Chicago: Ilona Gersh Runs For Mayor

 

Ilona Gersh, right, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Chicago, discusses fight of rail workers and the need for solidarity with co-workers at Alpha Baking Company Dec. 18.
(Picture & Caption Source: MILITANT/LISA ROTTACH)

I knew Ilona Gersh very well. She was the organizer of the Chicago Branch when I first moved there back in 1972. For at least a few months I shared an apartment with her and her roommate, Pearl Chertov. It was among the happy times of my life: I had a mission, I had friends, and we had fun.

I recall Ms. Gersh as a very serious but kind hearted person. She rarely smiled. I regarded her as my boss in those days, and I very much respected and admired her. She was totally business-like and competent. I'm not surprised she's still in the Movement.

If good character is required of a Chicago mayor, then Ms. Gersh is more than qualified.

I confess I wouldn't have recognized her from the picture. The sunglasses certainly don't help, and neither does the winter coat. It reminds me of our January days selling Militants at 63rd & Halsted. Then again, she's a lot older than she was back in 1972 and it's been a very long time. She is at least a couple years older than me, which puts her about age 73 or 74. I think she's probably in better physical shape than I am--which means she probably wouldn't recognize me, either.

The sad thing is that she is still working! The article announcing her candidacy (by Naomi Craine) has this lede:

The Socialist Workers Party announced Nov. 29 that it is running Ilona Gersh, a lifelong fighter for the interests of the working class, for mayor of Chicago. Gersh is a bakery worker and member of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union Local 1.

So I suppose bakery work involves some strenuous physical activity. I doubt I would be capable of doing it today. And surely most bakery workers at her age have retired. At very least she should be living off social security by now, and union bakers must have some kind of pension plan. I think it's very sad that she still has to work to support herself.

Perhaps she is working just so she can participate in the union movement? That would be consistent with her character. In that case it's voluntary and I admire her for still having the stamina to do it.

Or perhaps she's working because she has contributed all her savings over the years to the Party? This looks to be foolish. It's one thing to contribute to the Party if that is such an important part of your life, but to forfeit your retirement savings is taking it too far. She should have put some money aside.

Related to the above, perhaps she doesn't get a pension at all? Pensions are awarded to long-time employees--those who put 20 or 30 years into the job. The Party has a habit of moving comrades about fairly regularly, which means they can't keep a job for any length of time. It may be that Ms. Gersh has only had her current job for only a few years, in which case no pension will be forthcoming.

I suspect she is still working in part because she has no choice. As I say, I think this is very sad.

Ms. Gersh's campaign program can be summed up in a short paragraph (from Ms. Craine's article).

“Working people need to break with the Democrats, Republicans, and all other capitalist parties,” Gersh told the Militant. “We need to build our own party, a labor party, based on our unions, that can organize to fight for our own class interests in face of the economic, social and moral crises of the capitalist system. ..."

That's pretty much it. If you vote for Ilona Gersh you'll get a promise to build an as yet non-existent labor party built on a union movement that represents about 10% of the workforce (most of whom are public employees).

There is nothing about crime, homelessness, the terrible schools, the city and state's crushing debt, or any other issue that confront Chicago voters. What they really need, claims our candidate, is a party that doesn't even exist.

This alleged party does have some programmatic planks, to wit:

“Employment is a central question facing working people in Chicago and beyond,” Gersh said. “We need a union-led fight for jobs, with wages, hours and schedules that mean workers can be with their families and be politically active, rather than be torn apart by the bosses’ drive for profits.

That's weird. The BLS (pdf) reports that the unemployment rate as of October, 2022, in Chicagoland metro was 4.3%. In Cook County it was 4.9%. In the city it is about 5.3%. The national average (Oct., 2022) was 3.4%.

So Chicago is above the national average, but that's because of very high taxes and corrupt government. Still, unemployment is historically low, and wages for low-skilled workers are rising faster than average. Poor employment prospects does not seem like a major campaign issue right now.

“The labor movement needs to fight for a nationwide government-funded public works program, to create jobs and build and produce things that working people need,” the SWP candidate said.

Just what we need--more public employees! Unlike Ms. Gersh (who actually bakes something that people want to buy), most public employees contribute little to our total welfare. The teachers' union, for example, has reduced the public schools to a glorified babysitting service--when they're not pretending to teach over Zoom calls. We have more than enough public employees already, yet Ms. Gersh is calling for more of them.

Finally,

Gersh and her campaign supporters will join in fights in the interests of working people worldwide, including against Moscow’s assault on the independence of the courageous Ukrainian people and the protests by workers and youth in Iran today.

Ms. Gersh is entitled to her opinions on foreign affairs, but this has nothing to do with the City of Chicago, and she has no right to hijack its citizens into supporting her disparate causes, no matter how worthy.

I'll vouch for Ms. Gersh's character, but there is no other reason to vote for her for Mayor in 2023. 

Further Reading:

• Teachers Can't Teach
• Taxi Troubles
• Does 2013 Rhyme With 1934?

The Harm Reduction Team

Physician Mike Pappas works for a "harm reduction facility" in New York City, and writes a piece for Left Voice entitled Eric Adams Prescribes More Cops and Prisons for New York’s Poor and Oppressed. Who can be against harm reduction? And whose harm are they reducing?

Dr. Pappas' lede (link in original):

Last week, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced his new directive allowing cops to forcibly remove people from public areas and involuntarily detain them for transport to hospitals. The mayor’s guidance expands previous definitions which allowed cops and qualified professionals to involuntarily detain someone if the individual is deemed to be a threat. Now, the new recommendations allow cops to detain people if they deem they are “unable to meet their basic needs.”

My wife and I spent two days in Singapore last month, sightseeing. The most striking feature is that there are no beggars or homeless people on the streets or in the subway. It's the only city in the world that I've been to with that feature. This makes the city much more pleasant for the tourist. It is safe to walk around late at night. One doesn't need to fear pickpockets or muggers. One certainly doesn't have to worry about aggressive panhandlers on the subway.

It's much easier to be a tourist in Singapore than in New York. The no-beggars policy is obviously successful--this site claims that the "city of Singapore is very popular with international travellers. In 2019, it reached the 4th place of the world's most popular cities with 19.76 million tourists." For a city with less than 5.5 million people, this is pretty impressive (and even more impressive if you consider there isn't really very much to see there!).

Of course tourists aren't the only beneficiaries. The city hosts lots of hotels--we stayed in a big one--employing thousands of people. A key draw is the food--there are hundreds of restaurants at competitive prices. (For a delicious cheap-eat, go to the Chinatown Market.) The shopping centers are to die for. A rule of thumb is for every two tourists you need one employee. There are nearly 70,000 hotel rooms in Singapore, which at double occupancy results in 140,000 tourists every day. That means 70,000 people are employed taking care of them.

No wonder Singapore is such a rich country! When it comes to harm reduction, getting the beggars off the streets earns city residents some serious cash!

But Dr. Pappas will undoubtedly ask What happens to the mentally ill? the indigent? the addicted? Fair questions, those. Given the city-state's draconian drug laws, the addicted are probably in jail. The mentally ill are housed in hospitals--or at least some place that pretends to be a hospital. And the indigent are likely provided with subsidized housing--and told to stay there.

Singapore is not a free country. Civil liberties don't carry much weight. A harm reduction method that works there will not work anyplace else in the world--certainly not in messy, rambunctious, lively New York City.

At the same time, what Dr. Pappas calls "harm reduction" doesn't really cut the mustard. His horizon of "harm" extends only as far as the homeless--he wants to make their lives more comfortable. He ignores the welfare of an urban neighborhood when a few dozen homeless people camp out in their park, depriving them of its use. He doesn't see the effects on city life when homeless people shelter in subway stations or on trains. He pretends that mentally ill people pushing people on to subway tracks is not a real problem (only isolated incidences, he'd claim). He forgets that for every shooting in Times Square, there are thousands of potential tourists who decide they'd rather not spend their money on Broadway.

