The "Bureau" on Immigration

The Fourth International Bureau (also known as the Bureau of the Fourth International) issued a statement entitled Stop inhumane policies against immigrants (cross-posted in Socialist Action). As with most articles written by a committee it tends toward the inarticulate--full of emotion and short on common sense.

The lede paragraph, however, is mostly true. (Ellipses in original.)

Children separated from their families and caged in Trump’s USA, thousands drowning as they cross the Mediterranean, boats transporting migrants refused the right to dock by Salvini’s Italy, Orban’s Hungary declaring that helping refugees is a crime, 370 thousand Rohingya fleeing from [Myanmar] to Bangladesh after another military raid and massacres by Myanmar government, tens of thousands of economic refugees from Haiti and Venezuela spreading throughout South American countries, more than five million Syrian refugees outside the country and even more internally displaced .… Those who hold power in Old Europe and the Americas are joined in a holy witch hunt against the spectre of “migrants”: a wide ranging alliance embracing the populists of the right and what remains of the traditional Social Democrats. Salvini and Macron, Putin and Trump – chauvinists from the east and the west, French liberals and German police…

The Bureau leaves out other examples, e.g., the Banyamulenge of Eastern Congo. They're a Tutsi tribe who migrated to the region in the 16th Century. Their citizenship is hotly disputed by their neighbors to this very day--and that was the proximate cause of the Congo civil war that left five million dead before it was over.

Or the immigration of Jews into Palestine, which unlike the other cases the Bureau opposes, calling it an "occupation." They side instead with Hamas, demanding the extermination of the Jews. So much for free migration of all peoples!

There is such a thing as culture, and immigration beyond a certain point is just an invasion. Ask the native Slavs about the mass immigration of Magyars in year 850, or Native Americans about the immigration of Europeans. Some warn that Sweden will become a majority-Muslim country by 2040--after which the several thousand year old Scandinavian culture will simply disappear.

The Bureau-crats

...demand the right to migrate: freedom of movement and settlement. As internationalists we believe it is a fundamental right of every person to be able to live with dignity and enjoy all the political and social rights of the country where they reside.

This is just silly. No human society--capitalist or otherwise--has ever agreed to such a program.

The problem is most acute in Europe, adjacent to both Africa and South Asia--the only bits of the world where human populations are still rapidly growing. European fertility rates are so low that native populations are shrinking. The Bureau opines that "[t]he numbers arriving in the North – representing there between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent of the population – could easily be assimilated." They don't say as a percent of what, but I assume it's of the native population. Over twenty years, coupled with high immigrant birth rates, leads to the pickle that Sweden finds itself in right now. And no, these new immigrants cannot be easily assimilated.

The situation in the US is less dire, partly because we're such a big country, and mostly because fertility rates in most of Latin America are barely above the US average (if that high). Further, migration from Mexico is now reversing, with many returning to their home country. This is in part because of the significant improvement in the Mexican economy over the past 20 years.

To clarify the Bureau's errors, let's pick a hypothetical example. A certain Mrs. Wetback arrives illegally in Los Angeles with her six year old son. I pick that name not merely to pull the Bureau's chain (though that, too), but because it symbolizes a lot about her. She is from El Salvador, about 40 years old, illiterate, does not speak English, and has endured great hardships to come to the United States.

Mrs. Wetback's motives were not just economic, but also to avoid violence. The basic political unit in El Salvador is the street gang--and her neighborhood had become a battleground between rivals. The result was it became harder and harder for her to keep her $3/day job--she took her life in her hands just going to work.

In Los Angeles she gets a job as a nanny, caring for the children of Mr. & Mrs. Johnson. It's not a live-in position--she spends 90 minutes on the bus getting to work each morning. She is paid $7/hour in cash, weekly, but with no benefits. Her daily pay is $42, or 14x what she was earning in El Salvador!

