Steve Clark's Bizarre Book Bazaar

Steve Clark (MILITANT/ÖGMUNDUR JÓNSSON)

The astonishing thing about the book fair recently held in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, is that Steve Clark attended it. Mr. Clark is a member of the Troika, namely the three-person team that constitutes the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Of those three, he is the junior member, both in age and rank. His seniors are Jack Barnes, the National Secretary of the Party, and Mary-Alice Waters, who is Jack's significant other and head of Pathfinder Press. Comrades Barnes and Waters are both octogenarians. I believe Comrade Clark is a year or two younger than I am, which suggests he's about 70.

Mr. Clark, despite his status, rarely lets his picture be published, which likely explains why he's infrequently seen at public events, and has never run as an SWP candidate for any election. It's weird that he'd travel all the way to Erbil to be photographed sitting in an easy chair like a crown prince, attended to by hijab-clad women. Indeed, the phrase "crown prince" describes him rather well given his youth and status compared to the other two royals. He's the son that comrades Barnes and Waters never had.

Two other adjectives are inspired by the picture: old and frail. In knew Mr. Clark from the Chicago branch back in the early 1970s. He looked old then--the early onset of male-pattern baldness didn't do much for youthful good looks. He rose to the challenge, leveraging his appearance to seem more serious and mature than his fellow comrades. Today he just looks old--much older than 70.

Frail may be an artifact of the photo: being seated and surrounded by much younger, standing people will make anybody look frail. Still, I don't know what Mr. Clark actually does. He writes for The Militant only occasionally. He has no formal responsibility of which I am aware. I suggested in the past that he was in ill-health. Which may be true, but he can't be all that decrepit if he is able to fly from New York to Erbil and back.

I've dubbed Mr. Clark the Sycophant in Chief. If the Party had state power, he'd be the guy in charge of the concentration camps. He behaves the way you'd expect a good crown prince to behave.

Anyway, I think he joined the Movement after I did, and partly because of that bald pate made himself felt right away. He was always behind closed doors in some important meeting or another, or taking an urgent phone call. In those days the Revolution was serious business, and comrade Clark was in the thick of it. It was only a matter of time before fate called and he ascended into heaven the National Office to sit at the right hand of the National Secretary and his wife. I never saw him again except from a distance, as he has decorated the dais of every Oberlin conference since.

The current issue of The Militant has two articles by Ögmundur Jónsson: Book fair reflects class politics in Kurdistan and Iraq, and Socialist Workers Party author speaks on new title at book fair forum. From the former we learn that this is the fourth book fair that Pathfinder Press (the SWP's publishing house) has attended in Erbil. Pathfinder set up a large booth and sold 1200 books over the 11-day event. The organizers of the fair put the attendance at 600,000 people. (By comparison, last year Amazon sold about 330 million print books and an additional 300 million e-books.)

From the latter article we discover that Mr. Clark flew all the way to Erbil to deliver a talk to 50 people at the book fair. He was accompanied not only by Mr. Jónsson (who I believe is based in London), but also by Joe Young, from Toronto. The round trip airfare from New York to Erbil (basic economy) is over $1300 per person. It may be a bit more from Toronto and a bit less from London, but the Party spent the better part of $4000 getting these folks to Erbil. That doesn't include the cost of food and lodging, or the cost of transporting all the Pathfinder books to and from the site. If the trio sold 1200 books at an average price of $10 per, then total revenue comes to around $12K--which also has to cover the cost of printing the books.

Of course this makes no sense. It obviously makes no financial sense, and it doesn't look to make much political sense, either. Why should the third most important man in the Socialist Workers Party fly all the way to Iraq just to give a speech to 50 people? Is the Revolution really that desperate for eyeballs? My former comrades need to explain what they expect the political benefits of this extravagance to be.

Reading between the lines of Mr. Jónsson's article, I doubt his speech was especially well received. While Mr. Jónsson acknowledges the crime committed by Saddam Hussein in Halabja, he writes

Clark noted the importance of holding a book fair in Erbil, a city both in Kurdistan and Iraq. “The U.S. rulers have brought so much devastation to Iraq,” he said, pointing to the killings of hundreds of thousands due to Washington’s wars of 1990-91 and 2003 and the destruction still evident in Baghdad and other cities.

He fails to note that absent the American invasion the Kurds would likely have been wiped out. More, America has protected the Kurds in both Syria and Iraq from Turkish depredations. The Kurds love the Americans--why wouldn't they? I think it probably doesn't matter if you're a Communist or a Nazi or an Islamophobe or even a Jew--if you're an American you'll be warmly welcomed no matter what.

In addition, I think Mr. Clark makes one error of fact--probably minor. He says

“The U.S. rulers continue to assert their domination over Puerto Rico, which is the largest colony in the world today. The Kurdish people are the largest nation without a country, so you have something in common.”

