"Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Paulo Freire (1921 - 1997) was a Brazilian, Marxist theologian who wrote a famous book entitled Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1968. (It can be downloaded for free here.)

I have not read the book. The first two lines (not counting prefatory material) are

While the problem of humanization has always, from an axiological point of view, been humankind's central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern. Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality.

To me this is pretentious gibberish. I have no idea what it means--perhaps I'm just not intellectual enough. Whatever--I have no intention of reading the rest of the book.

So I'm grateful to a fellow named Kendall Gregory who writes an article for Left Voice entitled A Critique of ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ . Mr. Gregory writes clearly and cogently, so we'll use his piece as a guide to Mr. Freire. The lede paragraphs of his article set the context.

In the past few weeks a debate has been taking place inside the recently formed Revolutionary Socialist Organizing Project (RSOP). The debate centers around revolutionary organization, what the orientation of revolutionaries should be, how we engage with the broader Left, and what methods are needed to politically develop the revolutionary vanguard and the broader working-class and oppressed masses.

A faction within the RSOP raised Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a model that revolutionaries can use to answer some of the issues raised in the debate. What follows is a critique of Freire’s work, one that points out the flaws of using his work as a model for revolutionary organizing.

Mr. Freire (per Mr. Gregory) compares two models of education, which he calls the banking method and the problem-posing method. The former casts 

the teacher is the sole arbiter of truth. The students know nothing and must learn by receiving “deposits” of knowledge. According to Freire, those who approach education with the banking method view it as an exercise in rote memorization and blind acceptance of a list of facts, procured by the teacher. Freire criticizes this system as dehumanizing.

Today this might be referred to as the sage on the stage model, where the teacher stands behind a podium and feeds the students knowledge through power point slides.

This contrasts with the problem-posing method

wherein the teacher and the student both learn as co-investigators of the subject. Rather than “depositing” knowledge, the teacher poses problems to the students and works with them to find solutions. Though the teacher may know a solution, they do not directly state it, instead probing and guiding the students until they come up with a solution themselves.

Today this is called active learning. In previous eras it was known as the Socratic method, a term that suggests there is nothing particularly novel about Mr. Freire's insight. Active learning has earned a fanatical following whose adherents sometimes claim it should replace the traditional lecture altogether.

As a retired college professor and long-time teacher of introductory college chemistry classes, I'm convinced that the truth lies in the middle, and that both lecture and active learning are essential to success in a chemistry class. I guess that reveals my petty bourgeois class origins, because Mr. Freire puts it in political, class-consciousness terms.

He argues the banking model serves the interests of the oppressors, and he promotes problem-posing education as a liberatory alternative. He argues that the banking method cannot be used for liberatory purposes.

Mr. Freire apparently believes that full "liberation" is acquired only if the students arrive at the conclusion on their own, ideally without any perfidious influence from their professors. Mr. Gregory is right to condemn this as unrealistic. In a chemistry class, for example, it is surely impossible for students to regenerate 250 years of scientific progress without any reference to a textbook and/or a professor's power point slides. At the same time, it is the poor professor who doesn't insist that the students do their homework and so internalize the "knowledge" and make it their own. There has to be an active learning component.

But teaching students to be revolutionary socialists is apparently different than teaching them chemistry. To become revolutionaries, according to Mr. Freire, the students need to study the depths of their oppression. They do this by reflecting on their everyday life--how it's really hard, how in Brazil they sometimes go hungry, how the wages are too low to live well, and of course about the (imaginary?) danger of  "climate apocalypse," etc. In other words, students should learn to feel deeply sorry for themselves (which is easy to do if you just try).

The problem with teachers is that they always come up with solutions less draconian than revolution. Thus chemistry profs inform students about how new materials and modern medicines are produced. Or how environmental problems can be mitigated. We present a ray of hope--leading one to become a chemist or a doctor or an engineer, etc.

A mentor can teach you a trade, or instruct you how to open a bank account, or reveal to you the miracle of compound interest--suggesting a path to a more secure retirement. In Mr. Freire's world, all this does is reinforce oppression. The rays of hope are all false, and your teachers are agents of the bourgeoisie. To be a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the oppressed, you must see yourself as a worthless, helpless human being, armed only with a bottomless reservoir of self-pity.

