Has Socialist Action Ceased to Exist?

Reproduced from Socialist Action, December 31, 2018

As of about a week ago the Socialist Action homepage looks like the screenshot shown right. In other words, it seems like the paper is defunct. However links like this https://socialistaction.org/2025/ still work. So no archives been destroyed.

Screenshot Sept 18, 2026

There are several possible causes: Perhaps the most likely is the organization no longer exists. Though it seems weird that only the homepage is gone. A political party that can't maintain its homepage is in deep doo-doo.

Perhaps the homepage has been taken down pending a much-needed remodel? For example, they were still advertising a download of their last print copy, dated June, 2022. (It was always an unreadable wall of text, but it's become an out-of-date, unreadable wall of text.) But taking the page down completely for ~2 weeks is a rather drastic fix.

It's possible they haven't paid rent to the hosting company--the latter generous enough to keep the archives intact.

Whatever the immediate cause, the big problem is the physical decline of Jeff Mackler. Mr. Mackler is so essential to the organization that I've taken to calling him Vanguard Man, that is, he is personally responsible for the fate of the Vanguard Party. Without him leading us and providing us with the uniquely correct revolutionary program, a socialist revolution in the USA is impossible. The working class is screwed (or, equivalently, the bourgeoisie can break out the champagne). Jeff Mackler is the personification of sectarianism.

There is nobody else in the Party who can carry out Comrade Jeff's awesome responsibilities. Even the more down-to-earth obligations, like maintaining a webpage, fails them. Until now they've made do: they have hosted articles from outside their movement, eg, by sworn antisemite Chris Hedges, and by former Pol Pot sympathizer Barry Sheppard, The last new contribution by Mr. Mackler is dated August 31st, 2026.

It is possible that Mr. Mackler has passed away. I don't know exactly how old he is, but he is surely in his eighties. Nobody lives forever--not even an indispensable Vanguard Man. I hope he is still alive if only for the selfish reason that would like to read his obituary. I doubt anybody besides Socialist Action will publish that--though obviously Mr. Mackler can't write his own obit.

Comrade Jeff ran for president (of the United States!) twice--once in 2016 and again in 2020. Both campaigns were pathetic, and I grew my readership considerably by making fun of them. Highlights are here, here, here and here. That last article elicited a comment from whom I assume is Mr. Mackler himself, that reads in full

It seems that during this time, as we go through COVID, have had a massive response to cop killings and racism, as jobs are lost, rents coming due and the capitalist parties moving to the right and showing no way forward, the example of an independent socialist campaign - even a small one- is better than none at all.

So somebody over there was reading my blog. Of course they had to, coz apart from me nobody paid them any attention at all.

I do think my attention was rewarded. In 2019 Socialist Action underwent a split, with perhaps a majority of the membership leaving (despite being called the "minority"). Unfortunately I no longer have access to the minority's article justifying their departure, but I recall them saying that the ill-begotten and incompetently run presidential campaign was a contributing cause. I do give myself some credit.

The above photo was taken nearly eight years ago. I commented on it at the time. Eight years is a long time in the life of a young radical. I seriously doubt they're still members of the Jeff Mackler fan club. Some of them may have left with the Minority and gone on to join Workers' Voice (a grouplet I used to follow, but I've lost interest in them). Others probably found a home in the DSA. Who knows--maybe somebody saw the light and voted for Trump in 2024? I hope so.

Anyway, I'd love to read Jeff's obituary. Despite the obloquy I've aimed in his direction over the years--and I retract none of it--I can still be fair when reviewing an obituary. An obituary is to celebrate life's successes, not the failures upon which I've remarked so often. I would enjoy granting Jeff Mackler credit where credit is due.

Further Reading:

• The Fading Fumes of Trotskyism
• Election 2024, Trotskyists' Unanimous Opinion
• American Brezhnevism Today

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

 

Election 2024, Trotskyists' Unanimous Opinion

(Source)

They're unanimous--all the Trotskyist grouplets which I follow believe that a mass, independent working class party is the solution to all America's problems. 

Jimena Vergara, writing in Left Voice states it clearly in her closing sentence.

For this, we need not only a united front against the Right, but also a political party of the working class and oppressed with a socialist program that unites our struggles and gives us the foundation with which to fight for a better world. 

In an article posted in Socialist Action, guest authors Malik Miah and Barry Sheppard proclaim that

Fundamental change only occurs through class struggle. Mass action is the only road toward rebuilding the union movement, independent organizations of Blacks, women and all the oppressed, the revolutionary socialist movement and a mass workers party championing all the oppressed and exploited, and ultimately a socialist revolution.

Meanwhile, The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) in an article by Terry Evans, opines that

The SWP candidates are unionists, joining strike picket lines and building solidarity wherever they go. They’ve explained why workers need to break from the bosses’ political parties and build a party of our own, a party of labor, that can fight to take political power.

A working class party has never existed in the United States. It has existed in other countries (UK, Germany, Canada, etc.), but in every case it has evolved into a "reformist" party that resembles the American Democrats. Many of those parties, like the German Social Democrats led by the formidable Karl Kautsky, are direct heirs of Marx and Engels. It is both ironic and instructive that Marxist parties should end up as bourgeois, reformist institutions.

Our Trotskyist friends never ask why there has never been a successful workers' party anywhere in the western world. (They'll claim the Russian Revolution was a success--though it certainly didn't turn out that way.) The reason for that perennial failure is because Marxism is just wrong.

The basic tenet of Marxism is that the driver of history is the intractable, insoluble, existential conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Only one class can win, and that class must be the proletariat, according to our Trotskyist friends. But this is wrong--workers and capitalists are on the same side in most things: both of them need to maximize sales revenue in order to succeed. For the workers (who often claim more than 90% of revenue) it means more jobs and higher wages. For the capitalist it's the source of profit. Without revenue, both of them will starve.

Consumers are on the other side of the equation. They want better quality at lower prices and with improved service. They usually get what they want--which is why our standard of living has steadily improved since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The customer is always right.

That fundamental misunderstanding of basic economics is why Trotskyists never make any progress with their pipedream. All real workers need to cooperate with their capitalist bosses. Workers definitely do not want to overthrow the whole damn system.

This explains why Donald Trump is a tribune of the working class. He realizes that corporate taxes don't just take money away from the bosses--they take even more money away from the workers. He understands that over-the-top environmental regulations won't just put Exxon-Mobil out of business, but also put all the people who work in fossil-fuel related industries out of a job. Trump realizes that exaggerated Wokery adds a cost to doing business that will reduce revenue and hurt both the capitalists and the workers.

Our Trotskyist friends delude themselves in thinking they own the Truth: that because of their leadership as the Vanguard Party, the scales of false-consciousness shall fall from proletarian eyes, and they shall see the light and flock to the revolutionary banner. In fact, the people most afflicted with false consciousness are the Trotskyist grouplets, which is why they remain grouplets.

