Wednesday, July 31, 2019

What Determines Political Opinion?

The conceit of this blog is that my arguments are so compelling and my writing of such spectacular quality that the scales shall inevitably fall from my former comrades' eyes and they'll all become Republican Trump supporters.

Of course that almost never happens. People rarely change their political opinions because of argument, spectacular or otherwise.

So what determines people's political opinions? There are several points of view.

The first may be called Marxian. It maintains that politics derives from economics, and a person's political opinions will roughly follow their economic status. In the narrowly Marxist sense this reduces to bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, and proletarian sympathies. As this blog has relentlessly pointed out, that taxonomy no longer fits the modern world very well.

The larger Marxian premise is alive and well, however. It's shows up in simple-minded form in the MSM as blue-collar voters elected Trump. A more sophisticated, Marxian perspective is proposed by Joel Kotkin, author of the recently released The New Class Conflict (which I have not yet read). It is summarized in an important article here.

In Kotkin's view, US society exists in four classes: the Oligarchy, the Clerisy, the Yeomanry, and the Serfs. The oligarchs are the top 0.1% of our society--roughly equivalent to the bourgeoisie. The clerisy are "made up of academics, the media and well-paid professionals — represent[ing] some 15 percent of the American workforce." The yeomanry represent "small business and property owners." I'd suggest it constitutes most Americans with a positive net worth. Bringing up the rear are the serfs--people who are too poor to accumulate any wealth at all, or who have smothered themselves  debt that they'll never be able to pay off.

That all sounds very clear, and it has considerable explanatory power. But it falls apart when I try to apply it to myself, my family, friends and colleagues. Am I a member of the clerisy? After all, I retired as a professor at full rank, making me an academic in good standing. But I retired from Two-Bit State College--not Harvard. How far down in the academic pecking order can one get and still be a cleric in good standing?

Unlike most of my colleagues, I retired on a 401K rather than with a state pension. That means I have a lot more money than they do--if I can't rise to clerical status I'm definitely a yeoman. My retired colleagues, while they have much less money, do get a state pension--which politically isn't much different from a welfare check. Are they clerics, yeomen, or serfs? (Or are retired folks declassed altogether, as a traditional Marxist might maintain?)

And so on. It all dissolves into ambiguity. And none of this predicts my vote or that of anybody in my family. Maybe we're just special--but I don't think so.

A second explanation for political opinion is that it is a personality trait. A leading exponent of this model is Arnold Kling, author of The Three Languages of Politics. My review (here) briefly summarizes the thesis:
Kling suggests that there are three political ideologies in America, which he roughly labels as Progressive, Conservative and Libertarian. These three groups use different languages--that Kling calls heuristics--and from this he derives a three-axis model. Progressives organize ideas around an oppressor/oppressed axis. Hence they are primarily interested in social justice, and in righting historical wrongs. Conservatives think in terms of a civilization/barbarism axis. Accordingly they emphasize stable institutions (church, family, law), and tend to resist sudden changes. Finally, Libertarians orient according to a freedom/coercion axis. They're worried about big government, too much taxation, gun control, and too much environmental regulation.
How one aligns along the three axes (I'm halfway between the conservative and libertarian) is personality trait. Given that the adult personality is roughly 50% genetic and 50% random chance, a person's political opinions are substantially inherited and in any case unchangeable in adulthood--at least in terms of basic priors as summarized by the three-axes model.

This, of course, contradicts Kotkin's Marxian view--neither clerics nor yeomen share a common set of personality genes. It also means that political conversation is mostly a waste of time--we'll always be talking past each other no matter what we do.

The third model is group affiliation. A core human desire is to be part of a group, to have a reliable set of kin and friends who will stand with each other through thick and thin. People thus go to great lengths to demonstrate their allegiance to the group. Religious practice is a common example. The devout parishioner visibly demonstrates his loyalty to the group, proving that he can be trusted no matter what.

Some groups demand not a religious faith, but rather a shared set of political principles. The academy is an obvious example. To be a member in good standing of the academic club you have to hold reliably Progressive opinions. It doesn't matter what your genotype is, nor is any randomness in your background a factor. Absent vocal progressivism your chances at getting an academic job, much less acquiring funding and tenure, shrink dramatically. Accordingly academics are ostentatiously Woke and aggressively Green.

