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  • The “PMC” Does Not Exist and Why it Matters for Socialists

    The “PMC” Does Not Exist and Why it Matters for Socialists

    2019 was the year when “PMC” entered the vocabulary of many radicals in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the Anglosophere. As Alex Press observes, “’Professional-managerial class’ (PMC), a term coined by Barbara and John Ehrenreich in a 1977 essay for Radical America, has recently emerged from academic obscurity as a shorthand, of sorts, for technocratic liberalism, or wealthier Democratic Primary voters, or the median Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member, depending on who you ask.”

    The term was originally meant to refer to “salaried mental workers” who are separated from the capitalist class because they don’t control any means of production, but who are also said to have, in Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich’s words, “an objectively antagonistic relationship” to the working class because of the function of their work – reproducing capitalist society – and their high status within workplace hierarchies. The PMC was said to include “teachers, social workers, psychologists, entertainers, writers of advertising copy and TV scripts” as well as “middle-level administrators and managers, engineers, and other technical workers.”

    There’s no doubt that lots of people do such paid work. But are they a distinct social class? This takes us to the heart of the issue: what’s class? Ellen Meiksins Wood was right to argue in Democracy Against Capitalism (1995) that “There are really only two ways of thinking theoretically about class: either as a structural location or as a social relation. The first and most common of these treats class as a form of ‘stratification,’ a layer in a hierarchical structure… In contrast to this geological model, there is a social-historical conception of class as a relation between appropriators and producers.”

    The concept of the PMC combines elements of both models. It “confuses a group’s function with its class position,” as Peter Meiksins argued. Having a particular function doesn’t by itself make a group of people a social class. People who don’t control any means of production are employed to perform many different functions for capitalists and state managers. Many are directly involved in one way or another in producing goods and services as commodities and then selling them. Others aren’t. Many of the latter work for the state, whether in education, social services, public health care (where it exists), government administration, prisons or policing. “One must be careful,” Meiksins warned, “not to assume that a group of workers is in a different class simply because of a distinctive function.”

    Does their place within the structure of capitalism really make the relationship between most so-called PMC members and other wage-earners so antagonistic that they constitute a separate class? Or are most better understood as part of the working class, some of whose segments experience friction with other segments because of how capitalism organizes our lives? Conflicts between students and parents on the one hand and teachers on the other, or between parents and social workers, are similar to bus drivers’ conflicts with riders. The frictions are real, and they’re often shaped by racism and other forms of oppression. But they’re not antagonism between classes.

    What about the status and working conditions of people often seen as belonging to the PMC? Peter Meiksins hit the nail on the head: “Privileged, skilled, autonomous workers are still wage-labourers, whose privileges, skills and autonomy are under constant threat of removal by capitalists” and public sector bosses.

    In short, most of the people labelled “PMC” by users of the term should instead be understood as part of the working class (a minority are not, chiefly middle managers). This means that the working class is both broader and more internally-divided by workplace hierarchies, educational credentials, and other cleavages than many socialists realize, as well as divided by gender, racial and other forms of oppression.

    There’s nothing new about deep internal divisions in the working class. For example, in the second half of the 1800s skilled craftworkers often had helpers whom they hired and fired and paid out of their own wages. One thing that is distinctive about advanced capitalist countries today is the division in the class connected to the larger share of jobs classified as “professional,” for which workers are required to have university degrees (of course, many workers with degrees don’t work in such jobs). As Jeff Schmidt argues in Disciplined Minds – a book that every leftist considering graduate or professional school should read – employers expect professional workers to be creative “but within strict political limits.”

    There are real differences between workers often dubbed PMC and other workers. In the workplace, professional workers are often assigned what Karl Marx called the “function of direction” (supervising other workers). Outside of work, they often associate with each other and self-employed university-trained people like doctors and lawyers more than with people in other layers of the working class. These differences have political consequences and shouldn’t be ignored. However, they are differences within the immense majority who make up the collective labourer, to use another of Marx’s phrases, not evidence of a separate PMC.

    This argument about class theory matters politically. PMC theory reinforces narrow notions we’ve inherited from earlier eras in the history of capitalism about who the working class is. Such notions can get in the way understanding and participating in the struggles of the actually-existing working class in our time.

    People thinking of themselves as PMC reinforces the idea that “we’re not workers” which is extremely common among workers with graduate or professional degrees. That belief is an obstacle to such workers figuring out what side they’re on, unionizing, striking, and finding common cause with the majority of the working class that doesn’t have professional status. It can also encourage guilty moralism (“are we asking for too much? after all, others have it much worse than us”) among university-educated workers who start organizing and fighting collectively.

    PMC theory can easily lead to socialists arguing for watering down demands in order to create an alliance between the working class and PMC. In contrast, recognizing that most people labelled PMC are actually part of the working class and that their relatively better conditions are also threatened by austerity and employers’ drive to intensify work avoids this danger. This helps us to look for commonalities in the experiences of quite different segments of the working class.

    Taken to its logical conclusion, PMC theory would lead to questioning the inclusion of members of the so-called PMC in working-class organizations; after all, the PMC’s interests are supposedly antagonistic to those of the working class. That’s precisely the opposite of the approach best suited for undermining the elitism and narrow-minded sectionalism rampant among higher-status workers with professional credentials: promoting as much egalitarian convergence and association with other workers as possible. The more workers with professional status come together with other workers in settings where they don’t have the kind of control they do in the workplace, the more they’re likely to recognize both shared class interests and which of their advantages that are denied to other workers ought to be given up for the common good. This makes unions in which professional workers participate alongside other workers – like Ver.di in Germany, which includes many kinds of service workers, or SITUAM at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico, which includes faculty members as well as “blue collar” and “white collar” support staff – preferable to craft unions of professional workers alone. But that’s not the kind of organization to which PMC theory points.

    In 2020 let’s give up talk about a PMC and focus on the challenge of how to contribute to forging bonds of solidarity within a deeply divided working class.

  • Neo-Colonial Economics in Central Africa: A Very Short History

    Neo-Colonial Economics in Central Africa: A Very Short History

    Word War Two as the death-knell for colonial empires is a well-trodden and essentially erroneous narrative. Empires’ relationships with their colonies were uprooted, modified and given the gloss of ‘independence’ but retained injustice and exploitation at their core. In Central Africa, neo-colonialism is abundant in its forms. This article will explore a particular system of neo-imperial economic exploitation known as the CEMAC zone.

