Late Capitalism Sucks!
That's a not very accurate summary of Branko Milanovic's short, dense book Capitalism Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World.
To begin, Mr. Milanovic will disagree with the adjective. There's nothing "late" about capitalism, for it is nowhere near extinction. Indeed, arguably it is just coming into its own. All its competitors have been vanquished. Socialism--whatever its theoretical and occasional popular appeal--simply cannot provide a quality standard of living for most people. The end of capitalism, should it ever come about, will not auger a brighter future, but instead the end of civilization. Think Venezuela.
Mr. Milanovic puts great stock on Gini coefficients--numbers that measure the degree of inequality in a society--with zero representing perfect equality of income and/or wealth, and one hundred (perfect inequality) implying that a single person has all the income/wealth, while everybody else has nothing. South Africa has the world's highest Gini value (63.0). The USA comes in at 41.5. The Nordic countries are at the low end, ranging from 26 to 29 (data from Wikipedia).
Mr. Milanovic includes a chart of global Gini coefficients from 1820 to the present. With slight fluctuations inequality has increased from 55 in 1820 to about 75 just after World War II. Mr. Milanovic attributes this to rapid industrialization in the West, coupled with stagnation in the East. Since the war, however, the global Gini has declined, and quite significantly since 2000, mostly because of dramatically higher incomes in China. As of 2018 it stands at about 65.
The first half of the book fairly bristles with Gini coefficients. I never thought them very important--to me the value of capitalism is rising absolute incomes, and not significantly diminished by income inequality. There is no doubt that absolute incomes for most of the world's people have increased dramatically over the past few decades, so enough said. Who cares if Warren Buffett is rich.
But Mr. Milanovic partially changes my mind. No doubt it is true that absolute incomes go up--and that's the true value of capitalism--that's why we want to keep it. But the risk to capitalism stems from a lingering sense of unfairness. The suckiness derives not from the wealth that it obviously generates, but instead from its unequal distribution.
So the question then becomes how to lower Gini coefficients. The book offers no good suggestions, and puts paid to commonly proposed solutions. For example, social democracy only works when there is sufficient solidarity such that all members of society are willing to contribute to a common pool. That breaks down if the rich, young, or healthy refuse to pay for public insurance, or if one ethnic group resents payments to another. Globalization weakens social democracy because labor and capital are separated--capital comes from country A, labor is performed in country B, while the consumer lives in country C.
Mr. Milanovic cites the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev who distinguished two models for history: Athens vs. Jerusalem. In the Athenian model, history is just repeated variations, or perhaps only random chance. There is no larger progression. The Jerusalem model, on the other hand, sees progress in history--perhaps even a teleological purpose.
Within the Jerusalem framework, Mr. Milanovic describes two possible models of progress. One is the Whiggish view that capitalism will simply get better and better, and we'll all get richer and richer. Francis Fukuyama's excellent little book, The End of History and the Last Man, is among the best examples of this genre. Modern journalists often reflect the view with statements like "no two countries which both have a McDonald's franchise will ever go to war," or, perhaps, the ubiquitous, pre-Trump assumption that China would eventually take its place in the law-abiding, international community.
The Trump phenomenon puts paid to any simplistic Whig view. More importantly, Whiggery was ruined by 1914. That cataclysmic collapse of the capitalist world order should never have happened.
Opposing the Whigs are the Marxists, for whom capitalism is merely a steppingstone on the way to socialism or communism. For them, capitalism is beset with irresolvable crises and contradictions that will eventually lead to its downfall. Marxists have no difficulty explaining 1914.
The problem for them, however, comes in 1989, when the workers' states in Russia and Eastern Europe moved backwards--from some form of socialism to capitalism. The transition was most dramatic in China where Deng Xiao Ping led a dramatic counter-revolution. Marxism can't explain that, and it is a problem that my Trotskyist friends struggle with to this very day.
I'm not sure if Mr. Milanovic gives a satisfying account for 1914, but he's got 1989 down pat. He agrees that various communist parties led successful revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, etc. These accomplished two important things: they abolished feudalism, and they threw out the colonial powers. But after that the Communists were like the dog that caught the car: they had no idea what to do with their success. But they'd cleared the way for the development of true capitalism in their countries--and that is what happened in every case.
So Mr. Milanovic puts the Bolshevik revolutions not as a step toward a post-capitalist world, but rather as laying the groundwork for a thriving, capitalist economy. The most successful revolution--which tore up feudalism root and branch--was in China, and is today the most successful capitalist country in the developing world. Compare, e.g., to India, where feudalism was only partially removed, and where capitalism remains stunted.
Mr. Milanovic offers another dichotomy--that between liberal, democratic capitalism and political capitalism. In the former, while the state remains a servant of the bourgeoisie, it retains an independent existence. The state serves as the guarantor of fairness, and hence ensures the survival of the capitalism itself. Liberal democratic societies have a rule of law, a free press, an independent judiciary, and democratic institutions--along with a fixation on Gini coefficients. Governance is messy, inefficient, and occasionally completely dysfunctional, but the theory goes that long-term, liberal democratic capitalism is the best possible outcome.
In political capitalism, on the other hand, capitalism survives only at the sufferance of the state or the Party. The social contract is that the Party will ensure an ever improving standard of living as long as all political power remains with the Party. China is the archetype for this system, but other examples are Russia, Vietnam, and Singapore. Political capitalism sounds to me a whole lot like fascism.
Political capitalism is vastly more efficient than its liberal neighbors, but it is much more brittle. It's not clear if China can survive a serious recession. Because the very goal is to serve the Party, there is no rule of law, corruption is endemic, and human rights are honored only in the breach. (Singapore looks to be an exception.)
Indeed, corruption is feature rather than a bug--it's how the Party bureaucrats cash in on the wealth created by the bourgeoisie. But they can't engage in too much conspicuous consumption at home--that's why much of their wealth has to be stashed abroad. Hence the houses in Vancouver and New York, the yachts in Miami and Brisbane, and the children attending Harvard and Stanford. Seen in this light, Hong Kong is more important to the Chinese Communist Party than they let on--it is the window by which they can launder their money and get it out of the country. The US threat to withdraw Hong Kong's special financial status is a direct threat to the Party.
There are a lot of ideas in this book--I've barely scratched the surface. I've read parts of it twice and yet am still missing bits. I need to read the whole thing again. As said, it's a very dense book, but it definitely rewards the effort.
Further Reading:
NOTE: Because of some health issues, blogging is likely going to be on the light side for the next few months.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Returning to Industry?
The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)) is launching a drive to sell a "new" book entitled Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party. It's mostly reprint of an older book first published in 1981 under the title The Changing Face of US Politics, which I reviewed here.
Along with three older pieces from The Militant, the only new content is an introduction by Jack Barnes, which you can read in The Militant here. Since I've read and reviewed the original book (albeit six years ago), this post is only about the new introduction.
The opening paragraphs include this:
The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party is about the working-class program, composition, and course of conduct of the only kind of party worthy of the name “revolutionary” in the imperialist epoch. ...The comrades have set a goal to sell over 1000 copies of this book, mostly by going door to door in working class neighborhoods. This seems truly bizarre to me. Perhaps the book is a useful read for comrades and ex-comrades, but it is certainly not a worthy propaganda tool. (Propaganda is the Trotskyist term of art for advertising.) A person loosely attracted to socialism is not even going to find the book readable, much less enlightening. It's all about an esoteric, internal squabble within the Party.
This book is about building such a party in the United States and in other capitalist countries around the world. It is about the course the Socialist Workers Party and its predecessors have followed for one hundred years and counting.
It looks like they are not trying to recruit the masses. They want to find those few individuals who actually read the book and are moved by it. There won't be many (likely none), but those people will join the SWP.
The book is horribly out of date. To begin, the proletariat doesn't even exist anymore--certainly not as Marx and Lenin imagined it. For them, "workers" were an amorphous blob of unskilled labor who had nothing to sell besides their time and muscle power. Today that hardly applies: muscle power is nearly irrelevant, and unskilled labor has a small and ever-shrinking purchase in the market place. Today's employees have skills, which means they have invested in human capital, and accordingly they have something big to lose in a revolution.
The proletariat doesn't even look the same as it did in 1981, as the pictures accompanying Mr. Barnes' introduction reveal. An example is this:
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| Above, miners hold national protest in Washington, D.C., March 1981, a few weeks before 160,000 began 10-week strike, turning back concession contract demanded by mine bosses. (Picture & Caption credit: The Militant) |
It's the same story for other industrial unions: UAW, USWA, Teamsters, etc. Manufacturing only accounts for about 12% of US employment. That share is shrinking rapidly because of automation. Because of globalization, supply chains extend around the world. The ability of any American union to shut down production is negligible.
The recent GM strike is an example. The UAW was out for four weeks, and eventually settled for a very mediocre contract. Supposedly it hurt GM, but there was never any shortage of cars in American showrooms. Consumers didn't feel the strike at all. The only thing that might have happened is GM, along with its employees, lost market share to their competitors.
Unlike the days of Marx & Lenin, or even the 1980s, the industrial unions are a shadow of their former selves. The SWP acknowledges that: today they work at Walmart and for Uber (insofar as they're not retired).
Mr. Barnes will accuse me of denying the importance of the class struggle.
Denial of the class struggle is nothing new. There are more than enough grandparents to current “theories” about “identity politics,” “intersectionality,” and so on noisily propagated by young professionals and other upper middle class layers today. In 1940 James P. Cannon polemicized against petty bourgeois currents on the eve of World War II who “rail at our stick-in-the-mud attitude toward the fundamental concepts of Marxism — the class theory of the state, the class criterion in the appraisal of all political questions, the conception of politics, including war, as the expression of class interests, and so forth and so on.There is much to credit in this paragraph. The Party has firmly rejected "petty bourgeois" campus movements. They truly defend the "deplorables," and as much as they disagree with Trump, they argue rightly that the people who voted for him deserve to have their choice respected. They see impeachment for the sham that it is (only a slight exaggeration to call it a CIA plot). They've sided with Gibson's Bakery against the spoiled brats who attend Oberlin College, along with the kooky faculty who really should know better.
As important, they are sane on the issue of climate change. The rest of the "petty bourgeois" left has gone all in on catastrophism. The Militant, while acknowledging there might be a problem (which even I acknowledge), nevertheless rejects the total and immediate destruction of all civilization as a cure. A ludicrously extreme version of this can be found on the new Socialist Resurgence website. When so-called Marxists argue seriously for a return to subsistence farming and mass poverty, then you know something has gone horribly wrong. The Militant has not fallen into this trap.
But--even if you don't like the word intersectionality--the world really has gotten a lot more complicated. If nothing else, the global working class is much richer than they were 40 or 200 years ago. Rich people are not inclined to throw it all away on the unlikely chance Mr. Barnes is right about world history. Rich people can invest themselves in other ways besides their jobs: family, hobbies, church, sports, etc. They don't define themselves primarily as workers. As Paul Le Blanc puts it, organizing the working class today is very much like herding cats. Most workers just won't be interested in a class-conscious message.
Which brings us back to the propaganda campaign. Mr. Barnes writes (emphasis mine):
SWP members, supporters, and young socialists support picket lines, knock on doors, and stand on porches to talk with working people in cities, towns, and farm country, as we carry out such activity on the job and in the unions.Standing on porches works for bourgeois politicians. All they want from you is that you go vote in November. It's an easy ask that can convincingly be made from the front porch.
But that's not what the SWP wants. They want to change your life. They ask that you stop whatever you're doing and become a revolutionary socialist worker-Bolshevik. Ain't gonna happen just by standing on somebody's porch. For that kind of ask you need to really get to know somebody: babysit their kids, marry their daughter, root for the same football team, etc.
And this is where the Party made a huge mistake. By forcing comrades to move around every couple of years, they actively prevented them from making those strong connections. And this is why the original Turn to Industry never worked, and why selling a few books that nobody is gonna read won't work either.