A lot of this is self-selection. People who aren't Woke or Green often shy away from academic careers. Though some of my colleagues are nowhere near as committed to those principles in private as they are in public. In many cases they're just not interested in politics at all and only go through the PC motions. Others (like me) are actual Conservatives, and mostly we just keep our mouths shut.

Nevertheless, group affiliation explains why the academy is so relentlessly Leftist. To a lesser degree the same is true of school teachers and civil servants. On the other side, some religions also impose a political dogma on their adherents--they will often be Conservative.

The fourth and last possible determinant of political opinion is identity politics. It maintains that people of a given ethnicity share common genes, culture and/or experiences, and thus will share common politics. The Progressive version of this story has become cartoonish, but I have succumbed to it myself. Since reading Albion's Seed, I have been seeing Yankee, Quaker, and Scots-Irish influences everywhere. (See my review of Colin Woodard's book here.)

While Progressives say they subscribe to Identity politics, what they really mean is a form of group affiliation. The latter easily explains why academics vote 90% for Democrats. African-Americans also vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Progressives claim this is because of their unique genetic/cultural heritage, i.e., their identity. Though it is a stretch to think that African-Americans are so uniform in genotype and culture. Of course they're not, but voting Democratic has become a cultural touchstone--you're not genuinely African-American if you can't toe the line.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley recently put it very well. She said "we don't need Black faces that don't wanna be a Black voice." She's not playing identity politics, but rather trying to enforce group affiliation.

It won't work. Unlike academics, Blacks are not self-selected. They were born into an ethnic culture. That culture is much more heterogeneous than Ms. Pressley will have us believe. I think the days when Democrats can simply take the African-American vote for granted are coming to an end.

None of these models are mutually exclusive, and all of them describe some aspects of reality. Surely people respond to economic stimuli. For example, teachers vote to pass school budgets. But to suggest that blue collar workers voted for Trump for economic reasons stretches credulity. For that phenomenon group affiliation is a better predictor. Likewise, identity politics might have some merit--there really are many Americans of Scots-Irish descent, and they often vote similarly. But to think they'll vote as a solid block is to overstate the case.

While I'll give much credit to all of these models, I still think they're incomplete. It's a quaint thought, but I do believe people have free will. Its remit is pretty small, but it's still there. It means that ornery, unpredictable, thoughtful people still can change their minds independently of money, genes, or culture.

So there is reason for me to write my blog after all.

Further Reading:

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Book Review: Donald J. Trump

The full title of this biography by Conrad Black is Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other. Mr. Black--Canadian-born, one-time newspaper mogul and a former US prison inmate recently pardoned by President Trump--is a spectacularly talented writer, despite his discursive, complex, literate style. Among my friends I call him "my favorite Canadian," and I read his columns religiously.

Obviously this isn't the definitive biography of Trump--the man is still in mid career. We'll have to wait a decade or two before that comes out. Equally clear, it isn't a hit piece--Mr. Black is upfront about his pro-Trump sympathies. 

Nor is it a hagiography, perhaps best described by Edmund Morris (Theodore Roosevelt's biographer) who says you can't fall in love with your subject. Mr. Black avoids (maybe just barely) falling in love, and is sufficiently honest and clear-eyed to find fault.

What you will find here is first-class journalism. It's a background piece on today's top story, and apart from it's length it could appear in any newspaper or magazine.

Trump comes by his hucksterism honestly. His grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, arrived in the US in 1885 at age 16. Mr. Black surmises that he took the name Fred Trump at the port of entry. He first traveled west to Seattle, and then on to the Canadian Yukon, where he "operated restaurants, bars, and hotels, catering to prospectors." But "most accounts allege that he was in fact operating whorehouses and clip joints, sometimes with no lease or title to the land." Eventually he settled in the Bronx, marrying his childhood sweetheart from Germany.

Donald Trump was an ingenious businessman, but borrowing to the limit, played very close to the edge. When the economy tanked in the early 1990s, bankruptcy seemed inevitable. He took full advantage that neither banks nor bondholders wanted that outcome. The lenders didn't know how to run a casino, nor did they have the celebrity to promote it. Both knew that only he could maintain the value of the property. Trump leveraged this to the max, renegotiating the loans at very favorable terms, saving his personal fortune.