    After World War Two, people throughout Africa fought for national independence. Unable to quell the uprisings in their colonies, France eventually accepted that the era of direct colonial stewardship had come to an end. However, reluctant to lose a fruitful source of labour and material, President Charles de Gaulle sought to formulate a strategy that would benefit French military and business interests in Africa throughout the modern era.

    To achieve this, France accepted independence, but with certain conditions. France would be allowed to station military units in their former colonies and would retain a monopoly on key industries. France would also have control over her former colonies’ exports and imports. Finally, all former colonies would continue to use the CFA Franc (Franc of the French Colonies of Africa). In the Central African colonies, this would be known as the Central African CFA Franc. Those countries comprising West Africa would use the West African CFA Franc.

    Since 1964, Central African membership of this monetary union has taken place within the framework of the CEMAC (The Economic and Monetary Committee of Central Africa). This article’s focus is primarily on how this monetary committee problematizes economic development for its member-states. In particular, it will draw on Cameroon, a useful case-study for understanding exactly how colonial economic rule permeates all levels of society.

    The CFA Franc as a Colonial Weapon

    Those countries comprising the CEMAC still use the CFA Franc today. This includes Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of Congo. Described by economist Martial Ze Belinga as a ‘predatory relationship’, it is a colonial economic system cloaked beneath a veil of co-operation.

    The CFA Franc harms Central African economies in two main ways. Firstly, it denies these countries of their capacity for economic development and industrialisation. Secondly, it eliminates the possibility of a sovereign monetary policy.

    The CFA Franc achieves these effects in two main ways. Firstly, under the terms of the CEMAC, African nations are obliged to place two-thirds of their foreign exchange reserves in a special French treasury ‘operating account’. Foreign exchange reserves are a country’s way of stockpiling foreign currency so that their own currency can remain competitive. The benefits this incurs for France is clear. By building up their foreign currency reserves, Paris is able to protect the value of the Euro, thereby ensuring that other countries remain accessible markets for French exports. However, this has a devastating impact on Central African economies.

    Due to CEMAC stipulations, two-thirds of Central African wealth sit in European banks. This makes it very difficult for Central African businesses to obtain the credit loans they need for further development. Every time they want to access their own money, they must borrow it at crippling interest rates. Furthermore, France holds a de facto veto on the boards of the two central banks within the CFA franc zone. Consequently, Central African nations can only invest in their own economy if France allows it.

    France is a beneficiary of this economic stagnation. Without the industrial capacity to convert raw materials into valuable secondary commodities (clothes, televisions, cars, etc), Central African nations are forced to sell their primary products to France for desperately low prices.

    France promotes this deeply unjust relationship another way – by pegging the CFA to the Euro. This means that the conversion rate of Euro to CFA is always kept within a certain range. Consequently, the European Central Bank has de facto control of the CFA Franc. Any economic policy devised in Brussels will have a direct impact on the CFA. The problem is that CEMAC nations have no representation in Europe. The people of Central Africa therefore find themselves at the mercy of European bureaucrats who devise monetary policy with no regard to Central African interests. The most notable example of this came in 1994 when the CFA Franc was devalued overnight. Vital imports such as medication and sanitary products doubled leading to protests throughout the region.

    Moreover, the competitiveness of CEMAC products is severely penalized. Exchange rates between the Euro and CFA are structurally overvalued meaning that local producers pay an additional form of tax for the export of their products. By pooling Central African wealth and selling it back to them at extortionate rates, France constrains the development of African enterprises, thereby ensuring that it remains a fruitful producer of cheap raw materials for French business.

    Arguments in Favour of the CFA Franc

    In an article written for American Express, Frances Coppola, a respected economic journalist, comes out in favour of the CFA Franc. She summarizes that the nations of the CEMAC enjoy relative stability and low inflation. Economists also often claim that they benefit from close trade-links with France. Unfortunately, these claims are at best falsifications, and at worst outright lies.

    Take for example the first statement – ‘countries in the CFA zone enjoy relative stability’. This initially seems like a fair statement. According to the IMF, countries in the CEMAC tend to experience lower inflation rates than their non-CEMAC neighbours. In the last year, no CEMAC member endured an annual inflation rate greater than 3%.

    However, a stable economy does not necessarily entail prosperity. In fact, the CEMAC region is a case-study in how ‘stagnation’ can be re-packaged and marketed as ‘stability’.  By the logic of Coppola, low inflation is a self-evidently positive thing. If that was the case, Cameroonians who benefit from a low inflation rate of 2.1% should be experiencing far better standards of living than those living in Sudan, where the inflation rate is at 50.4% and has been above 10% since 2007. In reality, according to the World Bank, in Sudan 14.9% of people live beneath the poverty line while that figure is at 23.8% for Cameroon.  This demonstrates that the stability of a currency is no guarantee of better living standards.

    Not only does Cameroon’s fantastically ‘stable economy’ act as a fertile breeding ground for abject poverty, but it also appears incapable of long-term development. In Cameroon, real per capita GDP is less than it was 40 years ago. In fact, during the last two decades, the CEMAC’s economic growth has been, on average, slower than that for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. It’s become increasingly unclear what exactly economic ‘stability’ has achieved.

    Effects in Cameroon

    I currently live in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. I have, therefore, experienced the effects of this economic system first-hand. However, for an expat like myself, the impact is minimal. For example, buying a 700CFA (£1) beer with even a 5000CFA (£6.50) note is practically impossible because there simply isn’t enough money in circulation to give out that much change. An inconvenience – but not a tragedy. For the people of Cameroon, however, the implications of the imperial stranglehold find themselves crudely etched into the lived reality of everyday life.

    With such little domestic investment, unemployment is rife. The stated minimum wage in Cameroon is 36,720CFA (£47) per month but many people are forced to work for far less than that. The work which is available tends to be extremely underpaid. Furthermore, because Cameroon is so reliant on agriculture, much of the work is seasonal. Consequently, countless families are forced to live-by-day, hand-to-mouth. For the majority, vagrancy is the inescapable reality.

    What does this ‘inescapable reality’ look like? Well, it looks like emaciated figures picking their way through seething piles of rubbish. It looks likes skinny, jaundiced young men huddled together in the darkness of derelict buildings. It looks like children fetching water from malarial swamps when the shop next door sells it for 250CFA (35p) per bottle. We must be careful not to victimize these people too excessively. Cameroonians are breathtakingly industrious. From the crack of dawn, everyone from the twelve-year-old boy to the old woman is out on the streets hustling, carrying and bartering. There is an astonishing drive to better one’s circumstances regardless of the adversity. However, one cannot help but feel that they’re swimming against the tide.

    Why Does it Persist?

