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 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

 

Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters

From left, Esther Pérez, Mary-Alice Waters and Martín Koppel at the podium in Havana
(Source: Militant/Jonathan Silberman)

Contrary to my prediction, octogenarian Mary-Alice Waters really did make another trip to Cuba in February--and took a whole bevy of comrades with her (as best as I can determine, including Martín Koppel, Jonathan Silberman, Rachele Fruit and Philippe Tessier). Ms. Waters is second in command of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and longtime consort to chief honcho and similarly aged Jack Barnes. 

The occasion was the Havana Book Fair, and the topic of Mary-Alice's speech was a new edition (2024) of Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women, recently translated into Spanish by a Cuban, Esther Pérez.  The original authors were Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed, while the new edition includes contributions by Ms. Waters.  Her speech is reprinted in The Militant under the title ‘Fight for women’s equality is part of battle on world scale to settle which class will rule’. A companion article, by Rachele Fruit and Philippe Tessier, is headed Lively exchange at Havana book launch.

There are at least two things weird about the above photo. First are the microphones on the table. Authors Fruit and Tessier tell us that about 30 people attended the session. It hardly seems necessary to have a sound system, especially since Cuba is busy liberating itself from electricity use. After last Saturday's additional power failure, a reasonable estimate is that only 10% of demand is satisfied. It seems unlikely that the microphones even work. Why are they even there?

The second weird thing--recall this is a talk nominally about cosmetics and how evil capitalists have bamboozled women into buying them--is that octogenarian Mary-Alice has obviously dyed her hair! Compare her hair color with that of Esther Pérez--a woman likely younger than Ms. Waters, but who, living in Cuba, doesn't even have access to cheap hair dye.

In my prior article (Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion) I challenged Ms. Waters:

As a test, Ms. Waters should go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of cheap cosmetics that she can take with her next time she goes to Cuba (if she ever goes to Cuba again). She can pass them out to local women, whom I hazard will be overjoyed to receive them, without any encouragement from the bourgeoisie. Just a little bit of beauty to brighten their otherwise dark, dreary, boring days.

At very least she could've brought along some hair dye to share with her loyal translator. It would seem like the right thing to do.

The gist of Mary-Alice's speech was that women are oppressed, not just by men, but mostly by "capitalism" (whatever that is--Mary-Alice has no clue). The depths of their oppression is illustrated by the fact that they are hoodwinked into buying cosmetics that (according to Mary-Alice) they 1) don't need, 2) are dangerous, and 3) are similar to addictive drugs, such as fentanyl.

To which my responses are: 1) maybe women don't need cosmetics (who is Ms. Waters to tell women what they need?), but surely they enjoy having them. Cuban women probably have bigger problems than a lack of cosmetics (eg, adjusting to no electricity), but I still think had Mary-Alice taken my advice, she would've brightened the day of a few Cuban ladies. Cheapskate!

2) Ms. Waters mentions a few edge cases where cosmetics--broadly understood--might be dangerous. Her examples are mostly around cosmetic surgery, which I agree is perhaps taking the passion too far. But L'Oreal is the biggest cosmetics company in the world, and I don't think she can reasonably claim that any of their products are dangerous. 

3) They're addicting--which is true, but so is everything else that's pleasurable. I take great joy in being able to turn on electric lights in the evening. Does that mean that I'm addicted to electricity? Are her Cuban comrades better off being free of such an addiction?

Ms. Waters summarizes her talk at the end by asking and answering two questions.

The first question is: Are the issues addressed in a debate about cosmetics and fashion many decades ago still relevant? Haven’t “we” moved beyond that?

Second: Hasn’t knowledge of the earliest human societies moved far beyond what was known in the early 1950s? Isn’t Evelyn Reed’s article on “Anthropology: Marxist or Bourgeois?” outdated for that reason?

This is her answer to question one:

More than three centuries after the birth of industrial capitalism, we can say that the resources devoted by capitalist enterprises to advertising and the creation of markets — that is, creating “needs” that don’t naturally exist — have expanded astronomically, and continue to expand. 

Which demonstrates that she knows nothing about capitalism. To me, the most succinct definition of capitalism is an economic order designed to maximize consumption. Capitalists want you to shop till you drop.

