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

The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction Tried to Ruin my Breakfast

The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction is represented in the United States by Left Voice, a blog run by a collective of New York City college professors and their groupies. It's a very dicey project.

The very name is weird. For those not in the know, the Fourth International was founded by Leon Trotsky himself in 1938, in response to the Stalinist takeover of the Soviet Union and the associated Third International. So the Fourth International is, by definition, a Trotskyist movement--so what is the point of having a Trotskyist faction within a Trotskyist International?

Trotskyism today is a largely academic discipline, which cadre is disproportionately made up of professors, grad students, failed academics, schoolteachers, and other public employees. They're often called the lumpen intelligentsia, and far from being a proletarian movement, they're more likely a force for fascism. Surely the logo, depicted below in front of a crowd of people presenting a Nazi-like salute, proves the point. It looks like a stylized swastika superimposed on the hammer and sickle, giving new meaning to the Stalin-Hitler pact.

From Who is the Trotskyist Faction in Left Voice

Like college professors everywhere, these people have way too much time on their hands, and so write long, meaningless documents debating Marxist esoterica. The "Manifesto" which recently crossed my radar screen bears the heading The Capitalist Disaster and the Struggle for an International of Socialist Revolution, dated April 18, 2021, and was "approved by the leaderships of the groups of the Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International." It's almost 13,000 words long, and it's one of those that I've read (more accurately, skimmed through) so that you don't have to.

The professors are all busy trying to out-Trotsky each other, which is why one needs a Trotskyist Faction inside a Trotskyist International.

None of this is important--and this post is about something really important, namely my breakfast. We'll get to that in a minute, but I have to give you a flavor of the "Manifesto" first.

The new coronavirus spread rapidly — faster than any virus before it — following the same circuits that connect global just-in-time supply chains. While human viruses have frequently followed the flow of goods (the bubonic plague, for example, spread through trade routes for years), the speed and massive scale of globalized capitalism has created a scenario in which diseases can spread throughout the globe in a matter of weeks. This highlights the fact that capitalism not only makes it impossible to establish a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, but that it also increasingly destroys both.

Even just 100 years ago polio was rampant. Two hundred years ago the most widely feared disease was smallpox, which led to a very painful death. The American South was a hotbed for malaria, and not too long ago cholera, dysentery, typhoid and more plagued urban populations around the globe. This describes the "harmonious relationship between humans and nature" that capitalism has supposedly destroyed.

The Covid pandemic, serious as it may be, has a death rate of about 0.3%, preying mostly on older people. Within the first few months some effective treatments became available, and within about year, three or more variously effective vaccines were developed. The leaders of this effort were capitalist pharmaceutical companies in the US, who hired thousands of employees to work on the project--employees who do expect to get paid for their efforts. Which is why the companies insist on patent protection--how else are they supposed to pay their people? (In Cuba, where there are no patents, people get paid about $60/month--roughly a child's allowance.)

My breakfast is a simple affair. I'm a creature of habit and have eaten roughly the same thing for 50 years now. There are three ingredients:

• Oatmeal--the generic brand. The only ingredient is rolled oats (the dehusked grain, flattened to speed cooking time). It comes in an airtight, bug-proof, sealed container. Cost: about 70 cents per day.
• 2% milk--refrigerated, pasteurized and homogenized, typically with a sell-by date two weeks later than my purchase. It is sold in a plastic, air-tight, leak-proof container, carefully designed so it doesn't spill when poured. Cost: about 70 cents per day.

I don't recall how oatmeal was sold in my childhood--though we did eat it occasionally. Without a microwave oven (invented in the 1980s) cooking it was a bit of a chore. When I was very young I recall that the milkman would deliver milk to our home in returnable glass bottles. That was surely much more expensive and less sanitary than what I get today. Obviously, in the intervening years capitalist competition to sell better food for cheaper prices has greatly improved my quality of life.

But nothing compares with the third ingredient: fresh blueberries. Twenty years ago these were only available when in season locally--for perhaps six weeks. The rest of the time I'd have to make do with raisins. Then it became possible to ship blueberries over longer distances--I think this is because they are packaged under nitrogen--i.e., without much oxygen present. This, plus refrigeration, keeps food fresh for much longer.

Today I get fresh blueberries year round. During December and January they come from Chile. In January and February they often arrive from Peru. February and March brings in the crop from Mexico, and also from Florida. April and May 'tis the season in North Carolina, while in June and July they are locally in season here in New York and New Jersey. In August and September we get blueberries from Quebec. Only in October and November are the berries a bit less fresh and slightly more expensive.

You need to read the fine print to know where they come from--you can't tell by the price. That is, shipping blueberries half way around the world so that they arrive fresh at my local Walmart--is much cheaper than a pint of blueberries! It's so cheap that as a consumer I barely notice it. I spend another 70 cents per day for breakfast blueberries.

The total cost of my very delicious breakfast is a bit over $2/day. There is absolutely no way any socialist society could provide me with such an elegant luxury at so reasonable a price. Do they get fresh blueberries year round in Cuba or North Korea?

So imagine my distress when, in 2019, I read about mass rioting in Chile. The riots started because of a fare hike on the Santiago Metro system. So the rioters trashed the Metro, vandalizing stations and destroying rolling stock! That'll show them! They covered much of the city with graffiti, smashing store windows as they went. Of course they fought with police. Here is a picture from Left Voice.

November 12, 2019. Frontline youth facing police repression in Santiago de Chile.
(Picture & Caption Source)

So who are these people who threaten to ruin my breakfast? I certainly hoped they weren't farmers! The last thing I need is for Chilean farmers to go on strike. I needn't have worried. The Chilean blueberries arrived on time and under budget. From the cost of blueberries, I would never have known the rioting ever happened.

Another major Chilean export is copper, mined in the Atacama desert. Did the riots disrupt copper production? I doubt it, because copper prices in 2019 were lower than they were in 2017 and 2018. So apparently the copper miners didn't go on strike, either.

In other words, anybody who did useful work selling valuable products to consumers--those people kept on working. They had to earn a living. So, again, who are those nihilistic dingbats wearing garbage cans on their heads pretending to be revolutionaries?

Of course we know: they're the lumpen class, or more specifically, the lumpen intelligentsia. These are misguided folks who thought if the they went to college they'd get the corner office and earn a big paycheck. What they learned is that the corner office doesn't exist anymore, and big paychecks aren't earned by going to college, much less grad school. So now, as grad students or freshly-minted PhDs, they have no prospects for gainful employment.

Of course they're pissed, and want to ruin it for everybody else. So why not vandalize the subway? It's a lot of fun and it makes you feel like a bigshot.

Fortunately, the workers and farmers of Chile--the real workers and farmers who mine copper and grow blueberries--have kept the country alive and well. The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction has not succeeded in ruining my breakfast.

Further Reading:

• "A Program to Unify the Oppressed and Exploited"
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat
• Malik Miah on the Virus

Cuba Needs More Communism!

If you agree with my headline, then you're likely a Trotskyist. Without exception the comrades on my Beat are unanimous in support of the "revolution." Though there are some denominational distinctions.

In broad outline, the Trotskyist story goes like this. A few hundred counter-revolutionaries organized demonstrations in cities across the island. While this was in response to rapidly deteriorating economic circumstances, the unrest was greatly magnified by US propaganda, the CIA, and/or reactionary Cubans living abroad. To counter these small and unrepresentative demonstrations, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of loyal "revolutionary" citizens took to the streets to support the "revolution."