Even Mr. Gregory proposes a solution: Marxism-Leninism. He writes

To really win a revolution, or even reform struggles, firm, tested ideas are required. The role of Marxists is to furnish these firm, tested ideas to the working class in the course of struggle. As Lenin said, revolutionary socialists must “patiently explain” and win over workers to their viewpoint. There is no substitute for democratic political debate. There is no substitute for revolutionary leadership. This is not the same thing as imposing a political regime from above; in fact, to win a real revolution, workers must be completely convinced of the superiority and necessity of socialism.

The job of the RSOP, in his view, is to educate us masses in "tested ideas" as the opportunities to do so arise. Simply feeling sorry for yourself is not enough--you need a teacher armed with power point slides to help you out.

Mr. Gregory perceptively points out another flaw in the Freirean world view, and that is a false dichotomy between the oppressor and the oppressed. He puts it simply and clearly:

[Freire's overly simplified idealism] leads him to ascribe every reactionary tendency of the oppressed merely to internalizing the image of their oppressor, while the actions of the oppressor are completely intentional and malicious. There is no discussion of the economic interests of either “class” in the book, no discussion whatsoever of how the objective circumstances shape the people in question. The oppressed are merely confused saints waiting to take their rightful place as humanity’s savior, while the oppressors are irredeemable demons.

A modern term for this effect is moral dyadism, which briefly states that The Oppressed have feelings, but no agency; The Oppressors have agency, but no feelings. You can apply this to all the intersectional divides in our society: Black people have feelings and no agency, and thus were right to react in riotous, impotent rage during BLM's summer, while white people have agency but no feelings, as evidenced by the supposedly passionless actions of the police. Similarly, women are passive victims of violence and discrimination, which they feel deeply but can't do anything about. Conversely, men are without fail sexist psychopaths who want only harm to befall their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. Etc.

Anyway, I appreciate Mr. Gregory's clear and concise exposition of Paulo Freire's work.

Further Reading:

• Althusser in America
• The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction Tried to Ruin my Breakfast
• Book Review: Kim Jong-Un

Labor Notes 2022: Starbucks

The inspiration for this post comes from Left Voice (LV) with an article entitled Labor Notes 2022: Which Way Forward for the Movement?. It was written by a team of Left Voice journalists who attended the Labor Notes 2022 conference, held in Chicago June 17th-19th. 

The article led me to the Labor Notes webpage, and specifically the page reporting on the conference, which contains numerous videos of the proceedings. Most interesting to me was the panel discussion by people who organized the first Starbucks union--I listened to about an hour of the 95 minute video.

The LV journalists describe the conference this way:

It is in [today's] context that the biggest Labor Notes conference ever began today in Chicago. More than 4,000 workers, unionists, activists, labor journalists, and scholars are coming together to debate the strategies and tactics for taking the labor movement forward.

I'm don't think this is entirely accurate--at least based on the portions of the plenary sessions that I watched. Very little debate of "strategies and tactics" took place. Instead there was music, poetry, chanting and inspirational speeches. It had more the feeling of religious revival than any kind of serious discussion. Like a revival, the purpose was group solidarity, a sense of belonging, and a sense of purpose. In this it very much succeeded.

The breakout sessions were more substantive, but even there the word "debate" doesn't really fit. Sharing is a better descriptor. The Starbucks breakout (which is the only one I listened to at length) was show and tell from start to finish. The LV authors report that "...the socialist Left is banned from even handing out pamphlets or newspapers at the event, ..." suggests that debate was never on the agenda.

So here are my impressions of the Starbucks union organizers.

But for one older gentleman (who looked to be about 50, and who was the only person I saw wearing a wedding ring) the others were in their 20s or early 30s. One lady informed us of her pronoun, but the others all looked very normal and heterosexual. The youngest was a lady who started at Starbucks at age 17 and got fired--she is likely now about 20, or perhaps not even that old.

These people LOVE Starbucks. They refer to each other by the corporate lingo, i.e., as "partners." It seems like they buy the Starbucks' Mission and Values statements lock, stock and barrel. They like their customers, they're proud of where they work, and one bragged about the fancy drinks he'd learned to make. It's all very endearing.

Starbucks apparently has a serious management problem. The partners complained that their stores had cycled through a sequence of unsuccessful managers--as many as four or five in a year. This made it difficult for them to do their jobs, and more importantly, impossible to live the Starbucks Dream.

