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.

Prisoners

There are two so-called "political prisoners" that all the Trotskyist grouplets I follow champion: Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Lynne Stewart. My primary sources of information about both these cases come from Socialist Viewpoint, Socialist Action, and The Militant, in approximately that order of importance.

Mumia, a long-time Black activist involved earlier with the Black Panther Party, was convicted of the 1981 murder of policeman Daniel Faulkner. He spent 30 years on death row until the sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison. His case is now finally settled--he has few if any avenues of appeal left open. The original trial apparently was something of a circus. Mumia started by defending himself, but being obviously incompetent as a lawyer he was assigned an attorney. Subsequently he claimed (perhaps with justification) that the judge was racist and that the jury was all white. Multiple levels of appeal have not found cause to overturn the conviction--the only real matter of dispute was whether the death penalty should stand.

Lynne Stewart was a progressive civil rights lawyer--somebody who in the old days would have at very least been known as a "fellow traveler." She defended the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman in his trial on charges related to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Mr. Abdel-Rahman was convicted, and because of his terrorist connections was placed under "Special Administrative Measures," designed to restrict his communication with conspirators outside. Ms. Stewart was arrested on assisting Mr. Abdel-Rahman in violating those measures, and eventually convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Both of these figures proclaim their innocence. Mumia just flat-out says that he's innocent, without in anyway seeking to rebut the evidence against him. Ms. Stewart maintains that she simply acted as a good defense attorney, and that in any case the Special Administrative Measures are an unconstitutional infringement on her rights of free speech and freedom of association.

Now there are innocent people in jail. Indeed, there is a worthy organization known as the Innocence Project that is dedicated to freeing as many of them as possible. (Neither Mumia nor Ms. Stewart are on their list of clients.) Most innocent prisoners are victims of busy prosecutors, lazy cops, vengeful witnesses, tired  jurors, and overworked, incompetent public defenders. Sammy Jones and Johnny Smith are not convicted after due process, but more likely they just fell through the cracks of a creaking and overworked criminal justice system.

How different this is from the cases of Mumia & Stewart. While Mumia turned his own trial into a farce, the case has been thoroughly reviewed in the subsequent thirty years of appeals. Likewise, Ms. Stewart (who clearly had competent counsel) has had multiple reviews of her case, and has lost every appeal. Unlike the clients of the Innocence Project, this pair has due process coming out the wazoo. I suppose there is some mathematical chance that they're innocent, but I think the odds of that are vanishingly small.

So what is it that makes these political prisoners? Both of these people claim that they, uniquely, are targets of government repression--somebody is out to get them. Mumia talks about the "Mumia exception to the constitution." Unlike the pedestrian injustice cataloged by the Innocence Project, this (according to their defenders) is a purposeful, conscious rigging of the system to "railroad" brave people to jail. In a word, it's a conspiracy theory.

For thirty years, Mumia has loudly and consistently proclaimed his innocence. I think he actually believes he's innocent, but then I think he's a psychopath. Now I've never met the man, nor am I a clinical psychologist, but he certainly shares some characteristics common with psychopaths. First, psychopaths always think they're innocent--by definition they have no conscience and thus are incapable of feeling guilt the way normal people do. Mumia's claim of innocence is not that he didn't commit the murder, but rather that there was nothing wrong about murdering the guy, and he shouldn't be in jail for it.

Second, psychopaths tend to be superficially charming and charismatic. Mumia definitely fits this category--supporters and do-gooders who visit him come away charmed (see here, for example). And there is no doubt that he is a talented man. Early in his criminal career he was introduced as a poet, as if poets couldn't be guilty of murder. He clearly knows how to write, and has acquired a considerable education. But I hazard that people who know him better--guards and other prisoners--have learned not to trust him at all.

Finally, Mumia has never shown any remorse. He has never reached out to the family of the victim, nor ever asked what he could do to make amends. Truly innocent people are frequently very remorseful, and try very hard to convince the victim's family that they really are innocent. Mumia has done nothing of the sort.