Cuba's economic difficulties--according to my Trotskyist friends--stem entirely from the US embargo. The Militant, in an article by Seth Galinski, reports that "as a result of the embargo, they have a critical shortage of hypodermic needles for vaccination." This even though "...Cuba is the only country in Latin America to develop its own vaccines, rated as over 90% effective, and has begun massive distribution."

Which makes no sense. Despite the supposedly knee-capping embargo, Cuba has assembled the advanced biotechnology and sophisticated manufacturing wherewithal to produce a world-leading vaccine. Yet they can't manufacture their own hypodermic needles? It's even weirder since hypodermic needles are manufactured all over the world--not just in the United States--including Europe, Japan and China. Why can't Cuba buy needles from those countries? (Answer: they don't have any money.)

Besides which, hypodermic needles (and other medical supplies) are not under US embargo. Ike Nahem, in one of Socialist Action's poorly produced webinars, proudly announces that his private organization has just shipped six million hypodermic needles to Cuba all by their lonesome. Presumably without violating any US laws.

If Cuba has such a successful vaccine program, why can't they sell doses to other poor countries and earn money to buy needles? (Answer: they don't have an effective vaccine.)

The Militant (along with Socialist Action) claims that the American media has hugely overstated the importance of demonstrations by a few malcontents, by exaggerating both the numbers and the crowd's anger. Mr. Galinski says the NY Times misleadingly labels a photo as an antigovernment demonstration, when if fact it depicts a crowd of enthusiastic revolutionaries. Indeed, Mr. Galinski's article recycles the Cuban government's position hook, line and sinker, taking every word spoken by President Diaz-Canel as gospel truth.

I wasn't there. I don't know how many people marched in which demonstration, but I'm not inclined to believe The Militant. That paper--usually honest reporters--has lost its marbles when it comes to Cuba. More trustworthy is this piece by Jon Lee Anderson in the New Yorker (not exactly a right-wing source) who writes in the lede paragraph,

On Sunday, July 11th, the world took note of a historic event in Cuba, as thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest against the government. Many shouted “Patria y Vida!”—Fatherland and Life—the title of a banned but extremely popular rap song that riffs on a slogan coined by the late Fidel Castro: “Fatherland or Death.” Many also shouted “Libertad!”—Freedom—and similar phrases that are not only heretical but, when shouted in protest, illegal in Cuba, where the Communist Party is the sole legal arbiter of political life.

Socialist Resurgence takes a different tack. In an article by Ernie Gotta entitled Defend the gains of the Cuban Revolution! Free the prisoners! End the U.S. blockade!, the lede is this:

The protests in Cuba on July 11 are the symptom of a government in crisis. In some areas, the government used police to crack down on the protests. Marxist activists like Frank García Hernández and his comrades were arrested; Socialist Resurgence calls on the Cuban government for their immediate release.

The key issue is that communists were being arrested! What Cuba really needs is actual, real live Communists in control--not these crazy Castroite fakers. That's what the demonstrators were really demanding. The site reposts an article from the Cuban blog Communistas headlined A call for the freedom of detainees in Cuba.

Left Voice goes further with the idea that the Cuban government is not up to the task. A think piece by Facundo Aguirre suggests that Cuba is a deformed workers’ state, following the path of Stalinist Russia. While much is to blame on the embargo, there is also this.

For a little more than two decades, the Castroist bureaucracy has been promoting a policy of economic opening with the characteristics of restoring capitalist relations. This has led to the development of internal forces that are hostile to the revolution, particularly in the ranks of the bureaucracy itself, which controls the most profitable sectors of the economy. It is this social force of small proprietors that the pro-imperialist gusanos aim to influence as they look for a way to hitch a ride on this social movement. At the same time, imperialism hopes to influence the wealthy bureaucrats as a way to break the unity of the regime.

Of course the policy of "economic opening" was driven by necessity stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is impossible to have a growing economy if you don't put people in charge of their own resources. Back in 2013, Socialist Action's Jeff Mackler described the policy well:

The reforms indicate that the Cubans recognize the harsh reality of the economic distortions that have been wrought from their forced isolation from the world market due to the U.S.-imposed illegal embargo/blockade and related imperialist incursions. In a significant sense they are legalizing a reality—that hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers are already “employed” in tiny “business” ventures, trying to make ends meet, while they simultaneously receive subsistence wages from the state for their official job.

Some 178 areas where terminated workers can now operate as formally licensed small-scale business owners have been established.

I posted a response to Mr. Mackler's piece entitled Viva Poverty!, which I think accurately sums up the current situation.

What does Mr. Aguirre propose as the Trotskyist response?

We must not hand over the banner of democracy to imperialism and its agents. Instead, we must fight those forces, demanding an end to repression; freedom for those detained, who are mainly militants of the Left; and insisting on political freedom and freedom of organization for the Cuban masses.

It is necessary to fight for the legalization of the anti-imperialist Left parties and forces that defend the conquests of the revolution. What is required is to raise up the great mass of the Cuban people against the criminal embargo, against the restorationist policies, and against the privileges of the bureaucracy.

In a word, he advocates for more communism. His plea to extend freedom applies only to those folks who agree with Mr. Aguirre. Unfortunately for him, the demonstrations in Cuba--however big or small they were--demanded more freedom. That is freedom to be in charge of one's own life, own property, own money, and to choose a job where one wants to work.

Here we are--the great grandchildren of the "revolution" are still forced to live in abject poverty in a country where food is illegal. The last thing they want is more communism. 

Further Reading:

• Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole with Mary Alice Waters
• The Militant Visits Manila
• Cuba

Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole with Mary-Alice Waters

Last week I wrote about The Militant's (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) retraction of an article by Steve Warshell. My lede paragraph:

The Militant concocts more fake controversy with this post:

This week’s print edition of the Militant includes an article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” It has been withdrawn from the online edition. It does not reflect the opinion of the Militant or the Socialist Workers Party. 

Next week’s issue of the Militant will feature an editorial correcting that article.

This week's editorial--actually a long article by Mary-Alice Waters--appears in the current issue under the title Defending the Cuban Revolution, strengthening US working people. The supposedly offensive article by Mr. Warshell (Would a Joe Biden White House be better for Cuba?) is included at the same link (scroll down). If you really want to go down this rabbit hole, I suggest you read Mr. Warshell's piece before engaging with Ms. Waters, though this is one of those cases where I've done the reading so you don't have to.

Ms. Waters' piece is just plain incoherent. In an effort to understand it I've tried to outline it. The idea is that major points have a lede paragraph, and each paragraph has a topic sentence. Let's see how far those high school English class principles carry us.

For example, she says,

The second major problem with the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” is its opening sentences. “A number of groups here and around the country that consider themselves ‘friends of Cuba’ are promoting Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency as a way to relieve the effects of over 60 years of Washington’s economic and political attacks. …

The journalistically unacceptable anonymity of the phrase “a number of groups” is plenty reason enough to reject such a lead sentence in a working-class newspaper. But why is it a problem that some friends of Cuba are urging a vote for Joe Biden? Or Donald Trump? Is it a problem that the Socialist Workers Party advocates and organizes everyone we can to support the SWP ticket of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett?

The major criticism seems picayune--that Mr. Warshell omits a listing of the offending groups. Of course The Militant does this all the time, often referring to middle class organizations that cross the class line--without listing them individually.

But beyond that, she claims that Mr. Warshell misunderstands the principles behind a united front, where working class groups come together around narrow issues upon which they agree. He writes

These groups are organizing car caravans here, peddling the myth that Democratic administrations — and in particular Barack Obama’s — “have been better” for relations between Washington and Havana, especially better than Donald Trump’s.

