Oberlin 2026 Part 2: The Things You Won't Believe

Willie Cotton, SWP candidate for lieutenant governor of New York, speaks at June 24 protest against antisemitism. “Working class and unions must rally against Jew-hatred and pogroms,” Steve Clark told conference. (Photo: MILITANT/ELIZABETH LARISCY; Caption: The Militant)

For some reason all the links in this post were erased. I've tried to restore some of them, but that's still a work in progress.

Sometimes I think Comrade Jack Barnes doesn't believe his own bullshit. He and his fellow Troika members, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark, propose a long list of incredible propositions. It is hard to take them seriously.

Our recent post concerned the first installment of Steve Clark & Roy Landerson's account of the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) International Conference. Today we consider the sequel by the same authors, entitled ‘Live a life focused on conquering workers power from capitalists, war makers’ — Cuban Revolution set example for fighters. It reports on speeches by Comrades Mary-Alice and Steve.

Mary-Alice's remarks, in defense of the Cuban "Revolution," are full of howlers. For example, whatever the justification--or lack thereof--for Washington's blockade, the notion that it is "'saving' them from the government they have freely chosen for nearly seven decades" is absurd. Since Castro has come to power there has never been a free election in Cuba. That Cubans would in their majority vote for little food, no clean water, no transport, no jobs and now almost no electricity is beyond belief. The Castro kleptocrats are not that popular.

The Party is mustering a massive defense in opposition to the US blockade--or at least it's trying to. In its current issue The Militant does not mention any US demonstrations on behalf of Cuba. Of course the reason is obvious--a failed state such as Cuba does not inspire many people. So they're taking a different approach: pointing out the most important gains of the Cuban "Revolution." Americans are not asked to rally around the Cuban flag for any straightforward materialist reasons--all of which are in short supply. Instead these dialectical materialist Marxists are inspired by "...the proletarian internationalist example revolutionary Cuba has set from Latin America, to Vietnam, to Africa and beyond."

Cuba has apparently not contributed anything of actual material benefit to humanity--and certainly not to Cubans. But their spiritual contribution--in the form of solidarity--is enormous. It's solidarity all the way down.

The former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde fought for independence beginning in the 1960s. They were both successful in 1975 after the fascist Salazar regime was overthrown in Portugal. In Guinea-Bissau there was much violence; in Cape Verde the effort was mostly peaceful. Today, according to Wikipedia, Cape Verde is a stable parliamentary democracy with a growing economy. Guinea-Bissau is ruled by a military junta and is among the poorest countries in the world.

It's that Cuban effort in Guinea Bissau that thrills Comrade Mary-Alice. Indeed, as detailed by Wikipedia, the rebels claimed assistance from Cuba, among other countries. Pathfinder Press, the Party's publishing house, has released a new book touting the heroism of a certain Victor Dreke, entitled Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, also written by Mr. Dreke. According to Mary-Alice, (emphasis mine)

“Party members and supporters have already been working with others to organize events to get this book into the hands of working people and students, encouraging them to read and use it. ...“And we’re just barely out of the starting blocks.”

Today on Amazon the book is ranked at a bit over a million on the bestseller list (#1 is the top spot), which from my experience means they last sold a copy from that platform about a month ago--hardly an impressive launch off those starting blocks.

Admittedly, Amazon is not the important distribution channel for Pathfinder titles. Instead comrades go hawking books door to door on semiannual subscription drives, during which they also sell books. They set themselves a quota to sell something over a 1000 copies during a 10-week drive. It's more than they sell on Amazon--but probably not a lot more. The odds of this book going viral are very long indeed.

Now it gets weird: Somehow selling copies of this book is what is meant by the obscure slogan Deeper into the working class. As quoted above, comrades are not just supposed to read the book, but also to "use it." The so-called "revolutionary" effort fighting a guerilla war in the jungle in a country that was then and still is one of the poorest in the world--from that experience comrades are to draw lessons about current American politics! Go figure.

That, as best I can determine, is the extent of the Party's defense of the Cuban "Revolution."

The problem, per Comrade Waters, is "...that for the past 67 years, since the triumph in Cuba, there has “not been a single victorious socialist revolution anywhere in the world.'" For anybody who fancies themselves as a revolutionary socialist worker-Bolshevik that's got to be a real downer.  

Only two?

And the two outstanding socialist revolutions and proletarian leaderships of the 20th century, led by Lenin and by Fidel Castro, were Russian and Cuban.

What happened to China? When I was a comrade the Party championed the "Chinese Revolution" of 1949, however deformed it may have been by Stalinism. For decades after the end of the Cold War, the Party was claiming that no true counterrevolution had happened--that China and the ex-Soviet space were all still socialist under the skin. It was nonsense, but the Party held to it for decades as detailed in Comrade Barnes' 1998 book US Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War. But no more--China is now a full-on capitalist country, run by the hopelessly misnamed Chinese Communist Party. The Long March has been airbrushed out of history. (For the record, in my view China is not socialist, but also not capitalist. I'd call it mercantilist--a form of pre-capitalism.)

Making a bit more sense, Mary-Alice says

More than three decades after the fall of hated Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, these petty-bourgeois radical currents look to China as the principal alternative to what they see as U.S. imperialism’s “unipolar” world. Beijing is both the Stalinists’ new capital of “world socialism” and creditor-in-chief of “the Global South,” the wished-for capitalist counterweight to U.S. imperialist dominance.

She is on to something here. There are lots of petty-bourgeois radicals floating around, notably on the progressive Left in the Democrat Party, and certainly in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). But I don't see many of them claiming a Maoist heritage. Maoism, as an ideology, seems moribund.

Instead I see much of the Left coalescing around some variant of Trotskyism--Trotsky being the only dead Russian unsullied by not being a mass murderer. (This, in my opinion, was only because he never had the opportunity.) Perhaps I'm biased due to the nature of my blog--I study Trotskyists--but I haven't encountered much conversation about the virtues of Maoism anywhere.

Speaking of petty-bourgeois radicals who claim to be Trotskyist, there's no better example than Left Voice--a quality blog run by a collective of very petty-bourgeois academics from New York City. Mary-Alice's next paragraph is absolutely right on the money!

What’s new today is the convergence of these [petty-bourgeois] currents with the sharp rise of reactionary, Islamist, Jew-hating organizations and actions around the world, which has accelerated since the Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom against Israel.