    If CEMAC nations are so perilously aggrieved by this system, why do they continue to participate in it? The reasons pertinent to Cameroon are the same throughout Central Africa. For Paul Biya, President of Cameroon, his support for this French-dominated system hinges on two things; his need for power and his fear of losing it.

    Let’s first address the ‘need for power’. The Cameroonian government has long relied on French military assistance for legitimacy. France provide the Cameroonian army with both materiel and training and has done so since independence. The vitality of French military assistance was evidenced when, in 1984, they were instrumental in suppressing a coup against the Cameroonian leadership. Although Cameroon’s military is relatively strong, they rely on the French army as much as ever. With Ambazonian rebels in the West and Al Shabaab fighters in the north, there is no shortage of threats to Biya’s position, even as his reign enters its twilight years.

    Biya has proved that, for him, power is everything. Whether it means manipulating his nation’s constitution, sanctioning police atrocities or submitting his nation to a state of French economic vassalage, he will do anything to remain in power. French military assistance will only continue if the CEMAC system remains in place. Biya is thus unlikely to bite the hand that feeds.

    Lust for power isn’t the only vice the French government seeks to exploit. Fear has proved an equally effective weapon. France has a long and proud history of murdering leaders who don’t toe the economic line. In 1963, President of Togo Sylvanus Olympio was assassinated after he had tried to set up a Togolese currency. In 1987, President of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara met the same fate under similar circumstances.

    The most recent victim of French power was Laurent Gbagbo President of Ivory Coast. For years he had spoken out against the fallacy that was Ivorian independence and after three decades of non-violent struggle, was elected President in 2000. France responded to this by bombing both the military barracks and the presidential palace for several days. In April 2011, the French army station in Abidjan launched a full-scale assault against the Ivorian army. Alassane Ouattara was soon installed as France’s puppet of choice.

    France rules over Central Africa with the indignant insolence of a spoilt child, but one which wields the power of an Empire. The leaders of Central African nations know this all too well and behave appropriately. In a toast to then-president Francois Hollande, Biya reiterated “the strong true friendship existing between France and Cameroon”. In reality, this is no declaration of affinity or co-operation, but rather the trembling utterances of a fearful subject.

    Conclusion

    Recently, Macron said he was in favour of the gradual phasing out of the CFA Franc suggesting that there is perhaps light at the end of this tunnel. Such declarations are, however, best taken with a substantial dose of salt. Macron is a master of the ‘non-concession’ concession. Recently, to quell domestic unrest, he said that he’d give up his state pension of €600 per month. Bear in mind, this man with an estimated net worth of $31.5 million. The gesture is so hollow as to be almost laughable.

    His talk of phasing out CFA Franc is similarly vapid. Central Africa is one of the world’s most volatile regions. Consequently, ruling regimes need French military assistance to exist and are thus willing to pay the crushing economic price. Macron knows this. For the time being, French colonial rule in Central Africa remains strong, just as it has done for over one hundred years.

  • México: Year One of the “Fourth Transformation”

    México: Year One of the “Fourth Transformation”

    This is an statement marking the first year in office of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador [AMLO] published in Unidad Socialista, the publication of the Liga de Unidad Socialista, a socialist organization in México. The editorial refers to the “Fourth Transformation,” AMLO’s name for his program that seeks to place it historically among the three great transformations in the country’s history: independence from Spain, the period of liberal reform under President Benito Juarez, and the Mexican revolution. The editorial appeared in Correspondencia de Prensa on December 21, 2019. It was translated by Lance Selfa.

    Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gestures after casting his ballot at a polling station during the presidential election in Mexico City, Mexico July 1, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido –

    Nothing to celebrate

    Or very little, because 2019 is already the most violent year of the decade, with the highest number of femicides; and the ongoing murders of journalists that make México the most dangerous country in the world for their work; with a “National Guard” turned into an adjunct of the U.S. Border Patrol in the surveillance of the northern and southern borders of the country; with the first sign of military opposition to the president in decades arising from the events in Culiacan (where AMLO decided to release the captured drug kingpin Ovidio Gúzman to head off a wave of Sinaloa cartel violence). What’s more, the government has made an absolute bet on the exploitation of the oil fields when all over the world, steps are being taken to create a world without hydrocarbons. And there is a stagnant economy, with zero or negative growth, along with uncertainty about where the governing party wants to take the country. MORENA (AMLO’s party, the National Regeneration Movement) is not a true party that brings together disparate forces that disagree with each other, but a weak conglomeration held together by AMLO’s leadership.

    The huge turnout at a rally in the Zócalo [the main government square in México City] on December 1 testifies to AMLO’s continued popularity. Yet he and his government continue to propagate the same message, ad nauseum, in the president’s daily briefings. That is, that his government “inherited” a “mess” that won’t be easy to clean up and, of course, won’t be done by the end of 2019. How long will the government be credibly able to offer these excuses for a situation where things don’t change, and where we continue to live in the hell of a decaying society indelibly marked by the precariousness of life for the absolute majority of the population? Events in South America and throughout the world tell us that those times of satisfaction and apathy are coming to an end. México will not be exempt from those winds of rebellion and conflict.

    In fact, all of AMLO’s supporters, both ordinary people and the most sophisticated intellectuals, recognize that while there has been no coherent expression yet, there is considerable opposition to the government. [The mainstream historian] Lorenzo Meyer estimates that a third of the population opposes him. But Meyer, like the great majority, considers the government to be on the “left” and destined to carry out the “difficult and dangerous” task of what Machiavelli called “a change of regime”. An in-depth reading of the electoral tsunami of July 1, 2018 [when AMLO was elected in a landslide] points to this widely held desire for change among the country’s population—a population of poorly paid workers, subjected to long working hours, job insecurity and a future with few prospects. This is a population that longs for a radical change that, in this first year of México’s pompously titled “Fourth Transformation,” is far from being realized.

    When one looks at the main points of AMLO’s policies, they can be reduced essentially to government anti-poverty programs. What’s forgotten is that, historically, these policies don’t really work if they aren’t also combined with an economic project for large-scale productive investment. The fact that 50 percent of families receive state aid (eight million senior citizens, one million scholarship students, among others) is no small thing, as is the 16 percent increase in the minimum wage. But these programs are based on México’s anemic economy: a decline in foreign investment, under-utilization of government financial resources, and a total dependence on large México-based private investors (clearly favored by the president) to move a stagnant economy forward.

