Tariffs!

AI generated cartoon representing tariffs

The article is by Jason Koslowski, and it appears in Left Voice under the title Notes from a Wall Street Sewer: Tariff Edition. Mr. Koslowski identifies himself as "a contingent college teacher and union organizer who lives in Philadelphia." In other words, he works for peanuts, having to share his salary with the zillion other PhDs out there seeking a career in academia.

I assume he teaches English given the quality of writing, which is good. 

He gets the most important fact correct: Tariffs are "a tax on imported things." The reason for tariffs is supposedly to make foreign goods more expensive for American consumers, and thereby encouraging us to buy domestically. Or, alternatively, to incentivize the producer to manufacture their products in the US. In principle, tariffs should lower the trade deficit.

He remarks, correctly, that this usually doesn't work, writing "...this plan did not work in 2016. Also, pretty much every expert everywhere says it’s not going to work this time."

I don't blame Mr. Koslowski for taking Trump's justification for tariffs at face value. But in this case I think he's mistaken. I think Trump understands that tariffs won't likely reduce the trade deficit. What he really wants to do is raise taxes. And tariffs, especially disguised as repatriating factories to the US, is a politically acceptable way to raise taxes.

In other words, tariffs are--first and foremost--a tax increase. That's entirely the point. The uncertainty arises when one asks Who is gonna pay the taxes? This turns out not to be an easy question to answer.

The obvious answer, which both our contingent college teacher and "experts" suggest isn't likely, is that American consumers will pay the taxes. But here's the rub: when confronted with a tax increase, people adjust their behavior to avoid paying the taxes. American consumers are no exception: they can substitute the foreign products with American products, or they can decide they don't need as much of the tariffed goods after all. Eg, if Mexican avocados are tariffed, then perhaps our affection for guacamole will be lessened. This option, if it happens, would reduce the trade deficit.

Or it could happen that the foreign producers desperately need the revenue, and so they reduce their prices sufficiently to maintain market share. I think Chinese manufacturers may fall into this category--the Chinese need the US dollar reserve currency in order to buy food and oil from abroad, regardless of whether they end up taking a loss in Yuan terms. This is called mercantilism. In this case it is Chinese producers (both workers & capitalists) who pay the tax. There will be no net decrease in the trade deficit.

A third option is that--because, eg, Americans by fewer Canadian products--that Canadians just simply don't have enough money to buy American products. The result is that the Canadian dollar will decline in value compared to the US dollar. This is good for the Canadian manufacturer because of the favorable exchange rate their products sold in the US are no more expensive than they were before the tariffs were imposed. But Canadian consumers are still worse off--they still won't be able to afford that vacation in Florida. In this case there might be an increase in the trade deficit (Canadians sell just as much, but buy less), and it is the Canadian consumer who ends up paying the tax.

Finally, it's possible that Walmart generates sufficiently high margin on, eg, Mexican avocados that they can just pay the tariff as extra overhead. In this case the Walmart shareholder (and eventually, employees) are paying the tariff tax. This will also have no effect on the trade deficit.

None of these options are mutually exclusive, and it's likely that they will all apply to some degree. Of this we can be certain: every option reduces trade and therefore reduces wealth. As such tariffs are bad for the economy. But that's true for any tax increase--all taxes are bad for the economy. The only advantage of tariffs is that they're politically more palatable.

Of course it gets even more complicated. Mr. Koslowski mentions that other countries will levy retaliatory tariffs, ie, raising taxes even more! And it spirals down from there. But I think this problem is somewhat limited because: 1) the US runs a large trade deficit with the rest of the world, so other countries need to sell to the US a lot more than the US needs to buy from them. So the US will win this kind of war. And 2) the US depends less on foreign trade than almost any country on earth, so it's relatively immune from retaliatory tariffs.

In short, apart from being a tax increase, the effects of tariffs are near impossible to forecast. There are just too many options, followed by options in response to prior options, to know how this is gonna proceed. Anybody who predicts a supply shortage/inflation/higher price for Americans/a recession, or any other disaster may be right, but they're most likely wrong. I predict that Trump's tariffs won't have a huge effect on the American economy. People will respond by minimizing their tax bill, and eventually not much tax will actually be collected.

Mr. Koslowski damages his credibility with his cartoon-like description of the US economy. He writes

I think we should see the tariffs as part of a magic trick Trump is trying to pull off. That trick is to hold together an unstable — that’s the key word — class alliance. To get elected, he had to win over very different sections of the different classes in society. 

First sector of this support: large chunks of the ruling class, the “big bourgeoisie,” the very rich, majority shareholders and big CEOs of big companies. ...

He won a lot of them over. Trump’s selling his party as the most pro-business of the two parties. (Elections are lovers’ quarrels between segments of our masters.) He’s offering massive tax breaks for the rich, again. He’s deregulating the economy, he’s slashing protections on the environment — all this is great for profits.

One part of his appeal to the ruling rich: break the backs of the workers. 