It's an unholy alliance between so-called progressives (including pseudo-Trotskyists) and Islamic fascism. On this the SWP and I are in full agreement. Killing all the Jews won't solve ANY of the world's problems--especially not for Palestinians! Both the Islamists and the progressive Left are using the Jews as a scapegoat. However crazy the reasoning, kudos to the Socialist Workers Party for seeing this for what it is: a plea for mass murder.

Steve Clark, the junior Troika member, argues that the Iran war is actually two wars in one. The first war is an existential fight for Israel to exist. Should Israel lose this war then all the Jews in Palestine will be exterminated. Comrade Clark takes the Iranian government seriously when they demand Death to Israel.

The second war, happening at the same time, is happening because the US--or more precisely US imperialism is trying to conquer Iran to steal its oil. "Topmost for the U.S. ruling families are their own imperial interests in oil and gas resources, other lucrative markets, arms sales, and control over strategic sea routes and straits worldwide." The imperialists don't really care if all the Jews are killed--no sweat off their back. Apparently the Iranian threat of Death to America is just idle propaganda, and they don't really mean it.

This is just unbelievable. In truth, both Israel and the USA are threatened by an Iranian nuclear weapon, and it is essential for both countries to eliminate that threat.

I don't know how much of this Jack Barnes actually believes. It's all some very weird shit. There are people who think Comrade Jack is a secret Republican--and surely his positions on progressives' antisemitism, his opposition to wokeness, and his muscular defense of Israel will buttress their case.

But then there's all the other stuff. I don't know what to make of it.

Further Reading:

• Left Voice Antisemites Speak Out
• Mary-Alice on Cosmetics and Fashion
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat

Oberlin, 2026: History & Sentiment

Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes presents political report to June international party conference. With Barnes, from left are SWP leaders Paul Mailhot, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark. (Photo credit: MILITANT/LAURA ANDERSON; Caption: The Militant)

This week's Militant* publishes the first part of two reporting on the Party's 2026 International Conference held last June in Oberlin, Ohio. The title is SWP conference: Building a working-class party on Marxist foundations in the fight for workers power amid today’s capitalist crises and wars, and reports on the speech by Jack Barnes. Speeches by Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark will presumably be discussed next week. Comrades Jack, Mary-Alice and Steve constitute the central leadership of the Party, which I have dubbed the Troika.

Back in 2013 I proposed a framework for analyzing Comrade Jack's speeches, and it goes something like this:

• The speeches put great weight on history. Every event is deeply meaningful and subject to dialectical, Marxist interpretation. This makes them important.
• They are very sentimental, invariably referring to something that happened back when comrades were young (e.g., Malcolm X). So the speeches are inspiring.
• They make some odd-ball claim that sets the Party apart. For example, nobody else on the Left (or even the world) believes that the US lost the cold war. This inspires group solidarity.

Mr. Barnes makes an important historical claim that a Marxist, revolutionary-socialist Party in the Leninist-Bolshevik tradition already exists in the USA. It does not need to be reinvented or refounded. The hard work, according to Comrade Jack, has already been done. The article makes several points that I'll summarize in bullets.

• "Vanguard workers parties can grow with stunning speed amid deep going revolutionary events."
•  “We keep on building the party through our involvement in the class struggle and mass work of all kinds.”
• The Party's size is not important--that can change very quickly when the time is right.
• The Party "is proletarian in our program, our class composition and our norms and habits of political conduct. 'Our communist program is stronger than ever,' he said."

The SWP, with perhaps 100 members, is the vanguard remnant, the seed from which a future revolution will be brought forth. Their cadre, he claims, is proletarian to it's core.

I'll take issue with that last claim: their cadre was proletarian. Today they're increasingly retired. I think the average age is over 70. Comrades Jack and Mary-Alice are both about 85, and Steve is perhaps pushing 80. I wrote a post entitled Abandoning the Working Class about a revolutionary's retirement. What is the class nature of Bolshevik retirees? I suggested they might be declassed, like students.

The word "death" does not occur at all in the document--yet comrades are dying--obviously dying faster than new comrades can be recruited. Two comrades passed recently for whom obituaries appeared in The Militant.

The first was John Benson, who passed on March 6th at age 85. He met Jack and Mary-Alice when they were all students together at Carleton College. His leading accomplishments:

After joining the SWP in 1962, Benson helped build and lead 10 different party branches and organizing committees, served on the party’s National Committee for 15 years, carried out responsibilities helping build the international communist movement and worked at numerous industrial jobs, where he worked to strengthen the union.

Along with party members, supporters and others interested in learning more about the party, members of Benson’s family attended the meeting. This included his brothers Ken and Steve, with whom John shared a lifetime love of golf, a sport he mastered growing up in Crete, Illinois, some 30 miles south of Chicago.

I think all that organizing has been washed away with time--most of those branches don't exist anymore.

The second decedent was Dave Prince, a handsome man who frequently sat on the dais at Oberlin conferences alongside the Troika.

Prince, who joined the SWP in Cleveland in 1965, died on Jan. 25 at age 82, after a long battle against cancer. A member of the party’s National Committee since 1977, he shouldered a wide variety of central leadership responsibilities for the SWP’s party-building activity and international work. He helped organize and lead the financing of the party nationally, as well as the editorial preparation, printing, and circulation of books on working-class politics and program.

Mr. Prince is survived by a brother and sister, along with his longtime companion, Vivian Sahner.

No children and no grandchildren for either of these gentlemen.

For contrast, check out the obituary column for any small town America. I randomly picked Burns, Oregon, where a fellow died earlier this month at age 78. His very long obituary includes:

He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Andrea; his children, Matt, Luke (Missy), Megan (Tyler), and Trey (Jamie); his grandchildren, Chad (Serina), Tara (Jake), Colton, Jaxon, Taylen, Cali, and Tell; his great grandchildren, Cannon, Carter, Tell, Tilly, Tabor, His brother, Lou (Mary Jo) and numerous nieces, nephews, extended family members, and friends.

Folks with children and grandchildren, not to mention great grandchildren, are the people who will determine the future. This man is an example of a life well lived.

So I'll give great credit to my former comrades who made heroic sacrifices on behalf of the movement. They moved hither and yon across the country, dropping career, friends, and everything to respond to the momentary needs of the revolution. They never married or had children. If success had followed sacrifice, then it would be easy to admire them. As it is, they're to be pitied.

For they have not been able to reproduce themselves. Certainly not in the biological sense, but also not politically. They have not been able to recruit a younger generation of comrades to keep the flame going after they die. The biological and political are linked: red diaper babies are comrades who were the children of comrades. Our crop of aging, one-time proletarians are leaving no red diaper babies to follow in their footsteps.