    The next five years in AMLO’s term will be more contentious. Already in the first year of the “Fourth Transformation,” and in spite of AMLO’s speeches (which are also increasingly moderate, moralizing and vague), his government is basically a continuation of previous neoliberal governments. The aspiration for radical change in the political regime, which powered AMLO’s victory on July 1, 2018, remains unrealized. The government’s daily briefings and its demagogic rhetoric can’t evade the harsh reality that savage, neoliberal capitalism continues to dominate society and will deepen social inequality in the country that, according to the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ranks above only Haiti, Honduras, and El Salvador in the region. This will be the real reason why the electoral tsunami that brought AMLO to power will continue to be frustrated. And it will be the reason why sooner, rather than later, other tsunamis—and not just electoral ones— are coming in México.

  • The Socialist Position on the Latest U.S. Attack on Iran: The Assassination of Suleimani

    The Socialist Position on the Latest U.S. Attack on Iran: The Assassination of Suleimani

    President Donald Trump has virtually declared war on Iran with the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in an airstrike near Baghdad International Airport. The assassination of Suleimani will very likely lead to war, though it is unclear how such a war will develop and what form it will take. How do American socialists decide our position on this new situation?

    Oppose U.S. Imperialism

    First, we oppose the U.S. government’s latest attack on Iran, the most recent of a series of diplomatic, economic, and military measures against the Iranian government. The economic measures have affected the entire population, In May of 2018 Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear agreement and then in June and then again in September of 2019 he announced new economic sanctions against Iran. All of these were building toward the latest attack on Iran in the form of the assassination of Suleimani. Now the Trump administration has sent an additional 3,000 troops to the Middle East. We socialists must stand against U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military pressures or attacks on Iran.

    Trump has created an imperial presidency and has acted in an authoritarian and completely undemocratic manner in taking the United States to war. In carrying out the attack on Iran, Trump did not ask Congress for a new War Powers bill, nor did he invoke the old war powers acts, now outdated, nor did he even consult Congressional leaders. According to the U.S. Constitution, of course, only the Congress can declare war, though congresses have since World War II declined to take responsibility for declaring or refusing to declare war.

    Wars depend ultimately on the military budget, which last July passed the Senate 67 to 28 and passed the House 284-149; that is both Republicans and Democrats voted to fund arms and war. To his credit, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has either voted against or not voted for the last several military budgets by not being present.

    For decades, Washington has sought to maintain its dominance in the Middle East, particularly over its immense petroleum resources. This has meant invading Iraq, propping up dictatorial regimes, imposing deadly sanctions, and providing the diplomatic support and weaponry to enable Saudi Arabia to wage its brutal war in Yemen and Israel to wage multiple deadly assaults on Gaza. While attempting to maintain a reactionary order, U.S. intervention has wreaked havoc on the region and its people. We oppose U.S. imperialism in all of its economic and political forms.

    The Democratic Socialists of America, of which I am a member, put out an excellent statement opposing the United States attack on Iran and here in New York, where I live, organized a protest against a war on Iran at the home of Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, demanding that he too oppose the attack. We should demand that he and all Democrats take a forthright stand against a war on Iran and not simply on procedural grounds. We demand that every Democrat take a stand against war in Iran and those who don’t should receive no future political support.

    No Political Support for Iranian Government

    Our opposition to the U.S. attack on Iran does not imply any political support to the authoritarian, right-wing, theocratic government of Iran. Within Iran, we stand on the side of the movement for democracy, for political pluralism, for civil rights, for freedom, and within that democratic movement, we stand with the working class and socialist forces. As the Alliance of Middle Eastern and North African Socialists write:

    In Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other government forces brutally suppressed the nationwide popular protests that broke out on November 15 in opposition to a rise in the price of petroleum and called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and an end to its military interventions in the region. According to Reuters, at least 1,500 protesters were killed in four days. Between 8,000 and 10,000 mostly young protesters have been arrested and most have not been heard from. Many political prisoners, including labor, feminist, and oppressed minority activists languish in prison from previous protests. These and revolutionary protesters in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Algeria are the forces that socialists around the world need to reach out to and support.

    We oppose U.S. imperialism but also support the democratic forces in Iran, knowing that in the short run Trump’s attack on their government will make their tasks more difficult, but that in the long run the war could undermine the Iran government’s credibility and support. We as socialists would certainly support a political or democratic revolution in Iran, though we would oppose any U.S. intervention in such a situation.

    Oppose U.S. and All Other Imperial Powers

    At the same time, as international socialists, while we focus our attention on opposition to the United States’ role in the Middle East, we also oppose the intervention of other powers in the area. We oppose Russia’s authoritarian ruler Vladimir Putin and his aid to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad by bombing the province of Idlib, the last refuge of the Syrian opposition, including bombing of schools and the killing of civilian men, women and children. We must oppose Saudi Arabia’s role in the terrible destruction and slaughter of human beings in Yemen, and also Turkey, which has sent troops into Libya.

    Even while opposing the U.S. attack on Iran, we must also oppose the Iranian-Russian-Chinese naval drills in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman. Both Russia and China have demonstrated their imperial ambitions, Russia in seizing the Crimea and China in annexing Tibet and in seeking to obliterate the culture of Tibet and of the Uighurs, while also building new islands and naval bases in the South China Sea to intimidate neighboring states.

    In all of these situations, we as socialists oppose the great imperial powers like the U.S, Germany, France, Russia and China, and we also oppose the regional imperial powers such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And we stand for self-determination for all of the nations and peoples in the Middle East, such as the Yemenis and the Kurds. We place ourselves on the side of the democratic and, where they exist, on the side of the socialist movements in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Everywhere we stand with the working people against the tyrants.

  • How General Strike Rhetoric Became A City-Wide Reality

    How General Strike Rhetoric Became A City-Wide Reality

    Cal Winslow, Radical Seattle: The General Strike of 1919. Monthly Review Press, 2020. 220 pp.

    Calls for a general strike have long been a staple of “resolutionary activity” on the U.S. left. During moments of crisis and militancy—from the mass firing of air traffic controllers in 1981 to Occupy Wall Street and last winter’s federal government shutdown—rousing speeches are invariably made and motions duly adopted, which urge all workers to walk out in protest.

    Such efforts represent a triumph of hope over experience. In our entire history, only a handful of labor disputes have mushroomed into broader, city-wide work stoppages. On the “left coast,” this has occurred, most recently, in San Francisco in 1934 and Oakland twelve years later.

    The one notable 21st century exception to this historical pattern was the “day without immigrants” protests in 2005, when talented organizers, with deep roots in their own immigrant communities, managed to mobilize up to five million people in 160 cities.