His premise is that there is a fight-to-the-death between bosses and workers. I've discussed this in many previous blog posts, and it's not true. While they have some things to fight over, for the most part bosses and workers have a common purpose: sell as much to consumers as possible.

He asserts that the "big bourgeoisie" have a common interest--namely they're for tariffs. Many of them (in industries like agriculture, auto manufacturing, retailers, etc.) are very much against tariffs. Others (such as tech firms) don't care because they don't export material goods. I don't think there are many big businesses who actually think tariffs work in their favor.

The biggest supporters of tariffs are in fact the unions. Many union members were present at Trump's "Liberation Day" announcement. UAW head Shawn Fain is a strong supporter. And no wonder--tariffs allow unionized workers to collect a rent on top of the market wage--eg, a salary increase roughly equal to the tariff.

Mr. Koslowski's only evidence that Trump is anti-worker is "...he's attacking the National Labor Relations Board." This is small potatoes--the NLRB plays a bit role in the American economy. Indeed, the whole idea of collective bargaining is so last century--supply chains and consumer choices are too diffuse for a strike against any one company to have much significance. Much more impactful are unions as lobbying and political organizations, and it is in precisely that role that Trump is trying to reach out to them. A new tariff will strengthen the union far more than any collective bargaining agreement.

Personally, I'm on the side of Mr. Koslowski's cartoonish bourgeoisie: I think tariffs are on net a bad thing for the economy. They're a tax increase. But politically they make a lot of sense, and for Donald Trump they look to be a winning issue.

Further Reading:

• The General Strike Fizzles
• Left Voice Demands 5 Things of UAW's Shawn Fain
• Tradable vs. Non-Tradable Goods

Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is her answer to question one:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading:

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

The March 17th Militant: A Review

 

Volunteers at community project in Atabey, Havana. Recycling trash, they produce compost and grow vegetables. Ana Morales, speaking, talks to group and visitors. Jover Araújo, project director, center. Longtime revolutionary combatant Víctor Dreke, right, member of the group.
(Picture & caption source: The Militant/Martin Koppel)

It usually doesn't take me very long to skim through the pages of The Militant, the weekly publication of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The articles are so boilerplate and uninteresting as to not deserve a closer look. But the most recent issue dated March 17, 2025, is different. There are a number of articles that invite a response--indeed, for which I could have devoted an entire post. Instead I'm taking the opportunity to review the paper as a whole, with comments on some of the contents.

The paper began publication 1928, concurrently with the events leading to the founding of the international Trotskyist movement generally. As such, it is the oldest Trotskyist paper in the United States, and likely among the oldest in the world. Through various splits and copycat grouplets, there exists today a whole bevy of so-called "Trotskyist" newspapers, of which this blog covers only a few.

Newspaper is the operative word here: for most of its existence The Militant was published only in print form, distributed weekly both by mail and by comrades hawking copies on the street. That DNA is still baked into the modern paper: it is print first, after which a web-friendly version is posted on the internet. You can read the print version in pdf format, but the web format is far more convenient for me.

So yes, even though the web page is nicely designed and easy to navigate, it's still just a copy of the print version. It is updated weekly (not daily) except on weeks when the print paper isn't published. The print copies are mailed out on Thursday, and the issues are post-dated 11 days later. For example, the current issue was mailed on March 6th and is dated March 17th. The web version is posted on Saturday--this week on March 8th.

This, of course, makes perfect sense when you consider the fact that the SWP's comrades are typically in their 70s, and if they're at all like me they spent much of their youth selling Militants on street corners. Old habits die hard.

Compare with the latest incarnation of Trotskyism over at Left Voice, which is clearly web-native, and if they even have a print version I've never seen it. The Left Voice comrades belong to the Millennial generation, and it shows. Though it's not like they are any more relevant to American political conversation.

For the past several weeks The Militant has covered the successes Cuba is having in liberating humanity from electricity. Comrades Jonathan Silberman and Martin Koppel traveled to the island and now report back in an article entitled In face of US economic war, Havana neighbors organize to grow food, clean up the area. 

The the accompanying photo (above) suggests that the morose-looking, shabbily-dressed gentlemen have "volunteered" to plant a vegetable garden and to clean up a garbage dump.

“We’re just in the initial stages, but over the past few months we’ve gotten good results growing vegetables — cucumber, lettuce, broccoli, garlic and parsley,” said Araújo, the director of the project. “We deliver the vegetables without charge to schools, elderly people and economically vulnerable households.”

Of course the reason the veggies are "free" is only because the labor is free, ie, the workers are paid nothing. I doubt they're actually volunteers, especially since the article reports that "[José Jerónimo] Estevez is an elected representative of one of the local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), a nationwide organization that involves people on a neighborhood level." CDR is a euphemism for Cuba's ubiquitous secret police, analogous to the Stasi in East Germany.

So this is forced labor, aka slave labor. No wonder those guys look so morose!

