"The Worldwide Crisis of Capitalism and the Relevance of Socialism"

The article with the above title (by prez candidate Jeff Mackler) is based on a resolution adopted by Socialist Action's (SA) 2018 convention. The provenance isn't very clear. It claims to be the introduction to a soon-to-be issued pamphlet of the same name (which I will definitely read). There are some introductory remarks by SA's editor (or Mr. Mackler?), followed by more introductory remarks by Mr. Mackler (or is that actually in the pamphet?). Then much of the article is in quotation marks (but not all of it), apparently quoting from some other joint statement or something.

So I'm going to ignore all italics and quotation marks and just treat it as a single piece all written by Mr. Mackler.

My Trotskyist friends understand nothing about economics, as demonstrated by the lede substantive paragraph.

Global capitalist competition, including the current trade wars, is a completely unavoidable aspect of the system of private profit. Competition results in new innovation/automation that increases the rate of profit for the initial innovator. But these gains are offset again by the rapid adoption of ever more advanced technology by competitors, and profit rates continue to fall.

Taken literally, they're true Luddites, seemingly opposed to any "innovation/automation." Apparently we should get rid of backhoes so that real men can dig ditches the way they used to--with a pick and shovel. But who needs those tools? Why not just use human hands, like a chimpanzee?

They claim capitalism has a "falling rate of profit," but fail to mention that it stems from lower prices. That is, consumers are better off and everybody has a higher standard of living. Our problem today is not too much "innovation/automation", but rather too little. Productivity growth (i.e., new technology) is only about 1%.

In their desperate struggle to fight the falling rate of profit capitalists try to reduce costs and increase their competitive edge by attacking trade unions and workers’ rights, by attacking wage and benefit levels, by attacking general social benefits such as education, health care, and pensions, by refusing to accept responsibility for the massive environmental damage caused by cutthroat capitalist competition, and by transferring production to low-wage, unregulated areas both within and outside their own countries…

This makes no sense. Until recently profits have been at record highs--there is no evidence of the long-term, secular decline that Trotskyists predict. While one can complain that wages are not growing as fast as one would like, there is no secular decline there, either. This chart shows that real wages have been increasing most months since 2009. There certainly has been no decline in spending on education and healthcare! Both those industries are growing faster than the economy. Social Security is still solvent (just barely). Only pensions have suffered, specifically because public employees have been promised benefits that were never realistic to begin with.

It is worth noting that apart from casual references as in the above quote, the document makes no mention of the "environment." Yet SA is on record as subscribing to catastrophic climate change, in which case long-term problems such as pensions are irrelevant. We'll all be dead by then. Yet somehow (at least in this document) the imminent end of the world has been put on indefinite hold.

SA obviously doesn't believe its own climate bullshit. But I will point out that making stuff cheaper with more "innovation/automation" is good for the environment. After all, cheaper means using fewer natural resources, less labor, less electricity, lower shipping costs, etc. SA needs to let us know how all of that hurts the environment.

With this background, the article then takes on several issues.

Russia & China: We're promised another pamphlet (by John Leslie) entitled China: A New Imperialist Power. I'll read that one, too, though maybe I shouldn't bother. SA's position on China is very similar to that articulately expressed by Lynn Henderson (here), and rebutted by me (here). No need to rehash it.

Teacher's Strikes: My Trotskyist friends are in love with last year's teachers' strikes, beginning with the one in West Virginia. Hate to break the news, but they're yesterday's news and will have no lasting impact on our politics. Nobody in the presidential campaign, for example, is discussing them at all.

I commented on the strikes in West Virginia and Kentucky here and here. The West Virginia strike was successful, but only on a narrow wage dispute. It hardly augers a new age. The Kentucky strike was a hail-Mary pass in an effort save an irreversibly bankrupt pension plan. The strike accomplished nothing. I have not followed the other strikes closely, but I believe the California strike was also about pensions, i.e., futile howling at the moon.

Mr. Mackler goes on to claim that the teachers' biggest problem is their alliance with the Democratic Party. Really? The Democrats actually control purse strings, unlike the losers over at SA. If you're trying to save your (hopeless) pension plan, working with the Dems is the best option. Real teachers need real money, not just a bunch of gobbledygook sloganeering from the likes of Jeff Mackler.

Tax the Rich: That's Mr. Mackler's solution to all problems. The richest man in West Virginia is the governor, Jim Justice. He's worth $1.6 billion, and owns coal mines (that look to be near bankrupt), hotels and golf courses. If you assume a 10% rate of return on his wealth (very optimistic), then his annual income is $160 million. By comparison, West Virginia's total annual income--the state GDP--was $74 billion in 2018. Jim Justice's income is 0.2% of the state's total--hardly enough to solve all the problems in the universe as Mr. Mackler proposes.

Socialism: Mr. Mackler disses the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Though they call themselves “democratic socialists”—falsely implying that other socialists oppose democracy—we prefer the traditional label, “social democrats,” which makes clear that the DSA and similar organizations are Democratic Party supporters first and foremost, who pretend that socialism—a fundamental break with capitalist exploitation and rule—can be won through electoral reforms and other incremental changes to the capitalist system.

The irony is that SA does oppose democracy--they call all elections phony unless they win them (which they never do). So the DSA's distinction is apt.

Foreign Affairs: SA doubles down on its support for the world's worst dictators: Kim Jong Un and Bashar al-Assad. Yes, they hide behind the fig leaf of only demanding US "non-intervention," but that's not much of a hiding place. In reality they support brutal, totalitarian regimes.