About which the Bureau remarks:

As often in the past, migrants suffer a double exploitation, especially in some “exemplary” sectors like agriculture, logistics or social care.

By their lights Mrs. Wetback should be paid at least $15/hour with full benefits. Or better yet, she shouldn't have to work at all, but instead depend on welfare and free public housing.

Mr. Johnson is a truck driver, and is often away from home several days at a time. Mrs. Johnson is a nurse, and while she makes good money, she works overtime as often as she can. Between the two of them the couple bring home about $120K annually before taxes.

Mrs. Johnson is paid $30/hour, which after paycheck deductions yields her $20/hour. From that she has to pay Mrs. Wetback $7, leaving her $13/hour as a net profit from her labors. That's less than the Bureau's minimum wage.

If the Bureau gets its way, Mrs. Wetback will need $15/hour, plus benefits, which means that Mrs. Johnson takes a net loss. Obviously she would then stay home and take care of her own kids. Mrs. Wetback will be unemployed. The net effect of the Bureau's demands is to make everybody poorer.

So here is an interesting question: Why does Mrs. Wetback get a 1400% raise just for crossing the border? The standard answer is because American productivity is much higher than Salvadoran. Certainly Mrs. Wetback isn't any more productive--she still can't speak English, nor can she read or write. But her employers are more productive, which means they can afford to hire her (unless the Bureau succeeds in reducing everybody to poverty). In El Salvador very few people can afford nursing care or fresh fruits from foreign countries--so there's less need for nurses or truck drivers. Which means that Mrs. Wetback earns less money. Much less.

Mrs. Wetback benefits from being around rich people because rich people can afford to pay her money. The Bureau's solution is to confiscate the wealth of all the rich people, after which Mrs. Wetback's only option will be to go on welfare and become a slave of the state.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Wetback and her son settle in a Salvadoran neighborhood. As with all such neighborhoods the political unit is the street gang. As a teenager her son does what he has to do--he joins a gang, meaning in all likelihood he'll get killed or end up in prison.

So much for assimilation.

Further Reading:

• Venezuela
• If You Really Care About the Poor
• Immigration? Si!

A Pessimistic View

Here are some pessimistic thoughts about our economic future, slightly inspired by The Militant's article on collapsing pension plans. I'm not courageous enough to actually predict the future, but it could end up badly. This is one possible bad scenario.

I'm a fan of Ray Dalio's Debt Cycle Theory (excellent video here--31 minutes long). Mr. Dalio's describes three economic trends that have dominated capitalist economies since the 16th Century.

First is long-term economic growth, driven by technological progress along with the population increase that enables. This has been pretty much straight line up for centuries, and shows no signs of slowing down in the foreseeable future (though population growth seems to be going into reverse).

The second trend is the short-term debt cycle, also known as the business cycle. People like to buy things and capitalists like to sell things. As long as people have jobs they will buy as much as they can, and since they always want to buy more, they'll borrow money. Capitalists (specifically, banks) are happy to lend it to them. More and more buying takes place, production grows, employment grows, and everybody is happy.

Until, of course, the loans have to be paid back. That reduces consumers' purchasing power, forcing production to decline, and leading to higher unemployment. That exacerbates the problem. The result is a recession. Recessions occur every six to twelve years.

Eventually the loans are repaid and the cycle can repeat--at a higher level since underlying productivity has continued to increase.

But not all of the debt is repaid during a recession--some of it is long-term debt, such as home mortgages. This long-term debt continues to grow, even during recessions. But eventually it, too, becomes unsustainable. This leads to the long-term debt cycle, which repeats every 80 to 100 years.

The accumulated long-term debt is too big for consumers to ever pay back, so ultimately it results in a deleveraging, otherwise known as bankruptcy. A vast amount of debt is simply wiped off the books--debtors are spared the worst of their sins, while creditors end up taking big haircuts. After which the process can begin anew--again at a higher level because of underlying productivity growth.