May I suggest a fanciful solution? Our mutual friends over at Left Voice are all Millennials, many of whom aspire to be Trotskyists. Indeed, some of them are part of the Trotskyist Faction of the Fourth International--hard to get more Trotskyist than that! But they need an education: like our comrades 50 years ago, they're green behind their petty-bourgeois ears. They also need to disabuse themselves of their alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. But if--and it is a very big IF--then this is a Young Socialist Alliance in waiting. As Comrade Jack puts it, the Revolutionary Party already exists. No need for these young whippersnappers to reinvent it.

The second bullet in the analysis of Mr. Barnes' speeches is something sentimental that brings back fond memories of youth. Comrade Jack delivers hugely!

The SWP was founded as a Trotskyist party, in close collaboration with Leon (the Old Man) Trotsky himself, during his exile in Coyoacan, Mexico. While prohibited by law from being a member of the Fourth International, the Party stood "in fraternal solidarity" with the International, engaging in rousing sectarian disputes with people like Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel. Then, for reasons that now escape me, the Party "abandoned Trotskyism," not completely, but certainly downplaying the connection.

Well, Trotsky is back! The group-read for the conference (200 copies were sold!) was In Defense of Marxism, now available in a 2026 edition published by Pathfinder Press, with a new introduction by Steve Clark. The book is a collection of correspondence to and from the Old Man during a faction fight and eventual split within the Party over World War II.

Nothing gets more sentimental than the resurrection of old Leon himself! My second bullet is more than satisfied.

The third bullet is a position that is so outlandish that it serves as a marker for group solidarity. I'll claim that is the Party's current position on Iran. But that looks to be a topic from Part 2 of The Militant's coverage of their conference, due to appear next week.

So stay tuned. 

*The Militant is the weekly newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), often referred to as the "Party." Jack Barnes is the National Secretary (CEO), a position he's held since 1972.

Further Reading:

• Left Voice and the SWP
• The March 17th Militant: A Review
• Trotskyist Ephemera

The SWP Throws In the Towel

 

"The SWP opened its 2026 International Conference here June 11-14 ...  SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, at podium, gave the political report. Seated, from left, are SWP leaders Paul Mailhot, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark." (Photo & caption from The Militant)

Founded in 1928, The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) has been the unwavering champion of Revolutionary Socialism, standing in the tradition of Marx, Lenin, and above all, Trotsky. Leon Trotsky, aka the Old Man, took a personal interest in the paper and the Party's worker-Bolshevik cadre. Many SWP comrades lived, worked, and/or studied with Trotsky during his exile in Coyoacan, Mexico, including James P. Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, and most prominently, Joseph Hansen.

Party comrades went to jail for their opposition to US involvement in WWII, accused of violating the Smith Act. The convictions were later overturned as the Act was ruled unconstitutional--the first of many civil rights cases where comrades were victorious. The Party played a key role in the 1960s civil rights movement, long championing Malcolm X. The Party-run Pathfinder Press was Malcolm's first publisher.

The SWP reached its height during the Vietnam war, growing to as many as 3000 comrades. It played a key role organizing the antiwar demonstration on April 24th, 1971, the largest ever antiwar demonstration in US history. Together with the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters' strikes, this was one of only two occasions when the Party exercised political influence well beyond its small size. It is during Vietnam period that the majority of today's comrades were recruited--I also date from that time.

Jack Barnes, who turns 85 this year, has been national secretary (the vaguely Stalinist term for CEO) since 1972. That's 54 years in office--a tenure that's much too long. (There is at least a hint of corruption resulting from such a long tenure.) He and his one-time squeeze, Mary-Alice Waters, were both recruited to the Party in 1960 from Carleton College, where they were members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Defense of the Cuban "Revolution" has been a raison d'être for the movement ever since.

Though things are getting increasingly desperate for that benighted isle. The Militant rises to the "Revolution's" defense with headlines such as Build protests now to defend Cuba’s sovereignty! US hands off Cuba!, authored by Mr. Barnes himself. More pathetic is Join protests, demand: ‘US hands off Cuba!’ The picture shows a dozen or so elderly people forlornly standing up for Castro's kleptocrats.

“Hands Off Cuba!” picket at Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis June 3, called by area Cuba Committee. It was one of dozens across the country, worldwide. (Picture & Caption: The Militant)

The Party's position is that ALL (100%) of Cuba's problems are due to the US blockade. But the blockade is simply the icing on the cake. The country was founded on the principle of stealing from rich people. Not surprisingly, all the rich people left and built prosperous lives for themselves in Miami. Having squandered the wealth of rich people, the Castroites started stealing from the middle class. In particular they reduced skilled professionals to slaves. For example, in terms of purchasing power doctors in Cuba only earn between $15 and $20 per month! (According to ChatGPT)

Needless to say, the middle class has now fled the country--can you blame them? In particular, anybody with the technical skill to maintain the electrical grid is long gone. So no wonder Cuba can't keep the lights on anymore.

As the Castro government cannibalized economic infrastructure (eg, Cuba went from being the world's largest sugar exporter, to--in some years--being a sugar importer) the country depended on handouts. These initially came from the Soviet Union, and then subsequently from fellow kleptocrats in Venezuela--both regimes longstanding enemies of the United States. The Soviets even put nuclear-tipped missiles on the island, aimed at the USA. Apparently the Chinese use Cuba for electronic spying. So no wonder Uncle Sam is kind of pissed, and is finally doing something about the problem.

So Jack and Mary-Alice are getting really old, and the Cuban lodestar is fading fast. There is no younger leadership. Oh, there is, namely the comrades of my generation, who are roughly 10 years younger than the decrepit duo. Whatever--there doesn't appear to be any succession plan, and it's too late for one now anyway.

Marco Rubio memorably describes Cuba this way:

Cuba's in a lot of trouble because, unfortunately for them, it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists. Being a communist is bad. Being an incompetent communist is the worst.

That's a fair appraisal of Cuba--but not so of the SWP. For the Party was at least competent--at least compared to all other Trotskyist grouplets. Their communist doctrine never accurately described the American economy--certainly not post-WWII. Today it's just totally wrong, as I've detailed at length in this blog. So it was never going to become a mass Party with the prospect of taking state power. Most recently they've been pipped by the Democratic Socialists of America--who are campaigning hard on antisemitism.

