Trotsky's Children

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

The Trotskyist Faction on Haiti

Posthumous 1813 painting of Louverture
(Figure & Caption Source)

The Trotskyist Fraction--Fourth International (FT-CI, for some reason they use the Spanish acronym in an English language newspaper) has posted a thundering proclamation about Haiti entitled Declaration: End Imperialist Intervention in Haiti, Solidarity with the Haitian People. The Declaration is authored by a whole raft of acronyms, to wit:

The following is a declaration from Left Voice in the United States, the MTS in Mexico, the LTS in Venezuela, and the OSR in Costa Rica — all part of the Trotskyist Fraction-Fourth International (FT-CI) — in the face of a new stage of military intervention in Haiti. It is a call for international solidarity with the Haitian people.

The errors begin at the top. Here is the lede paragraph.

The forces of U.S. imperialism, the United Nations, and ally countries like France are preparing a new colonial military intervention in Haiti called the “Multinational Security Support Mission.” These are the very powers that have brought Haiti to unprecedented levels of political crisis and social chaos, as a result of recurring foreign military occupations, imperialist plunder, and support for local power groups and business elites.

Assuming there is such a thing as "US imperialism", then it's weird that it's so dedicated to destroying Haiti. In our Comrades imagination, "US imperialism" is a conscious entity whose primary mission is to screw people over--presumably just for the fun of it. They certainly aren't in it for the money--Haiti's contribution to global GDP rounds to about zero, and it's not worth the cost of sending even a single soldier. Plundering from zero results in zero profit.

The Comrades blame "foreign military occupations" for the turmoil. I think they have this wrong. It is the absence of "foreign military occupations" that leads to chaos--not their presence. The reason the foreigners have left Haiti is not because the Haitians are such doughty fighters against "colonialism," but rather because there is no feasible payback from any continued occupation. Who the hell needs Haiti's problems!?

Haiti's history boasts one world-class genius (Toussaint L'Ouverture), followed by a long succession of illiterate and semi-literate thugs. Toussaint, born a slave, taught himself how to read and write French and as a teenager read the literature of the French Revolution. His goal was not "decolonization," but instead, in the spirit of the Revolution, to end slavery and to gradually (as they became literate) admit the former slaves as citizens of France. Toussaint understood that without French literacy and government, Haiti had no chance of becoming a civilized, modern country. He absolutely did not want independence.

The French, defeated militarily, captured Toussaint by deceit and locked him in a jail up the French mountains, where he froze to death in 1803. Absent their genius leader, his mostly illiterate lieutenants went on a murderous rampage killing all white people and driving the survivors into exile. And so--as Toussaint predicted--Haiti cut itself off from the rest of the world. The country, stuck in poverty, has been led to this very day by a succession of thugs and tyrants. Among the first was the execrable "King Henry," who brutally forced the former slaves back into slavery to build himself a palace named Sans Souci.

And it's only gone downhill from there, relieved only by occasional and intermittent foreign occupations to enforce some law and order. Far from causing Haiti's problems, it's the so-called "imperialists" who at least temporarily ameliorated them. Our Comrades have the story precisely backwards.

The best thing that could happen to Haiti right now would be an invasion by the US Marine Corps. That would put a quick end to the gangs and the riots, and the people of Haiti could get back to earning a living. But the Marine Corps ain't coming--they'd get too much pushback from the Progressive Left--including our Comrades in the FT-CI--that it wouldn't be worth the hassle. So instead the US is now asking for United Nations "peacekeeping troops" from Kenya, of all countries.

The Kenyans may be fine people, and Kenya at least has a semi-stable government--albeit 7500 miles away from Haiti. But the problem with poorly trained soldiers a long way from home, supervised by the corrupt and inept United Nations, is one ends up with results graphically described by our Comrades:

These interventions include the 13 years of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) from 2004 to 2017, during which UN “peacekeeping” troops committed atrocious violations of human rights, sexual exploitation, at least 2,000 reported cases of sexual assault against women and minors, as well as the killing of 30,000 Haitians as a result of the introduction of cholera into the country’s most important river in 2010.

While cholera probably "introduces" itself without any help from the UN, the rest of what they say is certainly true. The UN mission was a disaster.

The Comrades won't have any trouble convincing me that the UN is not a force for good in the world. This is most recently illustrated in Gaza, where UN employees actively participated in the murder of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7th. Which makes the UN at least partially culpable for the disaster that's happened since.

Haiti is beset by street gangs--which our Comrades describe this way:

Haiti’s gangs — a legacy of the dictatorship of François Duvalier and later his son Jean-Claude, who oversaw the emergence of the paramilitary “tonton macoute” — won ground with the help of Haiti’s economic and political elite. In recent years, they have increasingly acted autonomously, through kidnappings and arms smuggling, with the support of different sectors of Haiti’s elite that depend on them as paramilitary security forces of social containment. These gangs act with the implicit consent of the police, carrying out murders, rapes, and lynchings in order to quell social unrest and rebellion.

Haiti’s elite are the ones who have maintained historic links with organized crime, oftentimes with the complicity of imperialist forces; indeed a great part of the military arsenal that the gangs depend on comes in large part from the United States. Some of these influential figures have positions in the “transitional council” and have well-known ties to the gangs.

Street gangs appear spontaneously when there is a breakdown in law and order. They almost always evolve from kin and clan loyalties, and thus are often neighborhood or geographically based. I'm surprised the Comrades think they are evil. After all, in our country Left Voice and the FT-CI advocate for the abolition of the police and for community control of law and order. "Community control" is just another word for street gangs.