The villain of the piece--the organization most responsible for false consciousness--is the Democratic Party. All our Trotskyist friends claim to hate the Democrats. But here the movement divides into two factions: one, led by the SWP, better understands why Trump is popular among real workers, and thus support many of the things Trump does. In other words, they think Trump is the chief agent of false consciousness.

Accordingly, the SWP defend Trump when his positions are defensible. They strongly protested the relentless lawfare as an attack on the civil liberties of all Americans. They object to the expensive, petty bourgeois climate agenda championed by other Trotskyists and their Democrat friends. They oppose the Woke silliness espoused by Democrats and other Trotskyists.

At the same time, they oppose Trump. Terry Evans writes,

Trump seeks to refurbish the image of the Republican Party as a party for workers. But he’s a real-estate-dealing capitalist in search of the highest profits. And his campaign seeks to demonize a section of the working class — immigrant workers with and without papers — in an effort to convince workers this is the cause of their worsening situation, not capitalism. This divides and weakens the working class and labor movement.

They accuse Trump of the same crime for which our other friends condemn the Democrats--namely trafficking in false consciousness. But they realize that the majority of the working class does, indeed, support Trump, and often for good reasons.

The other faction--represented by all other grouplets, but most prominently by Left Voice, subscribe to the Democratic Party's position (at least that of its Progressive faction) 100% of the time. They accuse the Democrats of not really believing what they say they want, but rather of cynically promoting false consciousness.

A classic response from that second faction comes from Left Voice author Tatiana Cozzarelli.  Apparently completely detached from proletarian sensibilities, she writes,

I teach on Wednesday mornings and on November 6, I was met with students who were in a shocked silence. They were in the 6th grade when Trump won the last election and again, this racist, misogynist authoritarian would take the White House. Some of them cried, thinking of friends and family who might get deported.  

For many, it was grief, fear and disbelief. When they hear “mass deportations,” it means their uncle, their mother, themselves. 

What to say to these 19 year olds? I wish I could just tell them it would be okay. That they won’t get deported. That they are safe. 

I can’t promise they will be safe. 

I can’t say to them that in two years voting Democrat will fix it– that would be a lie.

So she teaches at a CUNY school in New York City, where she is also a PhD student in "Urban Education" (whatever the hell that is). She obviously doesn't get around much, and obviously isn't a member of the working class. Trump won a majority of "working class" votes, defined as voters without a college degree. That certainly doesn't apply to Ms. Cozzarelli, who is wasting her time and our money getting a useless PhD.  

Trump won the election--in today's context by a landslide. Trotskyists have no clue why. Trump tells the truth when he claims to be a tribune of the working class. Our Trotskyist friends don't understand reality.

Further Reading:

• Kamala vs. Trump: The Decline of America?
• Whiners & Complainers
• SWP Announces 2024 Presidential Campaign

Oberlin? Mackler? Time Takes Its Toll

It appears that there was no Oberlin Conference this year.

I could be wrong. But here it is--three weeks into July--and there is no report on the Oberlin conference. What's more, I don't recall any previous mention of the conference in recent issues of The Militant. Usually they advertise said conferences in advance, inviting people sympathetic to the Party to attend.

The Party refers to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and said Party has been hosting annual conferences ever since I was a member (beginning in 1969), and then probably for years before that. Those conferences have traditionally occurred on the campus of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio--though in 2021 and 2022 they were moved to Wittenberg College. Because of the pandemic, no conference was held in 2020, which would be the only year they've missed in at least 55 years.

Until this year. Or so it seems. Maybe I'm just jumping the gun and next week there will be a full account in The Militant (the Party's newspaper) on the Oberlin Conference. Or maybe the conference has been delayed for some reason and will happen later this Summer, as happened in 2021.

I hope I'm wrong. I'll be happy to eat my words, or eat crow, or whatever it is an ex-comrade has to eat when he gets it wrong--but if the Oberlin conference really didn't happen this year, that would be bad news. My last post was entitled Is Trotskyism Dead?, and it appears it was prescient.

I can only think of three possible reasons why.

First, perhaps the Party's leaders are just too old. The National Secretary (CEO) is Jack Barnes, born in 1940, turns 84 this year. He's served as leader since 1972, or 52 years. That's longer than Stalin (30 years) or Mao Tse-Tung (32 years) reigned as head of their respective Communist Parties. Comrade Barnes has even out-lasted his bff Fidel Castro, who ruled from 1976 to 2008, retiring at the youthful age of 82.

It's pretty obvious that the SWP has a leadership succession problem.

It's not just Mr. Barnes, but the second member of the Troika (my term for the Party's leadership) is Mary-Alice Waters. She, along with Comrade Jack, graduated from Carleton College in the early sixties--whether at the same time or a year or two apart, I don't know--but she is approximately Mr. Barnes' age. Indeed, she's been his lifelong companion--and at least for much of that time his main squeeze. Party leadership apparently runs in the family.

The third member of the Troika (that's why it's called a Troika) is Steve Clark. Comrade Clark is much younger than Comrades Barnes & Waters--indeed, I think he's younger than I am, which suggests he's about 71 or 72.

Oberlin conferences come in two flavors. In most years they are an Educational Conference, held mainly to get comrades together and touch base with the big ideas. In some years they are a Convention (the last one took place in December, 2022) where the Party approves a new program (called the Political Report) and supposedly elects new leadership. I have compiled the attendance at recent Oberlin conferences here.

Either way--whether it is a Political Report or simply a Keynote Speech--Comrade Barnes has to prepare a major presentation. Plus he has to be physically able to travel. I'll suggest that he is no longer able to complete one or both of those tasks, and therefore leadership succession in the Party becomes an urgent issue.

The second possible reason for no conference is that they're running out of money. As commenter John B wrote here, the Party (as of 2023) has only $6 million left from the $20 million horde it got by selling its building. That cash has to subsidize publication of The Militant, along with costs associated with Pathfinder Press.

A third possible reason--depressing in its own way--is that there is nothing to talk about. The median age of our comrades is probably about 70, they've all attended dozens of Oberlin Conferences, and the notion that they somehow require more "education" seems silly. Plus the travel costs are expensive.

The Party is running candidates for US president and vice-president this year--Rachele Fruit and Dennis Richter, respectively. They're doing their usual respectable job of campaigning--its obviously on a small scale, but nobody can accuse them of lack of professionalism. They are working to get on the ballot in at least a few states, notably Tennessee and Vermont.

But their program doesn't inspire. Rachele Fruit says it all: ‘Workers need to form our own party, a party of labor’. A true Trotskyist demand is a demand on the bourgeoisie, and not an exhortation to the working class. Beyond saying that the "ruling class" is evil and does not rule in workers' interests, the Party doesn't demand of the rulers to do anything hard or impossible. There is no demand similar to what Trotsky describes in the Transitional Program.

