Oppression!

My Trotskyist friends are big on oppression. 

Using The Militant's search bar for "oppression" yields 398 hits since 2018.  A similar search on the Left Voice website generates 109 pages of hits, each citing 10 incidences of the word--or nearly 1100 hits since 2017. My friends at Socialist Action don't give me a numerical count, but the first page yields 20 hits, and I don't know how many pages there are. The comrades at Worker's Voice also don't do a tally for me, but I counted 300 hits before I got tired of scrolling.

They're obsessed with the oppressed.

As a retired faculty member at a regional college, I have definitely been a victim of oppression. My salary was too low, my office was too small, my research contributions weren't properly recognized, and I had to spend twelve (12) hours per week in the classroom teaching! Oh the misery, the humiliation! No wonder I retired.

Of course my oppression is nothing compared to that of one of my colleagues who is triply oppressed--despite her similar status as a full professor. She's female, she's a POC (person of color in today's terminology, though her skin tone is indistinguishable from mine), and she's queer (formerly a synonym for weirdo). Her oppression is somehow three times worse than anything I've ever suffered, and accordingly she feels triply more sorry for herself than I ever did. As a white male, I'm supposed to feel sorry for her, too, and to hang my head in remorseful guilt.

She likely attributes her oppression to being minoritized and marginalized. I'm not sure what those words actually mean, but I think she does that to herself. She's the author of her own problems.

Marxists believe oppression stems from the theft of surplus value from workers. In this view workers receive a wage (which is determined by the market), but which is always less than the true value of their work, as supposedly determined by the labor theory of value. The difference between this theoretical value and the wage is the surplus unjustly extracted by capitalists and is perceived as oppression.

Michael Roberts gets into the weeds how surplus value is calculated here. The fundamental formula is

Marx's original equation for Rate of Profit (P) is

where s is the surplus value (i.e., what most people would call "profit), c is the total capital stock, and v is the total cost of labor. This is intended to be measured for the entire economy--not just for any individual company.

Mr. Roberts has a very hard time estimating these quantities since Marx's definitions don't match the way the terms are currently used or quantities tabulated. E.g., Marx refers to v as the variable capital, as opposed to fixed capital represented by c, but in modern terms it roughly means total wages.  More, the rate of profit is to be calculated only for the global economy as a whole--for which it is nigh impossible to collect data. It is meaningless to apply the formula to an individual firm.

In a word, the formula is useless, which is why nobody besides Mr. Roberts and a few of his friends bother to try to calculate it.

But Mr. Roberts does say that

The bottom line of the rate of profit formula should be restricted to the capitalist sector and not include public sector or residential housing capital.

Since both I and my POC colleague worked for the public/non-profit sector, we contributed nothing to the productive economy and therefore our salaries should not be included in any calculation of surplus value. In other words, nobody makes a profit off of our labor. We are NOT oppressed--not even a little bit. It doesn't matter what our skin color is or how small our offices are.

As stated, the Marxian concept of surplus value is valid only for the global economy as a whole--it can't be used for any individual firm, much less for a particular worker. Based on Marxism, it's impossible to say that the Walmart worker is more oppressed than, say, the CEO of Citibank (who is, ultimately, merely an employee of the company, albeit a very well compensated one). So while we know that public employees are not oppressed at all, we can only speculate about the oppression of actual workers.

Still, Marxian ambiguity notwithstanding, I'll suggest that the degree of oppression depends on the size of one's wage. That is, the surplus value that a capitalist can withhold from a low wage worker is less than what he can obtain from a high wage worker. So if the unemployed are not oppressed at all, then also the minimum wage employee is minimally oppressed. There isn't much value from which to extract any surplus. Accordingly, the CEO of Citibank is way more oppressed than the Walmart worker.

Besides me, other people who aren't oppressed are people who don't have jobs. I've gone from being not oppressed as a college professor to now being not oppressed as retiree living off my savings. The last time I was actually "oppressed" was when I worked as a taxi driver in Chicago 50 years ago--that being the last time I actually created value for anybody. Similarly, unemployed people aren't oppressed, nor are those who have left the workforce for any reason--not just retirement. Homeless people--despite their dire straits--are also not victims of oppression. They're part of the lumpen proletariat, a term which meaning I'd broaden to include the lumpen intelligentsia, e.g., college professors and their ilk.

Such is the topsy-turvy land of Marxist economics.