Contrast that with socialism, where consumer wants are to be rationed by the government. Under socialism you can buy cosmetics only if the State approves the sale of cosmetics. Mary-Alice is convinced that nobody (except her) needs cosmetics, and therefore you should be prohibited from buying them. Apparently in Cuba they've decided that nobody needs electricity, either.

Sure--you can complain about overconsumption or even wasteful spending. But I think those are minor problems compared with the problem that afflicts most of the world, namely under-consumption, aka poverty. The problem in Cuba has nothing to do with who owns the means of production or who gets to distribute the proceeds. The problem is poverty. That's all it is. Cubans aren't allowed to buy what they want to buy.

Ms, Waters responds to the second question merely by asking another: Who needs any stinkin' research anyway? Some 60+ years ago she read a book entitled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, by Friedrich Engels, first published in 1884. That book is the absolute truth when it comes to anthropology. Why? Because it's "materialist," whatever that means.

In the intervening six decades Mary-Alice has refused to read anything new in the human sciences. Whenever confronted by novelty she sticks her fingers in her ears and sings loudly "LA LA LA LA..." to drown out any contrary information.

She's never heard of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, it appears she denies the theory of evolution altogether. She doesn't know what the human genome is, much less the astounding discoveries made over the past couple of decades. She's unfamiliar with radiocarbon dating. She's resoundingly ignorant of basic economics. Amazingly, she denies that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. Hell, she probably hasn't even read Sigmund Freud (who is, at very least, a pleasurable read).

She's a complete ignoramus, and we can safely ignore her opinions. Whether in English or Spanish, Cosmetics... is not a serious book.

Further Reading:

• The End of Cuban Civilization
• Steve Clark's Bizarre Book Bazaar
• Book Review: Human Diversity

Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion

Advertisement from around 1950. Cubans today wish they had a refrigerators filled with food.
(Picture Source: The Militant)

The octogenarian comrade Mary-Alice Waters opines on the status of women using a book first published in 1986 as a guide: Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women. She celebrates the new edition, which occasions this series of three articles from and about the book. The original book contains articles by old Party stalwarts, Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed. ("Party" refers to the Socialist Workers Party, SWP, publishers of The Militant.)

The first article is the new preface authored by Ms. Waters. The second article is the first chapter, also authored by Ms. Waters. Finally are some short reflections on the book by a Cuban woman, Isabel Moya, given as a speech in Havana in 2011 (back when Cuba still had electricity).

The first sentences of Ms. Waters' preface were for me a disappointment:

Title notwithstanding, Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women is not a book about cosmetics.

It is about capitalism.

Geez, I'm more interested in cosmetics and fashion. In The Militant every article is about "capitalism." The paper gets interesting only when they talk about something else. Besides which, Ms. Waters knows nothing about how capitalism actually works. 

Fortunately the excerpts cover other topics as well, notably economics, biology, anthropology, psychology and politics. Wow! It's a pastiche of factoids from beginning to end.

Unfortunately, Ms. Waters seems to think all progress in the social sciences ended in 1881, when the "materialist" anthropologist Lewis Morgan died. Or perhaps in 1895 when Friedrich Engels passed. Or maybe into the early 20th Century with Morgan's disciple, Robert Briffault. But nothing since the dawn of jet aircraft, or computers, or the internet, or mobile telephony, or the dramatic progress science has made studying human genomics. None of this crosses her radar screen--because if it did it would readily disprove her thesis. She can win the argument only by plugging her ears and pretending progress doesn't exist.

Her thesis is that humans are distinctive because we "labor." She quotes Evelyn Reed (italics in original):

Beauty has no identity with fashion. But it has an identity with labor. Apart from

the realm of nature, all that is beautiful has been produced in labor and by laborers.

Well? Maybe. Though it seems to me the fundamental human characteristic is not that we labor (beavers also labor), but that we trade. No other species on the planet engages in trade. Indeed, in an era when Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens shared the space, Neanderthal products are always found near where they were made. Human products, on the other hand, are often found hundreds of miles from where they were made. Perhaps labor can be defined as the act of making something for purposes of trade? In other words, labor exists to make the customer happy.

I'm not sure how Ms. Reed defines labor, but I think I disagree with her quote. People often produce beautiful things without any expectation of financial reward. And it is true--they "labor." But if made for personal use, then they don't trade, just like a beaver doesn't trade. Women (and some men) apply cosmetics to make themselves beautiful--and it is not done for any financial reward.