Ms. Stewart, certainly not a psychopath, thinks she's above the law. Now it may be that the Special Administrative Measures are unconstitutional, or that our government is asserting too much power in the fight against terrorism. But Ms. Stewart's status as a defense attorney does not give her the right to simply ignore these laws. The state depends on competent defense attorneys, and Ms. Stewart is to be commended for her full-throated defense of Mr. Abdel-Rahman. She made the difference between a real trial and a kangaroo court. Nobody has any interest in "railroading" her to jail for defending her client. But it's one thing to defend accused bank robbers in a courtroom; it's quite another to help them rob banks. It's the latter that she is convicted of doing, and for this she deserves to be in jail.

A political prisoner, properly understood, is somebody jailed because of their opposition to the regime. By this measure, neither Mumia Abu-Jamal nor Lynne Stewart are political prisoners. They should not be defended as such.

Where The Customer Always Comes Last

This article is about the so-called "wildcat" strike described by Laura Gottesdiener in the current issue of Socialist Viewpoint. The immigrant (Mexican) staff won union representation at a New York City bakery called Hot & Crusty.

The villains include a venture capital firm (worth $700 million, but no context given), and the managing partner, a white South African (must be a really evil guy) who lived around the corner from the shop. Then there's a part for the restaurant's landlord.

The hero is an illegal Mexican immigrant by the name of Mahoma Lopez (photo here). Mr. Lopez reports that the workers were regularly mistreated--wages withheld, subjected to verbal abuse, and in general not employed in compliance with labor laws. Given that the employees were mostly illegal immigrants, this may very well be true.

So Mr. Lopez organized a campaign for higher wages and working conditions, with help from the National Labor Relations Board. The employees won back pay, but the response of the owners was simply to shut the store down. The workers staged a sit-in and gave away free food. At this point the landlord got involved--the owners hadn't paid the rent, and the workers hadn't vacated the premises.

The landlord had another tenant in the wings--a non-union firm unacceptable to the workers. And at this point things get murky. Some new investor materializes, recognizes the union and grants the workers much higher wages, sick pay, and grievance and arbitration procedures. More, there is now a union hiring hall--the union gets to decide who gets hired--not management.

So apparently Hot & Crusty is back in business in the same location under new rules: free unicorns for everybody. Everybody, that is, except for the customers, who presumably have to pay considerably more for their pastries, to be served by people hired by the union. This clearly isn't going to work long term.

So one wonders what persuaded management to go along with this scheme? The article doesn't say, and I have no other information. But somehow I suspect gangland style threats made against the landlord--the employees in the picture are burly guys instead of the dainty ladies in most fast-food establishments. There may be other explanations, but I can't think of one.

This is particularly ironic since Gottesdiener's article first appeared on a website called Waging Nonviolence. I have to think that the folks who run that website, along with my friends at Socialist Viewpoint, are useful idiots.

Socialist Action on Virginity!

I have to weigh in on Socialist Action's recent post about virginity, of all things. The article (by Dawn Rose) is a review of Jessica Valenti's 2009 book entitled The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women. I have not read that book, but I'll assume that Rose's description is accurate.

The book is in response to a supposed effort by conservatives and "anti-feminists" to roll back women's rights. According to Valenti (per Rose), we right-wingers want women who are docile, passive, and obedient, and focus on traditional motherhood. In a word, we want "a return to traditional gender roles (marriage and motherhood), and focusing on purity is the vehicle toward that end.”

Now I have no doubt that there are conservative religious groups focused on virginity, and for just the reasons Rose describes. But their battle is lost. They will never persuade more than an insignificant minority of women to follow their lead. So this whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. Or rather, it was an effort to create a bogeyman--a fictitious enemy designed to scare the living daylights out of single women. That somewhat dishonest end seems to be Valenti's purpose in writing the book, and the Obama 2012 election campaign used the mostly mythical Republican threat to abortion and birth control as part of its successful GOTV effort.