This is not true. The Kurds have a population between 30 and 45 million. The Hakka minority in southern China and Taiwan number around 80 to 120 million people. The Dravidian peoples of southern India and Sri Lanka number around 250 million people. These are just two examples of other peoples who don't have their own country.

Back in the day--early '70s--the Revolution really was serious business. But nobody in today's SWP expects any imminent revolution--it's all put off into the distant future like the second coming of Christ. So it doesn't really matter who leads the SWP anymore. Steve Clark and his fellow royals imagine themselves to be indispensable, forgetting de Gaulle's maxim that "the cemeteries are full of indispensable men."

In the meantime they can play games with comrades' dues and sustainers. Comrade Clark's bizarre trip to Erbil's book bazaar is a case in point.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us
• Chicago: Ilona Gersh Runs for Mayor
• John Studer Makes a Boo-Boo

The SWP by the Numbers

It's the data you've all been waiting for! 

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP) has finally released the results of the Spring sub drive and fund drive in a chart labeled Campaign to expand reach of ‘Militant,’ books, fund March 12-May 17 (final chart).

Seriously, I keep dinging the paper for not providing any statistics about their membership--probably because the numbers are too depressing. But we can uncover a good deal of information by doing some analysis.

Here is a copy of my spreadsheet.

Branch	Subs quota	Subs sold	Sold/120	# comrades	Funds raised
Albany	35	38	3.5	4	$8,553
Atlanta	90	106	9.9	10	$11,839
Chicago	125	126	11.8	12	$14,291
Cincinnati	90	91	8.5	8	$5,944
Dallas-Ft.Worth	70	81	7.6	8	$4,980
Lincoln	15	18	1.7	2	$504
Los Angeles	130	145	13.5	14	$15,160
Miami	35	36	3.4	3	$5,250
Minneapolis	70	81	7.6	8	$5,640
N. New Jersey	90	92	8.6	9	$7,697
New York	125	126	11.8	12	$17,649
Oakland	100	100	9.3	9	$14,380
Philadelphia	40	41	3.8	4	$4,885
Pittsburgh	50	54	5.0	5	$5,016
Seattle	70	82	7.7	8	$13,681
Washington DC	65	68	6.4	6	$5,042
Totals	1200	1285	120.0	122	$140,511
Subs/comrade		10.71

The Branch column, the Subs Quota and the Subs Sold columns are copied directly from The Militant's chart. The Quota column is irrelevant to our analysis; we only consider the Sold column. Likewise, the Funds raised is transcribed from the chart.

The goal is to determine how many comrades are in each branch. The idea is that the number of subs sold should be proportional to the number of comrades. Accordingly, we are only interested in subs sales attributed to individual branches, so I have omitted the 40 subs sold at book fairs, and also the $1,300 raised directly through the National Office.

While it is still listed on the chart, it was reported last week that the Albany branch is closing down.

“The party is taking steps now to reinforce branches of the Socialist Workers Party in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Miami and Seattle,” Studer said. This is possible because party cadres in Albany have made themselves available to transfer to these cities, get jobs in union workplaces, and help to strengthen the forces the party already has in these cities, all important centers of working-class politics in the United States.

This suggests that were four comrades living in Albany who are moving to the listed cities. As you will see, those towns are in need of reinforcements.

Forum in Albany April 30 heard John Studer, speaking, SWP National Committee member and editor of Militant. From left, other speakers were Beverly Bernardo, Communist League in Canada; chair Jacob Perasso; and Alex Huinil, SWP Albany branch organizer.
(Source, Credit: Militant/Laura Anderson)

Note from the photo that Mr. Huinil is much younger than the typical SWP demographic--so the Party must have recruited somebody during their sojourn in New York's capital city.

Also note, as I reported here, the former Louisville branch moved to Cincinnati. Neither Albany nor Louisville now show up in The Militant's list of branches. This indicates that the Party has only a limited number of cadre--they can't grow the total number of branches. All they can do is rearrange their forces.

Here are some facts about branches. In my day, the minimum size of a branch was five comrades. Perhaps that number has shrunk a bit, but it can't shrink by very much. That's because the Party insists that each branch acquire a physical location--we called them "Halls," which typically include meeting space such as that depicted above. The rent for this real estate must be borne by the comrades in the branch, and splitting it less than five ways seems onerous. So I think the five-comrade-minimum, while perhaps not fixed in stone, is nevertheless a serious number. 

(The Party spends a huge fraction of its income on rent. Is this a good investment? I don't quite see the payoff, but I think it's a tradition since the Party was founded in the 1920s. No other organization on my Beat follows suit.)