Further Reading:
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Comrade Keith L. Writes About China
Comrade Keith L., then part of Socialist Action (SA), contributed a monograph entitled China: A New Imperial Power (pdf) to the 2016 pre-convention discussion bulletin. It is now among the founding documents of the new Socialist Resurgence group.
Consider, for example, Amazon, which is certainly a big company (on some days the world's biggest company by market cap). But it isn't a monopoly in any of its businesses. The retail trade is so competitive that Amazon can barely break even--basically no profit at all. Its cloud computing service, AWS, is profitable, but has to compete aggressively against Microsoft, IBM, Google, and recently, Apple. Amazon Prime is in entertainment, competing against Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney, and now Apple wants to enter that market, too. Whatever else Amazon is, it's not a monopoly.
Comrade Keith conflates "monopoly" with "big." He writes,
Similarly, the US has no "financial oligarchy." I assume that means a group of people who could, for example, set interest rates above the market rate. But it's obvious that no US financial institution can set interest rates--probably not even the Federal Reserve. The fluidity of the system is surely one reason why interest rates remain near all time lows (much to the chagrin of any incipient "oligarchy").
If not even the US is "imperialist," then why does Comrade Keith spend 83 pages trying to convince us that "imperialist" is something more than an epithet? The reason lies deep in the DNA of Marxism--Trotskyists need to explain why successful revolutions in the USSR, China, and elsewhere backslid to restore capitalist social relations. And further, this happened gradually without any violent counter-revolution. Now--only 28 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union--Socialist Action and Socialist Resurgence have finally come to terms with this course of events that wasn't supposed to happen.
Per Lenin, an "imperialist" country has to export capital, and China has been doing that at scale. China has accumulated, as of 2016, nearly $1.4 trillion in foreign direct investment, i.e., direct investment by China into businesses in other countries, ranking the country fifth in the world. (See Figure 8 on p. 25.)
China has been investing heavily in African ports, railroads and mining ventures, which makes sense since China is a natural-resource-poor country. In return for importing raw materials, China exported high-end manufactured products. Accordingly, China had a $38 billion trade surplus with Sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 (Figure 12 on p. 38).
They don't treat their African workers well. Comrade Keith quotes one of his sources (p. 32) at length, including this excerpt.
The point is that RMB debt is funny-money. There is no transparency: China can simply write off RMB debts, or print money to pay for them, or just shoot people who complain about not getting paid back. As a mercantilist economy they don't care about making a profit. They only care about earning hard currency (USD) from the export of manufactured products, net of hard currency expenses spent in Africa acquiring the raw materials. Spending funny-money for those resources is not a problem (though there is a cost in Chinese living standards).
So Tanzania and Zambia, etc., may not be getting such a raw deal. Their actual dollar debt is probably much smaller than what the headline number suggests. The funny-money default will only count against them with respect to China--the rest of the world will ignore it and their credit rating will be unaffected.
Comrade Keith devotes considerable attention to the size and state of the Chinese military, detailing technical advances in the land, air and sea forces. China's annual defense spending is approximately one fourth that of the US--still a hefty sum. The country built its first foreign military base in Djibouti, along with a chain of ports (in Burma, Pakistan and Tanzania, among others) that could easily become military bases. Collectively these are part of the One Belt, One Road system.
Keith suggests that military force could be used to enforce debt repayment from countries like Zambia. This is not likely--not even the US would try to use military force just to enforce debts. The problem with roads, power plants, and mining infrastructure is they can't be repossessed. If Zambia can't repay, then China is plum out of luck. Unlike the US, they have no control over the international banking system.
I think Keith exaggerates China's current military strength. Yes--they are a force to be reckoned with in the South China Sea. But they do not have a blue water navy, and are nowhere close to acquiring one. Their geography--a continental country separated from the larger ocean by island archipelagos, mitigates against it. In the Indian Ocean they are no match for the Indian navy, and they have no power necessary to keep the Straits of Hormuz open should the US decide not to do that for them. I base my opinion on Peter Zeihan's books.
As mentioned, Comrade Keith describes at great length the miserable way that Chinese companies treat their African workforce. I have no cause to disbelieve him--and this alone is reason to read his article. China's foul behavior is attributed to "imperialism" (my emphasis).
So the first couple of pages of Comrade Keith's opus are all about "imperialism." But after that you can just ignore the word. Then it's a rollicking good read, You will learn a whole lot about China. Highly recommended!
Further Reading:
It's 83 pages long! And I read all of it, not because I had to, but because it really is fascinating. It is chock full of facts and statistics about the Chinese economy, along with interesting figures and maps. Comrade Keith is a good writer, and--at least if you like statistics--it's an enjoyable read. It is exhaustively researched, and while I can't vouch for total accuracy, what data I did double-check survived the experience. Comrade Keith definitely knows his China!
Were he an academic, this is a monograph that could earn him tenure. It's a pity that he writes for such a small, insignificant audience. (Like I should talk--what with my obsession over small, Trotskyist grouplets!)
While the piece can and should be profitably read just to learn about China, Comrade Keith has a larger agenda. He wants to demonstrate to his comrades that China is an "imperialist" power. For me this raises two problems. First, I don't think the word "imperialism" actually means anything. And second, if it does mean what you might think it means, then it's obvious that China is "imperialist," and no 83 page argument is necessary.
To define imperialism, Keith goes back to the original source, namely Lenin's 1916 work, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. It's a five-point test: 1) monopolies play a decisive role in economic life; 2) the creation of "finance capital" and a financial oligarchy; 3) the export of of capital, in addition to the export of commodities; 4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations; and 5) the territorial division of the world into capitalist spheres of influence.
By this definition not even the United States is imperialist, failing to one degree or another on all five counts, most notably on the formation of monopolies. There is no major industry in the US that is dominated by a monopolist.
By this definition not even the United States is imperialist, failing to one degree or another on all five counts, most notably on the formation of monopolies. There is no major industry in the US that is dominated by a monopolist.
Consider, for example, Amazon, which is certainly a big company (on some days the world's biggest company by market cap). But it isn't a monopoly in any of its businesses. The retail trade is so competitive that Amazon can barely break even--basically no profit at all. Its cloud computing service, AWS, is profitable, but has to compete aggressively against Microsoft, IBM, Google, and recently, Apple. Amazon Prime is in entertainment, competing against Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney, and now Apple wants to enter that market, too. Whatever else Amazon is, it's not a monopoly.
Comrade Keith conflates "monopoly" with "big." He writes,
One useful measurement for determining the presence of monopoly companies is the Fortune 500 Global list, which lists the 500 largest companies in the world by revenue. How then, do China and other leading imperial powers compare on this metric?After which he presents data in Figure 3 (p. 19) showing that China had 109 companies in the global Fortune 500 in 2017. Which only proves that China has big companies (like Amazon), not that they're monopolies. "Big" and "monopoly" are not the same thing. (China may have monopolies. I don't know, and Keith never makes the case.)
Similarly, the US has no "financial oligarchy." I assume that means a group of people who could, for example, set interest rates above the market rate. But it's obvious that no US financial institution can set interest rates--probably not even the Federal Reserve. The fluidity of the system is surely one reason why interest rates remain near all time lows (much to the chagrin of any incipient "oligarchy").
If not even the US is "imperialist," then why does Comrade Keith spend 83 pages trying to convince us that "imperialist" is something more than an epithet? The reason lies deep in the DNA of Marxism--Trotskyists need to explain why successful revolutions in the USSR, China, and elsewhere backslid to restore capitalist social relations. And further, this happened gradually without any violent counter-revolution. Now--only 28 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union--Socialist Action and Socialist Resurgence have finally come to terms with this course of events that wasn't supposed to happen.
Per Lenin, an "imperialist" country has to export capital, and China has been doing that at scale. China has accumulated, as of 2016, nearly $1.4 trillion in foreign direct investment, i.e., direct investment by China into businesses in other countries, ranking the country fifth in the world. (See Figure 8 on p. 25.)
China has been investing heavily in African ports, railroads and mining ventures, which makes sense since China is a natural-resource-poor country. In return for importing raw materials, China exported high-end manufactured products. Accordingly, China had a $38 billion trade surplus with Sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 (Figure 12 on p. 38).
They don't treat their African workers well. Comrade Keith quotes one of his sources (p. 32) at length, including this excerpt.
Chinese employers tend to be amongst the lowest paying in Africa when compared with other companies in the same sector. In Zambia, for example, the Chinese copper mine paid its workers 30% less than other copper mines in the country. In general, Chinese companies do not grant African workers any meaningful benefits and in some instances ignore even those that are prescribed by law. Wages above the national average were only found at those Chinese companies with a strong trade union presence. Chinese staff members enjoy significantly higher wages and more benefits than their African counterparts.So here is my question--and I don't know the answer. What fraction of Chinese loans to a country like Zambia are denominated in RMB (the Chinese currency)? Obviously a lot of it is: Chinese employees on African work sites are likely paid in RMB, as are the costs of materials imported from China. The cost of consumer products sent to Africa are also probably denominated in RMB. On the other hand, salaries, rents and bribes paid to African employees, landlords and politicians must be paid in a hard currency. Which is surely one reason why China is so chintzy on the wages and working conditions.
The point is that RMB debt is funny-money. There is no transparency: China can simply write off RMB debts, or print money to pay for them, or just shoot people who complain about not getting paid back. As a mercantilist economy they don't care about making a profit. They only care about earning hard currency (USD) from the export of manufactured products, net of hard currency expenses spent in Africa acquiring the raw materials. Spending funny-money for those resources is not a problem (though there is a cost in Chinese living standards).
So Tanzania and Zambia, etc., may not be getting such a raw deal. Their actual dollar debt is probably much smaller than what the headline number suggests. The funny-money default will only count against them with respect to China--the rest of the world will ignore it and their credit rating will be unaffected.
Comrade Keith devotes considerable attention to the size and state of the Chinese military, detailing technical advances in the land, air and sea forces. China's annual defense spending is approximately one fourth that of the US--still a hefty sum. The country built its first foreign military base in Djibouti, along with a chain of ports (in Burma, Pakistan and Tanzania, among others) that could easily become military bases. Collectively these are part of the One Belt, One Road system.
Keith suggests that military force could be used to enforce debt repayment from countries like Zambia. This is not likely--not even the US would try to use military force just to enforce debts. The problem with roads, power plants, and mining infrastructure is they can't be repossessed. If Zambia can't repay, then China is plum out of luck. Unlike the US, they have no control over the international banking system.
I think Keith exaggerates China's current military strength. Yes--they are a force to be reckoned with in the South China Sea. But they do not have a blue water navy, and are nowhere close to acquiring one. Their geography--a continental country separated from the larger ocean by island archipelagos, mitigates against it. In the Indian Ocean they are no match for the Indian navy, and they have no power necessary to keep the Straits of Hormuz open should the US decide not to do that for them. I base my opinion on Peter Zeihan's books.
As mentioned, Comrade Keith describes at great length the miserable way that Chinese companies treat their African workforce. I have no cause to disbelieve him--and this alone is reason to read his article. China's foul behavior is attributed to "imperialism" (my emphasis).
The analysis of Tanzania, Namibia, and Ethiopia, as well as several integrated pieces of broader, continental-level analysis, attempt to show the broad trends, categories of interest, and serve as representative examples of Chinese imperialism in Africa. Broadly, it might be said that these primary interests fall into natural resource extraction, exporting of manufactured goods, capital export through infrastructure construction, offshoring of labor-intensive manufacturing, and utilizing Africa’s strategic position both in facilitating trade to and from Europe and in controlling the Indian Ocean. (p. 43)I think the word "imperialism" adds nothing to this paragraph. The problem isn't "Chinese imperialism," but instead it's just China. China is a big country, humiliated in the 19th Century, that views itself as the Middle Kingdom, and as the world's leading and most important society. It's a very inward-looking, xenophobic culture, and no wonder they treat Africans with complete disrespect, if not contempt.
So the first couple of pages of Comrade Keith's opus are all about "imperialism." But after that you can just ignore the word. Then it's a rollicking good read, You will learn a whole lot about China. Highly recommended!
Further Reading:
Monday, November 4, 2019
The New "Socialist Resurgence" Grouplet
Last week I discussed the split in Socialist Action (SA) from the point of view of the Majority Faction (MF). This week I'll consider the corresponding documents from the minority Permanent Revolution Faction, now reconstituted as an independent group named Socialist Resurgence (SR).
I promise to read these documents so that you don't have to. But in this case I failed. SR's Founding Document (pdf) is so dense that I couldn't get through all of it. Not that it's poorly written--I see Michael Schreiber's fingerprints all over it, and he is a good writer. It's just that you had to have been there--if you weren't privy to all the preceding arguments then it makes no sense. It's like reading through transcripts of a marriage counseling session for a couple about to get divorced.
It's really boring! Though I've read enough to have some things to say.
The name of the new grouplet, Socialist Resurgence, is a bit of a misnomer. Socialist Recrudescence would be more apt. If Socialist Action, a grouplet of about 100 worker-Bolsheviks, has failed to lead us to the post-revolutionary promised land, then it's hard to be optimistic about SR, which numbers about 40 comrades (if commenter John B is to be believed).
The split is about US military engagements abroad, notably in Syria.
Both SA and SR believe that the essential problem in Syria is something called "US Imperialism," though neither knows with any precision what that is. Where they disagree is with the characterization of Bashar al-Assad.
This is how SR describes SA's position:
I've addressed the issue myself, albeit in different terms, accusing SA of supporting any dictator--Putin, Assad, Maduro, Kim Jong Un--who for any reason opposes the United States. This puts them in bed with some really bad hombres, and renders them very unpopular among much of the American Left. For example, SA apparently believes that chemical weapons attacks blamed on al-Assad were really false flags. I'm not an expert on Syria, but I find false flag scenarios to be completely unconvincing. Too many people would have to be in on the conspiracy.
SR, by rejecting campism, gets away from the conspiracy theories, and is now able to pick and choose which dictators they want to support. That should make them more palatable to people they want to win over.
Of course they're both wrong. The Syrian conflict is only tangentially about "US Imperialism" (however poorly defined), as the US has no important strategic interest in the country. Obama's reluctance to enforce his humanitarian "red line" is proof enough, as is Trump's precipitous withdrawal of support for the Kurds.
The real problem in Syria is not "US Imperialism," but rather a sectarian/ethnic/religious conflict. The word "Alawite" is not mentioned in either SA's account of the split (discussed last week), nor in SR's Founding Document. This is truly bizarre. The Assad family are Alawites, a (heretical) Shi'ite sect comprising about 10% of the population, but which holds all important government and military posts.
Similar words--Christian, Druze, Kurd, and even Sunni--are not mentioned at all in SA's document. SR deigns to note the Syrian Sunni population only once.
And yet it is these ethnic distinctions that drive the whole conflict!
The reason SR gives for the massive destruction is ludicrous:
Recriminations within splitting groups are obviously personal and vicious (see aside below). This is no exception--they accuse each other of lying, acting in bad faith, being undemocratic, and not following the rules. In what might be called an Organizational Report (pdf), SR details their complaints against Comrade "Jeff M." (Jeff Mackler). I have no idea if what they say is true, but I will argue that it could be true, and for reasons that go beyond Mr. Mackler's turpitude.
Consider anti-Zionism. Narrowly interpreted this is a political opinion that can be held by honest people, e.g., the Szatmari Jews in Brooklyn. As I've said before, the Socialist Workers Party of my day was anti-Zionist is this sense.
But anti-Semites will also be anti-Zionist, albeit for disreputable reasons. So an anti-Zionist organization will attract not just honest, political anti-Zionists, but also true anti-Semites. Accordingly, SR accuses Mr. Mackler of collaborating with actual anti-Semites--which could be true. My opinion is, that by supporting Hamas, SA and SR have both crossed the Rubicon into true antisemitism. Mr. Mackler is just putting the icing on the cake.
The same problem holds for antiwar coalitions. The Trotskyist movement has long championed the united front, i.e, people who come together in support of a common cause, without necessarily agreeing on anything else. The classic, Trotskyist united front was the anti-Vietnam movement in the early 1970s, based on the simple slogan US Troops Out Now.
Similarly, the principal demand for today's United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) is Opposition to All US Wars and Interventions.
The problem with united fronts is they attract people with very different goals. Trotskyists, for example, opposed the US in Vietnam because we wanted the other side to win. Other people within the coalition were committed pacifists: they opposed any war and didn't want anybody to win. And yet others were classic liberals--the kind of folks who voted for Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. They just opposed the war in Indochina. Yet the united front demonstrations brought all of them together into one big march.
The problem with today's UNAC is that the tent has gotten too big. SA still wants al-Assad to win, and the pacifists are still pacific. But also, there is now a crew dedicated isolationists--people like Alex Jones of InfoWars, or even pundits like Pat Buchanan, who have opposed US involvement in every war since Korea. Then there are people who don't care about al-Assad, but really want Putin to win! SR, like Trump, just wants the US to withdraw--they don't seem to know who they want to actually win.
The dispute between SA and SR is about just how big the united front tent should be. SR accuses SA (and Jeff Mackler in particular) of collaborating with some truly unsavory people. Mr. Mackler's defense is that his people weren't initially aware of the unsavory types at the conference (in Russia), and never had anything to do with them.
A united front isn't stable. And Trotskyist organizations aren't stable, either. They tend to split apart.
An aside about splits:
The Dunbar Number is the maximum size of a human group based only on shared kinship or friendship--e.g., a group of hunter gatherers. Any group larger than that requires some institutional structure and bureaucracy in order to function. The size of the Dunbar number varies from 50 to 150, with the higher numbers only possible when there is an external threat--e.g., war with a neighboring group--that makes the big group advantageous. But the bigger the group, the more time they have to spend on "social grooming" in order to stay together.
It appears that Trotskyist grouplets rarely exceed the Dunbar number. Which means that, despite their elaborate constitutions and procedures, they only cohere because of personal friendships and reciprocity agreements. Once the group gets too big, or personal relations are in any way strained, the group splits into competing bands.
Dunbar groups are usually led by a chief who holds office by lifetime appointment, or until a younger man (they are always men) takes his place. Jack Barnes is boss of the Socialist Workers Party since 1972, while Jeff Mackler rules Socialist Action since 1983. This month we inaugurate the new leader of Socialist Resurgence, Michael Schreiber, who I predict will lead them for decades to come.
Anthropologists take note: Trotskyist grouplets are a good proxy for hunter-gather tribes, and probably a lot cheaper to study.
Further Reading:
The split is about US military engagements abroad, notably in Syria.
Both SA and SR believe that the essential problem in Syria is something called "US Imperialism," though neither knows with any precision what that is. Where they disagree is with the characterization of Bashar al-Assad.
- SA thinks he is an agent of resistance--a third world leader heroically defending his country from "US Imperialism." As such, he deserves to be defended and supported.
- SR thinks he is a cat's paw for "US Imperialism." That is, instead of being part of the solution, he is part of the problem. Al-Assad should be opposed by all good revolutionaries.
The world is polarized between two great forces or camps. One is U.S. imperialism, which is trying to actively foment regime change almost everywhere in the world. The other great force is an “Axis of Resistance,” anchored by Russia, and maybe China, and this alliance includes the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, and Syria, as well as organizations like ALBA. They implicitly and explicitly give political support to capitalist regimes.They refer to this as campism.
I've addressed the issue myself, albeit in different terms, accusing SA of supporting any dictator--Putin, Assad, Maduro, Kim Jong Un--who for any reason opposes the United States. This puts them in bed with some really bad hombres, and renders them very unpopular among much of the American Left. For example, SA apparently believes that chemical weapons attacks blamed on al-Assad were really false flags. I'm not an expert on Syria, but I find false flag scenarios to be completely unconvincing. Too many people would have to be in on the conspiracy.
SR, by rejecting campism, gets away from the conspiracy theories, and is now able to pick and choose which dictators they want to support. That should make them more palatable to people they want to win over.
Of course they're both wrong. The Syrian conflict is only tangentially about "US Imperialism" (however poorly defined), as the US has no important strategic interest in the country. Obama's reluctance to enforce his humanitarian "red line" is proof enough, as is Trump's precipitous withdrawal of support for the Kurds.
The real problem in Syria is not "US Imperialism," but rather a sectarian/ethnic/religious conflict. The word "Alawite" is not mentioned in either SA's account of the split (discussed last week), nor in SR's Founding Document. This is truly bizarre. The Assad family are Alawites, a (heretical) Shi'ite sect comprising about 10% of the population, but which holds all important government and military posts.
Similar words--Christian, Druze, Kurd, and even Sunni--are not mentioned at all in SA's document. SR deigns to note the Syrian Sunni population only once.
And yet it is these ethnic distinctions that drive the whole conflict!
The reason SR gives for the massive destruction is ludicrous:
Following the Russian bombing of neighborhoods and hospitals in support of the murderous Assad regime, Russian companies were granted billions of dollars in contracts to rebuild Damascus, Aleppo, and other devastated cities. The reconstruction efforts were part of Assad’s larger gentrification plan to clear the cities of the working poor and open up areas to international financial institutions.Ah yes! Russian bombing as an effort in urban renewal, as if Wall Street were eager to invest in Aleppo. Why not call it for what it is: ethnic cleansing. Neither of my Trotskyist friends have stumbled upon that term.
Recriminations within splitting groups are obviously personal and vicious (see aside below). This is no exception--they accuse each other of lying, acting in bad faith, being undemocratic, and not following the rules. In what might be called an Organizational Report (pdf), SR details their complaints against Comrade "Jeff M." (Jeff Mackler). I have no idea if what they say is true, but I will argue that it could be true, and for reasons that go beyond Mr. Mackler's turpitude.
Consider anti-Zionism. Narrowly interpreted this is a political opinion that can be held by honest people, e.g., the Szatmari Jews in Brooklyn. As I've said before, the Socialist Workers Party of my day was anti-Zionist is this sense.
But anti-Semites will also be anti-Zionist, albeit for disreputable reasons. So an anti-Zionist organization will attract not just honest, political anti-Zionists, but also true anti-Semites. Accordingly, SR accuses Mr. Mackler of collaborating with actual anti-Semites--which could be true. My opinion is, that by supporting Hamas, SA and SR have both crossed the Rubicon into true antisemitism. Mr. Mackler is just putting the icing on the cake.
The same problem holds for antiwar coalitions. The Trotskyist movement has long championed the united front, i.e, people who come together in support of a common cause, without necessarily agreeing on anything else. The classic, Trotskyist united front was the anti-Vietnam movement in the early 1970s, based on the simple slogan US Troops Out Now.
Similarly, the principal demand for today's United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) is Opposition to All US Wars and Interventions.
The problem with united fronts is they attract people with very different goals. Trotskyists, for example, opposed the US in Vietnam because we wanted the other side to win. Other people within the coalition were committed pacifists: they opposed any war and didn't want anybody to win. And yet others were classic liberals--the kind of folks who voted for Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. They just opposed the war in Indochina. Yet the united front demonstrations brought all of them together into one big march.
The problem with today's UNAC is that the tent has gotten too big. SA still wants al-Assad to win, and the pacifists are still pacific. But also, there is now a crew dedicated isolationists--people like Alex Jones of InfoWars, or even pundits like Pat Buchanan, who have opposed US involvement in every war since Korea. Then there are people who don't care about al-Assad, but really want Putin to win! SR, like Trump, just wants the US to withdraw--they don't seem to know who they want to actually win.
The dispute between SA and SR is about just how big the united front tent should be. SR accuses SA (and Jeff Mackler in particular) of collaborating with some truly unsavory people. Mr. Mackler's defense is that his people weren't initially aware of the unsavory types at the conference (in Russia), and never had anything to do with them.
A united front isn't stable. And Trotskyist organizations aren't stable, either. They tend to split apart.
An aside about splits:
The Dunbar Number is the maximum size of a human group based only on shared kinship or friendship--e.g., a group of hunter gatherers. Any group larger than that requires some institutional structure and bureaucracy in order to function. The size of the Dunbar number varies from 50 to 150, with the higher numbers only possible when there is an external threat--e.g., war with a neighboring group--that makes the big group advantageous. But the bigger the group, the more time they have to spend on "social grooming" in order to stay together.
It appears that Trotskyist grouplets rarely exceed the Dunbar number. Which means that, despite their elaborate constitutions and procedures, they only cohere because of personal friendships and reciprocity agreements. Once the group gets too big, or personal relations are in any way strained, the group splits into competing bands.
Dunbar groups are usually led by a chief who holds office by lifetime appointment, or until a younger man (they are always men) takes his place. Jack Barnes is boss of the Socialist Workers Party since 1972, while Jeff Mackler rules Socialist Action since 1983. This month we inaugurate the new leader of Socialist Resurgence, Michael Schreiber, who I predict will lead them for decades to come.
Anthropologists take note: Trotskyist grouplets are a good proxy for hunter-gather tribes, and probably a lot cheaper to study.
Further Reading:
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Socialist Action Splits!
A couple of days ago Socialist Action published a long post entitled Anatomy of the Recent Split in Socialist Action. It contains a short introduction by Jeff Mackler, followed by the Political Resolution Adopted by the Socialist Action National Committee Plenum, October 6, 2019, detailing the political differences that resulted in divorce. It comes to nearly 11,000 words.
The bottom line is that 29 comrades have left the organization, including the former editor of their newspaper (whom I believe is Michael Schreiber). It's a bit under a third of the total membership. They are referred to in the Resolution as the Permanent Revolution Faction (PRF), and I will use that terminology. I will call those remaining in Socialist Action, specifically the authors of the resolution, the Majority. The PRF has since gone on to found a new organization called Socialist Resurgence. I have not yet had time to study their webpage and so do not know their response to the Majority's resolution. I'll get to that in a later post.
The first topic of disagreement is trans liberation. Here is what the Majority claim:
An effort toward radical clarity leads them to oversimplify the whole issue--the trans phenomenon is not so easily dealt with. People with an interest in truth as opposed to mere revolutionary chic will not be able to take the Majority's position seriously. Beyond which, one wonders why the trans issue is so important, concerning, as it does, less than 1% of the population.
The Majority's position on Syria is similarly simplistic and counterfactual. The essential problem supposedly is "U.S. imperialism."
The Majority presents a hypothetical:
Apparently the PRF aren't the only people who speak for the masses. The Majority claims
The Majority's error is again to oversimplify things to the point of complete falsehood. Surely Syria is more complicated than some kooky story about "U.S. imperialism." Whatever the PRF's opinions, there is at least some recognition of reality.
As a final example, the Majority's position on Venezuela is similarly reality-deprived. They write
It's really easy to break stuff. The de-civilization of Venezuela began in 2006 when Hugo Chavez took money from the PDVSA (the state-owned oil company) and used it to buy services for the poor. The NY Times wrote
The PRF's sin apparently is pointing out the obvious fact that Maduro is substantially responsible for the disaster. The reward for truth-telling is expulsion.
Socialist Action had about one hundred comrades--now they're down to seventy. This because the so-called Vanguard Party, the sole inheritors of Revolutionary Truth, are unable to say anything truthful or coherent about the major issues of the day. It's not clear to me why I should continue writing about them--it could be they fall off the radar screen in a few months.
It seems they've fallen off their own radar screen. The supposedly important Jeff Mackler for President campaign hosted ZERO events in October, and has absolutely nothing scheduled for November. The idiots can't even ride down an escalator.
Further Reading:
The bottom line is that 29 comrades have left the organization, including the former editor of their newspaper (whom I believe is Michael Schreiber). It's a bit under a third of the total membership. They are referred to in the Resolution as the Permanent Revolution Faction (PRF), and I will use that terminology. I will call those remaining in Socialist Action, specifically the authors of the resolution, the Majority. The PRF has since gone on to found a new organization called Socialist Resurgence. I have not yet had time to study their webpage and so do not know their response to the Majority's resolution. I'll get to that in a later post.
The first topic of disagreement is trans liberation. Here is what the Majority claim:
We begin with our stance of full support to and respect for transgender people’s fundamental right to self-identify and for the full, unequivocal inclusion of trans people in every aspect of society. Gender is a social construct, which is formed by economic, cultural, historical, biological, and class factors. In matters of gender identity, as with sexual orientation, an individual knows best what is right for them. We reject any assertion that their identity is in any way inauthentic or invalid. Trans women are women. Trans men are men.That trans people should be assured the civil and human rights is incontrovertible--even I support that! But then they go off the rails. The "social construct" theory is just factually wrong, touted only by ideologues in academic women's studies departments. Nobody who has ever raised children can take it seriously. The final claims--e.g., "trans women are women,"--are also false. If they said trans women are women with an asterisk, where the size and content of that asterisk varies considerably by individual, they'd be a whole lot closer to the truth.
An effort toward radical clarity leads them to oversimplify the whole issue--the trans phenomenon is not so easily dealt with. People with an interest in truth as opposed to mere revolutionary chic will not be able to take the Majority's position seriously. Beyond which, one wonders why the trans issue is so important, concerning, as it does, less than 1% of the population.
The Majority's position on Syria is similarly simplistic and counterfactual. The essential problem supposedly is "U.S. imperialism."
With few, if any exceptions these “rebels” have almost from the beginning been armed, trained, promoted and supported by U.S. imperialism and its NATO and Gulf State monarchy “coalition” as well as the Turkish government.It's a real stretch to claim that the rebels have been significantly financed by the US, and certainly not since Trump took office. Further,
In Idlib today, the remaining “rebels,” who regularly launch missiles into Syria’s cities, exist only because of the support of the U.S., its NATO imperialist allies, and Turkey. These “rebels,” significantly, but decreasingly, control and dominate, via terror, the population of Idlib.There are 3 million people in Idlib, including 1.1 million displaced from elsewhere in Syria. They are all Sunnis who potentially face slaughter at the hands of Assad's army. Beyond which, Assad, with Russian assistance, is barrel-bombing Idlib hospitals in the hope of driving the population out of the country. The Majority doesn't tell that side of the story, and the side it does tell isn't accurate.
The Majority presents a hypothetical:
In the course of this monstrous U.S. imperialist war, SA tragically finds itself divided. In Syria, we have explained, we would be on the side of the Syrian government. In Syria, the minority explains, they would be on the side of the nondescript “Syrian masses.”This is very funny. If the Majority and PRF were both Sunni, then they'd all be refugees somewhere. If they were both Alawite then they'd all support the Syrian government. The notion that some theoretical distinction about "U.S. imperialism" might make any difference is absurd.
Apparently the PRF aren't the only people who speak for the masses. The Majority claims
The only way for serious revolutionaries to win the hearts and minds of the Syrian masses is to be in the front lines of the battle against imperialist intervention and invasion. [emphasis mine]In Syria there are no "masses." There are Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Palestinians, Druze, Assyrians, Kurds, and others--all fighting just for survival. The country--always artificial--hangs together now only by force of arms.
The Majority's error is again to oversimplify things to the point of complete falsehood. Surely Syria is more complicated than some kooky story about "U.S. imperialism." Whatever the PRF's opinions, there is at least some recognition of reality.
As a final example, the Majority's position on Venezuela is similarly reality-deprived. They write
The U.S. imperialist beast has sanctioned and embargoed Venezuela, the nation with the largest oil reserves in the world, since the Obama administration and before. These sanctions have led to mass starvation and the death of some 50,000 Venezuelans.This is simply not true. It is correct that some US sanctions have been in place since 2008 (pdf).
In 2008, the Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions on two individuals and two travel agencies in Venezuela for providing financial support to the radical Lebanon-based Islamic Shiite group Hezbollah.Two individuals do not an economy destroy. Subsequent sanctions were similarly narrow, in 2014 levying penalties on 89 people. It was only under Trump beginning in 2018 that economy-wide sanctions were imposed. By that time the Venezuelan economy had already imploded.
It's really easy to break stuff. The de-civilization of Venezuela began in 2006 when Hugo Chavez took money from the PDVSA (the state-owned oil company) and used it to buy services for the poor. The NY Times wrote
Critics see the spending as a reckless exercise in populist decadence intended to burnish Chávez's image while embarrassing the Bush administration, his principal obsession since American officials gave tacit support to a failed coup against him in 2002.It was worse than "populist decadence." Essential maintenance on the oil infrastructure was not performed, and today it will require billions in new capital to repair the damage. In a word, Chavez killed the golden-egg-laying goose. It will be generations (if ever) before Venezuela recovers its previous living standard.
The PRF's sin apparently is pointing out the obvious fact that Maduro is substantially responsible for the disaster. The reward for truth-telling is expulsion.
Socialist Action had about one hundred comrades--now they're down to seventy. This because the so-called Vanguard Party, the sole inheritors of Revolutionary Truth, are unable to say anything truthful or coherent about the major issues of the day. It's not clear to me why I should continue writing about them--it could be they fall off the radar screen in a few months.
It seems they've fallen off their own radar screen. The supposedly important Jeff Mackler for President campaign hosted ZERO events in October, and has absolutely nothing scheduled for November. The idiots can't even ride down an escalator.
Further Reading:
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Talking Tulsi
I think I understand Tulsi Gabbard.
Mr. Adams thinks Hillary is just stupid (698), which seems to be the consensus opinion. And that could be true. But Hillary might not be as dumb as she sounds--it's possible she has a strategy.
It's a given that she really wants to be president, which means she has to win the Democratic nomination. The odds are long no matter what she does, but steady-as-she-goes is definitely not gonna work. So she has to shake the box (as Mr. Adams would put it). Her comments do that--they're way over the top, and they've definitely gotten attention. She's borrowed the Trumpian tactic that there's no such thing as bad publicity--there is only publicity.
Ms. Clinton's comments are provocative in exactly the same way that Mr. Trump's Muslim ban was. It was never realistic, but it definitely got everybody talking.
Then follows an astute analysis of the campaign. Biden is on his way out--he has no chance. Bernie's support is self-limiting, and will gradually shrink over time. He's not a serious candidate. But if Bernie's voters migrate over to Liz Warren, then she becomes nearly unstoppable.
So the trick is to draw the Sanders' brigade over to Tulsi. There are at least three reasons to think that might happen. First, Tulsi endorsed Bernie in 2016, so there's a link there. Second, Tulsi's campaign has that radical, transgressive flavor that attracted people to Bernie in the first place.
And third, Bernie's Bros are obviously men. They're disinclined to support an aging harridan like Liz anyway, and if given half a reason will readily plump for sexy Tulsi. Like us Republicans, they'll "fall in love."
The other candidates are easily dismissed: Kamala is a loser; Mayor Pete is the windbag mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana; Castro has a tin ear; Corey is a nice guy who finishes last, etc. So by turning Bernie's Bros into Tulsi's Toys, Hillary splits the Left Lane three ways. By locking down the middle lane for herself, she has as good a chance as any of winning the nomination.
It's a long shot, but it's all she's got. That Tulsi invited Hillary to join the campaign is an added bonus.
Further Reading:
Enlightenment came from Scott Adams (695) who suggested her appeal is partly sexual, proposing that a lot of men (disproportionately Republicans) are "in love" with Tulsi. At age 38, she is by far the most attractive candidate, and a lot of guys just want to see more of Tulsi on TV. I can relate to that, and I was rooting for her.
So I was disappointed by her performance during the October debate. She got very little air time, and while she tried to land a punch, she never connected. Pete Buttigieg argued her to a draw during their exchange, not least because her description of Syria as a "regime-change war" isn't accurate.
So now comes Hillary Clinton who said
I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians. [...]Tulsi--who obviously is at least as smart as she looks--didn't miss the opportunity:
They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. And that's assuming [Green Party politician] Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset. She's a Russian asset, I mean, totally. They know they can't win without a third party candidate.
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a ...It's a wonderful set of tweets. Look how she reduces the campaign to a race between her and Hillary--between a person of integrity and the "personification of rot". Between the real voice of the Democratic Party and the sick, warmongering pretenders. Note how she indirectly tars the other candidates with the sick, warmonger label, among whom Hillary is the leader.
... concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and ...
... powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
Mr. Adams thinks Hillary is just stupid (698), which seems to be the consensus opinion. And that could be true. But Hillary might not be as dumb as she sounds--it's possible she has a strategy.
It's a given that she really wants to be president, which means she has to win the Democratic nomination. The odds are long no matter what she does, but steady-as-she-goes is definitely not gonna work. So she has to shake the box (as Mr. Adams would put it). Her comments do that--they're way over the top, and they've definitely gotten attention. She's borrowed the Trumpian tactic that there's no such thing as bad publicity--there is only publicity.
Ms. Clinton's comments are provocative in exactly the same way that Mr. Trump's Muslim ban was. It was never realistic, but it definitely got everybody talking.
Then follows an astute analysis of the campaign. Biden is on his way out--he has no chance. Bernie's support is self-limiting, and will gradually shrink over time. He's not a serious candidate. But if Bernie's voters migrate over to Liz Warren, then she becomes nearly unstoppable.
So the trick is to draw the Sanders' brigade over to Tulsi. There are at least three reasons to think that might happen. First, Tulsi endorsed Bernie in 2016, so there's a link there. Second, Tulsi's campaign has that radical, transgressive flavor that attracted people to Bernie in the first place.
And third, Bernie's Bros are obviously men. They're disinclined to support an aging harridan like Liz anyway, and if given half a reason will readily plump for sexy Tulsi. Like us Republicans, they'll "fall in love."
The other candidates are easily dismissed: Kamala is a loser; Mayor Pete is the windbag mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana; Castro has a tin ear; Corey is a nice guy who finishes last, etc. So by turning Bernie's Bros into Tulsi's Toys, Hillary splits the Left Lane three ways. By locking down the middle lane for herself, she has as good a chance as any of winning the nomination.
It's a long shot, but it's all she's got. That Tulsi invited Hillary to join the campaign is an added bonus.
Further Reading:
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Our President is a Pacifist
A few days ago President Trump suddenly pulled all US forces out of Syria, resulting in a Turkish offensive against the Kurds.
In Mr. Trump's mind, the original sin was the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, embroiling us in a series of "endless wars." President Obama partially corrected the error with his precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. Arguably that was a huge mistake, leading to the rise of ISIS and the Syrian civil war. Our departure likely permitted more than half a million deaths and many millions more refugees. Mr. Obama has definitely not lived up to the hopes of the Nobel Committee!
Mr. Trump apparently doesn't believe in "tripwire" tactics. We only had a thousand troops in Syria--not an intimidating force. But behind those troops stood the full faith and credit of the US military--namely a promise that we'd bring in the cavalry if so much as a hair on the head of one US soldier be harmed. Our presence in Syria was effectively a promise of US protection.
Mr. Trump has long said he doesn't want to extend that promise, especially in a country where the stakes for the US are so low. Much better to retract it now than wait for a crisis later on. Of course there are humanitarian consequences--take away the policemen and disorder will ensue. Though it is unlikely that Mr. Trump's withdrawal will be as catastrophic as Mr. Obama's.
Of course the war party is up in arms about this. "War party" is Mr. Trump's pejorative name for advocates for the Iraq war, for the preservation of our force in Iraq, and now for the continued presence of a tripwire in Syria. These people are mostly Republicans--though I think the war in Iraq was more bipartisan than people now let on. Apart from defending their own reputations, they believe strongly in the traditional tools of American power and diplomacy: strong alliances, an international perspective, and credibility.
I'm sympathetic to the war party. I supported the war in Iraq at the time, and I deeply opposed Obama's withdrawal in 2009 (still do). At the same time, I'm skeptical of high-sounding verbiage like "strong alliances." I increasingly agree with Trump that "alliances" are a means and not an end. Without a definite purpose, what's the point of an alliance? (NATO no longer has much of a purpose.)
Ultimately, once you scrape away all the highfalutin language, the war party's argument is humanitarian. For just as Obama's decision led to the complete destruction of two whole countries, so too will Trump's move destroy the Kurds (or at least force them into other alliances). It's heartrending! Why can't the US be a policeman--especially since the cost (a thousand troops) is so cheap?
But it's not cheap, if only because we have too many tripwires. There's the famous one in Korea--Trump has promised to bring those troops home. Then we still have 30,000 troops in Germany--there to ensure Europe's internal borders. They're coming home, too (and no, they aren't moving to Poland). Every tripwire is like writing an insurance policy--and some day we'll have to pay a claim. That likely involves us in a major war, and inevitably that will eventually happen. Think World War I.
But we need to answer Mr. Brooks' questions.
This evening on the NewsHour's Shields and Brooks, David Brooks opines
It's complete incoherence. I think Donald Trump — the logical thing is, Donald Trump spoke to somebody on the phone, he made a decision. It was a terrible decision, an immoral decision, and just bad for our foreign policy. I mean, who's going to fight ISIS, or I.S., if we're out?
Who's going to guard the 10,000 prisoners who the Kurds — we have been relying on the Kurds to guard? And the Kurds are going to turn to Russia or Iran or somebody. And so it will further strengthen Russia and Iran. So it's a terrible decision.
And then they get a little bad publicity, the administration does, and so then Mnuchin and various other people in the administration come out and say, oh, this is terrible.
And so it's not a foreign policy. It's a foreign policy by what Donald Trump's latest emotion is.This is bizarre. Mr. Trump campaigned on pulling US forces out of the Middle East, specifically Syria. His former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, resigned on precisely that issue. John Bolton left his job over similar concerns. The president has been considering this move for at least four years now--nobody can seriously claim it comes as an "incoherent" surprise except in the narrowest, tactical sense.
In Mr. Trump's mind, the original sin was the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, embroiling us in a series of "endless wars." President Obama partially corrected the error with his precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. Arguably that was a huge mistake, leading to the rise of ISIS and the Syrian civil war. Our departure likely permitted more than half a million deaths and many millions more refugees. Mr. Obama has definitely not lived up to the hopes of the Nobel Committee!
Mr. Trump apparently doesn't believe in "tripwire" tactics. We only had a thousand troops in Syria--not an intimidating force. But behind those troops stood the full faith and credit of the US military--namely a promise that we'd bring in the cavalry if so much as a hair on the head of one US soldier be harmed. Our presence in Syria was effectively a promise of US protection.
Mr. Trump has long said he doesn't want to extend that promise, especially in a country where the stakes for the US are so low. Much better to retract it now than wait for a crisis later on. Of course there are humanitarian consequences--take away the policemen and disorder will ensue. Though it is unlikely that Mr. Trump's withdrawal will be as catastrophic as Mr. Obama's.
Of course the war party is up in arms about this. "War party" is Mr. Trump's pejorative name for advocates for the Iraq war, for the preservation of our force in Iraq, and now for the continued presence of a tripwire in Syria. These people are mostly Republicans--though I think the war in Iraq was more bipartisan than people now let on. Apart from defending their own reputations, they believe strongly in the traditional tools of American power and diplomacy: strong alliances, an international perspective, and credibility.
I'm sympathetic to the war party. I supported the war in Iraq at the time, and I deeply opposed Obama's withdrawal in 2009 (still do). At the same time, I'm skeptical of high-sounding verbiage like "strong alliances." I increasingly agree with Trump that "alliances" are a means and not an end. Without a definite purpose, what's the point of an alliance? (NATO no longer has much of a purpose.)
Ultimately, once you scrape away all the highfalutin language, the war party's argument is humanitarian. For just as Obama's decision led to the complete destruction of two whole countries, so too will Trump's move destroy the Kurds (or at least force them into other alliances). It's heartrending! Why can't the US be a policeman--especially since the cost (a thousand troops) is so cheap?
But it's not cheap, if only because we have too many tripwires. There's the famous one in Korea--Trump has promised to bring those troops home. Then we still have 30,000 troops in Germany--there to ensure Europe's internal borders. They're coming home, too (and no, they aren't moving to Poland). Every tripwire is like writing an insurance policy--and some day we'll have to pay a claim. That likely involves us in a major war, and inevitably that will eventually happen. Think World War I.
But we need to answer Mr. Brooks' questions.
- Who is going to fight ISIS? Everybody and nobody. ISIS used to be a caliphate that controlled extensive territory, including the city of Mosul. Driving them out of that territory was a military objective--and one that Trump accomplished in short order. The caliphate is now gone, and ISIS is reduced to being a loose ideology connecting adherents around the world. Confronting them now is a matter for the police and other civil authorities. They are not a military target. The thousand troops in Syria weren't protecting us against ISIS, but instead they were protecting the Kurds against Turkey. In the unlikely event the caliphate ever resuscitates itself, then we can send the Marines back in.
- Who is going to guard the 10,000 prisoners? Probably nobody. As I understand it, a large fraction of those prisoners are European nationals. The Europeans have not repatriated them, leaving them for the Kurds, and indirectly, for the Americans to guard. The Americans have no dog in the fight--this is between the Europeans and the Kurds. The former are incapable, and the latter have more serious problems. My prediction is the prisoners will be killed, if not by the Kurds, then by the Turks or the Iranians or Russians. Or somebody.
President Trump has turned down many opportunities to go to war. His retaliation against Syria (for chemical weapons violations) was destroying an empty "research facility" in the middle of the night. When Iran shot down a drone, it turned out that he didn't want to kill any Iranians. He rejected John Bolton's desperate pleas to invade Venezuela. He wants to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. He has studiously ignored all the provocations coming from Pyongyang.
The man, of German ancestry (who, reputation notwithstanding, tend toward pacifism), studied at Fordham and Penn (two institutions in the larger Quaker tradition). He attended the New York Military Academy in high school, and apparently enjoyed the military lifestyle. But he never joined the military.
The man is a pacifist. It's that simple.
Further Reading:
Monday, September 30, 2019
The Pro-Poverty Crowd
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| "You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words." Picture credit; Caption credit |
Last February my wife and I visited the Philippines. We flew business class on Japan Airlines and stayed in 4-star hotels. We hired cars to travel around Manila, foregoing public transportation. We dined in nice restaurants, some expensive even by New York standards. A low-cost, eco-friendly, carbon-neutral vacation this was not.
Surely some wiseguy could have published a photo of me sleeping on my lie-flat, business-class seat, paired with street urchins sleeping on sidewalk mats along Mabini street in Manila. The injustice of it all! How could I?
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| A homeless child in the streets of Manila in 2014 (Source) |
I don't begrudge Greta Thunberg her first-class train ticket (or so it looks to me). Nor am I offended by her vegan(?) lunch--downright spartan compared to mine in Manila. I'm not bothered by her air travel to the U.N. meeting in New York, even though she probably flew business class (or even first class). That her audience all made similar arrangements to attend her talk is also not an important concern.
What disturbs is not the facts themselves, but rather the hypocrisy of it all. Terry Evans, in a feature article in The Militant, understands that much.
Almost all the proposals bandied about amounted to one thing — working people have to sacrifice to save the world. Give up your car, no more air travel, only plant-based food at McDonald’s, and the like.
[UN General Secretary] Guterres demanded no new coal plants be built worldwide after 2020. Another U.N. official told countries in Africa “not to get into coal.”
Calls to restrict which kinds of energy sources can be built by governments in the semicolonial world, countries whose development was stunted and distorted by colonial exploitation, amount to a demand that the 840 million people who live without electricity continue to go without. Close to 600 million of those live in rural Africa.
Ms. Thunberg, who with a straight face demands of her audience that they impose draconian restrictions on the rest of us--to reduce our carbon footprint by more than 50%--somehow holds herself exempt from those rules. Unlike me--merely on a luxurious, recreational trip to Manila--she is among the Chosen Elect tasked to Save the Planet. Not only is she Chosen, but so is her audience, made up of diplomats and potentates from around the world.
They may think they're Chosen, but to me it looks like Greta Thunberg and her audience don't really believe their own climate bullshit. I think it's hypocrisy all the way down.
Apart from The Militant, my Trotskyist friends agree with Ms. Thunberg. Here are excerpts from a manifesto issued by the Solidarity Ecosocialist Working Group.
They may think they're Chosen, but to me it looks like Greta Thunberg and her audience don't really believe their own climate bullshit. I think it's hypocrisy all the way down.
Apart from The Militant, my Trotskyist friends agree with Ms. Thunberg. Here are excerpts from a manifesto issued by the Solidarity Ecosocialist Working Group.
While the forests in the Amazon and Congo are in flames, while extreme weather demolishes island countries from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, while the Great Lakes suffer from both flooding and the spread of algae, politicians and corporations fail to address the climate crisis. So youth around the globe are taking a stand, demanding that we break with the fossil-fuel economy. On September 20 youth are striking for climate justice. We stand with them! ...
We need a “just transition,” one that retools and repurposes manufacturing, replaces the inadequate system of food production and builds communities where people have the right to good, healthy and meaningful work. In short, youth are demanding a future for themselves and for the planet!The magnitude of the problem is grossly exaggerated; the difficulty of the proposed solution is vastly understated. Though at least Trotskyists are not flying around the world in business class.
But this post isn't about climate change. It's about poverty.
My former comrades--including The Militant--all make the same mistake. And not just them: most Democrats share in the error.
It is this. They believe that if people like me didn't take luxurious vacations, then homeless children could live in a better world. The money I (or Greta Thunberg) spend is in their view "wasted," and instead should be used "to meet human needs."
My business class round trip NYC to Manila cost about $4,000. Economy tickets can be had for around a grand.
Consider this:
- Without business class service, about half of all flight attendants would be laid off.
- Economy tickets are partially subsidized by business class passengers, and would be more expensive without them.
- Skilled chefs prepare meals for business class customers (who are willing to pay for them). Absent the premium fare they'd be unemployed.
Our hotel cost about $200/night, about 25% of which was taxes. We stayed for 14 nights.
- We paid for maid, laundry, and front-desk services.
- We got a "free" breakfast (a good one), providing a salary to servers, cooks, and cleaners.
- The hotel had electricity and potable water--I'm sure we paid a premium for those services, subsidizing Manila residents.
- The taxes paid for infrastructure throughout the city.
And beyond that:
- We hired a car and driver nearly every day, paying as much as $200. That pays for the car, the driver, repairs and fuel. In addition to a fuel tax, we paid tolls.
- We ate in restaurants, paying chefs, waitresses, busboys, food and rent.
- My wife did some shopping, buying mostly local products.
- We even patronized a few street vendors.
It's hard to estimate, but I'll hazard that 70% of the $13,000 we spent on the trip was paid out as wages, mostly to Filipinos. The rest went for resources (food, fuel) and profit (maybe 5%). As mentioned, the taxes we paid subsidized the municipal infrastructure, including electricity.
So tell me--would those homeless children be better off if we'd instead stayed home? Of course not! Without tourism the Philippines would be a much poorer place.
And tell me again--would those homeless children be better off if we'd flown coach, stayed in cheap, budget hotels, and lived off street food? Again, no!
There is the old saw:
Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach him how to fish, and he eats for the rest of his life.We didn't teach anybody fishing, but we did something nearly as good. By our custom we helped sustain a viable economy. I estimate we contributed approximately $6,000 toward labor costs in Manila. The median annual household income in the country is about $5,300--we supported a whole family for a year!
I don't expect an award. I did, after all, have an extremely pleasant vacation in the Philippines. But please don't tell me that I don't care about the children.
Suppose, for example, somebody like President Elizabeth Warren or President Jeff Mackler or President Greta Thunberg comes along and says I don't deserve all my money. It becomes impossible for me to travel to the Philippines--and certainly not in business class. Will that make the homeless children of Manila any richer?
Of course it won't. Making rich people poor does not make poor people rich. And that's what all the pro-poverty politicians--especially including my Trotskyist friends--don't understand.
Down with Poverty!
Further Reading:
- Kim Moody on "Persistent Inequalities"
- The Militant Visits Manila
- Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl
Monday, September 23, 2019
Jeff Mackler on Trump, Trade, and China
Jeff Mackler pens an article in Socialist Action (SA) entitled Trump, trade, and China: A Marxist assessment. While this blog has often mocked Mr. Mackler's pathetic performance as a presidential candidate, I take seriously his ability as a writer and thinker. The article is worth reading.
Though I think it's all wrong, and in a few places incoherent. To fit everything into a Marxist story he oversimplifies.
Mr. Mackler starts with the Sept/Oct issue of Foreign Affairs (FA) headlined "How a global trading system dies." (Those articles look interesting, but unfortunately they're paywalled.) He credits FA with being a voice of the "ruling class," and I suppose in some sense that's true. But in this case it appears they're writing mostly on their own account. FA readers (and writers) are overwhelmingly employed by the State Department, intelligence services, other related government agencies, and academia. A Trumpian foreign policy--if it survives Trump--renders this collective expertise as obsolete as Kremlinologists were upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, whole PhD programs will go extinct.
So no wonder they hate Trump--you can think of them as the "deep state." Their cry of pain does not reflect any consensus among the "ruling class," to the extent such exists. When all opinion has to be categorized as either "ruling class" or "proletarian," then meaningful distinctions are lost. Simplicity becomes the enemy of truth.
More telling is that among politicians the China tariffs are relatively uncontroversial. It is pretty much a given on both sides of the aisle that our previous policy toward China is not tenable, and a new relationship has to be worked out. You can't trade with somebody you can't trust, and China has proven itself untrustworthy.
Mr. Mackler says China is a capitalist country--recall that SA's position is all countries are capitalist except for Cuba, which is a worker's state. This terminology is useless, and again elides meaningful differences between the US and China.
It is far more accurate to say that China is mercantilist, which means they don't care if they make a profit. Instead the only issue is positive cash flow--as long as an exporter brings in US dollars it's good to go. It doesn't matter if it loses money in Renminbi (RMB) terms--the Chinese government can fudge that at will. (They can print money, absolve debts, steal fortunes, eliminate people, or do whatever else they need to do. But they can't print dollars.)
Why does China need US dollars? In Mr. Mackler's opinion they don't:
The fact is that the dollar is the only possible reserve currency around. The euro is politically unstable. The yen, like the Swiss franc, is from too small a country. The RMB is not freely tradable, and is subject to arbitrary confiscation by the Chinese government. Bitcoin doesn't have the necessary capitalization yet (and may never get there). The fraction of world trade (pdf) settled in RMB in 2017 was 1.61%.
China needs dollars because it is resource poor and has to buy food and energy on the world market. The US is the world’s granary, and a long-term boycott of American agricultural products is not a tenable strategy. Today, because of a devastating swine flu epidemic, China is forced to buy American pork, that being their primary protein source.
Likewise, China depends on the Persian Gulf for oil, and by extension they depend on the US Navy to keep the supply route open. Given that North America is now energy-independent, our Navy is gradually withdrawing that service. Indeed, I’ll go further and suggest that the strong sanctions against Iran are directed more toward China than against Iran.
China is much richer today than it was in 1980. Even Mr. Mackler acknowledges that:
No--the bump in income is entirely due to global trade. The Chinese sold us toys, telephones, computers, clothes--in a word, just about everything you can buy at Walmart. Through Walmart, China raised the standard of living of every American. In return, the Chinese got food, jumbo jets, business services, and access to global resources (e.g., oil). I detail this in my two posts responding to Lynn Henderson (here and here).
Indeed, thanks to Sam Walton and Deng Xiao Ping, every Chinese citizen is vastly richer than they were in 1980. They didn't get that way just by stealing from each other. Mr. Mackler's theory is as silly as his presidential campaign.
Further Reading:
Though I think it's all wrong, and in a few places incoherent. To fit everything into a Marxist story he oversimplifies.
Mr. Mackler starts with the Sept/Oct issue of Foreign Affairs (FA) headlined "How a global trading system dies." (Those articles look interesting, but unfortunately they're paywalled.) He credits FA with being a voice of the "ruling class," and I suppose in some sense that's true. But in this case it appears they're writing mostly on their own account. FA readers (and writers) are overwhelmingly employed by the State Department, intelligence services, other related government agencies, and academia. A Trumpian foreign policy--if it survives Trump--renders this collective expertise as obsolete as Kremlinologists were upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, whole PhD programs will go extinct.
So no wonder they hate Trump--you can think of them as the "deep state." Their cry of pain does not reflect any consensus among the "ruling class," to the extent such exists. When all opinion has to be categorized as either "ruling class" or "proletarian," then meaningful distinctions are lost. Simplicity becomes the enemy of truth.
More telling is that among politicians the China tariffs are relatively uncontroversial. It is pretty much a given on both sides of the aisle that our previous policy toward China is not tenable, and a new relationship has to be worked out. You can't trade with somebody you can't trust, and China has proven itself untrustworthy.
Mr. Mackler says China is a capitalist country--recall that SA's position is all countries are capitalist except for Cuba, which is a worker's state. This terminology is useless, and again elides meaningful differences between the US and China.
It is far more accurate to say that China is mercantilist, which means they don't care if they make a profit. Instead the only issue is positive cash flow--as long as an exporter brings in US dollars it's good to go. It doesn't matter if it loses money in Renminbi (RMB) terms--the Chinese government can fudge that at will. (They can print money, absolve debts, steal fortunes, eliminate people, or do whatever else they need to do. But they can't print dollars.)
Why does China need US dollars? In Mr. Mackler's opinion they don't:
...Trump’s public complaints about the U.S. trade deficit with China, wherein Chinese imports to the U.S. exceeded U.S. exports to China by $419 billion in 2018, fail to take into account that the U.S. corporations pay for these imports with increasingly inflated dollars, printed with abandon by the U.S. Treasury in the form of paper money or the issuance of computer-generated federal bonds and/or related promises to pay. Again, any government that prints money with no regard to its material basis in commodity production risks disaster. The U.S. “coin of the world realm” is, in this writer’s view, in deep trouble.This is all wrong. Dollar inflation is definitely not a problem, remaining well below the Fed's 2% target. The Fed's massive money printing is something of a myth. Yes, they printed money, but they also started paying interest on reserves, which soaks up the cash as fast as it's printed. The result is a huge bump in the Fed's balance sheet, which may someday lead to inflation, but not soon. More, the issue isn't inflation per se, but rather differences in inflation between currencies. The rate of dollar-inflation is lower than RMB inflation.
The fact is that the dollar is the only possible reserve currency around. The euro is politically unstable. The yen, like the Swiss franc, is from too small a country. The RMB is not freely tradable, and is subject to arbitrary confiscation by the Chinese government. Bitcoin doesn't have the necessary capitalization yet (and may never get there). The fraction of world trade (pdf) settled in RMB in 2017 was 1.61%.
China needs dollars because it is resource poor and has to buy food and energy on the world market. The US is the world’s granary, and a long-term boycott of American agricultural products is not a tenable strategy. Today, because of a devastating swine flu epidemic, China is forced to buy American pork, that being their primary protein source.
Likewise, China depends on the Persian Gulf for oil, and by extension they depend on the US Navy to keep the supply route open. Given that North America is now energy-independent, our Navy is gradually withdrawing that service. Indeed, I’ll go further and suggest that the strong sanctions against Iran are directed more toward China than against Iran.
China is much richer today than it was in 1980. Even Mr. Mackler acknowledges that:
The question therefore inevitably arises of how China made the transition from a relatively poor nation, largely bereft of modern technology, to a world-class player on international markets? The answer lies in how China made the transition over the past 40 years from a deformed workers’ state that essentially banned capitalist private property, established a planned economy that focused more on addressing human needs—including providing free health care and education to all its citizens—than capitalist profits, to a leading capitalist and imperialist nation with trillion-dollar infrastructure investments in China and, increasingly around the world...His answer to the question is utterly bizarre.
A serious approach to answering this critical question, a complex matter to be sure, begins with China’s adoption of the key features of the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa. In all these relatively underdeveloped nations, the ruling elite focused on a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich that they expected to result in the emergence of a relatively well-off layer of perhaps 20 to 25 percent of the population, consisting of “middle class” and working-class sectors, who would be capable of purchasing a broad range of nationally produced consumer commodities typical of their counterparts in advanced nations. This massive transfer, of course, was to be at the expense of the vast majority of their respective populations, who were in turn driven into abject poverty.In other words, Deng Xiao Ping literally stole money from poor Chinese peasants in order to provide 400 million other people with a middle class income comparable to those in the West. This is ridiculous! The median income of a Chinese peasant was $2/day, or about $700/year. All that bought was a Mao suit and a couple copies of the Little Red Book. There was nothing to steal!
No--the bump in income is entirely due to global trade. The Chinese sold us toys, telephones, computers, clothes--in a word, just about everything you can buy at Walmart. Through Walmart, China raised the standard of living of every American. In return, the Chinese got food, jumbo jets, business services, and access to global resources (e.g., oil). I detail this in my two posts responding to Lynn Henderson (here and here).
Indeed, thanks to Sam Walton and Deng Xiao Ping, every Chinese citizen is vastly richer than they were in 1980. They didn't get that way just by stealing from each other. Mr. Mackler's theory is as silly as his presidential campaign.
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| Increase in wealth in Chinese households, both urban and rural. (source) |
Friday, September 13, 2019
Kim Moody on "Persistent Inequalities"
Why aren't wages equal across the economy? Why, for example, does a warehouse worker receive only half the pay of an auto assembly worker? Why are women and minorities paid less than white men?
The book is by Howard Botwinick and is entitled Persistent Inequalities: Wage Disparity Under Capitalist Competition. I have not read that book (though I probably should and maybe I will). Instead I respond to a lengthy review by Kim Moody, published in Against the Current. The principle inquiry of the book is to explain the persistent inequality in the wages of women and minorities when compared to white males.
Mr. Moody is a very capable economist who regards Mr. Botwinick's book (first published in 1993, and newly reprinted) highly. The latter is a recently retired economics professor at SUNY Cortland. Both claim to offer a Marxist perspective on their topic.
One common Marxist prediction is that industries will tend to be dominated by monopolies. Counter-intuitively (but correctly) Mr. Moody argues that monopolies will tend to pay higher wages, since as monopolies they can raise prices to cover the difference. But that doesn't appear to be happening. Retail, for example, is dominated by two behemoths: Amazon and Walmart. But they're in such intense competition with each other (and with smaller companies in the same space) that they're forced to lower prices--which means they have to reduce their labor costs.
(Some of my Trotskyist friends may confuse monopoly with monopsony. The former is when there is only one seller who monopolizes the market. The latter is when there is only one buyer, such as in a company town. Folks can only work for that company, or not at all, in which case the company can keep wages arbitrarily low. Mr. Moody does not consider the company town, monopsony phenomenon.)
A possible reason warehouse employees (at Amazon or Walmart) are paid less than auto workers is because Amazon and Walmart are in competition with each other, and not with General Motors. Therefore the wages at GM don't correlate with those at Walmart. This is a "persistent inequality."
Another possible reason for the wage differential is differences in productivity. If auto workers are more productive than warehouse employees, then of course they should be paid more. But Mr. Moody cites some statistics that warehouse productivity has increased faster than auto assembly productivity. (I'm not sure why that's relevant. The issue isn't about changes in productivity, but rather comparing existing values.)
The assumption is that auto assemblers and warehouse workers are comparably skilled, and therefore in a fair world should be payed equally. So I've never worked in either an auto plant or in a warehouse. I'll suppose that warehouse work is something similar to the people at Walmart who restock the shelves (or go around and shop for people who've ordered their groceries by phone). And I'll assume that autoworkers do jobs similar to what I see in a TV clip, where they're installing dashboards into SUVs.
The auto worker is using expensive equipment to do very precise work. The dash has to fit within a millimeter. A mistake can ruin a $40,000 vehicle. This has got to be a high stress job that requires continuous concentration. You can't tell me this is at the same skill level as the restocker at Walmart. The auto worker deserves her higher wage!
This, I think, is the fundamental flaw in the argument. Workplace skills can't be classed into a few boxes, e.g., people with a high school diploma. There is instead a huge variation within that category, and it depends not only on training but also very much on personality. The autoworker must be a more careful and conscientious person than the warehouse worker. The Marxist notion that we're all interchangeable proletons is wrong.
There lurks a deeper economic truth here. As Adam Smith pointed out, wealth derives from specialization. Using Smith's example, a skilled craftsman who makes pins might manufacture a couple dozen in a day. But if the labor is divided so that one person cuts the metal, and another sharpens the point, and yet a third fashions the pinhead, etc., then production increases thousand-fold.
This works only if there is a market for thousands of pins. Therefore large markets foster specialization, which makes everybody within that market richer. In our day markets are global, which means jobs are very, very specialized. Which implies that there are no large groups of people with similar skills. Individual talents and predispositions become very important.
Nevertheless, our Marxist friends carry on and locate three key dynamics accounting for "wage differentials among workers with similar skills." The first is "The ongoing processes of capitalist competition and technical change that create different conditions of production..." This describes the comparison between Walmart and autoworkers.
Second: "The continuing regeneration of a reserve army of unemployed workers." The very word "army" illustrates the error. There is no "army" of unemployed autoworkers. The people who can do that job have bespoke skills that are not readily transferable. The laid-off workers from the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant may or may not have the skill set necessary to assume jobs in South Carolina's much newer BMW plant.
Mr. Moody cites large numbers of men who have withdrawn from the labor force as being part of this "army." But this seems unlikely--most of those people are on disability, or have various mental/substance abuse problems that render them unsuitable for auto manufacturing (or warehouse work).
Finally, there is "the uneven efforts of workers to raise wages." This represents unionization, and Mr. Moody suggests that workers who are more militant (i.e., willing to sabotage their workplace) will on average receive higher wages. Count me skeptical.
So how do Misters Moody and Botwinick explain gender and racial differences in employment?
Women, by Mr. Botwinick's theory, are simply another set of proletons that need to be accommodated in the workplace. Of course they're not: women are obviously and significantly different from men in both physical and psychological respects. Men and women have had different job descriptions since time immemorial--as the words hunter and gatherer suggest. Robert Gordon says that (prior to the industrial era) men's work was dirty and dangerous, while women's work was unending drudgery. It is only latter-day feminists who implausibly insist that gender differences should be radically abolished. That will never happen.
Indeed, the modern workplace seems to favor women, what with its emphasis on customer service and care. Machines disproportionately displace men by doing the backbreaking, muscular labor for them. Mr. Moody illustrates the problem, mentioning the "growing numbers of prime-age males, in particular, who have dropped out of the work force."
There is no cause to think that women are being needlessly relegated to low-wage work as surplus proletons. The "persistent inequality" doesn't exist--at least not for that reason.
Mr. Moody's article, and likely also Mr. Botwinick's book, are worth the read. But the thesis is unconvincing.
Further Reading:
The book is by Howard Botwinick and is entitled Persistent Inequalities: Wage Disparity Under Capitalist Competition. I have not read that book (though I probably should and maybe I will). Instead I respond to a lengthy review by Kim Moody, published in Against the Current. The principle inquiry of the book is to explain the persistent inequality in the wages of women and minorities when compared to white males.
Mr. Moody is a very capable economist who regards Mr. Botwinick's book (first published in 1993, and newly reprinted) highly. The latter is a recently retired economics professor at SUNY Cortland. Both claim to offer a Marxist perspective on their topic.
One common Marxist prediction is that industries will tend to be dominated by monopolies. Counter-intuitively (but correctly) Mr. Moody argues that monopolies will tend to pay higher wages, since as monopolies they can raise prices to cover the difference. But that doesn't appear to be happening. Retail, for example, is dominated by two behemoths: Amazon and Walmart. But they're in such intense competition with each other (and with smaller companies in the same space) that they're forced to lower prices--which means they have to reduce their labor costs.
(Some of my Trotskyist friends may confuse monopoly with monopsony. The former is when there is only one seller who monopolizes the market. The latter is when there is only one buyer, such as in a company town. Folks can only work for that company, or not at all, in which case the company can keep wages arbitrarily low. Mr. Moody does not consider the company town, monopsony phenomenon.)
A possible reason warehouse employees (at Amazon or Walmart) are paid less than auto workers is because Amazon and Walmart are in competition with each other, and not with General Motors. Therefore the wages at GM don't correlate with those at Walmart. This is a "persistent inequality."
Another possible reason for the wage differential is differences in productivity. If auto workers are more productive than warehouse employees, then of course they should be paid more. But Mr. Moody cites some statistics that warehouse productivity has increased faster than auto assembly productivity. (I'm not sure why that's relevant. The issue isn't about changes in productivity, but rather comparing existing values.)
The assumption is that auto assemblers and warehouse workers are comparably skilled, and therefore in a fair world should be payed equally. So I've never worked in either an auto plant or in a warehouse. I'll suppose that warehouse work is something similar to the people at Walmart who restock the shelves (or go around and shop for people who've ordered their groceries by phone). And I'll assume that autoworkers do jobs similar to what I see in a TV clip, where they're installing dashboards into SUVs.
The auto worker is using expensive equipment to do very precise work. The dash has to fit within a millimeter. A mistake can ruin a $40,000 vehicle. This has got to be a high stress job that requires continuous concentration. You can't tell me this is at the same skill level as the restocker at Walmart. The auto worker deserves her higher wage!
This, I think, is the fundamental flaw in the argument. Workplace skills can't be classed into a few boxes, e.g., people with a high school diploma. There is instead a huge variation within that category, and it depends not only on training but also very much on personality. The autoworker must be a more careful and conscientious person than the warehouse worker. The Marxist notion that we're all interchangeable proletons is wrong.
There lurks a deeper economic truth here. As Adam Smith pointed out, wealth derives from specialization. Using Smith's example, a skilled craftsman who makes pins might manufacture a couple dozen in a day. But if the labor is divided so that one person cuts the metal, and another sharpens the point, and yet a third fashions the pinhead, etc., then production increases thousand-fold.
This works only if there is a market for thousands of pins. Therefore large markets foster specialization, which makes everybody within that market richer. In our day markets are global, which means jobs are very, very specialized. Which implies that there are no large groups of people with similar skills. Individual talents and predispositions become very important.
Nevertheless, our Marxist friends carry on and locate three key dynamics accounting for "wage differentials among workers with similar skills." The first is "The ongoing processes of capitalist competition and technical change that create different conditions of production..." This describes the comparison between Walmart and autoworkers.
Second: "The continuing regeneration of a reserve army of unemployed workers." The very word "army" illustrates the error. There is no "army" of unemployed autoworkers. The people who can do that job have bespoke skills that are not readily transferable. The laid-off workers from the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant may or may not have the skill set necessary to assume jobs in South Carolina's much newer BMW plant.
Mr. Moody cites large numbers of men who have withdrawn from the labor force as being part of this "army." But this seems unlikely--most of those people are on disability, or have various mental/substance abuse problems that render them unsuitable for auto manufacturing (or warehouse work).
Finally, there is "the uneven efforts of workers to raise wages." This represents unionization, and Mr. Moody suggests that workers who are more militant (i.e., willing to sabotage their workplace) will on average receive higher wages. Count me skeptical.
So how do Misters Moody and Botwinick explain gender and racial differences in employment?
The origins of racism and sexism precede the development of industrial capitalism in patriarchy and slavery, but it is the rise of capitalist competition that provides the new and changing unequal forms of wage labor that workers compete to fill.In this model, capitalism "creates" low-wage employment just so it has a place to dispose of women and minorities. The implication (as I understand it) is that if there were no more sexism and racism then low-wage work would no longer exist. This is not credible.
Women, by Mr. Botwinick's theory, are simply another set of proletons that need to be accommodated in the workplace. Of course they're not: women are obviously and significantly different from men in both physical and psychological respects. Men and women have had different job descriptions since time immemorial--as the words hunter and gatherer suggest. Robert Gordon says that (prior to the industrial era) men's work was dirty and dangerous, while women's work was unending drudgery. It is only latter-day feminists who implausibly insist that gender differences should be radically abolished. That will never happen.
Indeed, the modern workplace seems to favor women, what with its emphasis on customer service and care. Machines disproportionately displace men by doing the backbreaking, muscular labor for them. Mr. Moody illustrates the problem, mentioning the "growing numbers of prime-age males, in particular, who have dropped out of the work force."
There is no cause to think that women are being needlessly relegated to low-wage work as surplus proletons. The "persistent inequality" doesn't exist--at least not for that reason.
Mr. Moody's article, and likely also Mr. Botwinick's book, are worth the read. But the thesis is unconvincing.
Further Reading:
Thursday, September 5, 2019
George Novack: Then and Now
Back in the day (early 1970s) George Novack (1905-1992) was touted as the world's foremost Marxist philosopher.
My girlfriend at the time--also a comrade--had studied philosophy in college. "I don't like George Novack," she said. A heretical thought, for George and his wife, Evelyn Reed, had God-like status within the Movement.
I looked at her, shocked. In a parallel universe such a comment could've gotten her shot.
Nevertheless, since I had no prior opinion about Mr. Novack one way or the other, the remark has forever biased me against him. After all, she, better educated than me, should know a philosopher when she saw one.
Mr. Novack's name hasn't crossed my radar screen for decades, so it was with sentiment that I read the excerpt republished in The Militant, entitled "Socialist revolution is ‘historical mission of modern proletariat’" The entire piece is an introduction to Frederick Engels' classic work, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. That book was first published in 1880, while Mr. Novack made his contribution in 1972. With a bit of fiddling you can likely read the whole introduction using Amazon's Look Inside feature, which is what I did.
My girlfriend was correct--Mr. Novack is not a philosopher. But he is a lucid exponent of Marxist thought. The piece is worth reading for that reason.
Like all Marxists, Mr. Novack understands nothing about economics.
"Utopian socialism" was the sort practiced by, among others, Robert Owen in New Harmony, Indiana, where a group of like-minded souls got together and tried to live under socialist principles. Of course it failed, surviving only for two years, from 1825 to 1827.
"Scientific socialism," proposed by Marx and Engels, was the root-and-branch social transformation into a socialist society. It was "scientific" because it depended on "social forces," and "material conditions," rather than some idealistic dream. Mr. Novack gives us a summary statement of how this transformation is supposed to occur.
The workers--also known as the proletariat--trying to recover their rightful share of "surplus value," will form trade unions. These will fight around narrow, workplace issues, such as wages and working hours.
When this doesn't satisfy them, they will expand their fight to the political realm. This leads to the formation of a labor party, distinguished from capitalist parties by being beholden only to proletarian interests.
Since the capitalists cannot relinquish their hold on profits and still stay in business, not even a labor party will satisfy the workers. Hence they shall be inspired toward revolution, implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and ultimately communism.
Yet the dying embers of the Marxist dream are kept alive by my Trotskyist friends, who still insist that Engels' template can be turned into reality. But they're stuck on Square One, still championing the union movement. Socialist Action (SA), for example, touts hotel unions--service workers who Engels probably didn't have in mind when he wrote his book. Indeed, it is unlikely that hotel workers--even collectively--hold the keys to civilization.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is even more out on a limb urging the unionization of Uber drivers. This is a nigh impossibility--the closest they could come would be to quit their jobs, which if the proceeds from driving Uber ever fell below the market rate is precisely what they would do.
The union movement is fading, not just in the US but globally. There are many reasons for that, including: automation has supplanted the majority of industrial workers; workplaces are smaller and harder to organize; supply chains are longer and therefore redundant, meaning strikers have less leverage; management has been flattened, which means employment is much more sensitive to the marketplace than previously; and most employees are now service workers who directly interact with customers. I think this trend is irreversible.
So Trotskyists have made no progress on Engels' step one.
Step Two is the formation of a labor party, and both groups are striving. SA has gone the furthest with this--they are now engaged in Jeff Mackler's quixotic and deeply unserious presidential campaign. The core platform is Build an Independent Labor Party, which, of course, is copied straight from Engels.
But it is more complicated today. SA believes in "catastrophic climate change," and par for the course they're on the radical extreme of that movement, claiming the world will end in ten years. Their solution to this imminent disaster is to Build an Independent Labor Party. I, for one, wonder how such a labor party is gonna prevent catastrophe at all, much less within ten years--especially since it's so far from becoming reality.
Engels would be flummoxed, as I suspect George Novack would be as well.
The SWP has dropped the "climate change" nonsense, which puts them back in the real world. And further, they've gone all-in on the blue-collar billionaire, supporting President Donald J. Trump.
OK--that last sentence is an overstatement. They don't endorse Mr. Trump, but they do sympathize with his supporters. An attack on Mr. Trump--or so they perceive--is an attack on the workers who are his fans. The SWP adamantly (and in my view correctly) rejects the charges of treason and racism so often and casually thrown at the president's constituents.
It's a fine line: defending Trump's supporters against completely spurious charges--without supporting Trump. Many on the Left accuse them of actually supporting Trump. The case is stronger because the SWP has rejected the antisemitism otherwise so rampant on the far Left.
Nevertheless, I think they are very much on the Left: they strongly support the Cuban "revolution"; they defend North Korea as a workers' state ("emancipated"?); they generally oppose Trump's crackdown on immigration; and above all, they aspire to Build an Independent Labor Party.
So I predict they'll again run candidates for president and vice-president in 2020, just have they done since 1948. The campaign will be just as quixotic as Socialist Action's, though less incoherent.
Still, I can't help but hope that at least a few comrades, in the privacy of the ballot box, will join me in voting for Donald J. Trump.
Either way, George Novack is spinning in his grave.
Further Reading:
My girlfriend at the time--also a comrade--had studied philosophy in college. "I don't like George Novack," she said. A heretical thought, for George and his wife, Evelyn Reed, had God-like status within the Movement.
I looked at her, shocked. In a parallel universe such a comment could've gotten her shot.
Nevertheless, since I had no prior opinion about Mr. Novack one way or the other, the remark has forever biased me against him. After all, she, better educated than me, should know a philosopher when she saw one.
Mr. Novack's name hasn't crossed my radar screen for decades, so it was with sentiment that I read the excerpt republished in The Militant, entitled "Socialist revolution is ‘historical mission of modern proletariat’" The entire piece is an introduction to Frederick Engels' classic work, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. That book was first published in 1880, while Mr. Novack made his contribution in 1972. With a bit of fiddling you can likely read the whole introduction using Amazon's Look Inside feature, which is what I did.
My girlfriend was correct--Mr. Novack is not a philosopher. But he is a lucid exponent of Marxist thought. The piece is worth reading for that reason.
Like all Marxists, Mr. Novack understands nothing about economics.
The material source of the conflict between capital and labor is their ceaseless struggle over the division of the social surplus product in the form of the new value that is added to the total wealth produced by the laboring population. The profits of the capitalist stand in inverse ratio to the wages of the workers.This is manifestly not true, as evidenced by the dramatic rise in global living standards since 1880. The "conflict" between workers and capitalists is not the zero-sum game that Novack and Engels imply.
"Utopian socialism" was the sort practiced by, among others, Robert Owen in New Harmony, Indiana, where a group of like-minded souls got together and tried to live under socialist principles. Of course it failed, surviving only for two years, from 1825 to 1827.
"Scientific socialism," proposed by Marx and Engels, was the root-and-branch social transformation into a socialist society. It was "scientific" because it depended on "social forces," and "material conditions," rather than some idealistic dream. Mr. Novack gives us a summary statement of how this transformation is supposed to occur.
The workers--also known as the proletariat--trying to recover their rightful share of "surplus value," will form trade unions. These will fight around narrow, workplace issues, such as wages and working hours.
When this doesn't satisfy them, they will expand their fight to the political realm. This leads to the formation of a labor party, distinguished from capitalist parties by being beholden only to proletarian interests.
Since the capitalists cannot relinquish their hold on profits and still stay in business, not even a labor party will satisfy the workers. Hence they shall be inspired toward revolution, implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and ultimately communism.
Only the triumphant proletarian revolution can clear the road to a classless society. Then, at last, long-suffering humanity will be the master of nature and its own social organization, and its full creative capacities will be released to beautify a bountiful world. This will mark “the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”It's a silly model, yet Mr. Novack claims some success. He notes that when Engels wrote his book, it was
...no more than a prophecy. History had yet to demonstrate whether his prediction of things to come was solidly based or an aberrant hypothesis of social development. Now a century later, the act of emancipation he anticipated has been effected in fourteen countries, beginning with Russia in 1917 and extending to Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam and Cuba after the Second World War.While it's hard to think of Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or Castroist Cuba as being in any sense "emancipated," it is nevertheless true that (apart from Cuba) there is nothing "socialist" about them now. Mr. Novack was premature in his claim of success and Engels' prophecies are just flat-out wrong.
Yet the dying embers of the Marxist dream are kept alive by my Trotskyist friends, who still insist that Engels' template can be turned into reality. But they're stuck on Square One, still championing the union movement. Socialist Action (SA), for example, touts hotel unions--service workers who Engels probably didn't have in mind when he wrote his book. Indeed, it is unlikely that hotel workers--even collectively--hold the keys to civilization.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is even more out on a limb urging the unionization of Uber drivers. This is a nigh impossibility--the closest they could come would be to quit their jobs, which if the proceeds from driving Uber ever fell below the market rate is precisely what they would do.
The union movement is fading, not just in the US but globally. There are many reasons for that, including: automation has supplanted the majority of industrial workers; workplaces are smaller and harder to organize; supply chains are longer and therefore redundant, meaning strikers have less leverage; management has been flattened, which means employment is much more sensitive to the marketplace than previously; and most employees are now service workers who directly interact with customers. I think this trend is irreversible.
So Trotskyists have made no progress on Engels' step one.
Step Two is the formation of a labor party, and both groups are striving. SA has gone the furthest with this--they are now engaged in Jeff Mackler's quixotic and deeply unserious presidential campaign. The core platform is Build an Independent Labor Party, which, of course, is copied straight from Engels.
But it is more complicated today. SA believes in "catastrophic climate change," and par for the course they're on the radical extreme of that movement, claiming the world will end in ten years. Their solution to this imminent disaster is to Build an Independent Labor Party. I, for one, wonder how such a labor party is gonna prevent catastrophe at all, much less within ten years--especially since it's so far from becoming reality.
Engels would be flummoxed, as I suspect George Novack would be as well.
The SWP has dropped the "climate change" nonsense, which puts them back in the real world. And further, they've gone all-in on the blue-collar billionaire, supporting President Donald J. Trump.
OK--that last sentence is an overstatement. They don't endorse Mr. Trump, but they do sympathize with his supporters. An attack on Mr. Trump--or so they perceive--is an attack on the workers who are his fans. The SWP adamantly (and in my view correctly) rejects the charges of treason and racism so often and casually thrown at the president's constituents.
It's a fine line: defending Trump's supporters against completely spurious charges--without supporting Trump. Many on the Left accuse them of actually supporting Trump. The case is stronger because the SWP has rejected the antisemitism otherwise so rampant on the far Left.
Nevertheless, I think they are very much on the Left: they strongly support the Cuban "revolution"; they defend North Korea as a workers' state ("emancipated"?); they generally oppose Trump's crackdown on immigration; and above all, they aspire to Build an Independent Labor Party.
So I predict they'll again run candidates for president and vice-president in 2020, just have they done since 1948. The campaign will be just as quixotic as Socialist Action's, though less incoherent.
Still, I can't help but hope that at least a few comrades, in the privacy of the ballot box, will join me in voting for Donald J. Trump.
Either way, George Novack is spinning in his grave.
Further Reading:
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