But let's ignore the dubious motives and consider only the arguments made in Rose's review. She states "[t]he virginity movement’s ideal woman is passive, docile, and relegated to the home." Now this doesn't make any sense, for I can't see how self-discipline leads to passive docility. Self-discipline in almost anything generally leads to success of some sort. Students who study hard get good grades. Those who don't eat too much keep their weight down. People who save money are generally richer in retirement, and so forth.

Ascetic self-discipline has a long history in human affairs, and demonstrates success for both individuals and social groups. Among individuals, the odd example that comes immediately to mind is Malcolm X. He, a libertine in his youth, upon conversion to (the weird form of) Islam gave up womanizing, alcohol, and general carousing. Would his political career have been successful absent that self-discipline? Certainly not. Other political examples include Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Contrast them with Bill Clinton, successful to be sure, but not heroic nor in any way a figure for the ages. Future generations will not be celebrating Bill Clinton's birthday.

So I dispute the notion that virginity will result in docility or passivity. Are nuns passive and docile? I don't think so.

Rose writes

If women are the moral gatekeepers of sex, Valenti claims, then the behaviors of men are excusable; rape, sexual assault and violence against women are natural male responses to biological urges. We see this manifested often through victim blaming. The media reporting around sexual violence is often centered on women’s behavior—what she was wearing, what she was drinking, or where she was walking—rather than on the actions of the actual perpetrators.

Let's leave out the word "moral," and ask who are the gatekeepers of sex? For very obvious biological reasons (that only socialists can deny), women are. Women take by far the biggest risk from any sexual encounter. Unlike men, women are not generally interested in casual sex, and absent some financial or other tangible reward won't do that.

Since women are the gatekeepers, rape and sexual assault are crimes men commit against women, and rarely the other way round. This is not some cultural oddity of American society (as the article seems to imply), but is a worldwide phenomenon rooted in human biology. But it doesn't mean such behavior is excusable. All societies punish rape, often very severely and unjustly.

The last claim--that the press reports what rape victims wore--is surely laughable. How politically incorrect could you possibly get? I have never, in my entire life, read a news article that contained anything like "she was raped because she wore a mini-skirt." Still, dress and drink are relevant. Rape is a crime no matter what, but gatekeepers do need to guard the gate. Camille Paglia has interesting things to say about that.

I think whether or not a woman remains a virgin until marriage is a personal decision, and not a political one. I have no objection to either religious conservatives or Jessica Valenti offering free advice. I do object to words like "reactionary" used to describe a woman who chooses to remain virgin. It may very well be a good option for her.

Why are so many on the Left against traditional morality? I doubt it is political. Instead, I think it is envy. Among the groups that gets the Leftist goat are the Mormons. Now I don't much care for them either, but there is no gainsaying their success. By holding to a tight moral code, they preserve and expand social and physical capital. They have among the highest fertility rates in the nation. They're successful in business, and increasingly successful in politics. Success inspires envy and hatred.

Other groups--some evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews, Amish, some Muslim groups--are similarly able to both reproduce and preserve social capital. This feat is mostly impossible for single mothers, who usually only have one or two children, and for whom capital appreciation is a lost cause. A subgroup amongst this population are socialists and academic feminists, who then blame their plight on a so-called "virginity movement."

I feel sorry for them.

Is Marxism Dead?

Arguing with Louis Proyect about Marxist theory is like playing chess with Garry Kasparov, or discussing physics with Albert Einstein. It doesn’t look like much fun for the amateur. I hardly dare take him on. Still, his recent post entitled Does anyone ever get the revolution they ask for? is so compellingly interesting that I can’t resist a reply. Along the way he asks another great question: Is Marxism dead? Let’s consider that one first.