They discuss the "pink revolutions" in Latin America. Apparently--in Mr. Mackler's opinion--Venezuela didn't go full Venezuela enough. In addition to merely destroying the country, they should have nationalized it as well. That'll teach them evil imperialists! Of course SA touts Cuba as a successful example of socialism--a country that's much poorer than the Philippines, can't feed itself, and survives only because it's a police state.

I'm not sure what on this list makes for a viable election campaign. The only superficially attractive slogan is Tax the Rich, but that falls apart on even cursory examination. Nothing else here will have any popular appeal whatsoever.

So SA is publishing two new pamphlets. Here's how you order them.

Below is a partial list of pamphlets published by Socialist Action Books. To order send a letter with a list of the pamphlets you would like to purchase to P.O. Box 10328, Oakland CA 94610, along with a check made out to “Socialist Action Books.” Please add $2 for postage to any order of pamphlets, along with the listed price.

So far, at least a few pamphlets are available for free download; the rest are priced to simply cover printing costs.

That's pretty old-fashioned. My millennial children, for example, don't use either postage stamps or paper checks. I don't even use paper checks anymore, and maybe I'll send a snail-mail letter once every six months or so.

I hope the new pamphlets will be available for download. Yes, I would be willing to go to the bank, pay for a cashier's check, write it out and send it snail mail to the address above. But I doubt it would work. SA has never responded to anything I send them, so I think they'd probably pocket the money and not send me the pamphlet. That's just the way they roll.

Oh well.

Further Reading:

• Heather Bradford on Abortion
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again
• The Philippines

Heather Bradford on Abortion

Heather Bradford, Socialist Action's candidate for Vice President, publishes an article entitled New anti-abortion laws: How should we respond?  Ms. Bradford is a good writer. The article is worth reading.

I have generally stayed out of the abortion debate because I'm conflicted. While I'm very sympathetic to the pro-life cause, it is clear that in this era of modern medicine totally banning abortion is utterly impossible. However bad abortion may be, it is occasionally a necessary evil. Somebody has to make a decision about when that necessity arises, and our current compromise--that the mother makes that choice during the first three months, while the law and the courts render judgement later on--seems reasonable. So I generally support abortion laws as they have existed since 1973.

So I'm not here to defend Alabama's draconian legislation essentially banning all abortions. Indeed, I'll suggest the law was passed precisely because it will never take effect. If Roe v Wade is ever overturned, the gross cruelty and impracticality of such a ban will force its repeal.

My mission here is not so much to disagree with Ms. Bradford's conclusion as to analyze her argument. Her argument doesn't make very much sense.

While she never comes out and actually says it, it appears Ms. Bradford is against any restrictions on abortion at all. She likely supports the bills floated in New York and Virginia that would permit abortion up to and even after birth--essentially legalizing infanticide. People who support those kinds of laws must really hate babies!

It's one thing to suggest that aborting a 20-week fetus isn't the same thing as murder. But killing a nearly-born or already-born baby certainly is.

Bill Clinton famously said that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. An appropriate role for pro-life groups is to ensure that last condition. Laws that demand a waiting period, suggest counseling, or offer other alternatives are, I think, entirely appropriate. Making abortion completely illegal is not.

The connection between abortion and working class politics has always been mysterious to me--even when I was a Trotskyist myself. The issue crosses class, racial, and gender lines, and is more a moral and religious issue rather than an economic one. Ms. Bradford attempts to justify her political interest in abortion, which is the weakest part of her article.

She writes:

Social Reproduction theory grounds the tasks of building a global anti-capitalist feminist movement. Understanding social reproduction theory (SRT) is vital to combating anti-abortion laws in the context of capitalism. SRT posits that capitalism does not reproduce the labor power required to perpetuate itself. In other words, capitalism produces goods and services, but doesn’t in itself produce workers and due to profit motive (wherein profit is derived from surplus value of labor), capitalism does little to provide for the upkeep of workers. Thus, women are tasked with supporting the continuation of capitalism through biological reproduction, the care of non-laborers such as children, elderly, or people with illnesses, and unpaid household labor such as cooking and cleaning.

The premise is that capitalists pay workers so little that they can't support their families. Were this true then poor people would have a lower fertility rate than rich people. This is not true--indeed, quite the opposite. Fertility is lowest in the richest countries--Japan, Germany, Italy. And highest in very poor countries--Yemen, Uganda, Philippines.

In the US the evidence doesn't support SRT, either. The most fertile populations in our country are Amish and Orthodox Jews, who number among the poorest populations. More generally, birth rates are highest for the lowest income groups, and decrease as family income rises.

SRT also states that capitalist governments will "force" women to bear children. If so, they are remarkably unsuccessful at it. Presumably Socialist Action believes China to be a capitalist country--yet far from maximizing fertility they enforced a one-child policy for several decades. Accordingly their fertility rate is well below replacement: 1.65 children per woman.

Social Reproduction Theory is false.

Ms. Bradford does not think activists should wait for the Supreme Court to overturn the Alabama law. She correctly suggests that the Roe v Wade ruling is constitutionally shaky. "The courts have never framed abortion rights as fundamental to ending the oppression of women or gender minorities." Not sure how she comes up with ending oppression to be within the remit of the Supreme Court. The word "oppression" does not appear in the Constitution at all.