A New York Times article from this past March says that there are about 50,000 homeless people living in shelters. Nevertheless,

While it is difficult to accurately count the number of people living unsheltered, the city’s most recent estimate, conducted in January 2021, tallied about 1,300 people sleeping in subways and about 1,100 on the streets. Many advocates consider the estimate to be an undercount.

Those 2400+ people living rough are doing great harm to the remaining 8.465 million New Yorkers who don't sleep in subway cars or commandeer park benches. They scare tourists, commuters, restaurant patrons, pedestrians, and anybody else who wants to live in a civilized world. Mr. Adams' proposal is a perfectly reasonable effort to get people who for whatever reason can't follow rules of common decency and courtesy off the streets. This looks to be a police function--harm reduction for that small group of people can happen at the facility where the cops drop them off.

I also strongly urge the mayor to arrest turnstile jumpers and panhandlers. These are a small group of uncivilized people who hijack public conveyances for their own selfish purposes. Securing the right of 8.465 million New Yorkers to enjoy public spaces that they pay for constitutes a much greater degree of "harm reduction" than anything Dr. Pappas proposes.

In his headline, Dr. Pappas claims the homeless are "oppressed." This is not true--not even by Marxist standards. "Oppression" happens when surplus value is taken from workers in the form of profit. Homeless people are not workers, and they contribute nothing of value, much less surplus value. Instead they are thieves, stealing public spaces from workers who pay to ride the subway to work every day, and who deserve the quiet enjoyment of their ride.

The homeless, the turnstile jumpers, the squeegee guys--they're not oppressed. Instead, they are the oppressors. One can certainly feel sorry for them at some level, but they have absolutely no right to take over the subway or other public spaces.

Unfortunately, the harm reduction crew, which includes Dr. Pappas, isn't entirely innocent. Here is what it seems they're really interested in.

Workers at OnPoint NYC [a city-funded harm reduction outfit--ed] officially submitted their demand for voluntary union recognition on Thursday, December 8. The workers, who are demanding union recognition with the New England Joint Board of UNITE HERE, are calling their union OnPoint United. They are fighting for a wall-to-wall union, greater job security for employees, better healthcare, and a democratization of the workplace.

The truth will out! The harm reduction folks are more interested in their own bennies than in any serious harm reduction. Indeed, their incentives look to be entirely in the wrong place. The more homeless people there are, the more their services will supposedly be needed, and the more money they'll get. Rather than "harm reduction," their goal appears to be the exact opposite. They benefit most when the homeless population expands.

The vast majority of New Yorkers are civilized people. They deserve to live in a civilized city.

Further Reading:

• Louis Proyect and the More-Poverty Solution
• "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
• Unionizing Hotels?

Crypto & Socialist Action

This is now the second post in a week about Socialist Action (SA) and its chief honcho, Jeff Mackler. SA claims to be a "Vanguard Party," i.e., a Party that will lead us all to living happily ever after in a socialist utopia. That claim is belied by the fact that the Party has shrunk to minuscule size--indeed, it's arguable that Mr. Mackler is the very last member--the Vanguard Person. Or perhaps he's the Messiah? Who knows?

In the event, SA has become so small and so irrelevant that it's hardly worth paying them any attention at all. They're not even important within the narrow context of American Trotskyism, which this blog is vowed to cover. And yet here we are.

The reason for the favor is that Mr. Mackler attempts to do something important. He is, as far as I know, the first person on my Beat to actually discuss bitcoin and cryptocurrency. For this he deserves some credit. All the more is the pity that he understands absolutely nothing about the space. He's so ignorant that I have no choice but to make fun of him.

Full disclosure: I bought most of my bitcoin back in 2015, when it was very cheap, and sold all of it by the end of 2021--at a very healthy profit. For the moment I own no bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. That should make me an expert (and compared to Mr. Mackler I am), but I have to confess that until it went bankrupt I had never heard of FTX! I attribute that (in retrospect) to the fact that I never watch sports, am unaware of how stadiums are named, and don't see any of the ads on those channels.

So now it is my sad duty to correct Mr. Mackler's many errors of fact about bitcoin and crypto. His article is entitled Behind Sam Bankman-Fried’s Cryptocurrency Crash.

Mr. Mackler writes

A competitor, CoinDesk, apparently hacked its financial balance sheet and made it public, revealing grave discrepancies between FTX’s claimed worth and the reality of its investment portfolio. All hell broke lose as investors ran for the hills. In a matter of days most of FTX’s $32 billion evaporated.

CoinDesk was not a competitor, but is instead a news site covering the crypto space. They didn't really "hack" anything, but reporter Ian Allison did some good journalism. Mr. Mackler's bad habit is to never cite his sources. In this case we can correct the error: Mr. Allison's piece is here. 

Mr. Mackler writes "Cryptocurrency has been largely unregulated; it was only in the IRS’s 2022 tax forms that an item appeared regarding reporting cryptocurrency income." This is not true. Crypto showed up on the 1040 form in 2021, and maybe earlier. The IRS issued guidelines for "digital assets" as early as 2014.

Bitcoin, by construction, is completely decentralized and can't be regulated. This is seen by many people as a feature and not a bug. Indeed, I find it kinda weird that Mr. Mackler supports "bourgeois" regulation. More, the vast majority of bitcoin trading takes place outside the USA, and is obviously not subject to American regulations.

What can be regulated are the on and off ramps--i.e., the process of buying or selling bitcoin for dollars. This is increasingly true in the US. The biggest US exchange, Coinbase, is required to obey all KYC/AML laws (Know your customer/Anti-money laundering). They're also required to submit some information to the IRS. But transactions from one bitcoin wallet to another are impossible to regulate.

Mr. Mackler informs us that

Its touted blockchain technology, powered by tens of thousands of computers, consumed some 0.55 percent of the world’s energy supply. It was said to be impenetrable—free from government oversight and, thus, free from tax obligations. Anonymous crypto speculators, called miners, spent countless hours pouring [sic] over new deals and opportunities. Initially, it was a dreamworld for anti-government-intervention libertarian politicos, who marveled at SBF’s [Samuel Bankman-Fried] gifting NGOs and related altruistic causes millions of dollars.

I'm not sure what the initial "Its" refers to. Is he talking about crypto generally, or is he just referring to bitcoin? I don't think he knows. Crypto coins can be mostly put into two classes: proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. Bitcoin uses a proof-of-work algorithm--and that does consume a lot of energy. Though I'm doubtful it's as high as Mr. Mackler claims--and in any case it's lower now than it was when bitcoin was at its high in 2021. (As usual, Mr. Mackler provides no reference for his data, so it's impossible to check.) Most other coins--notably ethereum--use the proof-of-stake algorithm, which uses much less energy. Both methods have their fans, but you can put me in the bitcoin camp. Mr. Mackler lumps them all together and ends up with confused mush.

The bitcoin network--started in 2009 by "Satoshi Nakamoto"--has proven itself impenetrable. Nobody has hacked it. The on/off ramps have been successfully hacked, and some users have lost their passwords to thieves, but the blockchain itself remains sacrosanct. I'm not sure that's as true with the proof-of-stake coins.

Mr. Mackler clearly does not understand the role of miners. Yes, perhaps some of them are speculators. Few of them are anonymous--bitcoin wallets are only pseudonymous, and once one cracks the pseudonym all trades are a public record. But the main purpose of the miners is to handle transactions. If I send bitcoin to Mr. Mackler (heaven forbid) then it's the miners' job to see that those coins are transferred irreversibly from my wallet to his wallet. That's what they do, and in return they're paid some small amount of newly minted bitcoin. It has nothing to do with "speculation" or "poring over opportunities."

