Trump Won! Professor Hoff Says So

Trump divides the working class: four on his left, three on his right.
(Photo source: Doug Mills-Pool)

It seems like every Left Voice author wants to weigh in on Trump's electoral victory. See, eg, here, here and here. But by far the best of the genre is this piece by Professor James Dennis Hoff (associate professor, CUNY English Department) entitled Trump Wants to Divide the Working Class — We Must Fight to Unite It. It's good because--professorial status notwithstanding--Dr. Hoff is a good writer and a clear thinker.

Indeed, the professor's piece is as clear a summary of the returns as you will find anywhere, and if only for that reason I suggest you read it. He writes (links omitted)

In contrast to Kamala Harris, who looks set to receive about six million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020, Trump is actually on target to win close to four million more votes than last time — when he and Joe Biden each received the largest number of votes ever in a presidential election. In fact, Trump may win almost as many additional votes this election as there were additional eligible voters. In 2020, there were more than 240 million eligible voters, compared to 244 million in 2024, which is shaping up to be the second largest turnout of eligible voters in history. At the same time, exit polls show that 71 percent of voters said they were voting “for their candidate” rather than against their opponent in 2024, compared to 62 percent in 2020.

And then follows a detailed description of the results, which I condense into bullet points (links omitted):

• "...Harris likely won a smaller percentage (about two points) of votes from women than Biden did in 2022."
• "Meanwhile, Latino voters, particularly Latino men, turned out in record-breaking numbers for Trump. 46 percent of Latino voters chose Trump this election, ..."
• "Trump won 16 percent of the Black vote this election compared to 8 percent in 2020 and just 6 percent in 2016. Harris, on the other hand, lost about ten percent of the Black vote compared to Biden. Most astounding perhaps is that this increase in Black votes for Trump seems to have happened across the entire country: in blue states as well as red states, and in cities as well as suburbs."
• "Even in New York City, where he took more than 30 percent of the vote, Trump performed well in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods."

In other words, Kamala lost by a landslide--she lost ground compared to Biden and other Democrats in almost every demographic constituency you can think of.

Which, of course, begs the question: 

Why has this happened, and how should the Left respond?

His argument begins this way:

While many working people no doubt voted for Trump because they are deeply worried about their own and their family’s economic well-being, many unfortunately also did so with the full understanding that he plans to increase attacks on the rights of women and trans people, that he will likely further weaken already weak labor laws, and that he plans to deport a million so-called illegal immigrants. 

It's not clear to me how Professor Hoff thinks Trump will attack the rights of women. If he's referring to abortion, that's pretty much a non-issue as far as Trump is concerned. It is now a matter for state legislatures (which is where the issue legitimately belongs).

Regarding the rights of trans people, I think our professor friend is on pretty thin ice here as well. Nobody denies the rights of trans people guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Those are rights that we all have--you, me, Professor Hoff, and every last trans person. What Professor Hoff claims is that trans people should have rights beyond those that the rest of us have, eg, the right to use women's restrooms. Neither Dr. Hoff nor I have the right to use women's restrooms--and there's nothing in the Constitution that would guarantee that right to trans people.

Standards of public decency are established at state and municipal levels. There is no reason why trans people should be exempt from those standards. Indeed, the existing rules for bathroom use are very sensible and are designed to protect women and girls from male (ie, anybody with a penis) predators.

Trump's most effective ad campaign (arguably the most effective ad campaign of all time) ended with the tag line Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you. It's an effective pun: they/them can refer to the minuscule portion of the population that is legitimately trans, or it can refer to any special interest (eg, pharmaceutical firms) that tries to take advantage of voters--trans people being among the loudest special interests.

The prohibition of trans people on women's sports teams is equally rooted in biology and common sense. There is no Constitutional right to play on a girl's soccer team. Sorry.

Regards immigration, Professor Hoff writes,

On the question of immigration, in particular, the Right has relentlessly and successfully argued that what they call “illegal immigrants” are not only draining the national coffers, but negatively contributing to everything from unemployment, to low wages and higher rents, and many people — many of them immigrants themselves — are increasingly open to those explanations.

Along with the Professor, I will also take issue with the idea that immigrants are draining the national coffers. Indeed, to the extent they pay sales, property and payroll taxes they are contributing to the national coffers--not least helping to pay for my considerable medical bills covered by Medicare. I'm very grateful for that.

But on the other issues Professor Hoff is just wrong. Immigrants (illegal or otherwise) do compete for jobs and housing. That competition has the market effect of lowering wages and raising rents. Native born and immigrant citizens are right to raise that concern. As the professor points out, "Many Latino voters in those counties [along the Rio Grande] said they voted for Trump because they think stricter regulations on immigration will protect their jobs and livelihoods." Plus the large and sudden influx of immigrants is socially destructive and ruins communities.

Working people are responding to obvious threats to their way of life. They are not irrational victims of Trumpian misinformation and Democratic Party perfidy. Professor Hoff does not give the American working class credit for having an intelligent opinion (which, given that he's a professor, isn't surprising).