So today, the biggest accomplishment of the SWP is that they exist--just as the banner says. It appears they will outlive Cuba's kleptocratic "Revolution." Will they survive the passing of Jack Barnes? There are reasons to be skeptical. But I understand (from commenter John B) that they have several million dollars in the bank--so they'll probably soldier on until the money runs out.

The SWP (and this blog) Goes AWOL

 

Intramuros, Manila, Philippines
(Source)

OK. I give up. On June 28th (my last post on this blog) I wrote--in entirety--as follows:

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) printed a brief summary of the annual Oberlin Conference held June 12th--14th. Billed as an "International Conference," the agenda reads more like a convention, including a "political report" presented by Jack Barnes.

I assume a longer account of the proceedings is forthcoming--I certainly hope so since the banner looks more interesting than usual. I will get to it, but I'm going to be in the Philippines for the next two weeks so there may be a delay. 

I did go to the Philippines (rather idealized stock photo above). I got back from the Philippines. I had a whole slew of medical appointments (that in the end determined that my cancer is now in remission! Hope it stays that way). I've endured treatments for non-cancer ailments that will accompany me on my slow march toward oblivion. I've read every copy of The Militant since, along with checking Left Voice almost daily, along with visits to other blogs on my beat. 

Jack Barnes at the podium

For all that, no "longer account of the proceedings" has come forth. It appears that Terry Evans and Steve Clark--even with indispensable aid from the ever-reliable John Studer--can manage in over two months to write a couple thousand words describing their "international conference." I'm tired of waiting.

They're either a bunch of lazy, incompetent bums, or something else is going on, or some combination of the above. Lazy and/or incompetent could arise from the advanced age of said authors. Comrade Clark could easily be incapacitated--he hasn't looked healthy in recent photos. I don't know how old Comrades Evans and Studer are, but they're surely both over 70. If I'm gonna blame health on my failure to produce a blog post, then surely the same problems must afflict those who are even older.

More consequential would be Comrade Barnes' decrepitude. Here Kremlinology skills come in handy--unfortunately mine don't rise to the challenge. But if Jack is sick, then the future of the whole enterprise is called into question. Jack has been "national secretary" (don't you just love the Stalinist terminology!) since 1972, or 53 years. I think that's at least 43 years too long.

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men" is what some French politician allegedly said, suggesting that nobody is indispensable. But for a small Party with a leadership so entrenched and dependent on the wisdom of one guy, then perhaps said Party can't survive the illness of its leader?

Alternative explanations are possible. Perhaps the Party never intended to write anything more. Why? On the one hand they teasingly claim that "2025 is not 2024!", yet on the other their brief recap is boringly predictable. They make three points:

1. Capitalist rulers are building up their militaries.
2. "Jew hatred and deepening imperialist rivalries."
3. “Why the Fight for Women’s Emancipation Is Inseparable from the Class Struggle.”

It's what they don't mention that is noteworthy. Last year the talk of the town was the latest book, entitled The low point of labor resistance is behind us (my review here). It appears that the "low point" is making a comeback. The book is not mentioned at all in the short article.

The second unmentionable was the expression "women's emancipation," which did not occur in last year's report. Yes, they did mention women, but an explicit connection with the so-called "class struggle" was not made. The Party's position on women's issues has changed over the past few years, and it remains very unclear (see, eg, here and here). Perhaps some clarity is forthcoming?

Regards capitalists and their militaries, the brief account is ever so slightly more specific than last year, writing that "[c]apitalist rulers in the U.S. and elsewhere are building up their militaries and looking for allies as they fight to defend and expand their economic and political reach, pushing inexorably toward World War III." So what else is new? Capitalist and non-capitalist countries are always rebuilding their militaries. The Militant's observation is a truism, and does not auger World War III.

The current issue of The Militant sheds rather little light on the matter, except that the paper is declaring yet another week-long holiday next week, presumably to let our comrades recover from their laziness/incompetence and get their heads in gear long enough to produce an article. Or perhaps Comrade Jack is writing a new book!? Who knows.

Otherwise the issue is just boilerplate all over again:

• The lead headline is about the 3-day long Air Canada strike. Here today and gone tomorrow.
• The second headline is the evergreen ‘As crisis of capitalism grows, workers need to take power’. This is the hopelessly unrealistic demand that The Militant has put forth since its founding in 1928--in almost every issue.
• The "Book of the Month" is a piece from the long forgotten leader of the Burkina Faso "revolution" (1983 - 1987) commemorating Che Guevara. Che--a murderous psychopath--had the good sense to get himself killed while he was still handsome enough to decorate dorm rooms. Both revolutions (Burkina Faso's and Cuba's) are/were miserable failures, with the Cubans now mostly living without electricity.
• They still support open borders, championing a mass demonstration back in 2006.

They continue to get some things right. They understand that Hamas wants to kill all the Jews, in an article entitled Support Israel’s fight to stop a new Holocaust! Hamas must be defeated. Far from being "pro-Palestinian," Hamas is just pro-murder.

There's nothing new here. If 2025 really is different from 2024, then The Militant produces no evidence.

Further Reading:

• The Fading Fumes of Trotskyism
• Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters
• Oberlin, 2024

The Fading Fumes of Trotskyism

 

Jack Barnes

Jeff Mackler

Jack Barnes' biography has yet to be written, and I am certainly not the one to write it. I've never met the man apart from being in the audience at a few of his Oberlin presentations. All I know is what I've heard through the grapevine (and from Wikipedia). Along with his life-long companion, Mary-Alice Waters, he attended Carleton College, and in 1960 joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. That brought him and Ms. Waters into contact with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)--in those days an avowedly Trotskyist Party in fraternal solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International. In 1972 he became National Secretary (top leader) of the Party, a post he has held ever since. Comrade Mary-Alice followed him on to the Political Committee, a status she continues to hold.

So support for the Cuban "Revolution" is in the core DNA of the Party, even today. Almost every issue of The Militant contains articles about Cuba, this week's being no exception. This is noteworthy because the Party has evolved its opinions on many other topics, eg,

• They no longer refer to themselves as "Trotskyist," and have broken ties with the Fourth International.
• They have distanced themselves from Wokeism, and no longer associate with the petty-bourgeois, identity movements so common elsewhere on the Left.
• They support Israel against Hamas, which they regard (correctly) as a fascist death cult.

Today the Party consists of about 100 comrades (with perhaps 200 sympathizers), down from around 2000 in the early 70s. It's an aging crowd--the median age is likely over 70 by now. They'll survive Jack Barnes (who turns 85 this year), but I doubt they'll make it too much longer than that.