    In contrast, most general strike calls—if workers even knew about them— fall on deaf ears because of the widespread disconnect between individual advocacy of such action and the working-class base and organizational leadership necessary to undertake it.

    A century ago, as we learn from labor historian Cal Winslow, there was far more grassroots connectedness between would-be instigators of general strike activity and unions in Seattle, the author’s hometown. Winslow’s new book, Radical Seattle, shows how “labor’s most spectacular revolt”—which occurred 101 years ago this February—was many years in the making. It drew on the experience of previous “workplace struggles and political battles, in which working people built an infrastructure for radical politics” and became class conscious “political actors in their own right.”

    An Activist CLC 

    The Seattle general strike was coordinated by an activist central labor council (CLC), quite unlike the multi-union bodies that exist in Seattle and other U.S. cities today. The 110 local unions affiliated with it operated under the banner of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). But, as Winslow notes, CLC leaders were sympathetic to industrial unionism and they had previously used the threat of a general strike “as a bargaining chip in fights for wages and benefits.”

    In January of 1919, thirty thousand Seattle shipyard workers went on strike for better pay and working conditions, in the wake of a punishing World War I wage freeze. At a CLC membership assembly in Seattle’s “Labor Temple,” the local Metal Trades Council asked for broader union solidarity—in the form of a city-wide walk-out involving workers of all kinds. More than 65,000 union members responded with a shut-down that lasted five days and engaged thousands of others in the community.

    During that general strike, a 300-member committee, largely composed of rank-and-file representatives, coordinated its activities. Their role included taking responsibility, in a highly disciplined way, for “the health, welfare, and safety” of a city then populated by 300,000 people. As Winslow writes:

    “Garbage was collected, the hospitals were supplied, babies got milk,  people were fed, including some 30,000 a day at the strikers’ kitchens. There may have been no other time, before or since, when no one went hungry in the city.’

    The streets were safe, rarely safer—patrolled by an unarmed labor guard. Off the streets, Seattle was a festival—in union halls, the co-op markets, the “feeding stations,” and neighborhood centers where workers and their families gathered. Meanwhile, the worker representatives who packed the rowdy, emotion-filled Strike Committee meetings came prepared—they were making history and they knew it.”

    Among those patiently paving the way for this upsurge were radical street speaker Kate Sadler, a critic of unions which excluded black and Asian workers, and Anna Louise Strong, a crusading labor editor who served on the Seattle school board. Like Kshama Sawant today, Strong was a strong left-wing voice much reviled by Seattle conservatives; unlike Sawant so far, she was driven from elected office because of her controversial views.

    Sadler, Strong, and others did succeed in turning Seattle into “a Socialist Party stronghold, its members proponents of industrial unionism and thorns in the side of national Party officials who supported Samuel Gompers, conservative president of the craft-based AFL.” The Union Record, with a peak circulation of 120,000, became Strong’s platform for education and agitation about labor causes, at home and abroad.

    As Winslow documents, the city also served as a “base camp” for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose free speech fights, mass arrests, and militant strikes had roiled timber camps and saw mills throughout the Pacific Northwest.  According to the author, many workers held “an AFL card for the job and IWW card for the principle,” creating a working-class culture in which “social democracy and revolutionary unionism intermingled.”

    Straddling both political currents was CLC secretary Jimmy Duncan, a Scottish immigrant always at odds with AFL national officers who “supported strict jurisdictional divides, opposed sympathy strikes, and considered the IWW to be dual unionists.” Under Duncan’s unusual leadership, “skilled workers enjoyed no permanent place of privilege, the CLC represented skilled and unskilled alike, its Labor Temple was home to all.” The local labor movement backed consumer co-ops and expanded public ownership. It sponsored the Union Record, whose daily news coverage spanned workplaces and neighborhoods, local politics and world events.

    Labor-Management Opposition

    Labor and management foes of the 1919 uprising were greatly concerned that it might lead to a worker take-over of industry, per the IWW’s “One Big Union” scenario. So, Seattle employers persuaded federal and state authorities to deploy thousands of soldiers, police officers, and newly deputized civilians against the strikers. Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson denounced them as Bolshevik agents and threatened to impose martial law. The city’s two major newspapers were filled with fear-mongering headlines and demands to know “under which flag” Seattle workers were marching—the “red, white and blue” or just a red one.

    Equally terrified labor bureaucrats responded with “telephone calls, telegrams, a deluge of intimidation, threat and vilification from union headquarters.” The strike was denounced by Gompers and the national AFL. The Teamsters Joint Council in Washington state ordered strikers back to work. Other International union officers threatened to rescind local union charters and seize the property of striking locals.

    Unfortunately, too many other west and east coast ship builders failed to join the work stoppage which triggered the general strike. This lack of solidarity and industry-wide coordination resulted in members of the Seattle Metal Trades returning to work without achieving their own strike objectives.

    Despite this setback, and later attempts to downplay the impact of the general strike on worker consciousness, labor in Seattle remained very “strike prone” until the recession of 1920-21 hit the city long and hard. The Central Labor Council continued to press for industrial organization, although this running battle with AFL headquarters was not won until the mid-1930s. That’s when some AFL unions created an industrial worker organizing committee and then a rival national federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations CIO), which remained separate until the two merged in 1955.

    Open Shop Conditions, Then and Now

     Winslow’s account of local movement building in Seattle is extremely valuable for present-day radicals trying to reconnect labor to the left, build new unions, or remake old ones. His history lessons are particularly relevant to the situation of “red state” teachers. They have been organizing and striking under “open shop” conditions in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona, where bargaining or work stoppages by public employees have no more statutory support than private sector labor militancy did in Washington state a century ago.

    In our modern day “red states,” neither the American Federation of Teachers or the National Education Association can create formal bargaining units or be legally recognized as the exclusive representative of teachers. Yet thousands of members of both unions—or neither—have been involved in state-wide strike activity.  In the absence of collective bargaining rights, their demands were directed, out of necessity, at governors and state legislators responsible for funding teacher salary and benefit increases or making other public education improvements.

    Two years ago, in West Virginia, a statewide struggle involving more than 20,000 teachers and school aides was greatly influenced by new rank-and-file leaders. Through membership mobilization from below, they were able to prevent full-time union officials from settling short. And when right-wing Republican legislators tried to nullify some of the gains made during the 2018 strike a year later, teachers took direct action again to defend them.