I have criticized unions for adding an extra layer of management to a business, and thereby adding to expenses without improving the customer's experience. But in this case that appears less true. These partners seem more interested in competent management than anything else, and if the company can't provide it they'll try to do it themselves. It won't work, but one can't blame them for trying.

If there's an enemy, it's nobody in the store, but district managers are frequently blamed, and probably with some justification.

I think these partners love Starbucks too much! They regard the company as a family, and as such it's supposed to take care of personal problems. For example, the very young lady mentioned above got fired because she had medical issues and also wanted time off to go to school. The company agreed to keep her on, but demanded that she demote herself and take a pay cut. For a company this is a very reasonable request. But it's not something that a family would insist upon--their favors are dispensed unconditionally. The woman's irresolvable dispute with Starbucks was that they refused to treat her like family member.

In a nutshell, these partners expect way too much from Starbucks. It's not just a workplace, but it's a way of life, a cause, a home, a place that's supposed to love you. To be fair, the Mission and Values seem to promise as much, but in fact there is no way a customer-driven company can meet those expectations from its employees.

It seems to me (and this is very speculative) that the union organizers have no personal life outside of Starbucks. They're not married (apart from the old guy), they have no children, and perhaps they're estranged from their parents. They're not members of a church or involved in other extracurricular that would give their lives meaning beyond the workplace.

The union is not being organized because of low salaries or poor working conditions (though too much overtime was a complaint). Instead the union is needed because the partners aren't getting enough love. They want to be loved and appreciated. And the messenger of that love should, by all rights, be the store manager--who because of the high turnover rate is effectively not there.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No not just for some, but for everyone

Failing that, let's all go on strike.

Which brings us back to the article in LV. They write (links omitted)

While labor unions and other organizations of working people have enormous power to fight both the exploitation and oppression of capitalism, the state is always seeking to co-opt, limit, and control that power. And the Democratic Party is one of the main weapons of the ruling class in this process. Unfortunately, both the traditional bureaucracy and the so-called independent unions have ties to the establishment or progressive wings of the Democratic Party. Our union leaders use our dues to campaign for and support Democratic politicians and almost never consult us, except in the most obligatory ways, when endorsing candidates. And those candidates, even when they claim to care about working people, always support U.S. capitalism and almost always endorse war and imperialism abroad.

In light of the video of Starbucks union organizers telling their story in their own words--this seems all fantastically irrelevant. The partners aren't worried about the "exploitation and oppression of capitalism." Quite the contrary--they want to work at Starbucks for a long time, and the last thing they want is for the stores to close and/or the company to go bankrupt. They're definitely not revolutionaries!

The partners don't care about the class nature of the Democratic Party. Most of them are probably Democrats themselves, and in any case it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference.

The LV authors fret about "imperialism." It's a meaningless term, and it has zero relevance to anything that happens at Starbucks. 

In a word, Left Voice lives on a completely different planet from the partners at Starbucks. The latter are sane and honest people who work hard and towards whom I have considerable sympathy. The former are a bunch of overpaid, petty bourgeois college professors.

PS--When I was their age I was a member of and 100% committed to the Socialist Workers Party. That was far less constructive than our partners' 100% reliance on Starbucks for their life's meaning. But I'd advise them (based on my experience) to get a life--that is, do something important that's not part of Starbucks. The best is to get married and have children--nobody will ever love you more than your children. And hopefully you'll eventually have some grandchildren. Failing that, join a church, or a bowling league, or a Friday night poker club. Do something that gives your life structure and meaning that doesn't depend on Starbucks.

Further Reading:

• Lost in the Amazon
• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"
• Unionizing Hotels

Althusser in America

I'm proud of the zoo that Trotsky's Children has accumulated over the years. Of course there are the Trotskyists of various denominations that play the lead role on this blog. But many other grouplets and individuals make cameo appearances. I'm pleased to have dubbed Jeff Mackler (who owns Socialist Action) as a Brezhnevist. Solidarity might best be described as eco-feminist, a term that also fits the Freedom Socialist Party. Then there is the last gasp of the DeLeon movement, represented by the now defunct Socialist Labor Party. Don't forget the late Louis Proyect, a longstanding staple of this blog who was a free thinker. For bizarre species, let's include the Bob Avakian Fan Club--they're self-proclaimed Stalinists.