Reliance on the Supreme Court

...has lent itself to a cultish following of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is viewed as a liberatory figure who must never retire (or die), lest abortion rights be overturned once and for all. The centrist justice is celebrated for her support of women’s rights, but her critique of Kaepernick’s taking a knee (which she apologized for), ruling against paying overtime to Amazon workers, support of warrantless searches in Samson v. California, and failure to condemn solitary confinement within the prison system in Davis v. Ayala mar her record.

In other words, court rulings should not be based on the Constitution, but rather entirely on Ms. Bradford's personal opinions about this or that. So it's a little rich for her to claim that

[t]he presidential nomination of and lifetime tenure of Supreme Court justices and federal judges is fundamentally undemocratic. The feudal nature of these courts should be questioned and challenged.

She wants to substitute the rule-bound, Constitutionally-appointed Supreme Court with Heather Bradford as dictator and Empress of all the Americas. This hardly seems like a step toward greater democracy.

Ms. Bradford is convinced that access to abortion is a fundamental human right, and therefore it should be included in the "free" medical care that all socialists want to provide for us. Of course it's not free--somebody's got to pay for it. Since abortion is less a medical decision than a moral or religious one, it is not obvious that it should be included with "medical procedures." So I think her opposition to the Hyde amendment (which prohibits using federal funds to pay for abortions) rests on weak ground.

Society has at least some interest in ensuring a healthy population--at very least curtailing the spread of contagious diseases. We likely have some right to insist that everybody get a measles vaccine, for example. But no such reason exists for funding abortion. The people who are required to pay for it don't object primarily for financial reasons--that's trivial--but rather for moral ones. In a free society one should not be forced to violate one's moral conscience but for overwhelming necessity. Abortion does not rise to that occasion.

I disagree with Ms. Bradford and I support the Hyde amendment. Given the fact that it's received bipartisan support over many decades, I suggest the majority of Americans agree with me.

On most issues the Millennial generation is more liberal than the Baby Boomers. But polls show that there is little difference in opinions about abortion between the two generations. While most people of any age will oppose the Alabama law, few people will agree with Ms. Bradford and claim that abortion is a fundamental human right. It's too complicated for that.

I'm uncomfortable with abortion. Yet I think it has to be legal. Like a majority of Americans, my opinion is conflicted.

Further Reading:

• How Trump Wins
• Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?
• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl

Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again

You'd think they'd learn.

Boring Jeff Mackler, retired union hack and National Secretary of Socialist Action (SA), ran for president (of the United States!) in 2016. The campaign was a total flop, consisting only of a half-hearted tour through southern New England. Following the announcement in June, Boring Jeff's candidacy all but disappeared from the pages of Socialist Action.

That was then--only 4 months before the November election. I speculate he ran for Prez only because SA no longer wanted to "critically support" the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), likely because the latter explicitly rejected antisemitism. Mr. Mackler was just a last-minute stand-in candidate so comrades could express their Jew-hatred at the ballot box.

This year--a full 17 months before the general election--one infers they're more serious about running a real campaign. And true to form, Boring Jeff made what I guess he thinks was a dramatic announcement. No--he didn't ride down an escalator. No--he didn't address a crowd of thousands, or even hundreds. Not even dozens.

The big reveal happened at a Socialist Action National Committee Plenum--likely an audience of about a dozen people. Boring Jeff's campaign strategy closely follows that of his apparent mentor--Leonid Brezhnev. Leave it to a bureaucrat to make a bureaucratic announcement to an audience of fellow bureaucrats.

Though this time it's serious--so serious in fact that it looks like Boring Jeff hasn't even changed his shirt since 2016. I sure hope it's been laundered--otherwise the campaign will stink to high heaven.

Jeff Mackler in 2016

Jeff Mackler today

So we'll grant them a pass on 2016, but now they've got 17 months to run a real campaign. Can they actually get it together? Count me skeptical.

Because they're already making excuses:

"At best, and at great cost, socialists are able to achieve “legal” ballot status in just a handful of states—and even then, no matter the seriousness of our campaign efforts, we are consciously excluded from coverage. How could it be otherwise when the nation’s corporate media are owned and controlled by the exact same ruling-class forces that select the candidates to be their representatives in the first place?"

Admittedly, grouplets of about a hundred people don't have the same media clout as the Democratic Party, which got nearly 66 million votes in 2016. Because, you know, 65,999,900 voters were stupid and only went along with the media. Only the last 100 were of sufficient independent mind to vote for Boring Jeff.

But, as said, this year is different. They might actually try to win some attention, just as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) did just by her lonesome. At very least Boring Jeff might ride down an escalator. Or get a Twitter account. Or set up a real Facebook page. Or change his shirt. Or break from the Brezhnevian campaign strategy. Minimally I'd expect them to get on the ballot in a few states--though they make no commitment to do so.

In my day the Socialist Workers Party ran successful campaigns: Jenness & Pulley in 1972, and Camejo and Reid in 1976. Those were the days when pathetic candidates like Boring Jeff were put out to pasture.

Anyway, I've got the perfect campaign slogan for them:

The End is Nigh!

Because, we confront "a near-term climate catastrophe that threatens the future of life on earth." I don't know what "near-term" is. AOC says it's twelve years. I suspect Boring Jeff will grant us a short reprieve--30 years? I hope it's at least that long--I don't want to live long enough to see the end of the world.

Either way, Boring Jeff's proposal is hopelessly inadequate to the problem. He says

We need a party of our own—a mass working-class party based on an independent, reinvigorated, democratic, fighting trade-union movement allied in struggles in the social, political, and economic arenas with the organizations of the oppressed and exploited.

