Is a Blue Wave Coming?

The commentariat is all atwitter about the impending Blue Wave. FiveThirtyEight, for example, predicts an 80% chance that the Dems will take the house. RealClearPolitics, which averages all recent polls, gives the Dems an edge 206-189, with 40 seats in the toss-up column (all but two with Republican incumbents). With such odds the wave doesn't even need to be all that high--the Dems are odds-on favorites to win a majority in November.

Count me skeptical.

These are the same people that all but assured us of Hillary's victory in 2016. For example, the New York Times' Upshot blog gave her an 85% chance of winning. Others made similar predictions--indeed, a lot of us Republicans expected it to be an early and disappointing night.

But they were wrong in 2016. Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight, offered a lengthy postmortem of that election.

Why, then, had so many people who covered the campaign been so confident of Clinton’s chances?...[T]he answers  are potentially a lot more instructive for how to cover Trump’s White House and future elections than the ones you’d get by simply blaming the polls for the failure to foresee the outcome. They also suggest there are real shortcomings in how American politics are covered, including pervasive groupthink among media elites, an unhealthy obsession with the insider’s view of politics, a lack of analytical rigor, a failure to appreciate uncertainty, a sluggishness to self-correct when new evidence contradicts pre-existing beliefs, and a narrow viewpoint that lacks perspective from the longer arc of American history.

This seems true enough. But all the listed sins--groupthink, obsession, sluggishness, and narrow vision--are even more in evidence now than ever. Indeed, not only have the media not taken Mr. Silver's advice, they've fallen into all-out Trump Derangement Syndrome, apparently no longer able to distinguish fantasy from reality. Of course Trump has pwned them relentlessly, inspiring them to ever greater levels of irrationality.

So their predictions of a Blue Wave are likely wishful thinking.

For that matter, there is cause to think we might be on the cusp of a Red Wave. That certainly is the opinion of Newt Gingrich. Let's examine the evidence in favor.

Polling is a difficult business these days. Landlines have all but disappeared, and there's no such thing as a phone book anymore. Even area codes no longer mean anything. And then people are less willing to answer personal questions from strangers.

These problems have been around for awhile, and pollsters have adjusted. Sometimes polls are taken online, which introduces a whole new set of difficulties. The key problem is collecting a random, representative sample. Pollsters weight their samples to ensure that the views of different demographics are fairly represented. The weights are based on past experience.

The problem is that past experience is no longer a reliable guide. Trump--the Great Disrupter--has completely upended the American political scene. Post-Trump, blue-collar workers have become a solid, Republican constituency. Even AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka these days has positive things to say about the president. This is qualitatively different from the past. Yes--we used to talk about Reagan Democrats, but that was a minority of the blue-collar crowd. Unlike Reagan, Trump has completely refashioned the demographics of the Republican Party.

The commentariat recognizes Trump's blue-collar support, but they usually preface it with the word white, as in "white, blue-collar voters." I think this blinds them to the fact that many Latinos and Blacks are also blue-collar, and can vote their class interest along with their ethnic interest. Pollsters, concentrating as they do on ethnicity, also miss the trend.

This is most evidently happening among Latinos. A special election to fill a Texas state senate seat in a majority Latino district led to a Republican winning that seat for the first time in 139 years. (Yes--I know--all special elections are special. In this case there were only 50,000 votes cast in a district with a population of 800,000. But the Dems keep touting their special election victories, so why can't the GOP?)

Republican Will Hurd represents the Rio Grande Valley, an overwhelmingly Hispanic congressional district, and his reelection chances are now nearly assured. Likewise, Democrat Donna Shalala, running in a Miami-based, majority Hispanic, congressional district that Hillary carried by 19 points, now looks to be losing.

I think it's pretty clear why many Latinos like Trump--immigration. After all, that illiterate, traumatized single mother from El Salvador released by ICE pending a court date a year from now, will not be moving to Scarsdale, Berkeley or Ann Arbor. No--she'll settle in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood, her children will join an immigrant street gang, and her income will come from tax dollars. Failing that, if she does get a job she's competing against citizens--e.g., citizens from the Rio Grande Valley who have lived here since before the Mayflower.

The Rio Grandians may not like the wall (that goes right through the middle of their neighborhood), but they like foreign immigrants a whole lot less. Of course they'll vote for Trump!

For Blacks it is more speculative. If approximately 30% of Blacks fit the stereotype--living off welfare in the ghetto--that means 70% don't live that way. They've joined the middle class--however tenuously--and moved to the suburbs or down south. From my old haunts in Chicago I know this for a fact. Woodlawn (directly adjacent to my alma mater, the University of Chicago) was a classic Black ghetto like what you now see in movies from the 1970s. Today it's mostly abandoned--civilized people have all moved away.

They moved to get away from the crime and gangs. They moved to a place where they could buy a house, however modest. They moved to a place where their kids could go to school without getting shot. They moved to neighborhoods like where I currently live (majority Black), where there is absolutely zero gangland graffiti.

So Maxine Waters (D-Street Gangs) and Black Lives Matter, who are the political wing of the street gang movement, are not popular among these folks. Waters and BLM speak for the ghetto 30%, not the civilized 70%. Trump and the Republicans are appealing directly to that civilized 70%.

Evidence:

1.  HBCU presidents are remarkably sympathetic toward Trump. 
2. A significant number of Black pastors have come out in favor of Trump. 
3. A few celebrities (e.g., Kanye West) have endorsed Trump. 
4. Blacks are culturally much more conservative than white Democrats. They tend to oppose both abortion and gay marriage. 

OK--so that's much less convincing than the abundant evidence that Latinos are already voting Republican. But it is evidence, and I'll be surprised if the Republicans don't do relatively well among Black voters (outside ghetto neighborhoods) this November.

The commentariat, because of Mr. Silver's list of sins, can't see any of this. They assume Latinos won't vote their economic interest. They assume Black people must love high crime and street gangs. Trump's digs against Maxine Waters may inspire a few white racists, as liberals maintain. But his main audience are Black folks--civilized people--who understand that law & order is important for their well-being.

Further Reading:

• Affirmative Action
• If Everybody is a Racist, Then Nobody is a Racist
• Charlottesville

Book Review: Everybody Lies--Big Data, New Data...

I did finish the book: Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. I count myself among the elite, since the author claims that fewer than 10% of readers finish reading economics books. And it speaks to my opinion--I recommend all of you to follow my example and read it to the end.

Seth (the author refers to himself that way, and in the interests of brevity I will follow his lead) is a trained economist who studies Big Data, by which he means millions and even billions of data points. Big Data is distinct from small data, aka survey data, where a researcher polls some relatively small sample of subjects--probably less than a thousand. His primary source is Google. Through Google Trends (and a special relationship with the company for which he once worked) he has access to every search anybody has ever made (suitably anonymized). And not just Google, but also PornHub, one of the largest pornography sites in the US, and Facebook. All of this gets processed and analyzed, turned into statistics and conclusions.

Seth is suitably modest about his endeavor. Most of the book illustrates the virtues of Big Data, but the last chapter discusses the limitations. The major shortcoming is conflating correlation with causation, which one shouldn't do. Big Data is good at the former, but survey data is often essential to uncover causal relationships. The two together offer the most complete picture.

He refers to Google searches as truth serum. People in their darkest hours or horniest moments confide in a Google search bar for help, though as Seth often asks, what answer do they actually expect to receive?

Seth claims that Big Data will turn the social sciences into true sciences, i.e., disciplines with definitive truth statements about human behavior. I think he's wrong here, and some of the flaws in his book illustrate that.