It gets worse. The state capacity of the Cuban government is so diminished that they can no longer provide basic municipal services, such as garbage pickup. Indeed, lack of trash collection 

...has afflicted residential neighborhoods across the city. The majority of Havana’s garbage trucks have been paralyzed by the lack of imported fuel and spare parts caused by Washington’s economic war on Cuba. Despite these shortages, the Cuban government has marshaled resources to improve trash collection, and in parts of Havana such as Vedado and Miramar, some of the unofficial refuse dumps that had mushroomed on residential blocks have been eliminated.

If you believe The Militant, the US has sanctioned Cuba because our bourgeoisie are so envious of the Cuban lifestyle that they're afraid Americans will want to imitate them. Just think how marvelous life in America could be if we spent our free time sorting garbage by hand like they do in Cuba!

The reason that the US sanctions Cuba is because it's not a team player in the political or economic order, and can't be trusted to repay its debts. Besides which, there's plenty of oil for sale on the open market, and if Cuba had any money they could buy what they need.

A second article that caught my attention is by my old friend Brian Williams. Mr. Williams is The Militant's generally competent economics reporter--usually much better than others on my beat. But he falls down on the job here, retelling false narratives commonly recited in the progressive Left. His article is entitled Wall Street: ‘Life’s good for the rich, that’s good for you’. There are two whoppers that caught my eye.

First, he conflates stock with flow.

Last year the top 1% of U.S. households held $49.2 trillion in wealth, or about 30% of the country’s total wealth. To put this in perspective, this is more than the 2024 gross national product of the four largest capitalist economies — U.S., $25.43 trillion; China, $14.72 trillion; Japan, $4.25 trillion; and Germany, $3.85 trillion. 

The $49.2 trillion represents the (very hypothetical and mostly fictional) total wealth held by the bourgeoisie, accumulated over a lifetime of hard work and savvy investment. That is a stock of money, the same as net worth. Meanwhile, the gross national product numbers represent the total income of their respective countries over the course of a single year. That is a flow of money. It's an apples & oranges comparison, analogous to comparing a pound of butter with the speed of a car. Mr. Williams should know better.

Then he complains about good news.

Households that rake in $250,000 a year or more — those in the top 10% of income levels — account for nearly 50% of all spending, especially on luxury items. And this spending is what propels big-business media like the Journal to claim classless “consumers” are doing fine.

Would he rather the wealthier households just took their money and stuffed it into mattresses? Would that be better for the economy? Of course not! You can't have an economy without consumption. Think of all the waitresses, groundskeepers, Uber drivers, yoga instructors, jewelry salesladies, car dealers and home construction workers who would be out of a job of richer people didn't spend their money.

Who is gonna buy those expensive SUVs that UAW workers manufacture if not for people who have some money?

Marxists think that an economy is driven by production. They're wrong--an economy thrives or fails because of consumption. Cuba is so poor because the people there have no money and can't buy anything. They have to import tourists to purchase what little the country can produce.

There is more. The Book of the Month section reprints an excerpt from Evelyn Reed explaining her cartoonish version of anthropology. It's not worth reading.

The lede article is entitled ‘We run to build a party for workers to take power’, and is written by Terry Evans. The headline makes it sound really boring (like similarly-titled pieces in every issue of the paper), but this one reports on the Party's New Jersey gubernatorial candidate (Joanne Kuniansky) and is slightly more worthwhile.

Quoting Ms. Kuniansky, it contains this gem:

“Growing numbers of workers are repelled by the Democrats and Republicans. But without a complete break from these bosses’ parties, workers can make no progress..."

Really? A record turnout for Donald Trump does not suggest that "workers are repelled by the Democrats and Republicans." 

And in its 97 years of existence the Socialist Workers Party has made no progress.

Further Reading:

• Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion
• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us 
• Left Voice and the SWP

Harvey Graff Defends The Ivory Tower

An ivory tower at All Souls College, Oxford
By Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32343526

Solidarity usefully reprints a short article by the well-known retired professor and gadfly, Harvey Graff. Entitled The Myth of the Left-Wing Professors, it's accompanied by a short introduction by David Finkel. Key grafs include these:

Among the most distorted and damaging myths of higher education is the ideologically driven and profoundly anti-intellectual myth of “the predominance and indoctrination of left-wing university professors.”...

By “myth,” I do not mean false or fictitious. Regardless of any question of truth or accuracy, myths aren’t circulated or accepted by some people if they do not accord with certain recognizable elements. Nor does falseness limit the spread, selective influence, and damaging effects of myth. That fundamental point is too often missed by media commentators and even among scholars in history, politics, literature or anthropology.

Today’s political and cultural crisis of misrepresentation of professors’ ideological conduct and misconduct can only be understood in historical context. For the full millennium of their history, universities have been avowedly culturally and politically conservative.

I actually agree with much of this. The first paragraph claims that the "myth" has two parts, namely the "predominance" and "indoctrination" of "left-wing university professors." Predominance is mythic because today's professors aren't "left-wing" at all, but are instead merely centrist "liberals," such as dominated American politics from FDR through the Obama administrations. I don't think this is true--today's professors are--by and large--way more reality-deprived than, say, staunch liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith or Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But ok, if Mr. Graff wants to relabel professors as "liberal," then sure--I'll let him have at it. But just for clarity I'll describe the polarization in this country as being "left" and "right," even if it's not precise terminology.