The last great deleveraging was during the Great Depression, during which creditors famously jumped out of buildings. (Some debtors did too, since bankruptcy wipes you out.) That was about 90 years ago--we're due for another great deleveraging!

Some suggest that the financial crisis of 2008 was a deleveraging, and to some extent it was. After all, mortgage debt had become unsustainable and it was obvious it would never be paid back. Home "owners" were defaulting left and right.

And to some extent it really did deleverage--a lot of underwater people lost their houses, after which their debts were wiped clean and they received rather generous tax subsidies. The problem is the creditors never took a haircut--the debt was merely transferred from the banks to the government, i.e., taxpayers. In macroeconomic terms that solved nothing.

In a word, we got bailed out and the deleveraging never happened. Politically that was very convenient--Obama and Bernanke took credit for "saving" the economy. In practice, they didn't save anything--all they did was store up a bigger disaster for the future.

So where is all that mortgage debt hiding? Some of it is student loan debt--now over a trillion dollars, much of which was used to finance consumption. The government has now taken over the student loan program, and there is considerable political pressure to simply forgive those debts. That will likely happen--leaving taxpayers to take the haircut. Beyond this, both auto loan and credit card debt are both over a trillion dollars each. Indeed, total consumer debt (including home mortgages) stands at about $13 trillion, or about 60% of our $19 Trillion GDP.

The bulk of the debt is in entitlements and pensions. The current federal debt is $19 Trillion, to which one needs to add $3.5 Trillion owed by state & local governments, but those numbers surely understate the problem. This article claims the government really owes about $210 Trillion in entitlements. That figure is controversial--it depends on how long you extend the timeline into the future (I confess I don't understand the calculation).

By comparison, the total mortgage debt in 2007--that precipitated the Financial Crisis--was about $14 Trillion. But much of that was collateralized (the banks could repossess and sell the houses), while pension debt is not. So the numbers are not comparable.

In other words, all those pensions will never get paid. Some pensions will simply go bankrupt. Social security benefits will be cut, as will Medicaid and Medicare payments. (The latter may affect doctors and hospitals more than consumers.) The welfare state will shrink.

When does the house of cards collapse? Who knows--could be tomorrow; might not be for thirty years. It depends on when bondholders lose confidence. Bondholders have every reason not to acknowledge reality--it's tantamount to a bank run. They'll do it only when they're forced to. It's noteworthy that the bankruptcy of Puerto Rico has not had much effect. We'll see if the impending implosion of Illinois will be similarly received. If so, then what about Kentucky, New Jersey, Connecticut...?

At some point bondholders run for the hills. States will not be able to refinance their debt and they'll default. The government will not be able to bail them out without causing massive inflation. Bitcoin will be worth millions!

So will it be like the Great Depression all over again? I think not, and here's why.

• We are much richer today than in the 1930s. Food & clothing cost only a fraction of what it cost then. Housing is also cheaper. There will not be the mass destitution that occurred in the '30s.
• The population is shrinking, which means we increasingly have a labor shortage. During the Depression unemployment spiked to over 20%. During the Recession it went up to 12%. I think the labor shortage is with us for a long time, so I expect unemployment will remain relatively low--especially for skilled workers. But wages will decline and benefits will go to zero.
• There will be no bailout, which in the short term will make things much worse. But long run the economy will do much better. The reason the Great Depression lasted so long was because of misguided government meddling during the recovery, i.e., the New Deal.

The "creditors" in this case will be anybody owed a pension, welfare, or social security. They won't be wiped out, but they'll definitely feel the pain. The "borrowers" will be governments, who will no longer be on the hook for benefits they can't afford to pay. Over time taxes will go down and government services will improve. The welfare state will gradually be reinstated at a more modest level.

After deleveraging comes dawn. The economy will recover smartly! There will be zero debt, so everybody will start borrowing again, and consumption will grow like gangbusters. It will be similar to what happened just after World War II, except better.