But surely the rarest bird of all--the very capstone of my collection--is a genuine Althusserist (or is that Althusserite? I'm not sure.), named after the French, Marxist philosopher of modest renown, Louis Pierre Althusser (1918-1990). While I have heard of Mr. Althusser, I confess that I have neither read anything by him nor about him, so an informed criticism of Althusserian dogma will not be found here.

Anyway, America's resident Althusser aficionado is a fellow by the name of Warren Montag. I think the German form of address describes him best: Herr Doktor Professor Montag--anything less is an injustice. For this guy's nose is so far up in the air that he can no longer smell the roses. The good Herr Doktor is the Louis M. Brown Family Professor in Literature in English at Occidental College, and he contributes to an article that during the past week headlined the Left Voice website, entitled ‘A United Labor Movement Can Stop the Far Right’: An Interview with Warren Montag.

Left Voice, as readers may recall, is a quality blog run by a claque of NYC college professors and their groupies. It makes sense that they'd choose the good Professor to inform us about the labor movement and the "far right"--despite the fact that he knows next to nothing about either topic. A more on-the-nose self parody of the petty bourgeois Left is hard to imagine.

For what it's worth, Occidental College is one of those fancy-pants places in L.A. catering to the spoiled youth of the upper middle class--and ripping them off for a pretty penny. The annual sticker price tuition & fees exceeds $60K. For that money they get to subsidize Professor Montag's continuing efforts to elucidate Althusserian thought and practice.

Professor Montag states:

Even if Trump 2020 was a lost cause, there was a clear pathway to the institutionalization of the rule of the Far Right. The GOP’s alliance with the organizations like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers had awakened its primal instincts and showed the party what tens of millions shared with it: racism, misogyny, Christian nationalism, imperialism, the abandonment of the subaltern classes to the gospel of personal responsibility and the sanctity of private property.

There's so much to unpack in this paragraph. First he claims that the GOP is being taken over by the "far right," in which he includes groups such as the Proud Boys. Wikipedia notes that "[t]he total number of Proud Boys members is unknown. Reports estimate membership between several hundred up to 6,000." Let's flatter Professor Montag and accept the high estimate. Recall that 77 million people voted for Trump in 2020--that means the Proud Boys are 0.0078% of all people who voted Republican. This hardly seems like a takeover to me.

Then Professor Montag refers to the Proud Boys as "far right." I'd go further and call them fascist. My shorthand definition of fascism is people who believe we're poor because the foreigners stole all the money. The goal of a fascist group is to restore their chosen race/ethnicity to pride of place. For the Proud Boys, the foreigners are Jews, Black people, and immigrants.

Of course, by my definition BLM is also fascist. The only difference between BLM and Proud Boys is who they class as foreigners. For BLM it's Jews, White people, and immigrants. Reverse the colors and these two groups have an identical ideology. Some people will classify BLM as "far left." I can go along with that, too. But whatever term you apply to BLM, to be consistent you must use the same term for Proud Boys. You can't say one is far right while the other is far left. Pick one.

In reality, the Proud Boys and BLM both live on the dark side of the moon where Left and Right come together. Neither of them believes in civil rights, the rule of law, free markets, constitutional governance--or any of the other principles of a liberal society upon which both Democrats and Republicans largely agree.

Then--to those 77 million Trump voters--Professor Montag attributes a list of sins. It appears that Herr Doktor Montag has never in his entire life met or talked to even one of those voters. Almost all Trump voters will deny being racist. Trump himself denies being a racist, and there is little to suggest that he's wrong. (Trump has never opposed affirmative action; he does not advocate segregation; and unlike BLM, he adamantly defended the right of Black people to use the 911 emergency system.) Professor Montag claims to know what's in the heart of the average Trump voter better than they know themselves--despite never having ever talked to one. I can't take Professor Montag's opinion on this seriously.

Trump voters are no more misogynist than they are racist.

"Christian nationalism" is a pejorative term invented by non-Christians to justify their irrational bias against Christians. Christianity is a lifestyle choice that imposes no cost on anybody who is not a Christian. There is no reason to denigrate it.

"Imperialism" is a completely meaningless term anyway, but how an individual person can commit the sin of "imperialism" is beyond me.

Does Professor Montag really believe that personal responsibility is irrelevant? Surely it is up to the individual to take care of one's health, to tend to one's children, and to maximize one's income as much as possible. Conversely, nobody--certainly not Trump supporters--believes that everything results from individual effort.