Finally, Mr. Mackler has his history mixed up. The kooky Libertarian influence was strongest shortly after bitcoin was founded--say from 2009 to 2015. Since then bitcoin has entered mainstream consciousness and the ideologues have mostly been sidelined. FTX was founded in 2019--long after bitcoin had matured. Nathaniel Popper wrote a book published in 2015 that I reviewed. Mr. Mackler should read my review (or better yet, the book).

The remainder of Mr. Mackler's piece attempts to show that the whole crypto thing is just a bourgeois plot to destroy the working class, just as what happened during the 2008 financial crisis. I don't have the energy or space to go through it in detail, but it's just as sloppy as his account of crypto. 

He keeps referring to the government's response to the 2008 financial crisis as a "bailout," and then asserts that FTX wasn't "bailed out" because it lacked connections with the "ruling class." Of course it is impossible to "bail out" crypto--a bank is not the same thing as a blockchain. That Mr. Mackler can't tell the difference says something about Mr. Mackler.

In any case, the word "bailout" is inappropriate. The Federal Reserve was simply following Bagehot's law (1873) as best it could, which states that "to avert panic, central banks should lend early and freely (ie without limit), to solvent firms, against good collateral, and at ‘high rates’". In other words, all the Fed did was lend money--it didn't give anybody anything. I believe all or most of that money was paid back--at a high rate of interest. It's impossible to lend money to a blockchain.

In my aforementioned book review, I write

So what do Trotskyists think about bitcoin? I have absolutely no clue. My guess is that few of the papers on my Beat would know the difference between a blockchain and a cement block. If you're stuck in a 19th Century timewarp, then new technology becomes a mystery.

I'll give props to Mr. Mackler for at least trying, but unfortunately he still seems to be at the cement block stage.

PS  Let me link to this excellent post by Scott Alexander.

Further Reading:

• The Eurodollar
• Peak Bitcoin?
• Jeff Mackler Quits the 2020 Race

Conventions

There are two conventions of note: one that has already occurred, and another that has yet to happen.

The past convention was Socialist Action's (SA) 20th biennial meeting, implying that the "Party" has been around for forty years now. The Political Report is published on their webpage here. Apart from "November," no information is given about when or where the meeting happened. I suggest the venue was Jeff Mackler's living room--probably large enough to accommodate the dozen or so remaining members of the organization.

Why I bother writing about this is beyond me. Following SA is a waste of time. I have not read the entire Report, but what I have read strongly suggests it was written by Mr. Mackler. Indeed, apart from an occasional web post from his sidekick, Marty Goodman, there is no other literate person remaining in the mini-grouplet.

I also conclude that the whole document is balderdash from start to finish. There is no point in going through it in detail--it's completely illogical. But here are a few random highlights (lowlights) harvested from my brief perusal.

Mr. Mackler begins with the old Marxist chestnut, writing

The imperialists ceaselessly aim to counter what Marx described as the “law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.”

There are so many things wrong here: 1) the "imperialists" don't exist, and certainly don't give a shit about any alleged tendency. 2) There is no tendency for the rate of profit to fall. 3) If there were such a tendency it would be a good thing, since it would lower prices for consumers, and finally, 4) Mr. Mackler has no idea what this sentence means (assuming it means anything at all). He can't define profit, or rate of profit, and he has no idea how to measure any alleged tendency. He's an economic ignoramus.

Nevertheless, undaunted (with ignorance being bliss), Mr. Mackler proceeds to blame all the world's problems on mythical imperialists worried about a nonexistent tendency.

I really should have stopped reading here, but I didn't. So let me again mention Mr. Mackler's penchant for just making stuff up. He asserts factoids that can't possibly be true. There are no links in the Report, and no bibliography with references at the end, so there's no way to check Mr. Mackler's supposed "facts." For example, he writes

Today U.S. imperialism, with 1,100 military bases in 110 countries [Recent Congressional reports put the number of countries with ongoing U.S. military operations at 159!] reigns as “the chief cop of the world.” Its overriding objective is the subjugation and exploitation of poor and oppressed people and nations to advance the economic interests of U.S. imperialism.

How can the US have 1,100 military bases? And to what end? This makes no sense and isn't true. He cites "Congressional reports," but provides no reference where to find them. I doubt they exist. It is true that the US has embassies and consulates in most of the world's countries. Each of those embassies has a Marine guard--and I suppose if you count those as a "military base," then you'd generate a number in the couple hundreds. But then all large countries (China, Canada, Russia, etc.) have embassies around the world with attached guard contingents, so in this respect the US is no different.

Mr. Mackler writes

Tragically, comrades in Socialist Action found themselves on opposite sides of a war that today few, if any, consider anything but yet another U.S. imperialist slaughter, a slaughter that took the lives of 500,000 Syrians.

Somehow Mr. Mackler credits all 500,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war to the United States. And then claims near universal agreement that it was "another U.S. imperialist slaughter." This is absurd. Nobody outside of Mr. Mackler's living room believes the US murdered 500,000 people in Syria. To the contrary, the USA has all but kept out of that conflict altogether.

Enough already!

The future convention is that of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), scheduled for later this month. The current issue of The Militant informs us that it is a three-week issue, implying that the event will happen soon. But for now all I can do for you is speculate.

1) Previous conventions have been advertised in The Militant, inviting people interested in the SWP to attend. No such invites have appeared for this convention. This suggests that some sensitive topics are up for debate. As far as I know, this event has only been mentioned once.

2) There's some weird shit happening in the Party. They're rearranging their longstanding policy on abortion. In the most recent issue they are apparently rethinking their position on Taiwan.

3) The Party seems to be doubling down on its defense of Donald Trump. I confess I can't now find the article I'd like to cite (I'll pull a Jeff Mackler here), but I recall a phrase where they took issue with Trump Not Now voters (as distinguished from the never-Trump people). I'll admit that I'm in the Trump not now camp--he's got way too much baggage and he's caused the GOP to forfeit too many elections. I'm getting tired of losing. I think Trump was a great and transformative president, but it's time for him to retire. In a word, The Militant is more pro-Trump than I am (as hard as that is to believe).

4) I'm hoping there will be a change in the Party's leadership. The trio of octogenarians now leading the Party need to be replaced by younger people. I'll root for my old roommate, Brian Williams (who may also be the mysterious Terry Evans). OK--he's not much younger--but at least he's only a septuagenarian. And he's still active in the Party.

Anyway, we'll see.

Further Reading:

• John Studer Makes a Boo-Boo
• Wittenberg, 2022
• The Declining Rate of Profit
• Comrade Keith L. Writes About China

Brian Williams, Inflation and China

Thousands protest ruinous inflation in Prague, Czech Republic, Sept. 28, one of several actions around the world demanding relief from the crushing impact of unfolding capitalist crisis.
Source: Reuters/David W Cerny; Caption: The Militant

I typically commend my friend and former comrade Brian Williams for his economics coverage. He's among the very few on my Beat who actually knows something about the subject and who makes some effort to report it honestly. But I gotta say, his latest article, published in The Militant and entitled Soaring prices wreak havoc on working people worldwide, disappoints. It's not really about economics, and instead it's boilerplate propaganda that's not worth reading. That said, it's a slow week in Trotsky-Land and so here we are.

Trotskyists--and Mr. Williams is no exception--are against inflation. In this they agree with 99.5% of the global public, which makes them boringly mainstream. He writes,

Rising prices are wreaking havoc with the lives of working people and our families worldwide. Inflation reduces the value of our wages as we confront higher costs for food, fuel, housing and other essentials, and rising debts. ...

Sizable protests against these assaults have been held in many countries. In France thousands joined protests in dozens of cities Sept. 29 during a one-day walkout called by the CGT union federation. They denounced rising food prices and moves by French President Emmanuel Macron to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 or 65. “Increase our salaries, not the age of retirement,” Metro conductor Ludovic Le Ny, told the Wall Street Journal in Paris.