Then, in the professor's opinion, Trump is not a friend of the working man. He will, for example, sponsor a bunch of anti-union regulations that will make it much harder for organized labor. He does ding the unions for not being very good at their jobs, writing

Indeed, as Sou Mi explains, while organized labor has made gains for higher paid manufacturing workers, it has largely failed to address the problems of some of its most precarious workers, particularly those in the logistics sector, including Amazon and UPS, who are predominantly Black and Latino ..."

The economics of Amazon and UPS (along with Walmart, Starbucks, and many other companies) preclude a successful union movement--the profit margins are too small. I described that in detail here in an article explaining why Amazon has not yet signed a contract with the new union.

The fact is that today's modern union movement is oriented to the professor types, like Dr. Hoff. Unlike workers in the real world, Dr. Hoff gets his salary from the government--he's on the public dole. Since the government never needs to earn a profit it can be very generous with the largesse. The teachers' unions are especially effective at extorting taxpayers--including new immigrant taxpayers.

I think most workers in the private sector see through the scam and are becoming less interested in unionization--especially since the efforts at Amazon and Starbucks have not led to an improvement in their working conditions.

Professor Hoff tells us

Most working people, after all, know that Trump is also no solution, even many who voted for him. In this sense there are plenty of reasons why the working class shift toward Trump’s ideas this election may be short lived, especially if he actually follows through with his plans for the economy and immigration reform.

My main beef with this paragraph is there are no solutions--there are only trade-offs. Professor Hoff foolishly thinks his silly Marxism is going to solve all problems--he's just wrong. And most people know he's wrong, which is why Left Voice only has about 50 members.

I don't know how durable Trumpism will be, but I think he'll do a better job representing the working class than that cloud of academic pinheads that are at the core of the Democrat Party--including Professor Hoff. 

Further Reading:

• Sam Karlin Makes a Mess of the Middle East
• A Woman's Place is ...
• Unions and Work From Home

Is Trotskyism Dead?

— ADL (@ADL) June 11, 2024

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 11, 2024

When you've lost AOC, you've pretty much lost the argument. It's all very depressing.

As much as I disagree with Trotskyism, as a former comrade and longtime student I've always wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. I have tried hard to credit them with good intentions. However wooly-minded, at least they honestly desired a better world.

But for the most part I can no longer believe this. Their pro-Hamas sympathies lead them to call for the obliteration of the world's Jews. After October 7th it is no longer possible to interpret slogans like From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free, or--even worse--Globalize the Intifada, as anything other than demanding the murder of all Jews. 

They will probably claim they don't really want that (I don't believe them), but then there needs at very least to be an asterisk on those slogans. They must clearly state what they do mean. Because--coming from Hamas and without the asterisk--a Free Palestine is just a Judenrein Palestine, and Globalize the Intifada implies nothing other than the murder of Jews worldwide.

They compound the obfuscation by calling Israel's war against Hamas genocide. Whatever else it is (and it's bad enough) it is nowhere near the level of genocide.

Left Voice author Sam Karlin reveals his true feelings in an article entitled Liberal Towns in New Jersey Are Increasing Attacks on Pro-Palestine Activists. His very first paragraph gives the game away (link in original).

Pro-Palestine activists in New Jersey are coming up against repression. Five months ago, a collection of neighbors in South Orange and Maplewood (SOMA) New Jersey came together to form SOMA Collective for Palestine. This group has been advocating for a ceasefire and denouncing Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza in a community that is heavily Zionist. In fact, SOMA is a highly wealthy community and part of the eighth wealthiest congressional district in the country. The fact that the movement for Palestine reached even this community is a testament to its support from large sectors of society.

In this case the word Zionist is just used as a synonym for Jewish. Indeed, the supposed wealth of the Zionists/Jews just shows how despicable they actually are. Needless to say, the "Zionists" are not happy to see people demonstrating in public parks loudly demanding their murder, and do not regard such demonstrations as "free speech." Of course they're upset--and this has nothing to do with "Islamophobia" or "anti-Arab racism," as Mr. Karlin argues later in his article.

Mr. Karlin is an out-and-out antisemite, along with all his comrades at Left Voice, Socialist Action, and Workers' Voice, among other Trotskyist grouplets. They've all bought the pro-Hamas propaganda to the hilt--whether you call them Jews or Zionists, they're evil people whose filthy feet "occupy" supposedly Palestinian land, and nothing less than their murder/exile will solve the problem.

My Trotskyist "friends" have gone from being misguided but good-hearted, to being outright evil. They support the admittedly-fascist Hamas, just like in my day when we supported the Khmer Rouge.

Would Trotsky have supported Hamas? I don't know, but I hope not. He wrote a book entitled "The Jewish Question," which I have not read, but I doubt it advocates the mass murder of all Jews. Left Voice's alliance with Hamas is a betrayal of Trotskyism. And the same is true for most other Trotskyist grouplets.

As I say, it's very depressing. But that's not the end of their problems.