I think the end of the SWP and the end of the Cuban "Revolution" are likely to occur simultaneously. When Cuba is no longer "revolutionary," then the Party's very raison d'etre is gone. Without their allegiance to the Cuban Commies the SWP simply becomes a rather weird group of Trump supporters.

So people have been predicting the imminent demise of the "Revolution" for many decades now--and such predictions have so far come to naught. I think that's because the soothsayers have misunderstood the fate of Cuba: the "Revolution" isn't going out with a bang, but instead with a whimper. Rather than a cataclysmic end to the regime, it will instead just gradually and literally die away and fade into the dustbin of history.

In this, the "Revolution" is like the SWP. The Party won't end by Jack Barnes turning off the lights at the National Office. Instead there will be a gradual aging and shrinking until there is effectively nothing left. The historical analogy is the Socialist Labor Party, a once vital movement that faded into a website that ended when the last keeper of the flame passed away. It's gonna take another 20 years, but this is also how the Socialist Workers Party will end.

And so it is with Cuba. There will likely never be a counter-revolution in Cuba, but instead the country will cease to be a civilized, cohesive society. It's already close to that--most of the island is without electricity for most or all of the day, and transport is today mostly by oxcart and donkey.

The country is in steep demographic decline. You can't trust the Cuban government numbers (echoed by the United Nations)--those are certified fake. The government still counts as residents people who left the island less than two years ago--which obviously inflates the population numbers. According to official numbers, in 2024 the population of the island was 9,748,532. As mentioned, this ignores the large out-migration that began in 2020. According to the Universidad de Navarra in an article by Agustina Rodríguez Granja (emphasis mine)

The Cuban government refuses to give concrete figures on the recent massive outflow of citizens, claiming that until they have been out of the country for two years, they are still considered residents. This forces researchers to collect data from the receiving countries and to draw their own models. The conclusion of Cuban demographer and economist Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos is that in reality only 8.62 million people reside on the island, pointing to an 18% decrease in population between 2022 and 2023. Thus, more than one million people would have left Cuba since 2021, a Issue that is in line with the number of Cubans registered in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in other countries.

She goes on to write,

Based on the number of Cubans who entered the United States and the count that on other occasions this direct migration to the U.S. has represented in the overall Cuban migration, Albizu-Campos extrapolates that the total number of Cubans who left the island between 2021 and 2024 is close to an estimated 1.79 million.

The people who are leaving are typically working age, and disproportionately female of childbearing age. The government is letting them leave likely because they don't want rebellion at home. But eventually the "Revolution" will be reduced to a bunch of old people without electricity, subsisting by growing food on whatever land they can get ahold of.

It's not just the fading fumes of Cuba. It's also the fading fumes of the Socialist Workers Party. 

Speaking of fading fast, I haven't read a biography of Jeff Mackler, either. I also have never met him, but I think his bio might actually be very short--perhaps only one word: pathetic.

Mr. Mackler is the "national secretary" of the nearly defunct Socialist Action organization. That grouplet, which fancies itself as the "vanguard party," likely consists of a couple dozen comrades. It's gotten so small and so devoid of talent that I've taken to referring to Mr. Mackler as Vanguard Man, ie, the very last, living leader of the coming American revolution. 

The last formal edition of their newspaper was published in June, 2022, and since then their webpage has struggled with content. As I predicted back in January, it appears that Mr. Mackler (who is in his 80s) is no longer capable of leadership. So Vanguard Man is fading out, and it's not clear whose gonna lead us into the next revolutionary era.

The most recent post in Socialist Action, dated April 30th, is entitled Socialist Action General Membership Meeting for Comrades and Friends. It reads in full (except for details of Zoom meeting that was held on May 4th),

Comrades and Friends,

Join us this coming Sunday, May 4 at 5 pm PST [7 PM Midwest and 8 pm EST] for our Socialist Action ZOOM general membership meeting.

Reply to David.huseth@tutanota.com, John Pottinger <jpottinger@earthlink.net>, Jeff Mackler <jmackler@lmi.net>

Proposed agenda:

Analysis of Democrat’s “Hands Off” and “50 50 1,” • Defense of Palestine • May May/Immigrant Rights • New SA Members •  Fourth International World Congress Assessment and SA’s termination of fraternal membership. • Other business.

Comradely.

David and John

I don't know David Huseth, but John Pottinger was a comrade of mine in Chicago back in the day. He's a perfectly fine, upstanding gentleman against whom I bear no grudge--but frankly, he is woefully unqualified to assume the role of Vanguard Man. At very least he lacks the editorial talent. Note that prior to this April 30th announcement, the last post to their webpage was on March 20th.

No word yet on the outcome of the general membership meeting. But honestly, along with Mr. Mackler, it appears that Socialist Action is passing from this mortal coil. Which is a bit surprising--I expected the SWP to go first. 

There's more, of course. One shouldn't forget Left Voice, a claque of petty bourgeois academics that suffer from an overdose of Wokeism, a hatred of Jews, and of all the ills that beset the modern academy (eg, among other things, the advent of AI). These people aren't serious.

There is the nearly forgotten Socialist Viewpoint, a bi-monthly magazine edited by an aging group of spinsters formerly associated with Nat Weinstein's grouplet. And I can't forget Workers' Voice, which is in part a split-off from Socialist Action, and which now claims to be a vanguard party all its own.

The most significant remnant of Trotskyism is Solidarity, which isn't really Trotskyist anymore (not that anybody else is), but has instead become an addendum to the Democratic Party.

Anyway, I find all of this increasingly meaningless and boring, which is why I'm uninspired to write. There's no point. I won't end this blog--something will come along that inspires--but it's probably gonna be less frequent than it has been.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us
• American Brezhnevism Today
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again

 

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

Havana, Boston

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party, SWP) published two, backward-looking articles in its issue dated January 20. The first, by Sara Lobman, is a hopelessly sentimental account of the Cuban "Revolution." The lede paragraph sets the tone.

“Under the leadership of Fidel Castro, the Cuban people carried out a successful socialist revolution by uniting working people on the basis of a program that championed their own independent class interests,” Socialist Workers Party National Committee member Róger Calero told some 60 people at a special meeting here Jan. 5. The gathering was a celebration of the 66th anniversary of the Jan. 1, 1959, Cuban Revolution and to demand an immediate end to Washington’s decadeslong economic war aimed at crushing the Cuban people and overturning their revolution.