I previously believed that Trump became a politician by accident--that the campaign was initially a PR stunt designed to promote his business. Indeed, Trump obviously didn't think he was going to win--not even at the last minute. But Mr. Black makes a convincing case that Trump planned a presidential campaign far in advance of the event. He was long interested in politics, especially as his business turned from buildings/casinos into licensing his own name as a brand. Trump's long shot bet on a campaign is risk-taking typical of the man, and does not indicate lack of seriousness.

Trump's political tactics revolve around two principles. The first is never back down or apologize. He broke this rule at least once: following the release of the Billy Bush tapes, where Trump said he "can get away with women, including grabbing them 'by the pussy.'" This was made public a few days before the second debate with Hillary Clinton. Trump's first response was to apologize, saying "Anyone who knows me knows these words do not reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize." It made him sound like any two-bit political loser.

But then he fought back: he held a press conference with three women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault, and a fourth woman--a victim of an actual rape--whose assailant had Hillary Clinton as a lawyer and was acquitted on a technicality. Oddly not mentioned by Mr. Black, Trump invited these ladies to sit in the front row during the debate.

Far from backing down, Trump "flipped the script", accusing Mrs. Clinton of precisely what she had accused him of. It worked. I read recently that the Trump campaign thinks this maneuver saved the election for them.

The second tactic is truthful hyperbole, including obvious exaggerations, such as requiring press secretary Sean Spicer to say that his inauguration was "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, both in person and around the globe." That one probably didn't help him any. But Mr. Black also writes that
Trump, the grand impresario, had entered "an environment that was ripe for bombastic, inflammatory outrageous statements without having to suffer the consequences," where extreme partisanship, public cynicism, general disregard for traditional expertise, and accumulated public anger did not discourage his natural tendencies toward hyperbole and did not really punish lapses into fabrication.
Mr. Black, writing a biography, sticks close to Trump's own truthful hyperbole formulation. But I will go further and claim that Trump is a teller of tall tales.

A tall tale differs from a lie in that nobody is expected to believe the tale. Indeed, Trump is a master story teller--that's how he can keep an audience spellbound for over an hour. Stories must have a plot, and that requires exaggeration and simplification. The "alternative facts" have to fit the story--not reality.

The most famous tall tale (which Mr. Black doesn't mention) is the tag phrase "...and Mexico will pay for it." Nobody ever believed it--it was just an applause line--and that's why he suffers no political damage upon not being able to deliver. His critics--who invariably accuse him of "lying"--miss the point completely and make themselves look like fools in the process.

As Salena Zito famously wrote, "the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."

Trump is neither an intellectual nor an analytical thinker. He traffics in metaphors and parables. He doesn't have a "program" in the way Hillary or Elizabeth Warren do. His slogans are all evocative, emotional, and vague--easily misunderstood.

For example Nancy Pelosi thinks his slogan Make America Great Again, really means Make America White Again. I find that completely implausible, but I'd be hard pressed to find a specific quote where Mr. Trump explicitly denies it.

Likewise, I think Trump is pro-immigration, but he insists that it be legal. We should admit people "who love us." But others (both critics and supporters) interpret his rhetoric as trying to shut the door, or that we should only admit white people. I think they're wrong, and my post Good Trump, Bad Trump makes that case.

The amorphous nature of Trump's appeal makes him hard to pin him down. Some people think he's a "racist"; others, like me, think he's rebelling against political correctness. Some people think he's ignorant about "climate change." Others, like me, believe he's not gonna throw good money after a non-existent problem.

Those three issues (or at least my interpretation of them)--immigration, political correctness, and "climate change"--are what inspire my support for the man. Plus he's such a great storyteller.

Let me give Mr. Black the last word, who compares Mr. Trump to his predecessors.
In international relations, Richard Nixon was a chess player and Ronald Reagan a poker player, and both were very successful. Trump seems more of a pool shark, but it seems likely he will do well too.
"Pool shark" is a good word in many contexts--not just in international relations. It's part of Donald J. Trump's genius, as beautifully described by Conrad Black.

Further Reading:

Monday, July 15, 2019

Does The Militant Support Smaller Government?

The Militant (publication of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)) prints two articles of interest. The first, by Roy Landerson, is entitled 2020 election debates show crisis of bosses twin parties, while the second, by Brian Williams, is Almost half of all US workers live ‘paycheck to paycheck’.