And that brings me to the private pensions described in The Militant's article, mostly covering coal miners and teamsters. These plans were mostly Ponzi schemes, where today's workers pay benefits to today's retirees (like social security). That works as long as the active workforce keeps growing. But as The Militant points out, "[t]he UMW 1974 Pension Plan is expected to go bust by 2022, sooner if the capitalist economy goes south. It covers 87,000 retired and 20,000 working miners." Clearly the plan is in trouble when the ratio between workers and retirees becomes so lopsided.

So the unions had a demonstration in Columbus, Ohio. Not sure what good that does--they're marching against arithmetic. I feel sorry for them--they put their life savings into a fraud perpetrated by both their unions and the companies they worked for.

Further Reading:

• Trade Wars
• What Marxists Don't Understand About Economics
• Where Have All The Workers Gone?

Populism

Among many interesting articles in the current issue of Solidarity is this piece by Cyryl Ryzak, entitled Populism: What it is and what it is not. The post is a riff on a long article by John Judis, with which Mr. Ryzak ultimately disagrees.

The lead paragraph states the problem.

“Populism” is a magical word. Its mysterious power unites the Erdogan and Putin governments, Latin American leftists like Evo Morales and the late Hugo Chavez, the resurgent Right in Europe and the United States, Hungarian and Polish anti-communist parties, Podemos, the Eurocommunism of the tragic Syriza, the revitalizers of social democracy Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn – all under the same umbrella.

One infers that the word is nearly meaningless, and that only the most milquetoast centrist could escape the label (think John Kasich). Indeed, Mr. Ryzak's objection to Judis' piece is that it lumps too many people together; if Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are both populists, then at very least there is a semantic problem.

But its use is not innocent, as Mr. Ryzak explains.

“Populism” has become a useful shroud for political opportunists. Every player gains from its obscurations except the Left. The so-called “center” can present itself as a necessary bulwark against the Right, while the Right itself can cloak its pathological character in either the righteousness of championing “the people” or the rebelliousness of opposing “the establishment”.

Thus the effort to resurrect populism as a meaningful term. He summarizes Mr. Judis' opinion succinctly.

“Populism” has both a left-wing and a right-wing variant. The former, represented today by Bernie Sanders and Podemos, organizes the “bottom” and the “middle” of society against the “top”, while the latter, represented by Trump and Le Pen, opposes both the “top” and “bottom” from the middle.

Which he then also criticizes.

Judis treats Left and Right as simply window dressing for the underlying “populism”. This has some superficial truth to it, yet it seems to me to quite a leap to say both are expressions of the same phenomenon. The character of “populists” on the Left and the Right differ fundamentally. They play completely different roles. They relate to the rest of society in different ways. We need go beyond their apparent similarities and grasp what they really stand for.

Mr. Ryzak distinguishes populism from two other ideologies. While populism champions the cause of some romanticized "people," Marxism is very clear about who those people are--namely the working class. Thus Marxism replaces a vague, moral (Ryzak's term) concept with a rigorous, socio-economic category. Therefore Marxists are not populists--we can exclude the latest leftist du jour, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from the category.

Similarly, Mr. Ryzak doesn't count "organized chauvinism" as populist. He believes right-wing movements claiming to be populist will always betray their followers. Using George Wallace's movement as an example, he writes

When the ­­Wallace supporter became the Reagan Democrat, the union members among them got what they wanted against the deadbeats and welfare mothers, but in the process they surrendered true solidarity. They were powerless against Reagan’s anti-labor onslaught. “Right-wing populism” always ends in the betrayal of its popular constituencies. This betrayal is nothing more than the logical conclusion of a politics which emphasizes indifference to deprivation and oppression: the real masters find it easier to deprive and oppress everyone.

Presumably he'd class Donald Trump's populism in this category--Mr. Trump's followers are being betrayed, and really they're just plain stupid for supporting Trump. Or, as the modern phrase has it, they're deplorable.