Indeed, their demand is identical to all the other so-called Trotskyist grouplets. Left Voice's lead slogan is The Presidential Debate Showed the Time Is Now to Build a Party that Fights for Immigrant Rights, Workers’ Needs, and Socialism. (With a title like that who needs to read the article?)

If the SWP styles itself as the Vanguard Party, then Jeff Mackler, while nominally the head of the mostly defunct group Socialist Action, stands alone as the vanguard of the proletariat--I call him Vanguard Man.

Vanguard Man ran for president (of the USA) twice, in 2016 and again in 2020. Mr. Mackler is roughly Jack Barnes' age (perhaps a bit older), which means he's older than Joe Biden. And it showed--apart from a brief tour of southern New England there was no further activity. For some reason Mr. Mackler chose to run again in 2020, running a similarly lackadaisical campaign. Indeed, it was a lot like Mr. Biden's campaigning from his basement. I had fun mocking the attempt with headlines like Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again and Jeff Mackler Quits 2020 Race!

Unfortunately my comedic routine won't be repeated this year--Mr. Mackler appears not to be running in 2024. It seems he has health problems--expected of an 84 year-old--and is no longer able to travel very much. Which means the working class is screwed--after all, once Vanguard Man is gone, there will be nobody left to lead the Revolution. The imperialists will win.

As far as I know, Mr. Mackler has not endorsed any other candidate for president. Apparently none of them rise to the class consciousness of our Vanguard Man. After all, having spent 30 years as a California school teacher and living now probably 30 years into retirement receiving a generous pension from the Golden State--Mr. Mackler surely knows what it's like to be a poor, miserable oppressed worker--just like the shlub at Walmart with no health insurance (who's gonna vote for Trump!).

Compared to comrades Mackler, Barnes and Waters, Joe Biden is a spring chicken--a perfect symbol of youth. But it appears that time has caught up to him as well.

The SWP, despite their advancing age (or perhaps because of it) knows better what the real working class is about:

• That civil liberties are important, and an attack on one (Donald Trump) is implicitly an attack on all American workers.
• The murdering all JewsZionists in Israel is not moral, and is certainly not in the best interests of the Palestinian people.
• That Wokeism is not an ideology that benefits the working class, but instead is a set of Orwellian language and practices mandated by the petty bourgeois, academic elite.

So I'll forgive them their rather silly campaign slogan.

Further Reading:

• The SWP Announces 2024 Presidential Campaign
  
• The SWIP Flips to SWOP
  
• The Decline of American Trotskyism
  

Is Trotskyism Dead?

— ADL (@ADL) June 11, 2024

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 11, 2024

When you've lost AOC, you've pretty much lost the argument. It's all very depressing.

As much as I disagree with Trotskyism, as a former comrade and longtime student I've always wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I have tried hard to credit them with good intentions. However wooly-minded, at least they honestly desired a better world.

But for the most part I can no longer believe this. Their pro-Hamas sympathies lead them to call for the obliteration of the world's Jews. After October 7th it is no longer possible to interpret slogans like From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free, or--even worse--Globalize the Intifada, as anything other than demanding the murder of all Jews. 

They will probably claim they don't really want that (I don't believe them), but then there needs at very least to be an asterisk on those slogans. They must clearly state what they do mean. Because--coming from Hamas and without the asterisk--a Free Palestine is just a Judenrein Palestine, and Globalize the Intifada implies nothing other than the murder of Jews worldwide.

They compound the obfuscation by calling Israel's war against Hamas genocide. Whatever else it is (and it's bad enough) it is nowhere near the level of genocide.

Left Voice author Sam Karlin reveals his true feelings in an article entitled Liberal Towns in New Jersey Are Increasing Attacks on Pro-Palestine Activists. His very first paragraph gives the game away (link in original).

Pro-Palestine activists in New Jersey are coming up against repression. Five months ago, a collection of neighbors in South Orange and Maplewood (SOMA) New Jersey came together to form SOMA Collective for Palestine. This group has been advocating for a ceasefire and denouncing Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza in a community that is heavily Zionist. In fact, SOMA is a highly wealthy community and part of the eighth wealthiest congressional district in the country. The fact that the movement for Palestine reached even this community is a testament to its support from large sectors of society.

In this case the word Zionist is just used as a synonym for Jewish. Indeed, the supposed wealth of the Zionists/Jews just shows how despicable they actually are. Needless to say, the "Zionists" are not happy to see people demonstrating in public parks loudly demanding their murder, and do not regard such demonstrations as "free speech." Of course they're upset--and this has nothing to do with "Islamophobia" or "anti-Arab racism," as Mr. Karlin argues later in his article.

Mr. Karlin is an out-and-out antisemite, along with all his comrades at Left Voice, Socialist Action, and Workers' Voice, among other Trotskyist grouplets. They've all bought the pro-Hamas propaganda to the hilt--whether you call them Jews or Zionists, they're evil people whose filthy feet "occupy" supposedly Palestinian land, and nothing less than their murder/exile will solve the problem.

My Trotskyist "friends" have gone from being misguided but good-hearted, to being outright evil. They support the admittedly-fascist Hamas, just like in my day when we supported the Khmer Rouge.

Would Trotsky have supported Hamas? I don't know, but I hope not. He wrote a book entitled "The Jewish Question," which I have not read, but I doubt it advocates the mass murder of all Jews. Left Voice's alliance with Hamas is a betrayal of Trotskyism. And the same is true for most other Trotskyist grouplets.

As I say, it's very depressing. But that's not the end of their problems.

I read somewhere (I believe it was in one of Barry Sheppard's books) that a small organization (such as the Socialist Workers Party--SWP back in the 1970s) will attract a disproportionate share of social misfits. I think that was true, and I'll include myself among that number. Speaking for myself, the Party gave me a ready-made circle of friends, a mission in life similar to joining a religious sect, along with a lifestyle (eg, the no-drugs rule) that I found very congenial. Some others had physical problems (eg, blindness), or were so socially mal-adept that they needed therapy. 

I think that's still true. All of the little grouplets I follow seem to have similar problems, and attract a ragtag list of maladjusted grad students, adjunct faculty, "journalists" (such as Mr. Karlin), theater wannabes, etc. Few if any have the slightest chance of success in larger society, and so it is no wonder that they set themselves up as a "Vanguard Party," thereby anointing themselves with the success that eludes them in real life. In a word, they're just like we were, except that we were more self-aware of our shortcomings than this later generation.

This current crop of Trotskyists are not merely in denial, but they extol their oddities as being somehow an improvement. A disproportionate (I think, a majority) of Left Voice comrades self-identify as queer. I don't precisely know what this means, but to me it's a rough synonym for mentally ill. Indeed, our Left Voice comrades appear to be in some measure mentally ill.

Not that there is any great shame in this--as said, I suffered similarly when I was their age. And such status does not deny one's right to a political opinion. But one should be self-aware enough to realize that most "normal" people will not see mental illness--or queerness--as a positive attribute. And that for a very good reason: queer people are almost by definition infertile. Few parents want to raise a child that proudly proclaims his/her infertility.