The first article is a critique of the Green New Deal, championed by the irrepressible Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). Mr. Landerson asserts the following:
Millions of working people distrust both capitalist parties and want to discuss an alternative to the anti-working-class course of successive Democratic and Republican administrations.
In the face of this, the liberals work feverishly to corral working people back into the rulers’ two-party shell game, to convince us we absolutely have to back the “lesser-evil” among the bosses’ parties or disaster beckons.
There are so many things wrong here, beginning with the word millions. 95% of voters cast ballots for either Democrats or Republicans, and most of the remainder plump for the Libertarians. The fraction who subscribe to the distrust that Mr. Landerson describes is tiny--likely less than 1%.

So it is a stretch to suggest that "liberals have to work feverishly" to corral working people back into the shell game. Very few sheep have gone astray--and those that have are mostly voting for Trump. The clamor for an independent labor party of socialist stripe is minuscule.

Yet corralling is precisely the motivation that's attributed to AOC. She's not entitled to any honest opinion--hers is solely a mission of bait-and-switch deception. I think this is grossly unfair. However much I disagree with AOC, I'm certain she really believes her own bullshit. She is truly convinced that "climate change" is the crucial issue of our age, and that mass poverty is the only solution.

It's nonsense on stilts. Unfortunately, it's nonsense that claims the allegiance of a large part of the electorate--much larger than those demanding a labor party. The Green Party, for example, was founded on such a program. Most grouplets on the Left have enthusiastically signed on to climate-catastrophism, e.g., Socialist Action, even if they refuse to support the Democratic Party.

The Militant, to its great credit, understands the "nonsense" part, though Mr. Landerson unfairly imputes dishonest motives to AOC.
The hook Ocasio-Cortez advances to try and convince workers to back her call for a bigger, stronger capitalist state is fear of climate-change-generated disaster. Hysterical — and unscientific — claims of impending catastrophe are supposed to make you happy to turn your life over to the government.
Then comes the really strange part:
President Trump says he has “cut more regulations … than any other administration,” part of the Republicans’ claims to be partisans of “small government.” ... 
The Democratic aspirants all claim they want ever more regulations and government agencies to place the “smart” meritocrats in every government nook and cranny to do “good” for the downtrodden, who’ve proven too dangerous to make decisions for themselves. ...
Trump says all socialists like big government. But if you look at the real continuity of the revolutionary working-class movement — from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia to Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution to the program of the SWP today — you see the opposite is true. Writing in 1871, Marx explained that the Paris Commune, the first time that the working class held power, “made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions — cheap government — a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and state functionarism.”
So apparently The Militant claims to support small government, in solidarity with workers who support Trump. They agree with the premise that regulations and the administrative state are the enemies of freedom.

But then comes the ludicrous claim that Marxists are NOT for big government! Tell that to the Cubans, whose very livelihoods are stifled by myriad rules and red tape. The former USSR was no slouch in the regulatory department, either. But apparently Revolutionary America is going to cut all defense spending and government functionaries.

And it is on that very weird promise that workers are supposed to vote SWP in 2019 and 2020.

The second article, by Mr. Williams, claims that
Four in 10 U.S. workers struggle to pay their bills, a recent UBS bank survey showed, and would confront a crisis if faced with a $400 emergency expense. One quarter of U.S. residents skipped necessary medical care in 2018 because they couldn’t afford the cost.
And more:
After adjusting for inflation, 50 percent of U.S. households have less income today than they did 30 years ago, the Federal Reserve Bank reports. While more jobs are available today, increasing numbers of workers are forced to work two or even three jobs to make ends meet. Wages are less than $18.58 an hour for half of all U.S. jobs, and more than a third pay less than $15. Some 4.3 million workers seeking full-time jobs are forced to accept part-time hours, the government admits.
Mr. Williams never explains, but one assumes that his cure for this will be higher taxes and more regulations--all in a futile effort to raise people's standard of living by fiat. Of course that will fail in a major way--see Venezuela for a recent example.

But if that's Mr. Williams' view, then it openly contradicts that of Mr. Landerson, who (correctly) argues that government regulations are the problem rather than a solution. This is very funny for unintentional reasons: "Landerson" is likely a pseudonym--the name does not appear on The Militant's masthead. I'm reasonably certain that the person behind the name is Mr. Williams himself. So he's schizophrenic--in one article he tells the truth (that regulations make people poorer), while in the second he suggests the opposite (that we can, by magic regulations, make people richer by fiat).