Demonstrating against inflation is rather like demonstrating against earthquakes--it's under no one's control. Inflation arises when the supply of money exceeds the demand for money, which means the value of money goes down (i.e., things cost more). The supply of money is imperfectly regulated by central banks (in the US the Federal Reserve Bank), but even they can't control it with any precision. The demand for money depends on no central authority, but rather on collective consumer behavior. Nobody can control that, not even the Marxist despots in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or China.

So it's not clear to me what the protesters pictured above expect to accomplish. They're wasting their time.

What astonishes me is that Mr. Williams thinks our primary problem is inflation. Trotskyists--of all people--surely should be able to identify the root of our difficulty: our standard of living is declining. Inflation is not causing this, but does result in part from efforts by governments to make people feel richer by giving them extra money. In the US this has come in the form of "stimulus checks" and "student loan forgiveness." But extra money doesn't make people richer--it just raises prices.

Why is our standard of living going down?

There is one big reason and several smaller contributing reasons. Let's consider the small stuff first.

The Ukraine war and accompanying sanctions on Russia have taken a big chunk of global energy supply off the market. This has a dramatic effect on Europe--and will definitely lower their standard of living until the supply can somehow be replaced.

Likewise, the war has reduced global food production and distribution. Together, Russia and Ukraine were the world's leading wheat exporters. This hugely disrupts the food supply in the Middle East and will likely lead to famine. Egypt--which now grows cotton as a successful cash crop--will have to abandon that to grow its own food. Egyptians will be getting a lot poorer.

The US has a serious labor shortage, caused by the retirement of the baby boomers, sharply declining birth rates and declining immigration, and increased social dysfunction such as drug abuse. The result is increased wages and stronger unions (arguably good things), but also serious shortages of healthcare workers, airline personnel, and skilled trades. Many small businesses are being forced to close.

Mr. Williams obviously doesn't understand this. He writes

A large number of newly created jobs are at low pay, forcing an increasing number of workers to take on a second or even a third job to make ends meet. At the same time, bosses are hiring part-time workers with few if any benefits, and pushing speedup, as part of their drive to defend their profits and to weaken our unions.

This is not true. Starting wages for low-skilled labor is now over $20/hour in many parts of the country. Companies like Starbucks are belatedly realizing that they're going to have to treat their employees a whole lot better.

But the big problem--the one that Mr. Williams barely mentions--is the demise of China. George Friedman explains it very clearly. While I believe this video was recorded some years ago as a prediction, it is a prediction that is now coming true.

China is bankrupt. Twenty percent of the world's productive economy is now going out of business.

The ramifications are global--and huge.

• The US used to import lots of stuff from China. That's not happening any more--our manufacturing is being repatriated. (A huge new chip manufacturing facility is opening near Albany, NY). It will take some years for our supply chain to readjust, and there will be an additional strain on our labor supply, but within five years Americans won't even know that China is missing.
• While the US was China's biggest customer (by far), Germany was China's biggest supplier. To manufacture all that stuff, China needed machines and machine tools--most of which were imported from Germany. That market has disappeared--China ain't importing nothing. For the first time in decades Germany is running a trade deficit. The German standard of living is declining not just because of energy, but because there is no market for their products. Basically, Germany (and the EU) is screwed.
• Many Third World countries are in the same boat as Germany. Mr. Williams mentions South Africa. South Africa's leading exports are gold, platinum, cars, iron products, coal, manganese, diamonds. Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but a lot of those girls live in China--and they're not buying diamonds any more. Gold is also a luxury product for which the Chinese market no longer exists. I'll suggest that (apart from cars) the other items on the export list were headed to China. Indeed, China was South Africa's largest export market--and it's gone. South Africa is just as screwed as Germany--there is no ready substitute market for its exports.

So Mr. Williams tells us about irrelevant demonstrations against a mostly irrelevant problem--namely inflation. I don't know who those poor souls in Prague should be demonstrating against, but maybe Chairman Xi is the place to start. Not that it would do any good--China is still bankrupt.

Further Reading:

• Labor Notes 2022: Starbucks
• Keith Leslie's International Report
• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"

The American Right and Trans Rights

We academic, petty bourgeois types enjoy writing think pieces, letting us expound on the issues of the day. It's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and the conceit will have it that they make a difference in the world of ideas. In reality, of course, it's a way for the leisure class to occupy its time, because--after all--we don't have to work too hard for a living. We thinkers rely on American capitalism to slough off enough wealth to assure us that life's necessities will take care of themselves.

Our thoughtful essayist for today does his cogitating over at Left Voice (LV)--a leading mouthpiece for the petty bourgeois far-Left. Ezra Brain pens a thinker entitled Polarization, Economic Crisis, and Class Struggle: The Contradictions of the Political Moment. His byline tells us that "Ezra is a NYC based theatre artist and teacher," which suggests that he's not all that worried about where his next meal is coming from. Like me, he relies on the folks who stack produce at the supermarket for his sustenance.

Anyway, Mr. Brain's thinks are as good as anybody's, and his article is worth reading. Obviously I disagree with him. I believe he misses on two counts. He mischaracterizes the American Right, and his opinions on LGBTQIA+... matters are far from the mainstream. I'll close with a note on pronouns.

He writes (links omitted):

One of those strongest tendencies in the national situation is the advance of the Far Right and the escalating attacks on democratic rights — most notably the right to bodily autonomy and the right to vote. This right wing advance has echoes of the “culture wars” of the 1990s and early aughts, but it has some differences. First, this round of right-wing attacks on civil rights is successfully rolling back rights that were already legally enshrined. In other words, rather than just preventing the oppressed from winning more concessions from the state, the Right is successfully taking back concessions already won — such as the right to an abortion.

There is a contradiction here. The words "Far Right" suggest some kind of fringe movement. On the other hand "successfully rolling back rights" supposes support from at least a plurality of the electorate. I think designating what is longstanding Republican opinion as "Far Right" is not accurate. Center Right would be a better term.

And then I think he's factually wrong. The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision didn't rule on abortion at all. It merely clarified who in our system of government is supposed to make that decision. The Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision (1973), which ruled that abortion was a "right" under the "penumbras" of the Constitution. The Dobbs decision rejected that (admittedly weak) reasoning and said that, rather than the Court, it is the States that should determine abortion law.

Politically, the GOP is the loser from the Dobbs opinion. Advocating a (more or less) complete ban on abortion was great virtue signaling, and as long as the bans were hypothetical it was a vote getter. (After all, who doesn't want to be pro-life?) But after Dobbs it is no longer hypothetical, and it turns out that near total bans on abortion are very unpopular. See, e.g., Kansas, where abortion rights won a referendum in landslide.

The near total bans now common in red states will soon be overturned by an angry electorate. Mr. Brain's fears are not warranted. The "Far Right" isn't "Far," and it won't be successful in "rolling back" the right to abortion.

Regards trans rights, Mr. Brain opines that

...the Right’s attack is more radicalized than before, as reflected in its goals. For example, the last wave of anti-trans bills was focused on banning trans people — but, as is almost always the case, specifically transfeminine people — from using the public bathroom associated with their gender. This is, of course, a heinous and right-wing attack on basic rights, but it is primarily aimed to restrict trans people’s ability to integrate into public life. Put another way, the attacks sought to restrict which public spaces trans people have access to.

Mr. Brain is inventing "rights" out of whole cloth. Nobody has a Constitutional Right to use the women's toilet--not me, not Mr. Brain, and not anybody else. Standards of public decency are determined by majority rules--and since the majority are by a wide margin heterosexual men and women, it's they who get to write the rules. A reasonable standard (in my opinion) is that people without penises can use the women's toilet if they want to--because people without penises represent no sexual threat to women. Post-op trans women are easily accommodated by this rule. 

These new attacks, however, go further and attempt to attack trans people’s right to transition at all. From attempting to make gender-affirming health care for youth a felony, to designating gender transitions as child abuse, to removing trans health care from Medicaid coverage — the current wave of right-wing attacks on trans health care seek to forcibly detransition people or stop them from ever transitioning in the first place. In this sense, these attacks are aimed at restricting trans people not only in public spaces but also in private ones.