I cite three examples where I think his enthusiasm leads him astray.

First, he completely misunderstands Sigmund Freud. He refers to The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (a book I read as an undergraduate), aka Freudian slips. Those refer to slips of the tongue, e.g., if I inadvertently say sex instead of flex. So, when Google searchers type penistrian instead of pedestrian, Seth (he with the dirty mind) assumed they were making a Freudian slip. And then uses Big Data to prove that they weren't--it's simply a fat fingers effect.

I could have told him that. Freudian slips are always verbal, never written. Freud, of course, never saw a computer, much less a Google search bar, nor do I think he ever used a keyboard. The closest analogy to fat fingers I can think of is when strangers meet each other on the street. They sometimes do a little dance to determine which way to get past each other. Freud concluded that might occasionally reflect something sexual, but most of the time it is simply a miscommunication between two pedestrians. No psychopathology at all.

So Seth has misread Freud, and also draws a conclusion obvious to anybody who has read Freud (even if that was 40 years ago). No Big Data required.

Second, Seth asks an interesting question: "Why do some parts of the country appear to be so much better at churning out America's movers and shakers?" He goes through a list: Madison, WI, Berkeley, CA, etc. They're all college towns. To which he says: "Some of it may well be due to the gene pool: sons and daughters of professors and graduate students tend to be smart...But there is most likely something more going on: early exposure to innovation."

Really? When I think of "innovation," college is the last thing that comes to mind. A more sclerotic, hidebound, conservative, politically-correct institution is hard to imagine. Seth cites new art and music, and while that's outside of my bailiwick my experience leads me to think colleges fail there as well. So I'll posit another reason for the geographic effect our author identifies.

Jews.

Jews, who are very smart, for historical reasons have congregated in college towns. This attracts more Jews, and also more people who prefer living around other smart people. The result is you end up with "movers and shakers." It has nothing to do with the now moribund institution called college, except as the historical cause for the initial effect.

My model predicts that "moving and shaking" will correlate strongly with relatively high Jewish populations. Of course Seth never bothered to check that, so we don't know. What he did check reflects his bias, not necessarily reality, and represents a reason to think the social sciences will never become true sciences.

Seth's biases show most egregiously when it comes to politics. He admits to being one of Bernie's Bro's, though hopefully not part of the brown shirt gang that forced the cancellation of a Trump campaign rally in Chicago. And he, being most uncharitable toward his fellow citizens, looks for any reason he can think of to dub Trump voters "racist." Of course he discovers this on Google (I think if you look hard enough you can discover anything you want on Google). Searches for racist jokes are most common in regions that voted for Trump! QED.

Elsewhere in the book he contradicts his own argument. He says: "Four days after the shooting [in San Bernardino--ed] then president Obama gave a prime-time address to the country...But searches calling Muslims 'terrorists,' 'bad,' 'violent,' and 'evil' doubled during and shortly after the speech...Yet searches for 'kill Muslims' tripled during his speech. In fact, just about every negative search we could think to test regarding Muslims shot up during and after Obama's speech...".

In other words, Obama--however unintentionally--turned his audience into stark, raving Islamophobes.

I understand that completely. Obama's insufferable, patronizing self-righteousness engenders rebellion from any sentient human being. One types in transgressive Google searches just out of spite. (Black Lives Matter and "Check your privilege" partisans have the same effect.) So it's not that the country is unusually racist. It's rather that Obama was a spectacularly talented asshole.

I'll suggest that Trump's more laid-back attitude will reduce anger among the white "racists." Perhaps Seth can check if racist searches have declined since he's been in office?

Causality in society is dense. There is no one reason for anything. The causes Big Data discovers will be the causes the researcher chooses to look for in the first place. It is impossible for it to be otherwise, but it won't result in science.

Seth's book is fascinating and well worth reading. The only thing wrong with it is he doesn't realize that his bias is showing.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Complacent Class
• Book Review: Rise & Fall of American Growth
• Bernie's Brownshirts & The American Left

Good Trump, Bad Trump

The biggest problem with Donald Trump is that nobody knows just what he will really do after he becomes president. The man speaks with heart, but not with precision. Indeed, rhetoric notwithstanding, his statements are remarkably ambiguous.

Take the most famous one first:

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.

The implication (since clarified) is that the ban is temporary, but he's never specified for how long. It could be for 30 minutes or 30 years. Either way it sounds cataclysmic, though the reality may be much less so.

So what the hell does this guy have in mind?

The Bad Trump is an unreconstructed nativist who really hates Muslims. Any serious effort to ban their entry into the US will wreak havoc with our foreign policy, as Jeb! made clear during last night's debate. If consistently enforced it would damage our friends more than our enemies.

For the Good Trump, on the other hand, the plea is just a ruse. The total ban (if enforced at all) will operate only for a few weeks and then be relaxed after we've figured it out. What we'll end up with is something very much like what all the other candidates agreed to, namely a moratorium on war refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Trump's bombast merely serves to open the Overton window for this rather reasonable outcome.

Though I have no clue what he really intends.

His initial comments about Mexican immigrants was even more over the top:

When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Of course that's a slander. I don't think there's any evidence that Mexican immigrants (illegal or otherwise) are more prone to criminality than anybody else. And they're not sent by the government. On the other hand, he may have a stronger case about immigrants from Central America, especially El Salvador.

Asked by Univision's Jorge Ramos how he would deport 11 million people, Trump said,

We’re going to do it in a very humane fashion. Believe me. I have a bigger heart than you do. We’re going to do it in a very humane fashion. 

You know what it’s called? Management … I’m a great manager. I know how to manage things. I hire unbelievable people. What we’re doing here will work great. 

Once I win, you’re gonna see things happen.

The Bad Trump really believes this. Of course it's impossible--there is no way one could "humanely" deport millions at a low cost.

But the Good Trump isn't so sure. In the same exchange with Mr. Ramos he backs down a bit. Acknowledging that many Mexicans were "good people", he adds "and they're hopefully gonna come back in very soon."

The end result may be sensible immigration reform of the sort Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio have long advocated. This combines greater enforcement at the border with a big, beautiful gate for legal immigrants. As before, by expanding the Overton window he makes a practical solution possible. Though again I have absolutely no clue what his real intentions are.

Finally, this is what Mr. Trump has to say about tariffs on Chinese imports: "I would do a tax. And the tax, let me tell you what the tax should be … the tax should be 45%," But during last night's debate he claims he was misquoted about the 45% figure. But,

"They can't believe how stupid the American leadership is," Trump said of China. "I'm totally open to a tariff. If they don't treat us fairly — hey, their whole trade thing is tariff. You can't deal with China without tariff. They do it to us. We don't do it. It's not fair trade."

The Bad Trump is a devout protectionist--something that will destroy the American economy. The whole "fair trade" wheeze is just an argument for crony capitalism.

But the Good Trump...

Here I am unable to find the Good Trump. I have no quotes where he substantially backs down from this position. So I am afraid that on trade Mr. Trump means exactly what he says. Perhaps this isn't surprising--that a billionaire favors crony capitalism doesn't shock. But it does disappoint, and to my mind nearly disqualifies Mr. Trump from the presidency.

Nearly is the key word. Of course I much prefer either Christie or Rubio as candidates. Even Bush, Carson, or Kasich are better choices (though I'd hold my nose).

But compared to Ted Cruz? Sorry, but in that case I'll vote for Trump. Mr. Trump is a deal-maker. He can negotiate with people. It seems to me his instincts (except on trade) are mostly in the right place. So I can trust him--I think, at least sort of.

Donald Trump reminds me most of FDR. Like Roosevelt, he's not a man of principal. But he has an ability to communicate with the American public that can actually accomplish something. Like FDR, Trump cares not a whit about the Constitution or any other high-minded principal. For him it's all about the Deal. So it will depend on Congress and the courts to keep him in check.

A Trump/Roosevelt presidency is a very big risk. But perhaps we're in a place where such a risk is justified.

Further Reading:

• Immigration? Si!
• Economic Predictions for the Coming Period
• Fascism!

What Would Lenin Do?

Louis Proyect writes a wonderful article under the title Goodbye Lenin, appearing Counterpunch. He responds to friendly fire from our former comrade, Paul Le Blanc (not to be confused with the president of the University of Southern New Hampshire). Mr. Le Blanc was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (US SWP) when I joined, and has subsequently cycled his way through to the International Socialist Organization (ISO), his home since 2009.

Mr. Proyect's article is the latest volley in an on-going discussion from the consequences of the British SWP's collapse in a sex and rape scandal. I have not followed that at all, but apparently it has resulted in a serious leadership crisis. That larger issue was addressed by a prominent Marxist theorist, Alex Callinicos, in an article entitled Is Leninism Finished?. He maintains that whatever the specific fate of the British SWP, the truth remains that a Leninist vanguard Party is necessary to lead the working class in revolution.

Mr. Proyect responded with an answer to that question: Leninism is Finished, contending that the concept of democratic centralism is no longer helpful. He argues that the Leftist net must be cast wide, and that ideological purity is probably not the most important thing. Otherwise one ends up as a small, sectarian group, such as today's US SWP. His argument is similar to the one I make here.

Mr. Le Blanc picks up his cudgel in a piece entitled Leninism is Unfinished, where he tries to split the difference. Democratic centralism is still important, he maintains, but he thinks the modern grouplets purporting to be Leninist don't understand the concept. Lenin meant it in a much weaker sense, though how weak is a matter of dispute.

Here is how I summarize the three points of view:

Mr. Callinicos: Democratic centralism means vigorous, internal discussion of program and policy, followed by unity of speech and action presented to the outside world. That's the Trotskyism I grew up with.

Mr. Proyect: Democratic centralism means a united voice in parliament.

All discipline meant [according to Lenin--ed] was a deputy voting according to instructions from the party’s central committee, etc. For example, if Alex Callinicos was elected to Parliament and instructed to vote against funding the war in Iraq, and then voted for funding, the party would be entitled to expel him.

Outside of parliament, freedom of speech and action (within the "principles of the Party") are permitted.

Mr. Le Blanc defines democratic centralism succinctly: Freedom of discussion; Unity of action.

So let's consider an example. Back in the 1980s Nat Weinstein--then a member of Socialist Action (SA)--wanted to run his own newspaper. There were no important programmatic differences between SA and Weinstein and his friends, but nevertheless this perfectly simple and reasonable desire led to a split. And given the traditional conception of the "revolutionary press," it had to. The Party can't have two, independently edited newspapers.

Mr. Callinicos will agree with SA's decision to expel the Weinstein grouplet.

Mr. Proyect will probably agree with me and suggest that there's nothing wrong with Mr. Weinstein publishing his own newspaper under the SA umbrella. There is precedent for that, albeit not Trotskyist. The Daily Worker and People's World were both separately edited publications of the US Communist Party, with slightly different points of view. SA, of course, was too conservative to even consider the possibility.

I can't predict Mr. Le Blanc's opinion. Is publishing your own newspaper disunity of action, or freedom of discussion?

The last word, so far, belongs to Mr. Proyect in Goodbye Lenin. I can't do justice to his argument in the space here, nor indeed to any of the arguments. Rather than attempting any kind of summary, let me pick out some items that caught my fancy. I'll add that all three of my correspondents are very good writers, and if you're at all interested in debate on Marxist arcana, this is a good way to get there.

• Mr. Proyect repudiates the charge of "Zinovievism," supposedly leveled against him by Mr. Le Blanc. I'll let you figure out what that means for yourself--I did promise you Marxist arcana.
• Mr. Proyect indicates that the Internet changes everything, or at least a whole lot. Mr. Le Blanc appears not to like the Internet very much--witness the fact that his books are not available on Kindle. That means I'll never read them.
• Mr. Proyect touts the work of Lars Lih, an author whom Mr. Le Blanc seemingly does not think so highly of. The dispute may arise because Mr. Lih is an independent scholar, and not part of the academic priesthood to which Mr. Le Blanc belongs. Or it may be that Mr. Lih releases his books on Kindle. Indeed, I have downloaded his blessedly short Lenin biography, and am finding it quite enjoyable.

So I basically agree with Mr. Proyect--Leninism is dead. Misters Callinicos and Le Blanc are members of what some have called the Dead Russians Society. It's an apt name. As I read Mr. Lih, I am struck by how different Russia a century ago is from the modern world. Not only is there an Internet today (and therefore no "revolutionary press" worthy of the name), but there isn't even a proletariat. The working class of Lenin's day has long since been replaced by machines and robots. It's no longer sensible to speak of an intelligentsia--anybody who wants to read has access to all the information they could ever want.

Mr. Proyect is certainly correct that the Leninist grouplets of the sort I cover will remain completely irrelevant. That includes both versions of the SWP, along with Mr. Le Blanc's ISO, along with whatever variant of SA you care to imagine.

For all that, there is an air of unreality the pervades all the articles we've discussed. Mr. Callinicos spends most of his pixels on the evils of "neoliberalism." He demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how the modern economy works, nor the remotest comprehension of how to solve our serious problems. If this be the best Marxist theory can offer, then they've got worse problems than Leninism.

Mr. Proyect shares this view of the world, as demonstrated by his alternative to the Leninist project. He puts forward the Greek party SYRIZA as a role model. Now I think SYRIZA is mostly a group of government employees, and since the Greek government employs a very large proportion of the workforce, this is a sizable organization. The problem with these people is that they are totally unproductive. Every member of SYRIZA could go on strike and nobody would even notice. Rather than the proletariat, they represent the parasite, lumpen class.

SYRIZA believes that there is some huge stash of cash hidden somewhere, and if they just throw a big enough temper tantrum then the bank vaults will be opened an all problems will be solved. Of course it's delusional--nobody with any money remains in Greece. Worse, they conflate currency with money with wealth--all of which are completely different things. Currency is easily redistributed, but money less so. Wealth is almost impossible to redistribute since it is almost always intimately tied to the abilities of the wealth owner.

In Zimbabwe they liberated the white-owned farms that then subsequently fell into ruin. Because not only do you need land to run a farm, you also need expertise, access to capital, and access to markets. The Mugabe thieves had none of that--the wealth was impossible to capture. A similar story is playing out in Venezuela--by expropriating the oil industry the government is destroying it. Within the next decade (barring dramatic political change) Venezuela will not be an oil exporter, and for the same reason Zimbabwe isn't a food exporter.

Leninism won't get you to the socialist heaven of which Misters Callinicos, Le Blanc, and Proyect dream. But nothing else will either. Socialism is impossible.

Further Reading:

• Nat Weinstein's Project
• Trotskyism & New Media
• Jack Barnes' Next Book

Dusty's Ducks

A fellow named Dusty has posted a video on the Duck Dynasty kerfuffle (h/t Louis Proyect). Mr. Proyect offers it without comment, but he labels it under humor, among other categories. That does seem apt.

A more vituperative, angry response to a TV show is hard to imagine. That said, there are a couple of points where Dusty and I agree.

1) This is not a free speech issue. A&E certainly has the right to schedule its programming as it wishes.

2) It's not actually a reality show. The Robertsons are actors playing a cartoon version of themselves. Like actors the world over, they get into costume before appearing on camera. Dusty calls that "fake," but it's no more fake than any other TV show.

Beyond this, ironies abound.

The duck gang has expressed irritation with A&E for bleeping the soundtrack, as if there were profanity. They deny that they ever use profanity, and I'm inclined to believe them. Devoutly religious people don't use swear words.

Contrast that with Dusty, whose vocabulary consists mostly of profanity. A&E would have to bleep his entire speech! His favorite word is douchebag--that's the term he uses to describe Phil Robertson, all his kin, and Christians in general. This is an odd term: it's related to douche, which refers to "the cleansing product for vaginas." It's hard to know who's being insulted here: Christians because they're like dirty vaginas, or women because they're like Christians.

So Dusty claims that "nothing brings out the Christian love like hating us gay people." That's the felony, but for good measure he adds two misdemeanors: Christians (in the person of Phil Robertson) are ignorant and bigoted. Now I agree with him--Phil Robertson is ignorant. He's poorly educated and not widely traveled. And he's probably bigoted as well.

But he's not hateful. Phil does not threaten violence against gays, or even their civil rights. He just thinks that gays are tempted by their unique version of sin. As I said in my last post, "[i]f a gay man were to encounter a Robertson, the worst that could happen is he'd get an earful about the need for repentance and the saving power of Jesus Christ. And then he'd be invited over for dinner..."

Dusty is the man who is hateful, as the language, anger, and vitriol he directs against the Robertsons demonstrates.

A second irony is that Dusty sports a Darwin fish tee-shirt. I assume he refers to Phil's creationist views. As I said, Phil is not an educated man. He is an entertainer, and not an intellectual or political leader. In this he is similar to any number of other Hollywood airheads, like George Clooney or Prince Charles. You can't take them too seriously.

The irony arises because Dusty ignores the consequences of his own professed belief. As readers of this blog know, there aren't many people who can out-Darwin me, so let me school Dusty.

We live in an environment where birth control is cheap and widely available. It appears that people who use birth control have fewer children and grandchildren than people who don't use birth control. Thus any combination of genes and memes that inhibit using birth control will be favored. On the other hand, more permissive gene/meme combos will be less fecund.

My observation is that devoutly religious people tend not to use birth control. This includes not only fundamentalists Christians, but Mormons, devout Muslims, Amish, orthodox Jews, etc. The Robertson family is a case in point: Phil, at age 67, has thirteen grandchildren, and his parents have around 50 great-grandchildren. (Reproducing the species requires an average of four grandchildren.)

Compare this with a secular crowd. Take elderly Trotskyists for example, and even include some elderly ex-Trotskyists, such as Mr. Proyect or me. Put a random sample of such folks in a room until they, collectively, accumulate thirteen grandchildren (to rival Phil). How many Trotskyists would it take? I'll hazard more than thirteen. The median Trotskyist likely doesn't have any grandchildren, much less thirteen.

Phil Robertson's religion is crackpot--Dusty and I agree--but it is very successful in the Darwinian sense, measured by how many grandchildren you've got. I anticipate getting a few, but from what I know, Dusty's prognosis is not good. I think that's why he's so mad. If present trends continue, religious people will win the demographic culture war.

Duck Dynasty is not popular because of Phil's views about gays or creationism. That might be important to Phil, but its not what makes the show tick. It appeals to middle-aged women because it represents an aspirational ideal for them. Women want 1) a stable marriage with a faithful husband, who 2) is wealthy and has 3) earned his money in a He-Man profession. And while he engages many man-child hijinks, when in the presence of the ladies he 4) behaves like a gentleman.

And on the fourth point, Phil Robertson and I agree. No gentleman would ever call anybody a douchebag.

Further Reading:

• George Gilder, Evolution & Science
• The Dream 50 Years On
• Marxism & EvoPsych

Duck Soup

I'd never heard of Phil Robertson until the kerfuffle.

The kerfuffle happened when the Duck Dynasty star made some uncomplimentary remarks about gays in an interview for GQ Magazine, and that got him in hot water with the suits at A&E. The folks at GLAAD are pretty upset about it, with spokesman Rich Ferraro also claiming that Robertson is a racist. On the other hand, the show's supporters have come out strongly defending their TV star, and Duck Dynasty paraphernalia has sold out of stores.

So I've read the GQ piece (written by Drew Magary), along with much else, and even watched an episode (the first one) of Duck Dynasty over at A&E online. I don't share Mr. Robertson's religiosity, and I don't agree with his attitude toward gays. At the same time, the GQ article is a total hit piece--you'd have to believe the guy is a real idiot. Whatever else you want to say about Mr. Robertson, he is not a stupid man. Nor is he hateful, belligerent, or racist.

Still, A&E is right to filter most of the religion out of the show, for otherwise it would reach only a narrow audience. As is, it's A&E's most popular program, and some articles claim it is highest rated show on cable television. That's not because of Mr. Robertson's overt religiosity.

I vaguely recall reading a piece about Duck Dynasty when the show first came out. It was one of those how far have we fallen articles, describing Duck Dynasty as the pathetic successor to Jersey Shore--a hook-up, stupid-guy-stuff, reality show transplanted to the Louisiana swamps. I resolved never to watch the program, a promise I kept until the kerfuffle.

So who watches Duck Dynasty and why is it so popular?

The Robertsons are a large, Scots-Irish family in Northern Louisiana. Phil is one of seven siblings, including his co-star, Si. Phil and his wife, Kay, have four children. The two on the show are Willie and Jason, who are the lead characters. Willie's wife, Korie, plays a role, but none of their five children are involved. In other words, of the very large clan, only a small fraction of them participate in the show. A scene has them assembled around the dinner table--there are no children present. So it's not a very real "reality" program.

The family is apparently worth about $400 million--the proceeds of their Duck Commander franchise, founded by Phil and now run by Willie. Four or five guys lackadaisically sitting around a table making duck calls (as the TV unrealistically depicts) is not the source of that fortune. The Robertson family has been accumulating capital for three generations now. By comparison, Snooki--the most successful Jersey Shore character--is worth $4 million.

Another difference is that all the leading men on Duck Dynasty have been married to their wives for at least 20 years. Phil & Kay got hitched in 1966. These guys are loyal, unlike the ne'er-do-wells over at Jersey Shore. Snooki is recently married and has a son--we'll see how that goes.

So what's with the stupid guy stuff? First, it's not stupid--these fellows are expert outdoorsmen. They can literally live off the land. When you're expert, you can show off and make it look easy or dramatic or funny. But don't be fooled--this part is real. What you're watching is a lifetime of experience hunting, fishing, camping, and living.

I find Phil and his gang intimidating--I couldn't survive a week in their world. That's obviously the way Mr Magary (the GQ author) felt. So far removed from his native habitat, and so far out of his comfort zone, his article is a panic-stricken attempt to cut the Robertsons down to size. They're not really bigger than life--instead they're just a bunch of nutcases. Never mind that, by age 67, Phil has 13 grandchildren, is worth $400 million, and owns 20,000 acres of Louisiana swampland that he "lives off of." Some nutcase.

So the episode I watched showed Phil eviscerating some frogs while giving advice to one of his grandsons. "I've got these grandkids now, a whole passel of them. My task is to teach them to live off the land. It's a good thing, clean and honorable. Frog killing." He goes on with some marriage advice: "Find you a meek, gentle, spirited, country girl. If she knows how to cook, and she carries her Bible close by, and she loves to eat bullfrogs, then there's a woman. ...See, the first prerequisite for marrying a woman, in my opinion, is  can  she  cook? ... She doesn't have to be a pretty girl. If she looks a little homey, that's all right. It's hard to get a pretty one to cook and carry a Bible anymore."

So whose going to live by this totally retro advice? Not me, for sure. Nor any of my children. None of my friends live that way. I grew up in a petty bourgeois milieu that put a lot of emphasis on individuality and personal choice. There's no loyalty in my clan. You don't marry somebody just because she knows how to cook--how gauche. We all grew up in the undisciplined, divorce culture, where children are a burden and not a blessing.

Even on-line, A&E makes sure you watch some commercials. The ones they fed to me were for sanitary napkins--obviously Big Data has failed. But it's an indication of who they think their audience is--women in the 30 to 50 age bracket. How many of these ladies would love to be loved for her cooking? What number would want a handsome, loyal, rich husband like Phil Robertson? How many divorcees aspire to a husband who is an expert outdoorsman?

It's a very conservative show, but not in any political way. Instead, it is aspirationally conservative--it's a dream for women to live up to. Even though few people can actually live the Robertson dream, the aspiration is a good thing. A couple years ago, Charles Murray wrote a book entitled Coming Apart: The State Of White America, 1960-2010. In it he laments the decline of the family among working class and lower class whites. He sees that as the source of much of our current economic dysfunction.

But the popularity of Duck Dynasty proves him at least partially wrong. The fact that millions of lower-class Americans aspire to live a better life cannot be a bad thing.

Mr. Ferraro of GLAAD suggests that Mr. Robertson should spend more time with gay people so that he might learn something. If a gay man were to encounter a Robertson, the worst that could happen is he'd get an earful about the need for repentance and the saving power of Jesus Christ. And then he'd be invited over for dinner (though I'm not sure I'd want to eat that food). Nothing hateful or untoward would occur.

He should just be grateful that he's not a duck.

Note: Louis Proyect posted a video about Duck Dynasty. Unfortunately I didn't see it until after this post was written.

Further Reading:

• Food Network & The New Normal
• Take a Trotskyist to Tea
• Women's Lib

Book Review: The Everything Store

The Everything Store, by Brad Stone, is an account of Amazon's first twenty years. Included, of course, is a biography of the company's founder and guiding spirit, Jeff Bezos. Mr. Stone is a journalist for Bloomberg/Business Week, and has long covered Amazon as a reporter. He interviewed many people for this book, but did not score an interview with Mr. Bezos. For this, and also because he has worked hard to make the book readable, he is criticized by some for not writing an accurate, scholarly account. Scholarly it may not be, but I certainly enjoyed reading it.

Mr. Bezos was born of teenage parents, who divorced soon after his birth. He was adopted by his mother's second husband and took his name. For all that, his was a close family to whom he remains intensely loyal. His maternal grandfather, a West Texas rancher, played an especially important role in his life. Accordingly, today he owns 260,000 acres in the Lone Star state--the home of his Blue Origin space travel enterprise.

Typical of great entrepreneurs, Mr. Bezos is a driven, obsessive guy. Like many children, he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up, and space travel was his abiding interest as a youngster. But, unlike most he never outgrew that passion. Indeed, as I read Mr. Stone's book, my sense is that Blue Origin is even now Bezos' primary passion, with Amazon simply a way to finance it. He spends one day a week on the rocket business--a lot of time for a mere hobby. It's not just a hobby.

Founded in 1994, Amazon.com rode the dot-com bubble to the top, powered by Bezos' intelligence, energy and drive. He had two principles, both borrowed unapologetically from Walmart--the customer is king, and frugality rules. Like Sam Walton, he was brutal on his partners and employees. Shel Kaphan--arguably a co-founder--was sidelined when it became clear that his management skills were not up to the challenge. Mr. Bezos always hired the right people for the job, and as the job changed, the people changed with it. He's an incredibly demanding boss.

Mr. Stone reports that the company survived the dot-com bust only by a lucky break. They'd made some ill-advised acquisitions in the late 1990s and burned through a lot of cash. Mr Bezos had already demonstrated his aversion to making a profit. By fortuitous timing, the company scored a generous line of credit just months before the crash. Had that not been available, chances are Amazon would have gone bankrupt.

After the bust, to restore credibility with investors Amazon had to turn a profit. And so they did, for a few years, just long enough to be convincing. But as soon as investors were pacified, Amazon reverted to old habits, reinvesting revenues into the business. The company has gone from being a bookstore to an everything store, to a manufacturer of Kindle, to hosting the Amazon Web Services cloud.

Today Jeff Bezos is worth $27 billion, money that is being invested in Blue Origin. It doesn't come from customers, who are offered the lowest possible prices. Amazon competes with Walmart and Best Buy--margins are tiny. It doesn't come from workers. As a profit-free company, there is no way that workers are exploited in the Marxist sense. They are certainly ill-treated and probably relatively poorly paid, but the proceeds all go to customers, not to Mr. Bezos.

So who's the patsy?

Investors believe Mr. Bezos when he says that Amazon could make a profit if only it wanted to. And maybe that's true. Then again... Either way, they've bid the shares up to almost $400, and that is what funds Blue Origin.

I wouldn't want to work at Amazon. I'm probably too old and I never had the energy level. I certainly will never buy stock in the company--if I want to invest in rocket ships I'll do that directly. The only relationship I want with Amazon is to be a customer.

Because then I get to tell Jeff Bezos what to do.

Further Reading:

• Post Office Blues
• Is Big Data A Big Problem?
• The Writer's Computer

Joel Kotkin Hates The Tech Business

Joel Kotkin doesn't like the tech business. Just read his latest screed here.

Now I'm usually a fan of Mr. Kotkin, but in this I think he's gone off the deep end. Reduced to bullet points, his argument is as follows:

• They're rich ("they" being the wealthy, technology oligarchs, such as the Google guys, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, etc.).
• They don't hire many Americans.
• They hire way too many Chinese.
• They don't pay taxes.
• They live in a bubble.
• They want to take over the country.
• They're out to steal your soul.

Let's take the bullet points in turn.

• They're rich.

Well, duh! But they got rich by creating great wealth. The iPhone established a whole new industry. So did Google. According to Free: The Future Of A Radical Price, Google gives 80% of it's content away for $0.00. I write this blog on Google, and I haven't paid them a dime. It is probably impossible to estimate the total value to society created by Google, but the share captured by the Page & Brin, et al., is a minuscule fraction.

• They don't hire many Americans.

Well, good, I say. Mr. Kotkin can't have it both ways. On the one hand he complains these people are too rich, and on the other hand he wants us to hire more of them. No--the fewer employees the better. Just that much more money for the rest of us (in the form of better and cheaper goods and services). What earthly purpose is there in featherbedding the technology industry?

Mr. Kotkin also opposes the H1B visa program bringing in "cheap" foreign engineers. Here he has a point, but it's not the point he wants to make. The problem is not with the foreign engineers; the problem is the visa program that renders them indentured laborers. That is what unfairly distorts the market. We need a much more open immigration system--if foreigners want to come here and work for cheap, then that's wonderful. More money for the rest of us. But for the consumer to capture the product they have to come as free individuals and not bound to a specific employer.

• They hire too many Chinese.

Mr. Kotkin should check out the data here: the manufacturing cost of an iPhone is $8 per phone. So all those zillions of Chinese workers that Mr. Kotkin so envies--they're netting less than 2% of the value of the product. This site speculates that it takes about 17 hours to assemble an iPhone--so the Chinese are paid less than $0.50/hour. Are these jobs we want to repatriate to the US? I don't think so.

• They don't pay taxes.

Again, I say good. Government in this country (and every other country) is a rat hole and not worth the money we spend on it. Cash that the tech industry holds on to will eventually either be a) returned to the consumer, or b) invested in new enterprises. Either way, any penny saved in taxes is a penny that makes us richer. If they can legally avoid paying taxes, then so much the better.

• They live in a bubble.

Mr. Kotkin worries that the tech gurus all live in a self-contained community gated off from the rest of the world. In his telling, Silicon Valley is a bubble served by fancy sex workers, private planes, maids, and luxury cars. The people who live there have lost touch with reality. So--what's the problem? Mr. Kotkin compares this with the desperate circumstances of East Bay communities nearby. Of course there's no connection--the problems of the East Bay are not in any way caused by tech geeks in Silicon Valley. This is all a reprise of the Marxist meme: we're poor because the rich people stole all the money. Are the people in South Sudan poor because Mr. Kotkin lives in a middle class house? Same argument.

• They want to take over the country.

Mr. Kotkin panics about fwd.us, a supposedly surreptitious and vile plot by the technocrats to buy influence in Washington. He cites Twitter's founder, 37-year-old Jack Dorsey, who says he wants to be mayor of New York City, despite never having lived there. I have no doubt that a bunch of very successful, wealthy, self-righteous youngsters dream of world conquest. But it won't work--witness the money they've spent on the now-imploding Obama administration. Every political action invites a reaction, and the closer the tech oligarchs get to their goal, the greater the opposition will be. Remember the phrase "what's good for General Motors is good for the country"? GM had hundreds of thousands of employees spread across the entire nation, and they still couldn't pull it off. There's no way the tech guys--living in a bubble with only a few employees and disconnected from the larger culture--are going to take over the world. Mr. Dorsey's utterly silly comment is proof of that.

• They're out to steal your soul.

Google (and others) actually make money giving away stuff for free by collecting data. They use that data to specifically target advertising to individuals. There's the famous story (apocryphal?) about a father getting ads for baby supplies from a local store before his daughter had even told him she was pregnant. Such are the wily ways of Big Data. Mr. Kotkin thinks this is a huge problem. I disagree.

There are two parts to this.

First are ads that help consumers buy things they want to buy. Amazon's recommendations are in this category--very often I find books there that interest me that I would never have encountered otherwise. I regard this as a benefit that enhances my standard of living. Google Local apparently is an effort to turn people on to area restaurants that might be good. I think this is unobjectionable.

Second are ads that try to convince you to buy something you don't want to buy. This turf still belongs to the personable salesman--hawking encyclopedias, or diet fads, or some status symbol. I don't think Big Data will be particularly effective doing this--it depends on personal interaction. Banner ads, pop-ups, animations, etc., are a proven bust. 

Mr. Kotkin may be old enough to remember The Hidden Persuaders, written at the dawn of the television age. When I was in high school everybody was talking about subliminal advertising, i.e., if Coca Cola appears for microseconds during the movie, then people will unconsciously be inspired to go out and buy a Coke. I don't think that worked very well. The fact is people learn how to game the system and will push back against buying stuff they don't want to buy. Mr. Kotkin's panic is unwarranted.

In truth, advertisers are not trying to beat the consumer. They're just trying to be more effective than other advertisers. I think that's a zero-sum game--there is no way that Big Data is going to increase the (small) fraction of income spent on involuntary purchases.

In summary, Mr. Kotkin has gotten too Marxist for me.

Further Reading:

• You Can't Eat A Hipster
• Luddites Against Fracking
• Union Man

Book Review: The Three Languages Of Politics

Convention has it that there are two major political parties in America: The Evil Party and The Stupid Party. Now comes Arnold Kling to tell us convention is wrong.

Mr. Kling's goal, in his short e-book, is to enhance conversation among people of different political opinions. Too often, we write off our opponents as either stupid or evil because they appear not to understand even simple political or economic facts. Kling proposes a framework that will at least let us talk to each other, even if we never reach agreement.

Given this blog's purpose to serve both Trotskyists and Republicans at the same time, Kling's topic is of great interest to me. This isn't just talking across the aisle--I'm trying to talk across the class line. So if Mr. Kling has some advice for how to pull off that trick, I'm all ears. It is so easy for Republicans to dismiss Trotskyists as "stupid." Indeed, in this blog's first incarnation I routinely referred to the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) as the Stupid Workers Party. And I know from my time in the SWP that comrades see Republicans as intrinsically evil (think Richard Nixon).

Now I've set some ground rules for myself--nobody is going to listen to me if I just insult them. Hence I take Trotskyism seriously--I do not believe that comrades are mentally ill, or members of a cult. But Mr. Kling offers some insight beyond rules for civil discourse, and they're worth paying attention to.

Kling suggests that there are three political ideologies in America, which he roughly labels as Progressive, Conservative and Libertarian. These three groups use different languages--that Kling calls heuristics--and from this he derives a three-axis model. Progressives organize ideas around an oppressor/oppressed axis. Hence they are primarily interested in social justice, and in righting historical wrongs. Conservatives think in terms of a civilization/barbarism axis. Accordingly they emphasize stable institutions (church, family, law), and tend to resist sudden changes. Finally, Libertarians orient according to a freedom/coercion axis. They're worried about big government, too much taxation, gun control, and too much environmental regulation.

Mr. Kling provides a nine-point quiz that will roughly place you somewhere within this space. His test correctly puts me half way between the Libertarian and Conservative axes. Accordingly, I could never vote for Ron Paul, but I'm also somewhat uncomfortable with true conservatives such as Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee. Herman Cain's message really resonated with me. I'm a Republican, though one that leans toward the Libertarian end.

Mr. Kling points out that some languages are more suitable for some topics than others. His examples include the civil rights movement, where the Progressive heuristic looks to work best. Blacks really were oppressed, and defining the struggle as oppressed vs. oppressor was accurate. Compare that with the Libertarian response: Goldwater thought that any equal accommodations law was an unjustified infringement on individual freedom. Private business should be able to discriminate if they want to. Needless to say, Libertarians didn't get very far with that argument.

Conversely, on economic issues Libertarians usually win. That economic freedom enhances well-being is an almost indisputable fact, and casting economic policy along the freedom/coercion axis will lead to a richer society.

Trotskyists align very much along the progressive axis. The difference between oppressor and oppressed widens into the unbridgeable class line. The Marxist meme is we're poor because the rich people stole all the money, which is as progressive a phrase as one could possibly have.

Mr. Kling quotes Stephen Covey: "seek first to understand, then to be understood." Since Trotskyists are mostly concerned with social justice, they are unlikely to be persuaded by any rising tide lifts all boats argument. Efficiency, for them, is not important. Equality in outcomes is essential. We do not have to agree with them (I don't), but before we can talk to them we need to know where they are coming from. With that understanding, they will neither seem evil nor stupid. They're still wrong.

So far, so good. The second half of Mr. Kling's book is less satisfying. He distinguishes between motivated reasoning and constructive reasoning. Motivated reasoning is what most humans do most of the time: that is, we try to marshal data in support of our invested opinion. Contrary data leads to cognitive dissonance, which is painful. For reasons of ego, or for reasons of group affiliation, we choose our opinion first, and then cherry pick data to support it.

Constructive reasoning is the reverse, i.e., we discover the facts and then form an opinion based on those. This is how Mr. Spock in Star Trek behaves, and needless to say he isn't fully human. Most people can't behave that way. Still, one can approach constructive reasoning, and Mr. Kling argues that people who are serious about political discourse should strive for that goal.

To see how well we do, Mr. Kling picked three prominent columnists, each partial to an axis, and compared notes. The examples he chose were E. J. Dionne (progressive), Victor Davis Hanson (conservative) and Nick Gillespie (libertarian). Predictably, they all failed his test of being constructive thinkers--each defended his own point of view without indicating any understanding of the other.

And yet I don't think that's completely fair. First, Kling sampled only columns, which by design are short, propaganda pieces. He'd have done better if he'd looked at longer writing in journals like The New Republic or National Review. Second, while I've never met any of these people, I'm fairly certain that they all read each other's work. They talk to each other. I don't believe that Mr. Kling's schema will come to them as a surprise. They're as close to constructive thinkers as we're likely to find among non-Vulcans.

Compare that with my fellow faculty at the college where I'm a professor. They are all progressives--at faculty meetings it's just assumed that everybody is a Democrat. But despite their theatrical, political grandstanding, they know much less about politics than any of Kling's columnists. They have probably never even heard of either Hanson or Gillespie, and all they ever read is The New York Times. They live in an echo chamber, and are an excellent example of what Kling calls group affiliation. College faculty are Lefties because that's how you establish your credentials as part of the group. If you're not part of the group, you won't be successful and you won't get tenure.

There's no point in talking to these people. As I get older and closer to retirement I don't need to group-affiliate any more. I think that's why I'm writing letters to Trotskyists. Despite being wrong, they are at least honest and committed people--neither stupid nor evil.

I disagree with how Mr. Kling brings social science to his argument--I think he overstates the importance of Jonathan Haidt. But I’m out of space for now, so that discussion will have to wait for another time.


Further Reading

• Marxism & EvoPsych
• Women's Work
• Is Marxism Dead?
• Is the SWP a Cult?

New Media: Socialist Action's Second Best Friend

This is Part 2 of a series on Trotskyism and the New Media. Part 1 is here.

I have some up-close and personal experience with Socialist Action's web page. Some years back--don't recall quite when--I noticed they allowed comments on their site. What a wonderful opportunity, I thought. I can communicate with my old colleagues, engage in political conversation, and who knows, maybe even enlighten a comrade or two.

So I started commenting on the site, and worked hard to be a good citizen. It is from this experience that the rules for Trotsky's Children have evolved: be polite and respectful, take my interlocutors seriously, avoid ad hominem attacks, and stay away from meaningless, fighting words such as fascist or racist. I aspired--then and now--to be a friendly critic.

Did I always follow my rules? No--I confess I didn't. There was one post in particular--a comment on a report of their convention--that was so full of sarcastic snark that one couldn't have seen it as friendly. (Really--Marxists can so easily descend into self-parody that it's impossible to resist.) Still, by and large I stuck with the program.

My very first comment--on North Korea--garnered precisely the response I'd hoped for. One comrade simply wrote "F*** North Korea," which are my sentiments precisely. But after that initial success, I never received any feedback. Not that I'm surprised--the Party asked comrades not to honor me with a response, and they complied. The Socialist Workers Party in my day would have done exactly the same thing.

They let me comment more or less freely for the first couple of years, deleting only a few remarks. But then I guess I pushed one hot button too many and more of my posts got deleted. Eventually they instituted comment moderation and most of my remarks were never published. Accordingly, I stopped writing them and started this blog instead.

The latest incarnation of their website--now a few months old--doesn't allow comments at all. This, in my view, is a big mistake.

Indeed, when I first started posting and discovered that my comments weren't immediately deleted, I foolishly assumed that they welcomed my attention. I guess I'd been out of the Movement for too long and have read too much about how controversy drives web traffic. But Socialist Action has not gotten that message. I think this is symptomatic of a fatal flaw in the Leninist concept of a Vanguard Party.

The web devalues Grand Poobahs. In the old days you needed access to a printing press in order to be read. The New York Times editorial board, for example, had great power--they were the gatekeepers to an expensive resource. In the old days, when I was in the Party, we used to say we were unknown because we didn't have the resources of the bourgeois media. There was some truth to that then, but none at all now.

Now the problem a budding Vanguard Party has is, while it is not now a Grand Poobah, it aspires to become one. That is, Socialist Action (along with The Militant) doesn't just want to abolish the New York Times, but rather to replace it. Thus as the Internet corrodes the New York Times, it also destroys the ambitions of a Vanguard Party.

As we showed in Part 1, The Militant has essentially abandoned any such ambition. It has put its head in the sand and is just a weekly newspaper, a copy of which can also be found on the web. The Militant makes no effort to go web-native.

Not so with Socialist Action. They are trying very hard to use the Internet effectively. I can't recall when Socialist Action last had a print subscription drive. Indeed, the print edition looks more like a fund raiser than a way to get the word out. The real action takes place on the web. Here are some of the creditable things they are doing:

• The web page is regularly updated--at least every couple of days. The fact that the print edition only comes out monthly no longer determines the schedule.
• The site looks like a political site. It has headers that include "Donate," "Join," and "Contact Us." Perhaps revealingly, it lacks a "Get Involved" tab.
• The page has icons for Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and Youtube. In other words, they want to be part of the conversation.
• They advertise events. They really do want their readers involved with what they do.

So why don't they allow comments? Surely, if you want to be a center for political discourse, such as the Daily Kos, or RedState, or the Huffington Post, you have to give comments a big slice of the pie. Those sites are political organizing tools because they get their readers involved and talking to each other. By forbidding comments altogether, Socialist Action undoes everything it is trying to accomplish elsewhere on its site.

Of course, despite my best efforts at a friendly tone, Socialist Action will never regard me as a friend--we're on opposite sides of the political spectrum. I understand that--and deep down, they're not my friend, either. But they still should have been very happy when I started commenting on their website. And there is nothing wrong if comrades answer me back. After all, if they can't deal with me, how do they plan to lead a world revolution?

I am, in fact, their second-best friend. I read what they write, I take it seriously, and I spend time engaging them in conversation. That cannot hurt their cause. It doesn't hurt my cause either--I will be more widely read if comrades argue back. Controversy drives traffic. Traffic is what makes a web page important. Comments distinguish a successful web page from a dead-tree newspaper.

It's a little harder for them now that I have my own blog. I've attracted my own readers from the Right side of the aisle, along with Leftists from outside Socialist Action. Still, when somebody (anybody) reads your paper, takes it seriously, and drives traffic to your site, simply ignoring him is just dumb. They can't let their entire organization be turned into an anti-Dan King blog, but an occasional comment or article from them will do both of us good.

It used to be that a group of people--say in a Vanguard Party--could multiply their effectiveness by banding together and speaking with one voice. That's just not true anymore. Now, one voice is just one voice--regardless of how many people it represents. The web encourages multiple voices, even if they coalesce around certain ideas, such as socialism. By rigidly forbidding comrades from commenting on my site, or from having their own blogs that express their individual opinions (perhaps not always the Party Line), Socialist Action hugely reduces its effectiveness.

A blog roll is one important thing that's missing from the Socialist Action web page (the short list of links notwithstanding). Not only do they not like their second-best friends, they don't even like their first friends. They can't read anybody's opinion besides their own. In true Vanguard Party style, they act just like a Grand Poohbah wannabe.

Expletive Deleted

A recent post entitled Eric Alterman: What an (expletive deleted) is authored by an otherwise knowledgeable and talented writer that I've frequently linked to in the past. He'll remain nameless here so as not to engender unfortunate associations from search engines. In a word, I am shocked that he requires scatological profanity to make his point. Why?

I associate written profanity with stupid people possessed of small vocabularies. That description definitely does not suit Mr. P. So there is something else going on here--I don't really know what it is. Does Mr. P have some sort of mild mental disorder that causes needless use of profanity, some pale version of Tourette's syndrome? If that were true we could just ignore it--it's a very minor problem. But unfortunately he's not unique.

I think profanity is common on the Left side of the blogosphere. Even some of the best writers in the business (I'm thinking of Violet Socks over at Reclusive Leftist) can't seem to resist the meaningless expletive. And then there's the famous case of Amanda Marcotte--clearly a very talented young woman--who was picked to assist John Edward's presidential campaign. The job offer foundered on her compulsive use of utterly vile language, to the point of being pornographic. And then comments on The Daily Kos, or even Bloggingheads.tv, are absurdly vicious.

This feature seems to distinguish the Left-o-sphere from the Right-o-sphere. Now there's enough snark and stupidity to go around on both sides--the world's not running out of any of that. But profanity is highly concentrated on the Left. Again, I don't really know why. Is it supposed to be shocking? Well--it is. I continue to be shocked that otherwise intelligent people degrade themselves with gutter talk.

I learned my polemical skills from the Socialist Workers Party, and they did me a good turn. I have been reading The Militant for nigh 44 years now (unbelievable!), and never once do I recall them ever using the f-bomb. Or refer to feces. Or call a woman a c**t or a man a d**k. Nor are people they disagree with associated with a piece of toilet paper. The people who run The Militant are civilized people.

I hate to quote Abraham Lincoln on rules for blogging. He certainly had something much more consequential in mind for his second inaugural. But these words pithily express the preconditions for civilized discourse:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right...

Trotskyism & New Media

This is Part 1 of a series. Subsequent posts will look at Socialist Action and Socialist Viewpoint.

Update: Part 2 is here.

Ever since 1900 when Lenin founded the newspaper Iskra, Marxist parties have put great emphasis on the revolutionary press. Indeed, in those days when print media were expensive and rare, the concept of democratic centralism made sense. The Party press should print only the point of view of the entire organization, and not serve as a forum for internal discussion. These principles crystallized in the popular imagination with newspapers such as Pravda and The People’s Daily, often dubbed “Party organs,” or “government mouthpieces.”

The founding Trotskyist group in America, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) published The Militant with the same purpose--to represent the unified voice of the Party. Similarly that was the mission behind Pathfinder Press, even now the leading publisher of Trotskyist literature.

In 1998 Mary-Alice wrote

One thing that impressed them [Cubans] the most was something I did not expect. One person asked, "Do you have your own print shop?" When we answered, "Yes," her response was, "Well, that explains a lot. It would be hard to do this without your own shop." Many publishers in Cuba share the same presses. When acute paper shortages and equipment breakdowns are added to the equation, they have to make many painful decisions on who gets priority press time for which titles.

In the interim, the Party has dismantled the print shop and sold off the building. The Militant is now posted on-line, with digital issues available back to 1995. And no longer are “acute paper shortages and equipment breakdowns” responsible for painful decisions about what gets published, certainly not in the US. Anybody can publish anything, essentially for free.

And that’s the problem. Even the bourgeois press, such as the New York Times (NYT), no longer has a meaningful business model. Publication is now so cheap and so available that talented individuals can outdo the circulation of august institutions such as the NYT--witness Matt Drudge or Arianna Huffington. The money to be made in news publication is dropping to zero. While The Militant is not motivated by money, it confronts the same problem.

The Militant suffers from the Internet in three significant ways. First, it devalues their brand. In print, The Militant has a product far better than anything somebody like me could produce--I am not willing to invest in my own print shop. But on the web, The Militant becomes just another website--in no way distinct from my website. We are both essentially competing for eyeballs, and the fact that The Militant has an 85 year history behind it is just irrelevant. If I can generate content that successfully attracts Militant readers, then I win. That’s how Drudge & Huffington are putting the NYT out of business.

Second, it disaggregates their content. I still read The Militant (even though I haven’t seen a print copy in many years) by starting on their homepage and checking the articles that interest me. I don’t read the NYT that way--instead I come across NYT articles from outside. I click on them from the DrudgeReport or from RealClearPolitics. Because I’m not willing to pay for an NYT subscription, I no longer have access to the wisdom of the NYT editorial board. I read their articles in a disaggregated way. That may be the way you read The Militant. Instead of going to their homepage, you may only read the articles to which I provide links. In other words, I become your editor--The Militant’s editors are out of the loop.

And finally, the web is intrinsically interactive. A recent column by Tom Friedman has 267 comments. The NYT advertises “follow us on Twitter.” A measure of success of any web page is how many comments they get, or how many Twitter followers they have. A successful web page (not yet this one) has an extensive blogroll--a call-out for dialogue with other people. The Militant doesn’t allow comments. Indeed, its web edition is just a copy of the print edition--there is no effort to make it web native.

So how has The Militant responded to this changed set of circumstances? Not well--they display head-in-the-sand obtuseness. If there is one single, catalyzing event causing the decline of the SWP, it is that they have been unable to find a way to deal with new media. To see just how spectacularly the Party has failed in that regard, go back and read Mary-Alice’s article linked above.

I think the new media puts the whole concept of democratic centralism into question. A web site is ultimately a discussion forum, not a place to expostulate from on high. One can’t host a discussion if you insist that everybody has to agree with you in advance. The Militant can’t tolerate any disagreement--none at all--so conversation with them is impossible. Accordingly, almost nobody reads or links to their web site. And The Militant rarely links to anybody else’s website, either--they live in a self-contained universe.

Extrapolate this to social media. What are Comrades supposed to do with something like Twitter? Simply retweet the Party Line? How boring (and counterproductive) can you get. A Comrade who erroneously tweets a falsehood about our position on pre-war Croatia might get away with it. But what about the post that starts “The Party position is...,” which might imply that the tweeter doesn’t totally agree with the Party. Should they be promptly expelled? This is never going to work. Predictably, The Militant has no presence on social media web sites at all.

Instead, the Party concentrates on selling subscriptions to the print edition! To be sure, this is totally safe, but otherwise just nuts. It renders the Party completely irrelevant to anybody under age 40--people who came of age in a twitter/facebook world. It turns the Party into an apolitical organization that exists primarily for the psychological comfort of its own Comrades.

Back in the day, when staffing literature tables, we were frequently asked what was the purpose of the revolutionary party. “We know how to run the mimeograph machines” was often part of the answer. That is, the Party collected expertise necessary to organize and guide a mass movement, both politically and practically. And I’m certain that today’s Comrades--mostly sixty-plus--still know how to run mimeograph machines. The problem is they haven’t learned any new tricks.

This was all brought home to me in 2006. Recall the mass demonstrations (hundreds of thousands of people) by Mexican immigrants for less stringent immigration enforcement. Large numbers of high school students simply left their schools to participate. This was all organized by cell phone--today we would call it a flash mob, though that term had not been invented yet. Nobody ran any mimeograph machines. The Militant knew nothing about this demonstration until after it was over--they were completely out of the loop. What kind of vanguard Party is that? This is what happens when you cut yourself off from dialogue and discussion--nobody pays any attention to you.

Except me.