Perhaps Mr. Warshell is unclear here, but my impression is the car caravans are not organized to defend Cuba, but rather to promote Joe Biden. In which case this isn't a united front at all. But even if the stated purpose of the caravans were the defense of the Cuban "Revolution," since when is the Party supposed to remain silent about other issues of disagreement not involved in the united front? For example, we never hid our criticism of liberal Democrats despite marching with them in antiwar demonstrations.

But getting back to high school English, note the first phrase in Ms. Waters' above quote: the second major problem. Which begs the question: What is the first major problem? As best I can figure (and it's really unclear), it's this:

The problems begin with the headline itself. It poses a question the article never addresses. Moreover, it is a question that can’t be answered. What is there to say except, “If Joe Biden becomes the next president of the United States, we’ll see.”

Huh? Wouldn't this be solved by rephrasing Mr. Warshell's headline If Joe Biden became president, would that be better for Cuba? This seems like a really minor point. 

The supposed first issue subdivides into two, numbered components. 

First, whether Biden or Donald Trump is installed in the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, the revolutionary leadership of Cuba will continue on the course they’ve followed from 1959 to today, through 12 U.S. administrations. ...

Second, for our part, irrespective of who occupies the White House for the next four years, the Socialist Workers Party too will continue on the course we have followed from 1959 to today. 

She simply restates what we already know, namely that neither the Cuban government nor the SWP will change fundamental positions, regardless of the election outcome. There is nothing in Mr. Warshell's article to suggest otherwise. And neither has anything to do with the supposedly misguided headline--it's a non sequitur.

Then we get to the second major problem discussed above, not to be confused with the aforementioned "second" sub-point. (And if you're confused, so am I.) I think Ms. Waters just flunked English Comp.

But now we strike gold with {emphasis mine}

There’s a third way in which the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” did not express the editorial line of the Militant or the positions of the Socialist Workers Party. That is the way in which it presented the differences between executive actions taken by the Barack Obama administration during its second term versus measures imposed by the Trump administration. The latter have included cutting back travel rights in both directions and depriving Cuba of necessities such as oil, access to the international financial system, and remittances from family members living abroad. 

Here I'm indebted to commenter Eldee Stephens who intuited the true reason for the retraction without chasing down any rabbits. The reason is that life for the Cuban government (and probably also the Cuban people) will be easier under a less stringent sanctions regime, i.e., under a Biden administration.

After much throat-clearing Ms. Waters admits as much.

If a Biden administration were to reverse the direction of some of Washington’s current policies, it would open some breathing room for Cuban working people and their government to more easily deal with the challenges they face. If the boot on their neck pressed less tightly, they would be quite capable of doing that. … 

For these reasons, it’s probably safe to say that a majority of Cuban working people and their leadership are hoping for a Biden electoral victory. Does that mean it’s in the interests of U.S. working people to give political support to a capitalist party and its candidates?

That question was neither asked nor answered in the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” But for class-conscious workers in the U.S., that’s the most important question. And the answer is an unequivocal “No.”

So she admits that there is a difference between the two bourgeois candidates--a distinction that the Cubans are very much aware of. This is very unTrotskyist of her--Trotskyists (like Mr. Warshell) assert there is no essential difference between Republicans and Democrats--any contrary answer is reformist. But since the SWP wants to remain on good terms with the Cuban leadership, high principle has to yield to Cuba's immediate self-interest.

Regarding the question Does that mean it’s in the interests of U.S. working people to give political support to a capitalist party and its candidates?, Mr. Warshell answers it unambiguously in his final paragraph:

The fact is the only campaign for president that offers solidarity with the Cuban people and their revolution is the Socialist Workers Party campaign of Alyson Kennedy. Not only does the SWP call for an end to Washington’s economic assaults against Cuba and for the U.S. rulers to get out of Guantánamo, Kennedy points to Cuba’s socialist revolution as an example for workers and farmers in the U.S. to follow.

So here we are--at the bottom of the rabbit hole. And there ain't even a rabbit down here! 

Further Reading:

• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"
• The Militant Visits Manila
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History

Three From The Militant

I'm failing at my job.

My job is to criticize the Trotskyist movement from the Right. I'm tasked with keeping my remarks civil, serious and friendly, but critical it still should be.

Unfortunately the recent issue of The Militant makes that very difficult. It contains three articles that I mostly agree with--it's hard to criticize something agreeable. Still, I'll try.

The first, by Bob Carter, is entitled Protests hit Quebec festival move to shut musical revue. It concerns a theater production about slavery that was shut down by critics who accused it of "cultural appropriation."

On June 26, about 100 protesters organized by the self-named SLAV Resistance Collective protested in front of the theater doors on opening night. The protesters, both Black and Caucasian, shouted, chanted and waved placards accusing internationally renowned Quebecois producer Robert Lepage and lead singer Betty Bonifassi of being “racists” and of appropriating Black history because they are “white” and the show didn’t have a majority Black cast. 

On July 4, Montreal Jazz Festival officials cancelled the production after only two of the scheduled 16 shows. More than 8,000 tickets had already been sold. Officials apologized to anyone who they said might have been offended by the performance.

The Militant quotes producer Robert Lepage:

“Everything that led to this cancellation is a direct blow to artistic freedom,” Lepage said in a widely circulated statement. “When we are no longer allowed to step into someone else’s shoes, when it is forbidden to identify with someone else, theatre is denied its very nature … and is thus rendered meaningless.”

Of course this is absolutely correct. Unfortunately many of my other Trotskyist friends (along with the entire academic Left) will side with the censors. The Militant is right to call them to task.

The second, by Terry Evans, is headlined US, EU rulers clash over trade, spending for NATO. It centers attention on President Trump's recent meeting EU president Jean-Claude Juncker. I actually disagree with much of this article, but Mr. Evans gets one thing very right.

Much of what is reported in the liberal media about the clashes between Washington and Berlin aims to hide this reality. It seeks to reinforce the notion that Trump’s actions are endangering Washington’s interests by threatening to tear up the decades-long “world order” through which the U.S. rulers have collaborated with their “traditional allies” that make up the EU.

While it is likely true that Mr. Trump is needlessly undiplomatic in his dealings with the Europeans, The Militant is quite right when they suggest the media and critics are hyperventilating a bit. The fact is that the world has changed since 1991, and even more so since 2010, after which fracking came fully on line. Americans simply don't need that old alliance anymore.

But many people--not just in government but also in the media, academia, the military-industrial complex, and think tanks--have built their careers around those old verities. They've learned to negotiate the halls of NATO, the catacombs of the EU, the byzantine rules of the WTO, along with the elaborate protocols of the United Nations. Seventy years of collective expertise are now threatened with irrelevance--whole PhD programs are about to go out of business.

Call it the Deep State if you will, but it's actually something much more mundane than that. It's a heartfelt plea for job security--a plea that will ultimately fail. As individuals I feel sorry for them, but for the rest of us the demise of this world is probably all for the best.

Mr. Evans appears to agree with me.

Workers face a world today where a series of historic shifts are unfolding in the “order” the U.S. rulers imposed after the second imperialist world war — in Korea, the Mideast, Asia and in Europe. Trump is working within these developments to put together alliances and arrangements that favor the U.S. rulers. Many of those involve steps that can tamp down wars and conflicts that have existed for decades. These are good for working people. They open political space for us to act and learn how to fight for our class interests.

As the above paragraph indicates, the article occasionally devolves into boilerplate Trotsky-talk. Ignore that, however, and most of what it says is very agreeable.

The third article is by Roger Calero--Venezuela: Workers, farmers face effects of capitalist crisis. The Militant never bought into the whole Chavez charade, for reasons explained by Mr. Calero.

The leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution never mobilized working people to take control of production and the land and replace the bourgeois government with a workers and farmers government on the road to expropriating the capitalist class. They rejected the revolutionary example set by workers and farmers in Cuba. That is the only road that offers working people the chance to confront the problems they face.

 I think this is pretty lame--especially since Mr. Calero admits elsewhere that Venezuela did expropriate foreign owners (boldface mine).

A U.S. federal court judge ruled Aug. 9 in favor of Canadian gold mining company Crystallex, saying it can collect $1.4 billion it claims to have lost when late President Hugo Chávez nationalized the gold-mining firm in 2009. This could result in the company taking control and selling U.S.-based oil refineries owned by Citgo, which is part of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA.

Still, The Militant thinks it's off the hook and can now criticize the Venezuelan regime with "I told you so" impunity. And its criticisms are right on the money, e.g.,

“I am better off selling empanadas than working as a nurse,” said Ana Rosario Contreras, president of Caracas College of Nurses, during a July 6 protest demanding higher wages. “An empanada costs 500,000 bolivars and I get paid 600,000 every two weeks.”

The problem with Venezuela is not that they didn't utter the correct magic words, nor that they failed to completely implement the exact policy prescribed Jack Barnes from his Manhattan penthouse. No--the problem with Venezuela is socialism.

Socialism has failed always and everywhere. And however much I agree with The Militant on any individual point--for that reason alone my job still needs to be done.

Further Reading:

• Oberlin, 2018
• Summary Statement of US Strategic Goals for the Coming Period
• Viva Poverty!

Solidarity on Trump & Trade

I'm way behind on following Solidarity, which a month ago published an article by Luke Pretz and Bill Resnick (P&R), entitled Trump's Trade Folly and the Virtues of Organizing for a Radical "Fair Trade". It's a good piece, worth analyzing in detail.

They get off on the wrong foot--at least by my lights--by completely misunderstanding Donald Trump. The lede:

While Trump has been careening between policy positions on near everything (China, the Koreas, Syria, NATO, DACA, and health care policy among others), he has in his public statements and tweets remained dedicated to the economic nationalism that was a central plank in his campaign platform. In recent weeks he has kept himself in the headlines announcing aggressive tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico, the European Union, also his blunderbuss tariffs on Chinese manufacture perhaps igniting a mini-trade war, his obsession with combating the US trade deficit, and his tantrum at the G-7 conference snubbing his European counterparts and especially attacking Canada.

          ...the media accepted Trump’s economic nationalist theatrics as the real Trump, ...

They view Mr. Trump as an ignorant bozo, not conscious of his own policy and incapable of forming a coherent strategy. I think this is precisely wrong--Mr. Trump knows exactly what he is doing, and why.

But if you don't understand the president's method, then you can interpret his supposed madness any number of ways. P&R suggest that Trump's rhetoric notwithstanding, his underlings are sticking with the "neoliberal" agenda of free trade, for which the failed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty is a proxy. P&R infer this conspiracy because they can't imagine that the "ruling class" can be against free trade, and therefore it's Trump who doesn't know what he's doing.

At some level they're right. The business community--from the Chamber of Commerce to Main Street to Wall Street have all come out vociferously against tariffs. Even Whirlpool (the appliance manufacturer), which had long demanded protection from South Korean competitors, is now complaining loudly that the steel and aluminum tariffs raise their costs far beyond any benefit from tariffs against LG and Samsung. So even they are now suggesting all tariffs be abandoned.

How different this is from 1930, when the business class broadly supported the Smoot-Hawley duties. Supply chains today are so complex and so global that nobody profits from tariffs anymore. The near universal opinion is that tariffs are bad and will lower everybody's standard of living. Even the very language--"trade war"--suggests as much. No war ever made people better off.

Only a few people proclaim protectionism as a solution to our economic woes. The lead voice is Pat Buchanan, who claims that tariffs are what made this country rich to begin with. Despite being a Buchanan fan, I disagree with every word of this piece, including most of his cited "facts."

Mr. Buchanan is a voice in the wilderness.

I don't believe Trump is against free trade. Like P&R, he claims to only want "fair" trade, though the interpretations of "fair" do not correspond. And the president does have point: the days when the US can afford to run persistent trade deficits--year after year, decade after decade--are over. There were reasons we did that during the Cold War, but the world has changed. The US is no longer willing to subsidize global commerce.

I've written about these topics elsewhere, including at some of the links below.

Getting back to P&R--they claim to have discovered a third way that's neither protectionism nor free trade. They call it "fair trade", which they think is somehow radically different from Trump's version of "fair trade." I think they're wrong--no matter how you slice or dice it, "fair" trade is just a form of protectionism. The only (very slight) difference between P&R and Trump is who gets protected.

In P&R's scheme, Americans should be allowed to buy products from Mexico only if Mexican workers are paid on an American scale and receive American-quality benefits (including things like environmental protections). Let's count the ways this won't work.

1. Workers in Mexico are less skilled than American workers. That shows up today as only low-end vehicles are manufactured in Mexico, e.g., the Chevy Cruze. The important, high-end cars, e.g., F-150 pickup trucks, are all assembled in the USA. This is partly a function of skill level.
2. Infrastructure in Mexico is way below the American standard. Electricity and water are much more expensive. Transportation costs way more--the country has a poor highway system and nearly no rail network. (One can blame geography for that deficit.)
3. The infrastructure to provide workers with American-style benefits does not exist. The medical facilities do not exist because the population is too poor to afford them. The financial markets necessary to provide reliable pension plans also don't exist.
4. The reason Mexico is poor is because there are too few rich people in Mexico. The number of Mexicans who can afford an F-150 pickup is negligible compared to, say, New Jersey. Ciudad Juarez is a thousand miles further from New Jersey than Michigan or Tennessee. Manufacturing of large, heavy objects (cars) is always cheaper near the marketplace.

Mexicans can compete with American labor only by reducing their prices, which is what they do. P&R want to prohibit them from doing that, which will put Mexican manufacturing completely out of business. P&R's solution is the same as a very huge tariff.

Beyond this, P&R miss some important distinctions. First is the difference between tradable and non-tradable goods. Tradable goods can easily cross borders--things like cars, textiles, airplanes. Non-tradable goods are not easily exported, e.g., food service, plumbing repair, medical care, education. By far the bulk of the US economy is in the non-tradable sector--workers there do NOT benefit from tariffs at all.

But they are hurt. As tariffs (or P&R's substitute) raise the cost of imports, non-tradable workers will be forced to pay higher prices and their standard of living will suffer. So P&R's proposal will (very hypothetically) aid Mexican workers (assuming they still have a job) at the expense of Americans employed in the non-tradable sector--i.e., the majority of workers.

One last point. It turns out that open borders and free trade are approximately the same thing (at least in the tradable sector). With open borders (which I assume P&R support), jobs are kept in the USA and workers are imported to fill them. With free trade, the workers stay in their home countries, but the jobs are exported so they have work. Either way there is labor arbitrage.

So P&R are proposing something completely ridiculous. They want to prevent Mexican workers from having jobs in Mexico, but at the same time welcome them to the US to take the same jobs here. I don't understand the justification for this weird and politically unpopular procedure. Indeed, I don't think P&R have thought their proposal through very carefully.

I appreciate P&R's good intentions. They want to improve the lives of Mexican workers at what they believe will be no cost to American workers. But they believe in a free lunch--and it will end in catastrophe. Good intentions notwithstanding, our two friends need to think through how it would all come down in practice.