Finally, Mr. Ryzak concludes with a definition of populism that is really very clever.

Populism has a moralistic character which tries to awaken the pre-existing egalitarianism of the “people”. While it can have tremendous power, morality is often not enough to forge a durable politics which can construct a better social order.

On the one hand, populism is defined by its vagueness--accordingly Marxism is not populist. On the other hand, populism has a moral claim--overt racism is immoral, and therefore is not populist. I like and agree with Mr. Ryzak's definition, and nothing I say here contradicts it.

Populism's "people" need further elaboration. I suggest that populism always champions the middle class--not in the Marxist sense of being petty bourgeois, but rather as upholding righteous, American values. We all know what those are: work hard, support your family, pay your debts, save money. Your reward will be a chicken in your pot, two cars in your driveway, a house in the suburbs (with a pool if you want it), all located in a neat, clean, crime-free neighborhood where you can trust your neighbors. In a word, the American Dream.

Restoring that vision is what Trump means by "Make America Great Again."

The vision certainly has racial implications--the American Dream applies disproportionately to white people (and Asians). But it's not racist: my neighborhood fits that description to a tee--and most of my neighbors are Black. A friend of mine is a recent immigrant from India--he is so determined to have his daughters inherit the American Dream that he refuses to serve Indian food in his house. He's more Trumpian than even I am!

Trump's populism opposes the "elites," or at least those who want to regulate the middle class out of existence. Be it through higher taxes, or "climate mitigation", or zoning laws, or raising gas or electricity prices (one of Obama's goals), the elites are the economic enemy of the middle class. They are also often a cultural enemy, promoting "politically correct" values that do not lead to a middle class lifestyle.

Likewise, Trumpians also distrust the lower class--people who don't support their families, engage in petty crime, have a negative net worth, vandalize public property, or live off taxpayers' largesse. The lower class (in Trump's world view) are not defined by income as much as by values--call them lumpen values. Trump is very much against lumpen values.

And that informs his attitude towards immigrants. He wants to admit people "who love us," as opposed to those who come from "shit-hole countries." The language could be more civil, but the sentiment is widely shared. Do we really want a large influx of dirt-poor, illiterate, traumatized single mothers from El Salvador? Are those people who are going to Make America Great Again? Yes, sympathy and charity are important--everybody feels sorry for those Salvadoran women. And in small numbers it's alright to help them out. But as a nation we can't routinely allow the large-scale immigration from such a population.

On the other hand, immigrants like my Indian friend are warmly received. He really loves us (maybe too much so).

Some politicians are champions of the lumpen class: Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Maxine Waters.  Many others campaign on their behalf--Hillary Clinton foremost among them. After all, the Dems can't win without Lumpen support. Those candidates, by undermining middle-class values, are definitely not populist.

Mr. Ryzak places Bernie Sanders in that same class, saving his best line for last:

To remain on a level where Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump can both be described as “populist” is along the lines of saying a person is experiencing emotion without specifying whether they are feeling love or hatred.

And it is true: Bernie campaigned hard on a Lumpen platform--that all problems should be laid upon the government, and personal responsibility counts not at all. But his supporters? Maybe not so much. Yes, they certainly thrilled to Bernie's message, but it seems it was only virtue-signaling. For the Bernie Bros were academics, grad students, their hangers-on, and other people from the upper middle class. In reality it's hard to imagine a more middle-class audience. Beyond which Bernie never pretended to be a Marxist.

So message notwithstanding, Bernie's campaign was as populist as Donald's, though much less successful.

Further Reading:

• Affirmative Action
• Black Dispersal From Cities
• Subway Values

The North Star Ceases Publication

The North Star has apparently ceased publication. At least their URL (https://thenorthstar.info/) no longer works. Founded in order to reinvigorate Trotskyism by the lights of Bert Cochrane, it sought a non-sectarian Left. If anybody knows if they've moved someplace else, please let me know. Meanwhile, I've removed them from This Blog's Beat.