My Trotskyist friends will argue that I'm taking Marx too literally, and perhaps they're right. This is probably one of the many ways in which Marxist economics doesn't make any sense. If Mr. Roberts' herculean efforts at calculating the rate of profit fails, it's because the task is essentially impossible and the results are meaningless. No company measures its success on the global rate of profit, nor does any worker gauge their well-being on so ill-defined and irrelevant a concept. Even I admit that my career as a professor wasn't completely useless--a few of my students really did learn something. Though I will be the first to admit that I could have spent my time better, and I'd advise anybody who asks not to work for higher education.

My Trotskyist friends have broadened oppression way beyond its Marxian roots. If Marxist economics is hopelessly vague, then modern Trotskyism is a ball of confusion. In their world, not just workers are oppressed, but so are women, POCs (but not all POCS), "queer" people, and trans people. How all those groups fit into any Marxist category is beyond me. I've written about the so-called "oppression" of women here, and found the concept wanting.

I think Trotskyism attracts people who want to feel sorry for themselves. That certainly includes the academic precariat--who have voluntarily chosen their own misery but nevertheless want to blame it on somebody else. It includes much of the LGBTQIA+..., some of whom are mentally ill and probably rightly do feel sorry for themselves.

In summary, I believe the modern Trotskyist version of oppression is simply self-pity, and it's sad that the concept plays such a large role in their newspapers.

Further Reading:

• Academic Workers on the Rampage
• The Harm Reduction Team
• "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Cozzarelli on Chicago's Mayor Race

Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson
(source)

Tatiana Cozzarelli, one of Left Voice's better and more interesting columnists, writes about the city of Chicago. I moved to Chicago back in 1972 to help build the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) branch there. In subsequent years I drove a cab for five years, and eventually graduated from the University of Chicago. In total I spent 13 years living in or near the City of Chicago, and it is the town to which I am most sentimentally attached. While there, I cast the worst vote I ever cast in my entire life--I voted for Jane Byrne for mayor in 1979!

To atone for my sins, were I still a Chicagoan I would have voted for Paul Vallas, who Ms. Cozzarelli describes as (links omitted)

Vallas was a “law and order” candidate funded by big business and conservative donors, and he was strongly supported by the Chicago police union. He received over $1 million from Trump voters and even spoke at a fundraiser for anti-queer far-right group Awake Illinois. He is the former CEO of Chicago public schools and supports a program of pro-charter privatization, attacking the Chicago public school district and the Chicago Teachers’ Union [CTU--ed].

Among the biggest issues in the election were crime (aka "law and order"), the city's imminent bankruptcy (the chief concern of "big business and conservative donors"), and the total failure of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Mr. Vallas, to his credit, at least addressed those concerns. His opponent ignored them.

His opponent and ultimate victor in the race was Brandon Johnson, a very progressive Democrat who Ms. Cozzarelli describes this way:

Johnson is a former public school social studies teacher. He left teaching to become a staff organizer with the CTU and was in that position during the 2012 teachers’ strike. He spoke out against police brutality and anti-Black racism, making speeches in the Black Lives Matter movement. He ran on a progressive platform, promising to invest in affordable housing, public schools, and public transportation — paid for by taxing big corporations.

Police brutality is a problem, but a relatively minor one. Anti-Black racism is mostly not a problem--at least not in the way Ms. Cozzarelli imagines it. Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a fascist organization which never had the depth of support that our friendly journalist supposes. But worst of all, Mr. Johnson wants to tax productive businesses to fund things that don't need to be funded: e.g., housing, schools and transportation.

Nevertheless, Ms. Cozzarelli agrees with Mr. Johnson in every particular. She's against police brutality (who isn't?), she's against anti-Black racism (again, who isn't?), and she's in favor of good things paid for by magic unicorns and the tooth fairy. Put more generally, Ms. Cozzarelli supports the progressive Democrat platform down the line, on everything from excessive Wokery to antisemitism.

So why isn't she a Democrat?

Unlike an elected legislator, the mayor is directly responsible for running the city, including the police and the budget. Winning and taking this position is qualitatively different from taking a legislative position, where a socialist could run on an independent ticket and primarily use the position for protest votes and to advance class struggle.

This is a very profound paragraph! Apparently it's OK for a socialist to be in a legislative body, (e.g., Kshama Sawant in Seattle) who, like Ms. Cozzarelli, is allied with the Democrats 99% of the time. But the minute a Democrat actually wins executive office, then, like Mr. Johnson, they run headlong into reality and discover that compromises have to be made. In other words--unlike a city councilwoman or kibitzing journalist--they can no longer count on the magic unicorns to come through in a pinch.