Note: Mrs. Trotsky and I will be celebrating our anniversary by spending next week in Mexico City. Who knows--I might even visit the Old Man's fortress? Sadly, I don't read or speak Spanish, so I doubt I'll learn very much about politics. Though if I do you'll be the first to hear about it. However, I won't be getting anything posted next week--I'm leaving my laptop at home.

Further Reading:

• Trade Wars
• China & the United States
• Tradable vs. Non-Tradable Goods

"The Lenin of Libertarianism"

The title (quoted above) is magnificent, but that's the only thing I like about Cliff Conner's article in Socialist Action. The essay is commentary on Nancy MacLean's hit piece on James M. Buchanan, a Nobel-Prize-winning economist who died in 2013 at age 93. Her book, published in 2017, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, is such a slander that I refuse to provide a link to it.

It's even earned its own Wikipedia section, the first paragraph of which is worth quoting in full:

In 2017, Duke University historian Nancy MacLean published Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Her book claims that Buchanan saw a conflict between "economic freedom and political liberty", and that he sought (in his own words) "conspiratorial secrecy" in pursuit of what George Monbiot has described as "a hidden programme for suppressing democracy on behalf of the very rich". The book has garnered heavy criticism from both libertarian and non-libertarian writers for its perceived flaws in the use of quotes, sources, and the accuracy of its overall thesis. In particular, the claim that Buchanan supported segregation has been disputed as untrue and contradicted by evidence that MacLean's book omits. Buchanan played a key role in bringing prominent South African apartheid critic W.H. Hutt as guest lecturer to the University of Virginia in 1965, during which he also sharply condemned Jim Crow laws.

Also, "Legal scholar Jonathan H. Adler alleges a pattern of misrepresentation in MacLean's book, including truncating quotes to present them as saying the opposite of their original meanings ..." Mr. Conner, who apparently has never read anything by Mr. Buchanan, accepts everything Nancy says as gospel truth.

Whatever opinions he attributes to Mr. Buchanan are likely not accurate and not worth arguing about. So let's focus on Mr. Conner's expression of his own opinions.

There's this.

If you still think of libertarianism as the quaintly eccentric blend of laissez faire economics with concerns such as privacy rights, civil liberties, and antimilitarism, you are behind the times. That old-time libertarianism has been marginalized by a hardcore, right-wing, enemy-of-humanity libertarianism fashioned by Buchanan and the Koch Brothers.

So the mud that supposedly sticks to Mr. Buchanan is now attached to the Koch brothers--on the basis of no other evidence. News for Mr. Conner: the Koch brothers support abortion rights, the legalization of marijuana (and probably other narcotics), gay marriage, and a prohibition on government spying on citizens. Are these opinions that Mr. Conner classes as "enemy-of-humanity libertarianism"?

It gets worse. Mr. Connor apparently has a telepathic connection with the Kochs and knows what they are thinking. They "want above all else to decrease their taxes and minimize governmental regulation of their businesses." Really? How does he know that? How does he reconcile that with the opinions listed above?

Then, of course, there's Pinochet and Chile. Mr. Conner asserts,

If there is any lingering confusion regarding libertarian commitment to genuine individual freedom, it should be laid to rest by their interpretation of the 1973 Pinochet coup in Chile. To this day libertarian polemicists continue to hail that abominable crime against humanity as an “economic miracle” confirming the wisdom of free-market economic policy.

...The “miracle” they wrought was built upon the destruction of a vital labor movement requiring the murder and torture of tens of thousands of trade-unionists and their supporters. It was liberty for wealthy investors and property owners at the expense of the life, liberty, and happiness of the majority of the Chilean people.

So granted, Pinochet was a brutal guy who murdered lots of people. But he was hardly alone: similar brutality reigned over much of Latin America at the time: Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, to name a few. All of those governments have a lot of blood on their hands.

But only Chile experienced sustained economic revival. As Wikipedia puts it,

The economy of Chile is ranked as a high-income economy by the World Bank, and is considered one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption. Although Chile has high economic inequality, as measured by the Gini index, it is close to the regional mean.

In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America.

Mr. Conner blames "los Chicago Boys" (including Buchanan) for all the murders, while not giving them any credit for the economic success story. Yet free market economics has clearly and unambiguously succeeded in Chile, despite the crimes committed by Mr. Pinochet (not Mr. Buchanan).

Then Mr. Conner reduces Buchanan's economic thought to a caricature (boldface mine).

As for reductionism, Buchanan’s “Public Choice Theory” reduces real-world economic decision-making to the sterile abstractions of mathematical game theory. In a universe where human beings always act like purely self-interested automatons, game theory could perhaps offer some useful insights into economic behavior. But Buchanan applies mathematical models based on misanthropic assumptions about human nature to complex social interactions. 

Mr. Buchanan almost certainly never said any such thing--surely he wasn't that stupid. But if you replace the word always with often or on average, then you'd probably get closer to what he actually thought. Or it might be more accurate to say that while humans do not always make decisions based on economic reasoning, when they do they tend to maximize their economic outcomes. And so game theory does offer useful, empirically-validated insights about economics.

Though it's odd that a self-proclaimed Marxist is arguing against the supremacy of economics. Didn't Marx say something about all of history being about economic class struggle?

Finally we get to the makers and takers shtick. Mr. Conner attributes to Buchanan the notion that entrepreneurs are the makers, while workers and poor people are the takers. Again, this supposes that Mr. Buchanan is an idiot.

More likely, both the entrepreneur and his employees are all members of the maker class. They, after all, produce all the goods and services we consume. And I suppose we can reluctantly agree that poor, disabled, sick welfare recipients are in the taker class, though I doubt that's who Mr. Buchanan was talking about.

The most egregious takers are not poor people, but rather government bureaucrats, public employees, and their tax-supported sycophants and hangers-on. I'd certainly put Nancy in the sycophant category. Despite her private school affiliation, her salary is paid for substantially by taxpayers (in the form of student loans, research grants, and tax exemptions granted to universities).

Nancy, who advertises herself as the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy (is that her preferred pronoun?), has clearly established a new low for the quality of "research" at Duke University. Since when does a dishonest book slandering a dead economist count as "scholarship"?

Compare Nancy, for example, with Jennifer Burns, professor of history at Stanford and biographer of Ayn Rand. It's an excellent book, but by reading it you will never discover Ms. Burns' opinions about either her subject or her subject's beliefs. It is that honest and fair-minded.

That's what scholarship should be.

Further Reading:

• What Marxists Don't Understand About Economics
• Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy
• Book Review: Walmart

Tourism in Cuba

A Militant article by Andrea Morell describes the US visit of Cuban union leader Víctor Lemagne Sánchez. He is the secretary-general of Cuba's Hotel & Tourism union, and spoke in Berkeley, CA, on June 29th.

He paints a remarkably honest and unflattering picture of his country.

Mr. Lemagne hails from the Cuban city of Trinidad, "a popular tourist destination." I checked out Wikipedia, and here are two photos from Trinidad:


(Wikipedia: Dieter Mueller, 2003)


(Wikipedia: Jplavoie, 2006)

The first picture surely demonstrates why it's a tourist attraction. But the second makes it look like it's in a war zone! What's with all the ruined houses?

Of course we know. Cubans are guaranteed "free housing," but when it comes to housing you get what you pay for. Nobody maintains it, nobody has any money to maintain it, and every storm ruins yet more buildings.

Apparently storm cleanup in Cuba can't even clear away the rubble.

Cuba used to get money from the Soviet Union for it's role as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. That financing disappeared in 1991, leading to the "Special Period" of starvation and hardship.