I read somewhere (I believe it was in one of Barry Sheppard's books) that a small organization (such as the Socialist Workers Party--SWP back in the 1970s) will attract a disproportionate share of social misfits. I think that was true, and I'll include myself among that number. Speaking for myself, the Party gave me a ready-made circle of friends, a mission in life similar to joining a religious sect, along with a lifestyle (eg, the no-drugs rule) that I found very congenial. Some others had physical problems (eg, blindness), or were so socially mal-adept that they needed therapy. 

I think that's still true. All of the little grouplets I follow seem to have similar problems, and attract a ragtag list of maladjusted grad students, adjunct faculty, "journalists" (such as Mr. Karlin), theater wannabes, etc. Few if any have the slightest chance of success in larger society, and so it is no wonder that they set themselves up as a "Vanguard Party," thereby anointing themselves with the success that eludes them in real life. In a word, they're just like we were, except that we were more self-aware of our shortcomings than this later generation.

This current crop of Trotskyists are not merely in denial, but they extol their oddities as being somehow an improvement. A disproportionate (I think, a majority) of Left Voice comrades self-identify as queer. I don't precisely know what this means, but to me it's a rough synonym for mentally ill. Indeed, our Left Voice comrades appear to be in some measure mentally ill.

Not that there is any great shame in this--as said, I suffered similarly when I was their age. And such status does not deny one's right to a political opinion. But one should be self-aware enough to realize that most "normal" people will not see mental illness--or queerness--as a positive attribute. And that for a very good reason: queer people are almost by definition infertile. Few parents want to raise a child that proudly proclaims his/her infertility.

So whether they call themselves queer or trans, or even gay--and then raise that to the status of a virtue--that's a non-starter. It will never become a mass movement beyond the infertile queer community. Working class folks will not want to associate themselves with a weird group of losers. If Left Voice wants an impact on the wider world, then they need to keep their queerness to themselves.

Other Trotskyist groups seem to realize that. Both Socialist Action and Workers' Voice, while they still nominally support trans rights, no longer talk much about it. Indeed, the queerest people in Workers' Voice seem to have left the movement.

So the grouplets I've mentioned so far have left Trotskyism. They've descended into Hamas-style, antisemitic nihilism, which in this country--fortunately--will never win widespread support. And they've gotten so obsessed with their own queerness that they're no longer able to communicate with the larger world.

In a word, they've become progressive Democrats. Left Voice, Socialist Action and Workers' Voice all agree with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party 99%. They're more Democrat than most Democrats. Trotskyists are supposed to despise the Democrats, not join them. But these grouplets--while occasionally faking hatred--love the Democrat Party and all it stands for.

Trotskyism is dead...

With one big exception: the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP believes that workers are first of all proletarian. That means disciplined, loyal, trustworthy, and above all,  fertile. Infertility has no place in a Trotskyist program. The SWP despises the Democrat party and all it stands for--especially its progressive wing. It rightly sees progressives as being a petty-bourgeois, incipiently fascist movement.

They may go too far with this. Perhaps--in their hatred of the Democrats--they're all too cozy with the Trump team? Could be. But that's not their most serious problem.

The SWP's problem is captured by the 2024 presidential ticket: Rachele Fruit and Dennis Richter for president and VP, respectively. As The Militant reported here (italics in original),

The Socialist Workers Party nominated Dennis Richter as its vice presidential candidate April 29. Due to health considerations that need attention over the next several months, Margaret Trowe, who had been the party’s candidate, will no longer be able to run.

Mr. Richter joined the Movement back in 1972, and is probably around 70 years old. Ms. Trowe, whom he replaces as a candidate, will likely turn 76 this year. An illness that requires several months to treat is possibly cancer--and from personal experience let me say that cancer is a very time-consuming disease to treat. I wish Ms. Trowe all the best.

In a word, my former comrades are too old--their leaders, Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters, are both in their 80s. The Party is gradually dying out! OK--it's not dead yet, and I do wish them a few more years. 

But the die is cast and the clock is ticking. Trotskyism--even in this pure form--will soon be dead.

Further Reading:

• SWP Announces 2024 Presidential Campaign
  
• Left Voice and the Intifada
  
• Socialist Action's Political Report
  

The American Right and Trans Rights

We academic, petty bourgeois types enjoy writing think pieces, letting us expound on the issues of the day. It's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and the conceit will have it that they make a difference in the world of ideas. In reality, of course, it's a way for the leisure class to occupy its time, because--after all--we don't have to work too hard for a living. We thinkers rely on American capitalism to slough off enough wealth to assure us that life's necessities will take care of themselves.

Our thoughtful essayist for today does his cogitating over at Left Voice (LV)--a leading mouthpiece for the petty bourgeois far-Left. Ezra Brain pens a thinker entitled Polarization, Economic Crisis, and Class Struggle: The Contradictions of the Political Moment. His byline tells us that "Ezra is a NYC based theatre artist and teacher," which suggests that he's not all that worried about where his next meal is coming from. Like me, he relies on the folks who stack produce at the supermarket for his sustenance.