Further Reading:

• Classy
• Labor Strategy for the Coming Period
• The North Star

Oberlin 2018: Part 2

For Part 1, see here.

John Studer and Terry Evans author a second long piece about the recently completed Oberlin Conference. It covers a grab bag of different topics, and so comes off as more disjointed than their first article. A lot of it isn't worth commenting on: they're still on the US lost the Cold War shtick, to which they now add that the Cold War wasn't really about defeating the Soviet Union anyway. These ideas are just silly.

I was hoping this second article would shed some light on the status and future of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). It didn't. All I can do is read between the lines. We'll get to that in a minute--first some politics

Under the heading "Liberals attack workers' rights," Studer & Evans cite two pundits--first, the ever popular Paul Krugman, and then the more egregious Bryan Van Norden.

Mr. Krugman maintains the country is being led astray not so much by Mr. Trump as by his followers: the so-called deplorables. They've earned that moniker, in his opinion, and if they're not out-voted in the next election "America as we know it is finished." The Militant takes this as an insult to working people, who indeed built this country and have every right to their opinions.

In a limited sense I agree with Mr. Krugman. Trump's supporters (many of whom are workers) are not being radicalized (as Studer & Evans imply) but are instead being flattered and entertained. Which doesn't mean they're behaving irrationally. But Krugman is so certain of his own judgement and moral virtue that he can't imagine that anybody who disagrees with him could possibly have an honest opinion--they must instead be either crooks or dupes.

This very intolerance and willful ignorance is what makes Krugman so obnoxious. He thinks he knows better what is in people's best interest than the people themselves.

The very title of Mr. Van Norden's piece gives the game away: The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience. Needless to say, Mr. Van Norden is a pin-headed academic at Vassar College and obviously does not get out very much. He needs to go talk to people from other walks of life. He'll learn that people know more about their own lives than he does.

Neither Misters Krugman nor Van Norden have the foggiest clue what Trump is all about. The Militant's criticism is right on the money.

Under the heading "Women's rights and working class," Mary-Alice Waters makes the following unbelievable claim.

The subjugation of women “isn’t inherent to human nature,” Waters said. Its origins aren’t in conflicts between men and women but “entwined with the way communal structures of preclass society disintegrated. 

"Subjugation" is surely the wrong word--women are not always or even mostly subjugated. They didn't die by the tens of thousands in the trenches of World War I, for example. But the point is taken--women's roles in society are very different from that of men. Sometimes they're subjugated.

But it is at least partly "inherent to human nature." Given the evolutionary importance of reproduction, and given that men and women play different roles in that process, it is inconceivable that there aren't biological differences in body structure, brain structure, personality, and so on down the line. And in fact, there is--male and female bodies, brains, and hormones differ. By a lot.

One trivial example that crossed my radar screen recently makes the point. Of the hundred top chess grandmasters in the world, 99 of them are men. (Lone exception is Judit Polgar.) I won't claim to know why this is, but surely part of the explanation is biological. There is no way that socialization or male prejudice by themselves could have generated such an asymmetry.

So what's the future of the Party? Off hand they mention that a "year ago the SWP had just begun rebuilding industrial fractions." That's news to me--maybe I missed something? For the past many years the Party has just been "talking socialism," and abstaining from any actual "class struggle." I guess that's changed.

Otherwise the efforts of the Party are only briefly described.

These ranged from joining strikes and others workers’ and union battles, to activities supporting working people in Puerto Rico combating the devastation of U.S. colonial rule; from campaigning in workers’ neighborhoods with the Militant and books by revolutionary leaders; to participating in book fairs in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, the Philippines, and Cuba — and much more, as described each week in this working-class newspaper.

Beyond this is a short description of efforts at Pathfinder Press, led by Holly Harkness. Two new comrades are introduced to us--elsewhere in the issue the death of Wendy Lyons is reported. So net recruitment is one.