Then along came Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, who traded oil for medical services, leading to a shortage of doctors in Cuba. That pipeline is now also drying up: either Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro will be overthrown, and/or the entire oil industry will collapse. No more money there, either.

So Cuba is reduced to entertaining tourists for a living. The Obama-era regs allowed more Americans to visit, making them the second largest tourist group after Canadians. Other visitors come from Europe (esp. Spain), Mexico, and South America.

A few tourists are there to support the "revolution." That includes our Trotskyist friends, who will travel to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Che Guevara's death in October. I don't think Cuba especially encourages those visitors--they're much more likely to walk around, ask questions, and learn how people really live. That won't end well.

A second group are "commie tourists," i.e., visitors who want to see communism in its native state and experience what it's like to live under a totalitarian regime. For them it's "one and done"--a single trip to the island is all they will ever need. They may also wander around asking questions, but they're not opinion leaders like my former comrades. Though the government certainly wouldn't have admitted "commie tourist" Michael Totten had they recognized him as a journalist. His 2014 article, The Last Communist City, is a must read.

Finally, by far the largest group are just plain tourists--they want nice beaches, good hotels, excellent food, shopping opportunities, scenic & historical sights, and alcoholic beverages. Of course some other requirements are just taken for granted--available on every other Caribbean isle--fast internet access, good cell phone service, and liquid access to the local currency.

Cuba can't deliver on that list. Most tourists will never make a second trip to Cuba. Why go there when it's such a hassle?

Mr. Lemagne doesn't seem to understand much of this. As a union leader, he sees his job as protecting tourist workers from their customers.

Lemagne began with a slide show that documents the damage done to the Cuban people by Washington’s economic embargo. “Every attack against our revolution by the Empire is destined to fail,” he said. “Our response is to continue with the economic development of our country, our revolutionary process.” Workers in Cuba’s tourism industry see themselves as on the front lines of the struggle, Lemagne said.

Tourists are, first and foremost, an attack on the "revolutionary process." As indeed they are, possessing wealth unimaginable to the average Cuban. Nevertheless, reality does intrude. One has to earn a living somehow.

The industry has expanded rapidly, including a growing sector of self-employed nonstate workers. In 2012, he said, his union had only 345 members outside the state sector. Today they have 27,000.

He reports that Cuba last year had 3.52 million visitors. By comparison, New York City (similar population size) hosted 12.3 million international visitors in 2015, netting $42 billion in revenue, or nearly half of Cuba's entire 2015 GDP.

The "revolution" faces an irresolvable contradiction. On the one hand they need tourists in order to earn a living. On the other, they lack the domestic capital and skill set by which to attract them. Thus they are forced into joint projects with private foreign companies.

Many of the larger hotels are joint ventures, 51 percent owned by Cuba and 49 percent by foreign companies. Managers from abroad have to abide by Cuban labor law, he said, or they’re removed.

As tourism has mushroomed, with union membership rising alongside it, the union has fought to reduce workers’ workload to protect their bodies, he said. They work to limit the number of rooms cleaners in the hotels have to work per shift, to keep hours down, and for members to monitor safety on the job.

No wonder visitors often complain about surly service! After all, with the union doing all it can to prevent hard work, how can it be otherwise.

And protecting worker's bodies is a little rich coming from Mr. Lemagne. Surely he is aware of the rampant prostitution in Cuba. Indeed, cheap sex tourism is a major driver of the entire industry, what with Cuba not able to compete in any other way with other Caribbean islands. Odd that he doesn't mention that explicitly as an attack on the "revolution."

Mr. Totten reports that the average Cuban paycheck is only $20 per month. Yes, they supposedly get all sorts of "free" stuff: housing, food, transport, medical care, etc., though much on that list is of very poor quality or not available at all. Mr. Totten describes the cash pay as "a child's allowance." Seems right to me--like children Cubans allegedly have all their basic needs accounted for. And then they get a few extra pennies on the side just because they're cute.

But I think Mr. Totten's essay is out of date. He writes, in 2014,

Tourists tip waiters, taxi drivers, tour guides, and chambermaids in hard currency, and to stave off a revolt from these people, the government lets them keep the additional money, so they’re “rich” compared with everyone else. In fact, they’re an elite class enjoying privileges—enough income to afford a cell phone, go out to restaurants and bars, log on to the Internet once in a while—that ordinary Cubans can’t even dream of. I asked a few people how much chambermaids earn in tips, partly so that I would know how much to leave on my dresser and also to get an idea of just how crazy Cuban economics are. Supposedly, the maids get about $1 per day for each room.

Mr. Lemagne sets us straight on how it works today.

He also said with pride that Cuban tourism workers donate whatever tips they get to cancer research and treatment, a total of $23 million to date.

Sorry scumbags. $20 per month is all you get!

If I ever visit Cuba under those rules, remind me never to leave a tip.

Further Reading:

• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl
• A Marxist Pope?
• Viva Poverty!

Venezuela

Pity the poor petrostate! They have a tough life no matter who is in charge.

Venezuela, which  possesses the world's largest known reserves of oil, is therefore in hock to the global economy for its well-being. Without being able to sell its oil it can't buy the consumer products its citizens demand.

So the disastrous decline of that country is not entirely due to abysmal governance under Chavez and Maduro. Part of it was baked into the cake. Still, other petrostates--Canada and Saudi Arabia come to mind--have fared much better, despite hard times. Chavez and his successors and sycophants have turned a bad situation into a complete and irreversible catastrophe.

Among those sycophants is a fellow by the name of Chris Gilbert, a professor of political science at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela. This institution was founded by President Chavez in 2003 and is open to all Venezuelan citizens (contingent only on having completed high school). This is the "Let them eat college classes" strategy--food, toilet paper, electronics, and just about everything else in the country is in short supply. But never mind--you can still catch the pearls of wisdom from Professor Gilbert's lips for free.

Isn't socialism wonderful?

But even Professor Gilbert is forced to admit that things in the socialist petrostate have not exactly gone swimmingly, as he admits in an article entitled The Chavez Hypothesis: Vicissitudes of a Strategic Project. (h/t Louis Proyect)

Professor Gilbert accuses his fellow Leftists of many strange things. The lede paragraph:

What does Chavism really stand for? What are its main accomplishments and its main failures? What was the soldier-become-president Hugo Chávez trying to achieve, and how far did he go in achieving it? Most often it is taken for granted that Chávez, who was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, began with an anti-neoliberal project that became, with time, anti-imperialist and then later aspired to socialism. It is also usually argued that, unfortunately, Chávez went very little of the way to achieving the latter goal. Chávez’s project suffered, this story goes, because it was only discursively socialist; that is, it proposed socialism as a goal but could not really begin the transition, being unable to go beyond mere discourse to concrete social and economic facts. That being the case, a part of the Left praises the Venezuelan leader for what it sees as an essentially verbal achievement. This group contends that Chávez fulfilled an important task for humanity by merely recovering and promoting the word socialism after the fall of the Eastern bloc. Others, generally from the so-called Hard Left, are more skeptical. They highlight Chávez’s failure to significantly alter the structure of the society or the economy.

The unreality of this paragraph is stunning. It stretches credulity to think that anybody today will think that Chavism "recover[s] and promote[s] the word socialism after the fall of the Eastern bloc." Are there any American Leftists who still believe that the Venezuelan experiment has "fulfilled an important task for humanity"?

The alternative view is similarly detached--that Chavez, while "discursively" socialist, failed to properly implement socialism. This will be the view of my Trotskyist friends in the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Action, who believe that if Mr. Chavez had simply uttered the proper magic words and followed the correct policy as prescribed by a true revolutionary party, then the results would have been much different. As it stands he betrayed the working class.