Anyway, Mr. Brain's thinks are as good as anybody's, and his article is worth reading. Obviously I disagree with him. I believe he misses on two counts. He mischaracterizes the American Right, and his opinions on LGBTQIA+... matters are far from the mainstream. I'll close with a note on pronouns.

He writes (links omitted):

One of those strongest tendencies in the national situation is the advance of the Far Right and the escalating attacks on democratic rights — most notably the right to bodily autonomy and the right to vote. This right wing advance has echoes of the “culture wars” of the 1990s and early aughts, but it has some differences. First, this round of right-wing attacks on civil rights is successfully rolling back rights that were already legally enshrined. In other words, rather than just preventing the oppressed from winning more concessions from the state, the Right is successfully taking back concessions already won — such as the right to an abortion.

There is a contradiction here. The words "Far Right" suggest some kind of fringe movement. On the other hand "successfully rolling back rights" supposes support from at least a plurality of the electorate. I think designating what is longstanding Republican opinion as "Far Right" is not accurate. Center Right would be a better term.

And then I think he's factually wrong. The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision didn't rule on abortion at all. It merely clarified who in our system of government is supposed to make that decision. The Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision (1973), which ruled that abortion was a "right" under the "penumbras" of the Constitution. The Dobbs decision rejected that (admittedly weak) reasoning and said that, rather than the Court, it is the States that should determine abortion law.

Politically, the GOP is the loser from the Dobbs opinion. Advocating a (more or less) complete ban on abortion was great virtue signaling, and as long as the bans were hypothetical it was a vote getter. (After all, who doesn't want to be pro-life?) But after Dobbs it is no longer hypothetical, and it turns out that near total bans on abortion are very unpopular. See, e.g., Kansas, where abortion rights won a referendum in landslide.

The near total bans now common in red states will soon be overturned by an angry electorate. Mr. Brain's fears are not warranted. The "Far Right" isn't "Far," and it won't be successful in "rolling back" the right to abortion.

Regards trans rights, Mr. Brain opines that

...the Right’s attack is more radicalized than before, as reflected in its goals. For example, the last wave of anti-trans bills was focused on banning trans people — but, as is almost always the case, specifically transfeminine people — from using the public bathroom associated with their gender. This is, of course, a heinous and right-wing attack on basic rights, but it is primarily aimed to restrict trans people’s ability to integrate into public life. Put another way, the attacks sought to restrict which public spaces trans people have access to.

Mr. Brain is inventing "rights" out of whole cloth. Nobody has a Constitutional Right to use the women's toilet--not me, not Mr. Brain, and not anybody else. Standards of public decency are determined by majority rules--and since the majority are by a wide margin heterosexual men and women, it's they who get to write the rules. A reasonable standard (in my opinion) is that people without penises can use the women's toilet if they want to--because people without penises represent no sexual threat to women. Post-op trans women are easily accommodated by this rule. 

These new attacks, however, go further and attempt to attack trans people’s right to transition at all. From attempting to make gender-affirming health care for youth a felony, to designating gender transitions as child abuse, to removing trans health care from Medicaid coverage — the current wave of right-wing attacks on trans health care seek to forcibly detransition people or stop them from ever transitioning in the first place. In this sense, these attacks are aimed at restricting trans people not only in public spaces but also in private ones.

Mr. Brain and I are obviously starting from different places, as his personal webpage shows. He clearly exists somewhere along the LGBTQIA+... spectrum (I don't know enough about it to say where). I conclude he has no children and never will have children, and therefore he knows nothing about being a parent. If he did, he couldn't possibly have written the paragraph quoted above.

I, meanwhile, have children and now grandchildren. Like all parents, I want my children to grow up to be successful and fertile adults. That is, I want grandchildren. I definitely don't want my kids or my grandkids to decide, on their own and at a prepubescent age, to volunteer for irreversible infertility treatments. What Mr. Brain calls "gender-affirming care" really is a felony--as is castrating young boys against their or their parents' wishes.

Given his life history, I'll forgive Mr. Brain for not understanding that. But his opinion will never gain traction among people with children and grandchildren. It's a political lost cause, restricted to the remotest regions of the academic/petty bourgeois Left.

Finally, a comment on pronouns. Mr. Brain, in his CV (pdf), asks that I refer to him as "They" or "Them". I refuse to do that because it's ungrammatical, and Mr. Brain--for all his travails--has no authority to change the rules of English grammar. Like toilet usage, when it comes to grammar it's the majority who get to determine how language gets used.

More--and specific to this blog--one of my purposes here is civil discourse. For that reason I always address my interlocutors with an honorific--usually Mr. or Ms. It's a token of respect despite disagreements. There is no honorific (that I know of) for "they" intended as a singular pronoun. Since our friend has chosen "Ezra" as his given name--commonly associated with men--I have used the corresponding pronoun and honorific: Mr. Brain.

Further Reading:

• It's Not Just About Abortion
• Elections 2021--Race and Transgender
• Book Review: The Future of Higher Education

Shootings

This post is in response to the recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, TX. I find the whole thing horribly depressing, partly because it is inherently depressing, and also because I can't think of any solution to the problem. The proposed solutions--e.g., gun control, or arming teachers--all seem likely to fail.

Ezra Brain, a talented correspondent for Left Voice (published by a group of NYC college professors and their groupies), describes what he thinks is the root problem. The article is entitled The Uvalde Massacre Is the Product of a Heinous System.

He uses a rhetorical technique common to Trotskyism that may be called bait and switch.

The responsibility for this horrendous crime, of course, lays first and foremost with the killer himself who made an evil and reprehensible decision to kill children. Yet, this shooting doesn’t happen in a vacuum and we can’t individualize it. This horror comes within a much larger context of the violence inherent to the capitalist system and the violence particular to the United States empire in decline.

The first sentence is a truism that everybody will agree with. I think it is the only intelligent thing one can say about the event. But the rest of the paragraph, and indeed the rest of the article, dismisses any notion of individual responsibility. He claims "we can't individualize it." The ultimate cause of the massacre is an ill-defined something that Mr. Brain calls "capitalism."

"Capitalism" isn't just the cause of mass shootings--it's the cause of all bad things that ever happen anywhere in America or the world. For Mr. Brain it is the synonym for the Devil.

There are 330 million people in America, all of whom live under "capitalism." Of that number, approximately a dozen turn in to mass shooters each year. (I'm excluding the now ubiquitous gangland-style shootings in our major cities, which I think have a different cause--though no doubt Mr. Brain would blame "capitalism" for those as well.) "Capitalism" offers no clues about how those dozen individuals differ from the rest of us. Indeed, religious language like "possessed by demons" is more informative.

The paragraph following that just quoted introduces "capitalism's" evil sidekick, namely white supremacy. (Links in original.)

This shooting comes just ten days after a white supremacist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo left eleven, all Black, people dead. While there is no evidence currently that today’s shooting was racially motivated, the specter of white supremacy still hangs over the tragedy. Uvalde is 78 percent Latine and, currently, the border patrol — the same institution that detains and abuses migrants and chases them with whips — is currently at the school, potentially intimidating any undocumented parents who need to go pick up their traumatized children.

Three things come immediately to mind. First, despite there being no evidence, Mr. Brain can't help but suggest "white supremacy." This tells us more about Mr. Brain than about the shooting. Second, he uses a word new to me, namely Latine. I'm no expert on silly, petty bourgeois lingo, but I assume it's intended to replace the hopelessly unpopular Latinx--which I described as a degendered dysphemism for Latino and Latina. Latine doesn't seem to be an improvement. Why not just use the word Latin?

And third, the link attached to "chased them with whips" has nothing to do with whips, or with the now thoroughly discredited story that border patrol agents were whipping migrants. Mr. Brain doesn't tell us that the Spanish-speaking residents of the Rio Grande Valley have roots in this country that go back centuries and are in absolutely no danger of being deported. It turns out (Mr. Brain wrote before this was widely known) that a border patrol agent is the guy who finally took out the shooter.

A much more perceptive analysis of who mass murderers are is given by Park Macdougald, in a piece entitled Why young men become shooters. The lede paragraph:

Rampage shooters tend to be losers. The archetype of the modern school shooter, Eric Harris, frequently wrote in his diary about his feelings of alienation and resentment over his lack of social success. “I just want to be surrounded by the flesh of a woman,” begins an entry dated five months before the Columbine shooting, which later devolved into psychopathic fantasies of torture and mutilation. But in an entry from five days later, written after purchasing his first guns, Harris is exuberant. “I am fucking armed. I feel more confident, stronger, more God-like.”

Elliot Rodger, the 2014 Isla Vista shooter whose “manifesto” was a laundry list of complaints about his loneliness and sexual rejection, felt particularly resentful toward his female classmates, whom he saw as “mean, cruel, and heartless creatures that took pleasure from my suffering”. Unable to attract a girlfriend, he settled on revenge.  

Men, especially adolescent boys and young men, are in a life-and-death competition for access to female mates. The losers have little to lose and occasionally respond violently. This is a much more specific cause for mass shootings than "capitalism" is--but it's still not very helpful. There are, after all, millions of social outcasts, incels, disabled men, etc., out there, yet only a very few of them become mass shooters. It's still too crude a screen to identify them before they start killing people.

Mr. Brain writes,

It’s a system that has told angry young white men that it is people of color and queer people who are the cause of their distress, a system which has alienated so many young people and left them without hope, a system that has accepted near-constant school shootings in the years since Columbine.

This seems not true. The "angry young men" who become mass shooters are driven mad because of women--not race or homosexuality. Most school shootings are like Uvalde, Columbine and Sandy Hook--they've got nothing to do with race and even less to do with homosexuality. Even the rare cases where race seems to be a factor--Charleston, Waukesha, Buffalo--it probably isn't as much a factor as Mr. Brain thinks. 

The common wisdom is that Mr. Gendron drove to Buffalo to shoot people because he was a racist. I think the causal arrow is precisely the reverse. Mr. Gendron wanted to shoot people, and then devised a post hoc reason (racism) that justified to himself why he was shooting people.

We have to cut Mr. Brain some slack here. If the ultimate motive for mass shooters is frustration with the opposite sex, then Mr. Brain knows nothing about that. He's gay. His solution to what he might call toxic masculinity is for everybody to be androgynous. That's probably why he champions the word Latine. Of course androgyny is not an option for most men--who want to father children and eventually celebrate grandchildren. Whatever the virtues of the LGBTQIA+... community, fertility is not one of them--they don't have a lot of kids, and they're not good at raising them. 

An androgynous, gay man is poorly equipped to understand the psychology of mass shooters. That's why Mr. Brain blames everything on "capitalism."

Further Reading:

• It's Not Just About Abortion
• Louis Proyect Denies Being a White Supremacist
• Book Review: Bronze Age Mindset

It's Not Just About Abortion

I never understood why a "right to abortion" is a core programmatic plank of Trotskyism. I didn't get it even when I was a Trotskyist. It seems to me that the dispute is not primarily of economic importance, and therefore it cuts across class lines. Yet to this very day all Trotskyists regard abortion as a working class issue. The recent leak of the Alito draft brings the matter to the fore.

Two articles guide our inquiry. The first, entitled Mobilize in the streets to defeat the attacks on abortion rights! by Delores Underwood and published in Workers' Voice (WV), represents the Trotskyist view as I recall it from my youth. The second, entitled Supreme Court leak fuels debate on defense of families, women’s rights, by Terry Evans and appearing in The Militant, represents a slightly heretical point of view. (The Militant is published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP.)

Ms. Underwood states the Trotskyist case for "reproductive rights" relatively clearly (link and italics in original).

Gender oppression places the burden of domestic and wage labor overwhelmingly on those with reproductive capacity. In today’s capitalist society, the cost to reproduce laborers falls largely on the domestic sphere, and particularly on the shoulders of working-class women: health care, insurance, food, and increasingly, education is paid for not by the regime that requires wage laborers, but by the laborers themselves. As we explained: “The capitalist system wants to have it both ways: It wants women to have children to reproduce the labor force (so it heavily regulates reproductive rights) but it does not want to pay for the cost of social reproduction of labor power.” And in every new crisis of capitalism, women are tasked with new burdens in the realm of waged work and care work. 

To phrase it in my own words via bullet points:

• The capitalist class needs to reproduce workers to maintain production.
• To do this it makes demands on women to have and sustain children--tasks which are very costly and time-consuming.
• Women should get paid for this labor, but they don't. Thus the capitalist class is disproportionately "oppressing" women.
• The capitalist class makes excess profits because of women's unpaid labor.
• Therefore the capitalist class puts restrictions on abortion to maintain this added level of "oppression" and to capture the surplus value (aka, profit) from unpaid labor.

This seems like 90% hokum and 10% truth.

The truth is that total production (usually known as GDP) increases with the size and skill level of the labor force. So no doubt, without new babies there will be no new workers, and as the population dies out production will come to a complete halt. Ms. Underwood has got that right.

But almost everything else is wrong. The primary beneficiary of increased GDP is not the capitalist class, but rather consumers--most of whom are workers. We're the people who buy whatever it is that capitalists and workers produce. Our standard of living depends on GDP.

Parents are the people who benefit most from children. They often rely on their kids to take care of them in their old age, and also if they're lucky they'll have some grandchildren. A fundamental task of being human is parenting children and raising them to be successful and fertile adults.

So I can't take Ms. Underwood's economic rationale for abortion seriously. And frankly, I don't think she takes it seriously either. Her motivation is much more visceral. She writes,

It’s clear that the conservative-majority court is seeking to reinforce the capitalist regime of social reproduction and heteronormativity and setting the scene for further attacks on queer, gender non-conforming, and trans rights.

She apparently has a thing against "heteronormativity." But of course it's those "heteronormal" people who actually have children. I suggest she envies them for just that reason, and it's because of envy that she wants to knock us heteronormal folks down a peg. Envy is what drives her crusade.

She really doesn't like babies. She applauds Black people for not having them.

The [abortion] ban will disproportionately affect Black women, oppressed by class and race, who are already four to five times more likely to have an abortion and are more likely not to have access to contraception.

Of course the disproportionate abortion rate for Black people can be seen as part of a eugenicist conspiracy. I don't believe in the conspiracy theories, but a lot of people do. Indeed, an early campaigner for birth control, Margaret Sanger, championed eugenics as a reason for her cause. By contrast, Kathy Barnette, candidate for senate in Pennsylvania and certainly not a member of the bourgeoisie, is clearly shocked by abortions of Black children.

Just for the record, trans people (at least those who have undergone medical procedures) are completely infertile. This is why parents object so strongly to their grade school children being taught that infertility is a value-free choice for them. No parent wants to raise infertile children.

I read somewhere that the fertility rate for gay people is 0.5--far below the 2.1 reproduction rate. I have no idea how that's measured and I grant no credibility to that specific number. But no doubt the fertility rate for gay people is far below that of heteronormal folks. Parents, rightly, usually love their children  unconditionally regardless of whether they're gay or have downs syndrome. But given a choice, they'd rather have children who will give them grandchildren.

For that reason Downs syndrome babies are typically aborted these days. Likewise, if there ever is a cheap genetic test for homosexuality, then I predict most gay babies will be aborted as well. Will Ms. Underwood still support abortion in that circumstance? Is she ok with the disproportionate abortion of female babies in China? For that matter, does she really think it is good that abortion rates among Black women is four to five times higher than for whites?

Terry Evans--in his article in The Militant--buys into the same hokey economics that Ms. Underwood describes, essentially demanding that capitalists bear all costs related to childbearing.

For working people, access to abortion cannot be addressed separately from the growing pressures tearing at our families. ...

That crisis is accelerating after years of declining real wages; unaffordable housing and child care; longer hours, forced overtime and draining work schedules that cripple family life; and the intolerable weight of mounting household debts. All of this is exacerbated by the biggest price rises in 40 years.

I guess that shared economic theory is what makes them both Trotskyists. But unlike Ms. Underwood, Mr. Evans doesn't envy the fertile. His support for abortion is tepid.

These questions can’t be addressed without a fighting program to win broader access to affordable family health care, child care, housing, jobs, contraception, easily accessible adoption and more. This fight is the road to win an unchallengeable majority to include abortion in all public family planning programs.

The picture accompanying his article shows a mother of three, "forced" to quit her job so to educate her children at home because of the pandemic. The implication is that she made the right choice--that her children are far more important than any career or paid employment. People who have abortions usually don't have three children.

I don't agree with Mr. Evans' economic theory, which is just silly, boilerplate Trotskyism. But unlike most of the Left, he is not extolling infertility as a positive good.

I think abortion has to be legal to some degree. It is an evil necessity imposed on us by modern medicine, which requires humans to make more choices about who lives and who dies. A necessity it may sometimes be, but it is never a good thing. Nobody is ever happier because they had an abortion.

Most of the Left (Mr. Evans excluded) isn't just in favor of abortion. They're support infertility generally, which is why they champion "trans rights" that render people infertile, and also gay rights, that render people infertile. Many people are infertile because they have no choice--and they of course deserve full civil rights as citizens. But nobody should be actively encouraged to give up child-rearing.

I think people who support abortion are envious--they either don't or can't have kids. They want to deprive the rest of us of that joy. It is envy that powers their crusade. Accordingly they describe abortion in euphemisms, such as "reproductive rights,", as "health care," or as a "choice." They don't like babies.

Lots of people depend on that fetus in the womb--not just the mother, but the father, grandparents, siblings, cousins, the school district--and yes, several steps removed, the capitalist. All of them want that baby to be born. Babies are a good thing--gay babies, girl babies, Black babies, even white male babies. 

Babies make people happy.

Further Reading:

• The New Aristocrats
• The New Socialist Resurgence Grouplet
• The Philippines

Elections, 2021--Race & Transgender

Source: Andrew Harnik/AP, as published in Left Voice

Ezra Brain, a regular columnist for Left Voice, is a smart and interesting guy. His election night summary is excellent, and dated Nov. 3 is entitled  Election Night 2021: The Right Strikes Back. Another well written post from Left Voice author Tatiana Cozzarelli is dubbed Teachers Unions Must Fight the Attacks on Critical Race Theory and on Trans Kids. We'll also take a look at Terry Evans' piece from Nov. 22nd Militant headlined What do the 2021 election results mean for the US working class?

I don't have a big problem with Mr. Brain's Election night summary. The article is very well written and definitely informative--but there is nothing in it that is especially Marxist, much less Trotskyist. It is mostly a well-phrased rehash of Democratic Party talking points. The accompanying picture (shown above) is most revealing of Mr. Brain's biases: it shows a bunch of smiling white people, who have deceptively traded in a white hood for a red blazer, and who must all be racists because they're white, and you know they're white because they are so unWoke that there are no Black faces in the picture, and whenever white people get together for any reason, it's because they're racists. And did I mention that they are all white!

The problem for the progressive left is that one can't win people's votes by constantly accusing them of being racists. Surely reporters like Mr. Brain have to make some effort to understand what people are really thinking rather than just assuming they're all hopelessly obsessed with race and can't think about anything else. The best way to understand what people actually believe is to listen to what they say and to take them seriously--and then not assume you know more about their motives than they do themselves.

For example, Mr. Brain writes 

"Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican, also ran against critical race theory in schools. Ciattarelli essentially argued against the teaching of the terrible history of racism in the U.S."

I don't think CRT was the primary issue in New Jersey, and nobody is saying that racism and its history shouldn't be taught in schools. That's just a red herring. The real issue in New Jersey was exemplified by Governor Murphy's gaffe, when he said “If taxes are your issue, then New Jersey’s probably not your state.” A vote for Ciattarelli was a vote for lower taxes--not a vote for "racism."

Ms. Cozzarelli apparently imagines that on those rare occasions when us white folks aren't thinking about race, then we're thinking about sex. She writes.

Attacks on trans kids in schools take many forms, from the right to bathrooms to the right to play on sports teams. Eight anti-trans sports bans have passed in the past few months in Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Montana, West Virginia, and Texas. These laws ban trans kids from playing sports on teams that correspond to their gender. Texas’s law  was publicly litigated, and trans kids came in to plead their case. 8 year old Sunny Bryant told the Texas State Legislature: “My first visit to the Capitol should have been on a school field trip, not defending my right to exist, but if I don’t show up, you won’t see the real stories. Kids like me whose futures will be crushed, opportunities taken away even before I’m given a chance to try.” Her powerful testimony didn’t stop the bill—it passed in Texas, and others like it passed in multiple states across the country.

I confess I find the problem trans people pose to be intractable. I do know a couple trans women quite well, and both have undergone a strenuous and debilitating medical procedure to make the transition. They are smart, honorable people who have overcome serious odds. I honestly wish them the very best, I hope others treat them courteously and respectfully, and I strongly oppose any infringement on their Constitutional rights. I have no problem with them using the women's washroom--and I can't see why anybody else should have an issue with that, either.

But...

I do have a problem when a junior high or high school boy wakes up one morning, puts on a dress, changes his pronoun, and then claims he's a girl--asserting for himself the right to use the girl's toilet and play on girl's sports teams. Perhaps he's legit--i.e., he really does think he was born in the wrong body and will eventually undergo the medical procedure. Or maybe he's just pwning us, or just trying to get on a varsity sports team, or something less honorable than that. Either way, he devalues the travails of real transgender people, such as the two women of my acquaintance.

My basic disagreement with the Woke left is that I don't believe gender roles are fluid. For almost all of us sex and gender are fixed at birth. For a very few (<1%), something goes wrong (or at least different) and they really are transgender. But the notion that some kid can switch genders at will--which seems to be the dogma of most Trotskyists these days--is simply wacko. I can't take that seriously, and therefore I can't take the Woke notion of "trans rights" seriously.

Men and women, boys and girls, are different--even from birth. Their bodies and brains are constructed differently. Boys are bigger and stronger; girls have a thicker corpus callosum that connects the two halves of the brain. Boys excel in visuo-spatial skills, i.e. they can throw a ball further and aim it more accurately. Conversely, girls excel in verbal skills. Etc. 

Letting boys play on girls' sports teams is just unfair, and therefore trans people are going to be left out. I'm sorry--as I said, the problem is intractable. But bathroom rules can be very simple: if you have a penis, you need to use the boys' bathroom. If you don't have a penis--either you weren't born with one or you've had surgery--then you may use the girls' bathroom.

I think a large majority of the world's population agrees with me, and the Woke effort to radically remake gender roles is doomed to failure.

If Mr. Brain and Ms. Cozzarelli articulately represent the Democratic Left, then the The Militant's Terry Evans is similarly adept at arguing for the Republican Right. It's odd that they both identify as "Trotskyists," at least in some loose sense of the term. They both agree on what the end outcome should be: we need a mass labor party independent of the Democrats and Republicans, and the working class eventually needs to take state power.

Mr. Evans insists that blue collar white people are members of the working class. Our friends from Left Voice suggest that white folks can be workers only if they're grad students or somehow otherwise associated with the academic left. You need a graduate degree to not be a racist.

Mr. Evans' lede paragraph, in my opinion, represents an accurate description of Left Voice's authors.

The 2021 elections registered a sharp rejection of the anti-working-class politics of the liberal and middle-class socialist wing of the Democratic Party by workers and farmers across the country. From “defund the cops” referendums in Minneapolis and Seattle to the election results nationwide, candidates reflecting these views went down to defeat, taking other Democrats with them.

Regarding defunding the police, Mr. Evans quotes a fellow comrade this way: 

“What is of great concern to workers, however, is anti-social violence within working-class communities. In addition to the immediate consequences for those affected, it saps workers’ confidence and tears at social solidarity,” Nelson said. “The rulers’ cops and courts are aimed against us, but it is far better to live under their rule of law than without it, where warlords, gangs and vigilantes fill the gap. ..."

I've expressed a similar point of view, and still assert that our Left Voice friends unwittingly want to deny Black citizens access to the 911 emergency system. This is a shameful position.

The true home for working class Americans of all races--as opposed to the top 10% and the lumpen intelligentsia--is the Republican Party.

Further Reading:

• The Fourth International--Trotskyist Faction Tried to Ruin my Breakfast
• Louis Proyect Denies Being a White Supremacist
• "A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed"

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!

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:

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:

• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again
• Socialist Action's Convention, 2018
• Democratic Centralism