So whether they call themselves queer or trans, or even gay--and then raise that to the status of a virtue--that's a non-starter. It will never become a mass movement beyond the infertile queer community. Working class folks will not want to associate themselves with a weird group of losers. If Left Voice wants an impact on the wider world, then they need to keep their queerness to themselves.

Other Trotskyist groups seem to realize that. Both Socialist Action and Workers' Voice, while they still nominally support trans rights, no longer talk much about it. Indeed, the queerest people in Workers' Voice seem to have left the movement.

So the grouplets I've mentioned so far have left Trotskyism. They've descended into Hamas-style, antisemitic nihilism, which in this country--fortunately--will never win widespread support. And they've gotten so obsessed with their own queerness that they're no longer able to communicate with the larger world.

In a word, they've become progressive Democrats. Left Voice, Socialist Action and Workers' Voice all agree with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party 99%. They're more Democrat than most Democrats. Trotskyists are supposed to despise the Democrats, not join them. But these grouplets--while occasionally faking hatred--love the Democrat Party and all it stands for.

Trotskyism is dead...

With one big exception: the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP believes that workers are first of all proletarian. That means disciplined, loyal, trustworthy, and above all,  fertile. Infertility has no place in a Trotskyist program. The SWP despises the Democrat party and all it stands for--especially its progressive wing. It rightly sees progressives as being a petty-bourgeois, incipiently fascist movement.

They may go too far with this. Perhaps--in their hatred of the Democrats--they're all too cozy with the Trump team? Could be. But that's not their most serious problem.

The SWP's problem is captured by the 2024 presidential ticket: Rachele Fruit and Dennis Richter for president and VP, respectively. As The Militant reported here (italics in original),

The Socialist Workers Party nominated Dennis Richter as its vice presidential candidate April 29. Due to health considerations that need attention over the next several months, Margaret Trowe, who had been the party’s candidate, will no longer be able to run.

Mr. Richter joined the Movement back in 1972, and is probably around 70 years old. Ms. Trowe, whom he replaces as a candidate, will likely turn 76 this year. An illness that requires several months to treat is possibly cancer--and from personal experience let me say that cancer is a very time-consuming disease to treat. I wish Ms. Trowe all the best.

In a word, my former comrades are too old--their leaders, Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters, are both in their 80s. The Party is gradually dying out! OK--it's not dead yet, and I do wish them a few more years. 

But the die is cast and the clock is ticking. Trotskyism--even in this pure form--will soon be dead.

Further Reading:

• SWP Announces 2024 Presidential Campaign
  
• Left Voice and the Intifada
  
• Socialist Action's Political Report
  

Socialist Action's Political Report

Vanguard Man (source)

Socialist Action (SA) split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) back in 1983. It has been helmed by Jeff Mackler since its founding. He was SA's presidential candidate for both the 2016 and 2020 elections, running failed and unprofessional campaigns on both occasions. The man is 82 or 83 years old. It remains to be seen if he'll be the SA's candidate in 2024.

In 2019 SA underwent a split, with a large number (perhaps even a majority) of its members leaving. Notably, the very talented editor of their newspaper, Michael Schreiber, was among the leavers, as was Mr. Mackler's vice presidential running mate, Heather Bradford. How humiliating!

Some of the splitters went on to form the new and short-lived Socialist Resurgence movement. Other leaders of SA, e.g., Erwin Freed and Ernie Gotta (frequent coauthors), formed the core nucleus.

In 2022, Socialist Resurgence merged with a group called Workers' Voice with the new group assuming the latter name. This was hailed as an historic event, which I described as

The "two historic divisions" represent two versions of the Fourth International (FI): that of the United Secretariat, which purports to be the original FI, and the International Workers' League-Fourth International  (IWL-FI), which claims a mission to "reconstruct" the original FI. (A more useless mission is hard to imagine.)

So Mr. Mackler remains leader of SA's remnant husk, which I suggest is now down to about two dozen members. Since the first of the year their webpage has posted four (4!) articles--three of which are by Jeff Mackler, and one by that old Pol Pot supporter, Barry Sheppard. Apparently, apart from Mr. Mackler, nobody with any literary skills remains in the sect. Going back further in time, besides Mr. Mackler the website contains articles by others cribbed off the web. Only Marty Goodman, an SA comrade, occasionally contributes content.

Nevertheless, the "Party" held a convention last November. Insofar as it wasn't a Zoom meeting, it likely took place in Mr. Mackler's living room. The conclave issued a document: Fighting for the Socialist Future Today: Socialist Action Political Resolution. We're told that "[t]he following resolution was approved by Socialist Action’s 20th National Convention in November 2022." Approved it may have been, but the author is undoubtedly Mr. Mackler himself--so I'll give him credit here and not let him hide behind a Zoom meeting fig leaf.

I've taken to calling Mr. Mackler the "Vanguard Man." Normally, in Trotsky-talk, one speaks of the "Vanguard Party," which organization is the custodian of revolutionary tradition and which aspires to lead us toward a socialist utopia. But SA is so small and so depleted of talent that this awesome responsibility now rests on the shoulders of one octogenarian man: Jeff Mackler. Pity the poor proletariat, whose future hangs on such a thin reed.

Anyway, Mr. Mackler is a good writer, and that's the only reason I keep reading this stuff. But in this case he falls down on the job. There are too many typos, e.g., he writes "...right of return of all disposed Palestinians... ." Disposed is obviously the wrong word; perhaps he means dispossessed or dispersed? Not sure. Compare, e.g., with the SWP Political Report that I recently reviewed, in which I didn't find a single typo. It's not a big deal, but it indicates that the talent stack at SA is too small to support a proofreader.

The report is 15,000 words long, or the same length as the SWP's. I'll confess I skimmed through parts of it--much of it doesn't interest me, though perhaps that says more about me than Mr. Mackler.

The document discusses two big issues and several less important ones. The big issues concern "imperialism," especially the American variety, and then "[t]he global warming climate catastrophe."

Mr. Mackler subscribes to a theory known as campism, which I have dubbed American Brezhnevism. That post explains what that means in more detail, but briefly, campism maintains that the chief villain in the world is something called "American imperialism." We're never told what that is or how that operates, but it is apparently responsible for every war casualty anywhere in the world today. Mr. Mackler, for example, blames "American imperialism" for all the war deaths in Syria, and then also in Ukraine. Nobody else is responsible for anything. 

Because of "American imperialism," it is necessary for Vanguard Man to support any and all opponents of said imperialism, no matter how vile. Thus Mr. Mackler lends support to Assad in Syria,  Putin in Russia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is, of course, exactly the same argument that Barry Sheppard made in supporting Pol Pot and his murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia--no wonder Mr. Sheppard is an avid contributor to SA's webpage. However evil those regimes are, they're a lesser evil compared to "American imperialism."

To my mind, it's all a giant conspiracy theory. "American imperialism" does not exist in reality and is present only as a figment of Vanguard Man's overheated imagination.

Mr. Mackler is also a leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). Actually, it's not antiwar, but instead pro-war on the other side. They're rooting for Assad, Putin, the Taliban, Kim Jong-un, and China's Xi. Obviously this is not a popular position in the United States, especially since most sane people realize that "American imperialism" doesn't even exist.

Here is something funny. Vanguard Man admits that

With the exception of revolutionary Cuba, a healthy workers state with some inevitable bureaucratic distortions, there are no deformed or degenerated workers’ states in the world today.*

So, but for Cuba, we're all capitalist, imperialist running-dogs these days, the most evil of whom deserve support from those opposed to "American imperialism." But the humor comes from the asterisk, which footnote states,

*Tentative statement pending NC/PC discussion in the class nature of North Korea

As Shakespeare says, "uneasy is the head that wears a crown." Vanguard Man has a weighty decision to make: Is N. Korea a deformed workers' state, or instead only another imperialist, capitalist running-dog? The fate of the global proletariat depends on his answer.

Or not. Vanguard Man will support the Norks over the United States regardless of what their "class character" supposedly is.

I can't let Mr. Mackler's obvious antisemitism pass unremarked. He does say that "Anti-Zionism Is NOT Anti-Semitism." This is true--but the near-converse statement is also true: anti-Semites are always anti-Zionist. Thus anti-Zionism is an unprincipled coalition between those who support a constructive Palestinian nationalism, and those who simply hate the Jews. Vanguard Man is in that latter category because of his "...recognition of the illegitimacy of the racist, Zionist, colonial settler, apartheid state of Israel is today widespread, ..." Nobody but an antisemite could talk about Israel in such angry, vituperative terms. If he really were merely anti-Zionist, he'd use more conciliatory language.

The second big issue is climate change, where he opines:

Here, despite the uncontested facts, the world’s major powers press on to increase fossil fuel production in the face of ever-intensifying killer heat waves, deadly floods and hurricanes, inundation of low lying land masses, drying up and poisoning of major water supplies – all accompanied by unprecedented environmental destruction across the board. Forests are decimated, oceans and rivers are irreversibly polluted, air is poisoned, nature is torn asunder, with no end in sight. 2,000 people died in a single week from the recent heat wave in Spain and Portugal alone! All of the above are the undeniable reality everywhere.

This is just nonsense on stilts. He's cherry-picked random factoids that add up to nothing. He obviously knows nothing about science or scientists. Any legit climate scientist of whatever persuasion will be ashamed to be associated with our Vanguard Man.

I'm not a climate scientist, but I've spent my career as a professor of chemistry with a special interest in thermodynamics. So while I claim no expertise in climate science, I know a hell of a lot more than Vanguard Man. Which isn't hard, because he knows zilch.

The rest of the Report is about topics that are either irrelevant or unimportant: abortion, LGBTQIA+ rights, "Latinx" issues, etc. I don't have time or space, so see the links below if you're interested.

Further Reading:

• American Rights and Trans Rights
• It's Not Just About Abortion
• Cuba Needs More Communism!

Crypto & Socialist Action

This is now the second post in a week about Socialist Action (SA) and its chief honcho, Jeff Mackler. SA claims to be a "Vanguard Party," i.e., a Party that will lead us all to living happily ever after in a socialist utopia. That claim is belied by the fact that the Party has shrunk to minuscule size--indeed, it's arguable that Mr. Mackler is the very last member--the Vanguard Person. Or perhaps he's the Messiah? Who knows?

In the event, SA has become so small and so irrelevant that it's hardly worth paying them any attention at all. They're not even important within the narrow context of American Trotskyism, which this blog is vowed to cover. And yet here we are.

The reason for the favor is that Mr. Mackler attempts to do something important. He is, as far as I know, the first person on my Beat to actually discuss bitcoin and cryptocurrency. For this he deserves some credit. All the more is the pity that he understands absolutely nothing about the space. He's so ignorant that I have no choice but to make fun of him.

Full disclosure: I bought most of my bitcoin back in 2015, when it was very cheap, and sold all of it by the end of 2021--at a very healthy profit. For the moment I own no bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. That should make me an expert (and compared to Mr. Mackler I am), but I have to confess that until it went bankrupt I had never heard of FTX! I attribute that (in retrospect) to the fact that I never watch sports, am unaware of how stadiums are named, and don't see any of the ads on those channels.

So now it is my sad duty to correct Mr. Mackler's many errors of fact about bitcoin and crypto. His article is entitled Behind Sam Bankman-Fried’s Cryptocurrency Crash.

Mr. Mackler writes

A competitor, CoinDesk, apparently hacked its financial balance sheet and made it public, revealing grave discrepancies between FTX’s claimed worth and the reality of its investment portfolio. All hell broke lose as investors ran for the hills. In a matter of days most of FTX’s $32 billion evaporated.

CoinDesk was not a competitor, but is instead a news site covering the crypto space. They didn't really "hack" anything, but reporter Ian Allison did some good journalism. Mr. Mackler's bad habit is to never cite his sources. In this case we can correct the error: Mr. Allison's piece is here. 

Mr. Mackler writes "Cryptocurrency has been largely unregulated; it was only in the IRS’s 2022 tax forms that an item appeared regarding reporting cryptocurrency income." This is not true. Crypto showed up on the 1040 form in 2021, and maybe earlier. The IRS issued guidelines for "digital assets" as early as 2014.

Bitcoin, by construction, is completely decentralized and can't be regulated. This is seen by many people as a feature and not a bug. Indeed, I find it kinda weird that Mr. Mackler supports "bourgeois" regulation. More, the vast majority of bitcoin trading takes place outside the USA, and is obviously not subject to American regulations.

What can be regulated are the on and off ramps--i.e., the process of buying or selling bitcoin for dollars. This is increasingly true in the US. The biggest US exchange, Coinbase, is required to obey all KYC/AML laws (Know your customer/Anti-money laundering). They're also required to submit some information to the IRS. But transactions from one bitcoin wallet to another are impossible to regulate.

Mr. Mackler informs us that

Its touted blockchain technology, powered by tens of thousands of computers, consumed some 0.55 percent of the world’s energy supply. It was said to be impenetrable—free from government oversight and, thus, free from tax obligations. Anonymous crypto speculators, called miners, spent countless hours pouring [sic] over new deals and opportunities. Initially, it was a dreamworld for anti-government-intervention libertarian politicos, who marveled at SBF’s [Samuel Bankman-Fried] gifting NGOs and related altruistic causes millions of dollars.