Professor Montag paints with a very broad brush. According to Vox, 63% of the white working class (defined as non-college educated whites) voted for Trump. As did 37% of Latino voters and 10% of Black voters. Does our Herr Doktor Professor friend really think all these people are racist, misogynist scoundrels? If so, how does he ever expect there to be a working-class led revolution?

In reality, it's Professor Montag who is ripping off 19 year-olds for the purpose of feeding his Althusser ego-trip. The student loan crisis is at least partly his fault. I hope he'll be contributing his share toward paying off those debts.

Further Reading:

• Jeff Mackler Channels Michael Roberts
• It's Not Just About Abortion
• Good Trump, Bad Trump

A Tale of Two Conferences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Sterling describes the proceedings this way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading:

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

Wittenberg, 2022

 

Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes addresses conference.
Source: MILITANT/HILDA CUZCO

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) held its annual shindig this year at Wittenberg University, June 9 - 11. The Militant article reporting on the event is entitled Taking the Socialist Workers Party’s program to the toilers. As usual, the title doesn't really say much about the actual content.

It's a very strange article, from which I infer big changes are afoot within the SWP.

I'll begin with a nitpick. They write 

[Jack Barnes] was speaking to some 350 people at the SWP-sponsored International Active Workers Conference in Springfield, Ohio, June 11.

This year’s annual gathering, the largest since 2009, drew attendance from 10 countries... 

I went back and checked, going back as far as 2016. The 2018 Active Workers Conference hosted "nearly 400 participants." So somebody is fudging the numbers--not a good idea when they know I'm gonna call them out on that.

Back to the weird stuff: First, the article is very long. Few Militant articles are longer than a double-page spread, but this one includes an additional full page.

Second, they're calling a convention for December, 2022. Why not wrap up the convention during their stay at Wittenberg? I speculate that the pre-convention discussion will be more intense than usual and they want to give it some time. The political content of the current article is confusing, to say the least. It will take a convention to clear it all up--if indeed they intend to do that.

Finally, the authorship is different. The Militant reports from Active Workers Conferences in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021 were all authored by Terry Evans and John Studer. (There was no conference in 2020, and 2016's report was authored by Naomi Craine.) This article is penned by Terry Evans and Steve Clark.

Mr. Clark is third in command at the SWP, following only Jack Barnes and his main squeeze, Mary-Alice Waters (though Wikipedia claims he's in a gay relationship). Mr. Clark writes for The Militant only when something serious is happening (e.g., here*). Meanwhile, commenter John B seems to suggest that "Terry Evans" (a pseudonym) is the Great Successor, i.e., next in line to succeed Mr. Barnes as National Secretary.

In other words, the Big Guns are writing this post, shoving the work-a-day reporter John Studer aside. This implies there is something more important than usual going on.

For more tea leaves we need to consider the article itself. I'll take on two topics. In both cases they start out with provocative rhetoric, only to retreat to Trotskyist boilerplate.

The first is Ukraine. They write,

The [National Committee] statement gives unconditional support to the fight for Ukrainian independence and sovereignty and demands an immediate end to Moscow’s military operations and occupation.

It demands a halt to all U.S. economic, banking, and trade sanctions against Russia, whose devastation falls overwhelmingly on working people in Russia, undercutting solidarity between workers and soldiers in the two countries. The statement also demands Washington withdraw all  its nuclear weapons and armed forces from Europe.

This is the standard Trotskyist position, held by almost everybody on my beat. They oppose "US imperialism" even if it helps a cause they support, i.e., an independent Ukraine. Like the others, they object to sanctions against Russia and US arms shipments to Ukraine. But...

During a lively question and answer session after Studer’s report, one participant asked whether an SWP candidate elected to Congress would support the U.S. government sending arms to Ukrainians.

“We have no quarrel with how Ukrainians get arms to defend themselves from Moscow’s assaults,” Studer said. “But the longstanding proletarian internationalist position of the communist movement is and remains, “Not one dime, not one soldier for the U.S. rulers and their war machine! No political confidence in the bosses’ government!”

The U.S. rulers do nothing other than advance their own capitalist interests in everything they do. If they extend military aid, it comes with unprincipled strings attached. ...

With the phrase "we have no quarrel...", Clark & Evans point out the obvious contradiction in their position, namely Ukraine's defense depends crucially on weapons from "imperialist" countries. So, unlike their competition, they are aware that what they say makes no sense. More, "lively Q&A" is not something I associate with SWP conclaves--which suggests that the position is under contentious debate. I'm led to expect something beyond boilerplate after the December convention.

The second red flag is the abortion ruling (which was only a leaked draft when Clark & Evans' article was written). Here is the shocker:

In 1973 the Militant  hailed as a victory the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision overturning laws in 46 states that restricted a woman’s access to abortion during the first three months of pregnancy.

“Fifty years of experience in the class struggle have taught us that judgment was inaccurate,” said SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters in opening her conference report. “It soon became clear that the court edict set back the fight to repeal all laws criminalizing or restricting abortion.”

In other words, their support for Roe v Wade was a mistake. Who knew? But again, "lively discussion" ensued, yielding the following exchange:

In the question and answer session later that day, one participant disagreed with Waters’ assertion that an overturn of Roe v. Wade would be positive. She asked Waters what she meant when she said in her report that “the SWP is the party of life, not death.”

“Getting Roe out of the way will create an opportunity for working people to have the discussion we need,” Waters replied. “The job of the courts is not to impose legislation,” as it did in this case, “but to uphold rights and protections that have been wrested from the ruling class in struggles going back to the Bill of Rights.”

So it certainly sounds like they're gonna come out against abortion. But nope, they retreat back to Trotskyist boilerplate, as the next sentence in the quoted paragraph proves.

The 1973 ruling was an obstacle to fighting for access to safe and secure abortions, which is just one part of the broader working-class fight for both women and men today, she said.

I predict that the December convention will either reaffirm the Trotskyist boilerplate positions, or conversely double down on support for American policy in Ukraine and also for a consistent pro-life position.

I also suggest that the December convention may bring with it a change in leadership. Mr. Barnes is too old to be running a Party. Will the new leader be Steve Clark, Terry Evans, or somebody else?

A few other random comments:

The analysis of global politics (beginning with the sentence "But the so-called American Century abruptly came to an end before it had barely begun, ...") is not true. For a better and much clearer analysis, please read Peter Zeihan's latest book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning. 

Pathfinder Press' latest book is Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity. It's a collection of essays by Frederick Engels, George Novack, Karl Marx and Mary-Alice Waters. Oddly, it's favorably reviewed (pdf) by Peter Wood, professor emeritus of anthropology (Boston University) and current president of the right-leaning think tank, the National Association of Scholars.

I'm skeptical the book is of much value. Any work of anthropology that doesn't include human genetic evolution is now hopelessly dated. Obviously Marx, Engels and Novack knew nothing about the subject, and I doubt Ms. Waters is any wiser. Mr. Wood should certainly know better--and maybe he does, but is too polite to say so.

 

* The link is to my article, which contains links to The Militant. These now yield a "page not found" error. For some reason the entire discussion has been deleted by the paper.

Further Reading:

• Wittenberg, 2021
• Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole With Mary-Alice Waters
• Book Review: Human Diversity

Jeff Mackler Channels Michael Roberts

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

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

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

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

The lede paragraph:

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

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

But Mr. Mackler thinks globalization is evil, writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading:

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

James P. Cannon Was Spectacularly Wrong

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is introduced by Wikipedia this way:

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. Originally a group in the Communist Party USA that supported Leon Trotsky against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, it places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.

Among its earliest founders and also its most prominent leader was James P. Cannon, who wrote two books that are likely still required reading for any wannabe Trotskyist: The History of American Trotskyism, and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party. The former is still well worth reading; the latter is forgettable.

Mr. Cannon spent sixteen months (1944-1945) in jail for violating the Smith Act, later ruled unconstitutional. He wrote many Letters from Prison, now collected in a volume by that name. Among those letters (dated Dec, 1944) is a disquisition on the role of the Party's newspaper, The Militant. Excerpts from that letter are republished in this week's Militant under the headline From prison, Cannon proposed SWP expand reach of ‘Militant’. (I don't have access to the full letter; my comments here are based only on the excerpt.)