Professor Gilbert finds both criticisms "impoverished," and that leads to a long critique of the Marxist movement generally. Marxists, he claims, have ignored politics, which the professor describes as a "semiautonomous sphere."

On the procrustean bed of vulgar historical materialism, it generally spreads the Chávez phenomenon between, on the one hand, a mere discourse that is acknowledged to be avant-garde and interesting and, on the other hand, the unaltered hard economic facts. Yet this view leaves out almost entirely the specifically political mediation between these two realms.

And that takes him off on philosophical excursions, commenting on Derrida, Gramsci, and Lenin. Indeed, he attributes to the latter an opinion that is decidedly heretical: "that political consciousness is essentially separate from the economic struggle."

And it is in politics that Chavez apparently excelled. We're informed that he actually wrote books: "Even before taking power, he produced the Libro Azul (1992), the Agenda Alternativa Bolívariana (1996), and La propuesta de Hugo Chávez para transformar Venezuela (1996). This substantial body of writing constitutes less than a third of his output!"

If any of this oeuvre has been translated into English, it doesn't show up on Amazon. Never mind--the fact that Chavez remains mostly unread results from the ur-prejudice against politics by Marxists, and/or blatant Eurocentrism by the rest of us.

Professor Gilbert criticizes people like my Trotskyist friends for not having a strategy to achieve socialism. Simply mouthing words like "revolution" and "vanguard party" is not a strategy--there has to be something more specific than that. He cites Lenin--the man with the plan--as a counter-example borrowing from Lars Lih's biography (which I reviewed here). Whether Lenin had a strategy, or was merely a tactical genius, or was just plain lucky, is to me unclear. Probably a combination of all three.

Chavez's strategy (per Professor Gilbert) revolved around communes:

The Venezuelan commune was conceived as a profoundly democratic territorial organization. Though local, the commune aspired to be part of a future Communal State. The commune was also to be both political and economic, incorporating means of production under a regimen of social property that were projected to assume an important part of national production.

Any beginning student of economics can see why communes must inevitably fail. Unlike a firm, which responds to the market, communes are first and foremost tasked to make their members happy. It seems happiness does not arise from the production of toilet paper--apparently there were no communes in all of Venezuela which saw fit to produce it.

Far be it from me to defend traditional Marxism, and Professor Gilbert's emphasis on politics does have merit. But surely the "procrustean bed of vulgar historical materialism" will eventually raise its ugly head. Our professor barely alludes to that fact, mentioning "oil" only in a single, vaguely parenthetical paragraph. And yet oil is the final nail in Chavez's communal coffin.

In 2012 Mr. Chavez decided to redistribute capital away from the oil companies and give it to the poor. To which, in March, 2013, Mr. Proyect responded:

I’ve always thought that a good way to test the sincerity of anyone who claims to be on the Left is to find out their attitude to Hugo Chávez. Those who try to disavow him tend to be, in general, useless: they want a pure, ideal socialism, not socialism as a real material movement. Chávez wasn’t perfect. In some areas he went too far; in many he didn’t go nearly far enough. Nonetheless the immense good his Bolivarian Revolution has done for the people of Venezuela – and for people across Latin America and the world – is undeniable. What must be remembered, though, is that Hugo Chávez didn’t do any of this alone. His achievements were those of every doctor, teacher, worker, farmer and organiser who worked to improve the lives of those around them. The social movements he helped build and connect will long survive him. Descanse en paz. La lucha sigue.

Mr. Proyect's assessment was spectacularly wrong. Not only did Mr. Chavez make all Venezuelans much poorer, he destroyed their oil industry. Indeed, he has destroyed their country. It will take many generations before Venezuela regains the standard of living that existed prior to President Chavez.

Further Reading:

• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl
• Book Review: Is Socialist Revolution in US Possible?
• Punching Counterpunch

Book Review: Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible?

Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible?

The short answer is no. But that's the title and thesis of this book by Mary-Alice Waters, Olympia Newton and Norton Sandler. Of course they answer Yes.

Published in 2009, the book recounts events at the Venezuela International Book Fair, held in Caracas in 2007, specifically the session on the prospects for socialism in the US. It includes Ms. Water's opening presentation, along with reporting on the entire proceedings by Ms. Newton, and a presentation Ms. Waters gave a year later at another event in Caracas. Mr. Sandler contributes the introduction.

I guess it's human nature to regard our current generation as representing some inflection point in history. People imagine that folks in the future will spend their days thanking/condemning us for what we have or haven't done: saved the climate; prevented nuclear war; stopped an asteroid from hitting the earth; prevented the dystopia of artificial intelligence that's smarter than we are; solved the problem of overpopulation; returned us to the gold standard; etc.

Any of these items could represent the end of civilization as we know it, but they probably won't. Chances are the real threat to human flourishing will be something nobody today has even thought of. What the soothsayers all forget is that life is very contingent; the future depends as much on what side of bed Kim Jong-un wakes up on tomorrow morning as on anything else.

But Mary-Alice takes soothsaying to an extreme. Part of the future is inevitable, and another part of it depends on our choices.

The money quote is actually on the back cover.

To think that a socialist revolution in the U.S. is not possible, you would have to believe not only that the ruling families of the imperialist countries and their economic wizards have found a way to 'manage' capitalism. You would also have to close your eyes to the spreading imperialist wars, civil wars, and economic, financial, and social crises we are in the midst of.

In her world, the bourgeoisie are compelled by their "declining rate of profit" (she never explains what that means) to steal from the rest of us until the entire world order collapses into a catastrophic mess. The rich, despite their wealth, are insatiably hungry and inevitably can act in no other way.

On the other hand, we, the working class, have options, albeit only two of them. We can organize to fight back and defeat the bourgeoisie. For this we will need a vanguard party, which is the unique role of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Or, we can allow ourselves to be guided by false prophets who sell us out for a pocketful of change, betraying the working class and leading to the very end of the human civilization.

It's like a train rolling inevitably down a hill, and ahead is a switch between two tracks. Choose the wrong track and you'll head over a cliff. Flip the switch the other way (follow the SWP) and instead you'll reach safe harbor where everybody lives happily ever after.

Weird.

On matters of fact the above quote is misleading in at least two ways. First, she is quite right that the wizards are unable to 'manage' capitalism--neither the Fed, the Treasury department, nor the White House. Capitalism is, by design, completely unmanageable. But what she doesn't understand is that capitalism is stable--it doesn't need to be managed. Adam Smith's invisible hand works remarkably well.

And second, she is also correct that we have turmoil, strife, and "crises." The Militant always exaggerates every problem into a crisis--today we have an economic crisis, an educational crisis, an ecological crisis, and so on. Mostly these are just the warp and woof of every day life--problems, to be sure, but hardly a crisis. It is true that in 2008 we had a financial crisis, and in 1961 we had a missile crisis. But nothing today rises to anywhere near such a level. History has always been thus.

The most interesting part of the book is the contribution from Olympia Newton reporting on the rest of the conference. Most attendees apparently didn't agree with Mary-Alice, taking a much more pragmatic point of view.

Author Eva Gollinger said she didn't " 'share the same optimism that revolution is possible in the United States.' because 'it's very easy to change the channel. People are not poor and hungry in the U.S. like they were in Venezuela. You get two or three credit cards in the mail every day. There is poverty, but it's only in a few small sectors.' " (Italics mine. The conference took place when optimism about Venezuela still prevailed, hence poverty was spoken of in the past tense. How quaint!)

Ms. Gollinger's view seems more in accord with facts than Mary-Alice's.

Ms. Waters sees the struggle of illegal immigrants as central to the American Revolution. Recall that in 2006 (a year before the conference) there was a flash mob of Mexican high school students who demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands to protest deportations. Ms. Newton reports that Latin Americans were much less tolerant of these people than Ms. Waters would have you believe.

In various ways, several said that Latin Americans living in the United States are simply there to "get a piece of the pie."

"They are only there to get passports," said one participant. "Once they get them they will stop marching." Many spoke with barely concealed contempt for immigrant workers as sellouts who had bought into the "American dream" instead of remaining in Latin America to fight for political, economic, and social change.

This does seem like a truer description of immigrants than Mary-Alice's relentlessly downtrodden workers.

Then there was explicit antisemitism from "Leftist", Amiri Baraka, among others. Mr. Baraka recited one of his so-called poems.

"Who decide Jesus get crucified?" one poem asks. "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed? / Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / To stay home that day? / Why did Sharon stay away?"

Another "participant from Panama had said during the discussion that Jews are the main problem facing working people in the world today because 'they have all the money' and control everything."

Norton Sandler, representing the SWP, demonstrated appropriate courage. "[H]e spoke from the floor the next day and pointed to the deadly danger scapegoating and Jew-hatred posed for the working-class movement."

Whatever their intellectual failings, my former comrades have retained a moral compass.

Further Reading:

• One State or Two?
• Book Review: Are They Rich Because They're Smart?
• Immigration? Si!

Cuba

Last Wednesday President Obama announced a change in American policy toward Cuba. The US will open an embassy in Havana, will permit banking transactions, and will liberalize (but not eliminate) travel restrictions. In addition, it will release the remaining three members of the Cuban Five.

In exchange, Cuba will free Alan Gross, an American held prisoner for five years. And we'll get more rum and cigars.

We should have seen it coming, for there have been a number of articles in recent weeks that augured the event.

Let's begin with last week's Socialist Action (SA), oddly entitled Cuba Expands Women's Reproductive Rights. Here's the lede.

Abortion has been legal in Cuba since the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959 and was codified into law as a women’s “sovereign right” in 1968. 

Vilma Espin, a feminist and revolutionary fighter, was made the head of the new Federation of Cuban Women and later created the National Center For Sex Education, now headed by her daughter Mariela Castro Espin. As a result of Espin’s role in the revolution and heading an organization of over three million Cuban women, women’s reproductive rights were always on the agenda. Not only was abortion legalized; all women have access to free contraception.

Cuba is now launching a new campaign to address the low birth rate, which is due to the choices Cuban women have been making for decades.

No kidding about the low birth rate. Cuba's fertility is now 1.45, way below 2.1 required to maintain the population, and even below the United States' 2.01. It's odd that SA should point this out. After all, they're long-time and enthusiastic supporters of abortion rights. It should go without saying that women who use birth control and have abortions are less fecund than those who don't. Champion contraception long enough and extinction is eventually what you'll end up with.

A low birthrate is not Cuba's only problem. In addition people leak out as emigrants. Anybody with any smarts or ambition is leaving the country, not only for the US, but also in favor of Mexico and other Latin American countries. Folks remaining in Cuba are disproportionately lazy and stupid.

Note also that SA inadvertently reveals the corruption and nepotism of the regime. Chief bureaucrat Vilma Espin consorted with the high and mighty and passed her sinecure on to her daughter, who inherited the position partly by spreading her legs. She's married to a Castro. Who needs revolutionaries like that?

The Militant remarks on a Nov. 3rd editorial in the NYTimes (apparently not available on-line) in which the Times explicitly recommended today's strategy. Author John Studer invents a distinction between the Times and the Washington Post.

In decades past the Times was a major voice of the U.S. ruling families, but today it represents a narrower section of bourgeois public opinion. Instead, it has come to more reflect the prevailing views among meritocratic professionals centered in academia, the media, “think tanks,” “nonprofit” institutions and the like.

Speaking for the great bulk of the U.S. propertied rulers, the Post responded Oct. 20 to theTimes’ campaign for a shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba in an editorial titled, “Cuba Should Not be Rewarded for Denying Freedom to Its People.”

Mr. Studer appears to claim that the US rulers wouldn't take the Times' advice. If so, then Mr. Studer is wrong.

So why is this deal happening now? The Cuban government had many opportunities to normalize relations going all the way back to the Nixon administration. Walter Russell Mead offers some insight here, but the basic reason is simple: the Cubans are desperate.

Cuba has never had a self-sustaining economy. Prior to to 1991 it was a vassal of the Soviet Union, subsidized as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. The bankruptcy of the Soviet bloc plunged Cuba into its own bankruptcy, known today as the special period. As Michael Totten describes it,

...the country experienced unprecedented pain and deprivation when Moscow cut off its subsidies after the fall of the Soviet Union. Journalist and longtime Cuba resident Mark Frank writes vividly about this period in his book Cuban Revelations. “The lights were off more than they were on, and so too was the water. . . . Food was scarce and other consumer goods almost nonexistent. . . . Doctors set broken bones without anesthesia. . . . Worm dung was the only fertilizer.” He quotes a nurse who tells him that Cubans “used to make hamburgers out of grapefruit rinds and banana peels; we cleaned with lime and bitter orange and used the black powder in batteries for hair dye and makeup.” “It was a haunting time,” Frank wrote, “that still sends shivers down Cubans’ collective spines.”

While Castro made some halfhearted attempts to juice up foreign investment and revive tourism, the special period didn't end until another sugar daddy came along, in the form of Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. That country has been giving Cuba 100,000 barrels of oil per day in return for medical services. Unfortunately, the Venezuelan economy is imploding and the price of oil is down by 40%. That sugar daddy is about to disappear.

Apart from Venezuelan oil, Cuba's largest foreign exchange earner is likely prostitution. The trade drives much of the tourism traffic. That's hardly the hallmark of a healthy society.

So Cuba is forced into the arms of the Yanqui imperialists. That's not good for the regime--more American money, tourists, and influence will make running a police state even harder. So they're doing their best to keep us at arm's length, as Walter Russell Mead describes. Still, the regime can't let life get any worse than what it is. Michael Totten describes.

Even employees inside the quasi-capitalist bubble don’t get paid more. The government contracts with Spanish companies such as Meliá International to manage Havana’s hotels. Before accepting its contract, Meliá said that it wanted to pay workers a decent wage. The Cuban government said fine, so the company pays $8–$10 an hour. But Meliá doesn’t pay its employees directly. Instead, the firm gives the compensation to the government, which then pays the workers—but only after pocketing most of the money. I asked several Cubans in my hotel if that arrangement is really true. All confirmed that it is. The workers don’t get $8–$10 an hour; they get 67 cents a day—a child’s allowance. 

The maximum wage is just the beginning. Not only are most Cubans not allowed to have money; they’re hardly allowed to have things. The police expend extraordinary manpower ensuring that everyone required to live miserably at the bottom actually does live miserably at the bottom. Dissident blogger and author Yoani Sánchez describes the harassment sarcastically in her book Havana Real: “Buses are stopped in the middle of the street and bags inspected to see if we are carrying some cheese, a lobster, or some dangerous shrimp hidden among our personal belongings.”

Cuba is a country where even potatoes are considered contraband. That's hardly a beacon of hope for those of us who oppose poverty.

I support Mr. Obama's opening toward Cuba. It probably won't work, but then what we've been doing for the past 50 years definitely doesn't work. If it improves the lives of even a few people, it's probably worth it.

Down with poverty!

Viva Cuba Libre!

Further Reading:

• A Marxist Pope
• Immigration? Si!
• Viva Poverty!