Ms. Cozzarelli will claim she doesn't believe in magic unicorns. But she uses different verbiage that mean the same things. Here's an excerpt where I have italicized places where words like "unicorn" and "tooth fairy" could be freely substituted.

Refusing to support Democrats does not signify relegating ourselves to the sidelines of class struggle.  We should participate side by side  in every struggle of the working class and oppressed, discussing the need for our own party, for our own program and highlighting the need to fight to end this oppressive system.

So let's consider a serious problem Chicago has: crime. According to Wikipedia, Chicago had 796 murders in 2021. Of those, 398 (50%) were cleared by the police--that is, the police arrested and charged somebody with murder. That means that 50% of all murderers in Chicago got away scot-free! No wonder Mr. Johnson wants to hire more detectives--Ms. Cozzarelli disagrees with that because she's worried about the poor criminals and apparently cares not a whit for the parents whose children were killed. Of course that's a position she can hold only as long as she has no responsibility for anything.

On the day Ms. Cozzarelli's article was posted, Walmart issued a press release announcing the closure of four stores in Chicago, most notably including the one in Chatham at 83rd and Stewart. This is an all-Black neighborhood--the last time I drove through there about 15 years ago it was a tidy, working-class community. The Walmart store likely served 100,000 or more people in that part of town.

While Walmart was too polite to say so, a major reason for the store losing money was shoplifting. The police never arrested the culprits, and if they did the DA wouldn't have charged them. I'm sure Ms. Cozzarelli thinks the shoplifters are all single moms desperately trying to feed their children--but she'd be mistaken in that belief.

To the contrary, shoplifting in Chicago is a criminal enterprise, probably much like this report from New York:

Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. Some engage in shoplifting as a trade, while others are driven by addiction or mental illness; the police did not identify the 327 people in the analysis.

Of course professional shoplifters likely minimize the number of times they're arrested, and they also steal the most valuable items, so despite being only a third of arrests, they probably account for a majority of the expense. So by putting 327 people in jail, more than half of all shoplifting in New York would stop. 

The stats are likely very similar in Chicago. Jailing relatively few individuals would make the difference between a profitable store and an unprofitable, closed store.

Who pays for the shoplifting? It's certainly not the Walton family! Does Ms. Cozzarelli really believe that shareholders will pay for her friends' stealing? No, the people who pay are the minimum wage employees and their comparably poor customers. Whole neighborhoods will now not have a convenient grocery store because Ms. Cozzarelli and her BLM comrades defend wholesale theft.

It's worth noting that the Chatham store was comprehensively looted during the George Floyd/BLM riots. I'm pretty sure that Ms. Cozzarelli didn't participate in the looting, and I doubt she does any shoplifting, either. Somewhere in her character is basic human decency and common sense, which unfortunately she hides behind an army of unicorns and tooth fairies.

Further Reading:

• 63rd & Halsted
• Chicago: Ilona Gersh Runs for Mayor
• Left Voice and the SWP

 

Steve Clark's Bizarre Book Bazaar

Steve Clark (MILITANT/ÖGMUNDUR JÓNSSON)

The astonishing thing about the book fair recently held in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, is that Steve Clark attended it. Mr. Clark is a member of the Troika, namely the three-person team that constitutes the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Of those three, he is the junior member, both in age and rank. His seniors are Jack Barnes, the National Secretary of the Party, and Mary-Alice Waters, who is Jack's significant other and head of Pathfinder Press. Comrades Barnes and Waters are both octogenarians. I believe Comrade Clark is a year or two younger than I am, which suggests he's about 70.

Mr. Clark, despite his status, rarely lets his picture be published, which likely explains why he's infrequently seen at public events, and has never run as an SWP candidate for any election. It's weird that he'd travel all the way to Erbil to be photographed sitting in an easy chair like a crown prince, attended to by hijab-clad women. Indeed, the phrase "crown prince" describes him rather well given his youth and status compared to the other two royals. He's the son that comrades Barnes and Waters never had.

Two other adjectives are inspired by the picture: old and frail. In knew Mr. Clark from the Chicago branch back in the early 1970s. He looked old then--the early onset of male-pattern baldness didn't do much for youthful good looks. He rose to the challenge, leveraging his appearance to seem more serious and mature than his fellow comrades. Today he just looks old--much older than 70.