Mr. Brain and I are obviously starting from different places, as his personal webpage shows. He clearly exists somewhere along the LGBTQIA+... spectrum (I don't know enough about it to say where). I conclude he has no children and never will have children, and therefore he knows nothing about being a parent. If he did, he couldn't possibly have written the paragraph quoted above.

I, meanwhile, have children and now grandchildren. Like all parents, I want my children to grow up to be successful and fertile adults. That is, I want grandchildren. I definitely don't want my kids or my grandkids to decide, on their own and at a prepubescent age, to volunteer for irreversible infertility treatments. What Mr. Brain calls "gender-affirming care" really is a felony--as is castrating young boys against their or their parents' wishes.

Given his life history, I'll forgive Mr. Brain for not understanding that. But his opinion will never gain traction among people with children and grandchildren. It's a political lost cause, restricted to the remotest regions of the academic/petty bourgeois Left.

Finally, a comment on pronouns. Mr. Brain, in his CV (pdf), asks that I refer to him as "They" or "Them". I refuse to do that because it's ungrammatical, and Mr. Brain--for all his travails--has no authority to change the rules of English grammar. Like toilet usage, when it comes to grammar it's the majority who get to determine how language gets used.

More--and specific to this blog--one of my purposes here is civil discourse. For that reason I always address my interlocutors with an honorific--usually Mr. or Ms. It's a token of respect despite disagreements. There is no honorific (that I know of) for "they" intended as a singular pronoun. Since our friend has chosen "Ezra" as his given name--commonly associated with men--I have used the corresponding pronoun and honorific: Mr. Brain.

Further Reading:

• It's Not Just About Abortion
• Elections 2021--Race and Transgender
• Book Review: The Future of Higher Education

Tucker Carlson & Martha's Vineyard

iew YouTube video Tucker Carlson: Is an

Tucker Carlson is having a field day (actually, at least two of them) talking about Martha's Vineyard. This video is 21 minutes long, but I recommend watching it. He makes the Trumpian point very clearly, though please remember that he's an entertainer first (a very good one) and a political pundit only second. He points out the stunning hypocrisy of the Vineyarders (who sport signs saying "hate has no business here") as they arranged for the military to escort all 50 brown faces off their precious island within 24 hours. One resident said it was "like taking out the trash" (though he apparently intended his remarks to be attributed to DeSantis, but that was not clear from his context. The tweet was removed).

In a previous video Tucker suggests the Vineyarders should be joyful that 50 Venezuelans were sent to join them. After all, the island is 89% white, and since "diversity is our strength," welcoming 50 diverse Venezuelans should be a cause for celebration. But no joy--diversity was gone by military escort the following day.

So Mr. DeSantis has learned trolling from the master himself. And it's worked like a charm. It wiped Trump completely off the front pages for at least two days--important since the Dems want the election to be all about Trump. It makes the Dems left look ridiculous and hypocritical, reduced to phony accusations like "kidnapping" and "human trafficking, and asserting that everybody else is racist except for the enlightened denizens of Martha's Vineyard. Apparently Mr. DeSantis' trick forced the Biden administration to actually admit to a high-level meeting about immigration. Until now they've publicly ignored the issue. 

Though I've read enough commentary to realize that the Dem counterargument isn't entirely off-base, though it's clear Republicans won the news cycle by a country mile. The best Dem talking point was that the islanders' reception was not as hostile as Tucker will have you believe. (His "Froot Loops" segment is by far the weakest part of the video.) There were islanders who worked hard to make sure the Venezuelans got fed, showered, clothed and put up for the night. Yet it's odd that they couldn't persuade even 5 or 6 of them to stay on the island. Surely, with the nationwide labor shortage, there'd be more than enough work for them to do. And with the off-season island now full of empty hotel rooms, the purported lack of housing doesn't ring true either.

It was noted (I read this somewhere) that while the seasonal residents are the privileged, ultra-wealthy Obama-types, the year-round residents of the island are not like that at all. Instead, they're the servant class: the housemaids, groundskeepers, cops, chauffeurs, local officials, etc. Thus they responded as do similar workers in red states, i.e., with hostility to a large group of people who are coming to compete with them for jobs. (Not sure I believe that, though it could be part of the story.) As Tucker points out, red-staters in such circumstances are accused of being deplorable, bitter clinging racists. Obviously the Dems can't charge their own servants with such crimes--and hence the embarrassment. 

But both Tucker and the Dems miss the elephant in the room. They both conflate the Venezuelans with our American homeless population. And perhaps that's understandable, for they are, at least for the moment, homeless. They sleep on sidewalks, they haven't showered in weeks, they walked through the Darien Gap jungle, etc. The only thing missing are the hypodermic needles sticking out of their arms.

But the refugees are as different from our mentally-ill, addicted homeless people as night is from day. For the Venezuelans were, until a few years ago, solidly members of the middle class. Recall that their country used to be the richest in South America, until Hugo Chavez (enthusiastically cheered on by Progressives everywhere) put Venezuela on a path toward economic suicide. So these poor people have now spent the very last of their assets to come to the United States.

But, lack of money notwithstanding, these aren't really poor people. They're people with substance and middle class attitudes. They will do very well in America--like the Cubans before them.

• In three months they'll have a job and a place to live.
• In two years they'll speak English and own a car.
• In five years they'll have professional jobs and some of them will be buying houses.
• In fifteen years many of them will be citizens and they will vote.

None of these people will ever vote for anything that even remotely smells like socialism! That's why I call them the Future Republicans of America. Tucker sells them short--he thinks they're gonna be indigent indefinitely (as is likely true of many Salvadorans). He's afraid that they'll never assimilate into American culture and will change the country for the worse. He is just wrong!

The Dems are also wrong--though maybe deep down they realize what's happening. Inviting a whole bunch of incipient Republicans to NYC and DC (not to mention Martha's Vineyard) puts Democratic urban machine politics at risk. That's perhaps why they actually hate the immigrants so much that they have to get rid of them as fast as possible.

Tucker is wrong in another way as well. He shows a clip of Joe Biden saying that a country of 330 million can afford to bring in another two million immigrants. For once I'll side with Joe--he's right. Not only can we do it--we have to do it. American total fertility rates since the pandemic have dropped to about 1.7--well below replacement rate. We're not having enough babies. If red-staters really are worried about being "replaced," then part of the problem begins at home, specifically in the bedroom.

So we need a lot of new immigrants--but they shouldn't have to come this way. Why should a family have to traipse through the Darien Gap, and pay their very last coin to the Mexican Drug cartels in order to come the USA? There is absolutely no reason for that. We need the immigrants, and they want to come. We have to find a way to allow for legal immigration. There is more support for that than our media (left and right) are willing to admit.

But there are some conditions. The wall is a prerequisite. Before we can accept any large number of legal immigrants, we have to stop the illegal sort. We have to get control over our southern border. Second, we can't just accept low wage immigrants--that's unfair to our domestic workers. For every Honduran and Salvadoran, we need to also accept somebody with genuine skills, like nurses (e.g., more Filipinos). 

Biden, by irresponsibly and incompetently stopping the wall, has set back the cause for a higher rate of legal immigration by at least a decade. This, along with the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan, will mark his administration with shame.

Further Reading:

• A Leftist Criticizes the Left on Immigration
• Good Trump, Bad Trump
• Book Review: Nigel Farage

John Studer Makes a Boo-Boo

John Studer
(Source: The Militant/Phil Norris)

John Studer, who is about my age, joined the SWP (Socialist Workers Party, aka the Party) before I did. Which means he's been a member of the Party for more than fifty years now! In that time he's risen to what I'll dub the Chief Competence Officer, i.e., he's the only guy still in the Movement who can actually get anything done. Accordingly, he's currently the Party's Campaign Manager and also the editor of The Militant (the Party's newspaper).