That'll cool the planet! Short of blocking out the sun, a mass working-class party based on... organizations of the oppressed and exploited is the best refrigeration method ever devised by the human race.

Boring Jeff obviously doesn't believe his own bullshit about imminent climate catastrophe.

And neither does the vice-presidential candidate, Heather Bradford, also a member of the

Heather Bradford

National Committee and present at the Plenum. Presumably she raised her hand when they asked for volunteers to be vice president. Ms. Bradford is "the organizer of Socialist Action’s branch in Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis., in the Lake Superior region. Bradford works full time as a women’s advocate at a domestic violence shelter and part time at an abortion clinic and as a substitute public school teacher. She is the secretary of AFSCME Local 3558, a delegate to the Duluth Central Labor body, and a union steward."

Nothing dishonorable in any of that (except maybe the abortion clinic), but is she really the lady whose finger you want on the nuclear button in the event Boring Jeff can't finish his term of office? I don't think so.

Ms. Bradford seems more invested in feminism and LGBTQ rights than is seemly for somebody who believes in the imminent end of the world. You'd think she'd focus on the more immediate problem.

For all of that, one wonders why Socialist Action is fielding a presidential ticket at all. Because Jill Stein's Green Party campaign in 2016 echoed Boring Jeff's platform almost 100%, including antisemitism. The Greens are much closer to being the mass working class party that Boring Jeff so desires than SA could ever hope to be. Yet SA labeled the Green Party as middle class, and so excluded them from consideration. Though I fail to see how the Greens are more middle class than SA, represented as it is by teachers' union bureaucrats.

The only reason for a separate SA campaign is their commitment to purist, Brezhnevian tactics. For without the blessing of the Plenum of the National Committee, no person is worthy of running against Donald J. Trump.

By the way, perhaps Ms. Bradford, with her busy schedule campaigning around the country, doesn't realize that it's supposed to snow in her hometown Duluth this weekend (May 18th).

So much for global warming.

Further Reading:

• How Trump Wins
• How Socialist Action Helps Republicans in 2018
• Jeff Mackler on Trade

'Against the Current' Celebrates 200 Issues

Against the Current (ATC) is the bi-monthly publication of Solidarity, which split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) a few years after I left the movement. The group is a breath of fresh air because they've disavowed the "vanguard party" formalism, becoming instead a much more open, flexible movement on the larger Left, albeit with some very Trotskyist core principles. Accordingly their magazine offers more than most publications on my beat, and despite their infrequent publication schedule, I've posted 22 articles under the Solidarity label. I note that my pieces are among my best, but only because the articles I comment on are similarly thought-provoking.

Against the Current is a serious publication and is worth reading.

So it is appropriate that the paper, founded in 1986, celebrates its 200th issue this month. An article entitled ATC Turns 200 (issues)! (by The Editors) summarizes what's changed and what hasn't over the past quarter century.

I'll begin my critique with a caveat. 

Solidarity is not just ideological (like me), but also partisan. Marx understood the concept: the partisan's goal is to change the world, not merely to interpret it. Me--I'm satisfied with interpretation--I've given up trying to change anything. I am not a partisan, which gives me the luxury to be more reserved and thoughtful. Unlike me, Solidarity has to rally the troops.

President Trump is a partisan, and as such he's a famous teller of tall tales. The difference between a "tall tale" and a "lie" is the teller doesn't expect you to actually believe him--it's just an applause line. Most famously, nobody in his audience ever believed the tall tale ...and Mexico will pay for it, which is why he suffers no political damage now when he can't deliver. His political opponents embarrassed themselves by awarding him Pinocchio's for lying.

The Editors tell their own tall tales, and it's my duty now to point some of them out.

"Back then, the Reagan administration was knee-deep in bloody genocidal counterinsurgency wars in Central America..." "Genocidal" is a gross exaggeration in this context. The word means "relating to or involving the deliberate killing of a large group of people of a particular nation or ethnic group." There was no attempt on either side to wipe out an entire ethnic group. "Genocide" is a tall tale.

More important is the consequence of decades-long imperialist ravages in Central America, bringing tens of thousands of refugees and desperate asylum seekers today to the U.S.-Mexico border, where they’re subjected to world-class atrocities by U.S. border patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The claim is that today's refugee crisis on our southern border is a result of the Contra war in Nicaragua that ended in 1990. The premise is that if the US had not supported the Contras, Nicaragua would today be a modern, prosperous nation from which people would not flee. This beggars belief. Much more likely--had the Sandinistas remained in power--is that Nicaragua would at best look like Cuba (now tightly rationing food staples), and at worst like Venezuela (the complete destruction of a country). In both cases the waves of refugees would have been both much larger and come much sooner.

The notion that ICE is committing "world-class atrocities" is a world-class tall tale.

The Editors correctly note the decline of the American labor movement since 1986, but then suggest the trend is turning around.

The decline of organized labor has also been largely continuous, with defeats vastly outnumbering victories. Yet just when things looked bleakest for working class America, a spreading strike wave by teachers has breathed new life into what looked like a dying labor movement....

The teachers’ strike wave has been for higher wages, certainly, but even more about dignity and decent working conditions, supporting students and building alliances with communities. Here again, the processes that capital unleashed have led to today’s profound social crisis – but also to a popular reaction, and none too soon!

