Like college professors everywhere, these people have way too much time on their hands, and so write long, meaningless documents debating Marxist esoterica. The "Manifesto" which recently crossed my radar screen bears the heading
The Capitalist Disaster and the Struggle for an International of Socialist Revolution, dated April 18, 2021, and was "approved by the leaderships of the groups of the Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International." It's almost 13,000 words long, and it's one of those that I've read (more accurately, skimmed through) so that you don't have to.
The professors are all busy trying to out-Trotsky each other, which is why one needs a Trotskyist Faction inside a Trotskyist International.
None of this is important--and this post is about something really important, namely my breakfast. We'll get to that in a minute, but I have to give you a flavor of the "Manifesto" first.
The new coronavirus spread rapidly — faster than any virus before it — following the same circuits that connect global just-in-time supply chains. While human viruses have frequently followed the flow of goods (the bubonic plague, for example, spread through trade routes for years), the speed and massive scale of globalized capitalism has created a scenario in which diseases can spread throughout the globe in a matter of weeks. This highlights the fact that capitalism not only makes it impossible to establish a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, but that it also increasingly destroys both.
Even just 100 years ago polio was rampant. Two hundred years ago the most widely feared disease was smallpox, which led to a very painful death. The American South was a hotbed for malaria, and not too long ago cholera, dysentery, typhoid and more plagued urban populations around the globe. This describes the "harmonious relationship between humans and nature" that capitalism has supposedly destroyed.
The Covid pandemic, serious as it may be, has a death rate of about 0.3%, preying mostly on older people. Within the first few months some effective treatments became available, and within about year, three or more variously effective vaccines were developed. The leaders of this effort were capitalist pharmaceutical companies in the US, who hired thousands of employees to work on the project--employees who do expect to get paid for their efforts. Which is why the companies insist on patent protection--how else are they supposed to pay their people? (In Cuba, where there are no patents, people get paid about $60/month--roughly a child's allowance.)
My breakfast is a simple affair. I'm a creature of habit and have eaten roughly the same thing for 50 years now. There are three ingredients:
- Oatmeal--the generic brand. The only ingredient is rolled oats (the dehusked grain, flattened to speed cooking time). It comes in an airtight, bug-proof, sealed container. Cost: about 70 cents per day.
- 2% milk--refrigerated, pasteurized and homogenized, typically with a sell-by date two weeks later than my purchase. It is sold in a plastic, air-tight, leak-proof container, carefully designed so it doesn't spill when poured. Cost: about 70 cents per day.
I don't recall how oatmeal was sold in my childhood--though we did eat it occasionally. Without a microwave oven (invented in the 1980s) cooking it was a bit of a chore. When I was very young I recall that the milkman would deliver milk to our home in returnable glass bottles. That was surely much more expensive and less sanitary than what I get today. Obviously, in the intervening years capitalist competition to sell better food for cheaper prices has greatly improved my quality of life.
But nothing compares with the third ingredient: fresh blueberries. Twenty years ago these were only available when in season locally--for perhaps six weeks. The rest of the time I'd have to make do with raisins. Then it became possible to ship blueberries over longer distances--I think this is because they are packaged under nitrogen--i.e., without much oxygen present. This, plus refrigeration, keeps food fresh for much longer.
Today I get fresh blueberries year round. During December and January they come from Chile. In January and February they often arrive from Peru. February and March brings in the crop from Mexico, and also from Florida. April and May 'tis the season in North Carolina, while in June and July they are locally in season here in New York and New Jersey. In August and September we get blueberries from Quebec. Only in October and November are the berries a bit less fresh and slightly more expensive.
You need to read the fine print to know where they come from--you can't tell by the price. That is, shipping blueberries half way around the world so that they arrive fresh at my local Walmart--is much cheaper than a pint of blueberries! It's so cheap that as a consumer I barely notice it. I spend another 70 cents per day for breakfast blueberries.
The total cost of my very delicious breakfast is a bit over $2/day. There is absolutely no way any socialist society could provide me with such an elegant luxury at so reasonable a price. Do they get fresh blueberries year round in Cuba or North Korea?
So imagine my distress when, in 2019, I read about
mass rioting in Chile. The riots started because of a fare hike on the Santiago Metro system. So the rioters trashed the Metro, vandalizing stations and destroying rolling stock! That'll show them! They covered much of the city with graffiti, smashing store windows as they went. Of course they fought with police. Here is a picture from
Left Voice.
So who are these people who threaten to ruin my breakfast? I certainly hoped they weren't farmers! The last thing I need is for Chilean farmers to go on strike. I needn't have worried. The Chilean blueberries arrived on time and under budget. From the cost of blueberries, I would never have known the rioting ever happened.
Another major Chilean export is copper, mined in the Atacama desert. Did the riots disrupt copper production? I doubt it, because copper prices in 2019 were lower than they were in 2017 and 2018. So apparently the copper miners didn't go on strike, either.
In other words, anybody who did useful work selling valuable products to consumers--those people kept on working. They had to earn a living. So, again, who are those nihilistic dingbats wearing garbage cans on their heads pretending to be revolutionaries?
Of course we know: they're the lumpen class, or more specifically, the lumpen intelligentsia. These are misguided folks who thought if the they went to college they'd get the corner office and earn a big paycheck. What they learned is that the corner office doesn't exist anymore, and big paychecks aren't earned by going to college, much less grad school. So now, as grad students or freshly-minted PhDs, they have no prospects for gainful employment.
Of course they're pissed, and want to ruin it for everybody else. So why not vandalize the subway? It's a lot of fun and it makes you feel like a bigshot.
Fortunately, the workers and farmers of Chile--the real workers and farmers who mine copper and grow blueberries--have kept the country alive and well. The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction has not succeeded in ruining my breakfast.
Further Reading:
Excellent, educational and entertaining article.
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