I'm not clear why The Militant republishes this. It is so out of date that it provides no guide as to what role the paper should play today. Rather than flattering the The Militant, it makes it look ridiculous. Mr. Cannon's lede paragraphs (ellipses and italics in original):

What kind of a paper will best serve the needs of the new party in the next period which lies immediately before us? We used to think, or rather take for granted, that as we broke out of the narrow propaganda circle and began to get a hearing from the workers, we should aim at changing the weekly into a daily. …

It was also assumed that, as the paper became a “mass” paper, it would be obliged to adapt itself to the political understanding of the average, if not to the lowest common denominator, among its new readers; leaving the more complicated political and theoretical explanations to the monthly magazine. …

By "next period" Mr. Cannon means the immediate future, i.e., the next few years after the war. He predicts that the paper will break out of the "narrow propaganda circle," and become widely read. Of course this turned out to be wrong. Apart from a sharp recession immediately following the war, the American economy entered into a long period of rapid growth that extended for twenty years through the 1960s. Living standards during that time more than tripled.

The reasons for this growth are detailed in Robert Gordon's marvelous book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth--and contrary to what my Trotskyist friends will claim, it has little to do with the wartime destruction of Europe. The fact is that the economy was growing at 6% annually, there was a decades-long labor shortage and so the unions were fat and sassy, and nobody wanted to turn the economy over to know-nothings like Jim Cannon and Farrell Dobbs. The political effect of all of this was an allergic reaction to all things "communist", culminating in the McCarthy senate hearings.

To reach this promised next period, Mr. Cannon details what the Party needed to do next.

But what we have to do next is to reach more and more new people, catch their attention at the moment when they are just awakening from political indifference, and try to reach them with our message regularly. A big national weekly is ideally suited to this task.

He then answers two questions about the role The Militant is supposed to play.

The first question is about the price--it definitely should not be free. (Italics in original; ellipses mine.)

The principle that readers must pay for the paper is a sound one; people are inclined to put a higher value on things they pay for, even if it is a very small amount, than on throwaway sheets which they get for nothing. ... [E]xperience has also shown that it is the principle of paying, not the amount paid, that is most important. The two should not be confused and lumped together.

Mr. Cannon asserts a very capitalist principle, namely that prices mean something. The price is a representation of value, and when people pay for something it means they value it more. How different this is from, say, Cuba, where the ration card is more important than money. Things like housing and medical care--which should have a high value--are given away for free. People don't take care of things they get for free, which is why the housing stock in Cuba is so miserable.

The second question is about the intended audience The Militant is supposed to reach. The paper should serve two audiences simultaneously. The majority of readers, in Mr. Cannon's imagination, will be the unwashed masses, who coming to Trotskyism for the first time will need a simple introduction to the dogma. At the other extreme are folks who have been around the movement for longer and are interested in more substantive and complex articles. Of course there is the spectrum in between--and The Militant will have to accommodate them as well.

As Mr. Cannon points out, the Party did not have the resources for two weekly newspapers--one will have to accomplish both tasks.

Of course it never happened. The Militant never became a mass market weekly and Mr. Cannon's market segmenting problem never arose.

What I found surprising is Mr. Cannon never discusses The Militant as an organizing tool. The model for this was Lenin's paper Iskra, which was used to share information among class conscious workers throughout Russia. Of course Lenin's organization was at that time illegal, which made such information transfer essential. The Militant was not illegal.

In any case, it's all gone awry. Every October the paper has to publish a Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation to comply with postal regulations. This includes circulation figures. From the issue dated October 25th, 2021 (pdf, p. 8), under the  "Average Number of Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months" category, the "Total Paid Distribution" was 2,553 copies. This is a very far cry from being a mass market weekly.

I think 1972 might represent the high water mark for The Militant's circulation. Thus choosing the postal statement printed in the October 13, 1972 (pdf, p. 26) issue, we learn that "Total Paid Distribution" was 24,605 copies. This is ten-fold better than what they're doing today, but still a far cry from a mass market weekly.

Mr. Cannon served as National Secretary of the SWP from 1938 until his retirement in 1953. That latter year--when the political prospects for communist revolutionaries was at its nadir--must have been when Mr. Cannon recognized the futility of his efforts. The Militant was never going to achieve mass market status in his lifetime.

His successor, Farrell Dobbs, served as National Secretary until 1972, when he retired. And his successor, Jack Barnes--today an octogenarian--still holds the office! This, I think, is a scandal. The Party needs to pass term limits or a mandatory retirement age.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• Book Review: Rise & Fall of American Growth
• Trotskyism & New Media