Why the paucity of news? One look at this picture (accompanying Studer & Evans' article) explains a lot.


Mary-Alice Waters (inset), despite dying her hair (!?), still looks every bit the septuagenarian she is. Her audience seems only slightly younger. Indeed, I think they average about my age--66. Sorry, but these are not the cadre who are about to rebuild American unions. Not gonna happen.

Let me take this opportunity to comment on the new on-line look of The Militant. Generally I like it. The paper definitely needed a facelift. There is a lot of useful information readily available, including copies of the International Socialist Review from the 1970s. I'll probably take a look at those.

Two small quibbles, and then a big one. I wish the issue date were more prominently displayed on the home page. One would more easily know what one is reading. And then the "Features" column on the right of the home page should be more clearly labeled. It does NOT contain articles from the current issue--that's very confusing to the novice visitor. That said, it's nice to have that Features column there.

The big complaint is that it's still a newspaper. All a visitor can do is read--there are no comments, no likes or dislikes, no space for guest commentary (from outside the movement), and apart from the very tightly curated Letters to the Editor, no room for any feedback at all. It's as if they were afraid of something.

So it's not a webpage. It's not an organizing tool. It's not a way to get people involved. It's not the center of a thriving community. Instead it is Truth from on High--all you can do is read it and sigh I sure am glad they understand everything!

Further Reading:

• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History
• Iranian Politics as Group Therapy
• Trotskyism & New Media

Oberlin, 2018

A second post on the conference can be found here.

Here is the banner above Jack Barnes' lectern at the 2018 Active Workers Conference, held in Oberlin, OH, June 14-16. (The Militant's account is authored by Terry Evans and John Studer.)

It nearly duplicated the proclamation decorating last year's conclave; only the phrase "Build the Labor Movement" has been added.

For the Party (Socialist Workers Party, SWP) sees a revival in the American labor movement, citing the wave of teachers' strikes last Spring. I think they exaggerate the significance. While the strikes won some pay raises in several states, there is no broader legacy. That moment has passed, besides which the last thing the world needs are stronger public employee unions!

As I said in my Oberlin, 2017 post, I have absolutely no idea how the Party can go any "deeper" into the working class (which, for the most part, doesn't even exist anymore). They've been trying that trick for 40+ years now, to no noticeable effect. I think they need a new slogan.

As for the "rulers' deepening political crisis," count me skeptical. Yes--doubtless the mainstream media, along with many pundits whose opinions I otherwise respect, are bemoaning our increasing polarization. For which there is at least some evidence, such as the personal threats and harassment against Trump administration officials.

Then again, I recall one of my first political acts, standing with a large crowd (mob?) outside a hotel in downtown Portland where Richard Nixon was spending the night during a visit to our city. We shouted slogans like "Hey tricky Dick, you better run you better hide, we're still united on the other side!" That seems hardly more civil than anything directed toward Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

And is the assassination attempt against Congressman Scalise any worse than the more successful efforts of the Weather Underground or Black Panthers? I don't think so.

So I don't buy the increasing polarization or near civil war scenarios. This is just politics as usual. The difference is the 24 hour news cycle, cell phone cameras, twitter feeds and social media generally. Everything gets all blown out of proportion. If anything--to borrow from Tyler Cowen's book--we've all become much more complacent.

Get past the slogans, however, and the Party's positions are a lot more interesting. I'm astonished with how much I agree with them! Indeed, remove some rhetorical flourishes and it's almost as if I'd written Mr. Barnes' speech myself.

For example,

The prospects opened by the Singapore summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean head of state Kim Jong Un, which concluded two days before the SWP gathering, are good for the working class, Barnes said — not just in the U.S. and Korea, but in Japan, China, and across the Pacific and the world.

Of course that's true--only a Democrat full of sour grapes could disagree.

Mr. Barnes suggests the President is following the SWP's advice.

Trump has also raised withdrawing some of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea — a proposal he first mooted during the 2016 elections — in exchange for the North Korean government taking steps to dismantle its nuclear missile program. The SWP calls, Barnes said, “For a Korean Peninsula, Japan and surrounding skies and waters free of nuclear weapons.”

 Beyond Korea, I'll take partial issue with this statement:

The current White House, Barnes said, has ceased acting on the false premise, one that has guided the last several Democratic and Republican administrations alike, that “the U.S. rulers can dominate the world unopposed in the mistaken belief they won the Cold War.” While Washington maintains massive military superiority over other world powers, it can no longer simply impose U.S. capital’s will through bloody wars — wars that have now gone on, from Syria to Afghanistan, for more than 17 years. Instead, the current administration is seeking to advance U.S. imperialist interests by moving to end some longstanding conflicts and pull in its horns to a degree, at least for now.

I agree with Mr. Barnes that the US is withdrawing from world conflict, and is no longer willing to act as the world's policeman. But I object to the idea that this is from a position of weakness. We supported our allies during the Cold War because we needed them. Now that we've won that conflict we no longer require their services--they'll have to fend for themselves. Then, as Peter Zeihan points out, fracking changes everything. We're no longer dependent on Persian Gulf oil, and accordingly our willingness to compromise with Iran about nuclear weapons is greatly diminished.

But that's a minor point. Outcome of the Cold War conflict notwithstanding, Mr. Barnes describes US policy reasonably accurately.

The Party's account of the situation in Syria is confusing, but then Syria is intrinsically confusing. They are certainly right that Russia and Iran are not natural allies. Then again, Russia and Israel aren't natural allies either, as Mr. Barnes seems to claim. Surely Israel and Turkey have a common interest in Syria, and they'd share cause with the USA but for the Kurds, whom Americans staunchly support.

But the Kurds are a Persian people, whom Turkey regards as a fifth column. I think eventually the US will throw the Kurds under the bus and reestablish a strong alliance with Turkey--as a counterweight to Russia. Which pushes the Russians back into an alliance with Iran. And then the Egyptians and the Saudis,...??

Oh, alright. The whole thing is a headscratcher. The Party's account is no worse than any other. All I can say for certain is that Bashar al-Assad--the progenitor of the entire disaster, and for a long time the key to its resolution--is today irrelevant. He is entirely at the mercy of whatever foreign power holds sway over his country.

The article devotes only one sentence to Israel.

Washington also sent President Trump’s son-in-law and White House Adviser Jared Kushner to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in late June to discuss the next stages in advancing its Mideast peace plan, Barnes said.

I'll take it as an opportunity to remind readers that the Party's position on Israel is now quite sensible. They have sharply distanced themselves from openly antisemitic groups like Hamas. Instead--like me--they understand that a better life for Palestinians does not imply the complete destruction of Israel. Indeed, there are some obvious win-win solutions for that conflict, and it is only groups like Hamas that refuse to consider them.

That brings us to the final paragraph:

Despite the U.S. rulers’ intentions, these moves — from Korea to Moscow to the Middle East — can have positive results for the working class and toilers, helping to open much-needed political space to organize; to gain class-struggle experience against their respective capitalist ruling classes; to strengthen ties of workers solidarity across imperialist-stoked national and religious divisions; and to take steps toward the building of new working-class leadership.

I don't know what that's about. I think it's meaningless Trotsky-talk. Unlike Mr. Barnes, I have no telepathic connection to "U.S. rulers", and I can't tell you what their intentions are. But if you get rid of phrases like that, and other words like class struggle, imperialist, working class, etc., which collectively add nothing to the conversation, I think the Party's analysis of world affairs corresponds closely to mine.

Further Reading:

• Iranian Politics as Group Therapy
• Teachers' Strikes: The Difference a River Makes
• Strikes, Janus & Amazon
• Is the SWP Moving Right?