It stretches credulity to count the so-called "socialist revolution" as a success. Today's Cuba--which is fearlessly leading us into a post-electric future--is not only short on electric power, but now can no longer feed or house its population. There's even a water shortage, since without electricity the water pumps don't work. Presumably neither do the sewage treatment plants.

There is almost no transport on the island. Above is a satellite view of central Havana taken from Google Maps. It shows the four-lane Malecon merging into the seven-lane Tunel de la Habana. Amidst all those lanes, there are only three (3) vehicles in view! Clearly, Cuba does not have a traffic congestion problem.

The source of the problem--according to both the SWP and the Cuban government--is America's "decadeslong economic war aimed at crushing the Cuban people and overturning their revolution." Well, the Cuban people certainly are crushed--of that there is no doubt. But for what? Is the "Revolution" worth anything more than the silly propaganda posters displayed everywhere on the island? What has Cuba gained by earning the undying enmity of the USA? Nothing, so far as I can see. Indeed, the only people who perceived any benefit to the "Revolution" were the 60 people in attendance at the meeting upon which Ms. Lobman reports.

None of the other Trotskyist grouplets on my Beat even bother to talk about Cuba--likely because it's too embarrassing. They don't talk about Venezuela, either. They're not willing to tout the ox-cart as the latest in socialist transportation solutions.

Basically, socialism sucks. Forget about Cuba Libre. I'll settle for a Cuba with abundant food, clean running water, livable housing, and a bustling marketplace in the city center. If that means cozying up to the USA, then so be it.

The second article, by Susan Lamont, is a peon to the good ol' days, entitled ‘Battle of Boston’ 50 years ago helped change US class struggle. I remember it well, for this was my swansong as I was well on my way out of the Movement by that then.

The event surrounded a rather bitter fight to desegregate Boston's public schools. The premise was that Black children would learn more if they sat next to white children. That was always implausible because the white children--or at least their parents--were adamantly against any Black kids in their schools. There were more or less violent protests as the occasionally racist, white parents objected to the destruction of what had hitherto been their neighborhood school.

The upshot relevant to me was an effort to form a national movement in favor of school bussing--called the National Student Coalition Against Racism, or NSCAR. The premise was ludicrous: 

1) Pretty much everybody is against racism, which made it unclear who are opponents were to be. Indeed, the only opposition we confronted were working class parents in a white neighborhood who wanted to preserve their neighborhood school.

2) The Black kids weren't keen on being bussed long distances to schools where they obviously weren't welcome.

3) The issue was mostly about Boston geography, and didn't catch on as a national crusade.

So NSCAR had exactly one meeting, and somehow I got shanghaied into driving my car with a load of comrades to attend the meeting. And I did do that--on the first day. It was extraordinarily, excruciatingly, unendingly boring. They'd rented an auditorium seating about 500 people, of which perhaps 150 seats were taken. Most attendees were comrades, but there were a few ultraleft sectarians mixed in (I think Workers' League). The only interesting moments were the rare instances when one of the sectarians got to speak--at least that wasn't completely predictable. I doubt there were more than 20 "independents" in the whole crowd.

Needless to say, it was the first, last, and only NSCAR meeting ever held--long forgotten until Ms. Lamont chose to resurrect it in this article.

Fortunately for me, I met a fellow comrade from another city who was as bored with the proceedings as I was. And since we were more interested in exploring Boston than sitting thru another day of BS, we arranged for digs as far from the conference site as we dared go, and then spent the next morning and into the afternoon exploring Boston. It's a glorious city and I'm so glad we did that!

So around 3pm we sheepishly showed up at the conference site, hoping to escape unnoticed. Didn't happen, because as soon as we walked in a prominent comrade--no longer in the Movement, but a man of some accomplishment--confronted us and asked what happened. We confessed, but didn't apologize. We got the side eye expression of disapproval--but then nothing. We didn't get reported to any higher-ups or subjected to any further discipline.

It was my first time as a comrade where I behaved "irresponsibly." I learned my lesson--and vowed never to be "responsible" again. I spent another year as a nominal, inactive member, and then dropped out completely. My fellow comrade behaved similarly.

Bussing has long since died. The effort was very disruptive and seriously damaged the public schools. It was also completely unnecessary. I asked ChatGPT:

How do the demographics of Boston Public Schools compare with the school age population of Boston as a whole?

It answered (excerpt only):

The racial composition of Boston Public Schools (BPS) differs notably from that of Boston's overall school-age population.

Boston Public Schools (BPS) Demographics (2023):

Hispanic/Latino: 44% 

Black or African American: 28%

Asian: 9%

White: 15%

Other/Multi-Racial: 4%

Boston's School-Age Population Demographics (2018-2019):

Black: 45%

White: 24%

Hispanic: 19%

Asian: 3%

Other: 9% 

I disagree with ChatGPT. Apart from a significant discrepancy among Hispanics, it doesn't seem like BPS demographics are way out of whack. Please tell me what problem here will be solved by bussing?

Further Reading:

• The End of Cuban Civilization
• Chicago: Ilona Gersh Runs for Mayor
• Louis Proyect Denies Being a White Supremacist

The End of Cuban Civilization

 

A little bedtime reading in Havana (source: EFE / AAP) 

The Militant, in an article which they must now find slightly embarrassing given the island-wide blackout last Friday, reproduces part of a report delivered to the UN General Assembly and released to the press last Sept. 12th. The dignitary responsible for the missive is Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez. The excerpt appears in The Militant under the title Cuba: ‘End Washington’s economic, trade war against our revolution!’.

I do have to give The Militant some credit here. None of the other so-called Trotskyist papers on my beat even mention Cuba. For example, the most recent article about the island in Left Voice was posted in February, 2022! And yet I believe all my Trotskyist friends believe Cuba to be a socialist/workers' state and a step toward our progressive, human future. But it appears none of them have any courage of their convictions. Except The Militant.

Mr. Rodriguez has the courtesy to admit that "All the difficulties faced by the Cuban society are not exclusively due to the blockade...", but the rest of the article condemns the US policy in no uncertain terms. And he does have a point, or perhaps a few of them.

• The US made it much more difficult for Cuba to respond to the pandemic by imposing restrictions on imports of ventilators and oxygen from third countries, among other things.
• The US "continued its pursuit of fuel supplies to Cuba." I assume that means the US tried to deny Cuban access to fuel on the world market.
• The US worked to "curtail the recovery of the Cuban tourism sector" post-pandemic, dealing a mortal blow to the country's main source of income.
• The US has refused to let Cuba use global financial networks, almost all of which go through US banks.
• The US--specifically the Biden administration--has refused to lift the Trump-era's "arbitrary inclusion of Cuba in the State Department’s unilateral list of alleged countries sponsoring terrorism."