    Before this kind of strike activity developed and spread, it was widely assumed that the only way educators could make real gains was by winning a signed contract with their local school board—like teachers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, and Oakland have done recently, using more traditional strikes for collective bargaining purposes. However, on this familiar “blue state” terrain, fragmentation of union bargaining power is institutionalized via separate bargaining units and different contract expiration dates for each school district. In contrast, recent struggles by teachers in “open shop” America have been far more political, fluid, and worker-driven than contract fights confined to a single city or county school system.

    Out of this new mix of local contract campaigning and statewide work stoppages or mass protests—occurring in the absence of formal collective bargaining—public school teachers are forging bonds of solidarity, personal and political relationships, and rank-and-file networks like those which prefigured the Seattle uprising. Although largely limited to just one part of the public sector today, the recent teacher strike wave demonstrates how worker solidarity can occur unexpectedly and on a large scale, with workplace radicals playing a catalytic role (a process well described in Eric Blanc’s Red State Revolt.)

    Anyone interested in encouraging similar trends, elsewhere in the public and private sector, should take a close look at Radical Seattle. Winslow’s work provides not just a window into the world of left-wing labor activism during its last century glory days. His book contains many illustrative examples of socialist agitators and organizers steadily expanding the audience for their ideas, becoming working class organization leaders, and then transforming those ideas into action—in a fashion worthy of emulation by those following in their footsteps today.

  • Trump’s Reckless Assassination of Iranian General Is an Act of War

    Trump’s Reckless Assassination of Iranian General Is an Act of War

    The Middle East and the world woke up on the morning of Friday, January 3 to the shocking news that U.S. missiles had struck the Baghdad Airport, in a targeted assassination of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani.

    Donald Trump’s cold-blooded assassination is nothing short of an act of war. Moreover, it rivals the most reckless actions ever taken by imperialist powers in the Middle East or elsewhere.

    The U.S. missile attack on the Baghdad Airport followed a 2-day demonstration by pro-Iranian militias outside the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, which itself followed US airstrikes against these militias in response to their killing of a U.S. military contractor.

    Such a targeted assassination of a foreign leader like Soleimani violates US and international law. It also constitutes a gross violation of Iraqi sovereignty, especially since the US also claimed to have “arrested” a number of pro-Iran militants on Iraqi soil.

    Trump’s breathtaking shoot-from-the-hip warmongering brings to mind George Bush’s 2003 war in Iraq or his father’s 1989 invasion of Panama.  It is also a violation of the sentiments of the U.S. populace, who have no desire to become entangled in yet another war in the Middle East. And if the Iraq war was a disaster, what will happen if the U.S. gets into war with Iran, a far larger country with a more solidly entrenched ruling class and some significant regional allies?

    But such a war is exactly what Trump’s attack might bring about, for Iran might respond with some kind of attack of its own, after which the U.S. could easily bomb Iran, leading to further escalations….

    Soleimani, a top commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was the country’s top military strategist.  As a major force in Iranian subimperialist politics, Soleimani’s writ extended into Syria and Lebanon, where the militias he supported helped the murderous Assad regime to survive the Syrian revolution and also helped rule Lebanon. In addition, he was a major political arbiter in Iraq, where he could make or break prime ministers. This influence due in large part to the Shia militias he trained and supported that were instrumental in driving ISIS out of Mosul and northern Iraq.

    In recent months, the Iranian regime and its allies in the region have come under the pressure of revolutionary youth movements in the streets. This has occurred in Lebanon, Iraq, and inside Iran itself. These movements, with youth and women in the forefront, have attacked their local power structures for authoritarianism, corruption, religious sectarianism, and obscene levels of economic inequality. But this attack will give the Iranian regime and its allies ideological arguments for the further repression of the mass unrest in the streets.

    While there is no need to mourn Soleimani, his assassination provokes fear above all. Fear of another war in the Middle East, between a nuclear-armed U.S. and a Shia fundamentalist regime that has missiles and drones, as well as potential nuclear capability. Fear that the Iranian regime and its allies will profit from their “martyr,” mitigating the public revulsion against them in Iran and the region that had helped to spark some positive movements for change.  Fear for all of those who could die in the coming weeks.

    Now is the time to hit the streets in opposition to Trump’s reckless militarism, while in no way minimizing our critique of the Iranian regime and its allies.

    Originally posted at The International Marxist-Humanist.

  • Writing an Obituary for Neocons

    Writing an Obituary for Neocons

    The New York Times obituary of neocon historian Gertrude Himmelfarb shows why  neoconservatives remain a potent political force in U.S. politics: many liberals can’t imagine a socialist challenge to capitalism that doesn’t apologize for authoritarianism.

    The NYT’s sentimental gloss of Himmelfarb’s life avoids mention of the actual positions she and her neconservative co-thinkers adopted that justified social inequality at home and slaughter abroad, from their anti-feminism and tirades against black liberation to their endorsement of U.S. military invasions overthrowing democratically elected governments, as in Chile. In contrast, Himmelfarb’s one-time comrades, Phyllis and Julie Jacobson, who founded and edited New Politics, dedicated their political activity and intellectual work to a consistent defense of democracy, social equality, and peace—a worldview the NYT and many liberals can’t fathom.

    Ironically, it was Phyllis Jacobson who “recruited her childhood friend… Gertrude Himmelfarb, to the movement,” as Barry Finger notes in his obituary of Phyllis. But unlike Himmelfarb and the Commentary set, the Jacobsons “accommodated their views to fit no political fashion; to curry favor neither with academia nor with any left mainstream. They fought against the war in Vietnam, without succumbing to illusions about Ho Chi Minh and the NLF; they struggled against American intervention in Nicaragua, without closing their eyes to the Sandinistas’ infringements on democracy; they fought against CIA-inspired overthrow attempts of Castro, while exposing the Castro regime’s repressive anti-democratic nature. They engaged the struggle for democratic unions, while condemning racism both in the ranks and in leadership policies of the labor movement. And they saw no contradiction in fighting for both at once.”

    In its utterly uncritical take on Himmelfarb, her husband Irving Kristol, and Commentary magazine, the mouthpiece of neoconservatism, the NYT obituary avoids any mention of their consistent, vicious efforts to discredit challenges to the capitalist status quo.  In contrast, writing in New Politics, historian Martin Duberman noted how Himmelfarb, then chair of the CUNY Graduate School History Department, insisted he had no place in the Department because “sexual history wasn’t ‘real’ history at all; it had been spawned by political polemics, not scholarly necessity.” Duberman observes about Himmelfarb’s rebuke: “As if a scholar’s political and social views don’t always, consciously or not, color his/her narratives (Himmelfarb herself—a right-wing conservative—being among the more notorious current examples).” Duberman also recalls Himmelfarb warning that his “standing as a legitimate scholar… might well be at stake.”

    The NYT obit ends with an apt quote from their friend and fellow neoconservative, Daniel Bell, who called the union of Himmelfarb and Kristol “the best marriage of our generation.” The quote, like the obit, with its expression of neoconservatives’ blind love (of capitalism) belonged in the Sunday weddings.

  • Taking Stock, Settling Accounts: Coming to Terms with Stalinism

    Taking Stock, Settling Accounts: Coming to Terms with Stalinism

    I have written at some length about my experience as a member of Workers World Party, which I left due to the organization’s flawed political practice. What I’ve said less about is my psychological and ideological state during this time. If “Where’s the Winter Palace?” was a critique of the concrete practices of modern Marxism-Leninism, then this piece will be an account of the political, ideological, and psychological mindset I adopted within this milieu. I lost sight of my original thirst for truth and justice that radicalized me in the first place, instead internalizing a dogmatic and sectarian, even cultic, closed worldview.

    In my original resignation letter from the party, I made what I still feel are insightful critiques of WWP’s practices, but within a broader argument that WWP’s problems stemmed from it not being sufficiently Leninist, from failing to properly practice “democratic centralism.” The only tools I had at the time were to critique WWP by measuring it up against its own proclaimed orthodoxy.1

    It is also worth noting that my time spent in the Stalinist milieu was consumed mostly by “leftbook,” which I participated in for several years, which dwarfs my short five-month stint in WWP (although I regularly worked with WWP for the majority of those three years). Many who are reading this blogpost are familiar with the toxic group dynamics in leftist cliques on Facebook and Twitter. I don’t think I have anything interesting to say about these cultic parasocial groupings, and I believe it’s readily apparent that these group dynamics function independently of ideology. Similar trends of bullying, browbeating, and infighting have been reported across ideological tendencies.

    However, I also believe it can be said that Stalinism’s unique characteristics of authoritarianism and apologism make it a particularly potent ideology for online sects. I spent hundreds or even thousands of hours in a state of anxiety, arguing online about the USSR, North Korea, etc. I believed I was fighting the good fight by cyberbullying. I cannot fathom how much time and energy I wasted on this fruitless endeavor; I often wonder how many times I caused an interlocutor to have an anxiety attack. During my time as an internet Stalinist, I became withdrawn from essentially all non-political activity. I alienated my friends through my abrasive argumentation and denunciations; I consciously built my social surrounding into an echochamber. I began to see everyone in my life as either potential recruits or sworn enemies.

    When I first became disillusioned with “leftbook” and its unhealthy dynamics, which happened far in advance of my break from Stalinism, I at least believed that I may have educated some people, despite the negative aspects. Now I don’t even believe in the gospel I was spreading.

    It was only later that I began to question the actual theoretical and historical suppositions of “Marxism-Leninism,” and in the process start to reconstruct my politics. Upon deconstructing the mythologies of modern “Marxism-Leninism” and its hodgepodge of ideologies and movements (some of which are in direct contradiction), I was confronted with that bugbear of the twentieth-century, the thorn in the side of every modern-day Marxist: Stalinism.

    Confronting Stalinism was not an easy mountain to climb, as I had for years internalized the dogma that “Stalinism isn’t real, it’s just Marxism-Leninism.” Mass executions, routine party purges, ethnic deportations, brutal collectivization campaigns: if Stalinism is not real, what was all this? Indeed, perhaps the reverse is slightly closer to the truth: Marxism-Leninism isn’t real, it’s just Stalinism. (Of course, Khrushchev’s partial de-Stalinization and Maoism’s internal critique of Stalinism are worth noting.) I began to accept that Stalinism was something real, something to come to terms with, through reading various dissident and ex-Stalinist Communists, including Italo Calvino, Victor Serge, Isaac Deutscher, Russell Jacoby, Leon Trotsky, and Herbert Marcuse. Alongside them I read revisionist Soviet historians, chiefly Moshe Lewin and Sheila Fitzpatrick.

    While the most heinous crimes of Stalinism are firmly buried in the twentieth-century, its echoes are still heard today, else I never would have taken up such an abhorrent ideology. In the post-2008 world of rising student debt, looming climate catastrophe, endless war in the Middle East, and the rise of a new populist Right, young people are increasingly dissatisfied with a world in which we feel that we have no future. Some have turned to democratic socialism, nihilism, social media humor, or some combination of the three. A small set have turned backwards towards the late Eastern Bloc, mourning the collapse of a possible socialist future. Indeed, “the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”2

    The most devoted adherents of modern Marxism-Leninism have turned additionally towards modern China, the last remaining bastion of Communist officialdom with a sizable role in global politics. Lacking a coherent alternative, these young “Dengists” see brutal Chinese capitalism as precisely its opposite, a thriving (if complex) socialist society. I am only grateful that I broke from Stalinism when I did, else no doubt at this very moment I would be ardently defending the atrocities in Xinjiang committed against Uyghur Muslims in the name of “anti-terrorism.”3

    The incredible thing about Stalinist ideology is that I was amongst very sharp, critical thinkers who could build sophisticated analyses of capitalism, imperialism, etc. But when it came to any critical inquiry into state socialism, it was as if our brains switched off. Many a time I ardently defended for example the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar people during WWII as necessary, if unfortunate. I argued that Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, all deserved to die for their alleged transgressions. If I’d known about the hundreds of KPD members that Stalin handed over to the Gestapo,4 I would have figured out a way to defend that too. I actually believed that by arguing as such, I was on the side of freedom and justice. The novelist and former PCI member Italo Calvino aptly described this mindset required to defend Stalin’s crimes:

    We Italian Communists were schizophrenic. Yes, I really think that that is the correct term. One side of our minds was and wanted to be a witness to the truth, avenging the wrongs suffered by the weak and oppressed, and defending justice against every abuse. The other side justified those wrongs, the abuses, the tyrannies of the party, Stalin, all in the name of the Cause.5

    We built simplistic narratives around a deceptive interpretation of certain scattered facts. Our arguments were built almost completely on official Soviet propaganda and the works of Grover Furr, a thoroughly discredited non-historian who takes confessions extracted via torture at face value. When we actually read reputable revisionist Soviet historians like Sheila Fitzpatrick or J. Arch Getty, it was only to extract isolated facts from their research, discarding their actual arguments and biting criticisms of Soviet bureaucracy. “Totalitarian narrative is flawed? Good enough for me, I knew Stalin was great,” so the logic went.