In order to calculate the number of comrades per branch, I need to estimate the total size of the Party. Commenter John B. has suggested about 100 comrades. I have chosen a slightly higher number--120 comrades, for reasons I'll explain.

Given that, then the average number of subs sold per comrade is 10.71, as shown on the bottom row of my spreadsheet. That's simply 1285 divided by 120. Then of course it's easy to calculate the number of comrades per branch--just take the number of subs sold and divide it by 10.71. That data is given in the column labeled Sold/120. You will note that there are (were), e.g., 3.5 comrades in Albany and 11.8 in Chicago, etc. Obviously it's impossible for a branch to have a fraction of a comrade, so I have rounded those numbers to the nearest integer, shown in the column labeled # comrades--which answers our query.

So what could go wrong? Lots of things:

• It all depends on my estimate of the total number of comrades, which might be wrong.
• It assumes that the average subs sold per comrade for the Party as a whole also holds for each individual branch. That is, e.g., no branch has any super-salespersons who distort the average.
• It assumes that all comrades are true worker-Bolsheviks (i.e. voting members of the Party) and not sympathizers who also go on Militant sales. As a practical matter this distinction might not matter much.

So let's justify the number 120 as the total number of comrades. First, we know that Albany had four comrades since they're going to four different places. 120 is the smallest number I can put in that rounds up to four. Second, we know that all branches have to pay rent for a Hall--and I think this is impossible for three or fewer comrades. Again, 120 is the smallest number I can enter that gets us up to at least four comrades per branch. On the other hand, we know the Party has no extra comrades, so therefore 120 is likely the maximum size of the organization.

There are two exceptions. One is Lincoln, NE, which only has two comrades. But it's not a branch and doesn't have a Hall--they work out of a PO Box. There used to be a branch in Lincoln but it's long since been dissolved. I'll surmise that the comrades remaining there are retired and no longer available for worker-Bolshevik duty. Lincoln is a great retirement home for Trotskyists--one can live there on a social security check.

The second exception is Miami--and as just noted, Miami is one of the places where the Albany comrades are moving to. Note also that Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are short on people as well.

So I will stick with my estimate of 120 total comrades.

Now let's briefly turn our attention to the fund raising effort. I commented on this a long time ago (2012) when the fund quota was $100K, and most of the money was used to pay salaries to Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters. This year they raised over $140K, and I don't know how the money is spent.

So if the total amount raised is proportional to the number of comrades, then it should also be proportional (by hypothesis) to the number of subs sold. The plot below shows a graph--and there is considerable scatter. What gives?

I'll argue that comrades living in cities with more billionaires earn more money than comrades living in cities with fewer billionaires. That's because richer people tend to pay higher salaries and can afford to be more generous. The data bears that out. The yellow data point below (above the trend line, and therefore paying disproportionately more) represents Seattle. The red point is for Oakland (the Bay Area) and the green point is data for New York. These are the three big billionaire cities. By contrast, the point furthest below the trendline comes from Cincinnati--91 subs and $5800.

On an unrelated note, the Party is holding its annual shindig this year again at Wittenberg University, June 9-11.

Further Reading:

• Wittenberg, 2021
• The June 21st Militant
• Elections 2020: Socialist Action and SWP

The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction Tried to Ruin my Breakfast

The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction is represented in the United States by Left Voice, a blog run by a collective of New York City college professors and their groupies. It's a very dicey project.

The very name is weird. For those not in the know, the Fourth International was founded by Leon Trotsky himself in 1938, in response to the Stalinist takeover of the Soviet Union and the associated Third International. So the Fourth International is, by definition, a Trotskyist movement--so what is the point of having a Trotskyist faction within a Trotskyist International?

Trotskyism today is a largely academic discipline, which cadre is disproportionately made up of professors, grad students, failed academics, schoolteachers, and other public employees. They're often called the lumpen intelligentsia, and far from being a proletarian movement, they're more likely a force for fascism. Surely the logo, depicted below in front of a crowd of people presenting a Nazi-like salute, proves the point. It looks like a stylized swastika superimposed on the hammer and sickle, giving new meaning to the Stalin-Hitler pact.

From Who is the Trotskyist Faction in Left Voice

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.

November 12, 2019. Frontline youth facing police repression in Santiago de Chile.
(Picture & Caption Source)

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:

• "A Program to Unify the Oppressed and Exploited"
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat
• Malik Miah on the Virus

Book Review: Bronze Age Mindset

The book is Bronze Age Mindset, written by somebody who self-identifies as Bronze Age Pervert. Published in 2018, it has become a cult classic, and perhaps the defining text for the alt-right. I’m in debt to Michael Anton, whose comprehensive and excellent review of the book got me interested.

I hesitated reading Mindset, partly because Mr. Anton’s review led me to think my college education in Greek classics (45 years ago) left me unprepared, and then also because I was afraid I might actually agree with the book.

