Louis Proyect Denies Being a White Supremacist

Does Louis Proyect deny being a white supremacist?

Not explicitly, of course, because if you say you're not a white supremacist, then you probably are a white supremacist. That's all because of white fragility and systemic racism--the very people who deny being subject to it are, in fact, the leading carriers of the disease.

Yet we do have good cause to suspect Mr. Proyect of being a white supremacist. For starters he's white. There's no getting around that--he doesn't even try to deny it. And if white supremacy is indeed a condition that afflicts white people--a problematic population--then there's no reason to exclude Mr. Proyect from the category.

Beyond that, he's Jewish. We all know that Jews profited immensely from the slave trade. Indeed, Mr. Proyect used to work for Goldman-Sachs, a Jewish-led institution if there ever was one, and one that supposedly acquired its riches mostly if not exclusively from slave dealing. Besides, Jews wrote the Hebrew Bible (and the New Testament), admitting that they owned slaves almost from the very beginning, starting with Exodus. (I have an edge on Mr. Proyect here. I'm only half Jewish, so by that genetic quantum I'm less of a white supremacist than he is.)

Mr. Proyect tries mightily to atone for this original sin by allying himself with the most antisemitic organizations possible--notably Hamas (that explicitly wants to kill all the Jews) and BDS (which cancels people for the crime of being Jewish). Sadly, the stain of white supremacy is not so easily discarded.

So he kowtows to the BIPOCs in most humiliating ways. BIPOC is how we're supposed to refer to Black people these days--at least according to the Fac-Staff email list on my campus. It stands for Black & Indigenous People of Color. Though weirdly, the loudest representatives of BIPOCs on my campus aren't much differently colored from me. He's keen on using dehumanizing terms like Latinx (I think it rhymes with minx)--a degendered dysphemism for Hispanic, a people so reduced that they have no purpose in life other than to be oppressed by white supremacists. 

He insists on using the phrase Native American instead of Indian, despite the fact that the people themselves prefer the latter term. Like other white supremacists, Mr. Proyect wants to eliminate all traces of Indian culture from American life. Not just by renaming all the sports teams, but likely by eventually replacing evocative place names like Chattanooga and Kalamazoo. Those represent the evil legacy of white supremacist cultural appropriation.

Unfortunately, in my 50 years following American Trotskyism and 40 years as an academic, I have yet to encounter a succinct definition of "white supremacy." Mr. Proyect is no help here, but he does offer an example of a white supremacist--an archetype if you will.

The poor fellow's name is Matthew Karp, a professor of history at Princeton. Mr. Proyect's account of Professor Karp's sins is an article entitled How Harper’s Magazine Undermines the Struggle Against White Supremacy, which appeared in Counterpunch. The teaser to the article on Mr. Proyect's blog sports a picture of John "Rick" MacArthur, the editor of Harpers who has been "orchestrating this shift to the right." It's probably more accurate to say that he's been orchestrating a shift to common sense.

Mr. Karp's error is that he had the unforgivable temerity to criticize Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 project. Mr. Proyect writes,

[Mr. Karp's] article argues that it is futile to dwell on the racist history of the USA and to instead look forward to breakthroughs like the Civil War, the civil rights movement, etc. Essentially, Karp aligns himself with the cadre of historians that complained bitterly about all the falsehoods they supposedly saw in the 1619 Project. Among them, his Princeton colleague Sean Wilentz barked the loudest at Hannah-Jones. Mostly, the complaints were about her introductory article that stated that the colonists fought for independence in order to maintain slavery and that racism was in America’s DNA.

Now Mr. Proyect is an ace historian--a really good one--and he surely knows more about history than I do. And to his credit, he refuses to say that Mr. Karp's criticism is actually wrong. But in his desperate attempt to suck up to Ms. Hannah-Jones, he can only argue by association--i.e., that Mr. Karp keeps bad company. Here is the rest of the above-quoted paragraph:

Except for Wilentz, the historians took their case to the World Socialist Website (WSWS), an outlet distinguished by its hysterical Henny-Penny warnings that WWIII was always about to break out and that Socialist Workers Party leader Joe Hansen was a GPU agent.

That is, because Mr. Karp agrees with somebody who at some other time said something stupid on a completely unrelated topic, therefore Mr. Karp's criticism is wrong. OK, so it isn't wrong--Mr. Proyect never says it's wrong--but apparently one shouldn't utter it in public.

The fact is--as surely Mr. Proyect knows--that maintaining slavery was important to some American revolutionaries, especially in Georgia and the Carolinas. They were afraid that Britain was going to ban the institution--as indeed Britain did in 1833. But the bulk of the Continental Army--led by George Washington--came from Yankee states: New England and Upstate New York. Those Yankees were abolitionists more likely than not, and in any case were not fighting for "white supremacy."

Obviously the relationship between race and the American Revolution is vastly more complicated than Ms. Hannah-Jones would have us believe. Mr. Proyect is so in hock to bullies like her, who claim the power to exonerate one from being a white supremacist, that he can't even call a simple spade a spade. This is humiliating.

He makes other statements for which he really ought to know better. He channels his inner Democrat, claiming "Republican state governments were working overtime to pass Jim Crow type voting laws." I always thought Mr. Proyect hated the Democratic Party, but here he is echoing a completely over-the-top talking point. The voting laws in states such as Georgia are nothing even close to being like Jim Crow. There will likely be no racially disparate impact at all from that legislation. Like Democrats, Mr. Proyect apparently believes that Black people are too stupid to get a driver's license. I told you he was a white supremacist.

Mr. Proyect writes

This rather obscure observation is supposed to remind us, according to Karp, that history is neither all good or all bad. I am not sure it is necessary to cite Foucault to understand what most children learn in the 8th grade. What they are not learning, however, is how White households ended up with 6.9 times as much wealth as Blacks’.

I think it's obvious that school children are learning about white/Black wealth discrepancies (that may be all they're learning). Mr. Proyect will attribute the problem to "white supremacy." This fails for two reasons:

• Neither he nor anybody else can define "white supremacy" with sufficient precision to make it measurable.
• He attributes all social ills to that one meaningless phrase. Surely Mr. Proyect is smart enough to know that history and sociology are much more complicated than that.

Finally, referring to the fact that Ms. Hannah-Jones was denied tenure by the Board of Trustees at U of North Carolina, he writes "Somehow, he [Mr. Karp] had not noticed the UNC’s egregious attack on Hannah-Jones’s right to tenure."

Nobody has a "right" to tenure, which is guaranteed by neither the Constitution nor by any reasonable definition of academic freedom. Tenure is an employment contract promising the holder a lifetime job. In this case, tenure meant that Ms. Hannah-Jones would receive a paycheck from the U. of North Carolina for decades to come. Obviously taxpayers in that state have a right to deny her that privilege, and it is the obligation of the Board of Trustees to represent the taxpayers. Which they did until they wimped out, but fortunately for North Carolinians the lady went elsewhere.

I think Ms. Hannah-Jones is a propagandist faking it as a scholar. She's a fraud who should never have been hired in the first place.

I'll admit to being facetious in this post. I don't really think that Mr. Proyect is a white supremacist. Indeed, I don't think he's any more a white supremacist than I am, and I am definitely not a white supremacist.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• Teachers Can't Teach
• Louis Proyect and the More-Poverty Solution

 

Cuba Needs More Communism!

If you agree with my headline, then you're likely a Trotskyist. Without exception the comrades on my Beat are unanimous in support of the "revolution." Though there are some denominational distinctions.

In broad outline, the Trotskyist story goes like this. A few hundred counter-revolutionaries organized demonstrations in cities across the island. While this was in response to rapidly deteriorating economic circumstances, the unrest was greatly magnified by US propaganda, the CIA, and/or reactionary Cubans living abroad. To counter these small and unrepresentative demonstrations, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of loyal "revolutionary" citizens took to the streets to support the "revolution."

Cuba's economic difficulties--according to my Trotskyist friends--stem entirely from the US embargo. The Militant, in an article by Seth Galinski, reports that "as a result of the embargo, they have a critical shortage of hypodermic needles for vaccination." This even though "...Cuba is the only country in Latin America to develop its own vaccines, rated as over 90% effective, and has begun massive distribution."

Which makes no sense. Despite the supposedly knee-capping embargo, Cuba has assembled the advanced biotechnology and sophisticated manufacturing wherewithal to produce a world-leading vaccine. Yet they can't manufacture their own hypodermic needles? It's even weirder since hypodermic needles are manufactured all over the world--not just in the United States--including Europe, Japan and China. Why can't Cuba buy needles from those countries? (Answer: they don't have any money.)

Besides which, hypodermic needles (and other medical supplies) are not under US embargo. Ike Nahem, in one of Socialist Action's poorly produced webinars, proudly announces that his private organization has just shipped six million hypodermic needles to Cuba all by their lonesome. Presumably without violating any US laws.

If Cuba has such a successful vaccine program, why can't they sell doses to other poor countries and earn money to buy needles? (Answer: they don't have an effective vaccine.)

The Militant (along with Socialist Action) claims that the American media has hugely overstated the importance of demonstrations by a few malcontents, by exaggerating both the numbers and the crowd's anger. Mr. Galinski says the NY Times misleadingly labels a photo as an antigovernment demonstration, when if fact it depicts a crowd of enthusiastic revolutionaries. Indeed, Mr. Galinski's article recycles the Cuban government's position hook, line and sinker, taking every word spoken by President Diaz-Canel as gospel truth.

I wasn't there. I don't know how many people marched in which demonstration, but I'm not inclined to believe The Militant. That paper--usually honest reporters--has lost its marbles when it comes to Cuba. More trustworthy is this piece by Jon Lee Anderson in the New Yorker (not exactly a right-wing source) who writes in the lede paragraph,

On Sunday, July 11th, the world took note of a historic event in Cuba, as thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest against the government. Many shouted “Patria y Vida!”—Fatherland and Life—the title of a banned but extremely popular rap song that riffs on a slogan coined by the late Fidel Castro: “Fatherland or Death.” Many also shouted “Libertad!”—Freedom—and similar phrases that are not only heretical but, when shouted in protest, illegal in Cuba, where the Communist Party is the sole legal arbiter of political life.

Socialist Resurgence takes a different tack. In an article by Ernie Gotta entitled Defend the gains of the Cuban Revolution! Free the prisoners! End the U.S. blockade!, the lede is this:

The protests in Cuba on July 11 are the symptom of a government in crisis. In some areas, the government used police to crack down on the protests. Marxist activists like Frank García Hernández and his comrades were arrested; Socialist Resurgence calls on the Cuban government for their immediate release.

The key issue is that communists were being arrested! What Cuba really needs is actual, real live Communists in control--not these crazy Castroite fakers. That's what the demonstrators were really demanding. The site reposts an article from the Cuban blog Communistas headlined A call for the freedom of detainees in Cuba.

Left Voice goes further with the idea that the Cuban government is not up to the task. A think piece by Facundo Aguirre suggests that Cuba is a deformed workers’ state, following the path of Stalinist Russia. While much is to blame on the embargo, there is also this.

For a little more than two decades, the Castroist bureaucracy has been promoting a policy of economic opening with the characteristics of restoring capitalist relations. This has led to the development of internal forces that are hostile to the revolution, particularly in the ranks of the bureaucracy itself, which controls the most profitable sectors of the economy. It is this social force of small proprietors that the pro-imperialist gusanos aim to influence as they look for a way to hitch a ride on this social movement. At the same time, imperialism hopes to influence the wealthy bureaucrats as a way to break the unity of the regime.

Of course the policy of "economic opening" was driven by necessity stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is impossible to have a growing economy if you don't put people in charge of their own resources. Back in 2013, Socialist Action's Jeff Mackler described the policy well:

The reforms indicate that the Cubans recognize the harsh reality of the economic distortions that have been wrought from their forced isolation from the world market due to the U.S.-imposed illegal embargo/blockade and related imperialist incursions. In a significant sense they are legalizing a reality—that hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers are already “employed” in tiny “business” ventures, trying to make ends meet, while they simultaneously receive subsistence wages from the state for their official job.

Some 178 areas where terminated workers can now operate as formally licensed small-scale business owners have been established.

I posted a response to Mr. Mackler's piece entitled Viva Poverty!, which I think accurately sums up the current situation.

What does Mr. Aguirre propose as the Trotskyist response?

We must not hand over the banner of democracy to imperialism and its agents. Instead, we must fight those forces, demanding an end to repression; freedom for those detained, who are mainly militants of the Left; and insisting on political freedom and freedom of organization for the Cuban masses.

It is necessary to fight for the legalization of the anti-imperialist Left parties and forces that defend the conquests of the revolution. What is required is to raise up the great mass of the Cuban people against the criminal embargo, against the restorationist policies, and against the privileges of the bureaucracy.

In a word, he advocates for more communism. His plea to extend freedom applies only to those folks who agree with Mr. Aguirre. Unfortunately for him, the demonstrations in Cuba--however big or small they were--demanded more freedom. That is freedom to be in charge of one's own life, own property, own money, and to choose a job where one wants to work.

Here we are--the great grandchildren of the "revolution" are still forced to live in abject poverty in a country where food is illegal. The last thing they want is more communism. 

Further Reading:

• Down the Cuba Rabbit-Hole with Mary Alice Waters
• The Militant Visits Manila
• Cuba

The Lumpens Hate Eric Adams

Eric Adams (source)

Eric Adams, likely New York City's next mayor, just won the Democratic Party nomination after a kludgy, ranked-voting, election. At the end, Mr. Adams won by 8,426 votes--but he would have had a larger margin were the votes counted as in a normal election.

Left Voice (LV), the publication representing a loose collective of NYC college professors and their groupies, is so far the only blog on my Beat to say anything about the election. The article, Eric Adams is a Cop and a Zionist, was penned by Tatiana Cozzarelli.

Because of his tough on crime campaign, Mr. Adams carried the vote in all boroughs except Manhattan. The NY Post reports that "Inhabitants of lower-income, high-crime, mostly minority neighborhoods turned out for Adams in huge numbers, up to 70 percent of votes." Working-class Black voters turned out for Mr. Adams in droves, presumably because they are far disproportionately victims of crime. 

He spent 22 years as a member of the NYPD, retiring at the rank of Captain. So on the first charge Ms. Cozzarelli is correct--the man is a cop, or at least a retired one. Though he's not oblivious to police brutality, noting that he and his brother were beaten up by a couple of racist cops when he was 15 years old. He says that experience convinced him to join the police force. He was obviously really good at his job--only 1% of the force gets to be a Captain.

None of this was a secret--everybody who voted for him knew he'd been a cop. They voted for him precisely because of that experience--crime is out of control in Black and Hispanic working class districts. Murders, or course, are the worst, but fortunately are relatively rare (and NYC has a comparatively low murder rate). More common and corrosive are property crimes, destroying livelihoods and opportunities. Stores close because of robberies and shoplifting. The shops that remain have to raise their prices to cover the cost. The victims are working class and elderly people who lose their possessions and jobs, and have to travel outside of the neighborhood to go shopping. Of course they want more cops on the beat.

That's all news to Ms. Cozzarelli, who thinks the fix is in. First, she claims that only 950,000 people voted in the election--which she compares to NYC's population of 8.5 million. Of course many of those people are recent immigrants and not yet citizens, and many others are too young. The relevant number is the 3.8 million folks registered as Democrats--of which 25% went to the polls. That surely is sufficient to represent the will of the public. Anybody who cared, voted. And the people who didn't vote don't count.

Then she claims he was supported by all the wrong people. She writes,

Adams was endorsed by the pro-Trump New York Post, and is strongly pro-charter schools and vocally opposed to laws protecting tenants. And it’s no wonder — he is a wealthy landlord himself, with ties to and funding from real estate developers. Three millionaire hedge fund investors provided almost $2 million into the super PAC backing Adams’s campaign.

Charter schools are very popular in Black and Hispanic communities, who want to get out from under the thumb of the teachers' unions. They want their children to at least be literate and numerate--skills which the public school system no longer provides. For many families, structure and order in their kids' lives is similarly important. Ms. Cozzarelli's blind allegiance to the teachers' union reflects her own self-interest--not the opinion of voters.

She attributes the union support only to the bureaucrats--forgetting that many union members (largely public employees) live in high-crime neighborhoods and need more police support.

Then she obviously believes Black voters are really, really stupid. From her account, the only reason Black folks voted for Mr. Adams is because some hedge fund bozos contributed $2 million to his campaign effort. So yeah--all that money got the word out that he's a retired cop, will be tough on crime, and supports charter schools. There is nothing shocking about that.

Ms. Cozzarelli apparently thinks that Black folks--by a large majority honest and upstanding citizens--should not be entitled to 911 services. This is pathetic.

Finally, she writes

Further, Adams is a proud Zionist and has said that he would like to retire in the occupied territories in the Golan Heights. Like many of the city’s top cops, he’s traveled to Israel twice, seeking to nurture the already-cozy relationship between the NYPD and the Zionist occupation forces. He put out a strong statement in support of Israel last month, as the Zionist state murdered Palestinians, saying, “Today on Yom Yerushalayim, Israel came under attack from Hamas-fired rockets in Gaza. Israelis live under the constant threat of terrorism and war and New York City’s bond with Israel remains unbreakable. I stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel at this time of crisis.”

Mr. Adams later walked back moving to the Golan Heights, saying he was joking, but he stands by the rest of his statement. Of course this is politically expedient--Jews make up 13% of NYC's population. An antisemite isn't going to win their vote.

And that's the problem with Left Voice and much of the progressive Left--they're antisemitic. My working definition of antisemitism is anybody who supports Hamas--an avowedly antisemitic organization dedicated to Jew hatred. Mr. Adams' enthusiastic endorsement of Israel--while nice from my point of view--wouldn't be necessary to earn my support. All he would have to do is repudiate Hamas.

So who is this Tatiana Cozzarelli who writes such gibberish? The question is important because Marxists put weight on a "class analysis", of which a person's "origins" are important. For whatever reason, Left Voice has scrubbed the brief biographies of their contributors from their webpage. But Google helps, and from this site I recovered what I believe used to be there:

Tatiana Cozzarelli is a former middle school teacher and current Urban Education PhD student at CUNY.

It turns out that she graduated from Swarthmore in 2008, and taught middle school for a few years at a private school (charter school?) in Rhode Island before going to grad school. This establishes her as a card-carrying member of the lumpen proletariat. Here is the Communist Party's definition of the term.

LUMPENPROLETARIAT - German for "rag proletariat." Generally unemployable people who make no positive contribution to an economy. Sometimes described as the bottom layer of a capitalist society. May include criminal and mentally unstable people. Some activists consider them "most radical" because they are "most exploited," but they are un-organizable and more likely to act as paid agents than to have any progressive role in class struggle. 

Much of this doesn't apply to Ms. Cozzarelli, but the phrase makes no positive contribution to an economy certainly does. Grad school is a waste of time for almost anybody--and grad study in "Urban Education" is a total loss. Any job she ever gets will come at taxpayers' expense. She will never provide any service that people are voluntarily willing to pay for. The derogatory name for somebody like her is welfare queen. A more piquant term is lumpen intelligentsia.

Here she is--already in her mid-thirties--wasting her time and our money, faking it as a scholar while engaging in "more radical" political activism, which goal is to impoverish the lives of honest working people around the globe. She merely wants to defund the police so that law enforcement can be turned over to "community organizations" like street gangs and drug dealers, who will then be more effective in ripping off poor people. 

Look--I'm petty bourgeois from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. But at least I know where the class line is. I understand that the true party of the working class is the Republican Party. And absent that, they vote for Eric Adams. 

Further Reading:

• Elise Stefanik
• Amazon Defeats the Union
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat

The Case Against Inflation

Many pundits suggest--with varying degrees of conviction--that we're headed for a bout of inflation. They do have a point. Prices are obviously going up--the May CPI print was up 5.2%. But this is often seen as a one-shot response to the end of the pandemic, as supply chains readjust and changed consumer preferences are accommodated. Inflation, properly understood, is more than a once-off jump in prices--the Fed terms this as transitory--but instead a continuous escalation over an extended period of time.

The case for genuine inflation beyond the transitory rests on the "printing money" argument. Peter Schiff is the loudest exemplar of this school, where he basically channels his inner Milton Friedman: 

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.

The Treasury is issuing too many bonds, and the Fed is printing too much money to buy them, effectively monetizing the Federal debt. Interest rates are being kept arbitrarily low, and the result has to be sustained inflation.

A more subtle and sophisticated version of this analysis comes from two leading economists: John Cochrane and Arnold Kling. I very much enjoyed a lecture by Mr. Cochrane, and I learned much from a subsequent explication by Mr. Kling. Together they have dented my faith in the long-term secular trend toward deflation. They both make compelling arguments which I feel unqualified to summarize--so I encourage you to attend to those original sources.

Still--I'm gonna argue for deflation, or at least disinflation. Let me count three reasons.

1. Fundamentals: These include demographics (declining and aging populations), technology (automation), and globalization (more efficient supply chains). I believe this is deflationary--but of course I'm ignoring Mr. Friedman's dictum. If inflation really is only about money, then the fundamentals don't matter.

2. History: Large deficits have not yet resulted in inflation. Japan has been running huge deficits for decades, and they're in a seemingly permanent deflation cycle. The (then) huge deficits the US incurred in 2008-9 did not lead to inflation--again quite the contrary. Europe has experienced the same phenomenon. Perhaps you'd have to go back to the end of WWII to find a counter-example.

At very least, the empirical result is that government deficits don't inevitably lead to inflation. In fact, they seem deflationary. One can always argue that "this time it's different," and maybe it is. But don't count on it.

I have no obvious explanation for these empirical facts, but somehow Mr. Friedman is wrong.

3. Supply and demand: There is clearly a market for money--a subject which I now realize I know nearly nothing about. (I have pre-ordered Scott Sumner's book The Money Illusion. I'm hoping that provides me with an introduction. Mr. Sumner is a good writer.) Obviously the money market depends on total output and interest rates. It must also depend on how one defines money. Misters Cochrane and Kling define it very broadly.

But there is a money market, which has to be approximately the same thing as a liquidity market, which depends on a bunch of things that I don't understand very well. So I can't give you a coherent, analytical explanation, but I can tell you a story. It's cartoonish, it's fiction, and it takes place in the near future, perhaps a year or two from now. I hope it captures some basic ideas.

I'm a really lucky guy. No, I didn't win the lottery, but it's almost as good. Between the CARES act, the first stimmy check, my proceeds from the Human Infrastructure Bill, the second and third stimmy checks, the very generous Fund to Stimulate Retired College Professors Act, along with the fourth stimmy--with all that I managed to put together a million dollar stake. I went condo shopping in Miami Beach.

I paid for it in "cash"--actually a certified check for a million bucks. The seller turned out to be an old lady named Louise. She was too frail to be living alone and planned to move in with her daughter's family in Ft. Lauderdale. Louise didn't trust the stock market, and she'd never heard of bitcoin, so she took her check and marched down to the local bank and deposited it. The teller did her job--the check was endorsed, scanned and put in a bin with the five other paper checks that had come in that day.

But the bank manager--Elmer--was royally pissed. A $1MM deposit shows up as a liability on his books, and unless he could turn that into a moneymaking asset it would impair his bank's profitability. It might even hurt him with regulators, who may insist that he raise additional capital.

There were other issues besides. Some other customers (people less fortunate than me) were using their stimmy checks to pay off their credit cards and to pay down mortgages. There was so much money floating around that nobody wanted to borrow anymore. Last month Elmer only got one application for a new credit card--it came from Tom, who had a FICO score of 350. Not worth more than a $1,000 credit line, but better than nothing.

Elmer needed that million bucks like he needed a hole in the head.

A short term solution was the reverse repo window at the Fed. There Elmer could buy a T-bill in exchange for cash, on which he would collect some tiny rate of interest. It got rid of the cash--but only overnight. The next morning he'd have to return the T-bill and take the cash back (now with interest). Yeah, he could repeat this night after night, but that gets old real quick.

Then he could try to buy mortgages from other banks. This is a version of the "hot potato" problem, where banks try to cajole/fool/cheat their competitors into taking cash off their hands. The problem is there weren't very many mortgages for sale (folks like me were paying cash for houses), and no bank wanted to sell them because, like Elmer, the last thing they wanted was cash.

If something doesn't happen quick, then disaster will strike. Eventually the checks will clear, the funds will settle, and Wall Street will grind its way to the inevitable conclusion. Disaster will arrive at Elmer's bank in the form of a Brinks Armored Truck loaded with 10,000 fresh, clean, sequentially-numbered, just-printed $100 bills--straight from the Fed.

If Elmer couldn't even dispose of a million bucks in electronic format, just what was he gonna do with the actual, physical bills? They'd just sit in his vault, pose a serious security risk, and gradually decay from the elements (even in a climate-controlled safe). His Board of Trustees would never forgive him.

Fortunately, at the last minute the Fed came to Elmer's rescue. They offered to pay interest on excess reserves. OK--it was only 0.000001%--but that's infinitely better than the disaster scenario. So that's where the money went--back from whence it came--the Fed's vaults.

And there it will sit, indefinitely--or at least until the computer bugs eat all the hard drives and everything is forgotten in the mists of time.

Please tell me where you find inflation in this picture?

Further Reading:

• Peak Bitcoin?
• Book Review: The Future of Higher Education
• Louis Proyect and the More-Poverty Solution

Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

What is the significance of the Passion of Jesus Christ for today?

Nothing! will answer most readers of this blog. The event is merely an ancient myth. Science shall eventually prevail and put religion out of business.

The author of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, René Girard (1923-2015), doesn't entirely disagree, for the Passion is indeed very much myth-like, differing only in one very important way.

Mr. Girard, an anthropologist, was born and educated in France, though he eventually received his PhD in the US, after which his academic career was entirely in America. He retired from Stanford in 1995. His important works are all written in French--the current tome is translated by James G. Williams, who also pens a useful foreword.

Mr. Girard's anthropological interest was the study of primitive and pagan religions and myths. It is only late in life that he converted to Roman Catholicism, and began writing religious books, such as I See Satan..., published in 1999. It may be described as a work of Christian apologetics.

There are two parts to this religion thing: God and Man. Belief in the former requires faith, and can't be derived from reason alone. Mr. Girard makes no effort to "prove the unprovable," and accordingly God is barely mentioned in this book. The latter subject, Man, reduces to anthropology--or at least it has to get the anthropology right. This, of course, is Mr. Girard's wheelhouse--he tells us a lot about Christian anthropology.

A key to understanding the Bible--both Old Testament and New--lies in the tenth commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Covetousness is the way Satan enters the world--I'll provide a modern example. Consider the rivalry between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos,

• Donald envies Jeff for his great wealth, perhaps a hundred-fold greater than what Donald possesses.
• Jeff envies Donald for his charm, charisma and power.

Each envies the other for what he doesn't have. Ultimately, they both want the same thing--to be the richest man in the world who is also president of the United States. In other words, they become like twins--they share the same goals and are in intense competition with each other.

Mr. Girard calls this mimetic rivalry, and pagan myths are replete with brothers, often twins, fighting to the death to successfully imitate the other. Cain murdered his brother Abel. Romulus murdered his twin brother Remus. Joseph was exiled by his jealous brothers (Gen. 37-50). Mr. Girard asserts that such stories are common among primitive peoples around the world--presumably this is documented in his previous anthropology works.

It gets worse. Mimetic rivalry can grow into mimetic contagion, i.e., groups of people competing with other groups. Republicans envy Democrats, and vice versa--which ultimately reduces them both to something twin-like. Tweedledum and Tweedledee is how my Trotskyist friends like to describe them. Mimetic contagion is the source of social conflict, discord, and disorder.

If there is good news here, it's that Satan doesn't really exist--or at least not like a person or an angel. There is not a little devil on your shoulder urging you to do naughty things. What does exist is this inborn, mimetic covetousness that leads us to take sides and hate our neighbors. It is covetousness that results in the other sins described in the ten commandments--murder, adultery, etc.

Satan exists as collective behavior as mimetic contagion--today we'd call him an emergent phenomenon--the product of covetousness.

Yet Satan--described in the Bible as the Prince of this World--has a problem. His power depends on some level of social cohesion. Failing that, everything will end up in nuclear holocaust, and Satan will be dead along with the rest of us. So the disorder and conflict can't get too far out of hand. Satan has to curb his enthusiasm--or as Mr. Girard puts it, loosely quoting the Bible, Satan expels Satan.

How does Satan do that? It's something that Mr. Girard describes as the single victim mechanism, which he again claims is ubiquitous in primitive and pagan practice. We might recognize it as human sacrifice. The archetype example presented by Mr. Girard is the story of Appolonius of Tyana upon his visit to Ephesus. He found the city suffering from a severe "epidemic," though not of a biological kind. Instead it was riven by feuds and discord caused by mimetic contagion. (Spoiler alert--the full story quoted in I See Satan... is much more horrifying than my abbreviated account.)

Appolonius perceives a solution, and fingers a poor beggar as the culprit. "See," he says. "That man there is the cause of your troubles. He should be stoned." He does eventually convince somebody to throw the first stone--after which the stones fall fast and heavy. The beggar is murdered, but because the mob truly believes that he really was the guilty party, the "epidemic" quickly fades away, eventually to be replaced by renewed mimetic contagion. The beggar is a scapegoat.

The mimetic conflicts are all laid upon a single victim--inevitably somebody who has no friends or relatives to defend him or her: beggar, leper, widow, foreigner, etc. They're all ritually killed, one by one, or perhaps several at a time--and as long as the mob believes, it works. Social solidarity is temporarily restored. Satan has expelled Satan.

Sometimes the effect--civic restoration--is so sudden and beneficial that the citizens are deeply grateful to the victim. He or she is posthumously deified, and occasionally even resurrected. Mr. Williams, in the foreword, explains that pagan gods (such as those of Greek mythology) are usually just deified,  resurrected victims.

The Hebrew Bible understood that at least some victims weren't guilty--they were innocent. Joseph--a victim not murdered but instead exiled--was not guilty. Job is set upon from all directions--yet the Bible proclaims his innocence. The Jews have through the ages disproportionately served as victims, and according to Mr. Williams the Psalms are poems sung by innocent victims. (This insight has put the Psalms in a whole new light for me.)

But now consider the Passion--which follows the single victim mechanism almost to the letter. Jesus is both a foreigner and a pain in the ass. Jerusalem is beset with conflict and strife. The mob is convinced that Jesus is the source of their problems--and so are Herod and Pontius Pilate. The latter orders him ritually tortured unto death. "Forgive them," Jesus says, "for they know not what they do." They don't, because if they did the single victim mechanism wouldn't work.

But the disciples knew--and they proclaimed it loud and clear upon Jesus' resurrection (another echo of the pagan myth). Now you may not believe in the resurrection, but what you believe is in this matter irrelevant. There is no doubt that the disciples and the apostle Paul believed in the resurrection, and they proclaimed it far and wide. The resurrection was for them also proof of Jesus' innocence. He didn't call himself a scapegoat, but he picked a much better term: lamb of God. What can be more innocent than a lamb?

The Passion has destroyed the single victim mechanism for all time. Post-Passion, it's been impossible to sacrifice human beings (and increasingly, also animals) because it won't work. Since Jesus, people no longer believe the victim is guilty--instead he or she is innocent! Killing an innocent victim is murder--and it will no longer absolve one of one's sins. Satan can no longer expel Satan. 

Satan has lost his power to expel Satan, but he still exists and still sows havoc--the political polarization in US politics is a case in point. But Jesus has taught us that victims are innocent--far from blaming the victim as the pagans used to do, we now compete to become the most victimized of all victims. Even white males are today becoming victims because of "reverse racism," or "critical race theory." Our world is full of victims, all trying to imitate each other to become the victim to end all victims. "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." We're in a mimetic competition to be "last."

That is the significance of the Passion for today! I don't think Mr. Girard is wrong.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History
• Book Review: An Anxious Age

The June 21st Militant

The June 21st issue (pdf) of The Militant gets two things wrong and one thing right--which together makes for an interesting read. (The Militant is published by the Socialist Workers Party--SWP.)

A front page article by Terry Evans entitled Working people worldwide look to fight effects of rising prices leads with this howler.

Food prices and the cost of other necessities for working people are soaring worldwide, highlighting the urgent need for workers to join together to fight for jobs, higher wages and automatic cost-of-living adjustments on our wages and retirement pay. Millions face hunger, especially in the semicolonial world, because under capitalism food is produced and marketed solely to generate the highest profits for the employing class, not to meet the needs of humanity.

The last sentence is completely wrong--of course food is grown to meet the needs of humanity. Otherwise there would be no market for the stuff and the capitalists wouldn't make any money. Capitalists (aka farmers) want to sell as much food as they can to the largest number of people. There is no way that farmers are purposely causing world hunger.

But Mr. Evans is correct that world food prices are rising. That's because there is a global shortage of food, forcing the market price higher. I surmise that shortage is because of China, which is not self-sufficient in food and has had a bad crop year (flooding, swine flu). If you believe Peter Zeihan, China no longer has the workforce necessary to engage in the labor-intensive gardening that maximizes yield per acre, but instead has been forced to mechanize, reducing yields.

The financial fixes Mr. Evans lists will not increase the amount of food available. It will just distort the market and render food distribution inefficient.

He also writes,

In 2020 some 155 million people faced what the U.N. World Food Program euphemistically calls “food insecurity,” a rise of 20 million over the previous year.

This is astonishingly good news! Of a global population of nearly eight billion, fewer than 2% are food insecure. A generation or two ago that number would have been closer to 50%. So much for the notion that capitalism increases poverty. The suggestion that Mr. Evans and his ilk are gonna devise a more efficient method of food distribution is gonzo.

The photo accompanying Mr. Evans' article (below) shows some relatively well-fed Yemenis protesting high food prices. Note that Yemen is in the middle of a brutal civil war--a problem that has nothing to do with global food production or distribution.

(Source)

In a campaign statement by Joanne Kuniansky headlined Fight for workers control of production!, she claims (emphasis mine),

Under capitalist rule, production is organized with no concern for workers’ lives or limbs, on the job or for others living nearby, nor for the soil, air and water being fouled by pollution.

As written, this is just wrong. Of course capitalists have some concern for the welfare of their workers, for otherwise they would all quit or go on strike. More--capitalists are human beings, too, and share the moral and fairness impulses we all have. If she'd phrased it less strongly--too little concern or insufficient concern--then the case is arguable. But in today's environment, with labor shortages looming, especially for skilled labor, it behooves the capitalist to be extra solicitous of his employees' well-being.

Life is full of trade-offs. Any mining or manufacturing activity will incur some risks--both to workers and to the environment. Unlike what Ms. Kuniansky claims, it is impossible to eliminate that risk--only to reduce it at a higher cost. The cost the capitalist is willing to pay depends much more on the consumer than on the capitalist--for if the costs of safety are too high, then high prices make the market too small to justify the enterprise. So workers are more in conflict with consumers than with their bosses--which is why workers' control of production won't solve anything.

One has to note that labor and environmental protections in socialist societies (e.g., former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela) are awful. It's much better to be a worker in the United States.

An article by Mary Martin, entitled The working-class road forward in tackling crime and cop violence, tries to split the difference between Trotskyist boilerplate and reality. The boilerplate quotes SWP Minneapolis mayoral candidate Doug Nelson:

“Crime is defined by the capitalist rulers to maintain their power and privileges,” Nelson said. “Their laws and the way they’re enforced are designed to keep workers in line and to brand substantial layers of us as criminals, particularly those who are Black or from other oppressed nationalities. To the bosses and landlords in power, all workers are viewed as potentially dangerous. ..."

And this is at least partly true. No doubt the police exist to defend the status quo, which certainly includes capitalist property relations. But it's a stretch to suggest that laws are arbitrary artifacts designed for capitalist convenience--crimes such as murder, theft, and rape have been forbidden since the Ten Commandments, and are fundamental for any society, not just a capitalist one. The last quoted sentence is surely an exaggeration--capitalists are more likely to feel threatened by other capitalists or politicians rather than workers. It is standard Trotsky-talk to claim that cops are always and only agents of the bourgeoisie, and that's precisely what this paragraph claims. 

But the rest of Mr. Nelson's statement belies that narrow view. He says,

“What is of great concern to workers, however, is anti-social violence within working-class communities,” he said. “In addition to the immediate consequences for those affected, it breeds fear and demoralization; it saps workers’ confidence and tears at social solidarity. This in turn feeds into more anti-social behavior and spreads the infection of capitalist dog-eat-dog morality. The rulers’ cops and courts are aimed against us, but it is far better to live under their rule of law than without it, where warlords, gangs and vigilantes fill the gap.

“One of the obvious factors in the recent rise in violent crime has been the systematic withdrawal of police in certain working-class neighborhoods, particularly those with the highest crime rates,” Nelson said. “The effect was no surprise to anyone, least of all the government officials who organized it as part of the rulers’ political responses to the broad popular demonstrations that exploded across the country following the death of Floyd, as well as the unpopular and anti-social rioting and looting. They decided to sacrifice some beat cops responsible for Floyd’s death, and to have the police pull back from many of our communities. ..."

This is reality speaking: the only real alternative to a police force (what the Constitution refers to as a "well-formed militia") is a Hobbesian world of all against all. That's what life is like in today's Yemen, where there really are food shortages. So The Militant, true to its masthead, understands that working people need protection from criminals--as much or even more than folks in wealthier communities. Those who will withdraw the cops from poor neighborhoods are acting as agents for street gangs and the lumpen proletariat.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party represents all lumpens--both the lumpen proletariat and the closely aligned lumpen intelligentsia. On the other hand, a newspaper that claims to speak in the interests of working people has to realize that Black citizens (95% of whom are honest, upstanding, hardworking people) deserve to have their 911 calls answered.

So I'm down with The Militant on this one. I only wish that they'd drop all the silly Trotsky-talk.

Further Reading:

• Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?
• Socialist Action Believes American Children Should Freeze to Death
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat

Electric Cars

So I really liked the article entitled Electric cars: On the road to a ‘green’ future?, authored by Cooper Bard and published in Socialist Resurgence. It has a lot of very useful information, specifically about lithium and lithium mining. Lithium is used in lithium-ion batteries that are the power source for electric cars. The cited references are especially useful. So I recommend it highly.

Lithium is the lightest metal on the periodic table, and therefore ideal for low-weight batteries. It is a common element in the earth's crust, but is widely distributed, existing in most places in only trace amounts. Concentrated ores are rare, found disproportionately in South America (esp. Chile and Bolivia), Australia and China. Accordingly, economically viable mines are in short supply, and there is no reason to think the world's lithium supply will grow rapidly.

As one of Mr. Bard's references points out,

If we would like to have a North American standard of living for everyone in the world – say, 1 car for every 2 people – then we would need about 3.4 billion Nissan Leafs. This would use 32% of the identified resources (all known lithium in the world), or 82% of the reserves (all lithium that is currently economic to produce). Even with widespread recycling, that seems like an unsustainable prospect.

And that's just lithium. Mr. Bard mentions cobalt and nickel. Cobalt is mined mostly in DR Congo, with smaller amounts coming from Canada. Nickel is more widely dispersed:

More than 2.5 million tonnes (t) of nickel per year are estimated to be mined worldwide, with Indonesia (760,000 t), the Philippines (320,000 t), Russia (280,000 t), New Caledonia (200,000 t), Australia (170,000 t) and Canada (150,000 t) being the largest producers as of 2020.

For whatever reason, Mr. Bard doesn't mention copper, which electric motors require in large quantities. Indeed, the best response to governments mandating electric cars is to buy copper futures or copper mining stocks, which have doubled in price over the past 18 months. "Chile was the top producer of copper with at least one-third of the world share followed by the United States, Indonesia and Peru."

The common method of mining lithium involves the selective precipitation of various salts in brine pools. At first the ore is dissolved in a large pool, and as the water evaporates the salts crystallize and precipitate out. One then has a mixture of lithium, manganese and boron salts. These are then dissolved in another brine pool, and are again selectively precipitated out (by varying the pH), enabling the isolation of sufficiently pure lithium salts. Turning lithium salts into metallic lithium requires copious amounts of electricity, in a manner similar to aluminum production. Any general chemistry student who did qualitative analysis in a lab will understand the basic principles.

Even if you didn't follow all of that, the bottom line is that mining lithium requires lots of water, and is a process that takes months or even years to complete. The waste products include sulfuric and hydrochloric acid, along with heavy metal byproducts. None of this is good for the local groundwater.

So Mr. Bard is quite right: lithium mining is not good for the environment. And more--there is not enough lithium out there to electrify our transportation system. Similar issues arise in mining the other necessary metals. Copper, for example, is extracted in huge, open pit mines, leaving enormous tailings in their wake. Fracking is a much cleaner, cheaper and less destructive way of producing energy.

I'll take issue with Mr. Bard's description of the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. He writes,

Clay dug up from what is essentially an exploded mountain is mixed with 5800 tons sulfuric acid a day. The process will require over 3200 gallons of water every minute. The site, operated by Lithium Americas, will generate over 350 cubic yards of mining waste laced with the sulfuric acid [1]. Groundwater may also be contaminated with toxic materials. Anyone who declares this an environmentally safe solution has an odd perspective on environmentalism!

I won't argue with the last sentence, but the rest is misleading. The water is not required by the minute, but rather while setting up the brine pools, i.e., every few months. And similarly for sulfuric acid. Further, there is no groundwater at Thacker Pass--if you've traveled in Nevada you know the place is dry as a bone.

He also writes,

[The Thacker Pass] mine has received the ire both of local ranchers, who have filed lawsuits, and the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes, who have delivered petitions and protested the site, as well as organized a 273-mile-long prayer run to promote awareness.

The Ft. McDermitt reservation has 341 inhabitants, and is located about 50 road miles away from the mine. It is not clear to me how the mine will in any way affect the tribe. I also don't see why that small population should have veto power over an enterprise of national significance.

But I agree with Mr. Bard that electrifying our transportation system is not a solution to any environmental crisis. I'll suggest that fossil fuels are much better, cheaper and cleaner.

Instead of fossil fuels, Mr. Bard's suggestion is that we revert to "mass transit," i.e., a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem. He writes,

One bus—whether diesel, hybrid, or electric—can efficiently transport 50 people. A train or tram connected to a renewable city electric grid will provide clean transit to thousands of people over the course of a year. Mass transit has the dual advantage of being both more accessible (and more equitable) and more efficient. Pound for pound, trains, trams, and buses require less and do more.

Which is weird, because the buses in my hometown rarely carry more than half a dozen passengers at a time. Often I see them driving around completely empty. Trams famously travel at 19 miles per hour. On current ridership, there is no way that so-called "mass transit" is more energy efficient than private cars.

More, it's really hard to get to work on mass transit. Randall O'Toole writes,

It doesn’t reach many jobs: The University of Minnesota’s Accessibility Observatory estimates that a typical resident of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas can reach more than twice as many jobs in a 20-minute auto drive than a 60-minute transit ride. Auto users can reach 12 times as many jobs in 60 minutes up to 67 times as many jobs in 10 minutes as transit users.

Mr. Bard implicitly recognizes that--he phrases transit's advantage as "pound for pound." But surely, "minute for minute" is a much better comparison, and on that "mass transit" loses big time. Mr. Bard apparently assigns no value to people's time.

I believe Larry Ellison dinged rail travel something like this:

A train starts from a place you don't want to start from, leaving at a time you don't want to go, and takes you to a place you don't want to be at, arriving at a time when you don't want to get there. And after all of that you have to get into a car to drive to your destination.

Mass transit works in densely populated cities, e.g., New York. But most Americans don't live that way, and don't want to live that way. Mass transit doesn't work for suburban or rural areas.

Just imagine if the indigenous tribe Mr. Bard otherwise so champions were all forced to wait around for buses. They wouldn't be happy. 

Further Reading:

• Keith Leslie's International Report
• Louis Proyect and the More Poverty Solution
• Jeff Mackler Interviewed by Paul Duddridge