A couple additional points:

Debt Explosion: Mr. Williams complains that workers are too far in debt. Of course that's true--and not just workers. Practically everybody wants to spend beyond their means, and merchants are happy to extend credit. Ray Dalio has an excellent video on that topic here. But what is Mr. Williams gonna do about it? Prohibit people from taking on debt? Talk about a nanny state infringement on freedom.

Speed Up: Mr. Williams is exercised about automation, which he terms speed up. The example he picks is Amazon, which now uses robots that "that swarm around the 2,500-worker Amazon warehouse on Staten Island in New York bring goods for pickers to pack at breakneck speed, raising the rate from 100 items an hour to between 300 to 400."

And this is bad? Surely using machines to augment human labor is a good thing. Indeed, increases in productivity are the only real way people can actually get richer. But like all his socialist brethren, Mr. Williams is a true Luddite.

Brian Williams is a smart guy. Back in the day we nicknamed him Brainy--it still fits. But his ideology traps him in contradictions.

Further Reading:




Sunday, July 14, 2019

Trump Calls Out the Squad

So Trump just told the Sqaud (AOC, Omar, Pressley, Tlaib) that if they don't like the USA they should go back to their own, miserable, misbegotten countries.

Some thoughts:

1) The comment is over the top. Only Omar was born abroad, in Somalia. For some reason Somalis have come here expressly to become an aggrieved minority. So in her case, the request to go home and fix Somalia first before she tries to fix us may not be too far fetched. The rest were born in the US. AOC is of Puerto Rican ancestry, in which case she's an American back many generations.

2) The comment is not racist. It is a criticism of four individuals. It may be stupid, over the top, uncivil, etc., but it does not apply to any large group of citizens on the basis of race. There's nothing there that even remotely implies that all Blacks should go back to Africa, or some such.

3) It's a Godsend to the Squad. AOC must be overjoyed--it puts her squarely in the national spotlight. Their professed indignation is purely for show.

4) It won't hurt Trump at all. In a recent poll I read that AOC has a national approval rating of 13%--far below Trump's 46%. I have no data on Omar (who really is a racist), but I doubt she'd clear the single digits. The Squad is wildly unpopular, and widely perceived as representing what's wrong with America.

5) The real target of the attack is Nancy Pelosi, who is now between a rock and a hard place. She has been trying to diminish and isolate the Squad as nothing more than four votes in Congress. In return they've tarred her as racist (which she doesn't deserve any more than Trump). But now she's forced to stick up for them, and further, after a call-out from the President they're no longer just four irrelevant votes. Then Trump is claiming to support Pelosi--which is as embarrassing as it will be hard to disown.

6) Pelosi's predicament will make it much harder to keep control of the House in 2020. Swing-seat voters hate the Squad--and if Pelosi goes all squaddy they won't vote for Dems.

7) The 20 little dwarfs (Dem candidates) are similarly challenged--they either go all-in, Squad-crazy, or they end up siding with Trump. Liz has already picked the Squad--which will likely doom her presidential campaign. (Unless she can somehow credibly disown them later.) 

So as silly and over-the-top as it sounds, Trumps tweets are a stroke of political genius. Now all he has to do is watch the shit fly as the Dems tear each other apart.

Further Reading:

Monday, July 8, 2019

Jeff Mackler Interviewed by Paul Duddridge

Kicking off his super-ambitious, game-changing presidential election campaign, Jeff Mackler was a guest on Paul Duddridge's podcast (h/t Nick Baker). I listened to it last night. I don't have a transcript and comment on it from memory. The podcast is 53 minutes long.

Mr. Duddridge is a remarkably fair and astute interviewer. Of the available 50 minutes, Mr. Mackler was speaking for about 40 of them. During the first half hour Mr. Duddridge lobbed straightforward, softball questions toward him, letting his guest say his piece. Only in the last 20 minutes or so were the questions a little bit probing. Even then, Mr. Duddridge rarely interrupted, and apart from insisting on answers to his questions, he never argued back.