They overstate the importance of the teachers' strikes. First, they are public employees and are striking against middle class taxpayers, not the bourgeoisie. Then (at least in Kentucky) the strike was a futile protest against the bankrupt pension plan promised them by their union. And finally, the whole thing was a flash in the plan.

And then,

...resulting from this cascading disaster, from the “birther” backlash against the Obama presidency and from the cesspool of the Trump presidency, there’s been a massive growth of white-nationalist organizing and violence, Islamophobia on both government policy and popular levels, and a general rise in racism.

Trump’s Muslim travel ban, like the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, the massacres at the African American church in Charleston, South Carolina and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh – these are symptoms and symbols of the times we live in now.

Here, too, everything is exaggerated. There has been no "massive growth of white-nationalist organizing and violence." The neo-Nazis organized a once-off, international "Unite the Right" rally intending to show off their strength--all they could muster was about 500 people. By comparison, the NAACP convention draws 10,000 people every year. Even some Trotskyist-sponsored events pull a larger crowd. The whole thing was a dud.

Mass shootings, unfortunately, are a fact of life. If anything, they've become less common under Trump than under Obama, The Editors' anecdotes notwithstanding.

So all of these exaggerations are tall tales, intended to rouse the passions of the already-converted. The article is not addressed to me. While in a more sober frame of mind our editors realize that this is all over the top, nevertheless they are not lying. They can say all of this and more, and I'll still take them seriously.

But on one issue I do find moral fault. Like most Trotskyists (excepting only the SWP) Solidarity is deeply antisemitic. Now they will deny that, claiming to be merely anti-Zionist. And surely it is possible to be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic--again, see the SWP as an example. But it is impossible to support BDS or Hamas and still pretend that it is merely political anti-Zionism.

Another article in ATC by Julia Kassem illustrates the point--her very language betrays her. She refers to Jews as "occupiers." Apparently Jews living in Tel Aviv pollute the very ground they walk on with their filthy footsteps--"occupying" otherwise sacred ground. BDS will prohibit any Israeli Jew from speaking--regardless of topic--just because they're Jewish.

And settlements in the West Bank are intolerable because Jews live there--and for no other reason. That's antisemitism. Now I don't belittle the settlement problem--the land dispute is real. But that can be solved financially. The problem anti-Semites have is not about land, but rather with the very idea that Jews are living there.

Antisemitism isn't a problem of tall tales or partisan exaggeration. No--it really is a problem. On this issue my friends in Solidarity cease to be enthusiastic partisans with a worthy (if hopeless) cause, and instead become evil.

Further Reading:

• "Primacy of the Working Class"
• A Leftist Criticizes the Left on Immigration
• Democratic Centralism

How Trump Wins

"It's the economy, stupid" is how James Carville described Bill Clinton's election strategy back in 1992. However apt it may have been at the time, it is senseless today.

Those pundits who claim that blue collar Americans flocked to Trump because of economic woes are wrong. For the economy is doing very well--better than any time in recent history, with record low unemployment, interest rates, and poverty.

Some Democrats argue that Trump is weak on healthcare or the environment. I suggest that these topics will move the electorate not at all--people have already made up their minds. Nor is income inequality a compelling issue--people don't care how much money somebody in Mountain View, CA, earns. The fact is that a rising economic tide lifts all boats, and that some boats are fancy yachts really doesn't matter very much.

Trump didn't win in 2016 on economic issues. Any promises to his blue collar audience about better health care or fancier pensions were brief, pro forma and without detail. Mr. Trump obviously knows nothing and cares less about health care in this country.

Instead, he won the election by flattering and entertaining his audience. He paid attention to people who typically sit in politics' back row. As Michael Moore eloquently puts it "Trump's election is going to be the biggest fuck you in human history. And it. will. feel. good."

Why did it feel so good? Because Trump's election, not about economics, was instead about status. While a rising economic tide lifts all boats, that is definitely not true about status. Status games are inevitably zero-sum--if my status goes up, then yours must relatively go down. Trump rewarded his listeners just by spending hours with them at his rallies, telling them how they were going to Make America Great Again, in contrast to the evil, dishonest media in the back of the room.

He put low-status people at the top of his list and won their undying affection as a result.

Democrats also play status games, but unlike Trump they're not strategic in their choices. The top dogs in their universe are upper middle class white women, and gay men. The leading Democratic issues are #MeToo and Gay/transgender Rights.

Of course there is nothing intrinsically wrong with those issues. Women should be treated respectfully in the workplace, and gays do deserve civil rights. That's really incontrovertible, though opinions will vary on what respectful and civil rights specifically mean. The argument isn't about issues--instead it's about the enhanced status that accrues to those groups.

But if somebody's status goes up, then who goes down? The Dems seem to have forgotten the downside, and that is their Achilles heel. For people who lose status far outnumber the population of upper middle class women and gays, and they will feel their loss acutely.

Trump understands this. 62% of white men voted for Trump. More ominously, 14% of Black men voted for Trump, as compared to barely 2% of Black women. Obviously men see themselves as losers in the Democrat's status sweepstakes. And there are a lot more men than there are upper-middle class women and gays.

A couple weeks ago I heard an interview with Brad Parscale on Fox News. I don't have a transcript, but the gist was the campaign will recruit a million volunteers to pay personal visits to 20 million undecided, persuadable voters.

Undecided voters? That sounds like people on knife's edge: Are higher taxes a good trade-off for better medical care? Or Should student loans be forgiven for everybody, or just for poor people? Of course that's not how this group thinks. These instead are people who don't really care about politics--left to their own devices they might not vote at all. They don't listen to either FOX News or MSNBC.