For all that, he has no genuine authority. The leading triumvirate of the Party is Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark, Comrades Jack and Mary-Alice are octogenarians and are showing signs of age. Comrade Steve is, I believe, a year or two younger than I am, but he has largely disappeared from the pages of The Militant, so I'll speculate he's in declining health.

The Big Three's gradual exit does not imply more authority for Mr. Studer, because the man has a minder--as if the Party doesn't trust him to make decisions. While Mr. Studer is The Militant's editor, a fellow named "Terry Evans" is assigned as "managing editor" (not to be confused with the business manager, who is Bob Bruce).

What does a managing editor do? I don't know, but I'll surmise he's kind of like the commissar in Trotsky's Red Army.

All work must be carried out in the presence of the commissar, but the primary command responsibility for specialized military decisions belongs not to the commissar, but to the military specialist who works closely with him.

The commissar is not responsible for the success of purely military operational or battle orders. This is totally the responsibility of the military commander. The commissar’s signature on an operational order indicates that he vouches for the fact that it was dictated by operational and not some other (counterrevolutionary) considerations.

Terry Evans' job is to make sure that Mr. Studer stays on the straight and narrow and doesn't do anything "counterrevolutionary".

Though it stretches credulity to think that Mr. Studer is at this stage of his career in any way disloyal. Still, occasionally (or rather frequently in recent years) The Militant changes its mind on some topic or another and needs to issue a correction or a retraction. That is, Terry Evans keeps comrade Studer on a short leash.

Which means Mr. Studer's real job is to be the fall guy. He's the chump who has to eat crow whenever anything gets past the editor's desk that shouldn't have. He may be the workaday editor of the paper, but the power behind his desk is Terry Evans. 

I continue to think that "Terry Evans" is a pseudonym, likely for the very talented Brian Williams. My frequent commenter, John B., agrees with me about the pseudonym, though he might dispute the association with Mr. Williams. In any case, he has rather little respect for Mr. Evans. (See comments associated with posts here and here.)

Comrade Studer's chain got pulled in a dramatic fashion last November when he was forced to publish a major grovel (boldface mine).

The article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” appeared under the byline of Miami Militant  correspondent Steve Warshell, but responsibility for its line and content lies with the Militant editor. The editor retracted the article and pulled it from the online edition as soon as the SWP National Committee pointed out that it was contrary to the longstanding positions of the Militant  as well as those of the Socialist Workers Party. The print edition, however, had already been mailed to subscribers and distributors in the U.S.

The difference between Mr. Warshell's article and the replacement by The Militant is inconsequential. I covered the flap in detail here and here.

Our competent comrade is in the woodshed again recently because--in support of an SWP candidate in Pennsylvania--he is quoted saying this:

“We are supporters of the Constitution, as written and strengthened by dozens of amendments, many the result of pressure from the working masses; the federal system in the U.S., with three chambers of government and checks and balances put in place by the young coalition of merchants, slave owners and farmers on the backs of the American Revolution,” said Studer. “Of course it’s a bourgeois Constitution and government, but it provides space and powerful rights against government attack that are good for the working class and our struggles.”

This, apparently, is wrong, and the following week The Militant issued a 600+ word rebuttal. 

The importance for working people in defending our constitutional rights and protections from government interference has been driven home by the Aug. 8 raid by the FBI, Washington’s political police, at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Since the working class first began organizing to defend itself, free speech and assembly and protection from unreasonable search and seizure, to name but a few of the rights conquered in the Constitution, have been crucial. It is the utilization of these rights by millions in hard-fought class battles that has been integral to building unions, organizing opposition to Washington’s wars, bringing down Jim Crow segregation and fighting for women’s emancipation.

But that is far from the same as saying, as John Studer, the Socialist Workers Party campaign director, is quoted saying in the last issue of the Militant, that SWP members “are supporters of the Constitution, as written and strengthened by dozens of amendments.”

Put in my own words, the dispute boils down to this:

John Studer: "We are supporters of the Constitution as written and strengthened by dozens of amendments... "

The rebuttal:  We are supporters of the words and concepts in the Constitution, especially as amended. But we don't like the Constitution itself because it was written by a bunch of old white men who were capitalists and slaveowners looking out for their own class interests.

This is really a distinction without a difference. Ultimately, who cares how or why the Constitution got written. The only important thing (which both Mr. Studer and the Rebuttal seem to agree on) is that it is likely the best such document in the world today.

I think there are two reasons for this fake dispute. One is the Party wants to put some distance (however small) between itself and the Republican Party, which it sees as its primary competition for members.

The second reason (probably more important) is to put Mr. Competence in his place. With a leadership struggle imminent, this is a preliminary skirmish for who is gonna take over after the triumvirate is gone. "Terry Evans", whoever he is, wants to make sure the Comrade Studer doesn't grab the brass ring.

Though for Communists generally, competence won't get you very far. Just look at the efflorescence of incompetence, cruelty and mediocrity that accompanied all successful revolutions to date: e.g., Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

John Studer doesn't stand a chance.

Further Reading:

• Wittenberg, 2022
• Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat

Left Voice and the SWP

The personal is political.

That adage is taken to heart by Maryam Alaniz, a correspondent for Left Voice. In a speech she gave to Mexican comrades entitled Trotsky’s Legacy Today: Class Struggle, the Left, and the Need for a Revolutionary Party she shares much about her personal history. Her byline states that

Maryam Alaniz is a socialist journalist, activist, and PhD student living in NYC. She is an editor for the international section of Left Voice.

In the text she identifies herself as a "young worker," though we are not told what "work" she actually does. Is she a truck driver?--in imitation of workers in the 1930s who founded the Teamsters Union, ably aided by the Trotskyist Farrell Dobbs (whose books about the event are still worth reading). Or perhaps she works at Walmart, or Starbucks, or in an Amazon warehouse? Those are all honest jobs done by hardworking people.

But I'll hazard that she doesn't work at anything like that. (If she did she would have told us.) No, Ms. Alaniz is an intellectual and she's much too smart and too valuable to waste her time on honest day's labor. Instead, her role as a "grad student" likely earns her a small income as a teaching or research assistant, or perhaps she's an adjunct professor somewhere. To her this must seem like "work," but it isn't really. What it really is is a claim on a government paycheck--otherwise known as "welfare." In a word, our young lady friend is a grifter.

One does hope--at very least--that her graduate studies are in something useful, like computer science or engineering, or nursing. Something that would enable her to earn an honest living. Again, if that were true I think she would've told us. So I surmise that she studies something utterly useless, such as education or women's studies. The former is just a redoubt for over-the-hill Leftists who can't do anything else, while the latter is propaganda thinly disguised as "scholarship." These topics (and many others) will at best earn her a government paycheck--more grifting--but have no purchase in the marketplace where people voluntarily pay for useful services. Because these services are not useful.

She claims to be a "young" worker, but from her speech I infer she's in her early thirties. That's really too old to still be going to school! She's on the verge of declaring final vows as a Sister in the Convent of the Perpetual Student. These are women who, in their quest for ever more education, take lifelong vows of poverty and chastity infertility. They'll never get married and they'll never have children. And worse--they'll never have grandchildren. 

But I do hope that her parents are proud of her.

I don't know what Ms. Alaniz looks like today, but let me speculate on what she'll look like 35 years from now.

SWP Oberlin Conference Attendees (Photo credit: Mike Shur; The Militant)

I suggest that one of those ladies in the foreground is a spitting image of Ms. Alaniz in the year 2057--a grandma-aged woman who doesn't have any grandchildren, and who spends her free time applauding Jack Barnes' speeches.

The picture was taken at the 2019 Oberlin conference--the annual confab held by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Which is fitting, because the topic of our lady comrade's speech was the task of rebuilding a Trotskyist party today.

