Fascism!

Initially this post was entitled Nutty Professors, and maybe I'll still write a post under that heading some day. But Chris Vials, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, is sufficiently erudite and honest to render my original title a slander. He's not nutty. He is wrong.

His article appears in Against the Current, the publication of Solidarity. The goal is ambitious: he wants to rescue the word fascism from the grave of meaninglessness. This blog, for example, has consigned the word to oblivion as a mere epithet.

Professor Vials acknowledges that militaristic fascism such as under Hitler is not a threat in the US or Europe. Still, "...amongst the many political challenges we face, we would do well to remember that the fascist form of repression is still very much alive on both sides of the Atlantic, existing, as always, as a fool’s response to the never-ending contradictions of capitalism. Unfortunately, we still need 'the F word.'"

So what purpose is there in resurrecting fascism? Professor Vials offers two reasons. First, while fascist gangs are unlikely to take state power, they can serve as storm troopers for the capitalist class. Professor Vials cites the (tendentious) research of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which purports to show that fascists "continue to terrorize and even murder people with frightening regularity."

Second, he wants to reclaim the term from the Right, and specifically to rebut Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism, a book I read some years ago. Mr. Goldberg argues that fascism was a Left wing phenomenon, citing the cozy relationship between Leftists and Mussolini in the years leading up to WWII. He claims that Woodrow Wilson was America's proto-fascist, and had Warren Harding (succeeded by the vastly more competent Calvin Coolidge) not become president in 1921, the US may very well have gone down the fascist path.

Professor Vials argues that Goldberg (dishonestly) overstates the Leftist-Mussolini connection. I think Professor Vials is on weak ground here. There is no question that Mussolini considered himself a socialist and advocated for strong state control of the economy. The only difference between Il Duce and the Left is adherence to Marxist ideology. Mussolini disowned the Marxist meme we're poor because the rich people stole all the money, and replaced it with the equally absurd the fascist meme: we're poor because the foreigners stole all the money. To my mind, the only difference between brown shirts and red shirts is the color of the shirt.

To restore fascism as a useful term for the Left, Professor Vials offers this definition:

Fascism is a particular form of right-wing politics, finding fullest expression in Italy and Germany from the 1920s to the 1940s, based around militarism, anti-Marxism, a masculine cult of “action,” and a violent, racist, anti-democratic drive for national rebirth.

Obviously, if you define fascism as being a right-wing phenomenon, then you automatically win the argument. But this is preaching to the choir. Further, the definition has an ad hoc nature, i.e., is a list of symptoms. This gets us nowhere--we have no clue why fascism is still important, or why these particular symptoms cohere into an ideology. And third, by insisting on militarism it defines fascism as a tactic rather than as an ideology. It evades Mr. Goldberg's core argument embodied in his title, Liberal Fascism, where he argues fascism is not essentially militaristic.

Here is the definition of fascism I offer instead:

Fascism is an ideology that blames foreigners (however defined) for the economic and political problems of the favored race or nationality, and it proposes as a solution the forceful nationalization of politics and the economy to ensure that the favored race is restored to its prideful place.

This is a two-part definition. So, for example, France's National Front is fascist because (1) it blames Muslims, Jews, and Les Anglo-Saxons for France's decline, and (2) it advocates dirigisme as the solution. Dirigisme is just a fancy word for crony capitalism, i.e., capitalists serving at the whim of the state.

The Obama administration is not fascist, despite Obamacare. Obamacare enacts crony capitalism by completely politicizing the insurance market, so it meets condition (2). But it is not done in response to some imagined foreign or racial conspiracy, and thus fails condition (1).

Professor Vials exonerates the Tea Party for reasons I mostly agree with. The Tea Party fails both conditions of my definition: it doesn't blame foreigners (e.g., Blacks or homosexuals) for economic decline, but instead accuses the very crony capitalism which fascists advocate. Even Professor Vials acknowledges we're Libertarian.

Professor Vials says Goldwater was a fascist! For the life of me, I can't see that at all--Goldwater was Libertarian before it became popular. He's no more a fascist than Ron Paul. The Professor is hits closer with George Wallace (a Democrat), but even he didn't advocate greater state control. And I'm not sure he blamed Blacks for the economic problems of Whites.