Mr. Baker describes the podcast as follows (emphasis mine):
Duddridge, an extreme example of a pro-capitalist, free-trade, “economic nationalist,” an advocate of no government interference in any aspect of human endeavor, and a Trump supporter who believes that the current president exemplifies these qualities, nevertheless features on his podcasts dissident Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarian Party members, with whom he jousts to present his ideas, all essentially in defense of “free market” capitalism as opposed to the “socialism” that he sees ever encroaching on “freedom” in present day America. Mackler’s debate with Duddridge, edited by Duddridge to highlight his own views and undercut Mackler’s, is nevertheless noteworthy not because it is likely to reach a broad audience but rather because it provided a limited opportunity for a socialist to express some fundamental revolutionary propositions.
If there was any editing it must have been very minor. There really is no way Mr. Mackler can claim he's been misrepresented. I think Mr. Baker's statement is an admission that his candidate didn't perform very well. I doubt this interview will be featured on the campaign circuit.

Mr. Mackler is very much prone to exaggeration. He opens by claiming that Socialist Action (SA) has "thousands" of members. He does not disabuse his host's impression that he'll be campaigning in all 50 states. Unfortunately he was never asked about ballot status, but if he had been I'm not sure he would have admitted that SA likely won't be on the ballot in even a single state.

SA's actual membership is likely around a hundred people. And I'll remind my readers that during Mr. Mackler's 2016 run his sole campaign activity was a five-day tour through Southern New England.

Mr. Mackler makes two central points:
  • That capitalism inevitably leads to mass impoverishment and environmental disaster.
  • That the only solution is an independent labor movement, completely separate from the Democratic Party, which he views as a bourgeois organization.
There is, of course, no evidence of mass impoverishment since the dawn of the industrial revolution and the birth of capitalism. From then until now the standard of living of nearly every human being on earth has done nothing but get better. Mr. Mackler never claims otherwise.

Instead, he complains about extreme wealth inequality. His exaggerations get more and more outlandish as the interview wears on, but I'm pretty sure near the end he asserted that only six people own half the wealth in the entire world! Mr. Mackler's claim is absurd, but many Leftists make the same sort of argument. Andrew Gavin Marshall, for example, in an article entitled World's Top Billionaires suggests that in the United States, "...the top 1 percent own more than 36 percent of the national wealth and more than the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent." He arrives at those numbers only by taking a very narrow, cherry-picked definition of wealth. (See my post here.)

Do six people own 50% of all real estate in the United States? And do the same six people receive 50% of all disbursed social security benefits in the United States? Do only six people purchase 50% of all cars sold in the United States? Of course not. Yet those examples represent wealth that is not captured either by Mr. Marshall's legitimate statistics, or by Mr. Mackler's ridiculous assertions.

Wealth is much more widely spread than our socialist friends admit.

Mr. Duddridge pressed his guest on two issues. The first was the simple question: Has socialism ever been successful anywhere in the world?

It's a perfectly straightforward, predictable question, yet Mr. Mackler seemed totally flustered. His initial answer was to recite all the revolutions that had happened in the past: the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Russian Revolution, etc. Of course, Mr. Duddridge agreed--there have been lots of revolutions. That wasn't the question.

When backed into a corner, Mr. Mackler cited two examples of supposedly successful socialism: Russia from 1917 to 1923, and Cuba. If only those evil imperialists hadn't intervened, then surely those two countries would be much better off than anyplace else.

If only? Aren't socialists supposed to account for the possibility of "imperialist aggression" and defeat it? What's the point of socialism if it can't even withstand poorly enforced sanctions? Is that a record that will inspire people to try it again?

Yet those were the only two examples of socialism that Mr. Mackler claimed to be proud of. It's a pathetic list. Later in the program he noted that, despite accomplishing a successful revolution in 1949, China is today a capitalist country. Unmentioned was the slaughter of 50 million people by the socialist government before Deng Xiao Ping finally called quits on the experiment. Mr. Duddridge, lacking either time or energy, didn't chase that rabbit to the ground--Mr. Mackler got away with one.

The second issue upon which Mr. Mackler's bluff was called was climate change. SA states categorically that climate change is a cataclysmic threat to human civilization, and depending on what part of Mr. Mackler's interview you listen to, we have only 10-12 years to fix it. How building a labor party independent from the Democrats is going to resolve this problem within the narrow timeframe is a topic our guest never addressed.