I'm not sure what the initial "Its" refers to. Is he talking about crypto generally, or is he just referring to bitcoin? I don't think he knows. Crypto coins can be mostly put into two classes: proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. Bitcoin uses a proof-of-work algorithm--and that does consume a lot of energy. Though I'm doubtful it's as high as Mr. Mackler claims--and in any case it's lower now than it was when bitcoin was at its high in 2021. (As usual, Mr. Mackler provides no reference for his data, so it's impossible to check.) Most other coins--notably ethereum--use the proof-of-stake algorithm, which uses much less energy. Both methods have their fans, but you can put me in the bitcoin camp. Mr. Mackler lumps them all together and ends up with confused mush.

The bitcoin network--started in 2009 by "Satoshi Nakamoto"--has proven itself impenetrable. Nobody has hacked it. The on/off ramps have been successfully hacked, and some users have lost their passwords to thieves, but the blockchain itself remains sacrosanct. I'm not sure that's as true with the proof-of-stake coins.

Mr. Mackler clearly does not understand the role of miners. Yes, perhaps some of them are speculators. Few of them are anonymous--bitcoin wallets are only pseudonymous, and once one cracks the pseudonym all trades are a public record. But the main purpose of the miners is to handle transactions. If I send bitcoin to Mr. Mackler (heaven forbid) then it's the miners' job to see that those coins are transferred irreversibly from my wallet to his wallet. That's what they do, and in return they're paid some small amount of newly minted bitcoin. It has nothing to do with "speculation" or "poring over opportunities."

Finally, Mr. Mackler has his history mixed up. The kooky Libertarian influence was strongest shortly after bitcoin was founded--say from 2009 to 2015. Since then bitcoin has entered mainstream consciousness and the ideologues have mostly been sidelined. FTX was founded in 2019--long after bitcoin had matured. Nathaniel Popper wrote a book published in 2015 that I reviewed. Mr. Mackler should read my review (or better yet, the book).

The remainder of Mr. Mackler's piece attempts to show that the whole crypto thing is just a bourgeois plot to destroy the working class, just as what happened during the 2008 financial crisis. I don't have the energy or space to go through it in detail, but it's just as sloppy as his account of crypto. 

He keeps referring to the government's response to the 2008 financial crisis as a "bailout," and then asserts that FTX wasn't "bailed out" because it lacked connections with the "ruling class." Of course it is impossible to "bail out" crypto--a bank is not the same thing as a blockchain. That Mr. Mackler can't tell the difference says something about Mr. Mackler.

In any case, the word "bailout" is inappropriate. The Federal Reserve was simply following Bagehot's law (1873) as best it could, which states that "to avert panic, central banks should lend early and freely (ie without limit), to solvent firms, against good collateral, and at ‘high rates’". In other words, all the Fed did was lend money--it didn't give anybody anything. I believe all or most of that money was paid back--at a high rate of interest. It's impossible to lend money to a blockchain.

In my aforementioned book review, I write

So what do Trotskyists think about bitcoin? I have absolutely no clue. My guess is that few of the papers on my Beat would know the difference between a blockchain and a cement block. If you're stuck in a 19th Century timewarp, then new technology becomes a mystery.

I'll give props to Mr. Mackler for at least trying, but unfortunately he still seems to be at the cement block stage.

PS  Let me link to this excellent post by Scott Alexander.

Further Reading:

• The Eurodollar
• Peak Bitcoin?
• Jeff Mackler Quits the 2020 Race

Conventions

There are two conventions of note: one that has already occurred, and another that has yet to happen.

The past convention was Socialist Action's (SA) 20th biennial meeting, implying that the "Party" has been around for forty years now. The Political Report is published on their webpage here. Apart from "November," no information is given about when or where the meeting happened. I suggest the venue was Jeff Mackler's living room--probably large enough to accommodate the dozen or so remaining members of the organization.

Why I bother writing about this is beyond me. Following SA is a waste of time. I have not read the entire Report, but what I have read strongly suggests it was written by Mr. Mackler. Indeed, apart from an occasional web post from his sidekick, Marty Goodman, there is no other literate person remaining in the mini-grouplet.

I also conclude that the whole document is balderdash from start to finish. There is no point in going through it in detail--it's completely illogical. But here are a few random highlights (lowlights) harvested from my brief perusal.

Mr. Mackler begins with the old Marxist chestnut, writing

The imperialists ceaselessly aim to counter what Marx described as the “law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.”

There are so many things wrong here: 1) the "imperialists" don't exist, and certainly don't give a shit about any alleged tendency. 2) There is no tendency for the rate of profit to fall. 3) If there were such a tendency it would be a good thing, since it would lower prices for consumers, and finally, 4) Mr. Mackler has no idea what this sentence means (assuming it means anything at all). He can't define profit, or rate of profit, and he has no idea how to measure any alleged tendency. He's an economic ignoramus.

Nevertheless, undaunted (with ignorance being bliss), Mr. Mackler proceeds to blame all the world's problems on mythical imperialists worried about a nonexistent tendency.

I really should have stopped reading here, but I didn't. So let me again mention Mr. Mackler's penchant for just making stuff up. He asserts factoids that can't possibly be true. There are no links in the Report, and no bibliography with references at the end, so there's no way to check Mr. Mackler's supposed "facts." For example, he writes

Today U.S. imperialism, with 1,100 military bases in 110 countries [Recent Congressional reports put the number of countries with ongoing U.S. military operations at 159!] reigns as “the chief cop of the world.” Its overriding objective is the subjugation and exploitation of poor and oppressed people and nations to advance the economic interests of U.S. imperialism.

How can the US have 1,100 military bases? And to what end? This makes no sense and isn't true. He cites "Congressional reports," but provides no reference where to find them. I doubt they exist. It is true that the US has embassies and consulates in most of the world's countries. Each of those embassies has a Marine guard--and I suppose if you count those as a "military base," then you'd generate a number in the couple hundreds. But then all large countries (China, Canada, Russia, etc.) have embassies around the world with attached guard contingents, so in this respect the US is no different.

Mr. Mackler writes

Tragically, comrades in Socialist Action found themselves on opposite sides of a war that today few, if any, consider anything but yet another U.S. imperialist slaughter, a slaughter that took the lives of 500,000 Syrians.

Somehow Mr. Mackler credits all 500,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war to the United States. And then claims near universal agreement that it was "another U.S. imperialist slaughter." This is absurd. Nobody outside of Mr. Mackler's living room believes the US murdered 500,000 people in Syria. To the contrary, the USA has all but kept out of that conflict altogether.

Enough already!

The future convention is that of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), scheduled for later this month. The current issue of The Militant informs us that it is a three-week issue, implying that the event will happen soon. But for now all I can do for you is speculate.

1) Previous conventions have been advertised in The Militant, inviting people interested in the SWP to attend. No such invites have appeared for this convention. This suggests that some sensitive topics are up for debate. As far as I know, this event has only been mentioned once.

2) There's some weird shit happening in the Party. They're rearranging their longstanding policy on abortion. In the most recent issue they are apparently rethinking their position on Taiwan.

3) The Party seems to be doubling down on its defense of Donald Trump. I confess I can't now find the article I'd like to cite (I'll pull a Jeff Mackler here), but I recall a phrase where they took issue with Trump Not Now voters (as distinguished from the never-Trump people). I'll admit that I'm in the Trump not now camp--he's got way too much baggage and he's caused the GOP to forfeit too many elections. I'm getting tired of losing. I think Trump was a great and transformative president, but it's time for him to retire. In a word, The Militant is more pro-Trump than I am (as hard as that is to believe).

4) I'm hoping there will be a change in the Party's leadership. The trio of octogenarians now leading the Party need to be replaced by younger people. I'll root for my old roommate, Brian Williams (who may also be the mysterious Terry Evans). OK--he's not much younger--but at least he's only a septuagenarian. And he's still active in the Party.

Anyway, we'll see.

Further Reading:

• John Studer Makes a Boo-Boo
• Wittenberg, 2022
• The Declining Rate of Profit
• Comrade Keith L. Writes About China

A Tale of Two Conferences

The first was A Conference to Support Wealth and Prosperity. The second was A Conference to Support Poverty and Destitution.

Of course I'm being facetious. Those weren't the real names. Journalist Rick Sterling, in an article posted at Socialist Action, tells the truth in his lede paragraph,

Last week (June 8-10) there were two summits in Los Angeles, California:  the Summit of the Americas hosted by the US State Department and the Peoples Summit hosted by US and international activist organizations. The two summits were held in the same city at the same time but could not be otherwise more different.

The Summit of the Americas is the one I'd like to call A Conference to Support Wealth and Prosperity. Unfortunately the name doesn't really fit. Mr. Sterling describes it this way.

Begun in 1994, in the heyday of US international dominance, the Summit of the Americas is officially a function of the Organization of American States. It is meant to coordinate and consolidate US economic, political and cultural interests.

Of course there is nothing wrong with this. "US international dominance" is a given, what with the USA having a bigger population than any other country in the hemisphere, with by far the biggest military in the world, along with a GDP that that is 4x bigger than all Latin American & Caribbean countries combined.  Countries that can trade with the United States will definitely be richer than countries that can't. 

Compare, e.g., the Dominican Republic and Bolivia. Bolivian per capita GDP is $7,900, while Dominican per capita GDP is $17,000. The difference is that the DR has extensive trade with the US, while only 6% of Bolivian exports go to the US. The US is a huge market in which to sell, and a similarly huge agricultural and industrial powerhouse from which to buy. Countries that can trade with the USA have more money, and more products to buy with that money.

Nevertheless, two possible issues rendered the conference a failure. Mr. Sterling reports on one of them.

Despite threats to boycott the gathering by many Latin American and Caribbean presidents, the US chose to exclude Cuban, Nicaragua and Venezuela. This resulted in seven country presidents choosing not to attend: Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, St Vincent, Antigua, Guatemala, El Salvador.  Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said simply, “There cannot be a summit of the Americas if all the countries of the American continent do not participate. Or there can be, but …. it is just a continuation of the old policy of interventionism or disrespect of nations and their peoples.”

Of these, Antigua and St. Vincent are too small to matter, and, as mentioned, Bolivia has no trade with the US anyway. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are "shit-hole" countries--to use Mr. Trump's impolitic but apt phrase--whose citizens are risking life and limb for the chance of a better life in the USA. For that matter, Mr. Trump's moniker applies equally well to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, from all of which large numbers of people are fleeing across the Rio Grande. Collectively, these new immigrants are the "Future Republicans of America." They know what it's like to live in a "shit-hole" country, and they don't want their newfound home to turn into one.

So only Mexico's absence is worthy of note. Mexico is our second largest trading partner, trailing only Canada. Perhaps AMLO is sincere in his demand that all countries participate--including even Antigua and St. Vincent! On the other hand, perhaps he realized the whole affair was a gigantic waste of time and not worth his attention. Besides which he doesn't have much respect for Mr. Biden.

Mr. Sterling links to two articles that make this case. (In this he distinguishes himself from Socialist Action's editor, Jeff Mackler, who rarely cites external references and usually just makes stuff up.) One of them, in The Atlantic by William Neumann, states what I think is the true reason for AMLO's absence.

None of that [preparation--ed] seemed to occur with this year’s meeting, which close observers said was marked by poor planning and a lack of preparation. Despite daunting challenges, such as countering the growing influence of China and Russia and addressing deep poverty that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, the proposals that would normally have been hashed out in detail months ahead of time were, in many cases, slapped together late in the process and not shared in advance with other nations. The whole enterprise evoked the image of a privileged but lazy student who figures he can get an A on the test even if he doesn’t study or do his homework. On the final day, a South American diplomat summed up the meeting in a word: “improvised.”

In other words, Mr. Biden's characteristic incompetence was on full display. On top of which Kamala Harris gave a speech. No wonder Mr. Lopez Obrador didn't bother showing up.

By contrast, the second conference, the Peoples (sic) Summit, fits my description to a tee. It really was A Conference to Support Poverty and Destitution.

Mr. Sterling describes the proceedings this way.

A wide array of domestic and international issues were addressed at the Peoples Summit.  They included Health as a Human Right, Gender Violence, Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice, Cultural Resistance, Youth Organizing Strategies, Justice for TPS and Undocumented Community, Lessons from Below and Organizing Unhoused Communities.  Plus many more.

What's notable is the complete absence of any discussion about how to earn a living! They're all ways in which the money is supposed to get spent. Even assuming all the items on Mr. Sterling's list were beneficial, they all require money to become reality.

Take Honduras as an example. In 2019 the country had exports totaling $7.16 billion, and imports totaling $11.5 billion. This is augmented by remittances representing about a fifth of GDP, or approximately $10 billion. What's amazing is how tiny these numbers are! By comparison, Walmart's revenue in 2019 was $514 billion--or roughly 30x Honduras' foreign exchange earnings.

Obviously, on such a minuscule budget none of the items on Mr. Sterling's wishlist can come to fruition. "Health as a Human Right" is obviously impossible without the cash to pay for it. "Organizing Unhoused Communities" makes no sense with no money. Etc.

Even in an American context Mr. Sterling's remarks make no sense. Walmart generally fixes its operating margin at 3%, which means that 97% of total revenue is used to pay expenses. The biggest expense is cost of sales (mostly paid to product suppliers), which is roughly 75% of revenue. Most of the remainder is paid out as wages to employees--let's estimate the wage bill at about $80 billion spread amongst 2.3 million employees.

The average wage is thus about $35,000 per annum. That has to include benefits. Any additional amount that Walmart pays in taxes will reduce the amount that Walmart can pay in wages. Mr. Sterling wants to tax Walmart--i.e., Walmart employees--so that the "unhoused" (who contribute nothing to the economy) can get "free" housing. This is deeply unfair and makes people poorer.