Mr. Graff denies that professors engage in "indoctrination." I agree with him there. It's not like they don't try--it's rather that they don't succeed. I think the fastest growing political groups on campuses these days include the Young Republicans--a phenomenon almost certainly in response to the very illiberal political correctness and kooky wokeness that now dominates faculty opinion.

Mr. Graff's second paragraph is more true than he probably realizes. People--on both the left and right--don't choose their opinions on the basis of "facts" or dispassionate argument. Instead we engage in status competitions with each other. Our opinions reflect group affiliation and shared values. Mr. Graff is clearly a cheerleader for his left group, as witnessed by the irrational and emotional invective he directs toward his political enemies.

The third paragraph is the truest of all. Professors were not just conservative in the past, but they're ultra-conservative today. I think reactionary is a better description. They steadfastly try to maintain the sanctity of the faculty guild. They're against most technological progress, notably fracking and, more recently, artificial intelligence. Some of them even want to ban airplanes!

Mr. Graff's view hearkens back to a time when university faculty derived their status from medieval guilds. In those days literacy was rare, books were reproduced by copying by hand, and nobody had yet invented the e-reader. The faculty really was a special bastion of literacy and learning. Some of this still obtained back when I was a grad student: the chemistry literature filled an entire library of bound volumes, to which only members of the academy had access.

But today all residue of guild privilege has evaporated. Research results are now distributed on-line, and important results made public long before the referees have put on their eye-glasses. Indeed, the whole referee/gate-keeping/publication treadmill seems hopelessly out of date. Today's coin of the realm are blog posts, social media conversations and YouTube videos. The professors are left in the dust.

It looks to get worse. These days AI can complete almost any homework assignment in the undergraduate curriculum. I have no idea what the future effect of that will be, but enhanced status for the professoriate does not seem a likely outcome.

Today's professors have competition from all sorts of very smart people outside of academe. And if there's one thing that professors can't stand, it's competition. The faculty want to put that competition back in the box, and to reassure academics that they still have access to the special rights and privileges not granted to other citizens under the Constitution. These privileges come under the rubric of academic freedom.

Which may be briefly summarized this way:

1. Faculty should have a right to tenure.
2. Faculty should have unlimited power to hire and tenure other faculty.
3. Faculty should be totally in charge of the curriculum.
4. Faculty should get unlimited funds from federal and state governments which they can spend any way they want with no accountability whatsoever.

Academic freedom is what defines the ivory tower, which Mr. Graff races to the ramparts to defend.

So I get it. One hires math professors to teach mathematics, and it would probably be wise to leave the curriculum up to them. Regards hiring, obviously math professors know more about who would be a good math professor than, say, somebody in the state legislature. That is the justification for academic freedom, and on some level it makes sense.

But even there it must have limits. If the scholarly interests of a professor (eg, algebraic geometry) are too far removed from what the students are studying (eg, precalculus), and if the professor's tenure is determined by other faculty based on scholarly output more than precalculus pedagogy--then at some point things just go off the rails. One hires the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

There has to be some outside oversight--even math professors need a boss, and academic freedom must have limits. If that's true for mathematicians, it is much more true for disciplines in the humanities and social sciences--disciplines which more strongly affect what taxpayers in their state or country believe.

You can't have a sociologist who--in his professional life--advocates closing all prisons while citizens are suffering under a high crime rate. The sociology professor--when speaking as a professor--has to represent opinions that are at least within shouting distance of what citizens and taxpayers can understand as rational.

As a private citizen, a sociology professor can mouth off whatever crackpot opinions she wants. But in the classroom she has some limits. She has to be sane. I once knew a biology professor who passionately believed in the existence of space aliens. That's fine; it's a free country. But that opinion has no place in a biology classroom, and when he started discussing space aliens in every class, he got fired.

The typical name for the realm of respectable discourse is often called the Overton Window. I think the Overton Window should be as big as possible, but not infinitely big. More important, the Overton Window should be determined by those who are paying the bills. For a state school, that would be the state legislature. For a private school, it would be the Board of Trustees.

Mr. Graff--rather oddly, because he should know better--conflates academic freedom with free speech. He writes:

Ohio’s new state-mandated (anti-) diversity centers on five public university campuses is a major transparent case in point. Based on false claims and anti-intellectual, anti-diversity mandates, they substitute limited views and narrow requirements. State Senator Jerry Cirino’s legislative efforts to reduce public higher to a tragic mockery of freedom of speech and fact-based pursuit of knowledgeable interpretation sputter — rising again with SB1 passing recently.

In other words, the Ohio state legislature has determined that "diversity" lies outside the Overton Window for university faculty in Ohio. That may or may not be the proper limit (I think it's probably too restrictive), but the state legislature has every right to pass that law.