From the experience of the Minneapolis and Toledo strikes and at Trotsky’s urging, the American Workers Party emerged in 1934 as a result of a fusion between the Communist League of America and the Workers Party of America. A year later, in 1935, Trotsky helped lead a political struggle within the American Workers Party to have a special tactic toward the new workers and youth of the American Socialist Party, who had been radicalized by international events such as the rise of fascism. The Socialist Workers Party emerged from this experience in 1936. 

Me and my comrades in Left Voice hope to place ourselves within this tradition of struggle in the Trotskyist movement and aim to play a role in engaging and fusing with the most revolutionary elements of the most dynamic phenomena today, making common experiences in class struggle and leading political struggles, using our website as a tool to do so, to reach the sectors we are in dialogue with – left youth, workers, and the oppressed – beyond our forces alone.

Which raises several questions. First, why doesn't she join the existing SWP? One reason is obvious--she's way too young (or they're too old). But that's a social reason, not a political one. Indeed, it's plausible that old people know more about politics than she does and she might learn something.

Second, why bother rebuilding Trotskyism? It didn't work in the 1930s. It didn't work in the 1970s, when the SWP membership was at its apogee, and when I was a member. It has never worked anywhere in the world--ever. It didn't even work during the Russian Revolution! If anything is a proven failure in politics, it's Trotskyism.

Third--and probably most important--is I doubt the SWP would accept her as a member. The Party adamantly opposes the Democratic Party as being agents of the bourgeoisie. This is very much unlike Ms. Alaniz, who despite her professed opposition nevertheless supports every talking point mouthed by any progressive Democrat anywhere--including Bernie Sanders. In other words, she can talk the Trotsky talk--but she can't walk the Trotsky walk. Her political program--from climate catastrophism to supporting the (fascist) BLM movement to outright antisemitism--is straight out of the Democrat Party/Davos playbook.

The real Trotskyists--best represented by today's SWP--realize that 63% of America's white working class (defined as white voters without a college degree) voted for Trump in 2020, as did 37% of Hispanic voters and 10% of Black voters. The latter two numbers are at record high for any Republican candidate--though it also shows that Blacks are somewhat weak in the class solidarity department.

If the working class--I mean the real working class and not the grifters getting a government welfare check--in their majority voted for Trump, then that tells you something about Trump. He's saying something that resonates with the proletariat. The grifters, of course, just like their friends in the Democratic Party, claim that American workers are all racists, homophobes, sexists and deplorables. Only the grifters understand, as does Ms. Alaniz, that the only way to become an anti-racist is to get a PhD in some completely useless subject.

So what's different about the SWP that distinguishes them from all the other so-called Trotskyist grouplets in the country? After all, like me, all those baby boomers who joined the Party in the '70s were recruited off college campuses. We all aspired to be grifters (and a few of us, like me, succeeded). But the grifter wannabes all gradually dropped out or were expelled. What's left are a group of people who sacrificed marriage, family, close friends outside the Party, and a stable life so that they could take jobs at Walmart, in meatpacking plants, in factories, and at Amazon. Whatever their petty bourgeois roots may have been in 1975, spending 45 years in low-wage, boring jobs will turn anyone into a proletarian. (The fact that they donated much of their income to Jack Barnes is a sad story for another day.)

The SWP understands the working class in a way that grifter-wannabe Maryam Alaniz never will. But all is not lost. If she really, really wants to be a Trotskyist, she'll join the Socialist Workers Party.

I don't recommend that. But please--stop being a grifter and build a real career that can earn you an honest living. And get married and have children--so that your parents can have some grandchildren, and so that you can also eventually have some grandchildren.

Don't waste your life on Trotskyism. Remember--Darwin rules. The people who have grandchildren will determine the future.

Note: This is my 400th post since the inception of this blog on December 6th, 2012.

Further Reading:

• James P. Cannon Was Spectacularly Wrong
• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"
• Keith Leslie's International Report

"Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Paulo Freire (1921 - 1997) was a Brazilian, Marxist theologian who wrote a famous book entitled Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1968. (It can be downloaded for free here.)

I have not read the book. The first two lines (not counting prefatory material) are

While the problem of humanization has always, from an axiological point of view, been humankind's central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern. Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality.

To me this is pretentious gibberish. I have no idea what it means--perhaps I'm just not intellectual enough. Whatever--I have no intention of reading the rest of the book.

So I'm grateful to a fellow named Kendall Gregory who writes an article for Left Voice entitled A Critique of ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ . Mr. Gregory writes clearly and cogently, so we'll use his piece as a guide to Mr. Freire. The lede paragraphs of his article set the context.

In the past few weeks a debate has been taking place inside the recently formed Revolutionary Socialist Organizing Project (RSOP). The debate centers around revolutionary organization, what the orientation of revolutionaries should be, how we engage with the broader Left, and what methods are needed to politically develop the revolutionary vanguard and the broader working-class and oppressed masses.

A faction within the RSOP raised Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a model that revolutionaries can use to answer some of the issues raised in the debate. What follows is a critique of Freire’s work, one that points out the flaws of using his work as a model for revolutionary organizing.

Mr. Freire (per Mr. Gregory) compares two models of education, which he calls the banking method and the problem-posing method. The former casts 

the teacher is the sole arbiter of truth. The students know nothing and must learn by receiving “deposits” of knowledge. According to Freire, those who approach education with the banking method view it as an exercise in rote memorization and blind acceptance of a list of facts, procured by the teacher. Freire criticizes this system as dehumanizing.

Today this might be referred to as the sage on the stage model, where the teacher stands behind a podium and feeds the students knowledge through power point slides.

This contrasts with the problem-posing method

wherein the teacher and the student both learn as co-investigators of the subject. Rather than “depositing” knowledge, the teacher poses problems to the students and works with them to find solutions. Though the teacher may know a solution, they do not directly state it, instead probing and guiding the students until they come up with a solution themselves.

Today this is called active learning. In previous eras it was known as the Socratic method, a term that suggests there is nothing particularly novel about Mr. Freire's insight. Active learning has earned a fanatical following whose adherents sometimes claim it should replace the traditional lecture altogether.

As a retired college professor and long-time teacher of introductory college chemistry classes, I'm convinced that the truth lies in the middle, and that both lecture and active learning are essential to success in a chemistry class. I guess that reveals my petty bourgeois class origins, because Mr. Freire puts it in political, class-consciousness terms.

He argues the banking model serves the interests of the oppressors, and he promotes problem-posing education as a liberatory alternative. He argues that the banking method cannot be used for liberatory purposes.

Mr. Freire apparently believes that full "liberation" is acquired only if the students arrive at the conclusion on their own, ideally without any perfidious influence from their professors. Mr. Gregory is right to condemn this as unrealistic. In a chemistry class, for example, it is surely impossible for students to regenerate 250 years of scientific progress without any reference to a textbook and/or a professor's power point slides. At the same time, it is the poor professor who doesn't insist that the students do their homework and so internalize the "knowledge" and make it their own. There has to be an active learning component.

But teaching students to be revolutionary socialists is apparently different than teaching them chemistry. To become revolutionaries, according to Mr. Freire, the students need to study the depths of their oppression. They do this by reflecting on their everyday life--how it's really hard, how in Brazil they sometimes go hungry, how the wages are too low to live well, and of course about the (imaginary?) danger of  "climate apocalypse," etc. In other words, students should learn to feel deeply sorry for themselves (which is easy to do if you just try).

The problem with teachers is that they always come up with solutions less draconian than revolution. Thus chemistry profs inform students about how new materials and modern medicines are produced. Or how environmental problems can be mitigated. We present a ray of hope--leading one to become a chemist or a doctor or an engineer, etc.

A mentor can teach you a trade, or instruct you how to open a bank account, or reveal to you the miracle of compound interest--suggesting a path to a more secure retirement. In Mr. Freire's world, all this does is reinforce oppression. The rays of hope are all false, and your teachers are agents of the bourgeoisie. To be a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the oppressed, you must see yourself as a worthless, helpless human being, armed only with a bottomless reservoir of self-pity.

Even Mr. Gregory proposes a solution: Marxism-Leninism. He writes

To really win a revolution, or even reform struggles, firm, tested ideas are required. The role of Marxists is to furnish these firm, tested ideas to the working class in the course of struggle. As Lenin said, revolutionary socialists must “patiently explain” and win over workers to their viewpoint. There is no substitute for democratic political debate. There is no substitute for revolutionary leadership. This is not the same thing as imposing a political regime from above; in fact, to win a real revolution, workers must be completely convinced of the superiority and necessity of socialism.

The job of the RSOP, in his view, is to educate us masses in "tested ideas" as the opportunities to do so arise. Simply feeling sorry for yourself is not enough--you need a teacher armed with power point slides to help you out.

Mr. Gregory perceptively points out another flaw in the Freirean world view, and that is a false dichotomy between the oppressor and the oppressed. He puts it simply and clearly:

[Freire's overly simplified idealism] leads him to ascribe every reactionary tendency of the oppressed merely to internalizing the image of their oppressor, while the actions of the oppressor are completely intentional and malicious. There is no discussion of the economic interests of either “class” in the book, no discussion whatsoever of how the objective circumstances shape the people in question. The oppressed are merely confused saints waiting to take their rightful place as humanity’s savior, while the oppressors are irredeemable demons.

A modern term for this effect is moral dyadism, which briefly states that The Oppressed have feelings, but no agency; The Oppressors have agency, but no feelings. You can apply this to all the intersectional divides in our society: Black people have feelings and no agency, and thus were right to react in riotous, impotent rage during BLM's summer, while white people have agency but no feelings, as evidenced by the supposedly passionless actions of the police. Similarly, women are passive victims of violence and discrimination, which they feel deeply but can't do anything about. Conversely, men are without fail sexist psychopaths who want only harm to befall their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. Etc.

Anyway, I appreciate Mr. Gregory's clear and concise exposition of Paulo Freire's work.

Further Reading:

• Althusser in America
• The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction Tried to Ruin my Breakfast
• Book Review: Kim Jong-Un

Labor Notes 2022: Starbucks

The inspiration for this post comes from Left Voice (LV) with an article entitled Labor Notes 2022: Which Way Forward for the Movement?. It was written by a team of Left Voice journalists who attended the Labor Notes 2022 conference, held in Chicago June 17th-19th. 

The article led me to the Labor Notes webpage, and specifically the page reporting on the conference, which contains numerous videos of the proceedings. Most interesting to me was the panel discussion by people who organized the first Starbucks union--I listened to about an hour of the 95 minute video.

The LV journalists describe the conference this way:

It is in [today's] context that the biggest Labor Notes conference ever began today in Chicago. More than 4,000 workers, unionists, activists, labor journalists, and scholars are coming together to debate the strategies and tactics for taking the labor movement forward.

I'm don't think this is entirely accurate--at least based on the portions of the plenary sessions that I watched. Very little debate of "strategies and tactics" took place. Instead there was music, poetry, chanting and inspirational speeches. It had more the feeling of religious revival than any kind of serious discussion. Like a revival, the purpose was group solidarity, a sense of belonging, and a sense of purpose. In this it very much succeeded.

The breakout sessions were more substantive, but even there the word "debate" doesn't really fit. Sharing is a better descriptor. The Starbucks breakout (which is the only one I listened to at length) was show and tell from start to finish. The LV authors report that "...the socialist Left is banned from even handing out pamphlets or newspapers at the event, ..." suggests that debate was never on the agenda.

So here are my impressions of the Starbucks union organizers.

But for one older gentleman (who looked to be about 50, and who was the only person I saw wearing a wedding ring) the others were in their 20s or early 30s. One lady informed us of her pronoun, but the others all looked very normal and heterosexual. The youngest was a lady who started at Starbucks at age 17 and got fired--she is likely now about 20, or perhaps not even that old.

These people LOVE Starbucks. They refer to each other by the corporate lingo, i.e., as "partners." It seems like they buy the Starbucks' Mission and Values statements lock, stock and barrel. They like their customers, they're proud of where they work, and one bragged about the fancy drinks he'd learned to make. It's all very endearing.

Starbucks apparently has a serious management problem. The partners complained that their stores had cycled through a sequence of unsuccessful managers--as many as four or five in a year. This made it difficult for them to do their jobs, and more importantly, impossible to live the Starbucks Dream.

I have criticized unions for adding an extra layer of management to a business, and thereby adding to expenses without improving the customer's experience. But in this case that appears less true. These partners seem more interested in competent management than anything else, and if the company can't provide it they'll try to do it themselves. It won't work, but one can't blame them for trying.

If there's an enemy, it's nobody in the store, but district managers are frequently blamed, and probably with some justification.

I think these partners love Starbucks too much! They regard the company as a family, and as such it's supposed to take care of personal problems. For example, the very young lady mentioned above got fired because she had medical issues and also wanted time off to go to school. The company agreed to keep her on, but demanded that she demote herself and take a pay cut. For a company this is a very reasonable request. But it's not something that a family would insist upon--their favors are dispensed unconditionally. The woman's irresolvable dispute with Starbucks was that they refused to treat her like family member.

In a nutshell, these partners expect way too much from Starbucks. It's not just a workplace, but it's a way of life, a cause, a home, a place that's supposed to love you. To be fair, the Mission and Values seem to promise as much, but in fact there is no way a customer-driven company can meet those expectations from its employees.

It seems to me (and this is very speculative) that the union organizers have no personal life outside of Starbucks. They're not married (apart from the old guy), they have no children, and perhaps they're estranged from their parents. They're not members of a church or involved in other extracurricular that would give their lives meaning beyond the workplace.

The union is not being organized because of low salaries or poor working conditions (though too much overtime was a complaint). Instead the union is needed because the partners aren't getting enough love. They want to be loved and appreciated. And the messenger of that love should, by all rights, be the store manager--who because of the high turnover rate is effectively not there.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No not just for some, but for everyone

Failing that, let's all go on strike.

Which brings us back to the article in LV. They write (links omitted)

While labor unions and other organizations of working people have enormous power to fight both the exploitation and oppression of capitalism, the state is always seeking to co-opt, limit, and control that power. And the Democratic Party is one of the main weapons of the ruling class in this process. Unfortunately, both the traditional bureaucracy and the so-called independent unions have ties to the establishment or progressive wings of the Democratic Party. Our union leaders use our dues to campaign for and support Democratic politicians and almost never consult us, except in the most obligatory ways, when endorsing candidates. And those candidates, even when they claim to care about working people, always support U.S. capitalism and almost always endorse war and imperialism abroad.

In light of the video of Starbucks union organizers telling their story in their own words--this seems all fantastically irrelevant. The partners aren't worried about the "exploitation and oppression of capitalism." Quite the contrary--they want to work at Starbucks for a long time, and the last thing they want is for the stores to close and/or the company to go bankrupt. They're definitely not revolutionaries!

The partners don't care about the class nature of the Democratic Party. Most of them are probably Democrats themselves, and in any case it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference.

The LV authors fret about "imperialism." It's a meaningless term, and it has zero relevance to anything that happens at Starbucks. 

In a word, Left Voice lives on a completely different planet from the partners at Starbucks. The latter are sane and honest people who work hard and towards whom I have considerable sympathy. The former are a bunch of overpaid, petty bourgeois college professors.

PS--When I was their age I was a member of and 100% committed to the Socialist Workers Party. That was far less constructive than our partners' 100% reliance on Starbucks for their life's meaning. But I'd advise them (based on my experience) to get a life--that is, do something important that's not part of Starbucks. The best is to get married and have children--nobody will ever love you more than your children. And hopefully you'll eventually have some grandchildren. Failing that, join a church, or a bowling league, or a Friday night poker club. Do something that gives your life structure and meaning that doesn't depend on Starbucks.

Further Reading:

• Lost in the Amazon
• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"
• Unionizing Hotels