Mr. Duddridge cited mainstream scientific expertise, which says that absent the Paris Climate Accords, climate change becomes irreversible after 2100. With the Paris Accords (assuming they're fully implemented), disaster day doesn't strike until 2106. In other words, the Accords buy us at most six years.

The conclusion is that climate change is irreversible. Nothing we do today will materially change the outcome. So how, Mr. Duddridge asked our socialist friend, is curtailing fossil fuel use of any consequence? The die is already cast.

Mr. Mackler--he who wants to put us on a massively impoverishing course of fossil fuel elimination--briefly argued against defeatism, and then reasserted his claim that his proposals will make a difference.

"What's your evidence?" demanded the host. And this is the funny part--Mr. Mackler had no prepared answer to that very obvious question. He--the purveyor of imminent, end-of-the-world cataclysm--couldn't provide even a single anecdote in support of his proposition. Paraphrasing from memory: there's the guy from Stanford--Jacobson. And then I can't remember his name, the guy from NASA. (I think he means James Hansen.)

That's it! On the basis of two names we're supposed to put the whole fossil fuel industry out of business, hugely increase the price of transport, electricity, and industrial products, and impoverish millions of Americans with Mr. Mackler's harebrained schemes.

The man is stunningly ignorant. And completely unprepared for this or any other interview. Surely if you believe in imminent cataclysm you'll have better evidence at your fingertips than this.

What happened to those Trotskyist presidential candidates of yore? Fred Halsted argued William F. Buckley to a draw. Silver-tongued Peter Camejo could draw a crowd of hundreds. Even Linda Jenness actually inspired her followers.

But Jeff Mackler? Socialist Action needs to fire him as a presidential candidate. The man is a disgrace.

Further Reading:





Sunday, July 7, 2019

Oberlin, 2019

From left, John Studer, Dave Prince, Holly Harkness, Steve Clark, Jack Barnes (speaking), Mary-Alice Waters, Norton Sandler, at closing session of SWP conference June 15. Banners summarized continuity of Socialist Workers Party since 1919 founding of first communist party in U.S. and other Active Workers Conference themes.
From left, John Studer, Dave Prince, Holly Harkness, Steve Clark, Jack Barnes (speaking), Mary-Alice Waters, Norton Sandler, at closing session of SWP conference June 15. Banners summarized continuity of Socialist Workers Party since 1919 founding of first communist party in U.S. and other Active Workers Conference themes.
(Picture and Caption Credit: The Militant/Arthur Hughes)
The lead article about the 2019 International Active Workers Conference (aka Oberlin Conference) isn't very long and doesn't say very much. But there are three other articles in the same issue of The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)) that are obviously related. I'll cover two of them here.

The people pictured above are mostly folks I remember from my youth, specifically John Studer and Steve Clark. It's odd that neither the leadership nor the pecking order has changed very much over the last 40 years. Just as Kremlinologists used to be able to tell who was up and who was down by looking at the seating order on the dais, it's also works for the SWP. The top dogs are Jack Barnes, Steve Clark and Mary-Alice Waters. Dave Prince and Holly Harkness are likely on temporary rotation. Norton Sandler is a nonthreatening old standby. John Studer sits on the end like an afterthought, present only because of his competence, not because he has any authority.

Mr. Barnes claims that the Party "is a little bigger this year," urging his comrades on to recruit more. They're very proud of new Comrade "Kaitlin Estill, 27, from Oakland, California," who joined the Party last year. Indeed, while it is not so labelled, I'll guess that this is a picture of her:
Top, participants view some 30 displays depicting work and political lessons of communist movement. Above, participants snap up books and pamphlets by revolutionary leaders.
Photo Credit: The Militant/Carole Lesnick
Given her youth and gender, it won't surprise me if she's on the dais next year, perhaps replacing Dave Prince.

The slogans are the usual Trotskyist word-salad, i.e., mostly completely meaningless. The "100 years" dates from the May 1st, 1919, founding of the Communist Party USA, which the SWP marks as the beginning of its own movement. The "right side of history" is a bit disconcerting to anybody who thinks they're on the far left--but yeah, I was smart enough to figure it out after a second or two.

I have absolutely no clue what "Advancing Along the Line of March of the Working Class" means. Why is of italicized? Weird.