A Honduran working at Walmart sends money home to support her family--that's a remittance. Mr. Sterling proposes to take away her money and give it to the "unhoused."

"Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice" is just a plea for more subsistence farming. After all, only a peasant on two acres of land is "sovereign," and "climate justice" demands that he work without fertilizers, seeds, and mechanization. I don't think too many peasants will sign up for that lifestyle--and it's a little rich coming from an American journalist who gets all the food he wants from the local grocery store.

I don't doubt Mr. Sterling's intentions--of course he wants a better world. But he has no clue how to get there.

Further Reading:

• Jeff Mackler Channels Michael Roberts
• Socialist Action Believes American Children Should Freeze to Death
• Book Review: Walmart

Jeff Mackler Channels Michael Roberts

I intended to ignore Jeff Mackler, the octogenarian leader of a mini-grouplet called Socialist Action (SA). Mr. Mackler, readers of this blog may recall, ran the most incompetent campaign for president ever in history. Indeed, at least partly due to that ridiculous effort, SA is now reduced to a few dozen members.

SA is a "fraternal party" to the Fourth International (FI), an organization of Trotskyist parties around the world. Depending on how you define "membership," FI represents a few hundred to a few thousand people globally. In other words, it's of negligible political consequence. SA's mission is to set this organization on the true Trotskyist straight and narrow--that is, to return it to the concept of Leninist party building, which presumably has been abandoned by their international comrades.

It's a lost cause and a silly cause, and we may ignore it. Nevertheless, to that end three documents have been submitted to the FI, the most recent one entitled Debate in the Fourth International Part III: Capitalism’s World Economic, Political and Social Crises and the Coming Fightback. While authorship is not credited, the "politics in the report below were adopted by the National Committee of Socialist Action/USA..." However, it's obvious that Mr. Mackler is the actual author--he's a good writer and there is nobody else in that organization capable of the assignment--so I'll explicitly credit him here.

Because Mr. Mackler is a good writer, and because the topic is mostly economics, I break my vow to ignore him and will pay the man some attention.

The lede paragraph:

Today, world capitalism’s neo-liberal globalization is best characterized as a new form of organization where global value chains have become the dominant form of production, employing workers for one out of every five job on the planet. From low to high tech commodities, basic consumer goods to heavy capital equipment, food to services, goods for the world market are now produced across many countries, integrated through global value chains.

And this is true! Globalization has enriched people around the world. Bigger markets (and there is no bigger market than the globe) leads to more labor specialization (between countries and individuals), and as Adam Smith pointed out long ago, specialization is what increases productivity and makes people richer. There is a huge literature that makes this case, but I'll just cite three of my own posts, here, here and here.

But Mr. Mackler thinks globalization is evil, writing

This globalization was essentially driven by the inherent contradictions in the capitalist system itself. Ever declining average rates of profit, as repeatedly demonstrated by Marxist economist Michael Roberts, were countered worldwide by ever intensifying attacks on working people, ...

I don't think Mr. Roberts demonstrated any such thing. I wrote an (admittedly crappy) post on this some years ago. First, Mr. Roberts suggests a very weird definition of profit that nobody else uses and which has no effect on economic decision-making. Second, his definition only applies to the economy as a whole, and not to any individual company. So there is no way a CEO could make use of this information. Third, the quantities required to calculate "profit" are vague and not obviously tabulated anywhere. So all Mr. Roberts can do is estimate them.

And finally, he defines profit as something related to operating margins rather than return on investment. His ultimate claim is that operating margins have been shrinking over the past decades. I don't think that's true. Of course if it is true this is good--smaller operating margins are better for consumers, who get cheaper prices. Successful companies (e.g., Walmart) have capped their operating margins at 3%--if they go above that they reduce prices.

Profitability is usually and most meaningfully measured by return on investment, which is the quantity that's actually important to the capitalist. Accordingly, the price/earnings ratio is a lead indicator for how valuable a stock is.

Arguing for a falling rate of profit, Mr. Mackler cites Marx.

Simply put, as Marx explains in the first volume of Capital, the average value of any commodity is measured by the average amount of human labor power embodied in it in the course of its production.  Over time, competition compels capitalists to repeatedly renovate their productive facilities substituting machines for human labor power. This initially benefits the first on the market with the new technology and allows them to sell their product at a price above its real value. But as the competition heats up, weaker companies drop out while more serious competitors introduce even more advanced technological innovations and this initial advantage diminishes. 

In time the price and value of commodities tend to reach equilibrium and the corresponding average rate of profit declines in correspondence with the reduced quantity of human labor power embodied. 

And this is all true! I don't disagree with Marx at all. But Mr. Mackler leaves out two important points.

First, as already mentioned, declining profit rates (defined in terms of operating margins) are good for consumers, who get cheaper products. So I am in favor of shrinking profit margins--which as Mr. Mackler points out are often a result of new technology and increased productivity.  This increases our standard of living! If he is trying to convince me that capitalism is broken, this is not a very good argument.

Second, Mr. Mackler does not understand the meaning of "commodity." A commodity is a good which trades only on price. Gasoline is a commodity--people drive around searching for the lowest prices. They don't really care about anything else. So are basic economy airfares--you'll fly on the cheapest airline if all you want to do is save money. Obviously, things sold on commodity exchanges--e.g., copper, iron, wheat--all trade on price and not on any other quality.

Mr. Mackler cites an excellent example of something that is NOT a commodity.

The process [offshoring--ed] included such phenomena as major corporations like Apple employing some one million Chinese workers at near slave wages and hours and selling Apple I-phones for $1,000, only a few dollars of which went to Chinese and other Asian workers at the low end of the value chain.

I think the one million number is an exaggeration, as is the adjective "slave." But the point is mostly correct. In a post from 2013 I document that the assembly cost of an iPhone was only $8, while the sales price was closer to $300. The wages paid to the Chinese workers was 50 cents per hour. Add in the cost of components sourced from around the world, there is still no question that Apple made a healthy profit from the iPhone.

It's still true today, even with inflation doubling or tripling those numbers. The price of an iPhone is not determined by the production cost--and that's because an iPhone is NOT a commodity. Nobody buys it because it's cheap. Instead they appreciate the excellent engineering, the high-end components, the stellar design, and especially the cool factor in owning an iPhone. It's a fashion statement. An iPhone is expensive because Steve Jobs carefully and meticulously nurtured the brand. And for that reason it's very profitable with extremely high operating margins.

A commodity smart phone available on Amazon costs less than $40. That's the cost of production plus a small operating margin. An iPhone 13 sells for 20 times that much.

In Marx's time, almost everything sold was a commodity, and it is understandable that he expressed his economic theory in those terms. But that's not true today--most things Americans buy are not commodities. That is, the competition is not based solely or primarily on price, but rather on other qualities. The Marxist argument for declining profit margins does not apply.

Further Reading:

• Lost in the Amazon
• Socialist Action Believes American Children Should Freeze to Death
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again