If they do vote, they'll vote on emotion. And among those, the strongest political emotion is fear. So (and Mr. Parscale did not say this) the goal of all these visits is to make these people afraid--very, very afraid.

Obviously the undecideds do not include me--the only message I'll get from the Trump campaign is a fundraising letter. As readers of this blog, they don't include you, either. We're committed ideologues--unpersuadable by either camp. The folks we're talking about are precisely NOT part of Trump's base, and indeed, may even not have voted in 2016.

I surmise that Black men are a significant number of these undecideds, for they have a lot to lose from the Democrat's program. They are threatened with nothing less than abject servility, doomed to serve at the whim of upper middle class white women. In a word, they face emasculation. For men who historically have been lynched for looking at a white woman the wrong way, the #MeToo movement is a dire threat. Or at least that's how the Trump campaign will portray it.

Then there is affirmative action, which Black men see as their victory achieved during the civil rights movement. Yet today--with Democratic party connivance--the principle beneficiaries of affirmative action are upper middle class white women, who preferentially get jobs in academe or in the corporate suite. A less deserving population is hard to imagine.

Speaking of civil rights, the hijacking of the civil rights agenda by the LGBTQ community is, in the eyes of Black men, a complete travesty. I saw a bumper sticker yesterday: "Pink is the New Black." While I'm not sure what the driver actually intends, as a political statement it encapsulates the feelings of Black men--they're less important than gay people. Despite having fought and won the civil rights struggle, they're supposed to yield status to a bunch of spoiled sissies.

In 2016 Trump won his fraction of the Black male vote mostly by accident. That won't be true this time around--he will aggressively go after those people. The groundwork is laid--criminal justice reform, a thriving economy, Kanye West, the "what have you got to lose?" message, etc. He can't lose support from Black women, so playing the gender card has only upside for him. If he can increase his fraction from 14% to 20%, that likely puts Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan out of reach for the Democrats.

Trump has the advantage of being a very masculine, bad-ass, man. He's a great role model. Especially if the Dems nominate a woman, expect this strategy to work big time.

For different reasons Trump has an advantage among Hispanic voters (28% of whom voted for Trump in 2016), especially Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans are American citizens who are now being forced to share their communities and jobs with a marauding horde of illiterate illegals from Central America. They are likely to throw more support to Trump in 2020. That will make a difference in Florida, where it is speculated that Puerto Ricans cost the Dems the election in 2018. (Unfortunately it won't matter much in New York or New Jersey, which are safe Democratic redoubts regardless of how Puerto Ricans vote.)

The immigration issue may also redound to Trump's advantage in Texas and Arizona, where other Hispanic communities are on the front lines.

In summary, Trump may lose votes among "suburban women," aka upper middle class white women, but he'll more that make up for it with additional male, Black and Hispanic support. The gender gap will work in his favor.

Further Reading:

• A Leftist Criticizes the Left on Immigration
• Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?
• Affirmative Action

"Primacy of the Working Class"

The current issue of Socialist Viewpoint contains a wonderful article by Susan Roberts, entitled Primacy of the Working Class. It's long and not an easy read--I actually printed it out and went at it with a sharp pencil. The effort was rewarded.

(I am unable to find any biographical information about Ms. Roberts. It appears she's British, and she's obviously an academic of some sort. But I don't know where.)

She begins with a strange but useful redefinition of the word politics, which becomes "the contestation of power." Specifically, "it contests the balance of power wielded by different class interests." The contrast is with the apolitical--"concerned more with ameliorating the excesses of capitalism than with challenging the system itself."

These new [apolitical--ed] players comprise a panoply of “Global Social Justice Movements,” (GSJMs) and “Non-Governmental Organizations,” (NGOs) which impose themselves on inchoate civil society all over the globe. Whilst the range of their particularistic interests is vast, they are generally united in the denigration of working class politics. These movements, which tend to be managed by western, middle class personnel, and are very often funded, directly or indirectly by western corporate interests and unelected bodies, eschew the representational demands of the “old” class politics, insisting instead that their “individualistic” agenda wields a higher moral authority. In the eyes of these new global players, “collective” politics, with its demands of representation, constituency and even democracy are discredited artifacts of a broken system, which needs to be superseded by a more moral form of global governance. [Footnotes deleted--ed]

Ms. Roberts elaborates on the themes of this paragraph. The denigration of working class politics is, in her opinion, purposeful. There's a whiff of a conspiracy theory in the plot--the ruling class has purposely substituted apolitical action precisely for that reason. That funding comes from "western corporate interests and unelected bodies" is evidence, along with "western, middle class personnel" hired to do the dirty work.

I think this is the weakest part of her argument. Such a conspiracy would be impossible to keep secret; would require impossible unity among the myriad ruling class actors; and implies an ability to predict and manage an exceedingly complex future from 1970 to the present to ensure that the outcome comes out just right.

There is no conspiracy, and nobody is doing the bidding of the ruling class in any intentional way.

A second argument is more profound. The apolitical movements are principally concerned with moral arguments rather than power relationships. Traditional working class movements were ultimately about money and power, and not about saving whales or eliminating malaria. (The implausible conceit is that proletarians will successfully take on these important issues after they get power.)

The apolitical movements are aided by post-modernism, which suggests that

...a range of social interest groups, (e.g., feminism, anti-racism, environmentalism, etc.) can, through “moral and intellectual” leadership, (as opposed to mere “political” leadership) combine to effect such a challenge. Workers remain relevant to that amalgamation of interest groups, but only through their lived, concrete experience and not because of the historicity of their position.

The rejection of historicity strikes at the heart of Marxism. Post-modernism denies the objective truth of any history--including Marxist history--substituting instead "lived" fables and tales.

Ms. Roberts recalls the bygone days of working class politics:

In the UK of the 1970s strikes, sit-ins, worker occupations and even work-ins (most famously perhaps at the Upper Clyde Ship Building works (UCS) were common events. Angry grey men, huddled around braziers, were a regular sight on the nightly news, and everyone seemed to be locked in debate about the economic and political future of the country.

Today those angry, grey, faceless men are replaced by climate demonstrators, women's marchers, and pleas to close Guantanamo. A demand for power has yielded to middle class, moral lobbying.

She faults the apolitical organizations.

By elevating a spurious moral leadership above class politics a platform has been created for an open-ended plurality of apolitical causes. The effect of which has been to radically depoliticize democracy by removing from its preserve the defining issues of working class contestation.

In her view, the social justice movements and NGOs have killed off the working class--and given the supposed conspiracy theory that was precisely the point.

She's quite right about the effect--and that's what makes her article so interesting. But I think she's got cause and effect wrong. I think the NGOs, etc., are as much a symptom as is the decline of working class politics. The causes of both phenomena are to be found in automation, globalization, and social media.

The decades since 1970 have largely put paid to the angry grey men. The Upper Clyde Ship Building Works were closed for good in 2001. A similar transition has occurred in American manufacturing. For example, Peabody Coal Company--still the largest coal company in the US--only employs 7,100 people total, including white collar workers. Membership in the United Automobile Workers has declined from 1.5 million in 1979 to under 400,000 today. Even retail companies like Walmart, McDonalds, and Starbucks are shrinking their work forces (along with raising the pay of their remaining employees). The era of cashierless stores is nearly upon us.

Globalization has mostly ended the labor strike as a useful weapon. Production can be sourced anywhere in the world. If the UAW strikes against General Motors, it may lead to the bankruptcy of the company, but it will have minimal impact on the ability of consumers to buy cars. The vehicles will be manufactured elsewhere by other people.

The result of these trends has (so far) not been higher unemployment, but rather different employment. Unskilled labor is devalued in this new world. The angry, grey, faceless men are no longer needed. Instead, one wants smiling, skilled, customer-friendly women. These new employees, far from being faceless, are required to invest their personality into their jobs.

When I was a cab driver back in the 70s, my colleagues were 99% male. And for good reason--cab driving was a dangerous job back then, especially for women. We were faceless, unskilled labor.

Today, with Uber, it's quite different. The app mostly ensures safety for both passenger and driver, and accordingly many drivers are today women. Customers and drivers are rated by each other, with consequences for both. A smiling woman is much more likely to get a high rating and a big tip than an angry, grey, faceless man. He's gonna get left by the side of the road.

So one reason one doesn't see "angry grey men huddled around braziers" anymore is that such gentlemen are no longer employed. It's got nothing to do with any conspiracy theory.

I strongly commend to Ms. Roberts' attention the book by Martin Gurri entitled The Revolt of the Public. Mr. Gurri explores in great detail the effect of social media on our politics. In the past people had no good way to communicate with like-minded folks around the world. The best they could do was listen to the nightly news and latch on to some lowest-common-denominator mass movement--e.g., opposition to Thatcherite economics. Just as there were only three channels on television, there were also only a handful of opportunities for political activism.

Social media changes all of that. This blog, for example, reaches people interested in the residue of Trotskyism, including many on the Right. It's a very small audience, but it is global. Such an effort is impossible absent social media.

Martin Gurri argues that social media empowers the "public," under which he includes all the "particularistic interests" that "impose themselves on inchoate civil society all over the globe." In the 1970s one had a mass movement--called Earth Day. But that has fractured, and today there are undoubtedly Facebook pages devoted to saving whales. And more--there are likely Facebook pages devoted to saving specifically Blue whales.

Each tiny cause attracts its own public, and each public sees its particular cause as reason for revolt. The publics, cumulatively, have buried mass movements. When it's so easy to create an association to promote the specific interests of trans females, for example, it's much harder to maintain a unified LGBTQ community against the rise of all the narrower publics.

We've ceased being a mass movement of angry, grey, faceless men, and instead become members of a myriad of angry, colorful, Facebooked men and women. Politics, as Ms. Roberts notes, is fractured beyond repair.

There is much more to Ms. Roberts' essay than I've discussed here. It is well worth reading. Make sure your pencil is sharp.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Tomorrow 3.0
• Abandoning the Working Class
• Where Have All the Workers Gone?
• What Would Lenin Do?

The Militant Hails a Ride

The headliner in this week's Militant is an article by Bernie Senter entitled Uber drivers fight bosses’ pay cuts across California. The lede paragraph:

Uber drivers held a 25-hour strike March 25 to demand the company reverse a 25 percent per mile pay cut it imposed on drivers in Los Angeles and parts of Orange counties. Two hundred of the striking Uber drivers were joined by drivers for Lyft to protest in front of Uber headquarters here. Protests were also held in San Francisco and San Diego against similar cuts.

There's reason for skepticism. Uber drivers go on strike all the time--whenever they turn off their app--say to sleep, eat, or pick up their kids from school. That a few drivers turned off the app for 25 hours to uselessly rage against the machine is irrelevant to the company. I doubt it even noticed.

Then one has to take the "25% pay cut" headline number with a grain of salt. Were the cut that big drivers would be quitting in droves--not simply going on strike. So there obviously has to be more to the story than what The Militant is telling us.

This website lists all changes in Uber pricing in Orange County since way back when. The relevant entries appear to be these:

UberX cost per mile decreased from $1.06 to $0.80 - 3/11/19
UberX cost per minute increased from $0.24 to $0.28 - 3/11/19
UberX minimum fare decreased from $7.30 to $6.10 - 3/11/19

So the dramatic cut in per mile compensation is at least partially offset by a comparable increase in per minute pay. This is good for drivers who spend a lot of time in traffic, but less beneficial for those out on the open road. The decrease in the minimum fare only affects very short trips. I think The Militant's "pay cut" phrase is an exaggeration.

Another website (here) has information about Uber's pay policies--and as Mr. Senter suggests, they certainly are complicated. The company's cut varies by length of service and geography, ranging from 20% to 28%--though in the latter case the company pays the driver's insurance. That percentage only applies to time & distance charges, resulting in a service fee. In addition customers pay additional fees:

• A booking fee--that goes entirely to the company.
• A surge fee--applied in cases when there is a shortage of cars, and that goes entirely to the driver.
• A tip--which also goes entirely to the driver.

The booking fee is per trip and looks to cost about $2.30. On a short trip that will be a substantial fraction of the fare, which inflates Uber's percentage of the total haul. A long post from an Uber driver (well written, despite typos, from somebody who self-identifies as Underachiever (1970-present)) details an example:

• The customer paid $9.90.
• Booking fee--$2.30
• The time & distance charge is the difference--$9.90 - $2.30 = $7.60
• Service fee (25% of time & distance)--$1.90
• Total paid to Uber--$2.30 + $1.90 = $4.20
• Total paid to driver (75% of time & distance)--$5.70

For short trips the booking fee is substantial. For a $50 airport run, on the other hand, it's nearly trivial.

Mr. Senter quotes an Uber driver:

“In 2015, I was making between $1.15 and $1.20 per mile,” driver Esterphanie St. Juste, an organizer of the action, told Los Angeles Magazine. “Today, I’m making 50 percent of that. They call us partners, but we’re not. They dictate everything.”

As just documented, Uber drivers have not taken a 50% pay cut. But let's focus on the last sentence: "They dictate everything." They don't, and here's why.

Uber is a platform--it connects drivers with passengers. An analogy is the stock market, which connects stock sellers with stock buyers. The price of stocks fluctuates as necessary to clear the market.

Uber needs all passengers to get rides and all drivers to get passengers. There is a price that will do that--it's called the market price. If Uber charges below market, it is just leaving money on the table--money that could otherwise be shared with drivers. Conversely, if Uber charges more than market, there will be fewer passengers, and therefore also less revenue.

The market price is the price that maximizes total revenue. Obviously that's good for the company--25% of more is better than 25% of less. It is also good for the drivers collectively, who get 75% of more. It may not be good for individual drivers, since more drivers mean that the money gets split up more ways.

So the drivers, as described in Mr. Senter's article, are pushing to limit the total number of drivers, similar to what cab companies did with the medallion system. This is good for those (relatively few) drivers who have a job, but bad for those who are left at the side of the road. Even worse, it's bad for passengers, who will now have to wait longer and pay more to get a ride. And it's bad for Uber who, by charging above market rates, receives less revenue.

The drivers become rent collectors--selling access to a licensed, Uber slot--and can charge a premium for the privilege. Perhaps that's good for those drivers, but rent collecting never generates social utility.

Contrary to Mr. Senter's quote, Uber does not dictate its prices. The market does.

Still, the drivers have a case. Given that Uber has maximized total revenue, how should that revenue be split between driver and company? The drivers argue for more, while Uber wants to give them less. But the company can't dictate this, either. It is also determined by the market.

The market price is established by that equilibrium where the number of drivers equals the number of passengers. If the drivers are paid more, there will be too many drivers. Conversely, if they're paid less, there won't be enough drivers. The company has no real discretion over what that pay is. Indeed, it varies by time of day--during rush hours more drivers are needed and therefore a surge price is added.

Uber also has to cover its own expenses. It has to handle requests from customers, process payments, and arrange for pickups. Payment processing alone probably accounts for the majority of the booking fee--that's a real expense. The service fee likely pays for the elaborate computer navigation systems, which has to be absolutely fail-safe. That's expensive.

It's worth noting that neither Uber nor Lyft are profitable. So the incipient union (Rideshare) demand that the service fee be capped at 10% is a non-starter. Both companies would go bankrupt.

Likewise, demands that Uber pay for gas, car repairs, taxes, health insurance,... is a non-starter. Uber is a software and payment processing firm. They're not a transportation company. Folks in the transportation business need to cover their own expenses. It's a hard-scrabble, low wage industry to be sure, but asking Uber to manage a business for which it has no expertise will not make it better.

I think Uber is better for drivers than my initial job as a cab driver in the mid 1970s. I worked for Checker Cab in Chicago and received 42% of the meter, plus tips. Tips were about half my income. Apart from social security I got no benefits, but Checker covered all the car expenses (including gas).

It was a lousy job, and within a year I switched cab companies to one that operated more like Uber.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Tomorrow 3.0
• Teachers' Strikes: The Difference a River Makes
• Precarious Taxis