Marxism is not dead for generally the same reason that creationism is not dead. Both -isms resonate strongly in the human psyche--it is easy for people to believe them. Creationism offers the simpler example. Imagine a toddler having a conversation with his mother:

Toddler: Mommy, why is that mountain there?

Mother:  Because God put it there.

Most 2-year-olds will find this explanation entirely satisfactory. Mother’s reply asserts that the mountain is intentional, and the natural, nearly irresistible inclination for people to ascribe motives to everything means that evolutionists will never win the public relations argument.

Now consider this dialogue between toddler and mom:

Toddler:  Why are we so poor?

Mother:  Because the rich people stole all the money.

This is even more believable, for it not only assigns motives--it also assigns blame. Mother’s explanation slides into the mind like oil in an engine--it is so easy to learn, and very hard to unlearn. Marxism is not only not dead--it never will die.

The problem, of course, is that neither creationism nor Marxism are true. The Marxist assertion that rich people got that way by cheating workers out of their rightful wages is just straight-out, empirically false.

Walmart is an excellent example. The Walton family today is worth about $100 billion--a fortune that Sam Walton accumulated during his 40-year career. It sounds like a lot of money until you learn that the annual net revenue (sales minus cost of product) for Walmart is $500 billion. In other words, Walmart nets five times more than Sam Walton’s entire net worth in one year. Multiply that sum over forty years (and adjust for inflation), a conservative estimate is that Walmart has generated $10 trillion in revenue over the course of Sam’s career.

So Sam managed to pocket about 1% of Walmart’s total revenue. Who got the 99%? Well, to borrow a phrase, the 99% got the 99%. First, workers got paid. And more importantly, customers got good deals. Since Walmart’s customers are mostly poor people, the primary benefits of low prices accrue to the bottom half of the income distribution. That’s not the whole story--Sam bought much of his product from China, and so did a lot to raise the standard of living in China. Indeed, I think Sam Walton did more to eliminate poverty than any other human being in history. Far from stealing from workers, he created millions of jobs for the poor, and fulfilled his mission to give common folk the chance to buy the same things that rich people buy.

Marxism is just flat-out wrong.

Regarding the other question--can we get the revolution we want--I am not capable of following the debate between Mr. Proyect and Erik Olin Wright. Still, at risk of getting into a discussion that’s over my head, let me weigh in on this.

For Marxism, the study of history is central. Marxists view history in large-scale, hydrodynamic, tectonic terms--there are powerful social forces, irresolvable conflicts of interest, class struggles, historical trends, and material conditions. All these ingredients are combined into some mysterious dialectic through which the tea-leaves can be read, and the path forward for humanity can be discerned.

This does not seem to me to be an accurate view of history. History is instead a sequence of random events, piquantly illustrated by the (apocryphal) German newspaper headline of 1919: “Archduke Ferdinand discovered alive! Great War was a mistake!” And indeed, whether or not the Archduke survived his assassination, World War I was a mistake--and nothing more than that. It reflected no great, underlying social or historical conflict. And neither did World War II, which could easily have been prevented had the colonels’ plot to assassinate Hitler been successful. History, far from being the grand drama of class conflict, is instead a tawdry little tale about how, for the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.

Now even I acknowledge that history can’t be entirely random, for some long-term trends are readily apparent. For example, how can one explain persistent technological progress, much accelerated over the past 400 years? This is not random. And neither is the readily measurable decline in violence over past millennia--we live in the most peaceful time in history. And finally, social structures have become ever more enabling, making people richer. Capitalism is vastly better than slavery. These phenomena do require explanation, though I suggest the answers are more likely to be found in evolutionary psychology, not in Marxist dialectics.

A revolution is a radical change in the political dynasty, during which exists a period of mob rule. In the French revolution, there was a dynastic change from a monarchy to a republic, separated by mob terror. In the Russian revolution the dynasty changed from a serf-based monarchy to a “proletarian” republic, separated by mob rule. The so-called Arab Spring involves a dynastic change from secular dictators to (not totally yet clear what), separated by mob rule (which we are still in the middle of).

The problem with mob rule is that there are many more ways for it to go wrong than there are for it to come out right. Mobs have a way of bringing out the worst in people. You want Trotsky--instead you get Lenin and Stalin. You want Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--instead you get Robespierre and Napoleon. You want an Arab democracy--instead you (likely) get religious fanatics. And so forth. The odds are against you. You’ll lose.

The only exception I can think of is the American Revolution. Now perhaps this wasn’t even a revolution by my definition--I’m not sure the Colonies ever succumbed to mob rule. But semantics aside, it is only by the purest, most unexpected good fortune that our country escaped that fate. Today we call it American exceptionalism--in reality it’s as if our country just hit the jackpot in Vegas. No other revolution has been anywhere near as lucky or as successful.

So, the answer to the question Mr. Proyect poses--Does anyone ever get the revolution they asked for?--the answer is almost always No. Unless you’re really lucky. And you won’t be.

Revolutions are bad things.

Viva Poverty!

If there is one thing we know about socialism, it’s that it doesn’t work. This iron law of economics, as solid a result as the dismal science has ever produced, brooks no exception. “Not working” means that no socialist society can provide a meaningful standard of living for its citizens, much less compete militarily with surrounding capitalist societies. The Soviet Union collapsed without firing a shot, not because Russians are a bunch of weak-kneed wusses, but because their country was flat-out bankrupt. China turned to capitalism because its leader, Deng Xiao Ping, realized that Mao suits and Little Red Books were both useless and inedible. North Korea retains socialism only by maintaining a prison-camp society.

Even less dramatic examples have come to naught. Margaret Thatcher put paid to the pink socialism of Labor Party PMs James Callaghan and Harold Wilson. As she famously said, “Socialism works until you run out of other people’s money.” You can steal from the rich for a year, or perhaps two, but then the bank account is dry.

In the best case a socialist society is run by an honest and honorable man. One thinks of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who ruled his country reasonably gently (for a Communist, and Hitler-mustache notwithstanding), and then after twenty-odd years, retired. He lived the rest of his life peacefully in his own country (not in exile), earning the honorific Mwalimu (teacher) from his countrymen. He accomplished some good things, and partly because of his legacy Tanzania is not riven by the civil wars and ethnic conflict that plague the rest of the continent. But his economic policies were a complete disaster. The country was substantially poorer at the end of his rule than at the beginning. Indeed, in the poverty sweepstakes Tanzania excelled, bested only by nearby Ethiopia, a socialist experiment that plumbed depths of hell that not even Dante imagined.

So now comes Socialist Action (SA) with a resolution on Cuba presented at their August convention, and described in an article by Jeff Mackler. That nation, having long since run out of other people’s money, is now desperately seeking new sources of cash to support so-called social welfare projects, aka free unicorns. The stunning revelation is that Cubans are actually going to have to work for a living--a novelty that creates complex theological and legal tangles for Marxist minds to deal with.

So the bearded geniuses have decreed that 178 occupations are now legal in Cuba. These run the gamut from hairdresser to restauranteur. Mackler assures us, however, that nothing substantial has changed. People were already engaging in these professions, albeit illegally, and all the government is doing is regulating (and presumably taxing) existing practice. For Mackler this is important, because the major thrust of the article is to reassure readers that Cuba is not embarking on the Capitalist Road, following the well-trod path of Eastern Europe and China.

Well, he certainly has me convinced! No restaurant, for example, can have more than 50 seats--not even a restaurant with really good food! For if restaurants served more than 50 people, then a talented cook might have to hire an additional waitress--may the heavens forfend! She, miserable soul, would be ruthlessly exploited while delivering delicious dinners to hungry diners, some of whom could actually leave her a tip.

Our desperate waitress might actually float a makeshift boat to escape from such a fate. She’d certainly be much happier in North Korea, where hard work is properly punished.

Among the litany of problems Mackler describes are corruption and the black market. “Bureaucratic abuse has been and remains widespread, including government and military personnel using state-owned trucks to steal or otherwise sequester food products from state or cooperative farms for sale on the black market.” Now this I simply don’t understand. Why would good, honest, civil servants--revolutionaries no less, trained in the work ethic of psychopath hero Che Guevara--steal from their fellow citizens?

Mackler does actually answer this question--the argument is tortured and indirect. But the conclusion is simple--it’s America’s fault. That’s it--absent the United States all civil servants in Cuba would be scrupulously honest. It is only because of the trade embargo that Cubans are forced into such degrading activities such as stealing.

I point out that black markets are a creature of socialist societies, where prices don’t reflect reality. There is no black market for foodstuffs in the United States. Prices are set efficiently by the market, rather than regulated by a bunch of bearded crackpots. And corruption is primarily a problem of government. In 2010, 90% of the Cuban workforce was employed by the state. Of course corruption will be rampant in that environment. The cure for corruption is to put people in charge of their own money--you can’t steal from yourself.

These Cuban reforms won’t accomplish their goals. If you want people to work hard, invest in their property and their future, and manage resources well, you have to put them in control. You have to allow people to run businesses with as few restrictions as possible. Cuba’s halfhearted steps in this direction won’t make much difference. Mackler is correct about the limited, present reforms--they’re not much of a step toward capitalism.

Mackler does criticize the leaders of the Cuban state. He calls them “revolutionaries of action,” another one of those Marxist theological terms that I won’t try to define. But he admits that Cuba is not a democracy, and he advocates a more stringent adherence to majority rule. Presumably he thinks the majority should vote on how capital is to be allocated, and he would also deny individuals much protections from such rule. So if you had a successful restaurant, the majority could vote to confiscate it.

All this is particularly ironic given the picture that accompanies Mackler’s article--it’s a picture of majority rule in action as it exists now in Cuba. To me, it looks like mob rule. Here’s the link again--take a look and see if you don’t agree.

Book Review: We The Enemy

A useful assignment for college students would be to compare Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, with Ray Rhamey’s novel, We The Enemy. They are both political novels, and both begin in the dystopian near future. Atlas Shrugged heroine Dagny Taggart inhabits a misgoverned, decaying, impoverished New York. Rhamey’s heroine, Jewel Washington, lives in misgoverned, crime-ridden Chicago.

Jewel, a Black, single mother, lives in the Cabrini-Green housing projects with her six-year old daughter and drug-addict brother. She works as a legal secretary on Michigan Avenue, spending much of her salary on “Pink,” the drug that supports her brother’s addiction. She purchases Pink from a fat, white, corrupt, cowardly cop named Murphy.

Jewel is almost raped in broad daylight along Michigan Avenue by a couple of gun-toting thugs, and would have been if the male lead, Jake Black, hadn’t dispatched the pair with a pistol of his own. While all this happens, passersby avert their eyes and walk by--including the cowardly cop, Murphy. While not an example in the book, it seems as if in the Chicago-of-the-future, dead bodies are so common that people just gingerly step over them.

In Rand’s novel the good guys all hole up in a place called Galt’s Gulch, established by the mysterious John Galt (“Who is John Galt?”). It is where the creative class hangs out until it is safe for them to go back into the world and be creative again.

Rhamey’s analog is Ashland, Oregon, a college town in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains and home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Unlike Galt’s Gulch, a temporary hideout, Ashland is the permanent and very public headquarters of a group known as the The Alliance, headed by the Galt-like Noah Stone. What is The Alliance? Who is Noah Stone? These are questions which bring both Jewel Washington and Jake Black from Chicago to Ashland, and also concern the US government.

While both are political novels, they differ. Rand’s book is about capitalism, freedom, business, and the evils of the welfare state. Rhamey’s book instead focuses on guns and violence, and surrounding legal issues.

In an idealistic Oregon designed by Noah Stone, citizens are encouraged to own a gun known as the stopper. This is a three-barreled peashooter, each firing a different kind of non-lethal ammunition colloquially known as nap, whack, and tangle, supposedly adequate for self defense. Possession of any lethal firearm is a felony offense--punishable by ten years in jail (the “Keep”), or time in a re-education camp until you learn the error of your ways. The plot depends on militia activists out there--gun nuts in my reading--who still irrationally believe in the Second Amendment, but Rhamey grants them neither respect nor any intelligent arguments.

The book includes a gripping trial scene, where (in my opinion) the judge argues strongly against the Fifth Amendment. Due process has been partially replaced by a computer, which supposedly can infallibly identify when a witness is lying. It can’t--not even for the show trial described in the book.

I was going to ding Mr. Rhamey on his miscasting of Jewel--which I initially interpreted as a fiction issue. But on reconsideration I see that the problem is not Mr. Rhamey’s, but instead gets to the core of what’s wrong with Noah Stone’s philosophy.

Jewel is a ghetto girl from the Projects. Somehow she acquired the educational resources to become a downtown legal secretary. Good for her! Most ghetto girls don’t get that far. Jewel, already unusual, is still a believable character.

But now move her to Ashland, Oregon, and apart from the occasional verbal tic the ghetto has been completely forgotten. Indeed, within the first week she’s listening to Mozart with her new beau, a white, redneck-cum-hippie set designer for the Shakespeare Company, while reading The Little Engine That Could to her child. Wow! Ghetto girls (along with most human beings) just don’t behave that way.

Ghetto girls--even those that leave the ghetto--do not so comprehensively abandon their heritage. Instead, like most human beings, they retain connections to family, friends, lovers, language and the culture that they call home. Almost all emigrants keep one foot in their native culture. For Jewel to move to Ashland in the manner described in the book implies (in my view) that she has completely abandoned her birthright.

So (I imagined asking Mr. Rhamey) why not make Jewel a white girl? One could go with White Trash, say from Chicago’s Uptown or Bridgeport neighborhoods. The character would be more believable and possibly make for better fiction. Mr. Rhamey may have agreed with me, but Noah Stone certainly wouldn’t have. His proselytizing in Chicago, for example, implies that his movement is universal, and should appeal to people from all cultures and backgrounds--including ghetto girls.

It doesn’t. Noah Stone’s Alliance embodies Enlightenment attitudes as held by people with bourgeois attitudes. The group may be multi-hued and even multi-ethnic, but it is decidedly not multicultural. Jewel is a case in point—by joining, she becomes “white.”

Noah Stone’s professed tolerance actually disguises a form of intolerance. Religion, for example, makes a claim to truth that The Alliance simply doesn’t recognize. A conventional Christian will regard Noah’s watered-down version of Christianity as both patronizing and sophomoric. A religious Jew will simply ignore it--the Torah and Talmud are a much richer vein. A devout Muslim will accuse Noah Stone of blasphemy. Noah’s dismissive “tolerance” of religion may appeal to denizens in college towns, but it will hold little sway elsewhere. In most of the world (probably including in the Projects) the Enlightenment has a very slim purchase on the human soul.

I disagree strongly with the politics in this book. But I still think it is an excellent book. First, it is a page-turner--well written and expertly plotted. It’s as good as the Vince Flynn novel I read recently. The ending was a surprise, but totally convincing and very satisfying. Unlike much modern fiction, this book actually has a plot. And second, unlike Vince Flynn, it is intellectually serious. For better or worse, it presents a Liberal vision of the future--I find it disconcerting, but you may disagree. Either way, the book is well worth reading.

Note: Ray Rhamey is an excellent copy editor and cover designer. You can reach him through his website: http://www.crrreative.com/.