We all have a constitutional right to free speech. But nobody has a constitutional right to be a professor in the state of Ohio. If you are a professor in the state of Ohio, then you need to live within the Overton Window in your professional life. In your personal life (eg, on your private Facebook account) you can say whatever you damn well please.

Free speech for individuals is absolute. Speech by academics acting within their professional capacity has to be within bounds that benefit the community and the institution. Those limits are ultimately set by the people who pay the bills. It can't be otherwise.

Further Reading:

• CUNY PSC Can't Help HEOs
• Malik Miah Defends Harvard
• Henry Giroux Defends the Faculty Guild

Hamas Lost The War!

 

By Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138775619

Left Voice journalist and leading antisemite, Maryam Alaniz, pens an article entitled Ceasefire on the Brink: Trump and Netanyahu Push for Renewed War in Gaza. She is right that the "ceasefire is on the brink." Otherwise almost everything else in the article is just wrong.

She seems to think that Hamas still has some bargaining power. She writes,

The situation has opened up a diplomatic crisis and jeopardizes the second stage of the deal — scheduled for March — which calls for the release of all remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and a permanent ceasefire. Netanyahu, under pressure from his far-right allies, has vowed to continue military operations until Hamas is eliminated, calling the second phase into question.

The "situation" refers to the aftermath of Trump's remark describing Gaza as a "demolition zone" unfit for human habitation, and that the population needs to be removed into better housing. This seems on its face to be undeniably true--as the picture above (and also the one accompanying Ms. Alaniz's article) illustrates. Does she really think 2.3 million people can happily live amidst the rubble?

The quoted paragraph suggests she believes Israel and Hamas are embarking on a lengthy negotiation process which will end (ideally) with Hamas remaining in control of the Strip. She claims that 

Despite Israel’s overwhelming military advantage, Netanyahu’s government has failed to achieve its stated goal of eradicating Hamas — much like previous U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to eliminate their political adversaries. This failure is not just a military embarrassment but a political disaster for both Israel and its imperial patrons. Even with U.S. backing, Israel has proven incapable of achieving decisive victory, further exposing the bankruptcy of its apartheid policies.

Ms. Alaniz is just wrong: Israel has categorically, unambiguously won the war in Gaza. Hamas has been wiped out as a military organization. It has no infrastructure left, no access to food, water, electricity or armaments, and no place to hide. The only remaining military asset are a few teenagers marching around with AK-47s pretending to be an army.

And the hostages? Yes, Hamas still has hostages, and that's all that stays Israel's hand. But not for long, because, as Trump says, on Saturday "all hell" is gonna break loose. The only negotiation left open for Hamas is when and how the hostages will be released. That's it. That's their last bargaining chip, and now it comes with an expiration date.

There will be no negotiation. Israel will dictate the terms of the peace. As Trump's comments make clear, Gaza as it existed on October 6, 2023, will NOT be rebuilt, and most of its existing residents will have to find a new place to live. The where, how and when of such resettlement remains to be determined, but it will happen--and for humanitarian reasons it must happen soon.

Ms. Alaniz complains about "ethnic cleansing." Yes--but that's what happens when you lose a war. Had Hamas won, would they have behaved any differently? Of course not! Their explicit agenda was the murder/exile of all of Israel's Jews. Their goal has always been a Judenrein Palestine. It is a crusade that Ms. Alaniz has ardently supported.

Moral of that story: if you start a war, you'd better make sure you win it. Hamas started the war on October 7th, and Israel's actions since then have been entirely predictable. Why Hamas thought they could defy the laws of military gravity is beyond me. Their actions on that date seem in retrospect to be inexcusably stupid. They will now suffer the consequences.

So the question becomes where the Palestinians will be resettled, and who will pay for the facilities to house them at their new address. Neither Egypt nor Jordan want to host them, and for good reason. Egypt correctly views Hamas as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood--a sworn enemy of its current government. Housing a million Palestinians would be seriously disruptive. The Egyptians have adamantly refused to accept refugees from the war--their Rafah crossing has been hermitically sealed shut. They're not of a mind to open it now.

Jordan already houses a huge refugee population, including Palestinians (most of whom are now Jordanian citizens), Syrians, Lebanese and Iraqis. They don't need any more Palestinian refugees--and certainly not the sort that come from Gaza! Again, such an influx would be hugely destabilizing.

So I don't know what the solution will be. Probably Egypt--in exchange for large dollops of aid from both Israel and the US.

Ms. Alaniz does accurately lay out the motives of the neighboring states. None of them want Gazan refugees. Meanwhile, they're happy to see the end of Hamas, which they regard as a proxy for their archenemy: Iran.

So what explains Ms. Alaniz's completely unreasonable hatred of Israel? This paragraph may offer a clue (links omitted).

At the same time, the so-called “two-state solution,” the proposed liberal alternative to the total subjugation of the Palestinians, remains a mirage. For decades, this “solution” has been used to delay and deflect from the reality that Israel has always been a capitalist settler-colonial state created to defend the interests of imperialism.