Regards cosmetics, Ms. Waters proposes some serious conspiracy theory.

More than three centuries later, the resources devoted by capitalist enterprises to advertising and the creation of markets — that is, creating “needs” where none yet exist — are still expanding astronomically. Under the profit system, instead of advances in the productivity of social labor breaking down this mystical animation of objects that working people ourselves have made, the working class and lower middle classes are pushed into “needing” more and more things. Everything from each new cell phone release, to the latest model automobile, $500 torn blue jeans, and an exploding array of “cosmetic” surgeries, skin bleaches or tanning salons, designer handbags, and cosmetics-designed-to-make-you-look-like-you’re-not-using-cosmetics.

That is, women buy cosmetics only because they are foisted on them by a rapacious, scheming capitalist class. This is ridiculous! Women buy cosmetics because they want to, not because they've been bamboozled by the bourgeoisie. Working class women are way smarter than our comrade gives them credit for.

As a test, Ms. Waters should go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of cheap cosmetics that she can take with her next time she goes to Cuba (if she ever goes to Cuba again). She can pass them out to local women, whom I hazard will be overjoyed to receive them, without any encouragement from the bourgeoisie. Just a little bit of beauty to brighten their otherwise dark, dreary, boring days.

I'm not going to detail Ms. Waters' description of capitalism, but a few things need clarification. First, the declining rate of profit refers only to commodities, ie, products that compete only on price, such as gasoline. All other products, like most branded products, will compete on factors other than price. A commodity smart phone costs about $50; the latest iPhone will set you back more than $800! The iPhone, which competes on style and functionality, is not a commodity, and the profit margin on that product is huge.

The bottom line is that consumers determine the price for all non-commodity products. Apple will charge whatever consumers are willing to pay. The cosmetics you buy at the dollar store are commodities. The cosmetics you get from L'Oréal are definitely not commodities. 

The second and most important point is that Comrade Mary-Alice is a Luddite. She doesn't think there should be any pleasure in the world. Buying something that makes one more beautiful or more stylish is, in her opinion, just the bourgeoisie messing with your mind. She's wrong. America is a rich country because you can buy refrigerators full of food, shelves full of cosmetics, closets full of clothes, garages with two cars, and vacations to some of the finest beaches in the world. Compare that to consumers in that socialist heaven-state, Cuba, who can't even buy food or fresh water.

The measure of any society is the level of consumption--and Americans are by far the best consumers in the world. That's why everybody on the planet wants to move here. You can't eliminate poverty without increasing consumption--neither the Cubans nor the Chinese have learned that lesson yet.

Ms. Waters, in her preface, lists a whole bunch of bad things that happen to women, eg, "the stoning of women for adultery," and "government dictates that a woman must cover her hair, or face, or entire body, and that even her voice should never be heard in public." Most of the examples are from pre-modern societies (eg, Afghanistan) and do not represent the lives of women in the capitalist world. Nevertheless, our friendly comrade induces from her examples that women are systematically oppressed and are second class citizens.

This is not generally true, partly because she omits the list of bad things that happen to men, eg, dying by the thousands of the trenches in WW1. Or, quoting Robert Gordon, describing life prior to 1870, "men's work was dirty and dangerous, while women's toil was unremitting drudgery." It's hard to say one sex was more oppressed than the other. Life was hard all the way round.

Women are sometimes subordinated and oppressed. More generally they're not--instead they're protected and cherished. The fundamental error that Marxists (including Ms. Waters) make is that they believe evolution stopped the minute human beings came along. They claim that culture has supplanted biology. But this is false--it's more accurate to say that culture has augmented biology. Indeed, culture is itself a product of evolution, and conversely, culture dramatically influences the reproductive success of various human ethnicities. Thus culture drives evolution. The modern term for this is gene-culture co-evolution.

Men and women are biologically different. We evolved separately for different roles in reproduction. All cultures distinguish between men and women--there is no culture on earth where they are regarded interchangeably. Most of the differences between men and women in today's modern capitalist society stem, directly or indirectly, from those fundamental, biological differences. 

Mary-Alice is wrong to consider all differences to be examples of oppression.

Let me close with a poem (that only a woman could write) by Dulce María Loynaz, quoted by Isabel Loya. I include it here just because I like it.

