.  Moving to a kind of agro-ecology agriculture, which is part of the basis of organic farming, is one way to re-populate and revive the rural U.S.  It is more labor-intensive, produces healthier food, has a much lower carbon footprint and is less destructive to the soil, workers, animals and ecology.  Large corporate farms could be broken up slowly, as studies show smaller farms are actually more productive, replaced by cooperatives and a restored 'commons.' Local plant closings can be stopped through tough labor action. If rural areas move to the left, that will direct government funds to public hospitals and school systems in these areas.  Corporate America has planted itself in large cities, demanding you move there.  Just as they concentrate profits in their pockets, they concentrate people near their offices.

These ideas are outside the typical template of Big Ag, which is the real source of misery in the rural U.S.  Farmers are typically contract slaves to Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Dole, Tyson – name your big Ag conglomerate.  Or in debt to expensive farm equipment manufacturers –Deere & Co., Case, Caterpillar - all based on mono-cropping. So why love your bosses?  Reports indicate that 40% of farm income this year is coming from federal or state government welfare payments, much of that going to the largest corporate farmers and ranchers.

At some point there will come a break in rural areas and small towns.  Underpaid local workers who have lived under the thumb of local businessmen, along with some small farmers and small businessmen may realize they have been conned by the Republican Party and Democratic Party centrists, the farm elite and the corporate monsters.  The soil and environment suffer from pesticides, artificial fertilizers and mono-cropping; the water quality and quantity decrease and they themselves fall further into economic and social trouble.  Whether any left populist organization or political candidate captures this sentiment is another matter, as most do not have a real program for the rural U.S.
P.S. - on 1/6/20, Borden Dairy announced its bankruptcy.

Other reviews on this topic below, use blog search box, upper left with these terms: “Foodopoly,” “A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism,” “Damnation,” “Salt, Sugar, Fat,” “Land Grabbing,” “Behind the Kitchen Door,” “Farmer-Labor Party.”

 
Red Frog

November 25, 2019

Universal Emancipation

“Like a Thief in Broad Daylight – Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism,” by Slavoj Zizek, 2019

This is another ‘far-ranging’ Zizek thought-muffin, giving just enough to chew on.  He tackles the present sad state of the Left; ‘post-human’ rumblings of direct computer-human implants; disastrous identity and multi-culturalist politics and also the current Me-Too movement; old 1930s -1940s Ernst Lubitsch movies and their hidden sexuality; and lastly nationalism, war and nuclear weapons.  He retains his fascination with Lenin and Hegel while contradicting conventional clichés and on occasion, himself.  Freud and Lacan retreat into the distant background while Trotsky seems to be having a renaissance. For Zizek, besides liberals and Trump, Stalinism remains the biggest cruel ‘joke’ on the Left.

Zizek’s goal is world-wide revolutionary and universal emancipation.  The ‘non-Marxist’ again references Marx dozens of times. This book creates Marxist straw-men he can knock down, attributing positions to Marx he did not have.  So I’ll use his 'psych' method.  This position seems to be almost psychological – his philosophic revolt against ‘big daddy.’

I’ll bullet-point some more obvious parts of the book so you get an idea of what it contains:

     1.     He sees the Shanghai Commune, ended by Mao, as a model to supplant corrupt parliamentary ‘democracy.’

     2.     Science is needed for profits, but the capitalists do not want it applied to society.

     3.     “Capital is openly disintegrating and changing into something else.”

     4.     Bill Gates admitted capital could not deal with climate change.

     5.     Zizek thinks China is capitalist, but then admits that a “non-capitalist state could have strong elements of capitalism.”  I.E. he’s confused about China.

6.     He throws shade on typical liberal ideas of migration, instant land reform or the ‘romanticization of refugees.’  As I noted years ago, refugees of whatever kind do not really want to leave their home countries, so the key issues are actually war, climate change and economic collapse.

7.     He thinks the main task of trade unions is retraining workers for new jobs, which is a Democratic Party attitude.

8.     Some ostensibly right-wing governments institute social gains, as in present-day Poland.

9.      The transitional programs of the Communist International and the 4^th International are invisible to Zizek.

10.    Tech and IT workers now have immense power if they follow Trotsky’s strategy in the Bolshevik seizure of power – control of the technical levers of capital prior to any political seizure.  As a consequence, Zizek thinks the web is now ‘the most’ important commons and controlling it is the struggle for today.

11.     Biogentics is his name for superseding the purely human with computerization contained in the human body.  I.E. a ‘terminator’ like being, a plan of the ‘cognitive-military complex.’  This he calls ‘post-humanity.’

12.    He’s against pay for housework, because he thinks it just commodifies another area of life.  In that vein, the Communist Manifesto pointed out that ‘patriarchy’ had been dominated by capitalism.  At the same time, Zizek understands that women are now in the forefront of many emancipatory struggles.

13.     Of course automation would be a key part of socialism – allowing less work, not unemployment and starvation as in the present system.

14.    Zizek has a long section on the film “Blade Runner 2049” which goes nowhere that I can tell.

Zizek's hero and cadre of the Greek KKE in St. Petersburg, Nov. 2017 (CGG)

15.      In discussions of Lenin, he shows that revolutionaries are in a completely new situation with no clear roadmap.

16.     Lenin’s “April Theses” and “State and Revolution” broke through the inertia and tailism of the Bolshevik Party.

17.     Identity politics opposes the universal.  Republican “white Identity” politics are the mirror image of Democratic Party identity politics.  Yet class cuts across them all.  Zizek: “The only reality is the universal capitalist system.”

18.     Making the right ‘diabolique” (La Pen, Trump, Orban etc.) is actually a strategy to keep out the Left.  New capitalist parties (I.E. Macron and Five Star, etc.) are signs of weakening capitalist politics.

19.     Tax havens, like slavery, are integral to late capital.

20.     Europe carries the enlightenment and French Revolution values of post-national universality, which must be advanced against liberal ‘tolerance,’ religious fundamentalism and capitalist nationalism.  Europe could lead the way in getting rid of the dollar as the dominant global currency.

21.    He opposes an alliance between Western ‘leftists’ and ostensibly ‘anti-imperialist’ political Islam.  He calls it ‘an ideological abomination.’

22.    There are instances where two emancipatory issues collide, which is the difficult nature of class struggle.

23.    The British embraced the caste system in India by law.

24.   “Catholicism offers a devious stratagem to indulge in our desires without having to pay the price for them.”

25.     Deception is now out in the open.  (Trump et al…)

26.     Sexual contracts are mostly unworkable.  Manners are not matters of law.

27.     Zizek looks at the films “La La Land” and “Black Panther.”  His analysis of Black Panther follows a traditional Marxist line (I beat him to it…) while pointing out that at the end of the film the reviled revolutionary Killmonger / Eric becomes a bit of an anti-hero.

28.     Modern millionaire liberal comics (Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, John Oliver, etc.) merely ‘dust the balls’ of the ruling class – they do not actually threaten them.

Again, the title of the book only touches on what it’s partly about, as every Zizek book is really about the same thing – revolutionary emancipation from capital, its ideology and its culture in a somewhat unique, dialectical and quirky way.

Prior reviews of Zizek books, along with others referenced, use blog search box upper left: “Living in the End Times,” “Did Someone Say Totalitarianism?” “Violence,” “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce,” (All by Zizek) “Black Panther,” “October,” “The Struggle for Power – Russia in 1923,” “A People’s History of the Russian Revolution,” “Maoism and the Chinese Revolution, A Critical Introduction,” ‘What Can You Say About Bill Maher?” “Multi-millionaire Comedians,” "Blade Runner 2049."

And I bought it at May Day Books, where we carry a deep bench of Zizek.

Red Frog

November 21, 2019

Notes From the Underground

“Parasite,”film directed by Bong Joon-Ho, 2019

This comedic horror film has a large buzz going for it.  It is similar to “Get Out” and Boots Riley's "Sorry to Bother You," as the villains are all upper-class people.  Here a South Korean family in Seoul, the Kims – father, mother, older son and daughter - work at folding pizza boxes to make a living.  Their living is so sad they try to negotiate with the young pizza store manager for a higher piece rate.  The four of them live in a crowded basement apartment and none of them has any other job.  None of them has a higher education and seem clueless about how to improve their situation. They can’t even fold the boxes properly.

Class in South Korea

But the tide turns as a rich friend who teaches English to a girl from a wealthy family, the Parks, offers his job temporarily to the son, Ki-woo.  The Parks are a typical upper-middle class family – a beautiful modern house designed by a top architect; a young neurotic wife who has no skills except shopping; a bored daughter; a spoiled little boy who has the run of the house and the corporate father, smug and aloof.  He doesn’t want anyone to ‘cross any lines.’ 

The class system is very apparent, unlike most films.  The South Korean working-class and the noveau-riche upper classes have had little in common since the founding of South Korea.  So in the film we already detest the Parks and their damn house, which becomes a symbol of the difference between classes.  In one terrible scene, the Kim’s basement apartment is flooded by heavy rains, wrecking everything, and the Parks are completely oblivious to what happened to them.  The Park’s house did not get a drop inside and this is certainly a parable of climate change.  Even odor plays a role.  The Kim family has a stale and unpleasant ‘smell’ that is noticed by the Parks, who do not live in a moldy basement penetrated with cooking smells.  The Kims have to discuss using different soaps to hide their family identity.  So far, so good as a class –conscious film.

Eventually the whole Kim family get jobs with the Parks – the uneducated daughter as an ‘art therapist’ to the spoiled son, the unmotivated father as an excellent chauffeur, the quiet mother as a versatile, sophisticated cook.  To do this they hide their family relationship and push out the staff who already work for the Parks through clever tricks.  All of a sudden the somewhat buffoonish family is absolutely excellent at everything they do, including their deceptions.  Even not looking while driving is a skill the father has mastered.

So who are the parasites?  In Marxism, the upper-classes are parasites on the working-classes, as the latter do all the work which is then partially appropriated by the rich through profits and surplus value, rent or interest and dividends.  But in this film it seems the workers are parasites, duping the Parks while getting prior workers fired, acting like fleas on a dog. Yet the Kims still do all the work for the Parks as part of the servant economy.  We can marvel at their sudden cleverness but at the same time they show almost zero class solidarity, just a desperation foisted on them by living in a capitalist system. Dog eat dog; worker eat worker.  But they do outsmart the Parks, especially the befuddled wife.  That is the main source of the humor.    

Then the story takes an odd twist.  After the Park’s go on a camping trip, the Kim’s engage in a celebratory night of drunken partying in the Park’s glass and steel house.  Suddenly they are not so smart.  They do not anticipate the Park’s returning early.  They make another ‘small mistake’ by letting the former housekeeper they replaced into the house, as she has somehow forgotten some of her personal stuff in the basement.  And here it becomes not a real story of class conflict, but a tense horror show. 

I won’t describe the rest of the film except to say that it further reflects the desperation brought about by the South Korean class structure, which damages both workers and the rich into acting in abominable and bloody ways.  As an example, South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world for persons under 40.  Analysts report that internet use has atomized a good part of the population. As would be predicted, in this film the Kim family end up in an even worse position, giving the notion of ‘notes from the underground’ a new meaning. The creepy last act left me thinking this film failed in its potential and went for a cheap, sensationalist ending, transitioning from believable to unbelievable and in that, pulling its final punch.    

Many other films are reviewed below from a left point of view.  Use the blog search box in the upper left with the words ‘film’ or ‘television’ or ‘movie.’  The film “Get Out” is reviewed.  Also the book "The Servant Economy"  Use the word "Korea" to find books on Korea: "King of Spies," "The End of Free Speech," "The Grass," "The Vegetarian."

The Kulture Kommissar

November 18, 2019