I was wrong on both counts. No doubt Mr. Pervert definitely knows his Herodotus, Thucydides and Plato, and much else besides. But he imposes little on his readers--you don’t need to know anything to read his book. If you can read my blog, you’re educated enough to enjoy Mindset.

I have come to three counter-intuitive conclusions about Mr. Pervert--speculations, really--that I’ll explain in due course.

As you might expect, the book is proudly racist, sexist, homophobic and illiberal. A typical excerpt:

Should the tyranny that has descended on our age ever gain the power it seeks and then be challenged enough to feel itself in danger, the mass annihilations that will be carried out by homosexual, transsexual, and especially lesbian commissars will exceed in scale and cruelty anything that has yet happened in known history. Imagine lesbian mulatta commissars with young Martin Sheen face and haircut manning the future Bergen-Belsens, installations that will span tens of miles.

It’s in-your-face political incorrectness, and many will be angered by it. Definitely written to prick your nose. A more over-the-top, entertaining, funny, put-down of gay people is hard to imagine. And it contains just enough truth that the gullible, Superman sorts are bound to swallow the whole yarn.

I found Mr. Anton’s review frustrating because he never explained Mindset’s hierarchy. Who, for example, are the oppressors in charge of the tyranny? Who are the oppressed? Who are the men--young, beautiful men, whom I dub supermen--who are tasked with rescuing us?

It turns out Mr. Anton’s confusion stems from the original text. Even after reading Mindset I don’t understand the sociology.

Start with the tyrants--all we’re really told about them is that they remain hidden. “I don’t think we can ever know who these individuals are, but I suspect they walk among us like average men.” It’s possible they’re not even people: the tyranny could be an emergent phenomenon arising from modern complexity.

Whoever they are, they’re not the obvious suspects.

Please remember that these small people like Bill Gates, Zuckerface, and Bezos are entirely dependent men. They can’t really do with their wealth what you think they can...for example, they could never just kill a man and take his wife, but even the ruler of the smallest African country has this power, this is true wealth. (ellipses in original)

So both the tyrants and the tyranny remain hidden (this is one doozy of a conspiracy theory--nearly schizophrenia-worthy). Even the victims--he calls us bugmen--are mostly blissfully unaware. Here I’m living happily in retirement not yet realizing that I’m really a slave to Leviathan (the term Mr. Pervert sometimes uses).

Yet cracks do appear in the edifice revealing the depths of our slavery. Those slits of light show through in places where polite society falls apart. Mr. Pervert knows about this, because true to his name he’s spent much time in the fleshpots of Southeast Asia. He’s familiar with the drug-dealing prostitute, the vicious bar bouncer, the filth of the yeast-like city.

He knows all about feminine homosexuals--the poorest, most miserable victims of the tyrant. They--uniquely--see through all the playground games of their male school chums, and realize how useless and empty they are. For, according to Mindset biology, the goal of life is to occupy space. Yeast, for example, grow until the petri dish is full, and then they’ll start growing on top of each other.

Men, also, want to occupy space, and when space is full, they try to steal it from others. This is the goal of schoolyard antics--boys try to steal each other’s space. It’s just a game, but a serious game.

But the feminine homosexual realizes the futility, for the tyrants already own all the space. No matter how much you practice conquest, you’re doomed. All you’ll get are the left-over dregs. Most of us bugmen imagine we’re satisfied with a house and lot, and even Mr. Bezos thinks he’s a member of the ruling class! But we’re all bamboozled by the tyranny.

The feminine homosexual sees through the scam. He knows he can never resist, so he gives up. He retreats into a yeast-like existence--the most miserable form of life for a man. He becomes gay, or ghey, as Mindset often spells it.

How different this is from what you’d expect from the alt-right. Instead of being the scum of the earth, they are instead the tyranny’s chief victims. We’re supposed to feel sorry for them.

Speculation #1: Mr. Pervert is gay, maybe even ghey. His very name suggests as much.

Yeast deserve further attention. Women and Chinese have one thing in common--they are both yeast-like. There are two forms of life in Mindset’s framework: yeast and higher life. Yeast are all the same--they just grow and grow until they occupy all the space. Higher beings, on the other hand, specialize, and evolve different skills for different purposes. Some are soldiers, others peasants, more are slaves, and a few are tyrants. None of this variation happens among the yeast.

Women are yeast-like because all they usefully do is drop babies. (Mr. Pervert discounts the latter-day entry of women into the professions.) Above all women are ill-equipped to do what in Mr. Pervert’s Mindset is most important--kill people, steal their wives, and grow their space.

China is a yeast-like culture, demonstrated by its unchanging character--it’s maintained the same society for 5000 years. There’s neither progress nor regress in China.