If you love me, love me whole,
       not by zones of light or shadow …
If you love me, love me black
       and white, and gray and green,
       and blonde and dark …
Love me by day,
       love me by night …
And by morning in the open window!
If you love me, don’t break me
       in pieces:
Love me whole … or don’t
       love me at all!

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Human Diversity 
• Down the Cuba Rabbit Hole With Mary-Alice Waters
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History

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

Steve Clark's Bizarre Book Bazaar

Steve Clark (MILITANT/ÖGMUNDUR JÓNSSON)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading:

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

Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us

Authored by Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark, The low point of labor resistance is behind us is the political report adopted by the 49th Constitutional Convention of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), held on December 12th, 2022. The authors (whom I've dubbed the "Troika") are the long-time (going on five decades now) leaders of the Party. Comrades Barnes and Waters are over 80, while comrade Clark is about 70.

The premise is that the union movement has reached bottom, and because of economic misery workers are becoming more militant and more likely to organize and rebel. This, if true, will reverse a decades long trend that began in the 1970s.

Except I don't think it's true. Just today, in an editorial, the WSJ writes

Union members made up only 10.1% of the workforce last year, down from 10.3% in 2021, according to data released recently by the Labor Department. For a long time the prototypical union shop hasn’t been a private steel plant but a public school, yet the unionized share of government employees also fell.

Though the annual changes look small, they add up: The workforce in 2012 was 11.3% unionized, and in 2002 it was 13.3%. Organized labor hasn’t been able to stop the trend, despite frantic unionization drives, including many aimed at nontraditional members, such as the university graduate students who march under the United Auto Workers banner. Private workers are 6% unionized, down from 8.6% two decades ago. For public workers, it’s 33.1%, down from 37.3%.

Last week ZeroHedge reported similar statistics, along with this rather depressing gem:

The most unionized occupations are public safety (34.6%) and education (33.7%). The lowest are sales (3.0%) and computer and math jobs (3.3%). 

Bad news for Trotskyists, who don't consider cops to be part of the working class.

The Troika might concede that union membership hasn't yet recovered, but they'd insist that the trajectory has changed. Unions, they'd claim, are becoming more militant and better organized, which will be reflected in the overall statistics soon enough. They provide no data for that belief, but are concentrating their efforts in two unions: the bakery workers (BCTGM) and the rail workers. Among the bakery workers, 160 of them have gone on strike in recent months (120 at Ingredion, 40 at Corn Nuts). Both strikes have been settled. This does not auger a surge in labor activism.

The fact is that unions are increasingly irrelevant. There is a serious labor shortage for workers in blue collar professions, and those employees are getting raises. For example, Walmart recently raised starting salaries across the board from $12 to $14 per hour. That's a near 17% raise, for which no strike was required. They're doing this because they need the workers.

The Report consists of 27 sections, ranging in length from a paragraph to a page or two, organized within four chapters. The whole document (not counting prefatory material or illustrations) is about 60 pages long, or approximately 15,000 words. I read it in about three hours.

The first chapter is entitled Opposing US rulers' assaults on freedoms protected by the Constitution and their use of the political police. It describes in detail the unconstitutional persecution of Donald Trump and so-called "MAGA Republicans" by "the government's political police, first and foremost the FBI." It must be noted that the Party has had its own run-ins with the FBI before, notably the COINTELPRO lawsuit in which the Party won $264,000 in damages. Opposing the FBI is consistent with Party history, as the Report discusses at some length.

More, the Party notes that a majority of blue collar workers voted for Trump in 2016 and in 2020. Trump earned the vote of record numbers of Hispanics and Blacks (though the latter was still a small percentage). Therefore supporting civil rights in this case is in solidarity with the people whom they hope to represent. They cast themselves as being on the side of the "deplorables" and the "bitter clingers."

In their defense, the Report cites Leon Trotsky himself:

"Under conditions of the bourgeois regime, all suppressions of political rights and freedom, no matter whom they are directed against in the beginning, in the end inevitably bear down upon the working class, particularly its most advanced elements."

They are also very clear about who their opponents are.

Democrats, liberals, the "left," and "woke," so-called social justice warriors--not rightist or other reactionary forces--have led the assault against constitutional protections and freedoms in recent decades.

Trotskyists have always opposed the Democratic Party and all it stands for. The Report strongly reiterates that position.

While standing up for civil rights, the Report does not explicitly make clear their opposition to Trump and the Republican Party as agents of the bourgeoisie. Trump's name is mentioned in the Report only in passing, and the Republicans are not mentioned at all. This may lead to some confusion as to whether the Party still is part of the Left. I think they unambiguously are, but the Report would be better if they made that case explicitly.

The second chapter is entitled Capitalism's erosion of the family and the working-class road to women's emancipation. This includes some standard boilerplate:

Central to any communist program is a union-led fight for employment, with wage rates, work schedules, and job conditions necessary for families to live. ...

Jobs, not dependence on welfare programs, open a road forward. ...

Class-conscious workers call for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay, with regular hours.

So they're in favor of full employment, but then, after all that, they come out in favor of a comprehensive welfare program: "What is needed is a floor for all families--an income that's sufficient for workers..." to pay for all the bennies. The standard label for such a policy is universal basic income, and was championed by Andrew Yang in 2020.

The weirdest part of the Report concerns abortion. They claim that (boldface mine)

...we fight for women's right to reproductive and maternal health care, sex education (not gender indoctrination), as well as access to the safest and most reliable contraceptive methods and safe and legal abortion.

There is then a long section on how they supported Roe v Wade back in the 1970s, but have now come to regret that choice. The argument isn't entirely convincing. Summarizing in my own words, Roe v Wade short-circuited a national debate on abortion, depriving the working class of an opportunity to come to a decision on their own.

What the current Supreme Court has done, in the Dobbs v Jackson ruling, is simply return decisions about abortion to people in the individual states. They didn't rule on abortion one way or the other. The Party supports this move, and assumes that abortion will eventually be legal everywhere.

But now comes the truly mysterious part (in section 15; boldface mine):

The Socialist Workers Party unconditionally supports the decriminalization of abortion and joins others in fighting for it.

Decriminalization? Why that instead of legalization, as suggested in the prior quote? There is a difference, I suppose, but we're never told what it is.

A hint might be this:

...our communist program has nothing in common with bourgeois and middle-class forces--whether feminists, or campaigners for population control--who in fact advocate abortion as a means of contraception. We reject the pseudoscientific views of those who deny that the issue of human life, a profound moral question for all working people, is always involved in abortion decisions and procedures.

That second sentence is a bit hard to follow because of the double negative (...reject...deny...). It could be more simply written, but I think the mealy-mouthedness is on purpose.

I interpret the Party's position as pro-natalist, i.e., they want workers to have more babies. I think they're right--I describe myself using that word (and not just for workers). It's hard to square pro-natalism with unequivocal support for birth control and abortion. Therefore they equivocate.

The third chapter is entitled The Cuban socialist revolution and our communist continuity. It's much shorter than the first two, and in my opinion is completely wrong. Indeed, I think the Party's whole international analysis is wrong--I'll refer readers to books by Peter Zeihan for a clearer understanding. I'm going to skip over that here.

The fourth chapter--shortest of all--is Forging a proletarian party and educating its cadre. They claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that

The SWP is forging a proletarian party in the United States--a revolutionary political instrument of the working class, whose purpose, as our constitution asserts...is "to educate and organize the working class in order to establish a workers and farmers government, which will abolish capitalism in the United States and join in the worldwide struggle for socialism."

That's a tall order for a Party of about a hundred souls, with an average age in the 60s. The majority of comrades are at or nearing retirement age. Their current leading spokeswoman is Ilona Gersh, who is in her mid-seventies. The leaders are a pair of octogenarians.

What I am most disappointed with is that the Party has not brought in new, younger leadership. While I don't support the Party's goal of revolution and socialism, I have no fear of that ever happening even in my grandchildren's lifetime. But I'm sentimentally attached to my former comrades, and I want the Party to continue to exist. Having the same leadership for 50 years is not healthy. Presuming that the organization will have a meaningful voice when lead by octogenarians is fanciful.

I don't think Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters, or Steve Clark are serious about the World Revolution. They're just concerned for their own sinecures--and what happens after that let the devil take the hindmost.

I enjoyed reading the Report. It's well written, entertaining, and not too long. The illustrations are silly--they're mostly pictures of people standing around holding placards, such as shown on the front cover. But the book is professionally produced. I didn't find any typos--if there are some in what I've quoted here, they are mine. Apologies in advance.

Further Reading:

• Oberlin, 2017 (about the 48th Convention)
• Labor Notes 2022: Starbucks
• Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?