She is right about the two-state solution. It is now impossible. But she is wrong that it represents the "total subjugation of the Palestinians." No, it was an effort to find a way for the two peoples to live together. Obviously failed, thanks to Oct. 7th.

The last sentence is a clue to her antisemitism. She describes Israel as "a capitalist settler-colonial state created to defend the interests of imperialism." Let's take these terms one at a time.

"Imperialism" is a meaningless weasel-word. There is no conscious body on the globe that expresses the "interests of imperialism." "Imperialism" has no interests and they don't need defending. "Imperialism" doesn't even exist. How the "interests of imperialism" map on to the Israel-Gaza conflict is an unknowable mystery.

But Israel is "capitalist." All this means is that it has a viable economy and can engage in global trade. It produces exports from which proceeds it can buy imports. Indeed, the country boasts a small trade surplus. Israel generally permits free trade within its borders, which is why it has a high standard of living. Contrast this with any of its Arab neighbors.

Then she describes Israel as a "colony." Of whom? Who is the colonial master (besides non-existent "imperialism")?

More precisely, she describes it as a "colonial-settler" state. She is right about the settlers--Jewish settlers began arriving from Eastern Europe (mostly from Russia/Ukraine) in the late 19th Century, fleeing from pogroms. By the 1880s there were 80,000 Jews in Palestine. By 1948 the Jewish population had grown to 630,000, despite the British Mandate's efforts to keep Jewish immigration to a minimum. In the four years after independence, 687,624 Jews moved to Israel--mostly survivors and refugees from the Holocaust, who had no place else to go. Over the next two decades, 630,000 Mizrahi Jews moved to Israel from the Middle East and North Africa.

So yes--they were settlers. Of that there is no question. But which colonial power did they represent? Russia? Iraq? Yemen? Morocco? Or any number of other countries from which Jews fled under varying degrees of duress? Today about 70% of Israel's Jewish population were born in Israel. They are no longer settlers, but instead natives--with as much right to live there as any Palestinian.

Israelis, being human, are not more (or less) moral than any other group of people. But they are more civilized than any of their Arab neighbors, and certainly more than Gazans. By "civilized" I mean a richer, more prosperous economy, a bigger, more powerful military, and a more stable and democratic form of government.

Israel won the war and owns the peace. Gazans, in their majority, are likely to be rehoused somewhere else.

Further Reading:

• Sam Karlin Makes a Mess of the Middle East
• Left Voice and the Intifada
• Nazis

Iranian-American Demands Death to Israel

The above photo is taken from an article by Maryam Alaniz entitled Trump Escalates Attack on Pro-Palestine Movement with Plans to Deport Students and Workers, which appears on the Left Voice website. In the article she makes a number of claims that are manifestly not true. In fact, they are so not true that I can't help but think she's a liar.

The lede paragraph (links omitted here and in subsequent quotes):

Just a week after his inauguration, Donald Trump has already put into motion an attack against the historic movement of workers, students, and community members of universities across the country who protested the genocide in Gaza and defended fundamental democratic rights, such as free speech and the right to protest.

There are at least two lies in this one paragraph. First is that there is a "genocide" in Gaza. We'll get back to that. Second, she claims that fundamental rights such as "free speech and the right to protest" are violated. The picture contradicts her words.

A prominent sign advertises a "Gaza Solidarity Encampment." An encampment is not free speech--it is trespassing on private property. I assume (from both the context and the picture) that the setting for this encampment was Columbia University. Camping out on a campus lawn while yelling insults at passers-by is not exercising a "right to protest."

Ms. Alaniz must know this. Therefore she is simply lying in her first paragraph.

Then there is the "genocide" charge. Hamas claims that 46,000 Gazans have been killed in the war. This number is almost certainly exaggerated, but it's the only number we've got so let's run with it. Gaza had a pre-war population of 2.3 million, which means the casualty rate is about 2%. That's terrible--that 2% of Gazans have been killed in a war. All wars are tragic. But it is definitely not "genocide." That would require a death rate of at least 80% or 90%, along with an intention by the Israelis to kill as many people as possible. That was obviously not the Israeli's intention.

Again, Ms. Alaniz must know this. She is definitely lying about the "genocide."

Ms. Alaniz also writes,

Trump is worried that the broad sectors of U.S. society that began to question the lie that  “anti-zionism can be equated with anti-semitism” will rise up again.

I'll grant that there is a small distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. But it's so small that it doesn't really matter--at least not in Israel. Approximately 10 million people live in Israel, of which 7.2 million are Jewish. Almost all of those Jews (if only by virtue of where the live) are "Zionists." With perhaps a few exceptions, nearly 100% of the Jewish population in Israel should therefore be exiled or slaughtered.

Frankly, in this context there is no significant distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Perhaps others can cut Ms. Alaniz a little slack here, but personally I think she's lying. I think she's an antisemite. Obviously, as seen in the photo below, some of Ms. Alaniz's best friends are avowed anti-Semites.

Rafael Hasid, Israeli owner of Miriam Restaurant in Brooklyn. He left up Jan. 25 antisemitic graffiti so that people can “see that things like that happen.” Tehran-backed Hamas war to destroy Israel has sparked rise in anti-Jewish violence worldwide, a deadly threat to all workers.

(Photo & Caption from The Militant; Photo Courtesy Miriam Restaurant)

Ms. Alaniz tells us here that she is "the daughter of immigrants from Iran" So she apparently brings that whole Death to Israel vibe with her, which she apparently inherited from her friends the ayatollahs. Actually, I'm not sure if she sympathizes with Iran's clerics. Perhaps she'd acknowledge that life for every day Iranians was better under the Shah? Somehow I doubt that--though for all his sins the Shah looks like a saint in comparison.

I assume that (like me) Ms. Alaniz was born in the US of immigrant parents. That makes both her and me American citizens--regardless of where our parents came from. This means she can't be deported--she has exactly the same rights that I and all other American citizens have. This is the way it should be. Like Ms. Alaniz, I strongly object to Mr. Trump's efforts to deny birthright citizenship. Presumably she'd grant the same rights to children of immigrants born in Germany and oppose the proposal of some in the German AfD to deport "foreigners" born in Germany. Birthright citizenship seems like a principle widely accepted in most Western countries.

But somehow, in Ms Alaniz's world view it doesn't apply to Israel. While 80% of Israel's Jews were born in Israel (and likely, also, most of their parents), they are not to be credited with citizenship in their own country. They are, instead, "occupiers" and are to be either exiled or murdered. How can this be interpreted as anything other than antisemitism?

Then Ms. Alaniz tells us she's "pro-Palestinian," yet she still supports Hamas--or at least all of Hamas' slogans (which is the same thing). Hamas conducted the massacre on October 7th, killing 1200 Jews and taking a couple hundred hostages. This, they claimed, was to "end the occupation."

Of course Israel was going to see October 7th as an existential threat to their country and respond accordingly. The all-out war was as predictable as the day is long--no serious person in Gaza could have drawn any other conclusion. Can Ms. Alaniz tell us--with a straight face--that the people who carried out the Oct. 7th raid were acting in the best interest of Palestinians? Of course they weren't! Their sole motivation was a death-cult allegiance to some death-cult form of Islam. 

There is no way that Oct. 7th and the resulting war was "pro-Palestinian!" No--all it was is pro-Hamas--a murderous, fascist group that needs to be militarily and politically eliminated from the face of the earth.

The goal for those of us who are genuinely pro-Palestinian should be for the residents of Gaza to have a thriving economy that provides it's residents with a modern-world income, and offers Palestinians an opportunity for political expression that does NOT require the extermination of Israel's Jews. Clearly, by this definition, neither Hamas nor Ms. Alaniz can in any way be described as "pro-Palestinian."

They're anti-Semites, pure and simple.

Further Reading:

• Sam Karlin Makes a Mess of the Middle East
• Malik Miah Defends Harvard
• Left Voice and the Intifada

 

 

Trump & the Working Class

(Source)

Left Voice authors Professor James Dennis Hoff and Jason Koslowski, write an article entitled Is the U.S. Labor Movement Ready for Trump 2.0?. It's a very long article and I'm not going to go through it line by line. But it is truly weird that intelligent, supposedly well-informed people--professors even--should get it all so spectacularly wrong.

They fail in three ways:

1. They don't understand class struggle.
2. They don't understand the role of the unions.
3. They don't know what "solidarity" means.

After an introductory paragraph describing the way Trump--at the behest of the "ruling class"--will "attack" unions, our two academics write

Building a labor movement that can fight these attacks and grow stronger in the process will require not only a radical break with the business unionism of the past, but the active organization and mobilization of the entire working class. It’s up to rank-and-file workers to protect ourselves, not just against the hammer blows on unions that are coming our way, but against the devastating attacks on the working class meant to divide our power, like mass deportations and bigoted anti-trans legislation. 

Their model of society is that the "working class" is in an all-or-nothing, fight-to-the-death struggle against the bourgeoisie--aka the "ruling class." Of course this is wrong--for otherwise why have the workers put up with "business unionism" for all these decades (if not centuries)? The only answer our academic friends offer is that the workers are too stupid to behave otherwise. What they require is leadership from somebody who knows better and who can lead them to the promised land.

Obviously, if all you need for your liberation is a bunch of know-it-alls who've got everything figured out for you, then who better to ask than a couple of college professors? Even better--these college professors imagine themselves as part of the Vanguard Party. There you go--problem solved. Just follow whatever they say and all will turn out just fine.

For proof, just ask the folks in Cuba, Venezuela or North Korea to describe the benefits of following a Vanguard Party.

The problem with our professor-friends' account of reality is that it's wrong. Workers and their bosses do have disagreements, and there is something to fight about. But mostly they're on the same side, that is, both benefit when the firm--both workers and bosses--increases total revenue. They can argue about how the revenue is divided between them, but without the revenue, then there's nothing to fight over.