The Party has always believed it is guided by the Holy Spirit, immune from serious error.
In his political report, “100 Years ‘On the Right Side of History,’” Barnes said that the SWP is the only party in the U.S. whose continuity as communists is unbroken. Other groups once claiming that continuity to the Bolsheviks tossed it aside — in deeds long ago, but more recently in words as well. Some, like the International Socialist Organization, have imploded and dissolved, with many ISO leaders and members going into the Democratic Party. Other organizations are well along the way.
It begs the question: If the SWP is so correct, then why is it so small? Surely if Marxism/Leninism/Trotskyism/Barnesism is correct, then some popular recognition of the One True Revolutionary Party must follow. Either the SWP is wrong, or Marxism/Leninism/Trotskyism/Barnesism is wrong. Or (most likely) both are wrong.

For all its infallibility, I think the Party completely misreads the current situation. The lede paragraph:
As working people face the grinding effects of the capitalist rulers’ economic, political and moral crisis and their wars abroad, SWP candidates and campaign supporters call for independent working-class political action, Barnes said. They point to the necessity for working people to break with the bosses’ government and state, as well as their twin parties, the Democrats and Republicans.
In a world where unemployment is at record lows, profits are at near record highs, and indicators of well-being (airplane travel, new cars sold, cheaper prices for consumer goods) as good as ever, it stretches credulity to think we're in a "crisis." Of course there are problems. Does the Party even suggest that it will eliminate all problems? Some of the problems are serious. But to suggest that we're at an end-of-the-world, cataclysmic crisis of capitalism/imperialism is not believable.

If we were in a crisis, it's not clear how "independent working class action" will solve it. It might just make it worse, as it did in Venezuela and Cuba. In the event, building an independent, working class party is a long-term endeavor--hardly a suitable response to an immediate crisis.

The second article (indirectly) about the Conference is Liberal's Green New Deal is a trap for the working class by Terry Evans. The key graf:
[Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez [AOC--ed] promotes a “Green New Deal,” backed by many of the Democrats running for president, as the central vehicle to accomplish this. She says, “We are facing a national crisis,” a catastrophe from fossil fuels and “climate change,” that requires a massive strengthening of the capitalist state to address it. And, she adds, the massive mobilization it would mount would create jobs.
 AOC suggests a Second World War style mobilization of the American people, just as Roosevelt did in 1941.
“When FDR called on America to build 185,000 planes to fight World War 2, every business leader, CEO, and general laughed at him,” the “talking points” for the Green New Deal Ocasio-Cortez released says. “At the time, the U.S. had produced 3,000 planes in the last year. By the end of the war, we produced 300,000 planes. That’s what we are capable of if we have real leadership.”
Such a mobilization is necessary to fight "climate change", says AOC. A side benefit is it will employ all workers, just as fighting the Nazis reduced unemployment in the 1940s.

Under a heading "Do we need bigger government," The Militant's criticism of this is right on the money (emphasis mine).
Like Roosevelt’s New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats today view workers and farmers as the objects of government policies to be administered, rather than people who are not only capable of fighting to change the conditions the bosses and their governments impose on us, but to transform themselves through that fight to take political power.
And so it comes: The Militant opposes big government for precisely the same reasons that I do--namely it infringes on individual liberty. The government has no right to "administer" our well-being.

Unfortunately, the paper goes off the rails in two ways. First, their alternative to big government is even bigger government. Their solution is a totalitarian state, euphemistically described as "independent working-class political action." That's really mob rule, with no protection for the individual allowed for. If you don't like what the "independent working-class" decides, then there's a bullet reserved just for you.

Second, there is a good argument to be made for fighting the Nazis. The Militant dismisses that as just an internecine squabble between imperialists, but obviously it was more than that. On balance the world is surely better off because Hitler (and Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung) are no longer around. To the extent we Americans aided that process we were doing the Lord's work.

There is no similar argument for the fight against "climate change," which in my opinion is mostly a non-problem. Or at least it's an insoluble problem--there is no reason to think that AOC's remedies will have any significant impact on the climate.

Instead, just as World War Two made everybody much poorer, so too would the Green New Deal. I'm against poverty, and I'm for Liberty. So I oppose the Green New Deal. And while I agree with The Militant's criticism of the project, I strongly disagree with their alternative. Mob rule destroys both human lives and livelihoods.

A Republic guided by a Constitution that explicitly says what the government cannot do is the best form of government ever invented by the human race.

Further Reading: