Elections 2020: Socialist Action and SWP

There's something fishy in Mackler-land.

On November 3rd--election eve--Jeff Mackler, Socialist Action's (SA) failed presidential candidate, hosted a Youtube roundtable to discuss the returns as they came in. The comrade-panelists were Lisa Lunenburg (from Minneapolis); Barry Weisleder (Toronto); Marty Goodman (New York); Nicholas Brannon; Gary B (Oregon); John Pottinger (Chicago); and Ann Montague (VP Candidate). That's six white males and two white females, which is likely representative of SA's demographics.

Since November 3rd--26 days ago as of this writing--there has been nothing posted on the SA website. Crickets! What's going on? I suggest four possibilities.

1. Comrade Jeff is just too tired after his arduous campaigning. After all, sitting in an easy chair in front of a webcam for a few hours/week is just exhausting. He needs a rest.
2. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming on, comrades need some time to prepare for the holidays.
3. There is another split brewing in SA...and indeed, perhaps the organization will cease to exist.
4. Or (my preference), Mr. Mackler is being deposed as National Secretary because of old age and gross incompetence. After all, if there were ever a more humiliating presidential campaign I've never heard of it.

Anyway, we'll likely find out within the next week or two.

The video is two hours long, and I did not listen to all of it. I probably invested 45 minutes or so this afternoon (11/28) , and I made sure I sampled each of the speakers. I do not have a transcript, any "quotes" here are from memory and likely not strictly accurate. I'm not listening to it again--it really is very boring. Since it went online it has received 135 views, at least three of which were from me. The most commonly used word was "uh", followed closely by "um."

Mr. Mackler opened by touting the success of his campaign, claiming even to have gotten a vote from Idaho! Of course he dismissed both Trump and Biden as being bourgeois candidates neither of whom represents the working class. But he claimed to defend the right to a fair election, somehow blaming only Republicans for any unfairness. In retrospect, it appears that if there was any cheating it came overwhelmingly from Democrats.

He repeated the ridiculous assertion that "between 15 million and 26 million people" showed up for the George Floyd protests. Not even his fellow panelists lent their support to that statement.

Mr. Mackler doesn't believe in bourgeois elections, for when and if he ever wins one then all future elections will be abolished. The People will have spoken once and for all time. So his concern that the election be fair is pure hypocrisy.

Many speakers (maybe even all of them) went through the litany of who SA supposedly supports: Black, Latino, Native Americans, GLTBQAI, Trans, etc. In other words, all the BIPOCs, as current lingo will have it, despite the fact that nobody in SA shares that identity. This, of course, is precisely the same audience desired by AOC and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and also the Green Party under Howie Hawkins' banner. 

Is it any surprise that the program of Socialist Action is exactly the same as that of Democratic Party progressives? Of course it is--straight down the line: Green New Deal, Medicare for All, End Systemic Racism, Tax the Rich, $15 minimum wage, No New Wars, Down With Israel, etc. The only difference between SA's program and the Democratic Party Left's program is that Mackler claims he doesn't like Democrats. But I don't believe him--because he campaigned for the Democratic Party program the entire time.

So they oughta be happy that 75,000,000 people voted for the Dems, which more than makes up for the piddling 135 who watched snippets of Mr. Mackler's video. After all, why vote for Boring Jeff when you can vote for the real thing, i.e., Stupid Joe Biden.

Because Jeff Mackler, AOC, Kamala Harris, Bob Avakian and the whole disreputable gang do not stand for the Working Class. They instead represent an unholy alliance between the top 10% (academia, the media, Hollywood, "experts", climate gurus, etc.) and the Lumpen Proletariat (teachers' union hacks, civil servants, NGOs, social workers, grad students, folks up to their eyeballs in student loan debt).

The real champion of the Working Class in this election was none other than Donald J. Trump. Needless to say, the ruling elite has worked overtime to steal the election from him. And even though I am personally petty bourgeois from my split ends down to my toenail fungus, at least I'm smart enough to know where the class line is.

I don't vote for Democrats--not even those that gussy themselves up as "revolutionaries."

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) understands at least some of this. An article by Terry Evans (probably written around Nov. 13th) puts it this way:

The Democrats, middle-class left and some “Never Trump” Republicans complain Trump’s refusal to concede is a threat to democracy. Groups like ShutDownDC threaten to do whatever it takes “to force Trump from office.”

Their threats are dangerous for the working class. There is enough time to resolve the election result and hear the legal challenges before Inauguration Day in January. Working-class parties like the Socialist Workers Party are more than familiar with Democrats and Republicans rigging ballot rights.

The real target of the liberals and middle-class radicals is the working class. They are astounded their pollsters got the election so wrong. They say the 71 million people who voted for Trump means that working people are becoming more right wing and racist.

This isn’t true. Millions of workers are looking for ways to fight against the capitalist crisis today. Hundreds of thousands joined protests against police brutality in cities, towns and rural areas across the country in early summer.

Fine, as far as it goes. But they then go wrong in two ways:

1. They believe Trump is a false prophet--that he's just faking it as a friend of the working man. I think they're stuck in a time warp and don't really understand how class politics works today.
2. Like SA, despite their solidarity with Trump voters, they still subscribe to the Democratic platform: things like Health Care for All and Amnesty for All Undocumented Immigrants, i.e., appeals to the Lumpen Proletariat. Though, to give them credit, they don't sign on to the climate change nonsense, nor are they rabidly antisemitic.

To my knowledge, the above quoted article by Mr. Evans is the only journalistic piece the SWP has published about the election. Weirdly, it makes no mention of the Kennedy/Jarrett campaign, on which they expended considerable effort. Is that to be tossed down the memory hole so quickly? Seems like a lot of work for nothing.

Further, they worked hard to get on the ballot in at least a few states. As I pointed out here, it's weird that they didn't mention that at all in their final election push. And now they really should say how many votes they got--for if they're on the ballot those votes were all machine tabulated and should be readily available.

Why have they deep-sixed the petition drives to get on the ballot? I can think of several possible reasons.

1. It's just an oversight. In which case getting on the ballot just wasn't that important in the first place. Why then did they bother?
2. Their vote totals are humiliating. But surely it can't be worse than Mr. Mackler's 135 views. I understand that people who vote for minor parties at the bottom of the ballot often don't know who they're voting for--it's just a joke or a protest, or perhaps a mistake. But some of those votes are real, and they should be championed.
3. The Party, despite their efforts, didn't actually succeed in getting on the ballot anywhere. Now that would really be humiliating!

Anyway, here is the election outcome in a nutshell:

• the Working Class lost.
• the highly educated elite (aka, the swamp) won.
• The SWP was not effective.
• The most pathetic loser of all time is Jeff Mackler, who needs to get out of politics.

Further Reading:

• Who Should Trotskyists Vote For in 2020?
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again

Austerity Comes to Campus

This post derives from two articles in Left Voice: one authored by Scott Cooper, and entitled What's Next: Stimulus or Austerity?  The second, by Olivia Wood, is New York Postpones Raises for Public Employees; CUNY Workers Push for a Strike. As Left Voice's core is a collective of New York City college professors, they know their subject matter, and as a retired professor myself the topic is of considerable interest. The integrity and competence of both authors is beyond question and the articles are worth your time. 

Here is Mr. Cooper's lede idea:

The cuts are everywhere, thanks mostly to plunging tax revenues. States rely on taxes to fund their budgets that come, overwhelmingly, from two sources: income taxes, which don’t get paid if people don’t have jobs; and sales taxes, which are not forthcoming if people have little or no money to spend. …

His solution is to tax the rich, and he documents in some detail how the rich are frequently taxed at a lower rate than the middle class.

Unless it prints new money, federal government funds — and those of state and local governments, for that matter — are overwhelmingly what has been collected from the vast majority of people, the working class. As New York Times columnist David Leonhardt has pointed out by the numbers, the wealthiest pay taxes at much lower rates than the rest of us. And we don’t enjoy any of the numerous loopholes that have been established to help them get away with paying less and less and sometimes even zero.

And true enough, and in fact it's even worse than Mr. Cooper imagines. The very poor, i.e., those receiving welfare benefits, are often taxed at rates exceeding 100% (e.g., they lose food stamp benefits if they're $1 above the cutoff). There is obviously something wrong with welfare, leading many to propose getting rid of all the individual benefits entirely and replacing them with a negative income tax or a universal basic income.

But at the end of the day, it's all irrelevant. Because the big issue isn't the rate at which income is taxed, but rather the total amount received in taxes. And by this measure income taxes are highly progressive, as this chart shows.

Source

That's for federal taxes, nearly 70% of which are paid by the top 10% income earners. Relevant here are New York State and City income taxes, which are even more progressive than the Feds. As shown below, over 50% of New York state tax receipts come from the top 1%, and nearly 80% comes from the top 10%.

Source

Of course income taxes are not the whole story. There are payroll taxes, overwhelmingly paid by the middle class, for whom the primary beneficiaries are also the middle class. This does not seem unfair. Then there are sales and property taxes, which are undoubtedly regressive.

In light of this, raising taxes on the rich doesn't make too much sense. If they're already paying 70% of the tax haul, government is already dependent on the whims of only a few people. These people are the most mobile folks on the planet, and can easily move out of state or even out of the country. Indeed, the NY Post reports that nearly 300,000 people fled the state in the eight months ending Oct. 31st. These are upper income folks who are taking a big slice of AGI with them.

I'll suggest that tax rates are already adjusted to maximize revenue. Adjust the rates either up or down, and actual tax receipts will decline--the former because rich people can move, and the latter because you're just leaving money on the table.

If Mr. Cooper is worried about the revenue stream, Ms. Wood cares more about how the money should be spent. The meat of her argument is summarized in the last paragraph.

New York City, New York State, and CUNY have all been looking to Washington for some kind of relief. They say these cuts and budget shortfalls are temporary, and federal funds from a Biden administration will save us. But workers should not hold our breath. Instead, we must organize, within our unions, across unions, and with the un-unionized, to demand relief that benefits the workers, not the governments and the capitalists. This includes preparing our unions to take citywide strike actions to fight the wave of further austerity that is sure to come.

Are the budget shortfalls temporary? Probably not, and for several reasons. First, as said above taxpayers are leaving the state and taking their AGI with them. Second, and more important, the economy is recovering, but to a different economy.

“We’re recovering, but to a different economy,” [Fed chair Jerome] Powell said during a virtual panel discussion at the European Central Bank’s Forum on Central Banking.

The pandemic has accelerated existing trends in the economy and society, including the increasing use of technology, telework and automation, he said. This will have lasting effects on how people live and work. 

So what are the effects on higher education? I can count a few.

• More students are learning online. Some of them will prefer it and will not go back to the classroom. Online education got a permanent boost.
• Students expect online education to be cheaper and are less willing to pay high tuition. Beyond which, online students have no need for dorm rooms, cafeteria food or athletic facilities--all of which are major revenue sources for colleges.
• Working from home reduces the need for office space, managers, and overhead. Ultimately, it reduces the benefits of a college degree. For that and other reasons, including automation, the demand for college grads likely decreases over time.
• Likewise, working from home expands the labor pool available to the employer. Their candidates can live in Topeka as easily as in Manhattan. Wages will accordingly trend lower.
• Not pandemic related, but still important, is the demographic cliff--the cohort of high school grads will be much smaller in coming years.

Bottom line: fewer kids will go to college, fewer of them will attend a residential college, and those kids will all be spending less money at college.

So what's Ms. Wood's suggested solution?

This week, rank and file organizers at CUNY are bringing a Cross-Campus Resolution for a Strike Authorization Campaign and Vote to the floor of the PSC’s Delegate Assembly.

Who are they going to strike against? Surely not against the CUNY administration, because at the end of the day they don't control the purse strings. And also not against the state or city government--for not only can they not control the purse strings, but they've got all kinds of other social services they need to fund.

The faculty probably intend to strike against the millionaires and billionaires, who generally don't give a rat's patoot about CUNY. Why should they? Certainly the ones who have already left town have washed their hands of the whole problem.

So ultimately our faculty friends are striking against their own students--the ones who are at least paying a fraction of the bills. This seems perverse--and deeply counterproductive.

The whole higher education edifice is overbuilt and needs to shrink. We need fewer colleges, fewer professors, and a whole lot fewer grad students. One hopes it can happen gradually so that people could adjust their lives over time. But the world is never like that. As Hemingway put it, 

“How did you go bankrupt?" 

"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

 Further Reading:

• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"
• Louis Proyect and the More Poverty Solution
• Book Review: Capitalism Alone

Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole with Mary-Alice Waters

Last week I wrote about The Militant's (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) retraction of an article by Steve Warshell. My lede paragraph:

The Militant concocts more fake controversy with this post:

This week’s print edition of the Militant includes an article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” It has been withdrawn from the online edition. It does not reflect the opinion of the Militant or the Socialist Workers Party. 

Next week’s issue of the Militant will feature an editorial correcting that article.

This week's editorial--actually a long article by Mary-Alice Waters--appears in the current issue under the title Defending the Cuban Revolution, strengthening US working people. The supposedly offensive article by Mr. Warshell (Would a Joe Biden White House be better for Cuba?) is included at the same link (scroll down). If you really want to go down this rabbit hole, I suggest you read Mr. Warshell's piece before engaging with Ms. Waters, though this is one of those cases where I've done the reading so you don't have to.

Ms. Waters' piece is just plain incoherent. In an effort to understand it I've tried to outline it. The idea is that major points have a lede paragraph, and each paragraph has a topic sentence. Let's see how far those high school English class principles carry us.

For example, she says,

The second major problem with the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” is its opening sentences. “A number of groups here and around the country that consider themselves ‘friends of Cuba’ are promoting Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency as a way to relieve the effects of over 60 years of Washington’s economic and political attacks. …

The journalistically unacceptable anonymity of the phrase “a number of groups” is plenty reason enough to reject such a lead sentence in a working-class newspaper. But why is it a problem that some friends of Cuba are urging a vote for Joe Biden? Or Donald Trump? Is it a problem that the Socialist Workers Party advocates and organizes everyone we can to support the SWP ticket of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett?

The major criticism seems picayune--that Mr. Warshell omits a listing of the offending groups. Of course The Militant does this all the time, often referring to middle class organizations that cross the class line--without listing them individually.

But beyond that, she claims that Mr. Warshell misunderstands the principles behind a united front, where working class groups come together around narrow issues upon which they agree. He writes

These groups are organizing car caravans here, peddling the myth that Democratic administrations — and in particular Barack Obama’s — “have been better” for relations between Washington and Havana, especially better than Donald Trump’s.

Perhaps Mr. Warshell is unclear here, but my impression is the car caravans are not organized to defend Cuba, but rather to promote Joe Biden. In which case this isn't a united front at all. But even if the stated purpose of the caravans were the defense of the Cuban "Revolution," since when is the Party supposed to remain silent about other issues of disagreement not involved in the united front? For example, we never hid our criticism of liberal Democrats despite marching with them in antiwar demonstrations.

But getting back to high school English, note the first phrase in Ms. Waters' above quote: the second major problem. Which begs the question: What is the first major problem? As best I can figure (and it's really unclear), it's this:

The problems begin with the headline itself. It poses a question the article never addresses. Moreover, it is a question that can’t be answered. What is there to say except, “If Joe Biden becomes the next president of the United States, we’ll see.”

Huh? Wouldn't this be solved by rephrasing Mr. Warshell's headline If Joe Biden became president, would that be better for Cuba? This seems like a really minor point. 

The supposed first issue subdivides into two, numbered components. 

First, whether Biden or Donald Trump is installed in the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, the revolutionary leadership of Cuba will continue on the course they’ve followed from 1959 to today, through 12 U.S. administrations. ...

Second, for our part, irrespective of who occupies the White House for the next four years, the Socialist Workers Party too will continue on the course we have followed from 1959 to today. 

She simply restates what we already know, namely that neither the Cuban government nor the SWP will change fundamental positions, regardless of the election outcome. There is nothing in Mr. Warshell's article to suggest otherwise. And neither has anything to do with the supposedly misguided headline--it's a non sequitur.

Then we get to the second major problem discussed above, not to be confused with the aforementioned "second" sub-point. (And if you're confused, so am I.) I think Ms. Waters just flunked English Comp.

But now we strike gold with {emphasis mine}

There’s a third way in which the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” did not express the editorial line of the Militant or the positions of the Socialist Workers Party. That is the way in which it presented the differences between executive actions taken by the Barack Obama administration during its second term versus measures imposed by the Trump administration. The latter have included cutting back travel rights in both directions and depriving Cuba of necessities such as oil, access to the international financial system, and remittances from family members living abroad. 

Here I'm indebted to commenter Eldee Stephens who intuited the true reason for the retraction without chasing down any rabbits. The reason is that life for the Cuban government (and probably also the Cuban people) will be easier under a less stringent sanctions regime, i.e., under a Biden administration.

After much throat-clearing Ms. Waters admits as much.

If a Biden administration were to reverse the direction of some of Washington’s current policies, it would open some breathing room for Cuban working people and their government to more easily deal with the challenges they face. If the boot on their neck pressed less tightly, they would be quite capable of doing that. … 

For these reasons, it’s probably safe to say that a majority of Cuban working people and their leadership are hoping for a Biden electoral victory. Does that mean it’s in the interests of U.S. working people to give political support to a capitalist party and its candidates?

That question was neither asked nor answered in the article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” But for class-conscious workers in the U.S., that’s the most important question. And the answer is an unequivocal “No.”

So she admits that there is a difference between the two bourgeois candidates--a distinction that the Cubans are very much aware of. This is very unTrotskyist of her--Trotskyists (like Mr. Warshell) assert there is no essential difference between Republicans and Democrats--any contrary answer is reformist. But since the SWP wants to remain on good terms with the Cuban leadership, high principle has to yield to Cuba's immediate self-interest.

Regarding the question Does that mean it’s in the interests of U.S. working people to give political support to a capitalist party and its candidates?, Mr. Warshell answers it unambiguously in his final paragraph:

The fact is the only campaign for president that offers solidarity with the Cuban people and their revolution is the Socialist Workers Party campaign of Alyson Kennedy. Not only does the SWP call for an end to Washington’s economic assaults against Cuba and for the U.S. rulers to get out of Guantánamo, Kennedy points to Cuba’s socialist revolution as an example for workers and farmers in the U.S. to follow.

So here we are--at the bottom of the rabbit hole. And there ain't even a rabbit down here! 

Further Reading:

• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"
• The Militant Visits Manila
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History

Pre-Election Mockery

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) concocts more fake controversy with this post:

This week’s print edition of the Militant includes an article “Would a Joe Biden White House Be Better for Cuba?” It has been withdrawn from the online edition. It does not reflect the opinion of the Militant or the Socialist Workers Party. 

Next week’s issue of the Militant will feature an editorial correcting that article.

They did that last July--that is, retracted an article by Emma Johnson published in the prior week's Militant. I read both the offending article and the retraction, and even after all that I couldn't discern the reasons for the retraction. I concluded:

So I count Ms. Johnson not guilty. Her article is actually a clearer statement of what I (sort of) understand to be The Militant's true position. She does not deserve her walk of shame.

So why does The Militant retract an article that doesn't need to be retracted? This is like Tweedledum retracting a piece written by Tweedledee. It makes no sense.

So why the unnecessary retraction? My answer was "It's just clickbait."

So here we go again, except now we have to wait a week to supposedly find out the reason for the retraction. Fortunately for us, the print edition of The Militant is posted in pdf format here. The offending article is by John Warshell and can be found on page six. So it's kind of a game--can I figure out why it's been retracted without being told?

The answer is: No, I can't! For the life of me I have no clue where the author has gone wrong. Mr. Warshell was in the movement when I joined, so he's been a member for at least 50 years now. That he's suddenly succumbed to petty bourgeois wrong-think strikes me as astonishing. The article is total Trotskyist boilerplate--there's nothing in it any Trotskyist of any denomination could find offensive.

Yet I've fallen for the trick again. I will likely write a post about the retraction, and that of an article I should otherwise ignore. I guess I'm just a sucker for clickbait.

Help me out here, folks. Can any of you find the "error" in Mr. Warshell's piece? You have until next Saturday to let us know.

----

The ever-incompetent presidential candidate Jeff Mackler strikes again. As readers of this blog know, Mr. Mackler's original running mate was Heather Bradford. After declaring her candidacy in May, 2019, Ms. Bradford was part of the group that split from Socialist Action to form the new Socialist Resurgence grouplet. That happened in October, 2019, which means that Ms. Bradford had five months to campaign with the team before becoming a non-person. 

Her short-lived campaign for veep earned her exactly three (3) mentions on the Socialist Action website. That was a really aggressive, busy campaign schedule! (sarcasm).

Anyway, since October, 2019, Mr. Mackler has campaigned alone, sitting in his basement pontificating via boring Youtube videos watched (or at least clicked on) by dozens of people. But somehow, miraculously, on October 22nd, 2020, a new running mate has suddenly materialized--her name is Ann Montague.

Ann Montague and Jeff Mackler (source)

This is two weeks before the election, obviously too late to get any changes to ballot status. Oh--I forgot--Socialist Action has made exactly zero effort to get on any ballot. So all they'll need to do is modify their campaign literature--the 50 or so copies they've printed up. They'll have to cross out the name "Heather Bradford" and hand-write in "Ann Montague". A couple of comrades working all night should be able to get this done.

I have nothing against Trotskyists running presidential campaigns, no matter how quixotic they may be. But back in the day we took pride in at least being professional about it. If I were in Socialist Action, or for that matter in any denomination, I'd be totally ashamed. This is truly pathetic.

----

Getting back to The Militant, the SWP campaign of Alyson Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett at least meets the professionalism standard. In the issue just before the election, at least three front page articles are directly about the election. Ms. Kennedy and Mr. Jarrett have actually been out campaigning and have gone on tour.

But here is something weird. Back in August The Militant published this statement:

Join the fight to put the Socialist Workers Party 2020 presidential campaign on the ballot everywhere we can! Teams of campaigners are fanning out across Washington state, Tennessee, New Jersey and Minnesota. With backing from working people, the party has already won ballot status in Colorado and Vermont, and is filing in Louisiana Aug. 7. The party’s goal is to be on the ballot in as many states as possible, as we have done every four years since 1948.

So I don't understand why the final list of candidates (published the week of the election) does not indicate ballot status. What's the point of getting on the ballot if you don't tell your readers (and potential voters) about it?

(Source)

If they're on the ballot, one would expect that Kennedy/Jarrett will get thousands of votes--some by accident, more as a random protest against Biden/Trump, and a few intentional. No matter how they come, votes are an accomplishment for the Party. I don't know why they keep their ballot status under wraps.

Anyway I'd like to know how many votes they get.

And even more important, the world wants to know if Boring Jeff Mackler can get more than two dozen votes. I doubt he will. We'll likely never find out because nobody has the time to go looking for the kooks who bothered to write in the name of the most ridiculous candidate ever in American history.

Further Reading:

• Jeff Mackler Quits the 2020 Race! (false alarm)
• Left Voice on Trump's Tulsa Rally
• The SWP's 2020 Campaign Platform