This blog is on vacation until after Christmas. Enjoy the holidays!
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Trump Won! Professor Hoff Says So
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| Trump divides the working class: four on his left, three on his right. (Photo source: Doug Mills-Pool) |
It seems like every Left Voice author wants to weigh in on Trump's electoral victory. See, eg, here, here and here. But by far the best of the genre is this piece by Professor James Dennis Hoff (associate professor, CUNY English Department) entitled Trump Wants to Divide the Working Class — We Must Fight to Unite It. It's good because--professorial status notwithstanding--Dr. Hoff is a good writer and a clear thinker.
Indeed, the professor's piece is as clear a summary of the returns as you will find anywhere, and if only for that reason I suggest you read it. He writes (links omitted)
In contrast to Kamala Harris, who looks set to receive about six million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020, Trump is actually on target to win close to four million more votes than last time — when he and Joe Biden each received the largest number of votes ever in a presidential election. In fact, Trump may win almost as many additional votes this election as there were additional eligible voters. In 2020, there were more than 240 million eligible voters, compared to 244 million in 2024, which is shaping up to be the second largest turnout of eligible voters in history. At the same time, exit polls show that 71 percent of voters said they were voting “for their candidate” rather than against their opponent in 2024, compared to 62 percent in 2020.
And then follows a detailed description of the results, which I condense into bullet points (links omitted):
- "...Harris likely won a smaller percentage (about two points) of votes from women than Biden did in 2022."
- "Meanwhile, Latino voters, particularly Latino men, turned out in record-breaking numbers for Trump. 46 percent of Latino voters chose Trump this election, ..."
- "Trump won 16 percent of the Black vote this election compared to 8 percent in 2020 and just 6 percent in 2016. Harris, on the other hand, lost about ten percent of the Black vote compared to Biden. Most astounding perhaps is that this increase in Black votes for Trump seems to have happened across the entire country: in blue states as well as red states, and in cities as well as suburbs."
- "Even in New York City, where he took more than 30 percent of the vote, Trump performed well in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods."
In other words, Kamala lost by a landslide--she lost ground compared to Biden and other Democrats in almost every demographic constituency you can think of.
Which, of course, begs the question:
Why has this happened, and how should the Left respond?
His argument begins this way:
While many working people no doubt voted for Trump because they are deeply worried about their own and their family’s economic well-being, many unfortunately also did so with the full understanding that he plans to increase attacks on the rights of women and trans people, that he will likely further weaken already weak labor laws, and that he plans to deport a million so-called illegal immigrants.
It's not clear to me how Professor Hoff thinks Trump will attack the rights of women. If he's referring to abortion, that's pretty much a non-issue as far as Trump is concerned. It is now a matter for state legislatures (which is where the issue legitimately belongs).
Regarding the rights of trans people, I think our professor friend is on pretty thin ice here as well. Nobody denies the rights of trans people guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Those are rights that we all have--you, me, Professor Hoff, and every last trans person. What Professor Hoff claims is that trans people should have rights beyond those that the rest of us have, eg, the right to use women's restrooms. Neither Dr. Hoff nor I have the right to use women's restrooms--and there's nothing in the Constitution that would guarantee that right to trans people.
Standards of public decency are established at state and municipal levels. There is no reason why trans people should be exempt from those standards. Indeed, the existing rules for bathroom use are very sensible and are designed to protect women and girls from male (ie, anybody with a penis) predators.
Trump's most effective ad campaign (arguably the most effective ad campaign of all time) ended with the tag line Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you. It's an effective pun: they/them can refer to the minuscule portion of the population that is legitimately trans, or it can refer to any special interest (eg, pharmaceutical firms) that tries to take advantage of voters--trans people being among the loudest special interests.
The prohibition of trans people on women's sports teams is equally rooted in biology and common sense. There is no Constitutional right to play on a girl's soccer team. Sorry.
Regards immigration, Professor Hoff writes,
On the question of immigration, in particular, the Right has relentlessly and successfully argued that what they call “illegal immigrants” are not only draining the national coffers, but negatively contributing to everything from unemployment, to low wages and higher rents, and many people — many of them immigrants themselves — are increasingly open to those explanations.
Along with the Professor, I will also take issue with the idea that immigrants are draining the national coffers. Indeed, to the extent they pay sales, property and payroll taxes they are contributing to the national coffers--not least helping to pay for my considerable medical bills covered by Medicare. I'm very grateful for that.
But on the other issues Professor Hoff is just wrong. Immigrants (illegal or otherwise) do compete for jobs and housing. That competition has the market effect of lowering wages and raising rents. Native born and immigrant citizens are right to raise that concern. As the professor points out, "Many Latino voters in those counties [along the Rio Grande] said they voted for Trump because they think stricter regulations on immigration will protect their jobs and livelihoods." Plus the large and sudden influx of immigrants is socially destructive and ruins communities.
Working people are responding to obvious threats to their way of life. They are not irrational victims of Trumpian misinformation and Democratic Party perfidy. Professor Hoff does not give the American working class credit for having an intelligent opinion (which, given that he's a professor, isn't surprising).
Then, in the professor's opinion, Trump is not a friend of the working man. He will, for example, sponsor a bunch of anti-union regulations that will make it much harder for organized labor. He does ding the unions for not being very good at their jobs, writing
Indeed, as Sou Mi explains, while organized labor has made gains for higher paid manufacturing workers, it has largely failed to address the problems of some of its most precarious workers, particularly those in the logistics sector, including Amazon and UPS, who are predominantly Black and Latino ..."
The economics of Amazon and UPS (along with Walmart, Starbucks, and many other companies) preclude a successful union movement--the profit margins are too small. I described that in detail here in an article explaining why Amazon has not yet signed a contract with the new union.
The fact is that today's modern union movement is oriented to the professor types, like Dr. Hoff. Unlike workers in the real world, Dr. Hoff gets his salary from the government--he's on the public dole. Since the government never needs to earn a profit it can be very generous with the largesse. The teachers' unions are especially effective at extorting taxpayers--including new immigrant taxpayers.
I think most workers in the private sector see through the scam and are becoming less interested in unionization--especially since the efforts at Amazon and Starbucks have not led to an improvement in their working conditions.
Professor Hoff tells us
Most working people, after all, know that Trump is also no solution, even many who voted for him. In this sense there are plenty of reasons why the working class shift toward Trump’s ideas this election may be short lived, especially if he actually follows through with his plans for the economy and immigration reform.
My main beef with this paragraph is there are no solutions--there are only trade-offs. Professor Hoff foolishly thinks his silly Marxism is going to solve all problems--he's just wrong. And most people know he's wrong, which is why Left Voice only has about 50 members.
I don't know how durable Trumpism will be, but I think he'll do a better job representing the working class than that cloud of academic pinheads that are at the core of the Democrat Party--including Professor Hoff.
Further Reading:
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Election 2024, Trotskyists' Unanimous Opinion
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| (Source) |
They're unanimous--all the Trotskyist grouplets which I follow believe that a mass, independent working class party is the solution to all America's problems.
Jimena Vergara, writing in Left Voice states it clearly in her closing sentence.
For this, we need not only a united front against the Right, but also a political party of the working class and oppressed with a socialist program that unites our struggles and gives us the foundation with which to fight for a better world.
In an article posted in Socialist Action, guest authors Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard proclaim that
Fundamental change only occurs through class struggle. Mass action is the only road toward rebuilding the union movement, independent organizations of Blacks, women and all the oppressed, the revolutionary socialist movement and a mass workers party championing all the oppressed and exploited, and ultimately a socialist revolution.
Meanwhile, The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) in an article by Terry Evans, opines that
The SWP candidates are unionists, joining strike picket lines and building solidarity wherever they go. They’ve explained why workers need to break from the bosses’ political parties and build a party of our own, a party of labor, that can fight to take political power.
A working class party has never existed in the United States. It has existed in other countries (UK, Germany, Canada, etc.), but in every case it has evolved into a "reformist" party that resembles the American Democrats. Many of those parties, like the German Social Democrats led by the formidable Karl Kautsky, are direct heirs of Marx and Engels. It is both ironic and instructive that Marxist parties should end up as bourgeois, reformist institutions.
Our Trotskyist friends never ask why there has never been a successful workers' party anywhere in the western world. (They'll claim the Russian Revolution was a success--though it certainly didn't turn out that way.) The reason for that perennial failure is because Marxism is just wrong.
The basic tenet of Marxism is that the driver of history is the intractable, insoluble, existential conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Only one class can win, and that class must be the proletariat, according to our Trotskyist friends. But this is wrong--workers and capitalists are on the same side in most things: both of them need to maximize sales revenue in order to succeed. For the workers (who often claim more than 90% of revenue) it means more jobs and higher wages. For the capitalist it's the source of profit. Without revenue, both of them will starve.
Consumers are on the other side of the equation. They want better quality at lower prices and with improved service. They usually get what they want--which is why our standard of living has steadily improved since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The customer is always right.
That fundamental misunderstanding of basic economics is why Trotskyists never make any progress with their pipedream. All real workers need to cooperate with their capitalist bosses. Workers definitely do not want to overthrow the whole damn system.
This explains why Donald Trump is a tribune of the working class. He realizes that corporate taxes don't just take money away from the bosses--they take even more money away from the workers. He understands that over-the-top environmental regulations won't just put Exxon-Mobil out of business, but also put all the people who work in fossil-fuel related industries out of a job. Trump realizes that exaggerated Wokery adds a cost to doing business that will reduce revenue and hurt both the capitalists and the workers.
Our Trotskyist friends delude themselves in thinking they own the Truth: that because of their leadership as the Vanguard Party, the scales of false-consciousness shall fall from proletarian eyes, and they shall see the light and flock to the revolutionary banner. In fact, the people most afflicted with false consciousness are the Trotskyist grouplets, which is why they remain grouplets.
The villain of the piece--the organization most responsible for false consciousness--is the Democratic Party. All our Trotskyist friends claim to hate the Democrats. But here the movement divides into two factions: one, led by the SWP, better understands why Trump is popular among real workers, and thus support many of the things Trump does. In other words, they think Trump is the chief agent of false consciousness.
Accordingly, the SWP defend Trump when his positions are defensible. They strongly protested the relentless lawfare as an attack on the civil liberties of all Americans. They object to the expensive, petty bourgeois climate agenda championed by other Trotskyists and their Democrat friends. They oppose the Woke silliness espoused by Democrats and other Trotskyists.
At the same time, they oppose Trump. Terry Evans writes,
Trump seeks to refurbish the image of the Republican Party as a party for workers. But he’s a real-estate-dealing capitalist in search of the highest profits. And his campaign seeks to demonize a section of the working class — immigrant workers with and without papers — in an effort to convince workers this is the cause of their worsening situation, not capitalism. This divides and weakens the working class and labor movement.
They accuse Trump of the same crime for which our other friends condemn the Democrats--namely trafficking in false consciousness. But they realize that the majority of the working class does, indeed, support Trump, and often for good reasons.
The other faction--represented by all other grouplets, but most prominently by Left Voice, subscribe to the Democratic Party's position (at least that of its Progressive faction) 100% of the time. They accuse the Democrats of not really believing what they say they want, but rather of cynically promoting false consciousness.
A classic response from that second faction comes from Left Voice author Tatiana Cozzarelli. Apparently completely detached from proletarian sensibilities, she writes,
I teach on Wednesday mornings and on November 6, I was met with students who were in a shocked silence. They were in the 6th grade when Trump won the last election and again, this racist, misogynist authoritarian would take the White House. Some of them cried, thinking of friends and family who might get deported.
For many, it was grief, fear and disbelief. When they hear “mass deportations,” it means their uncle, their mother, themselves.
What to say to these 19 year olds? I wish I could just tell them it would be okay. That they won’t get deported. That they are safe.
I can’t promise they will be safe.
I can’t say to them that in two years voting Democrat will fix it– that would be a lie.
So she teaches at a CUNY school in New York City, where she is also a PhD student in "Urban Education" (whatever the hell that is). She obviously doesn't get around much, and obviously isn't a member of the working class. Trump won a majority of "working class" votes, defined as voters without a college degree. That certainly doesn't apply to Ms. Cozzarelli, who is wasting her time and our money getting a useless PhD.
Trump won the election--in today's context by a landslide. Trotskyists have no clue why. Trump tells the truth when he claims to be a tribune of the working class. Our Trotskyist friends don't understand reality.
Further Reading:
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion
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| Advertisement from around 1950. Cubans today wish they had a refrigerators filled with food. (Picture Source: The Militant) |
The octogenarian comrade Mary-Alice Waters opines on the status of women using a book first published in 1986 as a guide: Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women. She celebrates the new edition, which occasions this series of three articles from and about the book. The original book contains articles by old Party stalwarts, Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed. ("Party" refers to the Socialist Workers Party, SWP, publishers of The Militant.)
The first article is the new preface authored by Ms. Waters. The second article is the first chapter, also authored by Ms. Waters. Finally are some short reflections on the book by a Cuban woman, Isabel Moya, given as a speech in Havana in 2011 (back when Cuba still had electricity).
The first sentences of Ms. Waters' preface were for me a disappointment:
Title notwithstanding, Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women is not a book about cosmetics.
It is about capitalism.
Geez, I'm more interested in cosmetics and fashion. In The Militant every article is about "capitalism." The paper gets interesting only when they talk about something else. Besides which, Ms. Waters knows nothing about how capitalism actually works.
Fortunately the excerpts cover other topics as well, notably economics, biology, anthropology, psychology and politics. Wow! It's a pastiche of factoids from beginning to end.
Unfortunately, Ms. Waters seems to think all progress in the social sciences ended in 1881, when the "materialist" anthropologist Lewis Morgan died. Or perhaps in 1895 when Friedrich Engels passed. Or maybe into the early 20th Century with Morgan's disciple, Robert Briffault. But nothing since the dawn of jet aircraft, or computers, or the internet, or mobile telephony, or the dramatic progress science has made studying human genomics. None of this crosses her radar screen--because if it did it would readily disprove her thesis. She can win the argument only by plugging her ears and pretending progress doesn't exist.
Her thesis is that humans are distinctive because we "labor." She quotes Evelyn Reed (italics in original):
Beauty has no identity with fashion. But it has an identity with labor. Apart from
the realm of nature, all that is beautiful has been produced in labor and by laborers.
Well? Maybe. Though it seems to me the fundamental human characteristic is not that we labor (beavers also labor), but that we trade. No other species on the planet engages in trade. Indeed, in an era when Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens shared the space, Neanderthal products are always found near where they were made. Human products, on the other hand, are often found hundreds of miles from where they were made. Perhaps labor can be defined as the act of making something for purposes of trade? In other words, labor exists to make the customer happy.
I'm not sure how Ms. Reed defines labor, but I think I disagree with her quote. People often produce beautiful things without any expectation of financial reward. And it is true--they "labor." But if made for personal use, then they don't trade, just like a beaver doesn't trade. Women (and some men) apply cosmetics to make themselves beautiful--and it is not done for any financial reward.
Regards cosmetics, Ms. Waters proposes some serious conspiracy theory.
More than three centuries later, the resources devoted by capitalist enterprises to advertising and the creation of markets — that is, creating “needs” where none yet exist — are still expanding astronomically. Under the profit system, instead of advances in the productivity of social labor breaking down this mystical animation of objects that working people ourselves have made, the working class and lower middle classes are pushed into “needing” more and more things. Everything from each new cell phone release, to the latest model automobile, $500 torn blue jeans, and an exploding array of “cosmetic” surgeries, skin bleaches or tanning salons, designer handbags, and cosmetics-designed-to-make-you-look-like-you’re-not-using-cosmetics.
That is, women buy cosmetics only because they are foisted on them by a rapacious, scheming capitalist class. This is ridiculous! Women buy cosmetics because they want to, not because they've been bamboozled by the bourgeoisie. Working class women are way smarter than our comrade gives them credit for.
As a test, Ms. Waters should go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of cheap cosmetics that she can take with her next time she goes to Cuba (if she ever goes to Cuba again). She can pass them out to local women, whom I hazard will be overjoyed to receive them, without any encouragement from the bourgeoisie. Just a little bit of beauty to brighten their otherwise dark, dreary, boring days.
I'm not going to detail Ms. Waters' description of capitalism, but a few things need clarification. First, the declining rate of profit refers only to commodities, ie, products that compete only on price, such as gasoline. All other products, like most branded products, will compete on factors other than price. A commodity smart phone costs about $50; the latest iPhone will set you back more than $800! The iPhone, which competes on style and functionality, is not a commodity, and the profit margin on that product is huge.
The bottom line is that consumers determine the price for all non-commodity products. Apple will charge whatever consumers are willing to pay. The cosmetics you buy at the dollar store are commodities. The cosmetics you get from L'Oréal are definitely not commodities.
The second and most important point is that Comrade Mary-Alice is a Luddite. She doesn't think there should be any pleasure in the world. Buying something that makes one more beautiful or more stylish is, in her opinion, just the bourgeoisie messing with your mind. She's wrong. America is a rich country because you can buy refrigerators full of food, shelves full of cosmetics, closets full of clothes, garages with two cars, and vacations to some of the finest beaches in the world. Compare that to consumers in that socialist heaven-state, Cuba, who can't even buy food or fresh water.
The measure of any society is the level of consumption--and Americans are by far the best consumers in the world. That's why everybody on the planet wants to move here. You can't eliminate poverty without increasing consumption--neither the Cubans nor the Chinese have learned that lesson yet.
Ms. Waters, in her preface, lists a whole bunch of bad things that happen to women, eg, "the stoning of women for adultery," and "government dictates that a woman must cover her hair, or face, or entire body, and that even her voice should never be heard in public." Most of the examples are from pre-modern societies (eg, Afghanistan) and do not represent the lives of women in the capitalist world. Nevertheless, our friendly comrade induces from her examples that women are systematically oppressed and are second class citizens.
This is not generally true, partly because she omits the list of bad things that happen to men, eg, dying by the thousands of the trenches in WW1. Or, quoting Robert Gordon, describing life prior to 1870, "men's work was dirty and dangerous, while women's toil was unremitting drudgery." It's hard to say one sex was more oppressed than the other. Life was hard all the way round.
Women are sometimes subordinated and oppressed. More generally they're not--instead they're protected and cherished. The fundamental error that Marxists (including Ms. Waters) make is that they believe evolution stopped the minute human beings came along. They claim that culture has supplanted biology. But this is false--it's more accurate to say that culture has augmented biology. Indeed, culture is itself a product of evolution, and conversely, culture dramatically influences the reproductive success of various human ethnicities. Thus culture drives evolution. The modern term for this is gene-culture co-evolution.
Men and women are biologically different. We evolved separately for different roles in reproduction. All cultures distinguish between men and women--there is no culture on earth where they are regarded interchangeably. Most of the differences between men and women in today's modern capitalist society stem, directly or indirectly, from those fundamental, biological differences.
Mary-Alice is wrong to consider all differences to be examples of oppression.
Let me close with a poem (that only a woman could write) by Dulce María Loynaz, quoted by Isabel Loya. I include it here just because I like it.
If you love me, love me whole,
not by zones of light or shadow …
If you love me, love me black
and white, and gray and green,
and blonde and dark …
Love me by day,
love me by night …
And by morning in the open window!
If you love me, don’t break me
in pieces:
Love me whole … or don’t
love me at all!
Further Reading:
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Left Voice & The Election, 2024
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| (Source) |
Sybil Davis and Jimena Vergara co-authored an article on Left Voice entitled Neither Harris nor Trump: Only the Working Class Can Fight the Rightward Shift. It's an analysis of the election as of a few days ago, Oct. 25th, that begins this way:
As the election roller coaster barrels on, the Harris campaign has lost some steam. Popular enthusiasm once drove the campaign to new heights and helped raise over $1 billion. Now Harris is struggling to win over undecided votes and is losing support among sectors that have previously strongly backed Democrats — such as Black and Latino men. After riding high on “vibes” after she replaced Biden and generated a huge wave of enthusiasm, Harris has failed to put forward a compelling vision for a country that is contending with inflation, natural disasters, and an increasingly unstable international situation that includes foreign conflicts that many Americans don’t want to be involved in.
In this context, Trump has repositioned himself to potentially win the election. Every poll shows an incredibly tight race in which either candidate can emerge as the winner. It will all come down to a handful of swing states. In this context, we must have as precise an analysis as possible of the situation and think towards what might happen after the election and what our response to the situation needs to be.
This is remarkably boilerplate. The mainstream media couldn't have phrased it any better. It's surprising that leaders of the Trotskyist Faction (publishers of Left Voice) can't come up with anything different, given the amazing Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyist/Vanguard/Dialectical tools at their disposal. Only the last quoted sentence suggests something unexpected is forthcoming.
Yet there are a few places where our comrades distinguish themselves. The first concerns "Palestine," where they ludicrously claim that Israel is committing "genocide." Without belittling the number of civilian casualties, and even acknowledging the possibility (unlikely, in my view) of war crimes, whatever the Israelis are doing does not rise anywhere near the level of genocide. Even if you take the Hamas figures at face value, under 45,000 people have been killed. This is about 2% of Gaza's population--nowhere close to "genocide." I've covered this before, most recently here.
Then Comrades Davis and Vergara insist that today's Trump Republicans are "far" right. I guess the adjective depends on where you sit--if you're way off on the far-left Trotskyist fringe, then the Trumpians must seem as if they come from another planet. But no movement that earns roughly half the vote can be "far" anything. Almost by definition, Trump is a mainstream candidate. He has some supporters that might be classed as "far" right--Steve Bannon comes to mind--but Trump himself is not, and neither are most of his supporters.
Of course our authors are here repeating a Kamala talking point--that Trump is the second coming of "Hitler," no less. Whatever else Trump is, he's not a fascist. He has no army of storm troopers. He's not antisemitic. He doesn't hate Black people or Hispanic people ("Latinx" is how the comrades call them). The speaker list at Madison Square Garden included Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Hindus and women. The event was as American as apple pie.
Most recently, Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, has accused Trump of being a "fascist." To which our comrades respond:
Now, whether Trump meets the more precise political-economic definition of a fascist is a complex question that is too big to discuss here. What we can say, though, is that Kelly is correct that Trump is far-right and wants to take more authoritarian measures. But let’s not forget that the people who sent the cops to break up encampments and brutalize students were usually Democrats. The Democrats, too, are moving toward an increased authoritarianism (though not as blatantly and quickly as Trump is).
So even if he's not a "fascist," he's at least an "authoritarian." I'm not sure what that word means--if it means he's gonna use the powers of the office of the president, then he's like all other presidents. There was nothing that happened during his first term that in any way established him as particularly authoritarian. Mss. Davis and Vergara are right to point out that Democrats are equally authoritarian, though the example they give is not a good one. Encampments, blocking traffic and vandalizing property are not protected speech and any government has an obligation to enforce civic order.
Our friends write,
All this is to say: if Kamala Harris wins the election, the election will likely be challenged in court, along with street demonstrations whose character we cannot predict. On Election Day, MAGA supporters might try to intimidate minority voters and prevent them from voting. If Trump wins, the Democratic Party will likely concede. If this is the case, the party of the donkeys will suffer a profound defeat that it will blame on its progressive wing, the movement for Palestine, or Jill Stein. But the blame for any defeat will rest on the Democrats’ shoulders alone: the party is the graveyard of progressive social demands, and broad sectors of the working class, the middle classes, and the oppressed now understand this.
There are many problems with this paragraph.
- The Trump campaign is MUCH better run today than in 2020, and their campaign has been almost error-free. In particular they have competent lawyers who are filing the lawsuits before the election (and winning some of them) which will make the election much fairer than in 2020. Accordingly, I think any argument that the election was stolen will be much weaker this time around.
- The Trump campaign is trying very hard to recruit minority voters to their side. Far from trying to "intimidate" them, they're working to get them out to vote--especially Black and Hispanic men.
- The so-called "movement for Palestine" is a disgrace. It's really a movement for Hamas--if there ever was a fascist movement, Hamas is it.
- Obviously if the Democrats lose, the fault will fall on the Democrats--though Republicans will surely take some credit for that outcome.
- How our comrades can claim that the Democrats are the "graveyard of progressive social demands" is beyond me. After all, Left Voice's program is 100% identical to that of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party--antisemitism included. So if one is a graveyard, then so is the other.
Comrades Davis and Vergara include these remarks in their final paragraph.
Whoever wins, we will need to fight to protect our rights and win our demands. Hopefully from this united front, a new political party can emerge. A party of workers and the oppressed that fights for socialism. The need to build a political alternative to the current parties is paramount, but so is the fight in the here and now. ... The vanguard and the socialist Left must embrace a revolutionary program and join together to lay the foundation for a new political party of the working class — one that raises high the banner of socialism.
Big words, that. I think Trump will likely win the election, including the popular vote. Which means he'll get at least 75 million votes, and the Democrats only slightly less. Approximately 50 people attended the most recent Left Voice congress. Trotskyists of all denominations have been calling for a labor party since the 1930's, always to no avail. No reason to think our comrade's call today will have a different outcome.
Further Reading:
Monday, October 21, 2024
The End of Cuban Civilization
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| A little bedtime reading in Havana (source: EFE / AAP) |
The Militant, in an article which they must now find slightly embarrassing given the island-wide blackout last Friday, reproduces part of a report delivered to the UN General Assembly and released to the press last Sept. 12th. The dignitary responsible for the missive is Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez. The excerpt appears in The Militant under the title Cuba: ‘End Washington’s economic, trade war against our revolution!’.
I do have to give The Militant some credit here. None of the other so-called Trotskyist papers on my beat even mention Cuba. For example, the most recent article about the island in Left Voice was posted in February, 2022! And yet I believe all my Trotskyist friends believe Cuba to be a socialist/workers' state and a step toward our progressive, human future. But it appears none of them have any courage of their convictions. Except The Militant.
Mr. Rodriguez has the courtesy to admit that "All the difficulties faced by the Cuban society are not exclusively due to the blockade...", but the rest of the article condemns the US policy in no uncertain terms. And he does have a point, or perhaps a few of them.
- The US made it much more difficult for Cuba to respond to the pandemic by imposing restrictions on imports of ventilators and oxygen from third countries, among other things.
- The US "continued its pursuit of fuel supplies to Cuba." I assume that means the US tried to deny Cuban access to fuel on the world market.
- The US worked to "curtail the recovery of the Cuban tourism sector" post-pandemic, dealing a mortal blow to the country's main source of income.
- The US has refused to let Cuba use global financial networks, almost all of which go through US banks.
- The US--specifically the Biden administration--has refused to lift the Trump-era's "arbitrary inclusion of Cuba in the State Department’s unilateral list of alleged countries sponsoring terrorism."
I can't vouch for Mr. Rodriguez's facts, but he is certainly right that the US has not been a friend of Cuba. The question is: Why?
The problem begins in 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis. The island allowed the Soviet Union to place nuclear-tipped warheads in Cuba, aimed at the United States. Now I know there are arguments on both sides, but the hard fact is that when somebody aims nuclear weapons in your direction--that somebody isn't gonna be a best friend. The Cuban government has never so much as apologized for that act. And more, until the Soviet collapse in 1991 they remained a staunch ally of the Soviet Union--and since then an ally of Russia.
Cuba sent troops to Angola to fight against American interests. Again, I know there are arguments on both sides, and I'm not sure America really had any interests in that war (besides oil). Still, when one of our nearest neighbors goes halfway around the world just to poke Uncle Sam in the nose--don't be surprised if Uncle Sam returns the favor.
In more recent years Cuba has aligned itself with the so-called "axis of evil," ie, that loose, anti-American alliance between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Venezuela used to be part of that group, but that country has long since committed economic and social suicide and is no longer a global player of any consequence. These countries work to resist US influence globally--and Cuba's alignment with them means they'll get no benefits from us.
Speaking of suicide--it looks like the Cuban power system may have breathed its last. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 18th,
Electricity went out across Cuba on Friday just hours after its cash-strapped government ordered the shutdown of nonessential businesses to save power as millions of residents were already suffering from widespread outages.The country’s Energy Ministry said that a failure at the largest power plant sparked a nationwide blackout affecting the island’s 11 million residents. Utility workers were working to restore service, the ministry said on X.
An update today from Reuters tells us
Cuba's power-grid operator said it had restored electricity to parts of the capital Havana on Monday following a fourth major grid failure in 48 hours, while Tropical Storm Oscar lashed the island's eastern end.
They've made fantastic progress! The same article reports that
Cuban energy officials said they were providing to the grid around 700 megawatts, or one-fourth of a typical day's demand, by mid-morning. Authorities said they had restored power to 56% of Havana by midday.
Note that "one-fourth of a typical day's demand" seems kind of silly. Even in normal times power is out for 20 hours per day for much of the island. One fourth of that says the power is available for only one hour per day. Such are the benefits of socialism.
We're told that "utility workers were working to restore service." I don't believe that. Utility workers in the United States can earn six figures. In Mexico it might be half as much. Even in poor countries like Guatemala and Honduras I'll suggest utility workers earn what counts for a living wage.
But not in Cuba. In Cuba the employees are paid in scrip and given a now increasingly useless ration card. This is no way to live.
According to Times Radio, in two years, 2022 & 2023, Cuba's population has declined from 11 million to 8.5 million, or a 23% drop. This is due to emigration--people are fleeing the island as fast as their little row boats can carry them. Do you really think many utility workers are still left in Cuba? Why would they stay when they can't even earn enough to feed themselves?
I think the Cuban electricity grid is down for the count. They don't have the fuel, they don't have spare parts, and now they likely no longer have the workforce. Cubans are just gonna have to get used to living without electricity--just as they did in the 19th Century when they were a Spanish colony.
Of course no electricity means no food, no water, no medical care, and for that matter, no schools. The link is to a video by Joe Blogs which appeared two weeks ago, ie, just before the great blackout. It looks like everything he predicted is coming true.
A Socialist Workers Party (publisher of The Militant) leader Mary-Alice Waters used to make frequent trips to Havana (eg, here) where she gave sitting-room only speeches to an audience of petty-nomenklatura. I doubt she'll be making such trips in the future. The island is too far gone.
Secretary Rodriguez can complain and moan and cry about the injustice of it all. And maybe he's right? Perhaps the US really is a scoundrel and has treated Cuba wrong? And it's likely the General Assembly will pass yet another meaningless resolution condemning the US behavior.
The US may be wrong, but it has behaved in a way that is totally predictable. If you want trading relations with the United States (and by extension, with the rest of the world), you have to be a US ally when it comes to foreign affairs. You can't side with the "axis of evil."
For many decades Castro gained political favor by blaming the US for everything. But those days are long gone. The only solution to Cuba's problems today begins with disavowing America's enemies, pledging to be a loyal partner in the Caribbean and in Latin America, and allowing the (mostly) free inflow of capital to help rebuild the economy. Because capital and expertise is what America has, and what Cuba needs.
Further Reading:
Friday, October 11, 2024
Kamala vs. Trump: The Decline of America?
Left Voice author Sou Mi (who I think is female; apologies if I have that wrong) has written a think piece entitled Kamala Harris Wants to Revive an Empire in Decline. It's a well-written, worthwhile read that in my view is wrong in important ways.
The confusion starts at the top. This is the "hook" paragraph--that's supposed to tempt you into reading the rest of the article.
As November pulls closer and the specter of another Trump presidency looms large, Harris is trying to present a different project for the future: one based in restoring a “rules based order” where the rules are fundamentally set by U.S. imperialism.
Only the last word grates--"imperialism" is a meaningless word that adds nothing to the paragraph. The paragraph would be better if she just omitted it, eg, rules are fundamentally set by the U.S.
"Imperialism" occurs 22 times in the article, and all such mentions should be deleted, either as I illustrated above, or by substituting real institutions like "US foreign policy." Because foreign policy at least comes with an address (Foggy Bottom) and has somebody in charge (Antony Blinken). Unlike "imperialism," which is at best a vague conspiracy theory.
Otherwise she is quite correct--that Trump and Harris represent a decision point for American foreign policy. This observation is not original to her--it's been widely discussed in the mainstream media.
She paints the choice between the two this way. She says Harris
...has not only positioned herself as the heir to an administration that put diplomacy back on the table, but also presented a vision for the future: one based in the realization of an American leadership that will restore a “rules based order” through both diplomacy and might, and where the rules are fundamentally set by the U.S. imperialism.
This seems true. Kamala aspires to take us back to the good ol' days when America ruled the waves, owned the foreign exchange medium, and guaranteed world peace.
Sou Mi accurately summarizes Trump's position, which I'll describe in my own words. Labelled "America First," it suggests that the US should withdraw from global affairs, mind it's own business, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, let the devil take the hindmost. When the enemy gets within 12 miles of our shores, then and only then will the world's greatest superpower be roused to action.
I exaggerate slightly. Trump is not quite as hands off as I've described, but only because he's forced to compromise with reality. The US really does have trade relations with other countries that need to be protected, notably with Mexico and Canada, but also with Europe and S.E. Asia. Those trade routes will require US policing. And more, the US has cultural and religious allegiances beyond our shores, eg, Israel, which even though it is of no strategic value whatsoever, we are bound to protect. (It does have economic value.)
But at his core, Trump is a pacifist. He does not want America involved in any war. He follows in the tradition of two prior pacifists, Nixon and Reagan, both of whom described the American strategy as having the biggest, baddest, meanest military the world has ever seen--and then never using it. "Peace Through Strength" is how previous generations (and Sou Mi) put it. It's Trump's strategy to a tee.
So the debate is between "The War Party," represented by Kamala, Liz Cheney, the journalists at The Bulwark, the CIA, and most college faculty. And "the Peace Party," championed by Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, journalists at ZeroHedge, and (apparently) most of America's working class.
I'm not sure which side Sou Mi is on: is she pro-War or pro-Peace? I don't think she knows, so befuddled is she by all those imaginary "imperialists" floating around in her head. I also don't really know what side I'm on--I can see virtues in both points of view. But I'll be voting for Trump.
So why now? Why is this choice presented to the American public in this election? Sou Mi has an answer (my emphasis).
Harris’s proposals... come amidst the growing tensions of an empire in decline, especially amidst the retreat of globalization when the United States, based on the export of manufacturing and exploitation of cheap labor in the global south (and particularly through the restoration of capitalism in China), and debt-fueled consumption, was able to rearticulate a unipolar order behind it.
Sou Mi's view is that, with the "empire in decline," there are two possible responses. One is, in spite of that, to double down and re-establish our weight in the world. This is what Kamala proposes to do. The other is to retreat into a shell and acknowledge defeat--the Trump strategy. Or, instead of War Party and Peace Party, we can think of them as the Recovering America's Greatness Party and the Surrender Party (which weirdly reverses the terminology the parties use to describe themselves).
I dispute that America is an empire in decline. For good reasons during the Cold War, the US served as the world's policeman, and provided the world with a reserve currency by running huge trade deficits. This enabled an unparalleled period of global economic growth, including, most notably, in China (bringing 400 million people out of poverty). Sou Mi ludicrously describes it as an act of "exploitation," which it definitely wasn't. It was, instead, an act of great generosity (albeit extended only to America's allies--and not to miscreants such as Cuba).
The question thus arises, can America continue to be so generous? Trump says no; Kamala responds yes. The problem is that, while America has certainly gotten richer over the past 70 years, the rest of the world has gotten richer faster and caught up. So Sou Mi is partly right: in relative terms, the US has declined, and is therefore no longer able to finance global trade as it once did. While in domestic terms our trade deficit has not yet declined, today as a fraction of total global trade it is too small a percentage to finance global trade.
In finance parlance, this is known as a shortage of eurodollars--and countries that don't have enough eurodollars (eg, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, and on the cusp, China) are no longer able to import basic necessities such as food and fuel.
Whatever Kamala's intentions, she will not be able to reverse this relative decline in eurodollars, and the result will be a crimp in globalization. As there is no other reserve currency on the horizon, despite this shortage the Eurodollar will remain the world's reserve currency for the foreseeable future. The only country that can literally "print" eurodollars is the United States--we're sitting in the catbird seat.
Then there is our role as the global policeman. We guaranteed European borders, allowing European countries to all but defund their militaries. And likewise for Canada, Japan and the Philippines, among others. This, by itself, made people richer. We made the same guarantee to countries in the Middle East, fighting wars over Kuwait.
But being the world's policeman is expensive! And US taxpayers have to pay the bill. Trump has decided we don't need to do that anymore. For example, our efforts to keep the Red Sea open have come to naught--we're using million dollar missiles to shoot down the Houthi's thousand dollar drones, obviously not a sustainable operation. Technology has changed the nature of warfare.
There's no reason for us to police the Red Sea--that's a job for the Europeans. We no longer have much interest in defending European borders. If Russia invades the Baltic states, we're probably not going to rise to their defense. We're not patrolling the Indian Ocean--India, Japan and China can fight over that one.
More, the Middle East is on its own. We still have an outpost in Qatar, but I predict that's not long for the world--Trump will bring them all home. The US has no dog in any fight over the Persian Gulf--we don't import any of their oil, and we have no reason to defend their sea lanes. That's up to the Europeans, Japanese and Chinese to work out. Good luck!
That's Trump's plan. Kamala says we're still gonna be the world's policeman. That's popular within the intelligence community and in the faculty lounge--but not among many common voters. It's one reason why I think she'll lose the election.
Sou Mi's article is worth reading. Apart from the gratuitous use of the word "imperialism," hers is an intelligent point of view.
Further Reading:
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