More, the Haitian gangs released around 5000 prisoners, which our Comrades should be very happy about. It's a great example of decarceration, which they enthusiastically support.

(Source)

They invoke a power hierarchy that I find implausible. At the top--ultimately calling all the shots--are the mythical "imperialists," who exert control through who knows how. Subservient to them are the pitiable "Haitian elites," who have little choice but to sponsor vicious street gangs. And at the bottom are the gangs and gang leaders, eg, the infamous Jimmy Barbecue, pictured here.

I think our friends have this precisely backwards. After all, it's Mr. Barbeque who has all the guns. It's fanciful to think he works for the unarmed, overweight and effeminate elites. Most likely it's the "elites" who are victimized, being extorted and robbed blind by the gangs. The "imperialists," whoever they are, just sit by and scratch their heads.

The Declaration ends with a list of demands. I'll list them here, with my comments in italics.

For the right to self-determination of the Haitian people! Haiti needs law & order before they can even think about "self-determination."
No to imperialist military intervention! Yes to a disciplined force that can defeat the gangs and restore law & order.
Out with colonial imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean! I still don't know who these supposed "imperialists" are.
Down with the IMF and the World Bank! What!? The IMF lends money to poor countries. They also issue a so-called "reserve currency" known as special drawing rights. It's useless monopoly money that has no impact on the world economy. The IMF is both harmless and useless. Ditto for the World Bank.
For a socialist Haiti within the framework of a Federation of Socialist Republics of Latin America and the Caribbean! Absolutely! And I'm for the Tooth Fairy and her army of Free Unicorns!

For what it's worth, I'm against the imperialists. I'm also against poltergeists and hobgoblins.

Further Reading:

Saturday, February 24, 2024

SWP Announces 2024 Presidential Campaign

Left, Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for president. Right, Margaret Trowe, SWP candidate for vice president.
(Figure & Caption Source)

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has announced their candidates for US President in 2024. The big reveal happened at a forum in Union City, NJ, and is described in two articles in this week's Militant here and here.

I have several immediate reactions:

I'm glad they're running candidates. Despite the fact that their program is incoherent and I'm never gonna vote for them, I'm sentimentally attached to the effort. I put too much work into the Linda Jenness/Andrew Pulley campaign in 1972, and especially into the Peter Camejo/Willie Mae Reid campaign in 1976, for me not to care. I'm proud to say that Willie Mae was a good friend of mine back in the day. So Godspeed (or Lenin-speed) to the new candidates.
Despite my not voting for them, I support them on several specific issues. First, they recognize Hamas for what it really is--namely a fascist thug gang that wants to murder all Jews. Unlike our other Trotskyist friends, the SWP understands that Hamas isn't even pro-Palestinian--all they are is pro-fascism and pro-murder.
Second, they understand that Trump's legal problems are not because he's such a great criminal, but rather it's an attack on the civil liberties of all Americans. Indeed, they explain that better than I can. My response is to vote for Trump (which is what I intend to do), but I'm happy to have the support from my old friends in the SWP.
There is nothing in either article about getting on the ballot anywhere, though they are working to get Joanne Kuniansky on the ballot for the New Jersey Senate seat.

OK--enough of a tease: the lucky candidates are Rachele Fruit for president, and Margaret Trowe for vice-president. I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know either of them personally, despite the fact that we were comrades back in the day. Ms. Fruit apparently joined the Party back in 1970, which makes her roughly my age. As best as I can tell from her biography, she's a native of Philadelphia.

She has run for public office many times in the past. Indeed, she's currently running for the US Senate seat in Florida, open due to Rick Scott becoming governor. There is no explanation about who is going to take her place in that campaign. This seems unserious.

She ran for a Detroit Common Council seat in 1973, for governor of Georgia in 2018, and for governor of Florida in 2022. Most people will find it odd that one person runs for various offices in three states, but of course that's what SWP candidates do--they make no effort to go native and be from someplace specific.

We can infer that Ms. Trowe will turn 76 this year. It seems she grew up in Oakland, and she currently lives in the East Bay. From 1997-98 she worked as a meatpacker in Marshalltown, Iowa. If she's a typical comrade she has been posted in many places across the country. Her only run for public office was for vice-president in 2000, playing second fiddle in James Harris' campaign.

Both of our candidates are proud union members, and see that as a key selling point for their candidacy.

Fruit is a hotel worker and a member of UNITE HERE Local 355. Before that, she has been an active member of the American Postal Workers Union, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, the International Association of Machinists and the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Ms. Trowe reports the following list:

Margaret Trowe is a unionist who has worked in the shipbuilding, garment, chemical and food production industries. Currently a member of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 125, Trowe is on a leave from her job as a production worker at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory in San Leandro, California, to campaign for vice president.

Apparently comrades change unions as often as the move across states, and only slightly less often than they change their clothes.

Which is sad. Ms. Fruit--who is at least 70--is still working in a hotel. Is she a maid? Had she stuck with just one of those union jobs for--let's say--30 years, she'd be collecting some kind of pension by now. Or at least she'd have a 401K. But as it is, she has to keep working into her 70s.

Ms. Trowe is just as poorly off--still working as a production worker on the chocolate line.

The Party did their comrades a grave disservice by moving them around so much--and for what looks like zero political gain. How do you earn trust or gain a reputation if you never live in a place for more than a few years?

The list of unions our candidates were/are members of is praiseworthy. Apart from the Postal Workers, all of them are private sector unions. Put another way, they provided real goods and services for consumers who voluntarily paid for what was produced. Mss. Fruit & Trowe are actual, productive members of the working class. No mooching off the taxpayers for these two ladies, which puts them streets ahead of other Trotskyist grouplets who champion the causes of public sector workers (eg, Jeff Mackler--long time member of the teachers' union). By contrast, our friends over at Left Voice are grad students and college professors, clamoring for ever more generous ~~welfare~~ salaries for public college employees, at tax-payers expense.

It's weird that the campaign never mentions two unions that have been much in the news recently: Starbucks Workers United and the Amazon Labor Union. These are serious--if not entirely successful--efforts to unionize workers who are hard to reach. I understand the SWP doesn't want to be in the same bed as the petty bourgeois fakers over at Left Voice, but in this case there is a confluence of interest and the Party is remiss in not getting on board.

Ms. Fruit summarized the campaign's program here:

“The capitalists’ profits come from exploiting wage labor. The wealthy minority holds state power by dividing the working majority,” Fruit said. “The SWP joins the fight for unity in the working class, for building and strengthening the trade union movement and labor solidarity, for opposing Washington’s wars, for a government-funded public-works program to provide jobs and put an end to divisions between employed and unemployed, and for demanding amnesty for immigrants living and working in the United States.”

My response in bullet points:

The first sentence is just wrong. In a competitive free market (such as mostly exists in the USA), it is impossible for anybody to be oppressed in the Marxist sense. The second sentence is a gross exaggeration--the "wealthy minority" of whom she speaks is only 0.1% of the population, and despite their economic wherewithal, they're nowhere near numerous enough to "divide the working majority."
Regards "Washington's wars," the Party seems to be supporting US foreign policy more than opposing it. They support the US arming Ukraine, and they back the US policy regards Hamas (though they appear to have more backbone than Mr. Biden).
About immigration, I point out here that the Party's position is somewhat more nuanced than what is said in the above quote.

Margaret Trowe said nothing but the truth, here:

“The Socialist Workers candidates urge workers to organize and act to prevent the Democratic Party’s assault on freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution,” Trowe said. “The Democrats’ witch hunt against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — the attempt to throw him off the ballot, ruin his family and send him to prison — is a blow to political rights workers sorely need. Whoever is targeted today, it is working people who will be targeted tomorrow.”

Enough said. Vote for Trump!

Further Reading:

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Cheapskate Consumers in China

The Mall of America, suburban Minneapolis, sells a lot of stuff from China (source)

Roy Landersen, writing for The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP), contributes an article entitled China’s capitalist rulers’ deepening crises visit disaster on working people. Even though he gets China mostly right, he still misunderstands some basic economics. His lede paragraph is here (emphasis mine).

For decades China’s rulers have relied on expanding capitalist methods to grow their economy, and repression to keep working people in check. But their course today is producing falling exports, rising local government debt and a property market meltdown, exemplified by the collapse of Evergrande, once the world’s most profitable property developer.

What he describes here isn't really capitalism, but rather fascism. While under socialism all economic activity is run directly by the state, in fascism, it is run only indirectly by the state. The government allows private enterprise, but forcibly subordinates it to the political needs of the state. Mr. Landersen denotes this by the euphemism "capitalist methods," which is distinct from capitalism because economic profitability is not the primary concern. Instead enterprises must serve the state first and foremost.

Another name for this might be mercantilism. Either way, it is unfair to blame China's problems on capitalism. Instead, it's the fascist-like CCP that poisons the mix.

The last clause of the quoted paragraph is wrong. It seems that Evergrande was never profitable--the company has been accused of systematically inflating revenue. Apparently they've been running a big Ponzi scheme--with CCP connivance, of course. There were never any profits--only fraud.

In a transparent effort to blame mythical, foreign imperialists, Mr. Landersen writes,

A Hong Kong court ruled Jan. 29 that Evergrande, with its gigantic $300 billion debt, be liquidated, setting up a tug-of-war over its assets between Beijing and imperialist lenders who are owed billions. Bosses at the company stopped paying creditors two years ago.

Google AI (now called Gemini) reports that

While Evergrande's total debt was massive at $340 billion, its reliance on foreign loans was relatively small. Here's a breakdown:
Total debt: $340 billion
Foreign debt: $25.4 billion
Percentage of foreign debt: ~7.5%

The so-called "imperialist" lenders are only out $25 billion, which is small change. I don't know what an "imperialist" lender is--foreign lender is a better description. I'll suggest almost all of them are from Hong Kong. Is Hong Kong "imperialist"? The epithet is completely meaningless.

Mr. Landersen recites a litany of problems Chinese "workers" face, which I'll summarize in bullet points.

Evergrande "took billions in down payments for houses that were never built, and its collapse left countless numbers of construction workers with unpaid wages." As said, it was all a big Ponzi scheme.
"In industry, bosses’ profits fell 2.3% last year, after a 4% fall the year before." So it's not just workers who suffered.
"High unemployment among Chinese university graduates — one in five without a job..."
"Despite government inducements to have children, including tax breaks, cheap housing and cash payments, the birth rate fell in 2023 for the seventh straight year." China looks to be in an irrecoverable demographic downward spiral. There's probably no way of undoing that now.
"Foreign capitalists are shifting manufacturing from China to countries like Vietnam where bosses pay workers less."
"Chinese President Xi Jingping’s signature project, the Belt and Road Initiative, is losing steam. ... [G]overnments that have borrowed from Beijing are defaulting on loans."
"For years, Beijing has detained millions of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority, in 'reeducation camps' across Xinjiang province."
"Demonstrations by workers have grown recently in China’s export-oriented manufacturing industries where demand has fallen. More than 1,700 strikes took place last year, double the number in 2022. They are protesting unpaid wages and benefits, as well as mass layoffs or forced relocations."

Mr. Landersen tells the truth--every statement in these bullet points is true. Intentionally or otherwise, he puts paid to the notion that China is some rising power about to displace the United States. There is no way that is gonna happen. Quite the contrary, China will increasingly have difficulty importing enough food and fuel to meet its needs.

It is, in the end, all a question of supply and demand.

Marxists only talk about the supply--e.g., the governments in Cuba (sugar), North Korea (food) and the former Soviet Union (steel) all bragged about their levels of production. After all, in their view, the key to economic progress is to increase production because that's the only thing that adds value to an economy.

But it's not true. The real measure of economic progress is the rate of consumption, typically measured as sales volume. Because if consumers can't afford or find use for your product, its manufacture is a waste of resources. It's increased consumption that actually raises a country's standard of living.

This is why the plight of workers--how they're oppressed, deprived, etc.--is mostly irrelevant (as long as they're free and paid market rate wages). The real test of well-being is what those workers--acting as consumers--can buy. In Cuba they can't buy tiddlywinks. In China--even after all the progress of recent decades--most consumers are too poor to buy very much.

Americans, by contrast, are excellent consumers! Indeed, we're the best consumers on the planet. Almost every country on earth tries hard to sell into the American market--because that's where the consumers are. American consumers are the people who have made the world's economy go round.

In particular, modern China has never been able to consume its own production. It has always had to find consumers abroad--mostly by exporting to America.

Unfortunately, America is now tapped out. We're too far in debt to keep accepting new exports from other countries. Our ability to consume everything the world produces is no longer feasible. Other countries are going to have to develop their own consumer markets.

China has not done that. Not even close. A housing Ponzi scheme destroys consumption. A lack of babies results in a lack of consumers--the best consumers are families with children. Not having a good old-age pension system, or something like Medicare for old people, forces people to save more than they likely need for old age. And reduces consumption. China's "iron rice bowl" has rusted out.

So I think China is screwed. Mr. Landersen wants to blame capitalism, but he really should blame the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP, like most Marxists, has always emphasized production over consumption--and now they're in a pickle of their own making.

Mr. Landersen will, of course, champion the Cuban consumer, who earns something like $50/month. How much can you consume on that income? It's pathetic, and that's why Cuba is so poor.

Further Reading:

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Immigration: The Militant & Left Voice

Source: Amazon.com

Two articles from the Trotskyist press guide our discussion of immigration.

An article in The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) entitled As immigration spikes, workers look to unify the working class. The author is the competent Alyson Kennedy.
News, as reported in Left Voice, about the "far-right" Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The post, by Inés In interviewing Inés Heider, is Protests in Germany: “The Whole Regime Is Shifting to the Right”

Back in 2020 Ms. Kennedy ran for president on a campaign program demanding

AMNESTY FOR ALL UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS in the US, a life-and-death question for the unions to unite workers and cut across divisions the bosses use to drive down wages. For access to driver’s licenses for all.

Fast-forward to today, and the last two paragraphs of her current article are these:

Under capitalism workers compete for jobs. Opening the borders would vastly intensify that competition, fueling unemployment and spreading misery among working people, immigrant and native-born alike.
Instead, the call for amnesty for all workers living in the U.S., regardless where they come from, coupled with support for revolutionary battles abroad, is the road forward for the working class.

The first paragraph suggests some skepticism about open borders and unrestricted immigration. The second reiterates the traditional Trotskyist position from 2020--along with a Kamala-Harris-like effort to solve the "root causes" of our immigration problem. These seem to be in conflict with each other: total amnesty does not look like a way to control immigration.

What gives?

The Militant, which masthead proclaims it "A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE," has long recognized that the bulk of the working class supports Trump for president. This sharply distinguishes them from the other Trotskyist grouplets on my beat, who have reduced their cause to petty bourgeois, progressive Left orthodoxy. Accordingly, The Militant has rethought their positions on any number of topics, notably Israel, abortion, and the defense of Trumpian civil liberties.

Now it seems that they're moderating their position on immigration. Ms. Kennedy's article argues by anecdote, collected while campaigning door to door in the Fort Worth area. For example:

“It’s bad what is going on,” Juanita Castillo, a retired factory worker, told this Militant worker-correspondent when I knocked on her door and said I was the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Texas and wanted her opinion. “Immigrants who are coming now don’t care about the law. Before when immigrants were coming they were scared they were going to be deported or put in jail, now they are not,” Castillo said.

Or again,

“I work with immigrants from Cuba and El Salvador. In Minnesota I worked with workers from Romania and Bosnia at a bakery,” [union steward Jerome] Crawford said. “They came from war-torn countries for a better life. You have the president telling them they are welcome and the governor rebutting this. It is a union issue because you can’t join unions if you don’t have citizenship.”

Compared to her campaign platform four years ago, her current article is a more sober analysis of some of the trade-offs of immigration. Gone is the certitude that it is always beneficial. She admits that new immigrants compete with domestic workers for jobs, thus depressing wages. More, high levels of immigration make things harder for unions. Her quote from Mr. Crawford ("...war-torn countries...") suggests that she's aware of problems of acculturation and assimilation.

Trump is very popular among the working class (which is why The Militant pursues that audience), and his hard stance on immigration is an important cause. So it makes sense that the Party is rethinking their policy.

Though she still demands total amnesty, but I don't see how unconditional amnesty can lead to any coherent immigration policy. It begs the question: is the SWP still Trotskyist? Or are they just kowtowing to their Trumpian audience?

Left Voice, meanwhile, has participated in mass protests in Germany against a policy supported by at least some members of the AfD. It's described by Ms. Heider.

The scale of the mobilization reflected the shock provoked by the revelation on January 10 by the investigative media Correctiv of a plan initiated by the AfD and neo-Nazi activists, as well as members of the conservative CDU, to mass expel several million people from the country on the basis of their origin, as well as those who come to refugees’ aid, notably in the Mediterranean.

A clearer description can be found in a publication of an EU Agency here:

According to the “re-migration” plan, migrants will be forcefully deported to their countries of origin via mass deportation and will target citizens holding German passports who, Martin Sellner, a member of the Identitarian Movement, claims, “form aggressive, rapidly growing parallel societies”.

I share Ms. In's and Ms. Heider's disgust at the idea of deporting citizens--either in Germany or in the US. Deporting citizens who have lived in Germany for many decades and fill important roles such as nurses and engineers, is neither moral nor good for the economy. The very idea is crazy-talk, and I'm reassured that Germans are nearly unanimously rejecting it.

Similarly, the demands to expel the 15-20 million illegals now living in the US are utterly unrealistic and very expensive. It would be the largest forced migration ever in history. Trump's promise that he could do it "humanely" is ridiculous.

On the other hand, Left Voice has long supported open borders, including the abolition of the US customs agency, ICE. Unlike The Militant, they make no mention of any downsides, ignoring the competition for jobs, the threat to the unions, and problems of assimilation.

Indeed, Left Voice's position can only be held by a bunch of college professors, whose connections to the real world are sufficiently tenuous that they can't even imagine how it could fail. If deporting millions of immigrants (either in the US or Germany) is both immoral and impractical, then the only alternative is to restrict the flow of incoming illegals.

In other words, Build The Wall! The US has to have control over its southern border.

Both articles (along with the mainstream media) miss another aspect of immigration: consumption. Immigrants not only take jobs, but they also buy things and are consumers. As consumers, they create jobs. The short-term problem arises when they first arrive: they're either not allowed to work, or they're so far in the financial hole that they can't consume as much as they earn. That's why the perception (not entirely inaccurate) is that they "steal jobs." In the long run, they don't. They just grow the economy.

The biggest consumers in any society are families with children. That obvious insight leads to this hierarchy of which immigrants to admit, listed from most desirable to least desirable:

A pregnant woman with husband in tow--the child will grow up in the US, will speak fluent English, and the husband will earn a living for his family. Hopefully they'll have more children.
A woman with one or more children, again with husband in tow--still good, but the children will be less likely to assimilate depending on how old they are upon arrival. The husband remains a financial necessity.
A husband and wife--here's hoping they have children.
A single woman--likely children in her future. Hope she finds a husband.
A single mother--at least there are kids, but her financial prospects are not good and she's likely to end up on welfare.
Unattached males--these are the guys who are gonna paint swastikas on synagogues, or join street gangs, or generally make a nuisance of themselves. They should not be admitted unless they have marketable skills in short supply.

Further Reading:

Monday, January 15, 2024

Malik Miah Defends Harvard

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudine_Gay

Malik Miah--a longtime and honorable socialist, formerly a comrade of mine in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and now a leader in the Solidarity movement--astonishingly rises to the defense of elite education in an article entitled Targeting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Higher Education. The piece is a rousing defense of former Harvard president Claudine Gay, and by extension all who supported her: students, faculty and the Harvard Corporation Board.

Harvard (along with a couple dozen other institutions) are tasked with educating elite students. For example, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both attended Harvard, admitted on the basis of their near perfect SAT scores. Educating elite students is, of course, precisely the opposite of championing equity. Equity and Harvard are like oil and water--and that is what makes Mr. Miah's defense of Harvard so mysterious.

It is a conceit among my Trotskyist friends--perhaps not often openly stated--that anybody could excel at Harvard if only they were given a chance. William F. Buckley famously said “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” My former comrades--I think including Malik Miah--will likely agree with that, and insist that there is no intelligence or aptitude difference between Harvard faculty and students, and a random collection of people chosen from the phone book. Further, the latter are more likely to represent the working class.

Of course it's not true, and if Harvard genuinely thought it was, then they would have to go out of business. Nevertheless, in deference to the American public's egalitarian impulse, they pretend it's true, and so they go to great lengths to admit a few lower class students and to hire a Black woman as president.

It's all a virtue-signaling scam. I wish Harvard would stick to educating the elite as measured, eg, by test scores.

Apparently Mr. Miah buys the charade. He truly believes that Claudine Gay represents progress in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in some meaningful way. And this despite Ms. Gay being woefully unqualified to be a college president at all, especially at Harvard. Let me count the ways.

The main job of a college president--especially at a private school--is to raise money. This can be done by soliciting donations, recruiting tuition-paying students, scamming the federal Student Loan program, recruiting students from petrostates who pay full, unsubsidized rates, etc. A president who can't meet fundraising expectations will not be long employed. Ms. Gay has 1) deeply alienated a large group of donors, who have vowed to never give Harvard another penny as long as she's in office, and 2) presided over a 17% drop in applications for early admission.

Any president of any skin color would be gone if they'd failed so miserably. (At my former campus, when the admissions' office failed to recruit enough students for the Fall semester, the president was unceremoniously fired.)

