The Case Against Inflation

Many pundits suggest--with varying degrees of conviction--that we're headed for a bout of inflation. They do have a point. Prices are obviously going up--the May CPI print was up 5.2%. But this is often seen as a one-shot response to the end of the pandemic, as supply chains readjust and changed consumer preferences are accommodated. Inflation, properly understood, is more than a once-off jump in prices--the Fed terms this as transitory--but instead a continuous escalation over an extended period of time.

The case for genuine inflation beyond the transitory rests on the "printing money" argument. Peter Schiff is the loudest exemplar of this school, where he basically channels his inner Milton Friedman: 

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.

The Treasury is issuing too many bonds, and the Fed is printing too much money to buy them, effectively monetizing the Federal debt. Interest rates are being kept arbitrarily low, and the result has to be sustained inflation.

A more subtle and sophisticated version of this analysis comes from two leading economists: John Cochrane and Arnold Kling. I very much enjoyed a lecture by Mr. Cochrane, and I learned much from a subsequent explication by Mr. Kling. Together they have dented my faith in the long-term secular trend toward deflation. They both make compelling arguments which I feel unqualified to summarize--so I encourage you to attend to those original sources.

Still--I'm gonna argue for deflation, or at least disinflation. Let me count three reasons.

1. Fundamentals: These include demographics (declining and aging populations), technology (automation), and globalization (more efficient supply chains). I believe this is deflationary--but of course I'm ignoring Mr. Friedman's dictum. If inflation really is only about money, then the fundamentals don't matter.

2. History: Large deficits have not yet resulted in inflation. Japan has been running huge deficits for decades, and they're in a seemingly permanent deflation cycle. The (then) huge deficits the US incurred in 2008-9 did not lead to inflation--again quite the contrary. Europe has experienced the same phenomenon. Perhaps you'd have to go back to the end of WWII to find a counter-example.

At very least, the empirical result is that government deficits don't inevitably lead to inflation. In fact, they seem deflationary. One can always argue that "this time it's different," and maybe it is. But don't count on it.

I have no obvious explanation for these empirical facts, but somehow Mr. Friedman is wrong.

3. Supply and demand: There is clearly a market for money--a subject which I now realize I know nearly nothing about. (I have pre-ordered Scott Sumner's book The Money Illusion. I'm hoping that provides me with an introduction. Mr. Sumner is a good writer.) Obviously the money market depends on total output and interest rates. It must also depend on how one defines money. Misters Cochrane and Kling define it very broadly.

But there is a money market, which has to be approximately the same thing as a liquidity market, which depends on a bunch of things that I don't understand very well. So I can't give you a coherent, analytical explanation, but I can tell you a story. It's cartoonish, it's fiction, and it takes place in the near future, perhaps a year or two from now. I hope it captures some basic ideas.

I'm a really lucky guy. No, I didn't win the lottery, but it's almost as good. Between the CARES act, the first stimmy check, my proceeds from the Human Infrastructure Bill, the second and third stimmy checks, the very generous Fund to Stimulate Retired College Professors Act, along with the fourth stimmy--with all that I managed to put together a million dollar stake. I went condo shopping in Miami Beach.

I paid for it in "cash"--actually a certified check for a million bucks. The seller turned out to be an old lady named Louise. She was too frail to be living alone and planned to move in with her daughter's family in Ft. Lauderdale. Louise didn't trust the stock market, and she'd never heard of bitcoin, so she took her check and marched down to the local bank and deposited it. The teller did her job--the check was endorsed, scanned and put in a bin with the five other paper checks that had come in that day.

But the bank manager--Elmer--was royally pissed. A $1MM deposit shows up as a liability on his books, and unless he could turn that into a moneymaking asset it would impair his bank's profitability. It might even hurt him with regulators, who may insist that he raise additional capital.

There were other issues besides. Some other customers (people less fortunate than me) were using their stimmy checks to pay off their credit cards and to pay down mortgages. There was so much money floating around that nobody wanted to borrow anymore. Last month Elmer only got one application for a new credit card--it came from Tom, who had a FICO score of 350. Not worth more than a $1,000 credit line, but better than nothing.

Elmer needed that million bucks like he needed a hole in the head.

A short term solution was the reverse repo window at the Fed. There Elmer could buy a T-bill in exchange for cash, on which he would collect some tiny rate of interest. It got rid of the cash--but only overnight. The next morning he'd have to return the T-bill and take the cash back (now with interest). Yeah, he could repeat this night after night, but that gets old real quick.

Then he could try to buy mortgages from other banks. This is a version of the "hot potato" problem, where banks try to cajole/fool/cheat their competitors into taking cash off their hands. The problem is there weren't very many mortgages for sale (folks like me were paying cash for houses), and no bank wanted to sell them because, like Elmer, the last thing they wanted was cash.

If something doesn't happen quick, then disaster will strike. Eventually the checks will clear, the funds will settle, and Wall Street will grind its way to the inevitable conclusion. Disaster will arrive at Elmer's bank in the form of a Brinks Armored Truck loaded with 10,000 fresh, clean, sequentially-numbered, just-printed $100 bills--straight from the Fed.

If Elmer couldn't even dispose of a million bucks in electronic format, just what was he gonna do with the actual, physical bills? They'd just sit in his vault, pose a serious security risk, and gradually decay from the elements (even in a climate-controlled safe). His Board of Trustees would never forgive him.

Fortunately, at the last minute the Fed came to Elmer's rescue. They offered to pay interest on excess reserves. OK--it was only 0.000001%--but that's infinitely better than the disaster scenario. So that's where the money went--back from whence it came--the Fed's vaults.

And there it will sit, indefinitely--or at least until the computer bugs eat all the hard drives and everything is forgotten in the mists of time.

Please tell me where you find inflation in this picture?

Further Reading:

• Peak Bitcoin?
• Book Review: The Future of Higher Education
• Louis Proyect and the More-Poverty Solution

Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

What is the significance of the Passion of Jesus Christ for today?

Nothing! will answer most readers of this blog. The event is merely an ancient myth. Science shall eventually prevail and put religion out of business.

The author of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, René Girard (1923-2015), doesn't entirely disagree, for the Passion is indeed very much myth-like, differing only in one very important way.

Mr. Girard, an anthropologist, was born and educated in France, though he eventually received his PhD in the US, after which his academic career was entirely in America. He retired from Stanford in 1995. His important works are all written in French--the current tome is translated by James G. Williams, who also pens a useful foreword.

Mr. Girard's anthropological interest was the study of primitive and pagan religions and myths. It is only late in life that he converted to Roman Catholicism, and began writing religious books, such as I See Satan..., published in 1999. It may be described as a work of Christian apologetics.

There are two parts to this religion thing: God and Man. Belief in the former requires faith, and can't be derived from reason alone. Mr. Girard makes no effort to "prove the unprovable," and accordingly God is barely mentioned in this book. The latter subject, Man, reduces to anthropology--or at least it has to get the anthropology right. This, of course, is Mr. Girard's wheelhouse--he tells us a lot about Christian anthropology.

A key to understanding the Bible--both Old Testament and New--lies in the tenth commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Covetousness is the way Satan enters the world--I'll provide a modern example. Consider the rivalry between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos,

• Donald envies Jeff for his great wealth, perhaps a hundred-fold greater than what Donald possesses.
• Jeff envies Donald for his charm, charisma and power.

Each envies the other for what he doesn't have. Ultimately, they both want the same thing--to be the richest man in the world who is also president of the United States. In other words, they become like twins--they share the same goals and are in intense competition with each other.

Mr. Girard calls this mimetic rivalry, and pagan myths are replete with brothers, often twins, fighting to the death to successfully imitate the other. Cain murdered his brother Abel. Romulus murdered his twin brother Remus. Joseph was exiled by his jealous brothers (Gen. 37-50). Mr. Girard asserts that such stories are common among primitive peoples around the world--presumably this is documented in his previous anthropology works.

It gets worse. Mimetic rivalry can grow into mimetic contagion, i.e., groups of people competing with other groups. Republicans envy Democrats, and vice versa--which ultimately reduces them both to something twin-like. Tweedledum and Tweedledee is how my Trotskyist friends like to describe them. Mimetic contagion is the source of social conflict, discord, and disorder.

If there is good news here, it's that Satan doesn't really exist--or at least not like a person or an angel. There is not a little devil on your shoulder urging you to do naughty things. What does exist is this inborn, mimetic covetousness that leads us to take sides and hate our neighbors. It is covetousness that results in the other sins described in the ten commandments--murder, adultery, etc.

Satan exists as collective behavior as mimetic contagion--today we'd call him an emergent phenomenon--the product of covetousness.

Yet Satan--described in the Bible as the Prince of this World--has a problem. His power depends on some level of social cohesion. Failing that, everything will end up in nuclear holocaust, and Satan will be dead along with the rest of us. So the disorder and conflict can't get too far out of hand. Satan has to curb his enthusiasm--or as Mr. Girard puts it, loosely quoting the Bible, Satan expels Satan.

How does Satan do that? It's something that Mr. Girard describes as the single victim mechanism, which he again claims is ubiquitous in primitive and pagan practice. We might recognize it as human sacrifice. The archetype example presented by Mr. Girard is the story of Appolonius of Tyana upon his visit to Ephesus. He found the city suffering from a severe "epidemic," though not of a biological kind. Instead it was riven by feuds and discord caused by mimetic contagion. (Spoiler alert--the full story quoted in I See Satan... is much more horrifying than my abbreviated account.)

Appolonius perceives a solution, and fingers a poor beggar as the culprit. "See," he says. "That man there is the cause of your troubles. He should be stoned." He does eventually convince somebody to throw the first stone--after which the stones fall fast and heavy. The beggar is murdered, but because the mob truly believes that he really was the guilty party, the "epidemic" quickly fades away, eventually to be replaced by renewed mimetic contagion. The beggar is a scapegoat.

The mimetic conflicts are all laid upon a single victim--inevitably somebody who has no friends or relatives to defend him or her: beggar, leper, widow, foreigner, etc. They're all ritually killed, one by one, or perhaps several at a time--and as long as the mob believes, it works. Social solidarity is temporarily restored. Satan has expelled Satan.

Sometimes the effect--civic restoration--is so sudden and beneficial that the citizens are deeply grateful to the victim. He or she is posthumously deified, and occasionally even resurrected. Mr. Williams, in the foreword, explains that pagan gods (such as those of Greek mythology) are usually just deified,  resurrected victims.

The Hebrew Bible understood that at least some victims weren't guilty--they were innocent. Joseph--a victim not murdered but instead exiled--was not guilty. Job is set upon from all directions--yet the Bible proclaims his innocence. The Jews have through the ages disproportionately served as victims, and according to Mr. Williams the Psalms are poems sung by innocent victims. (This insight has put the Psalms in a whole new light for me.)

But now consider the Passion--which follows the single victim mechanism almost to the letter. Jesus is both a foreigner and a pain in the ass. Jerusalem is beset with conflict and strife. The mob is convinced that Jesus is the source of their problems--and so are Herod and Pontius Pilate. The latter orders him ritually tortured unto death. "Forgive them," Jesus says, "for they know not what they do." They don't, because if they did the single victim mechanism wouldn't work.

But the disciples knew--and they proclaimed it loud and clear upon Jesus' resurrection (another echo of the pagan myth). Now you may not believe in the resurrection, but what you believe is in this matter irrelevant. There is no doubt that the disciples and the apostle Paul believed in the resurrection, and they proclaimed it far and wide. The resurrection was for them also proof of Jesus' innocence. He didn't call himself a scapegoat, but he picked a much better term: lamb of God. What can be more innocent than a lamb?

The Passion has destroyed the single victim mechanism for all time. Post-Passion, it's been impossible to sacrifice human beings (and increasingly, also animals) because it won't work. Since Jesus, people no longer believe the victim is guilty--instead he or she is innocent! Killing an innocent victim is murder--and it will no longer absolve one of one's sins. Satan can no longer expel Satan. 

Satan has lost his power to expel Satan, but he still exists and still sows havoc--the political polarization in US politics is a case in point. But Jesus has taught us that victims are innocent--far from blaming the victim as the pagans used to do, we now compete to become the most victimized of all victims. Even white males are today becoming victims because of "reverse racism," or "critical race theory." Our world is full of victims, all trying to imitate each other to become the victim to end all victims. "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." We're in a mimetic competition to be "last."

That is the significance of the Passion for today! I don't think Mr. Girard is wrong.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History
• Book Review: An Anxious Age

The June 21st Militant

The June 21st issue (pdf) of The Militant gets two things wrong and one thing right--which together makes for an interesting read. (The Militant is published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP.)

A front page article by Terry Evans entitled Working people worldwide look to fight effects of rising prices leads with this howler.

Food prices and the cost of other necessities for working people are soaring worldwide, highlighting the urgent need for workers to join together to fight for jobs, higher wages and automatic cost-of-living adjustments on our wages and retirement pay. Millions face hunger, especially in the semicolonial world, because under capitalism food is produced and marketed solely to generate the highest profits for the employing class, not to meet the needs of humanity.

The last sentence is completely wrong--of course food is grown to meet the needs of humanity. Otherwise there would be no market for the stuff and the capitalists wouldn't make any money. Capitalists (aka farmers) want to sell as much food as they can to the largest number of people. There is no way that farmers are purposely causing world hunger.

But Mr. Evans is correct that world food prices are rising. That's because there is a global shortage of food, forcing the market price higher. I surmise that shortage is because of China, which is not self-sufficient in food and has had a bad crop year (flooding, swine flu). If you believe Peter Zeihan, China no longer has the workforce necessary to engage in the labor-intensive gardening that maximizes yield per acre, but instead has been forced to mechanize, reducing yields.

The financial fixes Mr. Evans lists will not increase the amount of food available. It will just distort the market and render food distribution inefficient.

He also writes,

In 2020 some 155 million people faced what the U.N. World Food Program euphemistically calls “food insecurity,” a rise of 20 million over the previous year.

This is astonishingly good news! Of a global population of nearly eight billion, fewer than 2% are food insecure. A generation or two ago that number would have been closer to 50%. So much for the notion that capitalism increases poverty. The suggestion that Mr. Evans and his ilk are gonna devise a more efficient method of food distribution is gonzo.

The photo accompanying Mr. Evans' article (below) shows some relatively well-fed Yemenis protesting high food prices. Note that Yemen is in the middle of a brutal civil war--a problem that has nothing to do with global food production or distribution.

(Source)

In a campaign statement by Joanne Kuniansky headlined Fight for workers control of production!, she claims (emphasis mine),

Under capitalist rule, production is organized with no concern for workers’ lives or limbs, on the job or for others living nearby, nor for the soil, air and water being fouled by pollution.

As written, this is just wrong. Of course capitalists have some concern for the welfare of their workers, for otherwise they would all quit or go on strike. More--capitalists are human beings, too, and share the moral and fairness impulses we all have. If she'd phrased it less strongly--too little concern or insufficient concern--then the case is arguable. But in today's environment, with labor shortages looming, especially for skilled labor, it behooves the capitalist to be extra solicitous of his employees' well-being.

Life is full of trade-offs. Any mining or manufacturing activity will incur some risks--both to workers and to the environment. Unlike what Ms. Kuniansky claims, it is impossible to eliminate that risk--only to reduce it at a higher cost. The cost the capitalist is willing to pay depends much more on the consumer than on the capitalist--for if the costs of safety are too high, then high prices make the market too small to justify the enterprise. So workers are more in conflict with consumers than with their bosses--which is why workers' control of production won't solve anything.

One has to note that labor and environmental protections in socialist societies (e.g., former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela) are awful. It's much better to be a worker in the United States.

An article by Mary Martin, entitled The working-class road forward in tackling crime and cop violence, tries to split the difference between Trotskyist boilerplate and reality. The boilerplate quotes SWP Minneapolis mayoral candidate Doug Nelson:

“Crime is defined by the capitalist rulers to maintain their power and privileges,” Nelson said. “Their laws and the way they’re enforced are designed to keep workers in line and to brand substantial layers of us as criminals, particularly those who are Black or from other oppressed nationalities. To the bosses and landlords in power, all workers are viewed as potentially dangerous. ..."

And this is at least partly true. No doubt the police exist to defend the status quo, which certainly includes capitalist property relations. But it's a stretch to suggest that laws are arbitrary artifacts designed for capitalist convenience--crimes such as murder, theft, and rape have been forbidden since the Ten Commandments, and are fundamental for any society, not just a capitalist one. The last quoted sentence is surely an exaggeration--capitalists are more likely to feel threatened by other capitalists or politicians rather than workers. It is standard Trotsky-talk to claim that cops are always and only agents of the bourgeoisie, and that's precisely what this paragraph claims. 

But the rest of Mr. Nelson's statement belies that narrow view. He says,

“What is of great concern to workers, however, is anti-social violence within working-class communities,” he said. “In addition to the immediate consequences for those affected, it breeds fear and demoralization; it saps workers’ confidence and tears at social solidarity. This in turn feeds into more anti-social behavior and spreads the infection of capitalist dog-eat-dog morality. The rulers’ cops and courts are aimed against us, but it is far better to live under their rule of law than without it, where warlords, gangs and vigilantes fill the gap.

“One of the obvious factors in the recent rise in violent crime has been the systematic withdrawal of police in certain working-class neighborhoods, particularly those with the highest crime rates,” Nelson said. “The effect was no surprise to anyone, least of all the government officials who organized it as part of the rulers’ political responses to the broad popular demonstrations that exploded across the country following the death of Floyd, as well as the unpopular and anti-social rioting and looting. They decided to sacrifice some beat cops responsible for Floyd’s death, and to have the police pull back from many of our communities. ..."

This is reality speaking: the only real alternative to a police force (what the Constitution refers to as a "well-formed militia") is a Hobbesian world of all against all. That's what life is like in today's Yemen, where there really are food shortages. So The Militant, true to its masthead, understands that working people need protection from criminals--as much or even more than folks in wealthier communities. Those who will withdraw the cops from poor neighborhoods are acting as agents for street gangs and the lumpen proletariat.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party represents all lumpens--both the lumpen proletariat and the closely aligned lumpen intelligentsia. On the other hand, a newspaper that claims to speak in the interests of working people has to realize that Black citizens (95% of whom are honest, upstanding, hardworking people) deserve to have their 911 calls answered.

So I'm down with The Militant on this one. I only wish that they'd drop all the silly Trotsky-talk.

Further Reading:

• Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?
• Socialist Action Believes American Children Should Freeze to Death
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat

Electric Cars

So I really liked the article entitled Electric cars: On the road to a ‘green’ future?, authored by Cooper Bard and published in Socialist Resurgence. It has a lot of very useful information, specifically about lithium and lithium mining. Lithium is used in lithium-ion batteries that are the power source for electric cars. The cited references are especially useful. So I recommend it highly.

Lithium is the lightest metal on the periodic table, and therefore ideal for low-weight batteries. It is a common element in the earth's crust, but is widely distributed, existing in most places in only trace amounts. Concentrated ores are rare, found disproportionately in South America (esp. Chile and Bolivia), Australia and China. Accordingly, economically viable mines are in short supply, and there is no reason to think the world's lithium supply will grow rapidly.

As one of Mr. Bard's references points out,

If we would like to have a North American standard of living for everyone in the world – say, 1 car for every 2 people – then we would need about 3.4 billion Nissan Leafs. This would use 32% of the identified resources (all known lithium in the world), or 82% of the reserves (all lithium that is currently economic to produce). Even with widespread recycling, that seems like an unsustainable prospect.

And that's just lithium. Mr. Bard mentions cobalt and nickel. Cobalt is mined mostly in DR Congo, with smaller amounts coming from Canada. Nickel is more widely dispersed:

More than 2.5 million tonnes (t) of nickel per year are estimated to be mined worldwide, with Indonesia (760,000 t), the Philippines (320,000 t), Russia (280,000 t), New Caledonia (200,000 t), Australia (170,000 t) and Canada (150,000 t) being the largest producers as of 2020.

For whatever reason, Mr. Bard doesn't mention copper, which electric motors require in large quantities. Indeed, the best response to governments mandating electric cars is to buy copper futures or copper mining stocks, which have doubled in price over the past 18 months. "Chile was the top producer of copper with at least one-third of the world share followed by the United States, Indonesia and Peru."

The common method of mining lithium involves the selective precipitation of various salts in brine pools. At first the ore is dissolved in a large pool, and as the water evaporates the salts crystallize and precipitate out. One then has a mixture of lithium, manganese and boron salts. These are then dissolved in another brine pool, and are again selectively precipitated out (by varying the pH), enabling the isolation of sufficiently pure lithium salts. Turning lithium salts into metallic lithium requires copious amounts of electricity, in a manner similar to aluminum production. Any general chemistry student who did qualitative analysis in a lab will understand the basic principles.

Even if you didn't follow all of that, the bottom line is that mining lithium requires lots of water, and is a process that takes months or even years to complete. The waste products include sulfuric and hydrochloric acid, along with heavy metal byproducts. None of this is good for the local groundwater.

So Mr. Bard is quite right: lithium mining is not good for the environment. And more--there is not enough lithium out there to electrify our transportation system. Similar issues arise in mining the other necessary metals. Copper, for example, is extracted in huge, open pit mines, leaving enormous tailings in their wake. Fracking is a much cleaner, cheaper and less destructive way of producing energy.

I'll take issue with Mr. Bard's description of the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. He writes,

Clay dug up from what is essentially an exploded mountain is mixed with 5800 tons sulfuric acid a day. The process will require over 3200 gallons of water every minute. The site, operated by Lithium Americas, will generate over 350 cubic yards of mining waste laced with the sulfuric acid [1]. Groundwater may also be contaminated with toxic materials. Anyone who declares this an environmentally safe solution has an odd perspective on environmentalism!

I won't argue with the last sentence, but the rest is misleading. The water is not required by the minute, but rather while setting up the brine pools, i.e., every few months. And similarly for sulfuric acid. Further, there is no groundwater at Thacker Pass--if you've traveled in Nevada you know the place is dry as a bone.

He also writes,

[The Thacker Pass] mine has received the ire both of local ranchers, who have filed lawsuits, and the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes, who have delivered petitions and protested the site, as well as organized a 273-mile-long prayer run to promote awareness.

The Ft. McDermitt reservation has 341 inhabitants, and is located about 50 road miles away from the mine. It is not clear to me how the mine will in any way affect the tribe. I also don't see why that small population should have veto power over an enterprise of national significance.

But I agree with Mr. Bard that electrifying our transportation system is not a solution to any environmental crisis. I'll suggest that fossil fuels are much better, cheaper and cleaner.

Instead of fossil fuels, Mr. Bard's suggestion is that we revert to "mass transit," i.e., a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem. He writes,

One bus—whether diesel, hybrid, or electric—can efficiently transport 50 people. A train or tram connected to a renewable city electric grid will provide clean transit to thousands of people over the course of a year. Mass transit has the dual advantage of being both more accessible (and more equitable) and more efficient. Pound for pound, trains, trams, and buses require less and do more.

Which is weird, because the buses in my hometown rarely carry more than half a dozen passengers at a time. Often I see them driving around completely empty. Trams famously travel at 19 miles per hour. On current ridership, there is no way that so-called "mass transit" is more energy efficient than private cars.

More, it's really hard to get to work on mass transit. Randall O'Toole writes,

It doesn’t reach many jobs: The University of Minnesota’s Accessibility Observatory estimates that a typical resident of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas can reach more than twice as many jobs in a 20-minute auto drive than a 60-minute transit ride. Auto users can reach 12 times as many jobs in 60 minutes up to 67 times as many jobs in 10 minutes as transit users.

Mr. Bard implicitly recognizes that--he phrases transit's advantage as "pound for pound." But surely, "minute for minute" is a much better comparison, and on that "mass transit" loses big time. Mr. Bard apparently assigns no value to people's time.

I believe Larry Ellison dinged rail travel something like this:

A train starts from a place you don't want to start from, leaving at a time you don't want to go, and takes you to a place you don't want to be at, arriving at a time when you don't want to get there. And after all of that you have to get into a car to drive to your destination.

Mass transit works in densely populated cities, e.g., New York. But most Americans don't live that way, and don't want to live that way. Mass transit doesn't work for suburban or rural areas.

Just imagine if the indigenous tribe Mr. Bard otherwise so champions were all forced to wait around for buses. They wouldn't be happy. 

Further Reading:

• Keith Leslie's International Report
• Louis Proyect and the More Poverty Solution
• Jeff Mackler Interviewed by Paul Duddridge

Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?

(SWP refers to the Socialist Workers Party, aka "the Party," which publishes The Militant newspaper.)

In a comment thread to the recent post entitled News From the SWP, reader JohnB asks a question. (The entire thread is worth your attention.)

By the way, Dan, a while back you took exception to my assertion that the SWP is moving to the right:

https://trotskyschildren.blogspot.com/2017/08/is-swp-moving-right.html

Have you changed your mind now?

The short answer is No I have not. Indeed, I've gone back and reread my old posts on the topic (here, here, here and here), and I still agree with all of them. Those span a stretch from November, 2019, all the way back to December, 2013. So my opinions about the direction of the SWP have remained remarkably constant. (I surprise even myself. Usually I find my old posts to be somewhat cringeworthy--but not these.)

Beginning in 1975, the Party instituted the Turn, which was a serious effort to get comrades into the unionized, industrial labor force. Ex-SWPers mostly dismiss the effort as ridiculous. Far from building the Party, membership dropped from about 3000 in the early 70s, to perhaps less than a hundred today. The Turn gradually fizzled out beginning in the late 90s as comrades left the movement, and as the remaining members aged into retirement. It never succeeded in recruiting new members.  My review describes the Turn and its consequences succinctly.

While the Turn failed at its intended purpose, it had other consequences. It did drive a lot of people out of the movement--likely including me (though I wasn't really aware of it at the time). The emphasis on being a union member in an industrial fraction never appealed to those of us attending college. I never imagined myself working in a steel mill--I wouldn't have been any good at that.

The Turn's biggest mistake was to move comrades around from city to city--like traveling preachers. This made it impossible for them to establish serious, personal connections with the people they were trying to reach. It prevented comrades from ever developing a career--not even a blue collar career. Not for them was any investment in personal skills or talents. They strove toward the Marxist ideal of a proletarian worker--nothing to lose, not even chains, with only cheap and brute labor for sale.

I felt sorry for my former comrades, because if you never develop a career, and never put down any roots in any one place, and likely never start a family, and more, contribute any extra money you earn to Jack Barnes the Party, then you're in for a tedious, lonely life and an impoverished retirement. They're like Franciscan friars who take vows of obedience and poverty--and lead itinerant, childless lives.

No wonder our now elderly comrades are still working at Walmart or driving Uber cars. They need the money.

But in one respect the Turn was spectacularly successful. One goal was to "proletarianize" the Party--and this has undoubtedly been accomplished. The college-educated sorts, teachers, welfare caseworkers, college professors, grad students--the lumpen intelligentsia all--have been ruthlessly purged. What's left are the blue-collar sorts.

Is it any surprise that they'd thrill to Trump's blue collar appeal? Of course they do.

Now consider the Republican Party, which prior to 1980 was known as the home of the bourgeoisie--the Boston brahmins, the Upper East Side's brownstone denizens, the folks who hang out in Hollywood or Beverly Hills. Their presidents were Eisenhower and Nixon. Then Reagan came along and worked to extend the GOP's reach into the middle class. He didn't talk Ivy League--but was instead an Illinois farm boy, the son of an alcoholic.

The GOP subsequently partially walked back the Reagan Revolution, reestablishing its upper crust credentials during the Bush years--both of whom were Ivy League grads. Bush 1 promised no new taxes--only to renege in obedience to the wealthy. The rich don't mind paying taxes because they can always pass the cost on to the middle and lower classes. It's the middle class that mostly ends up with the bill--and they knew it. That was the end of Reagan's coalition--the blue collars returned to the Democrats.

Obama's relentless efforts to impoverish middle- and working class America spawned the Tea Party rebellion, leading to the Republican sweep of Congress in 2010. For obvious reasons, blue-collar America depends on a literal interpretation of the Constitution for their well-being. For without Constitutional limits on government they become slaves of the Federal bureaucracy--reduced to being wards of the state. To use The Militant's phrase, they become a population to be "administered."

On the other hand, they don't object when the government gives them free money. Of course, the money is never "free." It always comes with strings attached, usually losing your freedom. It is this contradiction--between "don't tread on me" and "give it to me for free" that eventually leads to Trump.

Gone was the longtime GOP fixation on balanced budgets. The party-poopers who worried about the solvency of social security were exiled to the wilderness. Obamacare was fine after the individual mandate was repealed--then it became just another free lunch. A few old-fashioned Republicans now complain about Biden's stimulus--though it is nearly certain that Trump would've done the same thing.

So I think it's a myth that Trump moved the GOP to the right. On the contrary, he expanded government in ways tailored to help his blue-collar base--and at the same time he dissed the pinheads who wanted to "administer" them. Many government posts were left vacant, the universities were defunded, and self-righteous international institutions were appropriately disrespected.

The Dems, by now the party of the lumpen intelligentsia (along with the traditional lumpen proletariat), hated that. How could he! That very hatred thrilled the working class all the more, and along with it Trump's popularity.

The SWP is moved by the same emotions that power the working class. In this respect they differ dramatically from the other grouplets and bloggers on my Beat--all of whom speak for the lumpen intelligentsia.

The SWP and blue-collar America have something else in common--they're old. Old people realize that the world needs boundaries--for without boundaries society simply can't function. In the simple case, a boundary means a literal border wall--as Trump put it "a country without borders isn't a country." It means that sex roles remain reasonably well-defined--one can't switch genders just by putting on a dress. It means that the language of political conversation is English--not Spanish, Chinese, or Tagalog.

It means a balancing act in the right to free speech. Yes, that right is nearly absolute. But the "right" to get a paycheck from a state university is reasonably a lot more restrictive. Professors need to believe at some level in the American civic religion--for if they don't constructive conversation becomes impossible. For this reason, we don't hire KKK members as college professors, no matter how smart or creative they are. Likewise, membership in BLM should disqualify, and for the same reason.

Nikole Hannah-Jones was recently denied tenure at the University of North Carolina. She should never have been hired in the first place.

The SWP sort of understands that. They disdain the fluid model of gender roles championed by the lumpen intelligentsia. They're attitude on race relations is at least sane, unlike that now popular on college campuses. They acknowledge that Jews and Arabs somehow have to live together in Israel/Palestine.

True to its masthead, The Militant is "published in the interests of working people," however inconsistent that may sometimes be.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat
• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl

News From the SWP

I've been ignoring the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) because their paper--The Militant--has not caught my fancy recently. They're following some labor issues that haven't interested me; they waste a lot of pixels on Cuba; they tout ancient books that don't look to be very relevant today. This week's issue, for example, has a long excerpt from American Labor Struggles 1877-1934--surely of purely academic interest.

For all their interest in labor struggles, it was weird that they waited until this week to comment on the defeat of the Amazon union effort--an event that happened on April 9th. I purposely postponed my own account (dated May 1) so to include their response, but I gave up on them. As it turns out author Susan Lamont adds nothing new to the conversation, so no update from me is needed.

The big news is that the pandemic-postponed Active Workers Conference will happen this year from July 22 - 24. Historically these have occurred in Oberlin, OH, and are known informally as "Oberlin Conferences"--a very long tradition in the Trotskyist movement. Some reminiscences of my time at Oberlin are here. 

But these days the Oberlin brand is hopelessly tarnished given the eponymous college's failed and dishonorable crusade against a small-town bakery. So this year's "Oberlin Conference" will instead take place at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH. Springfield is a mid-sized, struggling, rust-belt town 26 miles east of Dayton International Airport. I, being a geography buff, find it an odd place to hold the affair--so please let me indulge my geography itch to explain why.

I surmise that the Oberlin site was originally chosen because it was close to the Cleveland branch. Indeed, I recall at one such shindig we adjourned to a big hotel in that city for a large campaign rally. The Cleveland comrades played a key role in organizing the event every year. Further, Oberlin was within a couple hours drive of branches in Detroit and Pittsburgh, and not that far from Chicago. Folks from further afield could fly into Cleveland airport (though we Portland comrades drove).

Today the Party has no branches in Ohio, the Detroit branch also no longer exists, and Pittsburgh is a four hour drive from Springfield. The closest branch is Louisville--a three-hour ride. So Springfield seems remarkably inconvenient. Further, while Dayton airport is close by, it is smallish and rather expensive to fly in to. I checked connections from the West Coast (SEA, SFO, LAX--this is how I waste my time) and they're horrible. The layover time in Chicago is as long as five hours.

The closest large airport is Cincinnati (CVG), a bit under two hours away. That's a Delta hub, and nonstop flights are available from LAX, though from SEA or SFO a connection is still necessary. The fares are lower as well. While I didn't check, being a Delta hub CVG is probably easier to reach from Atlanta, Miami, or Texas.

So were I in charge, Wittenberg wouldn't be my top pick. The criteria are: 1) a small-campus setting, 2) near an existing branch, 3) not too far from a major airport, 4) in the Midwest--because that's centrally located wrt SWP branches. There are four branches that meet the Midwest criterion: Chicago, Louisville, Pittsburgh, St. Louis.

• Chicago is a logical choice--definitely centrally located and certainly a big airport. There are a bunch of colleges in the suburbs or further afield that would be an easy reach. Lots of options here, but Chicago is a big city and doesn't really have the "vacation" vibe that is essential to the Oberlin experience.
• Louisville doesn't have a major airport, though CVG is only about 90 minutes away. Otherwise it's a fine choice. The city is charming and the surrounding countryside is lovely. There are lots of colleges both in town and out of town. St. Meinrad's--a Catholic seminary in Indiana--is glorious. Hanover College--halfway between Louisville and Cincinnati--is gorgeous.
• Pittsburgh has a big airport, and the region doesn't lack for colleges. Allegheny College in Meadville has a beautiful campus--but there are many others to choose from. The scenery is spectacular, and the airport offers many nonstop flights. But it's too far east to be easy for comrades driving from places like Minneapolis, Lincoln, St. Louis, or even Chicago.
• St. Louis is literally in the middle of the country, and has the best location. The airport is major. It's an easy drive from Louisville, Chicago, Lincoln, or even Minneapolis. There are plenty of colleges around.

Were I geography czar, I'd pick a college within 50 miles of Louisville. There are plenty to choose from.

In a campaign statement by Roger Calero, The Militant advocates for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. They distinguish themselves from their Trotskyist brethren in not being antisemitic--to their everlasting credit. They rightly describe Hamas as "the reactionary Islamist group that rules Gaza" --certainly true as far as it goes. I'd be less diplomatic and use the f- word banned from this blog.

Mr. Calero also criticizes the Israelis, writing

The spark for today’s crisis is the refusal of the Israeli government to halt attempts to evict 300 Palestinians from 13 households in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem. Regardless of who “owns” the homes, Palestinians have lived in them since the 1950s.

While the Israeli government portrays this as a private landlord-tenant dispute, Palestinians rightly fear that allowing the evictions would open the floodgate to more, and to Israeli government refusal to ever accept East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

Fair enough--it is not antisemitic to note Israeli sins. But as The Militant points out, the Hamas leadership, by launching hundreds of militarily-useless rockets randomly aimed at Israeli cities and towns with the intention of killing civilians, obviously is not representing the best interests of their own people. Of course the Israeli army has to respond in force--any government would do that. For good or ill, the Israelis are acting rationally. Hamas is just a bunch of irrational, semi-suicidal crazies.

The other papers on my Beat are spouting the same-old the Jews are evil, imperialist, colonial-settler, apartheid-mongering, out to gratuitously murder Palestinian children for no reason other than that they enjoy it crap. I've responded many times--by now my answer is predictable. A good example is here.

My friend and former comrade Brian Williams pens a piece entitled Witch hunt against Trump, political rights continues. It's a rousing defense of former President Trump's civil liberties--so rousing in fact that I'm beginning to wonder if they're joining the Republican Party. If so, welcome aboard--but you'll have to cut back on the Cuba enthusiasm.

Mr. Williams even goes a half-step further than I would, defending Rudy Giuliani against the likely unjustified search warrant on his home. And they're probably right--the warrant was unjustified. But I'm mad at Mr. Giuliani right now, for a more incompetent legal team a presidential campaign has never had. Trump's electoral college loss in 2020 was due in significant part to the lawsuits that his lawyers never filed in a timely fashion. Mr. Giuliani only got around to it after the election was over, when it was too late.

I understand the injustice of it all, but I can't work up too much sympathy for Rudy Giuliani. Sorry.

Further Reading:

• Oberlin, 2018
• Oberlin, 2016
• The 47th SWP Convention

Elise Stefanik

Elise Stefanik is one of New York's own, and as such I'm partial to her. She represents my adopted state.

She grew up in suburban Albany, where her parents run a lumber supply business. She graduated from Harvard College, i.e., she's among the smartest people on the planet. Following graduation she went to work in the Bush White House doing foreign policy stuff. After Obama's election, she returned to Albany to help run her parents' business. When in 2014 Democrat Bill Owens decided not to run for re-election for Congress from New York's 21st district, she bought a house in Willsboro (Essex County) and ran for the seat. She won, and has won every re-election since by convincing margins. She was the youngest congressman (30) when first elected. She since got married and lives in Schuylerville (Saratoga County).

She's now running for House Republican Conference Chair to succeed the politically tarnished Liz Cheney. Her credentials are political backslapping, prodigious fund raising (I think she's among the dollar leaders), and, unlike Liz, her vocal and unwavering support for Trump during both his impeachment hearings. That has earned her strong support from DJT, and also from Steve Scalise, the House minority whip. Kevin McCarthy doesn't seem to like her very much, though he's decided not to oppose her.

But a lot of people (incl. the Club for Growth) have come out against, calling her too liberal. They do have a point:

• She is a squish on abortion. While she consistently opposes any taxpayer funding for the procedure, she's against making it illegal.
• She opposed Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accords. She's trying to stake out middle ground in climate issues.
• She opposed Trump's troop withdrawal from Syria, and I assume she opposes our pending withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• Like the entire NY delegation, she opposed removing the SALT deduction.
• She opposed reallocating DoD funds to pay for the border wall (though I don't think this was because of opposition to the wall).
• She supported the LGBTQ rights bill.

In other words, say her detractors, she's no better than Liz Cheney.

Despite her support for the president, she clearly is not a Trump Republican. She isn't even a Reagan Republican. I think one has to go back to Calvin Coolidge to find a good analogue.

Calvin was born in Plymouth Center, Vermont, barely 75 miles from where Elise now lives. He attended college at Amherst in Northampton, MA. In those days Amherst was a legit good school for men, cultivating the rock-ribbed, Republican attitudes for which New Englanders were famous. Following college he apprenticed himself to a law firm (he was the last lawyer president not to have attended law school), and then lived in Northampton for the rest of his life, except for the time that he spent in the Governor's mansion in Boston or in the White House in DC. I'm informed by the excellent biography by Amity Shlaes.

Cal ran as vice-president under Warren Harding. The latter was a gregarious, happy, intelligent man whose campaign slogan was "Back to Normal." By that he meant undoing the near dictatorship of Woodrow Wilson, inspired by WWI. Wilson was as close to a fascist president as America has ever had, and surrounded himself by a coterie of like-minded people, e.g., Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. He curtailed both civil liberties and economic freedoms, and Harding's campaign promised to undo all of that. Harding won easily.

Unfortunately, Harding had one great flaw: he couldn't say NO. The result was people walked all over him and his administration became grossly corrupt, topped off by the Teapot Dome scandal. I think Harding would eventually have been impeached, but fortunately for the country he died first, and in 1923 the vastly more competent Silent Cal took over. Coolidge stuck to the same principles--shrinking government, counting every penny in the government fisc, and undoing all the civil liberties restrictions. The result was the roaring economy for which the '20s are famous.

So what is this Rock-Ribbed Republicanism so ably represented by Coolidge?

• Pragmatism. Rock-Ribbed Republicans do not go for Grand Eternal Schemes. Just solve today's problems as they come along.
• Moderation. No radical proposals. Put together viable coalitions.
• Thrift, bordering on asceticism, in both government and personal budgets.
• "City on a Hill." The USA is an exceptional country and therefore has exceptional responsibilities. We can't just abandon the rest of the world. We must live up to our high standards.
• High moral principles. For Coolidge that meant personal virtues; for modern politicians it's more likely to mean social justice virtues, such as LBGTQ rights,

Obviously, Elise isn't the same as Calvin Coolidge--we live in different times, and she's a different person, not least female. But if history doesn't repeat, it's easy to see the rhyme. She holds pragmatic, moderate positions--ones likely to piss off the extremes, such as Club for Growth. I'll bet she's a believer in balanced budgets--were she in charge we'd have no $2 trillion spending bills. She lives modestly, and there's no hint of corruption in her background.

Elise obviously has political ambitions beyond Congress. She aspires to statewide and/or national offices, and rumor has it she's considering a run for governor in 2022. I don't think the presidency is off her radar screen--she certainly has the smarts to pull it off. Let's consider her options.

• Her biggest hurdle for statewide office is not that she's a Republican, but rather that she is from Upstate. Her district is in the far northern reaches of New York, surrounding the Adirondack Park. Its population is nearly 60% rural. Her constituents are as far removed from the problems of New York City as it is possible to be. Needless to say, all postwar governors have built their political careers Downstate, in or near the City. The northernmost recent governor--George Pataki--hailed from Peekskill, in Westchester County. Beating a Downstate Democrat for statewide office will be a stretch, no matter how smart she is.
  
• On the other hand, her gender and pragmatic moderation make her the suburban woman's ideal candidate. Upstate notwithstanding, she's gonna poll well on Long Island and in Westchester County. Will that be enough to put her over the top? It will take a miracle, but it could happen.
• On the third hand, by his very brashness Trump was able to appeal to Black and (esp.) Hispanic voters. Elise's district, by contrast, is 90% white, and only 3% African-American. New England and Upstate New York is a part of the country uniquely inhospitable to Black folks. Cal never had to worry about that--but Elise does. Most New England politicians have the same problem, e.g., Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

I think the Republican Party needs to be a bigger tent than narrow Trumpism, and a champion for Rock-Ribbed Republicanism is a good thing. My biggest beef with her is the climate change shtick, which I think is mostly fake news. But I trust her enough to believe she's not gonna do anything really stupid, like ban airplanes or prohibit fracking. I admire her for standing up for Trump during the impeachment witch hunts--Coolidge-style loyalty counts for something.

To win a nationwide contest she'll have to expand her coalition beyond New York/New England. That's a big hurdle--Yankees aren't popular in much of the country. Just ask Liz Warren or Bernie about that.

So even though I'm more in the Trump camp, I still support her bid for Conference Chair. I will happily vote for her against any Democrat, though I won't promise to support her in a primary. You Go, Girl!

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• Book Review: Donald J. Trump
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again