I disagree with the Professor's characterization of the Christian Right as fascist (apart from some extremist outliers). I see no evidence that they blame foreigners for anything, and I don't believe they're motivated by hate. (See my comments on Duck Dynasty here and here). Their appeals for stronger government (stricter regulation of moral issues) have little or nothing to do with crony capitalism.

So who are some fascists in today's world? Arguably, Pat Buchanan might fit the bill. He blames foreigners (Chinese, Japanese, Jews) for America's problems, and thinks we should go back to the tightly regulated economy of the 1950s. He's against free trade and open borders. Though if you have to have a fascist, it's hard to imagine a more intelligent and entertaining one.

Paul Berman, in his excellent book Terror and Liberalism, makes a very strong case that the Muslim Brotherhood is fascist. He argues it is a direct descendant of European fascism of the 1930s. All they've done is taken Mussolini's Catholicism and replaced it with Islamism. I agree with his argument, which also encompasses the more radical forms of the phenomenon, such as al Qaeda, and sundry Saudi sects, etc.

In particular, Hamas is absolutely a fascist organization. The foreigners are the Jews, vilified as a people. Hamas explicitly advocates the mass murder of Jews for reasons that have nothing to do with Zionism. It is pure anti-Semitism. In this I think one can distinguish Hamas from the Palestinian Authority, which while it has fascist elements, is mostly a nationalist movement with some just grievances.

So American followers of Hamas are at very least sympathetic to a fascist movement, and I think they verge on being fascists. If there is any daylight between anti-Semitism and their supposedly political anti-Zionism, I certainly can't see it. And consistent with Mr. Goldberg's argument, anti-Semitism is mostly a disease of the political Left, which--Pat Buchanan notwithstanding--does seem to be the modern home of fascism. I am NOT saying that all Leftists are fascists, but some of them certainly are.

But the word is too inflammatory. I will resume my policy of not using it in this blog.

Further Reading:

• Those Nattering Nabobs Of Negativism
• The Dream 50 Years On
• Why The Academy Sucks

Brian's Bubbles

This post is in response to Brian Williams' piece in The Militant. (I knew Brian well in our Chicago days. Mr. Williams sounds too formal, so I'll address him by his first name. No disrespect intended.) Brian has become The Militant's economics reporter, and as such he does a creditable job. At least he knows enough to follow the business pages, and there are no bonehead howlers in his article. He successfully maintains The Militant's professional standard.

For all that, he's got it completely wrong, as the lede paragraph illustrates.

As Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, prepares to hand over the appointed post to Obama administration pick Janet Yellen, he announced Dec. 13 plans to taper the Fed’s “quantitative easing” monetary scheme, whose stated purpose was to “stimulate” economic activity following the world financial crisis of 2008-2009. Meanwhile, working people continue to bear the brunt of a capitalist crisis for which the propertied rulers have no solution.

Of course a Trotskyist economist will be pessimistic about the economy. Much of what Brian writes is borrowed from the permanent bears over at ZeroHedge. Here's the rap sheet in bullet points:

• He says recovery is nowhere near as strong as the talking heads on CNBC would have us believe. Despite temporary ups & downs, we're still stuck in the mud of the recession. He describes it using Larry Summers' phrase secular stagnation.
• While Mr. Summers was arguing against the existence of bubbles (Paul Krugman has an excellent summary, here), Brian maintains the Fed is inflating bubbles. He suggests the stock market is in a bubble. But it's not much of a bubble--today's PE ratio is about 20, slightly above the long term average of 15. By comparison, in 2008 the ratio was 67--that's a bubble! There is no evidence of bubbles anywhere in the economy: commodities, real estate, bonds--all seem typically priced.
• Brian accurately notes the decline in labor force participation. But he attributes it entirely to demand side problems, i.e., businesses not hiring enough people. This is consistent with the Summers/Krugman theory, but inconsistent with the bubble model Brian wants to believe.
• Brian claims that retail sales are down in the fourth quarter--likely true in the brick & mortar world.  Holiday on-line sales were up 10% year over year in 2013. 
• Brian repeats the standard error of Trotskyism--that this is the final economic crisis of capitalism from which no recovery is possible. The SWP was wrong with that prediction in 1932, in 1975, in 2001, and it's wrong today. Our problems are modest compared with any alternatives, such as represented by North Korea or Cuba.

I think he errs most on that last bullet. Not only is the US economy recovering, it is booming. Working people are not experiencing a declining standard of living, but just the opposite. Among other reasons, that's because of new and cheaper fossil fuel resources, a resurgence of domestic manufacturing, pent-up demand for things like houses and cars, and lower prices for almost every manufactured item or service. More and more services are available for free.

Brian hits closest to the mark with this paragraph: 

But more than five years since the so-called recovery from the 2008-2009 recession began, there’s been no recovery for working people. The proportion of the population with a job remains at record-low numbers, production has only recently reached pre-recession levels and living standards for working people continue to decline. To the degree the bosses are reaping profits despite the world economic crisis, it’s off our backs.

There is a lot of debate about the cause of the declining labor force, especially among men. Brian just assumes it is a demand side problem--that is, if businesses would just let go of their cash hoard then all would be well. Krugman--another demand-sider--thinks the government should run a bigger deficit and just hire more people, regardless of how inefficiently they're employed. The increased payroll would induce spending, from which the economy could naturally recover.

But others (including me) believe there are larger, structural changes in the economy which have fundamentally altered the nature of the employment market. Here are some ideas--they could all be partly true.

The Great Stagnation theory says that we've consumed the great technical and social advances of the 20th Century. There are no further, large, economic gains to be made from electrification, mass education, putting women into the workforce, etc. Thus economic growth will stagnate until something new comes along. (I don't subscribe to this theory.)

Productivity increases have rendered labor less valuable. If capital and labor are both factors of production, capital is getting a bigger share than labor. (This is an empirical fact, but whether it is a cause or an effect of low employment is not clear.)

More people are voluntarily leaving the workforce. Some polls indicate that only a small percentage of people classed as not in the labor force are actually there involuntarily. Instead, they'd rather be unemployed than working at some minimum wage job. The rise in disability rolls is taken as evidence, as is the large number of young men who prefer to live in their parents' basement, or be house-husbands. (This is certainly partly true. Some of the permanently unemployed are members of a new leisure class.)

A skills mismatch theory argues that technology has changed so dramatically in the past decade that people no longer have the skill sets necessary to be gainfully employed. The evidence for this is strong: there is a severe shortage of qualified employees in many industries. And recent college graduates have not learned skills necessary for today's workplace, since higher education has not kept up with the economy. Hence there is high youth unemployment.

Personal lifestyle choices make investment in human capital difficult. For example, the rise of single motherhood means that neither the mother nor her children will be as economically adept as one would like. So young women are making a personal choice not to put up with men, but at an economic cost. That is, we're investing part of our GDP in more privacy and freedom. (This one seems to be a stretch.)

"End of average" organizational changes mean that employment in the traditional sense is no longer how work is structured. More and more people will work as independent contractors, and entrepreneurs will contract out work as needed rather than hiring permanent employees. Workers will more and more have to demonstrate how their specific task adds value to the business. Each person will be a profit center. (I think this is undeniably true long-term. The Internet makes narrowly contracted piecework a much more efficient form of organization.)

I'm willing to grant a small role for demand-side causes for low employment. But I just don't think the demand side plays a very large role. My own views are given in this post from last summer, and fit mostly into the skills mismatch and end of average categories.

I think Brian's prediction of doom and gloom is wrong.

Further Reading:

• Those Nattering Nabobs Of Negativism
• What Are Unions Good For?
• Are Rich People Rich?

Book Review: Changing Face Of US Politics

This book, by Jack Barnes, is apparently one of the two most important books of the 20th Century:

The struggle to build any revolutionary working-class party must be rooted in continuity with the political conquests of the communist movement won in the course of struggles from those led by Marx and Engels to the Russian and Cuban revolutions. The major lessons of two key turning points in the fight for such a party in the U.S. are codified in The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, first published in 1943, and The Changing Face of U.S. Politics: Working-Class Politics and the Trade Unions, first published in 1981.

The book is a documentary history of The Turn, an initiative the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) began in 1975, when I was still in the Party. The Turn had begun in incipient form as the Party moved away from campus work. The end of the Vietnam war made such a shift inevitable, and as a result we opened up numerous small branches in working class communities. And so it was that I spent my final years as a comrade in Chicago's Hyde Park branch.

By 1978 (with me no longer a member) the Party had sharply defined The Turn as a concerted effort to get comrades into basic industry. This implied not only a move away from campuses, but also from the public employee unions where many comrades were employed, such as AFSCME or the teachers' unions. Basic industry are those unions who have their pulse on the essential core of the economy--the steelworkers, the autoworkers, coal miners, oil, chemical & atomic workers, etc. By 1990 the Party lists nine unions in which they had substantial fractions.

To implement The Turn, comrades were urged to get jobs in basic industry if at all possible. Accordingly civil servants were asked to quit their jobs in favor of new employment on the factory floor. Comrades employed in non-union situations were likewise so pressured. While not stated in the book, my understanding is that comrades who for no good reason resisted this effort were gradually purged from the Party. This eventually led to the split with Socialist Action.

The Turn had three purposes:

• To "proletarianize" the Party. This goal is denied in one of the early documents, but later on it becomes a major theme. Students are frequently from petty bourgeois backgrounds, a status that will lead to all sorts of trouble for a working class party.
• To take advantage of the combined nature of the coming American revolution. While Black nationalism, feminism, and environmentalism, etc., were all important parts of the struggle, the ultimate driver of revolutionary change is the proletariat. Thus the Party saw itself participating in these other movements as members of unions rather than from campuses.
• To position the Party such that it can be effective in the coming class battles. The documents state this in the most mealy-mouthed ways possible, for example, 

"We have entered the initial stages of a preparatory period, which will lead in coming decades to a prerevolutionary upheaval marked by revolutionary struggles of a kind that workers and farmers in the United States have not waged in more than a century."

Initial stages of a preparatory period to a pre-revolutionary upheaval? Not a very confident prediction, yet on this thin reed the Party forecasts that it will increasingly start recruiting young union members to its ranks, and hence grow the Party.

The prediction was based partly on the end of the Vietnam war and the defeat of world imperialism, but more often on what the documents refer to as the 1974-75 "depression." The Party's view was that capitalism could never recover from this economic setback, and this would force the ruling class to put increasing pressure on workers everywhere, leading to a continuing mass radicalization.

The goal (especially in later documents) was to create a cadre of worker-bolsheviks. These comrades would be unionized workers, to be sure, but they would be Party comrades first and foremost. Union work was never to take precedence over Party discipline. To enforce this, comrades were constantly being moved from job to job and from place to place. They were never allowed to develop a social or personal life separate from the Party. Critics have called this practice cult-like. I think that's too strong, but there is no question it made Party membership much harder and less effective than it had to be. After all, the first task of recruitment is establishing trust and friendship. These are earned not just in the work place, but also at the VFW Hall, the church basement, and the local bowling alley. Comrades, by never showing up at any of those venues, essentially forfeited the match.

The net result is that The Turn has been a total failure. Party membership has declined from a high of maybe two thousand to probably 300 today. Worse, comrades are now mostly retired and are in no position to engage in basic industry. Their hope of recruiting "young workers" is today completely hopeless.

And then the Party's political approach was just flat-out wrong. For example, nowhere in the book is Nixon's visit to China mentioned. Yet this was the key watershed event that has led to the collapse of the union movement. The participation of Chinese labor in global production has rendered the American industrial worker simply unimportant. The Sparrows Point steel mill in Baltimore was once a jewel in The Turn's crown--they had a large fraction there. Today the mill is closed and the Baltimore SWP branch no longer exists. Ed Sadlowski, in the mid 1970s, led Steelworkers Fight Back out of Chicago's SouthWorks mill. That mill is now closed, and Sadlowski's District 31 no longer exists. Party branches in such industrial centers as Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are all gone.

There is no union in the US that today has the ability to shut down an entire industry. A General Motors strike would bankrupt GM, but there would be nary a hiccup in global auto production--there are plenty of people around the world who'd be happy to take over GM's market share. Accordingly, an autoworkers strike is essentially impossible. The industrial working class toward which the Party turned 40 years ago simply does not exist anymore.

I think the Party is finally reevaluating The Turn. One indication is the previously linked article, which casts closure on the episode in a way that makes it sound successful.

The key accomplishments in building a communist party rooted in the working class in the late 1970s, as laid out in The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, are not registered primarily in the colonization of basic industry carried out universally by the party cadre at the time, but in the political conquests recorded there.

It then goes on to announce an unusual call for a Party Convention to be held in March, 2014.

The second hint comes from an article about Ukraine.

Since then [1990s], the remnants of the ruling bureaucracies in Ukraine and the rest of the Soviet bloc have moved to reimpose capitalist exploitation on the working class. The social crisis resulting from this course is today exacerbated by the deepening crisis of capitalism on a world scale.

This is the first time I recall reading that the former Soviet Union was restoring capitalism. Up until now the Party held to the dogma of secret socialism, i.e., the countries were socialist even though their own populations were completely unaware of that fact.

These two bits of evidence lead me to believe that changes are afoot in the Socialist Workers Party.

Further Reading:

• Labor's Final Step
• The Doctrine of Secret Socialism
• Jack Barnes' Next Book

Dusty's Ducks

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

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

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

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

Beyond this, ironies abound.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading:

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

Duck Soup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading:

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

Why New York Is Different

Joel Kotkin and his colleagues over at New Geography have invested many millions of pixels making the case that the suburbs are not dead. Their argument is solid: the so-called back to the city movement is very small scale, Millennials show every sign of wanting to live in single-family, detached houses, and the most thriving locations are suburban-like places, such as Houston, Dallas, or Oklahoma City. New technology looks to strengthen the suburban trend, as telecommuting and driverless cars reduce the pain and expense of commuting.

I totally agree with New Geography on the general trend. The effort to force people into higher density housing is doomed to fail. More mass transit is mostly a waste of money (the Second Avenue subway line being a rare exception). But within that larger trend, there are eddies and countercurrents that flow backwards. The larger movement to the suburbs notwithstanding, there are a handful of cities that will do very well as traditional cities. They are the obvious suspects: San Francisco, Boston, Washington, possibly Chicago. Maybe a few more.

And within that handful, New York City will excel. Unlike as is sometimes implied over at New Geography, New York is a lot more than just a "luxury city." Instead, it has a unique niche in both America and the world that no other city can fill. 

My argument has three parts: The beginning of New York in the 17th Century, the people who live in New York today, and the uniquely incredible value New York adds to the economy.

The Dutch founded New York in 1624. Unlike the British, French, and Spanish, the Dutch had no desire to extract resources from the land. Not for them was taming the wilderness, mining for gold, or raising cattle. Unlike other colonists, the Dutch settled accounts with the Indians as quickly as possible, in legend buying Manhattan for $24. A few of their number got as far up the Hudson as Albany, but beyond that, early Dutch influence on American settlement was negligible.

Unlike any other colony in the Americas, New York was founded from Day One as a commercial center. Think of it as a 17th Century version of Hong Kong. Lower Manhattan--even in 1624--was a shipping, trading, and financial center. It was never a farming or manufacturing town.

That legacy holds to the present day. Colin Woodard has published a now famous map showing the eleven nations of North America. By far the smallest geographically, but unmistakably distinctive, is New Netherlands, a region that doesn't even include all of New York's modern suburbs. How can this be? The Dutch lost their colony to the Brits in 1664--they were only there for 40 years. A negligible fraction of New York's current residents are descended from those original Dutch settlers. And yet that crucial heritage persists.

Today New York is known for having the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Most of these people came over through Ellis Island, along with a much larger number of other immigrants from other places. Those other folks didn't stick around long--the Swedes headed for Minnesota, the Irish moved to Chicago, and so on. The Jews stayed in New York, and not just because they're lazy. The Jews have been a commercial people since Medieval times, and it made sense for them to settle in a place founded on commerce. The Dutch had built them a congenial home.

The other prominent commercial class in the US are the overseas Chinese. These settled first in California, where today they are disproportionately dominant in Silicon Valley. But by far the largest Chinese community in the Americas is in New York--initially along East Canal Street. Today there are multiple Chinatowns throughout the metropolitan area, nine in the City alone. They deal in everything from rags to restaurants. The formerly slum-like Lower East Side is now a suburb of Chinatown, full of back-office businesses, run by an increasingly wealthy population.

Jews and Chinese--these are Peter Stuyvesant's descendants. They compete with each other. The diamond trade has long been a Jewish business, but recently Chinese traders are gaining market share.

Other cities have ethnic commercial classes. I've mentioned the Chinese in Silicon Valley. Hollywood's studio moguls tend to be Jewish. Mormons play that role in thriving Salt Lake City. But as far as I know, New York is the only city in the country (and likely the world) that has two, large immigrant communities that both bring substantial commercial expertise. Of course there are Jews and Chinese in places like Los Angeles and Houston, but the numbers are vastly smaller, both in absolute terms and as a fraction of the population. Indeed, it is surprising how few Chinese live in Los Angeles.

So why are these ethnic communities so valuable to the cities in which they settle? In particular, the Jews bring an attribute uniquely relevant to Mr. Kotkin's thesis. Observant Jews are not allowed to drive or take the bus to synagogue on the Sabbath--they have to walk. That means they all have to live within walking distance of each other. This enforced close living, augmented by shared religious practice and intermarriage, breeds trust and very high levels of social capital. Trust is a marketable commodity--people will do business with banks where the employees are trustworthy.

Famously, among New York's diamond traders, million dollar deals are sealed with a handshake. So is it any wonder that the money center banks are all headquartered in New York? You can move the buildings and the computer services to North Carolina or South Dakota or wherever. But you can't move the community. Ultimately, banking is about trust, and that is something that close-knit, ethnic communities have in spades.

There are other industries where New York has a lock. The rag trade is one. Perhaps partly because Jews have to walk, New York is a densely settled, very walkable city. The women (and men) are out in public, showing off their duds. Because they're on the street, in public, going about they're daily business, fashion trends happen in New York. Accordingly, New York hosts thousands of blogs like this one. That's how people dress in New York City.

There are three fashion capitals in the world--New York, Paris, and Tokyo. New York and Paris are beautiful cities, adding a marvelous backdrop to any photo shoot. Tokyo, while not beautiful, is nevertheless glamorous. All three cities are built for walking and public transport--it's one big fashion show. Compare that to Houston, where stylish people drive around in cars with tinted windows. How can you model clothes in a car? Houston will never be a fashion center--and neither will Los Angeles, Chicago, or Sioux Falls.

A second industry is food. Yes, they grow the goods in Kansas, package it in Illinois, and eat it around the world. But where do they invent the stuff?

Tyler Cowen says that the best ethnic food is found in suburban strip malls. I think he's probably right. But that's not the food that most people eat most of the time. What most people eat is some creative combination of ethnic and comfort food, tasty and cleverly made. Few are going to eat the oddball dishes they serve at Cantonese restaurants. 

But lots of people patronize a New York fast food chain called Happy Taco. Forget Tex-Mex; think Mexiasian. Or JapoItalian. Or Peruvithai. Or whatever combinations of cuisines you can think of. People like ethnic food, but they like it modified, synthesized, palatable, and recognizable. Creating this nouvelle cuisine requires business acumen, lots of fresh ingredients, educated consumers willing to try, and a labor force with sufficient expertise. And ideally, all the restaurants are within walking distance of each other.

I've just described New York City. What you'll eat at Applebee's tomorrow, they're cooking up in New York City today.

Further Reading:

• Food Network & The New Normal
• You Can't Eat A Hipster
• Where The Customer Always Comes Last

All About Me

It's time for that annual, self-indulgent post celebrating the first anniversary of this blog. On December 6th, 2012 I posted About This Blog, where I laid out my mission. Short, civil, critical pieces about American Trotskyism were what I promised, with columns appearing every week or so. I use the word column advisedly, because that's the model I'm emulating. These aren't tweets, but neither are they books. If Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman can live with a 1200 word limit, then so can I. Brevity is clarity.

I promised that my blog would be exclusively about Trotskyism. This is a promise I have not been able to keep--instead half my posts are about other topics altogether. There are several reasons for this. First, I'm interested in other things, and since I can't support multiple blogs, it all ends up here. 

Second, the Trotskyist newspapers are explicitly designed as political propaganda. Trotskyists are out to change the world, and not interpret it. Their papers read more like press releases, unlike most publications that are a forum for ideas and discussion. That means they tend to be repetitive and not very substantive. There just isn't that much to write about.

I started by covering four publications all produced by some of my former comrades in the Socialist Workers Party. These are The Militant, Socialist Action, Socialist Viewpoint, and Solidarity (links all on right). Of these, the best by far is The Militant. This is a bit surprising given the supposed insanity of Jack Barnes, along with accusations of cult-like behavior. But in terms of writing quality, reporting, cogency and professionalism, The Militant has them all beat.

Socialist Action, by comparison, is shrill and bombastic. The writing is much more uneven. There is less original reporting, and they believe anything vaguely Leftish, no matter how outlandish. At its worst, it reads like something printed up in the middle of the night by the Occupy movement.

Socialist Viewpoint isn't really a newspaper, but rather a bi-monthly magazine. It's edited rather than reported, and so isn't really in the same league as the other two. I usually find something interesting here, though I gotta say the November-December issue has let me down.

Solidarity is not really Trotskyist any more (I'll have to post a column about that). Not that that's a sin--I'm not much of a Trotskyist myself--but they've evolved into something that is just not that interesting to me. Still, they are doing a superb job covering Detroit. I'll keep them on my blogroll.

To keep myself busy, I've added two other publications. One is Louis Proyect's Unrepentant Marxist. Like me, Mr. Proyect is a former comrade who has left the Trotskyist movement. But he remains a Marxist, at least in name. His interests are mostly orthogonal to mine--he writes about the arts, history, and Marxist theological philosophical debates. My concerns are more economics, science, politics, and higher education. Still, his blog is my aspirational goal--I one day hope to have a site that is as widely read as his.

Most recently I've added Counterpunch, which looks to be a bigger, better funded version of Socialist Viewpoint. I'm still learning about them.

I do have some people to thank. First and foremost is Mr. Proyect, who has very graciously and generously let me advertise my blog in his comment section. My first readers were from among his audience, and at least on relevant posts, they remain readers today.

Similarly, Joel Kotkin at New Geography and Walter Russell Mead at via Meadia have extended the same courtesy. I am similarly appreciative, and in all cases I have tried not to abuse the privilege.

Looking back of the past year, I think these are my three best posts:

• My most imaginative post was entitled Food Network And The New Normal. Not many people can turn Chopped into political commentary. 
• The best explication of a complex idea is Getting Richer While Feeling Poorer. It's my optimistic take on the new economy. Admittedly, it's a bit longer than 1200 words.
• The best written article is Viva Poverty! If I could produce writing like that twice a week, then I'd have a job at the New York Times.

When my son was in kindergarten, he'd ask preschooler questions like "Daddy, what's the tallest mountain in the world?" That was easy. But then would come the stumper: "What's the shortest mountain in the world?" So, in deference to your inner child, here are a few of the worst things I've posted over the last year. These are the reasons why I definitely am not working at the New York Times.

• I did read David Leonhardt's book, Here's the Deal. But if this review makes any sense, please let me know what it is.
• This one is just incoherent. Combining Zimmerman and Syria into one post is dumb.
• Canaries in the Coal Mine is a great headline. Unfortunately, the article isn't really about that. It's true bait and switch. Click here and you will be--bored to tears.

These, and maybe a few more notwithstanding, I'm generally happy with the quality of my output. I have a day job and other demands on my time--it is impossible for me to produce consistently tightly-crafted work. For an amateur I'm doing OK. Obviously, I find the topics I write about intensely interesting, and it appears there are a few readers out there who share some of those interests. If you're reading this, you're probably one of them. Thank you.

Further Reading:

• What are Unions Good For?
• BRICS
• Trotskyism & New Media