I can't vouch for Mr. Rodriguez's facts, but he is certainly right that the US has not been a friend of Cuba. The question is: Why?

The problem begins in 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis. The island allowed the Soviet Union to place nuclear-tipped warheads in Cuba, aimed at the United States. Now I know there are arguments on both sides, but the hard fact is that when somebody aims nuclear weapons in your direction--that somebody isn't gonna be a best friend. The Cuban government has never so much as apologized for that act. And more, until the Soviet collapse in 1991 they remained a staunch ally of the Soviet Union--and since then an ally of Russia.

Cuba sent troops to Angola to fight against American interests. Again, I know there are arguments on both sides, and I'm not sure America really had any interests in that war (besides oil). Still, when one of our nearest neighbors goes halfway around the world just to poke Uncle Sam in the nose--don't be surprised if Uncle Sam returns the favor.

In more recent years Cuba has aligned itself with the so-called "axis of evil," ie, that loose, anti-American alliance between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Venezuela used to be part of that group, but that country has long since committed economic and social suicide and is no longer a global player of any consequence. These countries work to resist US influence globally--and Cuba's alignment with them means they'll get no benefits from us.

Speaking of suicide--it looks like the Cuban power system may have breathed its last. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 18th,

Electricity went out across Cuba on Friday just hours after its cash-strapped government ordered the shutdown of nonessential businesses to save power as millions of residents were already suffering from widespread outages.

The country’s Energy Ministry said that a failure at the largest power plant sparked a nationwide blackout affecting the island’s 11 million residents. Utility workers were working to restore service, the ministry said on X.

An update today from Reuters tells us

Cuba's power-grid operator said it had restored electricity to parts of the capital Havana on Monday following a fourth major grid failure in 48 hours, while Tropical Storm Oscar lashed the island's eastern end.

They've made fantastic progress! The same article reports that

Cuban energy officials said they were providing to the grid around 700 megawatts, or one-fourth of a typical day's demand, by mid-morning. Authorities said they had restored power to 56% of Havana by midday. 

Note that "one-fourth of a typical day's demand" seems kind of silly. Even in normal times power is out for 20 hours per day for much of the island. One fourth of that says the power is available for only one hour per day. Such are the benefits of socialism.

We're told that "utility workers were working to restore service." I don't believe that. Utility workers in the United States can earn six figures. In Mexico it might be half as much. Even in poor countries like Guatemala and Honduras I'll suggest utility workers earn what counts for a living wage.

But not in Cuba. In Cuba the employees are paid in scrip and given a now increasingly useless ration card. This is no way to live.

According to Times Radio, in two years, 2022 & 2023, Cuba's population has declined from 11 million to 8.5 million, or a 23% drop. This is due to emigration--people are fleeing the island as fast as their little row boats can carry them. Do you really think many utility workers are still left in Cuba? Why would they stay when they can't even earn enough to feed themselves?

I think the Cuban electricity grid is down for the count. They don't have the fuel, they don't have spare parts, and now they likely no longer have the workforce. Cubans are just gonna have to get used to living without electricity--just as they did in the 19th Century when they were a Spanish colony.

Of course no electricity means no food, no water, no medical care, and for that matter, no schools. The link is to a video by Joe Blogs which appeared two weeks ago, ie, just before the great blackout. It looks like everything he predicted is coming true.

A Socialist Workers Party (publisher of The Militant) leader Mary-Alice Waters used to make frequent trips to Havana (eg, here) where she gave sitting-room only speeches to an audience of petty-nomenklatura. I doubt she'll be making such trips in the future. The island is too far gone.

Secretary Rodriguez can complain and moan and cry about the injustice of it all. And maybe he's right? Perhaps the US really is a scoundrel and has treated Cuba wrong? And it's likely the General Assembly will pass yet another meaningless resolution condemning the US behavior.

The US may be wrong, but it has behaved in a way that is totally predictable. If you want trading relations with the United States (and by extension, with the rest of the world), you have to be a US ally when it comes to foreign affairs. You can't side with the "axis of evil."

For many decades Castro gained political favor by blaming the US for everything. But those days are long gone. The only solution to Cuba's problems today begins with disavowing America's enemies, pledging to be a loyal partner in the Caribbean and in Latin America, and allowing the (mostly) free inflow of capital to help rebuild the economy. Because capital and expertise is what America has, and what Cuba needs.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us
• A Tale of Two Conferences
• The Philippines

Oberlin, 2024

 

84 year-old Jack Barnes, leader of the Socialist Workers Party since 1972.
(Source)

“Every class struggle is a political struggle.” With that statement Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers PartyI [SWP - ed], opened his report to an International Socialist Educational Conference in Oberlin, Ohio. ...

Barnes was quoting an 1895 tribute by communist leader V.I. Lenin to Frederick Engels, who along with Karl Marx founded and led the modern revolutionary workers movement. In October 1917, after the horrors of more than three years of imperialist war, the Bolshevik Party, under Lenin’s leadership, led the working class and exploited peasants in Russia to the conquest of power and establishment of the first workers state in history. It was the world’s first victorious socialist revolution.

That is an excerpt from Steve Clark's long article reporting on the 2024 Oberlin Conference held June 13-15, 2024. The article is entitled Forging a proletarian party in the class struggle today.

I previously suggested that there was no Oberlin conference this year, offering to eat crow if I was proven wrong. Well, I had a large helping of finely cooked, elegantly spiced crow for breakfast this morning--in honor of the fact that I'm happy to be wrong, as detailed in my previous article. Why it took Mr. Clark more than two months to write the report, I don't know. I also don't understand why the event wasn't advertised in advance (at least not that I noticed).

I will say the lack of advertising didn't make much difference in attendance--Mr. Clark reports that 330 comrades and friends attended, including visitors from Australia, France, UK, Iceland, Greece and Norway. This is in line with attendance in previous years.

Friend and commenter John B. points out that nothing much of importance seems to have happened this year. And he's right--but this year's report has a noticeably different tone from those of prior years. Previous reports from Oberlin have led off with the topics of the day, followed by (at least in attenuated form) what the Party is gonna do in response.

That's not true this year. Mr. Clark's article is mostly about the past--beginning with that 1895 quote from Lenin. Current events are reserved to the very end, and there is almost no discussion of the Party's tasks for the coming period.