Then she got caught plagiarizing. Personally, I don't think this is such a big deal, and if one fires all college faculty who ever plagiarized anything, you probably wouldn't have many faculty left. Beyond which, with so much written on the web, it's hard to distinguish between purposeful plagiarism and coincidence.

But Harvard, in particular, makes a big, huge deal about plagiarism, and having its president caught in the act is embarrassing. Though I think this is more an excuse to fire her than an actual cause.

Finally, Ms. Gay is not much of a scholar. She has published only 11 papers and not a single book. No white male would get a job at Harvard even as janitor with such a weak publication record. She is not qualified to serve on the Harvard faculty.

Mr. Miah will claim this is just a plot against Black women, or an exercise in "white supremacy." Of course he's wrong. There are plenty of Black college presidents, and many of them successful on the measures I've just outlined. Let me mention Shirley Ann Jackson, first African-American woman to earn a doctorate from MIT, who served as president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 1999 to 2022. "Jackson has helped raise over $1 billion in donations for philanthropic causes." Ms. Jackson was frequently criticized, mostly for being the highest paid college president in the country. But nobody ever accused her of being a diversity hire.

Beyond issues posed by President Gay, there are some issues in higher education generally. In Mr. Miah's telling, these are all the result of perfidious attacks by a certain Christopher Rufo. He writes (quoting Mr. Rufo),

The far right is open about its objectives. Christopher F. Rufo, the leader of the racist mob that chased after Gay, said:
“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right,” he stated on X — formerly Twitter — on Dec. 19. “The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.”
This is a replication of his earlier campaigns to turn “critical race theory” (CRT) and “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs (DEI) into dog whistles for the reactionary Republican voting bloc.

Mr. Miah is generous with the insults. In particular, I wonder why everybody who disagrees with him is automatically a "racist?" Surely there are other, more important, issues facing higher ed than "racism," eg, money and mission. I don't know what a "dog whistle" is. Whatever it is, Mr. Miah's ears are much more finely attuned than mine--or any dog's.

Then it's not just Harvard that has a problem with “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The purpose of higher ed is to give its students a leg up on life--to make them better qualified for employment and to earn them more money and a higher status. Thus higher ed is all about maximizing inequity, that is separating their graduates from the hoi polloi. This seems built into the very nature of the enterprise, and not because of anything Mr. Rufo does.

Higher ed is as much or more about status transfer as wealth transfer. Wealth is easy--everybody can get rich at the same time. If Mr. Miah learns how to build a better mousetrap, then not only will he make more money, but I, a consumer, will benefit from having better mousetraps.

Status, on the other hand, is a zero-sum game. My status can't go up without Mr. Miah's status going down, and vice versa. It's ultimately a pecking order. When universities try to transfer status from one group to another, they're definitely gonna get pushback from those whose status is going down. For whatever reason--Mr. Miah probably knows why better than I do--higher ed today is all-in on raising the status of Black and gay people, and then to a much lesser extent, women. People who are not included (blue-collar folks, Asians, Jews) needless to say feel dissed. It's finally reached a boiling point; Blacks and gays have way higher status in higher ed than any other group.

This isn't the fault of Christopher Rufo.

So I don't know why Mr. Miah champions higher ed. It is probably the most reactionary institution in America today. Diversity, equity and inclusion are precisely not on higher education's agenda--and they never can be.

Further Reading:

Tuesday, December 19, 2023

The UAW Strike

United Auto Workers Local 551 members rally at Chicago union hall Oct. 7. Watched by millions, UAW strikers fought to win back concessions given to Big Three bosses in 2007.
(Figure & Caption Source; MILITANT/SALM KOLIS)

James Dennis Hoff, CUNY English professor and prominent contributor to Left Voice, writes an extended think piece entitled The UAW Won Big: What Does It Mean for the U.S. Labor Movement?. (It's dated Nov. 12th, before the proposed contract was ratified.) He nicely summarizes the outcome (links in original).

Though UAW members are still debating and voting on the tentative agreements, and though they did not win everything they aimed to (in fact, as the recent no vote at the Flint Michigan plant shows, they probably could have won more if the rank and file had been in the lead), this is nonetheless a victory for the auto workers. The gains in these proposed contracts are substantial, and represent a significant restoration of the concessions on wages and benefits made to the Big Three over the last 15 years. Not only did the union manage to secure wage increases of 25 percent across the life of the contract, with 11 percent in the first year and a $5,000 signing bonus; they also took significant steps toward the elimination of wage tiers at all three automakers and managed to win back cost of living adjustments that will protect those wages against inflation going forward.

Professor Hoff is correct--the outcome is a victory for the union. The 25% pay raise is over the 4½ year life of the contract. Adding in the cost-of-living adjustments, this is probably close to the 40% that the union was originally asking for. In addition, "...the union was able to use the strike to force all three auto companies to make big investments in new manufacturing and to secure pathways toward unionizing electric vehicle (EV) and battery plants that will help protect jobs and wages as the industry transitions to EV production."

So what could go wrong? First, the contract assumes continuing inflation, absent which the companies will not be able to raise prices sufficiently to pay the new labor costs. But that doesn't seem to be panning out. While services (eg, airline fares, restaurant meals) costs are continuing to climb, goods costs are now shrinking, specifically "... appliances, furniture, used cars and other goods" are getting cheaper. Walmart reports deflation on many items in its stores:

Deflation in some items is creating a new dynamic for Walmart, [CEO Doug] McMillon said. In general merchandise, the category that includes electronics, toys and other nonfood items, prices have dropped by about 5% compared with a year ago, he said.

What happens if new car prices start going down? Are the workers gonna take a pay cut, ie, the opposite of COLA? Of course not--it will all come out of the margin. The companies will be forced to cut costs, lay off employees, and at least temporarily close factories.

Second, there is the problem of electric vehicles (EVs). While the sales of EVs are still increasing, the rate of increase is far below what was anticipated. Accordingly, "General Motors will be slowing its electric car (EV) production in North America due to lower-than-forecast demand, pushing its manufacturing targets well into 2025. The decision saves the company $1.5 billion next year..."

I think the problem with EVs is that they simply don't work. The technology is not ready for prime time. And as Trump has pointed out, most EV production will take place in China. The big cost for EVs is not in the assembly, but rather in mining the myriad raw materials (lithium, copper, nickel, rare-earth metals, etc.) China has a huge head start on that and can do that much cheaper than we can. The promises made to the union about future EV production will not happen.

The reason for the union's victory was not primarily because of militancy, but more because of an endemic labor shortage, especially for the skilled trades. Professor Hoff doesn't realize that--he somehow thinks the unionists will get paid above the market rate. I doubt that's true, and if that is true then union members will gradually be laid off and assembly plants will move to non-union states or to Mexico.

Professor Hoff has, for a Marxist, a very strange suggestion for the union. The union would be much better served if they (emphasis mine)

...insist that strikes like these be led from below by strike committees in each workplace, where decisions about where and when and how to strike are openly debated and discussed and that the negotiations be public and open to all members throughout the bargaining process.

Leaders, in his view, should do no more than organize meetings and make sure everything is transparent and open. Negotiating in good faith (which means keeping some things confidential) should not be allowed. In a word, the union should be governed by the mob--not by any elected, competent and accountable leadership.

Anarchists champion from below organizations, and they're spectacularly unsuccessful. Leninists reject that approach, advocating instead guidance from a vanguard Party with the expertise and experience necessary to lead the working class to victory. Professor Hoff weirdly sides with the anarchists here, rejecting his self-proclaimed Leninism.

The Militant posts a recent article (by Terry Evans) entitled UAW members debate, vote up contract, more fights to come. The piece makes many of the same points as Professor Hoff, albeit with a different emphasis. Mr. Evans' summary post-mortem includes this,

The fight was watched closely by millions of workers who also face falling real wages and worsening conditions from past concessions to the bosses and today’s deepening capitalist crisis.
There is no question workers won some important gains. And most came away feeling the union was stronger, better prepared to fight.

The Militant's main quibble with the outcome of the strike concerned pensions (an issue mentioned only in passing by Professor Hoff). After noting that workers hired before 2007 will still receive defined benefit pensions (albeit with only a 9.8% raise in monthly benefits), others face a supposedly bleaker future.

The situation facing workers who got jobs after 2007 is far worse. “We don’t have pensions or health care when we retire,” Randolph said. These workers get an inferior 401(k) plan, as do all new hires. “Pensions and post-retirement health care were a huge topic,” newly elected President Katie Deatherage of Local 2250 at GM’s plant in Wentzville, Missouri, told the press. She said 70% to 75% of workers there were hired after 2007. Workers voted the contract down.

It's not at all certain that the 401(k) plan is inferior--it depends on how carefully and successfully it is invested. The problem with defined benefit packages is they have an unfortunate tendency to go bankrupt--that's because both union officials and company execs are happy to promise hopelessly unrealistic benefits, knowing that the bills won't come due for decades, long after they've left office. The 401(k) may seem chintzy by comparison, but they are far less risky, and workers are much less likely to lose everything.

One last point: all my Trotskyist friends are mad at the billionaires and millionaires, with Professor Hoff commenting favorably on UAW chief Shawn Fain's sentiment:

Through a regular and concerted denouncement of the super rich, including the CEOs and executives of the Big Three, Fain and the UAW were able to call attention to the ways in which the assaults on the living standards and well being of auto workers were part of a larger assault on working people everywhere ...

Of course it's all wrong--the so-called billionaires take nothing away from either Mr. Fain or Professor Hoff. Without billionaires there would be no millionaires, and without millionaires there wouldn't be anybody who could afford a $60,000 F-150 pickup truck. Without billionaires the UAW would be out of business altogether.

My Trotskyist friends don't even like Mary Barra, CEO of GM. According to this site she earned $34.1 million in 2022. That sounds like a lot of money! OK--it is a lot of money! But divvy it up among GM's 167,000 employees it comes to $201 per employee. So that's a nice Christmas bonus, but frankly, in the grand scheme of things, it's small change.

The UAW strike was successful mainly because of the on-going labor shortage, especially of skilled workers. It's possible the union has priced themselves too high (if inflation doesn't materialize), in which case UAW membership will shrink below it's already record low enrollment.

Further Reading:

Saturday, December 16, 2023

Left Voice and the Intifada

(Source)

Left Voice author Nathaniel Flakin tells us that intifada is a soft and cuddly teddy-bear term. He writes, in an article entitled No, Intifada Does Not Mean Genocide Against Jews,

The term “Intifada” has nothing to do with killing Jews. Rather, it is an Arabic word meaning roughly “shaking off.” The term was used for the first Palestinian uprising that began on December 9, 1987. This first Intifada was defined by mass resistance: demonstrations, strikes, and organizing across the occupied territories. This struggle forced Israel to make some concessions — at least on paper — that led to the Oslo Peace Accords.

Of course it has nothing to do with genocide, except for a few examples such as

This eventually led to a second Intifada, which began on September 28, 2000 after yet another provocation by a far-right Israeli government. This uprising again consisted of mass protests — but this second intifada is when Palestinian groups began the tactic of suicide bombings on a wide scale.

Then, of course, there is the absurd non sequitur,

“Intifada” has been used for different popular uprisings across the Arab world. The people of Western Sahara, fighting against occupation by the U.S-backed monarchy in Morocco, also refer to their struggle as an “Intifada.” Socialists have always supported the Sahrawis against imperialism and Moroccan colonialism. Would Stefanik claim this is also a call for genocide against Jews?

He never gets around to mentioning the events of October 7th, when 1200 Jews were murdered and over 200 kidnapped as hostages. All, presumably, in the name of intifada.

The problem with Mr. Flakin's transparent evasions is that he doesn't get to define the word intifada. Today the word is defined for us by Hamas. And they are quite explicit--in both word and deed--that intifada does mean killing Jews. All of them. From the river to the sea. The term has nothing to do with some past, irrelevant conflict in Morocco, nor with an ancient dictionary definition of the word before Hamas got hold of it.

Anyone who champions intifada today advocates the mass murder of Jews. Why? Because that's what Hamas says the word means, and they get to define it. Not Mr. Flakin.

Mr. Flakin tries to let himself off the hook by claiming Hamas doesn't understand its own language.

In a similar way, the slogan “from the river to the sea” means that all people living in historical Palestine — Jews, Palestinians, and others — must enjoy equal democratic rights. It is not a call to end Jewish life on the territory. Rather, it is a call to end Apartheid.

When Hamas uses the phrase "from the river to the sea," they're not talking about "equal democratic rights." They want a Judenrein" Palestine--cleansed of Jews, who ideally will all be killed, or at very least driven into exile. This is as clear as daylight--that Mr. Flakin tries to twist their language into teddy bears and sunshine is despicably dishonest on his part.

Note Mr. Flakin's gratuitous use of the word "apartheid." This is just a swear word--there is no serious reason why Israel is like South Africa of the 1970s. A more apt analogy is Rwanda in the 1990s.

Rwanda (along with Burundi, and neighboring parts of Congo and Uganda) is inhabited by two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. The former are a Bantu people, agriculturalists, who have lived in Central Africa for millennia. The latter are of Hamitic ancestry (often considered racially distinct) who migrated to Rwanda beginning in the 14th Century. The Tutsis are pastoralists--famous for Ankole cattle. Like most pastoral people, the Tutsi are known for their military prowess, and despite being a minority soon came to dominate political life in Rwanda.

The Hutu--especially Hutu militants--regarded the Tutsi as "colonizers," which is the language that Mr. Flakin uses to describe Israeli Jews. And of course we know what happened to said "colonizers"--there was an attempt at a final solution, resulting in the deaths of up to 800,000 people.

The Hutu militants were eventually defeated and fled to neighboring Congo. There lived a Tutsi tribe known as the Banyamulenge--who had long been denied citizenship because of their immigration status, having arrived in the Congo only in the 17th Century. The Banyamulenge--afraid of being slaughtered--formed the corps of an army led by Laurent Kabila that eventually overthrew the Mobutu regime in 1997. That same conflict--a war of all against all, or kill our neighbors before they kill us, resulted in the Second Congolese war that did kill a lot of people--more than five million. (An excellent book about the Congo wars is here.)

This is the promise that Hamas holds for the Palestinians. And people who support Hamas are aptly dubbed génocidaires, named after the Hutu mobs responsible for the genocide.

Mr. Flakin, all of his comrades in Left Voice, and most of the progressive wing of the Democrat Party are génocidaires. The cowardly and clueless college presidents are at very least apologists for génocidaires, if not génocidaires themselves.

Of course génocidaires accuse Israel of committing genocide--what else would you expect them to say? There is an asymmetry between Hamas and Israel. Hamas explicitly in word and deed aspires to commit genocide, but they don't yet have the means to carry out the act. Israel is now fighting what it sees as an existential war for survival, to prevent Hamas from ever acquiring such means.

On the other hand, Israel has the means available to wipe out the entire population of Gaza. They have nuclear weapons for heavens' sake--they could kill all 2.3 million Palestinians in about 10 minutes. Or almost as bad, they could drive the entire population across the border into Egypt in about half a day--wouldn't take long. Yet here we are--two months into the war--and Israel has only killed 18,000 Palestinians, many of them not civilians but Hamas soldiers. That's less than 1% of the Palestinian population!

It's obvious that, despite having the means, Israel does not aspire to kill Palestinian civilians. Indeed, it is to their obvious political advantage to minimize civilian deaths as much as possible. Israel is not committing genocide. Civilian deaths in Gaza are war casualties. That's still bad, but it's not genocide.

The génocidaires think they are fighting for the Palestinian people. I don't get it. I don't understand how murdering ten million Jews is going to improve the lives of Palestinians.

The Militant reports that an Israeli, Ariana Pinsker-Lehrer, studying at Columbia University, spoke to a Palestinian Rights rally at that school.

Pinsker-Lehrer has been active inside Israel in support of Palestinian rights. “I want Israel to be a better country,” she noted, but “you guys think that you have some right to decide whether Israel has a right to exist or not.”
“There are 14 million people ‘between the river and the sea,’” she said, referring to the Jews, Muslims, Christians and others who live in Israel and the Palestinian territories, “and none of them are going anywhere. We need to find a solution that involves all of them and that is not what you are doing.”

She is not a génocidaire. Neither am I, but she has way more courage than I do.

Further Reading: