Oberlin 2026 Part 2: The Things You Won't Believe

Willie Cotton, SWP candidate for lieutenant governor of New York, speaks at June 24 protest against antisemitism. “Working class and unions must rally against Jew-hatred and pogroms,” Steve Clark told conference. (Photo: MILITANT/ELIZABETH LARISCY; Caption: The Militant)

For some reason all the links in this post were erased. I've tried to restore some of them, but that's still a work in progress.

Sometimes I think Comrade Jack Barnes doesn't believe his own bullshit. He and his fellow Troika members, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark, propose a long list of incredible propositions. It is hard to take them seriously.

Our recent post concerned the first installment of Steve Clark & Roy Landerson's account of the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) International Conference. Today we consider the sequel by the same authors, entitled ‘Live a life focused on conquering workers power from capitalists, war makers’ — Cuban Revolution set example for fighters. It reports on speeches by Comrades Mary-Alice and Steve.

Mary-Alice's remarks, in defense of the Cuban "Revolution," are full of howlers. For example, whatever the justification--or lack thereof--for Washington's blockade, the notion that it is "'saving' them from the government they have freely chosen for nearly seven decades" is absurd. Since Castro has come to power there has never been a free election in Cuba. That Cubans would in their majority vote for little food, no clean water, no transport, no jobs and now almost no electricity is beyond belief. The Castro kleptocrats are not that popular.

The Party is mustering a massive defense in opposition to the US blockade--or at least it's trying to. In its current issue The Militant does not mention any US demonstrations on behalf of Cuba. Of course the reason is obvious--a failed state such as Cuba does not inspire many people. So they're taking a different approach: pointing out the most important gains of the Cuban "Revolution." Americans are not asked to rally around the Cuban flag for any straightforward materialist reasons--all of which are in short supply. Instead these dialectical materialist Marxists are inspired by "...the proletarian internationalist example revolutionary Cuba has set from Latin America, to Vietnam, to Africa and beyond."

Cuba has apparently not contributed anything of actual material benefit to humanity--and certainly not to Cubans. But their spiritual contribution--in the form of solidarity--is enormous. It's solidarity all the way down.

The former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde fought for independence beginning in the 1960s. They were both successful in 1975 after the fascist Salazar regime was overthrown in Portugal. In Guinea-Bissau there was much violence; in Cape Verde the effort was mostly peaceful. Today, according to Wikipedia, Cape Verde is a stable parliamentary democracy with a growing economy. Guinea-Bissau is ruled by a military junta and is among the poorest countries in the world.

It's that Cuban effort in Guinea Bissau that thrills Comrade Mary-Alice. Indeed, as detailed by Wikipedia, the rebels claimed assistance from Cuba, among other countries. Pathfinder Press, the Party's publishing house, has released a new book touting the heroism of a certain Victor Dreke, entitled Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, also written by Mr. Dreke. According to Mary-Alice, (emphasis mine)

“Party members and supporters have already been working with others to organize events to get this book into the hands of working people and students, encouraging them to read and use it. ...“And we’re just barely out of the starting blocks.”

Today on Amazon the book is ranked at a bit over a million on the bestseller list (#1 is the top spot), which from my experience means they last sold a copy from that platform about a month ago--hardly an impressive launch off those starting blocks.

Admittedly, Amazon is not the important distribution channel for Pathfinder titles. Instead comrades go hawking books door to door on semiannual subscription drives, during which they also sell books. They set themselves a quota to sell something over a 1000 copies during a 10-week drive. It's more than they sell on Amazon--but probably not a lot more. The odds of this book going viral are very long indeed.

Now it gets weird: Somehow selling copies of this book is what is meant by the obscure slogan Deeper into the working class. As quoted above, comrades are not just supposed to read the book, but also to "use it." The so-called "revolutionary" effort fighting a guerilla war in the jungle in a country that was then and still is one of the poorest in the world--from that experience comrades are to draw lessons about current American politics! Go figure.

That, as best I can determine, is the extent of the Party's defense of the Cuban "Revolution."

The problem, per Comrade Waters, is "...that for the past 67 years, since the triumph in Cuba, there has “not been a single victorious socialist revolution anywhere in the world.'" For anybody who fancies themselves as a revolutionary socialist worker-Bolshevik that's got to be a real downer.  

Only two?

And the two outstanding socialist revolutions and proletarian leaderships of the 20th century, led by Lenin and by Fidel Castro, were Russian and Cuban.

What happened to China? When I was a comrade the Party championed the "Chinese Revolution" of 1949, however deformed it may have been by Stalinism. For decades after the end of the Cold War, the Party was claiming that no true counterrevolution had happened--that China and the ex-Soviet space were all still socialist under the skin. It was nonsense, but the Party held to it for decades as detailed in Comrade Barnes' 1998 book US Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War. But no more--China is now a full-on capitalist country, run by the hopelessly misnamed Chinese Communist Party. The Long March has been airbrushed out of history. (For the record, in my view China is not socialist, but also not capitalist. I'd call it mercantilist--a form of pre-capitalism.)

Making a bit more sense, Mary-Alice says

More than three decades after the fall of hated Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, these petty-bourgeois radical currents look to China as the principal alternative to what they see as U.S. imperialism’s “unipolar” world. Beijing is both the Stalinists’ new capital of “world socialism” and creditor-in-chief of “the Global South,” the wished-for capitalist counterweight to U.S. imperialist dominance.

She is on to something here. There are lots of petty-bourgeois radicals floating around, notably on the progressive Left in the Democrat Party, and certainly in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). But I don't see many of them claiming a Maoist heritage. Maoism, as an ideology, seems moribund.

Instead I see much of the Left coalescing around some variant of Trotskyism--Trotsky being the only dead Russian unsullied by not being a mass murderer. (This, in my opinion, was only because he never had the opportunity.) Perhaps I'm biased due to the nature of my blog--I study Trotskyists--but I haven't encountered much conversation about the virtues of Maoism anywhere.

Speaking of petty-bourgeois radicals who claim to be Trotskyist, there's no better example than Left Voice--a quality blog run by a collective of very petty-bourgeois academics from New York City. Mary-Alice's next paragraph is absolutely right on the money!

What’s new today is the convergence of these [petty-bourgeois] currents with the sharp rise of reactionary, Islamist, Jew-hating organizations and actions around the world, which has accelerated since the Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom against Israel.

It's an unholy alliance between so-called progressives (including pseudo-Trotskyists) and Islamic fascism. On this the SWP and I are in full agreement. Killing all the Jews won't solve ANY of the world's problems--especially not for Palestinians! Both the Islamists and the progressive Left are using the Jews as a scapegoat. However crazy the reasoning, kudos to the Socialist Workers Party for seeing this for what it is: a plea for mass murder.

Steve Clark, the junior Troika member, argues that the Iran war is actually two wars in one. The first war is an existential fight for Israel to exist. Should Israel lose this war then all the Jews in Palestine will be exterminated. Comrade Clark takes the Iranian government seriously when they demand Death to Israel.

The second war, happening at the same time, is happening because the US--or more precisely US imperialism is trying to conquer Iran to steal its oil. "Topmost for the U.S. ruling families are their own imperial interests in oil and gas resources, other lucrative markets, arms sales, and control over strategic sea routes and straits worldwide." The imperialists don't really care if all the Jews are killed--no sweat off their back. Apparently the Iranian threat of Death to America is just idle propaganda, and they don't really mean it.

This is just unbelievable. In truth, both Israel and the USA are threatened by an Iranian nuclear weapon, and it is essential for both countries to eliminate that threat.

I don't know how much of this Jack Barnes actually believes. It's all some very weird shit. There are people who think Comrade Jack is a secret Republican--and surely his positions on progressives' antisemitism, his opposition to wokeness, and his muscular defense of Israel will buttress their case.

But then there's all the other stuff. I don't know what to make of it.

Further Reading:

• Left Voice Antisemites Speak Out
• Mary-Alice on Cosmetics and Fashion
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat

Oberlin, 2026: History & Sentiment

Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes presents political report to June international party conference. With Barnes, from left are SWP leaders Paul Mailhot, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark. (Photo credit: MILITANT/LAURA ANDERSON; Caption: The Militant)

This week's Militant* publishes the first part of two reporting on the Party's 2026 International Conference held last June in Oberlin, Ohio. The title is SWP conference: Building a working-class party on Marxist foundations in the fight for workers power amid today’s capitalist crises and wars, and reports on the speech by Jack Barnes. Speeches by Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark will presumably be discussed next week. Comrades Jack, Mary-Alice and Steve constitute the central leadership of the Party, which I have dubbed the Troika.

Back in 2013 I proposed a framework for analyzing Comrade Jack's speeches, and it goes something like this:

• The speeches put great weight on history. Every event is deeply meaningful and subject to dialectical, Marxist interpretation. This makes them important.
• They are very sentimental, invariably referring to something that happened back when comrades were young (e.g., Malcolm X). So the speeches are inspiring.
• They make some odd-ball claim that sets the Party apart. For example, nobody else on the Left (or even the world) believes that the US lost the cold war. This inspires group solidarity.

Mr. Barnes makes an important historical claim that a Marxist, revolutionary-socialist Party in the Leninist-Bolshevik tradition already exists in the USA. It does not need to be reinvented or refounded. The hard work, according to Comrade Jack, has already been done. The article makes several points that I'll summarize in bullets.

• "Vanguard workers parties can grow with stunning speed amid deep going revolutionary events."
•  “We keep on building the party through our involvement in the class struggle and mass work of all kinds.”
• The Party's size is not important--that can change very quickly when the time is right.
• The Party "is proletarian in our program, our class composition and our norms and habits of political conduct. 'Our communist program is stronger than ever,' he said."

The SWP, with perhaps 100 members, is the vanguard remnant, the seed from which a future revolution will be brought forth. Their cadre, he claims, is proletarian to it's core.

I'll take issue with that last claim: their cadre was proletarian. Today they're increasingly retired. I think the average age is over 70. Comrades Jack and Mary-Alice are both about 85, and Steve is perhaps pushing 80. I wrote a post entitled Abandoning the Working Class about a revolutionary's retirement. What is the class nature of Bolshevik retirees? I suggested they might be declassed, like students.

The word "death" does not occur at all in the document--yet comrades are dying--obviously dying faster than new comrades can be recruited. Two comrades passed recently for whom obituaries appeared in The Militant.

The first was John Benson, who passed on March 6th at age 85. He met Jack and Mary-Alice when they were all students together at Carleton College. His leading accomplishments:

After joining the SWP in 1962, Benson helped build and lead 10 different party branches and organizing committees, served on the party’s National Committee for 15 years, carried out responsibilities helping build the international communist movement and worked at numerous industrial jobs, where he worked to strengthen the union.

Along with party members, supporters and others interested in learning more about the party, members of Benson’s family attended the meeting. This included his brothers Ken and Steve, with whom John shared a lifetime love of golf, a sport he mastered growing up in Crete, Illinois, some 30 miles south of Chicago.

I think all that organizing has been washed away with time--most of those branches don't exist anymore.

The second decedent was Dave Prince, a handsome man who frequently sat on the dais at Oberlin conferences alongside the Troika.

Prince, who joined the SWP in Cleveland in 1965, died on Jan. 25 at age 82, after a long battle against cancer. A member of the party’s National Committee since 1977, he shouldered a wide variety of central leadership responsibilities for the SWP’s party-building activity and international work. He helped organize and lead the financing of the party nationally, as well as the editorial preparation, printing, and circulation of books on working-class politics and program.

Mr. Prince is survived by a brother and sister, along with his longtime companion, Vivian Sahner.

No children and no grandchildren for either of these gentlemen.

For contrast, check out the obituary column for any small town America. I randomly picked Burns, Oregon, where a fellow died earlier this month at age 78. His very long obituary includes:

He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Andrea; his children, Matt, Luke (Missy), Megan (Tyler), and Trey (Jamie); his grandchildren, Chad (Serina), Tara (Jake), Colton, Jaxon, Taylen, Cali, and Tell; his great grandchildren, Cannon, Carter, Tell, Tilly, Tabor, His brother, Lou (Mary Jo) and numerous nieces, nephews, extended family members, and friends.

Folks with children and grandchildren, not to mention great grandchildren, are the people who will determine the future. This man is an example of a life well lived.

So I'll give great credit to my former comrades who made heroic sacrifices on behalf of the movement. They moved hither and yon across the country, dropping career, friends, and everything to respond to the momentary needs of the revolution. They never married or had children. If success had followed sacrifice, then it would be easy to admire them. As it is, they're to be pitied.

For they have not been able to reproduce themselves. Certainly not in the biological sense, but also not politically. They have not been able to recruit a younger generation of comrades to keep the flame going after they die. The biological and political are linked: red diaper babies are comrades who were the children of comrades. Our crop of aging, one-time proletarians are leaving no red diaper babies to follow in their footsteps.

May I suggest a fanciful solution? Our mutual friends over at Left Voice are all Millennials, many of whom aspire to be Trotskyists. Indeed, some of them are part of the Trotskyist Faction of the Fourth International--hard to get more Trotskyist than that! But they need an education: like our comrades 50 years ago, they're green behind their petty-bourgeois ears. They also need to disabuse themselves of their alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. But if--and it is a very big IF--then this is a Young Socialist Alliance in waiting. As Comrade Jack puts it, the Revolutionary Party already exists. No need for these young whippersnappers to reinvent it.

The second bullet in the analysis of Mr. Barnes' speeches is something sentimental that brings back fond memories of youth. Comrade Jack delivers hugely!

The SWP was founded as a Trotskyist party, in close collaboration with Leon (the Old Man) Trotsky himself, during his exile in Coyoacan, Mexico. While prohibited by law from being a member of the Fourth International, the Party stood "in fraternal solidarity" with the International, engaging in rousing sectarian disputes with people like Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel. Then, for reasons that now escape me, the Party "abandoned Trotskyism," not completely, but certainly downplaying the connection.

Well, Trotsky is back! The group-read for the conference (200 copies were sold!) was In Defense of Marxism, now available in a 2026 edition published by Pathfinder Press, with a new introduction by Steve Clark. The book is a collection of correspondence to and from the Old Man during a faction fight and eventual split within the Party over World War II.

Nothing gets more sentimental than the resurrection of old Leon himself! My second bullet is more than satisfied.

The third bullet is a position that is so outlandish that it serves as a marker for group solidarity. I'll claim that is the Party's current position on Iran. But that looks to be a topic from Part 2 of The Militant's coverage of their conference, due to appear next week.

So stay tuned. 

*The Militant is the weekly newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), often referred to as the "Party." Jack Barnes is the National Secretary (CEO), a position he's held since 1972.

Further Reading:

• Left Voice and the SWP
• The March 17th Militant: A Review
• Trotskyist Ephemera

Jew Lady Betrays Both Country and Kin

(Source)

Frankie Levine flew all the way to Berlin, Germany, to deliver a speech of which she should be deeply ashamed. It's reprinted in Left Voice under the title “We Know the Way Out of this Violent System”: Speech from a Socialist Summer Camp in Germany, from which the above photo is taken. I assume it's a picture of the author.

She introduces herself:

Good evening, bonsoir, buonasera, buenas noches, guten abend. My name is Frankie and I am honored to join you as a representative from the declining, crisis-ridden empire that is the United States.

Her diagnosis is entirely wrong. The US is not declining, it's not crisis-ridden, and it isn't an empire. And she's not a representative of our country: we're a hardworking, quietly patriotic folk who cherish our constitutionally-endowed freedoms, along with our world-beating standard of living. Frankie is herself a beneficiary of our success: she flew to Berlin on an incredibly safe airplane, traveling without difficulty on a US Passport, and upon arrival was able to freely convert US dollars into euros, along with using a credit or debit card to pay for essentials. Nevertheless, she wants to destroy the United States.

She tells us a lot about herself: that she's a fourth-generation Brooklyn Jew who "been anti-Zionist since I was fourteen." She credits her 95 year-old grandmother for some crazy shit, eg, “Israel is an apartheid state that is committing genocide,” and who "mourns Palestinian children." Nothing wrong with mourning Palestinian children--the death of any child is a tragedy. But can she spare a thought or two for the Israeli children tortured to death on October 7th, 2023? Apparently not.

Hamas started the Gaza war and is responsible for most of the casualties on both sides. They put up their own children as human shields. The "genocide" slur is just a rehash of the old antisemitic slander that Jews suck the blood of Arab and Christian babies as part of their secret Kabbalistic rituals. There has been no genocide in Gaza--even by inflated Hamas figures less than 3% of Gaza's population died in the war. 

Anyway--no point in going over this again. Grandma is likely senile, and Frankie isn't gonna listen to me anyway. Beyond which Frankie has a solution to the world's woes, and it's this:

Today, we are here because we know the way out of this violent system. We need an independent, working class party that fights for revolutionary international socialism.

This, of course, is what my former comrades in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) have been demanding since 1928, when their newspaper, The Militant, was founded. For example, The Militant from March 26th, 1951, proclaimed

The burning need is the formation of an independent labor party, which can mobilize the potentially gigantic political strength of the working people. 

That was before I was born and certainly before Frankie was born. You'd think that if Trotskyists have been trying for nearly a century to "build an independent labor party," and have never succeeded in the US nor durably succeeded anywhere in the world, it might be time to rethink priorities? Besides which, how this solves the problems between Israelis and Palestinians is beyond me.

But Frankie wants to "transform society." I, along with tens of millions of my fellow Americans, depend on a monthly social security check. Somehow this "transformation" is gonna have to happen without any interruption in social security checks. Silly little Frankie imagines that she's smart enough to pull that off. And not just her--the assorted failed academics around Left Voice hardly inspire confidence that they know how to finance social security. Their most illustrious comrade, James Dennis Hoff, is an English professor at a community college. While creditable in today's tough academic job market, the guy doesn't know squat about how the social security system works. Should flaky Frankie succeed in her "transformation," I predict the collapse of the social security system.

And not just that, but also water, gas and electric utilities, supply chains across the globe, public order, and all food distribution will fail. Indeed, Frankie's "transformation" will result in mass starvation and death to most of the world's population. I'll give her credit for good intentions, but at some point some minimal intelligence is required. She ain't got it. 

No wonder the American proletariat strongly prefers Trump to pie-in-the-sky socialists (aka communists).

Frankie proudly asserts her "anti-Zionist" credentials, claiming she's been so since age 14. She waves "anti-Zionism" around like an amulet, as though it will magically protect her from the gas chambers. It won't. Her problem is that many (most?) of her allies are not mere anti-Zionists, but genuine antisemites. Her comrades Otto Fors and Maryam Alaniz are demonstrably antisemitic--at best they see foolish Frankie as a useful tool. When the day comes to globalize the intifada, Frankie will be exterminated along with the rest of them.

While she doesn't support the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates for irrelevant Trotskyist-sectarian reasons, she somehow doesn't object to their blatant Jew-hatred. Future congresswoman Darializa Chevalier celebrated Hamas' slaughter on October 8th. The success of Abdul El Sayed in Michigan is further cause for worry, as is that of Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York. Both those gentlemen are smiley-faced exponents of the Muslim Brotherhood. Frankie is fighting for socialism. What she'll get is an Islamic State.

During her visit to Berlin perhaps she learned a useful word Judenrein? Literally it means cleansed of Jews, and it's the word the Nazis used to describe their Holocaust efforts. Hamas has cleaned this up a little bit--in English they demand Free Palestine. But what does that word free mean? It means free of Jews. After all, Jews are walking all over Palestine, occupying it with their filthy feet and causing all the world's problems. A fair, multilingual translation of free Palestine is judenrein Palestine. The Jews need to be exterminated. 

I don't know what psychic itch Frankie scratches by hanging out with these people. Whatever it is, she needs to get over it. They want to kill her, her family, her people--everybody in her neighborhood. It's OK to care about Palestinian children. Somebody needs to do that. But allying with a bunch of murderous thugs like Hamas does not benefit anybody's children--certainly not Palestine's!

The socialist Left, specifically the DSA, Left Voice, and all the Trotskyist grouplets apart from the SWP, have formed an unholy alliance with Islamic fascism. Fortunately Trotskyism can be ignored--and ultimately I think that fate awaits the DSA.  I don't think the majority of Americans are antisemitic. I don't even think a majority of Democrats are antisemitic. So this too shall pass.

Frankie needs to find a better home for her good heart.

Further Reading:

• Envy Is Why They Hate The Jews
• The Fading Fumes of Trotskyism
• Left Voice and the SWP

Cuba Fading Fast

An example for working people? Not even the plumber has a truck! (Source)

Roy Landerson publishes a piece in The Militant misleadingly entitled Why the Cuban Revolution is an example for all working people. That doesn't describe the article at all. Instead it's a sentimental post about how a dictator was overthrown by a bunch of ragtag "revolutionaries." This isn't an example for working people so much as a sentimental journey for those who were inspired by the so-called "revolution" at the time.

How many people in the US will recall Fidel Castro's supposedly inspirational speech History Will Absolve Me? It's two hours long! All but the most brainwashed Castro fans will fall asleep before it's over. It asserts that Castro partisans are unfailingly honest, innocent, peaceful (despite launching an insurrection) citizens, while the government officials are all and always liars, crooks and thieves. I confess I didn't read the whole thing--it was too boring and too incredible.

Yet Mr. Landerson will have us believe that History Will Absolve Me is the greatest document since the Declaration of Independence.

Usually, if a country is "an example for working people" it's because it has a higher standard of living, offers more freedom in terms of career, where to live, and how to spend your money and your free time. Cuba provides none of that: housing is hopelessly dilapidated, food is nearly non-existent, you can't choose a career, and--it seems to me worst of all--one has to spend one's free time listening to boring speeches and "volunteering" to contribute free labor.

Whatever the good life is, Cuba's is the complete opposite. When possible Cubans flee to the USA--or Mexico or Colombia, or Panama or any place besides Cuba. Mr. Landerson's headline is 180 degrees wrong.

The dictator that so offended Mr. Castro was a politician cum gangster named Fulgencio Batista, president of Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The Castroites had much to complain about (links & footnotes omitted).

Throughout the 1950s, Havana served as "a hedonistic playground for the world's elite", producing sizable gambling, prostitution and drug profits for the American mafia, corrupt law-enforcement officials, and their politically elected cronies. In the assessment of the Cuban-American historian Louis Perez, "Havana was then what Las Vegas has become." Relatedly, it is estimated that by the end of the 1950s the city of Havana had 270 brothels. In addition, drugs, be it marijuana or cocaine, were so plentiful at the time that one American magazine in 1950 proclaimed "Narcotics are hardly more difficult to obtain in Cuba than a shot of rum. And only slightly more expensive." As a result, the playwright Arthur Miller described Batista's Cuba in The Nation as "hopelessly corrupt, a Mafia playground, (and) a bordello for Americans and other foreigners."

While the prostitution part is as much a draw today as it was back then, the Castro regime has curtailed the drug trade. They've tried to keep the tourist industry alive, but instead of attracting the rich or famous (eg, Ernest Hemingway), Cuba instead appeals to low-budget package tourists. Much less lucrative.

In 1960 (according to Google AI) Cuba produced between 5.6 and 6.0 million tons of sugar. After 66 years of Castro rule production is down to 200,000 tons.

Perhaps the country most like Cuba is the Dominican Republic--same ethnicity and former Spanish colony. In 1960 it was ruled by a dictator way more vicious than Mr. Batista, namely Rafael Trujillo ("Generalissimo" from 1934 until his death in 1961). He is credibly charged with murdering between 25,000 and 50,000 people. If Mr. Castro had been Dominican he would have been summarily shot and never put on trial.

I asked ChatGPT what fraction of Dominican households had access to electricity in 1960, and also today. Her answer, excerpted:

In 1960: the best estimate is roughly 15–25% of households had reliable electricity.

Today (2025–2026): about 95–99% of Dominican households have reasonably reliable electricity, although reliability still varies substantially by neighborhood.

I put the same question to her about Cuba:

By the late 1950s Cuba was one of the more electrified countries in Latin America:

• Havana and other cities had extensive electric service.
• Cuba was considerably more urbanized than the Dominican Republic.
• Many towns had electricity, although rural electrification remained incomplete.
• Large rural areas still lacked service entirely.

Historical studies of Latin American electrification suggest Cuba's household electrification rate around 1958–1960 was approximately 55–70%, much higher than most neighboring countries.

Moreover, where electricity existed, it was generally dependable.

Clearly, Mr. Batista was way more successful in getting electricity to his population than his Dominican counterpart. He also killed far fewer people. Corruption was, of course a problem, but comparatively a minor one..

Regards today, Ms. GPT points out that 100% of Cuban households are connected to the electrical grid. But the grid is not reliable, and in recent years it's failed more or less completely. Apparently Cuba had another nationwide blackout in early June. She writes:

Access to the grid has improved from roughly 60% to essentially 100%. But reliability has deteriorated dramatically in recent years because of the collapse of the generating system and fuel shortages. A household that technically has electricity today may still experience many hours each day without power.

She goes on to estimate that despite 100% access, only between 30%- 50% of households have power at any given time. Ms. GPT does not have access to the most recent internet pages, so I think today's figure is no more than 30%.

In other words, since Trujillo died, the Dominican Republic has brought its electrical grid almost to first world standards. Meanwhile, Cuba has gone the opposite direction--from a dependable, nationwide grid under Batista, to complete collapse under the Castro brothers. This is NOT an example for working people--at least not a positive one.

Mr. Landerson's retort will be Cuba's problems are entirely due to the perfidy of the United States. Of course that's small comfort to the average Cuban--why did the Castro brothers go so far out of their way to anger the US? Seems in retrospect to be totally unnecessary--what has Cuba gained from that? As Marco Rubio puts it, the only thing worse than a communist is a stupid communist.

 
But Mr. Landerson is wrong: Cuba is in significant part the author of her own problems, for when it comes to corruption, the Castros have been far worse than anything Batista did. The Castro regime has stolen 90% of people's paychecks--it's hard to get more corrupt than that.

A useful counterpoint to Mr. Landerson's piece appears in Left Voice in an article by Adrien Masson entitled Cuba’s Market Reforms Are a Huge Retreat for Socialism. He takes the regime to task for taking some obvious steps to rejuvenate its economy, to wit:

The main measures include the adoption of private banking, lifting the cap on how many companies private individuals can own, giving private companies control over how many workers they hire and at what wages, eliminating the government’s monopoly on foreign trade, repaying external debt by selling national assets, and expanding the private sector’s reach. State-owned properties and real estate can now be sold to both domestic and foreign companies and individuals, while subsidies for important goods will be taken away from most Cubans and means-tested for the most vulnerable.

In other words, he accuses Cuba of going down the capitalist road and betraying the working class along with socialist ideals. He is right, of course, and the government's new policy is a straightforward admission that the idiotic, "revolutionary" fantasies held over the past 67 years are worthless. How many lives have been wasted sacrificing everything in a heroic effort that has done nothing but enrich the Castro clan?

The nonsense spouted by Mr. Masson deserves its own post. I won't go into detail here. His article is a very clear illustration of how Marxists completely misunderstand capitalism. The bottom line is Mr. Masson wants a do-over--his solution is to subject another three generations of Cubans to ever more poverty and misery. 

Further Reading:

• Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters
• The End of Cuban Civilization
• The Trotskyist Faction on Haiti

The SWP Throws In the Towel

 

"The SWP opened its 2026 International Conference here June 11-14 ...  SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, at podium, gave the political report. Seated, from left, are SWP leaders Paul Mailhot, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark." (Photo & caption from The Militant)

Founded in 1928, The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) has been the unwavering champion of Revolutionary Socialism, standing in the tradition of Marx, Lenin, and above all, Trotsky. Leon Trotsky, aka the Old Man, took a personal interest in the paper and the Party's worker-Bolshevik cadre. Many SWP comrades lived, worked, and/or studied with Trotsky during his exile in Coyoacan, Mexico, including James P. Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, and most prominently, Joseph Hansen.

Party comrades went to jail for their opposition to US involvement in WWII, accused of violating the Smith Act. The convictions were later overturned as the Act was ruled unconstitutional--the first of many civil rights cases where comrades were victorious. The Party played a key role in the 1960s civil rights movement, long championing Malcolm X. The Party-run Pathfinder Press was Malcolm's first publisher.

The SWP reached its height during the Vietnam war, growing to as many as 3000 comrades. It played a key role organizing the antiwar demonstration on April 24th, 1971, the largest ever antiwar demonstration in US history. Together with the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters' strikes, this was one of only two occasions when the Party exercised political influence well beyond its small size. It is during Vietnam period that the majority of today's comrades were recruited--I also date from that time.

Jack Barnes, who turns 85 this year, has been national secretary (the vaguely Stalinist term for CEO) since 1972. That's 54 years in office--a tenure that's much too long. (There is at least a hint of corruption resulting from such a long tenure.) He and his one-time squeeze, Mary-Alice Waters, were both recruited to the Party in 1960 from Carleton College, where they were members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Defense of the Cuban "Revolution" has been a raison d'être for the movement ever since.

Though things are getting increasingly desperate for that benighted isle. The Militant rises to the "Revolution's" defense with headlines such as Build protests now to defend Cuba’s sovereignty! US hands off Cuba!, authored by Mr. Barnes himself. More pathetic is Join protests, demand: ‘US hands off Cuba!’ The picture shows a dozen or so elderly people forlornly standing up for Castro's kleptocrats.

“Hands Off Cuba!” picket at Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis June 3, called by area Cuba Committee. It was one of dozens across the country, worldwide. (Picture & Caption: The Militant)

The Party's position is that ALL (100%) of Cuba's problems are due to the US blockade. But the blockade is simply the icing on the cake. The country was founded on the principle of stealing from rich people. Not surprisingly, all the rich people left and built prosperous lives for themselves in Miami. Having squandered the wealth of rich people, the Castroites started stealing from the middle class. In particular they reduced skilled professionals to slaves. For example, in terms of purchasing power doctors in Cuba only earn between $15 and $20 per month! (According to ChatGPT)

Needless to say, the middle class has now fled the country--can you blame them? In particular, anybody with the technical skill to maintain the electrical grid is long gone. So no wonder Cuba can't keep the lights on anymore.

As the Castro government cannibalized economic infrastructure (eg, Cuba went from being the world's largest sugar exporter, to--in some years--being a sugar importer) the country depended on handouts. These initially came from the Soviet Union, and then subsequently from fellow kleptocrats in Venezuela--both regimes longstanding enemies of the United States. The Soviets even put nuclear-tipped missiles on the island, aimed at the USA. Apparently the Chinese use Cuba for electronic spying. So no wonder Uncle Sam is kind of pissed, and is finally doing something about the problem.

So Jack and Mary-Alice are getting really old, and the Cuban lodestar is fading fast. There is no younger leadership. Oh, there is, namely the comrades of my generation, who are roughly 10 years younger than the decrepit duo. Whatever--there doesn't appear to be any succession plan, and it's too late for one now anyway.

Marco Rubio memorably describes Cuba this way:

Cuba's in a lot of trouble because, unfortunately for them, it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists. Being a communist is bad. Being an incompetent communist is the worst.

That's a fair appraisal of Cuba--but not so of the SWP. For the Party was at least competent--at least compared to all other Trotskyist grouplets. Their communist doctrine never accurately described the American economy--certainly not post-WWII. Today it's just totally wrong, as I've detailed at length in this blog. So it was never going to become a mass Party with the prospect of taking state power. Most recently they've been pipped by the Democratic Socialists of America--who are campaigning hard on antisemitism.

So today, the biggest accomplishment of the SWP is that they exist--just as the banner says. It appears they will outlive Cuba's kleptocratic "Revolution." Will they survive the passing of Jack Barnes? There are reasons to be skeptical. But I understand (from commenter John B) that they have several million dollars in the bank--so they'll probably soldier on until the money runs out.

The SWP (and this blog) Goes AWOL

 

Intramuros, Manila, Philippines
(Source)

OK. I give up. On June 28th (my last post on this blog) I wrote--in entirety--as follows:

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) printed a brief summary of the annual Oberlin Conference held June 12th--14th. Billed as an "International Conference," the agenda reads more like a convention, including a "political report" presented by Jack Barnes.

I assume a longer account of the proceedings is forthcoming--I certainly hope so since the banner looks more interesting than usual. I will get to it, but I'm going to be in the Philippines for the next two weeks so there may be a delay. 

I did go to the Philippines (rather idealized stock photo above). I got back from the Philippines. I had a whole slew of medical appointments (that in the end determined that my cancer is now in remission! Hope it stays that way). I've endured treatments for non-cancer ailments that will accompany me on my slow march toward oblivion. I've read every copy of The Militant since, along with checking Left Voice almost daily, along with visits to other blogs on my beat. 

Jack Barnes at the podium

For all that, no "longer account of the proceedings" has come forth. It appears that Terry Evans and Steve Clark--even with indispensable aid from the ever-reliable John Studer--can manage in over two months to write a couple thousand words describing their "international conference." I'm tired of waiting.

They're either a bunch of lazy, incompetent bums, or something else is going on, or some combination of the above. Lazy and/or incompetent could arise from the advanced age of said authors. Comrade Clark could easily be incapacitated--he hasn't looked healthy in recent photos. I don't know how old Comrades Evans and Studer are, but they're surely both over 70. If I'm gonna blame health on my failure to produce a blog post, then surely the same problems must afflict those who are even older.

More consequential would be Comrade Barnes' decrepitude. Here Kremlinology skills come in handy--unfortunately mine don't rise to the challenge. But if Jack is sick, then the future of the whole enterprise is called into question. Jack has been "national secretary" (don't you just love the Stalinist terminology!) since 1972, or 53 years. I think that's at least 43 years too long.

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men" is what some French politician allegedly said, suggesting that nobody is indispensable. But for a small Party with a leadership so entrenched and dependent on the wisdom of one guy, then perhaps said Party can't survive the illness of its leader?

Alternative explanations are possible. Perhaps the Party never intended to write anything more. Why? On the one hand they teasingly claim that "2025 is not 2024!", yet on the other their brief recap is boringly predictable. They make three points:

1. Capitalist rulers are building up their militaries.
2. "Jew hatred and deepening imperialist rivalries."
3. “Why the Fight for Women’s Emancipation Is Inseparable from the Class Struggle.”

It's what they don't mention that is noteworthy. Last year the talk of the town was the latest book, entitled The low point of labor resistance is behind us (my review here). It appears that the "low point" is making a comeback. The book is not mentioned at all in the short article.

The second unmentionable was the expression "women's emancipation," which did not occur in last year's report. Yes, they did mention women, but an explicit connection with the so-called "class struggle" was not made. The Party's position on women's issues has changed over the past few years, and it remains very unclear (see, eg, here and here). Perhaps some clarity is forthcoming?

Regards capitalists and their militaries, the brief account is ever so slightly more specific than last year, writing that "[c]apitalist rulers in the U.S. and elsewhere are building up their militaries and looking for allies as they fight to defend and expand their economic and political reach, pushing inexorably toward World War III." So what else is new? Capitalist and non-capitalist countries are always rebuilding their militaries. The Militant's observation is a truism, and does not auger World War III.

The current issue of The Militant sheds rather little light on the matter, except that the paper is declaring yet another week-long holiday next week, presumably to let our comrades recover from their laziness/incompetence and get their heads in gear long enough to produce an article. Or perhaps Comrade Jack is writing a new book!? Who knows.

Otherwise the issue is just boilerplate all over again:

• The lead headline is about the 3-day long Air Canada strike. Here today and gone tomorrow.
• The second headline is the evergreen ‘As crisis of capitalism grows, workers need to take power’. This is the hopelessly unrealistic demand that The Militant has put forth since its founding in 1928--in almost every issue.
• The "Book of the Month" is a piece from the long forgotten leader of the Burkina Faso "revolution" (1983 - 1987) commemorating Che Guevara. Che--a murderous psychopath--had the good sense to get himself killed while he was still handsome enough to decorate dorm rooms. Both revolutions (Burkina Faso's and Cuba's) are/were miserable failures, with the Cubans now mostly living without electricity.
• They still support open borders, championing a mass demonstration back in 2006.

They continue to get some things right. They understand that Hamas wants to kill all the Jews, in an article entitled Support Israel’s fight to stop a new Holocaust! Hamas must be defeated. Far from being "pro-Palestinian," Hamas is just pro-murder.

There's nothing new here. If 2025 really is different from 2024, then The Militant produces no evidence.

Further Reading:

• The Fading Fumes of Trotskyism
• Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters
• Oberlin, 2024

Oberlin Summary, 2025

 

(Militant/Hilda Cuzco)

The Militant (published by the Socialist Workers Party) printed a brief summary of the annual Oberlin Conference held June 12th--14th. Billed as an "International Conference," the agenda reads more like a convention, including a "political report" presented by Jack Barnes, pictured above.

I assume a longer account of the proceedings is forthcoming--I certainly hope so since the banner looks more interesting than usual. I will get to it, but I'm going to be in the Philippines for the next two weeks so there may be a delay.

Further Reading:

• Oberlin, 2024
• Socialism, 2024
• The Professors' Congress: The International Situation

The Fading Fumes of Trotskyism

 

Jack Barnes

Jeff Mackler

Jack Barnes' biography has yet to be written, and I am certainly not the one to write it. I've never met the man apart from being in the audience at a few of his Oberlin presentations. All I know is what I've heard through the grapevine (and from Wikipedia). Along with his life-long companion, Mary-Alice Waters, he attended Carleton College, and in 1960 joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. That brought him and Ms. Waters into contact with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)--in those days an avowedly Trotskyist Party in fraternal solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International. In 1972 he became National Secretary (top leader) of the Party, a post he has held ever since. Comrade Mary-Alice followed him on to the Political Committee, a status she continues to hold.

So support for the Cuban "Revolution" is in the core DNA of the Party, even today. Almost every issue of The Militant contains articles about Cuba, this week's being no exception. This is noteworthy because the Party has evolved its opinions on many other topics, eg,

• They no longer refer to themselves as "Trotskyist," and have broken ties with the Fourth International.
• They have distanced themselves from Wokeism, and no longer associate with the petty-bourgeois, identity movements so common elsewhere on the Left.
• They support Israel against Hamas, which they regard (correctly) as a fascist death cult.

Today the Party consists of about 100 comrades (with perhaps 200 sympathizers), down from around 2000 in the early 70s. It's an aging crowd--the median age is likely over 70 by now. They'll survive Jack Barnes (who turns 85 this year), but I doubt they'll make it too much longer than that.

I think the end of the SWP and the end of the Cuban "Revolution" are likely to occur simultaneously. When Cuba is no longer "revolutionary," then the Party's very raison d'etre is gone. Without their allegiance to the Cuban Commies the SWP simply becomes a rather weird group of Trump supporters.

So people have been predicting the imminent demise of the "Revolution" for many decades now--and such predictions have so far come to naught. I think that's because the soothsayers have misunderstood the fate of Cuba: the "Revolution" isn't going out with a bang, but instead with a whimper. Rather than a cataclysmic end to the regime, it will instead just gradually and literally die away and fade into the dustbin of history.

In this, the "Revolution" is like the SWP. The Party won't end by Jack Barnes turning off the lights at the National Office. Instead there will be a gradual aging and shrinking until there is effectively nothing left. The historical analogy is the Socialist Labor Party, a once vital movement that faded into a website that ended when the last keeper of the flame passed away. It's gonna take another 20 years, but this is also how the Socialist Workers Party will end.

And so it is with Cuba. There will likely never be a counter-revolution in Cuba, but instead the country will cease to be a civilized, cohesive society. It's already close to that--most of the island is without electricity for most or all of the day, and transport is today mostly by oxcart and donkey.

The country is in steep demographic decline. You can't trust the Cuban government numbers (echoed by the United Nations)--those are certified fake. The government still counts as residents people who left the island less than two years ago--which obviously inflates the population numbers. According to official numbers, in 2024 the population of the island was 9,748,532. As mentioned, this ignores the large out-migration that began in 2020. According to the Universidad de Navarra in an article by Agustina Rodríguez Granja (emphasis mine)

The Cuban government refuses to give concrete figures on the recent massive outflow of citizens, claiming that until they have been out of the country for two years, they are still considered residents. This forces researchers to collect data from the receiving countries and to draw their own models. The conclusion of Cuban demographer and economist Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos is that in reality only 8.62 million people reside on the island, pointing to an 18% decrease in population between 2022 and 2023. Thus, more than one million people would have left Cuba since 2021, a Issue that is in line with the number of Cubans registered in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in other countries.

She goes on to write,

Based on the number of Cubans who entered the United States and the count that on other occasions this direct migration to the U.S. has represented in the overall Cuban migration, Albizu-Campos extrapolates that the total number of Cubans who left the island between 2021 and 2024 is close to an estimated 1.79 million.

The people who are leaving are typically working age, and disproportionately female of childbearing age. The government is letting them leave likely because they don't want rebellion at home. But eventually the "Revolution" will be reduced to a bunch of old people without electricity, subsisting by growing food on whatever land they can get ahold of.

It's not just the fading fumes of Cuba. It's also the fading fumes of the Socialist Workers Party. 

Speaking of fading fast, I haven't read a biography of Jeff Mackler, either. I also have never met him, but I think his bio might actually be very short--perhaps only one word: pathetic.

Mr. Mackler is the "national secretary" of the nearly defunct Socialist Action organization. That grouplet, which fancies itself as the "vanguard party," likely consists of a couple dozen comrades. It's gotten so small and so devoid of talent that I've taken to referring to Mr. Mackler as Vanguard Man, ie, the very last, living leader of the coming American revolution. 

The last formal edition of their newspaper was published in June, 2022, and since then their webpage has struggled with content. As I predicted back in January, it appears that Mr. Mackler (who is in his 80s) is no longer capable of leadership. So Vanguard Man is fading out, and it's not clear whose gonna lead us into the next revolutionary era.

The most recent post in Socialist Action, dated April 30th, is entitled Socialist Action General Membership Meeting for Comrades and Friends. It reads in full (except for details of Zoom meeting that was held on May 4th),

Comrades and Friends,

Join us this coming Sunday, May 4 at 5 pm PST [7 PM Midwest and 8 pm EST] for our Socialist Action ZOOM general membership meeting.

Reply to David.huseth@tutanota.com, John Pottinger <jpottinger@earthlink.net>, Jeff Mackler <jmackler@lmi.net>

Proposed agenda:

Analysis of Democrat’s “Hands Off” and “50 50 1,” • Defense of Palestine • May May/Immigrant Rights • New SA Members •  Fourth International World Congress Assessment and SA’s termination of fraternal membership. • Other business.

Comradely.

David and John

I don't know David Huseth, but John Pottinger was a comrade of mine in Chicago back in the day. He's a perfectly fine, upstanding gentleman against whom I bear no grudge--but frankly, he is woefully unqualified to assume the role of Vanguard Man. At very least he lacks the editorial talent. Note that prior to this April 30th announcement, the last post to their webpage was on March 20th.

No word yet on the outcome of the general membership meeting. But honestly, along with Mr. Mackler, it appears that Socialist Action is passing from this mortal coil. Which is a bit surprising--I expected the SWP to go first. 

There's more, of course. One shouldn't forget Left Voice, a claque of petty bourgeois academics that suffer from an overdose of Wokeism, a hatred of Jews, and of all the ills that beset the modern academy (eg, among other things, the advent of AI). These people aren't serious.

There is the nearly forgotten Socialist Viewpoint, a bi-monthly magazine edited by an aging group of spinsters formerly associated with Nat Weinstein's grouplet. And I can't forget Workers' Voice, which is in part a split-off from Socialist Action, and which now claims to be a vanguard party all its own.

The most significant remnant of Trotskyism is Solidarity, which isn't really Trotskyist anymore (not that anybody else is), but has instead become an addendum to the Democratic Party.

Anyway, I find all of this increasingly meaningless and boring, which is why I'm uninspired to write. There's no point. I won't end this blog--something will come along that inspires--but it's probably gonna be less frequent than it has been.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us
• American Brezhnevism Today
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again

 

Cosmetics, Cuba & Mary-Alice Waters

From left, Esther Pérez, Mary-Alice Waters and Martín Koppel at the podium in Havana
(Source: Militant/Jonathan Silberman)

Contrary to my prediction, octogenarian Mary-Alice Waters really did make another trip to Cuba in February--and took a whole bevy of comrades with her (as best as I can determine, including Martín Koppel, Jonathan Silberman, Rachele Fruit and Philippe Tessier). Ms. Waters is second in command of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and longtime consort to chief honcho and similarly aged Jack Barnes. 

The occasion was the Havana Book Fair, and the topic of Mary-Alice's speech was a new edition (2024) of Cosmetics, Fashion and the Exploitation of Women, recently translated into Spanish by a Cuban, Esther Pérez.  The original authors were Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed, while the new edition includes contributions by Ms. Waters.  Her speech is reprinted in The Militant under the title ‘Fight for women’s equality is part of battle on world scale to settle which class will rule’. A companion article, by Rachele Fruit and Philippe Tessier, is headed Lively exchange at Havana book launch.

There are at least two things weird about the above photo. First are the microphones on the table. Authors Fruit and Tessier tell us that about 30 people attended the session. It hardly seems necessary to have a sound system, especially since Cuba is busy liberating itself from electricity use. After last Saturday's additional power failure, a reasonable estimate is that only 10% of demand is satisfied. It seems unlikely that the microphones even work. Why are they even there?

The second weird thing--recall this is a talk nominally about cosmetics and how evil capitalists have bamboozled women into buying them--is that octogenarian Mary-Alice has obviously dyed her hair! Compare her hair color with that of Esther Pérez--a woman likely younger than Ms. Waters, but who, living in Cuba, doesn't even have access to cheap hair dye.

In my prior article (Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion) I challenged Ms. Waters:

As a test, Ms. Waters should go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of cheap cosmetics that she can take with her next time she goes to Cuba (if she ever goes to Cuba again). She can pass them out to local women, whom I hazard will be overjoyed to receive them, without any encouragement from the bourgeoisie. Just a little bit of beauty to brighten their otherwise dark, dreary, boring days.

At very least she could've brought along some hair dye to share with her loyal translator. It would seem like the right thing to do.

The gist of Mary-Alice's speech was that women are oppressed, not just by men, but mostly by "capitalism" (whatever that is--Mary-Alice has no clue). The depths of their oppression is illustrated by the fact that they are hoodwinked into buying cosmetics that (according to Mary-Alice) they 1) don't need, 2) are dangerous, and 3) are similar to addictive drugs, such as fentanyl.

To which my responses are: 1) maybe women don't need cosmetics (who is Ms. Waters to tell women what they need?), but surely they enjoy having them. Cuban women probably have bigger problems than a lack of cosmetics (eg, adjusting to no electricity), but I still think had Mary-Alice taken my advice, she would've brightened the day of a few Cuban ladies. Cheapskate!

2) Ms. Waters mentions a few edge cases where cosmetics--broadly understood--might be dangerous. Her examples are mostly around cosmetic surgery, which I agree is perhaps taking the passion too far. But L'Oreal is the biggest cosmetics company in the world, and I don't think she can reasonably claim that any of their products are dangerous. 

3) They're addicting--which is true, but so is everything else that's pleasurable. I take great joy in being able to turn on electric lights in the evening. Does that mean that I'm addicted to electricity? Are her Cuban comrades better off being free of such an addiction?

Ms. Waters summarizes her talk at the end by asking and answering two questions.

The first question is: Are the issues addressed in a debate about cosmetics and fashion many decades ago still relevant? Haven’t “we” moved beyond that?

Second: Hasn’t knowledge of the earliest human societies moved far beyond what was known in the early 1950s? Isn’t Evelyn Reed’s article on “Anthropology: Marxist or Bourgeois?” outdated for that reason?

This is her answer to question one:

More than three centuries after the birth of industrial capitalism, we can say that the resources devoted by capitalist enterprises to advertising and the creation of markets — that is, creating “needs” that don’t naturally exist — have expanded astronomically, and continue to expand. 

Which demonstrates that she knows nothing about capitalism. To me, the most succinct definition of capitalism is an economic order designed to maximize consumption. Capitalists want you to shop till you drop.

Contrast that with socialism, where consumer wants are to be rationed by the government. Under socialism you can buy cosmetics only if the State approves the sale of cosmetics. Mary-Alice is convinced that nobody (except her) needs cosmetics, and therefore you should be prohibited from buying them. Apparently in Cuba they've decided that nobody needs electricity, either.

Sure--you can complain about overconsumption or even wasteful spending. But I think those are minor problems compared with the problem that afflicts most of the world, namely under-consumption, aka poverty. The problem in Cuba has nothing to do with who owns the means of production or who gets to distribute the proceeds. The problem is poverty. That's all it is. Cubans aren't allowed to buy what they want to buy.

Ms, Waters responds to the second question merely by asking another: Who needs any stinkin' research anyway? Some 60+ years ago she read a book entitled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, by Friedrich Engels, first published in 1884. That book is the absolute truth when it comes to anthropology. Why? Because it's "materialist," whatever that means.

In the intervening six decades Mary-Alice has refused to read anything new in the human sciences. Whenever confronted by novelty she sticks her fingers in her ears and sings loudly "LA LA LA LA..." to drown out any contrary information.

She's never heard of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, it appears she denies the theory of evolution altogether. She doesn't know what the human genome is, much less the astounding discoveries made over the past couple of decades. She's unfamiliar with radiocarbon dating. She's resoundingly ignorant of basic economics. Amazingly, she denies that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. Hell, she probably hasn't even read Sigmund Freud (who is, at very least, a pleasurable read).

She's a complete ignoramus, and we can safely ignore her opinions. Whether in English or Spanish, Cosmetics... is not a serious book.

Further Reading:

• The End of Cuban Civilization
• Steve Clark's Bizarre Book Bazaar
• Book Review: Human Diversity

The March 17th Militant: A Review

 

Volunteers at community project in Atabey, Havana. Recycling trash, they produce compost and grow vegetables. Ana Morales, speaking, talks to group and visitors. Jover Araújo, project director, center. Longtime revolutionary combatant Víctor Dreke, right, member of the group.
(Picture & caption source: The Militant/Martin Koppel)

It usually doesn't take me very long to skim through the pages of The Militant, the weekly publication of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The articles are so boilerplate and uninteresting as to not deserve a closer look. But the most recent issue dated March 17, 2025, is different. There are a number of articles that invite a response--indeed, for which I could have devoted an entire post. Instead I'm taking the opportunity to review the paper as a whole, with comments on some of the contents.

The paper began publication 1928, concurrently with the events leading to the founding of the international Trotskyist movement generally. As such, it is the oldest Trotskyist paper in the United States, and likely among the oldest in the world. Through various splits and copycat grouplets, there exists today a whole bevy of so-called "Trotskyist" newspapers, of which this blog covers only a few.

Newspaper is the operative word here: for most of its existence The Militant was published only in print form, distributed weekly both by mail and by comrades hawking copies on the street. That DNA is still baked into the modern paper: it is print first, after which a web-friendly version is posted on the internet. You can read the print version in pdf format, but the web format is far more convenient for me.

So yes, even though the web page is nicely designed and easy to navigate, it's still just a copy of the print version. It is updated weekly (not daily) except on weeks when the print paper isn't published. The print copies are mailed out on Thursday, and the issues are post-dated 11 days later. For example, the current issue was mailed on March 6th and is dated March 17th. The web version is posted on Saturday--this week on March 8th.

This, of course, makes perfect sense when you consider the fact that the SWP's comrades are typically in their 70s, and if they're at all like me they spent much of their youth selling Militants on street corners. Old habits die hard.

Compare with the latest incarnation of Trotskyism over at Left Voice, which is clearly web-native, and if they even have a print version I've never seen it. The Left Voice comrades belong to the Millennial generation, and it shows. Though it's not like they are any more relevant to American political conversation.

For the past several weeks The Militant has covered the successes Cuba is having in liberating humanity from electricity. Comrades Jonathan Silberman and Martin Koppel traveled to the island and now report back in an article entitled In face of US economic war, Havana neighbors organize to grow food, clean up the area. 

The the accompanying photo (above) suggests that the morose-looking, shabbily-dressed gentlemen have "volunteered" to plant a vegetable garden and to clean up a garbage dump.

“We’re just in the initial stages, but over the past few months we’ve gotten good results growing vegetables — cucumber, lettuce, broccoli, garlic and parsley,” said Araújo, the director of the project. “We deliver the vegetables without charge to schools, elderly people and economically vulnerable households.”

Of course the reason the veggies are "free" is only because the labor is free, ie, the workers are paid nothing. I doubt they're actually volunteers, especially since the article reports that "[José Jerónimo] Estevez is an elected representative of one of the local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), a nationwide organization that involves people on a neighborhood level." CDR is a euphemism for Cuba's ubiquitous secret police, analogous to the Stasi in East Germany.

So this is forced labor, aka slave labor. No wonder those guys look so morose!

It gets worse. The state capacity of the Cuban government is so diminished that they can no longer provide basic municipal services, such as garbage pickup. Indeed, lack of trash collection 

...has afflicted residential neighborhoods across the city. The majority of Havana’s garbage trucks have been paralyzed by the lack of imported fuel and spare parts caused by Washington’s economic war on Cuba. Despite these shortages, the Cuban government has marshaled resources to improve trash collection, and in parts of Havana such as Vedado and Miramar, some of the unofficial refuse dumps that had mushroomed on residential blocks have been eliminated.

If you believe The Militant, the US has sanctioned Cuba because our bourgeoisie are so envious of the Cuban lifestyle that they're afraid Americans will want to imitate them. Just think how marvelous life in America could be if we spent our free time sorting garbage by hand like they do in Cuba!

The reason that the US sanctions Cuba is because it's not a team player in the political or economic order, and can't be trusted to repay its debts. Besides which, there's plenty of oil for sale on the open market, and if Cuba had any money they could buy what they need.

A second article that caught my attention is by my old friend Brian Williams. Mr. Williams is The Militant's generally competent economics reporter--usually much better than others on my beat. But he falls down on the job here, retelling false narratives commonly recited in the progressive Left. His article is entitled Wall Street: ‘Life’s good for the rich, that’s good for you’. There are two whoppers that caught my eye.

First, he conflates stock with flow.

Last year the top 1% of U.S. households held $49.2 trillion in wealth, or about 30% of the country’s total wealth. To put this in perspective, this is more than the 2024 gross national product of the four largest capitalist economies — U.S., $25.43 trillion; China, $14.72 trillion; Japan, $4.25 trillion; and Germany, $3.85 trillion. 

The $49.2 trillion represents the (very hypothetical and mostly fictional) total wealth held by the bourgeoisie, accumulated over a lifetime of hard work and savvy investment. That is a stock of money, the same as net worth. Meanwhile, the gross national product numbers represent the total income of their respective countries over the course of a single year. That is a flow of money. It's an apples & oranges comparison, analogous to comparing a pound of butter with the speed of a car. Mr. Williams should know better.

Then he complains about good news.

Households that rake in $250,000 a year or more — those in the top 10% of income levels — account for nearly 50% of all spending, especially on luxury items. And this spending is what propels big-business media like the Journal to claim classless “consumers” are doing fine.

Would he rather the wealthier households just took their money and stuffed it into mattresses? Would that be better for the economy? Of course not! You can't have an economy without consumption. Think of all the waitresses, groundskeepers, Uber drivers, yoga instructors, jewelry salesladies, car dealers and home construction workers who would be out of a job of richer people didn't spend their money.

Who is gonna buy those expensive SUVs that UAW workers manufacture if not for people who have some money?

Marxists think that an economy is driven by production. They're wrong--an economy thrives or fails because of consumption. Cuba is so poor because the people there have no money and can't buy anything. They have to import tourists to purchase what little the country can produce.

There is more. The Book of the Month section reprints an excerpt from Evelyn Reed explaining her cartoonish version of anthropology. It's not worth reading.

The lede article is entitled ‘We run to build a party for workers to take power’, and is written by Terry Evans. The headline makes it sound really boring (like similarly-titled pieces in every issue of the paper), but this one reports on the Party's New Jersey gubernatorial candidate (Joanne Kuniansky) and is slightly more worthwhile.

Quoting Ms. Kuniansky, it contains this gem:

“Growing numbers of workers are repelled by the Democrats and Republicans. But without a complete break from these bosses’ parties, workers can make no progress..."

Really? A record turnout for Donald Trump does not suggest that "workers are repelled by the Democrats and Republicans." 

And in its 97 years of existence the Socialist Workers Party has made no progress.

Further Reading:

• Mary-Alice on Cosmetics & Fashion
• Book Review: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us 
• Left Voice and the SWP