Have you ever wondered why Starbucks baristas work so hard to get your drink precisely right? It's not just that the boss will get mad if they don't--but even worse, their fellow employees will be just as mad. That's because--deep down, in their heart of hearts--everybody in the store knows that if the customer isn't happy, then the baristas are not long for employment.

The mantra of capitalism is shop till you drop. The mark of a successful capitalist society is a high level of consumption. Because without customers there will be no revenue, and without revenue, nobody--neither worker nor boss--is gonna make any money. The customer is always right! 

The leadership that our academics deride as "business unionism" understands this. A "business union" works to maximize revenue--and then also maximize the fraction of which is paid to the workers. That's why, for example, the UAW was very selective about its strike targets. They understood that a general strike would cut revenue to zero and hurt the workers more than the bosses. So even when on strike, unions try very hard to maintain or even increase revenue.

Our academic friends will never defeat business unionism, because that's the strategy that makes the most sense for workers. Workers, after all, are smarter than academics for one important reason, ie, academics don't have any customers. They get paid by the government no matter how bad they are at their jobs. That's especially true for Professor Hoff, who is a tenured professor--which means regardless of incompetence he can't be fired. His work life is completely different from that of a Starbucks barista.

So the professors misunderstand the working class and the role of unions. But even the unions don't understand the role of unions! That's because--like every other large organization--they evolve into a self-interested bureaucracy. The union is often more interested in maximizing its own revenue rather than the wages of its members. In extreme cases the union is taken over by the Mafia and simply becomes an extortion racket. Las Vegas casinos are mostly unionized--thanks to the diligent efforts of the Chicago Outfit to skim as much revenue off the top as they could. The workers didn't benefit at all.

Even honest unions have to worry about their income--will they earn enough money in dues to make up for the cost of organizing? For retail businesses the answer seems to be mostly No. Neither Starbucks nor Amazon have profit margins big enough to make it worthwhile for a union to organize them. That's why the Teamsters' Union will likely never succeed at getting a contract at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse. The fledgling Starbucks union will be equally unsuccessful, for the same reason. The profit margins (typically 3%) are too small to keep a union solvent.

Our professor friends never have to worry about that. Colleges and Universities don't have to make a profit. The teachers' unions are really good at ripping off taxpayers. That's why they don't understand the conflict between unions and their members.

Finally, we get to "solidarity." This is what the professors write (links omitted):

Without a radical shift in strategy, labor may wind up squandering the relative advantages it still has. 

These include record-high levels of popular support for unions, an increasingly pro-labor workforce made up of young workers ready to organize, and the likelihood of increased class struggle as Trump attempts to carry out the worst of his proposed agenda against workers, immigrants, women, and trans people. A plank of Trump’s platform is the mass deportation of immigrants — which is not just an attack on immigrants, but also a frontal assault on the working class itself, to divide and weaken it. None of our union leaders have spoken yet of this threat. But stopping it requires a labor movement willing to strike for more than its immediate needs at its own workplaces. Stopping Trump here calls for a willingness of workers to strike in solidarity with immigrants and against the state and ICE — technically against the law. Here, again, relying on the state to support unions will weaken us, not strengthen us.

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) has been touting the abundance of "solidarity" in Cuba for decades now--most recently here. Solidarity is all they've got there--no food, no water, no medicines, no electricity. The next time our gracious professors encounter a homeless bum, I'm sure he'll be grateful for their "solidarity."

Even the professors have to acknowledge that Trump won the votes of the majority of the working class. They attribute this to a combination of workers being stupid, and/or being racist. But our professors are wrong, of course. The working class is a lot smarter than the they are.

For example, Trotskyist academics will have you believe that allowing more immigrants is good for the working class because of "solidarity." Professor Hoff can believe this because he has tenure and therefore never has to look for a job. But most people realize that if you're looking for a job, you're competing with other similarly qualified people. And more, if there are a lot of similarly qualified people then the average wage for those folks will go down. That's Professor Koslowski's problem--he's an adjunct lecturer working for peanuts because there are so many other folks with useless PhDs wanting the same opportunity.

Then consider the bizarre list of folks that somehow deserve our solidarity. Weirdest is the affection for trans people--that 0.5% of society who somehow think they deserve more rights than the rest of us. The professors also insist that all workers show solidarity with the Hamas death cult, which demands the extermination of all Jews. That's not gonna make anybody any richer. It won't even make the Palestinians richer. 

So why did most workers support Trump? That's easy. Trump is for prosperity. Prosperity means more consumption, more revenue, lower taxes, fewer regulations, and smaller government.

Me--I'm also for more prosperity, which is why I voted for Trump. Unlike the folks on the Progressive & Trotskyist Left, whose goal is to destroy civilization and redistribute the carrion to the starving masses. Just like they do in Cuba.

Further Reading:

• The General Strike Fizzles
• The End of Cuban Civilization
• Amazon, Teamsters & Contract