Frail may be an artifact of the photo: being seated and surrounded by much younger, standing people will make anybody look frail. Still, I don't know what Mr. Clark actually does. He writes for The Militant only occasionally. He has no formal responsibility of which I am aware. I suggested in the past that he was in ill-health. Which may be true, but he can't be all that decrepit if he is able to fly from New York to Erbil and back.

I've dubbed Mr. Clark the Sycophant in Chief. If the Party had state power, he'd be the guy in charge of the concentration camps. He behaves the way you'd expect a good crown prince to behave.

Anyway, I think he joined the Movement after I did, and partly because of that bald pate made himself felt right away. He was always behind closed doors in some important meeting or another, or taking an urgent phone call. In those days the Revolution was serious business, and comrade Clark was in the thick of it. It was only a matter of time before fate called and he ascended into heaven the National Office to sit at the right hand of the National Secretary and his wife. I never saw him again except from a distance, as he has decorated the dais of every Oberlin conference since.

The current issue of The Militant has two articles by Ögmundur Jónsson: Book fair reflects class politics in Kurdistan and Iraq, and Socialist Workers Party author speaks on new title at book fair forum. From the former we learn that this is the fourth book fair that Pathfinder Press (the SWP's publishing house) has attended in Erbil. Pathfinder set up a large booth and sold 1200 books over the 11-day event. The organizers of the fair put the attendance at 600,000 people. (By comparison, last year Amazon sold about 330 million print books and an additional 300 million e-books.)

From the latter article we discover that Mr. Clark flew all the way to Erbil to deliver a talk to 50 people at the book fair. He was accompanied not only by Mr. Jónsson (who I believe is based in London), but also by Joe Young, from Toronto. The round trip airfare from New York to Erbil (basic economy) is over $1300 per person. It may be a bit more from Toronto and a bit less from London, but the Party spent the better part of $4000 getting these folks to Erbil. That doesn't include the cost of food and lodging, or the cost of transporting all the Pathfinder books to and from the site. If the trio sold 1200 books at an average price of $10 per, then total revenue comes to around $12K--which also has to cover the cost of printing the books.

Of course this makes no sense. It obviously makes no financial sense, and it doesn't look to make much political sense, either. Why should the third most important man in the Socialist Workers Party fly all the way to Iraq just to give a speech to 50 people? Is the Revolution really that desperate for eyeballs? My former comrades need to explain what they expect the political benefits of this extravagance to be.

Reading between the lines of Mr. Jónsson's article, I doubt his speech was especially well received. While Mr. Jónsson acknowledges the crime committed by Saddam Hussein in Halabja, he writes

Clark noted the importance of holding a book fair in Erbil, a city both in Kurdistan and Iraq. “The U.S. rulers have brought so much devastation to Iraq,” he said, pointing to the killings of hundreds of thousands due to Washington’s wars of 1990-91 and 2003 and the destruction still evident in Baghdad and other cities.

He fails to note that absent the American invasion the Kurds would likely have been wiped out. More, America has protected the Kurds in both Syria and Iraq from Turkish depredations. The Kurds love the Americans--why wouldn't they? I think it probably doesn't matter if you're a Communist or a Nazi or an Islamophobe or even a Jew--if you're an American you'll be warmly welcomed no matter what.

In addition, I think Mr. Clark makes one error of fact--probably minor. He says

“The U.S. rulers continue to assert their domination over Puerto Rico, which is the largest colony in the world today. The Kurdish people are the largest nation without a country, so you have something in common.”

This is not true. The Kurds have a population between 30 and 45 million. The Hakka minority in southern China and Taiwan number around 80 to 120 million people. The Dravidian peoples of southern India and Sri Lanka number around 250 million people. These are just two examples of other peoples who don't have their own country.

Back in the day--early '70s--the Revolution really was serious business. But nobody in today's SWP expects any imminent revolution--it's all put off into the distant future like the second coming of Christ. So it doesn't really matter who leads the SWP anymore. Steve Clark and his fellow royals imagine themselves to be indispensable, forgetting de Gaulle's maxim that "the cemeteries are full of indispensable men."

In the meantime they can play games with comrades' dues and sustainers. Comrade Clark's bizarre trip to Erbil's book bazaar is a case in point.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us
• Chicago: Ilona Gersh Runs for Mayor
• John Studer Makes a Boo-Boo