Places of higher culture (e.g., medieval towns in northern Italy, Switzerland and Germany) can give birth to Superman. That’s Nietzsche’s term that I’ll use, which Mr. Pervert only uses twice and then not as a general category. But they’re the elect group that will eventually defeat the tyranny. It is to that potential elect that Mr. Perverse addresses his treatise--he calls it “an exhortation.”

The task of the Supermen is to save us from the tyranny by installing either an absolute monarchy or a military dictatorship. To what end? You might reasonably ask, and here the story of the Jews is revealing.

The problem with the Jews--according to Mindset--is they’ve become nerds. They’re too obsessed with logic and rationality for their own good. Preoccupied by numbers and money, they don’t understand that they’re slaves to the tyranny. It wasn’t always this way:

Spinoza explains the corruption of the Jewish people in just this way: the Hebrew “Republic” was in fact a military regime of the type I say here, a rule of the captains. But the priests took this power away and corrupted the nation to weakness.

They’ve let themselves go. They’ve become obese and ugly. Unaesthetic.

This, actually, is the extent of Mr. Pervert’s antisemitism--the Jews are ugly and out of shape. They’ve let themselves become nerds in service of the tyranny. Like the feminine homosexual, they are a people to be pitied.

How far is this from the Global Jewish Conspiracy? Whatever happened to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Indeed, neither “Zion” nor “Zionism” are ever mentioned in the book. Nothing about BDS. Assuming the above Bergen-Belsen quote is any indication, Mr. Pervert isn't even a holocaust denier. If this be antisemitism, it’s as pale a version as I’ve ever encountered. Sheesh--I have Trotskyist friends who are more antisemitic than this--they support Hamas!

Speculation #2: Mr. Pervert is Jewish.

The story of the Jews reveals the true nature of the cosmic conflict. It is this: the tyranny is ugly, and Superman’s task is to restore beauty. Superman is to fight and win great battles, to be a hero, and to die a glorious death. He is above all supposed to be physically beautiful--physically fit, sculpted, strong--like a Greek god. Mindset raises the young, beautiful king, Conradin, beheaded at age 16, as an example.

This book is all about aesthetics--and that’s all it’s about. Reason and rationality are dismissed. For example, 

Could it be, as some have said, that the Jews are actually themselves a recent invention, a sect of Arabs in Cordoba, and that this group made up parts of Plato or of Aristotle…?

Or,

I’ve heard other less strange, though still wild theories: that the New Testament was written by a Jewish woman, as a parody of Greek tragedy. It was an effort to overturn Roman life and power.

He even doubts geography.

I believe it needs to be investigated, for example, if Mexico City is not in fact the same as Bangkok, and the so-called Baja peninsula not the same as Malay. …

I’ve heard rumors that as you go inland from Port-au-Prince you start to see the lights of Manila, and that the Caribbean islands are no different from the Philippines.

And you thought 9/11 trutherism was wacky? So you condemn his political theory as kookiness--for that is what it is. It makes no sense at all. But that just misses the point. The point isn’t reason--it’s beauty. Mindset is a book about aesthetics.

And that’s just it. Mr. Pervert has written a marvelously beautiful book. It’s an absolute joy to read. Very literate, very erudite, definitely not boring (as Mr. Anton says). I recommend it highly. It’s just crazy as hell--and possibly dangerous, too.

The book is addressed to teenage boys, perhaps not least because they’re the objects of Mr. Pervert’s lust. The following tells give it away.

First, Mindset purports to be secret knowledge, reserved for the elite few. By reading it you enter into the kingdom.

Second, while he claims to address an elite--the rare Superman--he rarely uses that term. In practice the book is offered to any boy who is inspired. So it makes you feel special while reading it, without in any way being exclusive. (Though you won’t like it if you’re a girl. Mr. Pervert isn’t interested in girls.)

Third, the book is transgressive. The pugnacious political incorrectness is certainly that. Then Mr. Pervert distorts grammar (he dislikes articles) and spelling, which along with violating the rules, gives it a fresh rhythm. Your lady grammar teacher will hate it.

Fourth, you don’t need to know anything to join the club. History and geography are obviously not necessary. So on the one hand you’re reading a very learned book, but also a book that denigrates learning. Weird.

But you do need to be literate. Mr. Pervert showcases his learning--and it is considerable and impressive. You won’t get through this with a sixth grade reading level. That limits his audience among teenagers, but attracts readers like Mr. Anton and me.

At the end Mindset offers advice to these teenage, future supermen. I’ll summarize in bullet points:

• Be physically fit. Spend as much time in the gym as possible.
• If you can, join the military. Prepare for war. But don’t argue with the “eunuch brass”--the time is not ripe. Just suck it up and follow instructions like a good little superman.
• Make sure you have good friends--ones with whom you can conspire. Ultimately it’s the band of brothers that will rule.
• Outside of your friend circle, hold off on the racist rhetoric. That will just get the “normies” upset and cause the tyranny to turn on you. The time is not yet ripe.
• Speaking of successful people, such as Sebastian Kurz in Austria, he says “You don’t see these people marching around in hotel bellboy’s uniforms with a Sonnenrad and talking about the “Jewish Question” and this other kind of role-play.” In other words, quit the silly cult stuff.

It’s all pretty tame--even lame. Beyond being part of the elect and joining the secret band of brothers, this resistance against the tyranny is consequence-free. It’s a charade.

Which leads to Speculation #3: the book is a hoax. We're being pwned just as Sokal did with Social Text.

So you’re a Jewish faggot--wonderfully literate, very widely read, hopelessly imaginative--and you want to make some serious money. Best thing to do is to write a bestseller. But how do you that when your expertise is Greek history and philosophy? Mr. Pervert figured to fake it as a phony fascist--and the ruse is working.

Whatever its provenance, it’s a beautiful book. Read it. Enjoy it. It will become a classic, much like Atlas Shrugged.

Just don’t give it to your teenage son.

Further Reading:

• The New Aristocrats
• Men Are Men and Women Are Women
• Fascism!

Trotskyist Ephemera

Today's topic is Trotskyist ephemera--nothing substantial here.

Let's begin with Socialist Action (SA). Because of the virus they are posting a pdf version of their paper online. While the articles are mostly reproduced from the web, some other bits are not. Notably, the print version has a list of locations and phone numbers. In my day we would have called them branches (which typically had 15+ members), but that seems too generous a term. SA has about 60 members spread out among 14 locals implies an average of six comrades per local.

My interest in geography inspires me to copy the list here:

Brunswick, ME; Buffalo, NY; Central New Jersey; Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Kansas City, MO; Lexington, KY; Louisville, KY; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; New York City, NY; Oregon; Norfolk, VA; Bay Area, CA; North Bay Area, CA

Brunswick and Lexington are unambiguously college towns. Central NJ might mean Rutgers or Princeton. Buffalo and Minneapolis have lots of campuses.  So one concludes that SA is still oriented towards campus.

Is that good news or bad news? If they're attracting students, then it is unambiguously good news--it means the organization is getting younger. But somehow I doubt that. I suspect their membership is mostly among the faculty and staff. Or less optimistically, among the retired faculty and staff. That their leader--Jeff Mackler, a retired teachers' union hack who will turn 80 this year--likely represents the demographic.

Norfolk is weird--I've never seen a Trotskyist branch there. It's mostly a military town, but there are colleges in the area. The other places, e.g., Chicago, Detroit, and New York, are places where any grouplet will want to have a branch.

More generally, membership skews heavily toward the Northeast and Midwest, with the Bay Area, Oregon, and Norfolk being outliers. Most locations are wealthy cities. The Deep South and Texas are not represented. Neither is Los Angeles--a much more proletarian city than San Francisco.

There are some changes in the Socialist Action webpage/newspaper. Distressingly, there is no link to archives--or at least none I could find. You can still search for old articles, but for that you need a specific title. There is no way to look up what was in the paper in, say, May, 2019, or for any time prior to January 30th, 2020. Perhaps this is just a technical oversight to be corrected in a few days. But I fear instead it is an attempt to airbrush Socialist Resurgence out of history. (Recall that SR split from SA in October, 2019, taking about half the membership with them.) This makes it seem like they have something to be ashamed of.

The other novelty is SA is now posting more videos. This sounds like a good idea, and perhaps they'll get the hang of it some day. But right now there are lots of problems.

They've posted a long video entitled Why I Am Running to be President of the USA. It's in interview format with host Kurt Young, who along with Vancouver comrade Yvonne Hanson, asks Mr. Mackler a bunch of very softball, scripted questions.

The good news is that Mr. Mackler has at least changed his shirt. He's wearing a clean and pressed dress shirt with a tie--big improvement there. He's sitting in his Bay Area living room, in front of a fireplace and well-stocked bookshelf. It looks to be a very nice private house--one wonders what money that would fetch on today's market? He confesses to be nearly 80 years old and has likely lived in that house for decades--surely it's paid for by now. The conclusion: Mr. Mackler is probably a millionaire several times over. He's richer than I am!

But that's not the worst of the video. The main flaw is it's an hour and 20 minutes long! Even I, a devout follower of irrelevant grouplets, don't have the stomach for that. I have only sampled it. Then the production quality, while adequate, is not professional. Mr. Mackler--whom I've dubbed Boring Jeff--lives up to the nickname, answering obvious questions in a monotone voice at great length.

Leonid Brezhnev would be proud! Though I gotta say, Mr. Mackler is a lot more articulate than Joe Biden, so there is hope.

Socialist Resurgence (SR) posts a pdf version of Volume 1 Issue 1 of their eponymous quarterly. (Note that the link goes to votesocialistaction.files.wordpress.com. Some divorces are more amicable than others.)

The paper does contain color photographs, some quite dramatic. For some reason there are two multi-column wide pics of Bernie Sanders--even though they're as much against the guy as Mr. Mackler. But photos notwithstanding, the overwhelming impression is a Wall of Text. Three or four columns wide, covering the entire page in small type, is nothing but fine print. It's very uninviting. The front page has exactly one article, continued on page six. Compare that with The Militant, which front page contains five headlines and two photos--it's a much more lively and engaging layout. Of course The Militant has been in business since 1928--and they certainly don't hide their archives.

SR doesn't offer much geographical information, but there is this. Their national office address is a mailbox at a UPS store in--you'd better sit down for this--Stamford, CT! What's going on--are they running a hedge fund on the side? While Stamford itself is not super-wealthy--it's only the 38th richest town in the state, out of 178--it is the largest business and financial center in New York metro second only to Wall Street. The neighboring communities, e.g., Greenwich and New Canaan, are among the wealthiest places in the world.

What a place to headquarter a supposed Vanguard Party! Sheesh!

Apparently SA and SR are engaged in a competition to see who can attract the smallest audience with new videos. Among SR's contributions is a post by Keith Leslie entitled China, from workers state to imperialist power. It's a presentation of his excellent monograph on the same topic. But honestly, Mr. Leslie should stick to his knitting--while he's a superb writer, he sucks as a lecturer. Even Boring Jeff does better.

The video is nearly two hours long. Mr. Leslie looks like a grad student--slovenly dressed and in dire need of a haircut. Grad students (and here I speak from experience) are very low-status individuals, with only a tenuous purchase on the academic ladder (much more tenuous today than in my time). Typically they are people who have nothing better to do with their time, and who are willing to work for what is likely less than minimum wage. When making a video, the last thing you want to do is look like a grad student!

I don't know if Mr. Leslie really is a grad student--I'm just saying he looks like one. SR does have a number of articles bemoaning their plight, so perhaps Mr. Leslie is playing to type. He needs a better stage persona.

My advice to him is stick to writing. He's good at that.

Further Reading:

• Socialist Resurgence Demands Steep Wage Cuts for Healthcare Workers
• Comrade Keith L. Writes About China
• Socialist Action Splits!

The Militant & Louis Proyect Argue About the Virus

Louis Proyect (h/t commenter John B) suggests a (perhaps literally) fatal flaw in Socialist Workers Party (SWP) strategy and tactics. Consider the picture below, published in an article by Maggie Trowe in the April 6th edition of The Militant.

Audience at March 15th memorial meeting celebrating the life of Larry Quinn (Source: The Militant/Roy Landerson)

Mr. Proyect notes in his lede:

In this photograph, dated March 15, 2020, you will see a group of mostly senior citizens defying the call for social distancing. Who could they be? Rightwing Christian evangelists? Libertarians standing up for liberty? 

Nope. Instead, you are looking at members of the Socialist Workers Party at a memorial meeting for one of their members who died last month. The Militant newspaper reported that more than sixty people were in attendance. That’s probably about half the membership, ...

The meeting was held in Albany, NY on March 15th. In our comrades' defense, New York's Stay-At-Home order was not issued until March 22nd--a week later. Broadway theaters were closed on March 12th. It's hard for me to go back in time and recover how transgressive such a gathering was perceived back then, but Mr. Proyect obviously conflates attitudes on April 10th (when his article was published) with those on March 15th (when the meeting took place). Likewise, the door-to-door canvassing depicted in this article probably did not violate Indiana's stay-at-home order (not sure).

Mr. Proyect exaggerates the kookiness of the SWP--there is no way this meeting can be interpreted as libertarian civil disobedience. Though in retrospect it was foolish--especially for the senior citizen crowd. I'm glad I didn't attend. (Apparently the Party's top leadership--Jack Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters, or Steve Clark--also didn't attend. Make of that what you will.) [Update: Ms. Waters did attend the meeting and is sitting in the second row.]

Weirder is The Militant's vigorous defense of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings. In the April 13th issue Roger Calero writes

Essential needs like 12-step program meetings — the regular, face-to-face peer gatherings key to recovery for alcoholics and addicts, as well as their spouses and families — have been forced to close by shelter-in-place and lockdown edicts, and bans on even small gatherings, here and elsewhere.

This was almost certainly written after lockdown orders went into effect, so the context is very different from Larry Quinn's memorial.

Mr. Proyect's take is this:

If you want to see an explicit call, however, you can turn to a bizarre Militant article titled “Morality of capitalist rulers reflected in shutdown of AA.” It defended the right of alcoholics to attend weekly meetings even if it cost their lives from COVID-19 rather than cirrhosis of the liver.

Mr. Proyect himself can't decide whether Covid or alcoholism is the greater threat, and his uncertainty somehow renders the SWP "bizarre." But surely it's a fair question--the lockdown inevitably produces some trade-offs. Is it unreasonable to let individuals decide for themselves which risk is greater? Apparently not according to Mr. Proyect--he thinks that Mr. Cuomo should make such decisions for everybody, unilaterally.

To me, the "weird" part is The Militant's uncharacteristic support for a religious movement. In AA's 12 steps, "God" or "higher power" is explicitly mentioned in six of them. Belief in God is core to AA's success. That a supposedly Trotskyist organization is touting such virtues is astonishing.

In our politically polarized society, it's not surprising that people gravitate toward extreme positions. Our Marxist and pseudo-Marxist friends, such as Misters Proyect and Cuomo, take literally Marx's dictum  "from each according to his ability, and to each according to his needs."

Supporters of capitalism--especially Libertarians--will rephrase this.

From each an opportunity to apply his ability toward maximum economic benefit, both for himself and society, and to each according to his wants.

Only the free market allocates and organizes abilities efficiently. No other system works nearly as well--not state capitalism (aka fascism) such as practiced in China, and certainly not socialism, e.g., Cuba or Venezuela.

More important for the discussion here is the second clause--the contrast between needs and wants. Marxists (pseudo and otherwise) claim to know the difference. This leads to the distinction between essential workers and non-essential workers. Mr. Cuomo--acting now very much like a Marxist--believes that essential workers tend to people's needs, while the non-essential sort are only about wants. Misters Proyect and Cuomo claim to be smart enough to tell them apart.

Of course the governor is self-dealing. People who deliver groceries to the upper-middle class (e.g., Cuomo's political base, Mr. Proyect, and me) are deemed essential, while the waitress at the working-class diner is somehow a non-essential luxury. Supposedly waitresses spread disease, but grocery deliverers somehow don't.

To supporters of a free market the distinction is completely nonsensical. The other night on Fox News, Shannon Bream interviewed two small business owners from Atlanta--now legally allowed to reopen. One lady owned a beauty parlor--hair styling, facials, manicures, etc.--the owner herself did eyebrows. For her own safety she chose not to reopen, despite running up a big debt on her credit card.

The other lady owned a cross-fit gym, and armed with blue tape to mark out socially-distanced workstations, along with liberal quantities of sanitizer, she is back in business.

The only thing these two businesses have in common is that some stupid governor deemed them non-essential (as if nobody ever needed a haircut). But they're obviously completely different from each other, and the one-size-fits-all, essential category is silly.

People, including the president, criticized Georgia's Governor Kemp for reopening too soon. That would be a proper criticism if he'd required businesses to reopen. But as the Fox clip shows, both these ladies are very smart and know their businesses. They choose different strategies. The moral is Let Capitalism Reign. Businesses, their employees, and their customers will work out optimal solutions.

The Militant gives a good example of how this happens.

On March 26 an assistant manager at a sizable Walmart in the northern New Jersey area told Tetri Boodhoo that she had to take off the mask she had decided to wear, saying it was against company policy. The boss said she and any other workers not happy with this could take leave without any penalty — and without any pay. 

... After rejecting their demands, the boss consulted with higher-ups and backed down. Many workers — and customers too — considered this a victory. “You see, when we speak out together we can win,”

... Walmart bosses nationally have now reversed their position. They told the press March 31 that they intend to make available “high-quality masks” for any employee who wishes to wear them.

While this is more confrontational than seems necessary, it didn't take long for a meeting of minds between bosses, employees and customers--to the benefit of all concerned. Yet Mr. Proyect puts all his hopes in the supposedly unfailing wisdom of Mr. Cuomo, who thinks the only good business is a closed business.

Just to rant a little bit:

Aren't non-essential workers some vaguely sub-human folks who can't serve people's needs instead of merely their wants? That's what Mr. Cuomo implied when he told "protesters" to get "essential" jobs. So the lady, whose life savings and entire career are invested in the beauty business, should now go and deliver groceries to Mr. Proyect's house?

Or--aren't non-essential workers approximately the same as the deplorables? Admittedly the correspondence isn't exact, but surely close enough. Do people like Mr. Proyect really have it in for the lower middle class?

Perhaps Mr. Proyect is correct? Maybe the SWP isn't Marxist anymore? But at least they know who their customers are. The Militant's masthead proclaims "published in the interests of working people."

Seems right to me.

Further Reading:

• Trotskyists on the Pandemic
• Louis Proyect and the More-Poverty Solution
• The Militant Visits Manila