The March 17th Militant: A Review

 

Volunteers at community project in Atabey, Havana. Recycling trash, they produce compost and grow vegetables. Ana Morales, speaking, talks to group and visitors. Jover Araújo, project director, center. Longtime revolutionary combatant Víctor Dreke, right, member of the group.
(Picture & caption source: The Militant/Martin Koppel)

It usually doesn't take me very long to skim through the pages of The Militant, the weekly publication of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The articles are so boilerplate and uninteresting as to not deserve a closer look. But the most recent issue dated March 17, 2025, is different. There are a number of articles that invite a response--indeed, for which I could have devoted an entire post. Instead I'm taking the opportunity to review the paper as a whole, with comments on some of the contents.

The paper began publication 1928, concurrently with the events leading to the founding of the international Trotskyist movement generally. As such, it is the oldest Trotskyist paper in the United States, and likely among the oldest in the world. Through various splits and copycat grouplets, there exists today a whole bevy of so-called "Trotskyist" newspapers, of which this blog covers only a few.

Newspaper is the operative word here: for most of its existence The Militant was published only in print form, distributed weekly both by mail and by comrades hawking copies on the street. That DNA is still baked into the modern paper: it is print first, after which a web-friendly version is posted on the internet. You can read the print version in pdf format, but the web format is far more convenient for me.

So yes, even though the web page is nicely designed and easy to navigate, it's still just a copy of the print version. It is updated weekly (not daily) except on weeks when the print paper isn't published. The print copies are mailed out on Thursday, and the issues are post-dated 11 days later. For example, the current issue was mailed on March 6th and is dated March 17th. The web version is posted on Saturday--this week on March 8th.

This, of course, makes perfect sense when you consider the fact that the SWP's comrades are typically in their 70s, and if they're at all like me they spent much of their youth selling Militants on street corners. Old habits die hard.

Compare with the latest incarnation of Trotskyism over at Left Voice, which is clearly web-native, and if they even have a print version I've never seen it. The Left Voice comrades belong to the Millennial generation, and it shows. Though it's not like they are any more relevant to American political conversation.

For the past several weeks The Militant has covered the successes Cuba is having in liberating humanity from electricity. Comrades Jonathan Silberman and Martin Koppel traveled to the island and now report back in an article entitled In face of US economic war, Havana neighbors organize to grow food, clean up the area. 

The the accompanying photo (above) suggests that the morose-looking, shabbily-dressed gentlemen have "volunteered" to plant a vegetable garden and to clean up a garbage dump.

“We’re just in the initial stages, but over the past few months we’ve gotten good results growing vegetables — cucumber, lettuce, broccoli, garlic and parsley,” said Araújo, the director of the project. “We deliver the vegetables without charge to schools, elderly people and economically vulnerable households.”

Of course the reason the veggies are "free" is only because the labor is free, ie, the workers are paid nothing. I doubt they're actually volunteers, especially since the article reports that "[José Jerónimo] Estevez is an elected representative of one of the local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), a nationwide organization that involves people on a neighborhood level." CDR is a euphemism for Cuba's ubiquitous secret police, analogous to the Stasi in East Germany.

So this is forced labor, aka slave labor. No wonder those guys look so morose!

It gets worse. The state capacity of the Cuban government is so diminished that they can no longer provide basic municipal services, such as garbage pickup. Indeed, lack of trash collection 

...has afflicted residential neighborhoods across the city. The majority of Havana’s garbage trucks have been paralyzed by the lack of imported fuel and spare parts caused by Washington’s economic war on Cuba. Despite these shortages, the Cuban government has marshaled resources to improve trash collection, and in parts of Havana such as Vedado and Miramar, some of the unofficial refuse dumps that had mushroomed on residential blocks have been eliminated.

If you believe The Militant, the US has sanctioned Cuba because our bourgeoisie are so envious of the Cuban lifestyle that they're afraid Americans will want to imitate them. Just think how marvelous life in America could be if we spent our free time sorting garbage by hand like they do in Cuba!

The reason that the US sanctions Cuba is because it's not a team player in the political or economic order, and can't be trusted to repay its debts. Besides which, there's plenty of oil for sale on the open market, and if Cuba had any money they could buy what they need.

A second article that caught my attention is by my old friend Brian Williams. Mr. Williams is The Militant's generally competent economics reporter--usually much better than others on my beat. But he falls down on the job here, retelling false narratives commonly recited in the progressive Left. His article is entitled Wall Street: ‘Life’s good for the rich, that’s good for you’. There are two whoppers that caught my eye.

First, he conflates stock with flow.

Last year the top 1% of U.S. households held $49.2 trillion in wealth, or about 30% of the country’s total wealth. To put this in perspective, this is more than the 2024 gross national product of the four largest capitalist economies — U.S., $25.43 trillion; China, $14.72 trillion; Japan, $4.25 trillion; and Germany, $3.85 trillion. 

The $49.2 trillion represents the (very hypothetical and mostly fictional) total wealth held by the bourgeoisie, accumulated over a lifetime of hard work and savvy investment. That is a stock of money, the same as net worth. Meanwhile, the gross national product numbers represent the total income of their respective countries over the course of a single year. That is a flow of money. It's an apples & oranges comparison, analogous to comparing a pound of butter with the speed of a car. Mr. Williams should know better.

Then he complains about good news.

Households that rake in $250,000 a year or more — those in the top 10% of income levels — account for nearly 50% of all spending, especially on luxury items. And this spending is what propels big-business media like the Journal to claim classless “consumers” are doing fine.

Would he rather the wealthier households just took their money and stuffed it into mattresses? Would that be better for the economy? Of course not! You can't have an economy without consumption. Think of all the waitresses, groundskeepers, Uber drivers, yoga instructors, jewelry salesladies, car dealers and home construction workers who would be out of a job of richer people didn't spend their money.

Who is gonna buy those expensive SUVs that UAW workers manufacture if not for people who have some money?

Marxists think that an economy is driven by production. They're wrong--an economy thrives or fails because of consumption. Cuba is so poor because the people there have no money and can't buy anything. They have to import tourists to purchase what little the country can produce.

There is more. The Book of the Month section reprints an excerpt from Evelyn Reed explaining her cartoonish version of anthropology. It's not worth reading.

The lede article is entitled ‘We run to build a party for workers to take power’, and is written by Terry Evans. The headline makes it sound really boring (like similarly-titled pieces in every issue of the paper), but this one reports on the Party's New Jersey gubernatorial candidate (Joanne Kuniansky) and is slightly more worthwhile.

Quoting Ms. Kuniansky, it contains this gem:

“Growing numbers of workers are repelled by the Democrats and Republicans. But without a complete break from these bosses’ parties, workers can make no progress..."

Really? A record turnout for Donald Trump does not suggest that "workers are repelled by the Democrats and Republicans." 

And in its 97 years of existence the Socialist Workers Party has made no progress.

Further Reading:

• Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion
• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us 
• Left Voice and the SWP