It's all very sentimental. It has a swan-song vibe to it--as if Mr. Barnes is in his final year of leadership. It's more a funeral than a new beginning.

As detailed in my last post, both capitalists and workers have a strong, common interest in maximizing a business's revenue--on that they are very much on the same side. Indeed, labor almost always gets the lion's share of revenue. The necessity to maximize revenue dwarfs the conflict over how it's divided between wages and profits. With no revenue, there won't be either. Marx never understood that.

Quoting Mr. Barnes, Mr. Clark writes,

“Workers and our allies need a party of independent working-class political action — class against class — in factories and other workplaces, in army barracks, and in the neighborhoods, towns and streets where working people live and labor.”

The Party has been demanding this since its inception in 1938. More, this is the key demand of all the "Trotskyist" offspring that this blog covers--they all want an independent working class party. Indeed, Marx and Engels made the same demand in the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. If there ever was a consistent theme in Marxism/Leninism/Trotskyism, it's that there needs to be an independent labor party.

In the United States that has never happened. There have been labor parties in other countries--eg, Canada and the UK. And many European countries still have Social Democratic parties, which were originally founded by Marx himself (and led, in Germany, by the redoubtable Karl Kautsky). Yet all labor and social democratic parties have evolved toward "reformism," and in the modern era have faded into insignificance. In Germany recent polling gives the Social Democrats only 14% of the vote.

The reason is because Marxism is wrong. Class struggle does NOT drive human history (though it is a factor, probably minor). Revenue is more important to workers than profit. A zero-sum conflict between workers and capitalists does not exist.

If Marxism were right, then why is the SWP today still a tiny party of 330 comrades and sympathizers with an average age of about 70? They haven't grown. They haven't convinced any large number of people of the correctness of their opinions.

Mr. Clark (describing Mr. Barnes' speech) gives a long list of positions the Party has taken that he says have since proven correct. He touts the most recent political report entitled The low point of labor resistance is behind us (my review here). The major thesis of that book, published in 2022, is that the union movement has been revived and will start growing again. Recent evidence for that are successful strikes at Amazon and Starbucks, and by the UAW.

And the Party was correct (at least in a minor way). In 2022 we had a major labor shortage and all workers--union and non-union alike--were getting significant raises. Whether that caused inflation or was the result of inflation is a chicken-egg question that I won't answer--but it did happen. And it made it look as though unions were on the upswing.

But that's not true today. Today 4+ million new immigrants have joined the labor force. All the help wanted signs that decorated stores and restaurants in 2022 have disappeared. Labor participation rates are at a recent high. 

There is no labor shortage. The days of easy raises for employees is over. Indeed, white collar workers--especially in the tech industry--are taking pay cuts, often big ones. That trend may be spreading into the blue collar field as well. The Party was right in 2022. Now it's wrong.

Even if you grant that the Party was right in 2022, it was also wrong. Because many of the successful strikes were by public employee unions, eg, teachers, college professors and grad students, social welfare workers, etc. These are described in loving detail by our friends over at Left Voice, a Trotskyist grouplet made up of college professors and assorted failed academics. But public employees--however occasionally necessary their services--do not improve our standard of living. They're paid from taxes paid involuntarily mostly by working people, and not from revenue which comes from consumers voluntarily spending their money on products they want to buy. Growth in the public employee unions does not represent the revival of the labor movement.

The Party--to its great credit--has mostly championed revenue-making businesses that actually improve our lives. Their candidate for mayor of Chicago in 2023, Ilona Gersh, was a good example of this.

Among the most ludicrous of the supposedly correct positions is (italics in original),

The Socialist Workers Party said, “No!” U.S. imperialism has lost the Cold War, not won it. The fall of the Stalinist apparatuses eliminated a class-collaborationist crutch the imperialist rulers had relied on for more than six decades to undermine national and class battles the world over and block extension of the socialist revolution.

Note to Mr. Barnes and all other comrades: The US won the cold war. The Soviet state, born of the supposedly successful Russian Revolution of 1917, has disintegrated. Russia is but an empty husk of its former self, suffering demographic, economic, technological, and now military decline. Even if it somehow wins the war in Ukraine, it will be a pyrrhic victory that won't help at all.

But Mr. Clark does correctly note that world disorder is increasing. Some of that is technological: eg, the Houthis are firing thousand dollar drones at ships in the Red Sea while the US Navy is shooting them down with million dollar missiles. This is obviously unsustainable.

Or put more generally, because of the Soviet Union the US had to acquire allies around the world. It did that by bribing them with foreign aid, by granting them tariff-free access to US markets, and by militarily guaranteeing their borders from invasion. But today the Soviet Union is no longer a threat. We don't need all those allies, and countries that used to get aid from Uncle Sam (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Egypt, South Africa, etc.) are just shit out of luck.

We're the most self-sufficient country on Earth.

Like their Trotskyist competitors, the Party is obsessed with the word imperialism. It's an imaginary boogeyman invented by Lenin designed to bamboozle the ignorant. At bottom, it's just a giant conspiracy theory. The word fragment imperial- occurs in Mr. Clark's essay 31 times. This is just meaningless Trotsky-talk.

The Party takes the honorable position on two issues. First, it truly understands that Hamas is a murderous, fascist organization. The compare Hamas to Nazis. The comparison isn't wrong, but I think it's more precise to compare them with the Khmer Rouge. They're not motivated by ideological fascism so much as just murderous nihilism. If there's any method to Hamas's madness, I certainly don't know what it is.

Second, they understand that the egregious lawfare against Donald Trump is an attack on the basic civil liberties of all Americans. The SWP has long defended civil liberties, going all the way back to the Smith trials of the 1950s. Their defense of Trump is entirely consistent with that proud tradition. Kudos.

The final paragraph of Mr. Clark's report is this.

It’s along that historic line of march, Barnes said, that a tested proletarian party will be forged in class battles, capable of organizing and leading the great working-class majority in the United States in a mass revolutionary movement that will decide which class will rule.

Big words, that. Mr. Barnes likely expressed that same thought 52 years ago when he first became National Secretary. In the intervening decades it doesn't look like he's made any progress. Indeed, the opposite. His tiny band of aging comrades are not the next generation of fighters, and Mr. Barnes--still pretty fit for an 84 year-old--looks every bit his age.

The Good Bye has taken too long. The Socialist Workers Party needs new leaders and a new program.

Further Reading:

• Amazon, Teamsters & Contract
• SWP Announces 2024 Presidential Campaign
• Cuba Needs More Communism