    We argued that the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was primarily fascist in character, without even bothering to cite any sources other than Soviet government statements. In one of our most impressive acts of mental gymnastics, we cited Stalin’s statement condemning antisemitism as evidence that antisemitism did not exist in the USSR, or at least was not sanctioned by the government. The doctor’s plot and the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitanism” were of course chalked up to Western propaganda.

    We dismissed the Holodomor famine as Nazi propaganda, using the research of Tauger and Wheatcroft to essentially argue that the Soviet government had no complicity whatsoever in the famines. But even if the famines were not a Ukranian genocide (after all, they did hit the Kazakhs just as hard), it does not mean that the famine could be fully explained by bad weather, kulak subversion, and imperialist pressure. If we could so incisively argue that a hurricane devastating Houston, Texas could not be called a “natural disaster,” why were we so resistant to say the same thing of hunger on the Eurasian steppe in the early 1930s?

    A lot of my writings from this time are innocuous enough, if a bit naive. But I want to turn specifically towards a few pieces which I believe most reveal the ugly flaws of my old views.

    Towards the end of my time as a Stalinist, I started churning out pieces in defense of the basic orientation of the Communist Party of China. Again I am all too happy that I ceased this practice before getting the chance to write something about Xinjiang or Hong Kong. I wrote two naive articles in defense of the PRC’s environmental policy, “Disaster Relief: Capitalism and Socialism,” and “Socialism is the future: China leads the way on the environment.” More substantially, I wrote a sprawling blog post in defense of Deng Xiaoping and the “capitalist roaders,” against the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. While I am still critical of Mao’s regime, especially the horrific consequences of the GLF, such a critique in no way vindicates the leaders and factions that ushered in the integration of China into global capitalism, with the simultaneous progress and suffering that entails.

    I also wrote several articles on the war in Syria. While I remain critical of most of the militarized opposition forces, my writings on the topic amounted to apologism for the crimes of the Syrian government, mostly by way of omission. Anti-interventionism and a broad anti-imperialist outlook are vital for any sort of socialist movement in the United States, the principal global military power on the planet. Nonetheless, that is no excuse to downplay, deny, or justify the atrocities committed by the Assad regime. The logic of such apologism is nearly identical to defenses of Stalin.

    My most regretful article is “Russophobia and the Logic of Imperialism.” In the piece, I draw on the scholarship of Domenico Losurdo contra Hannah Arendt and the “totalitarian” school of Soviet history. All that is fine enough, and I still side with the critique of the “double genocide” theory of WWII, but the article is deeply flawed. First, I make bold claims about the racialization of Russians and Slavs that were based on little to no research or historical evidence. I can only imagine I accepted this narrative through internalizing the ambient Great Russian chauvinism of Stalinist mythos.

    Second, and this was the most crucial mistake, I equated any sort of critique of Stalinism (or, Christ, even the Russian Federation under Putin) with Orientalism. In my mind, any critique of Stalin was by necessity racist and anti-communist. Given that many of Stalin’s victims were oppressed minorities such as Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and Kazakhs, this claim hardly holds weight and carries a regretful irony. Of course, there are Russophobic critiques of the Soviet Union, but to lump all critiques under this umbrella is cynicism and bad-faith argumentation of the highest order. Ironically enough, I now quite enjoy the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya and Hillel Ticktin, both of whom I chastise in the piece.

    Coming to terms with and eventually abandoning Stalinism was a long process involving numerous stages of research and self-reflection. It did not happen overnight. My old views grow more incomprehensible by the day, and while my politics are still evolving as always, I hope now I’m moving in the right direction, towards a more rigorous and consistent socialist outlook.

    What do I mean by “Stalinism”?

    What follows is my broad strokes understanding of Stalinism. It is not meant to be a comprehensive historical account of the Stalin period, nor is it much of a rigorous analysis. Rather, it is a gesture towards understanding some of the key features of Stalinism, which is primarily defined by, but not limited to, the Stalin era itself (~1928-1953). The phenomenon includes not just the actions of Stalin but also those of figures such as Beria and Yezhov, and more importantly the institutions and practices characteristic of the period. The ‘Further Reading’ section at the end of this piece enumerates the most important sources from which I derived my understanding of Stalinism.

    Substitutionism

    A major hallmark of Stalinism, which continues to this day, is the uncritical accepting of State propaganda, and more broadly siding with the State against the workers, if it’s a state deemed “good,” either due to its ostensible socialism or its ostensible anti-imperialism (or mere anti-Americanism). But the basic defense of the existence of a state (whether it be the socialists defending the USSR or liberals defending the United States) does not have to entail the defense of every action taken by said state, nor does it have to entail the defense of the state against internal rebellion. For Victor Serge, the elevation of Marxism to State ideology undermined its critical character:

    All the same, I cannot help considering as a positive disaster the fact that a Marxist orthodoxy should, in a great country in the throes of social transformation, have taken over the apparatus of power. Whatever may be the scientific value of a doctrine, from the moment that it becomes governmental, interests of State will cease to allow it the possibility of impartial inquiry.6

    Thus, the basis was laid for a “Marxist” justification of Stalinism’s state violence. This ‘statism’ is tied with a warped view of class. In Stalinist, as in much traditional Marxist thought, “the proletariat” is defined as a coherent political category with its own interests, cohesion, and even psyche. We can see how the heroic belief in the proletariat as a revolutionary subject devolved into authoritarianism. If the proletariat is the vanguard of humanity, of progress, and the Party is the vanguard of the proletariat, then the Party’s ruling clique can justify the most heinous crimes as being “objectively” in the interests of humanity.

    This understanding of class often vacillates between basing itself on relations of production and on political outlook.7 Thus not only were the former bourgeoisie, expropriated kulaks, and their respective social circles politically suppressed, but so too were “objective agents” of the old ruling class, “counter-revolutionaries,” and “Trotskyites.” These dubious political categories were extended to eventually engulf the majority of the delegates to the 1934 Party Congress, 1,108 of whom were arrested and 848 shot during the Great Terror.8

    The interests of the class are defined by the Party Line, and thus the Party substitutes itself for the class, “acting out its deepest desires.”9 Once the Bolshevik Party was in power, the interests of the proletariat were defined by the interests of the State, and thus “the cruelest and most repressive forms of the primitive accumulation of capital [were] carried out against the empirical proletariat, in the name of a metaphysical proletariat.”10 This subtle substitutionism was even explicitly argued by Stalin himself when he spoke about how the Moscow Trials should be written about:

    …Stalin and the other leaders are not isolated individuals but the personification of all the victories of socialism in the USSR, the personification of collectivization, industrialization, and the blossoming of culture in the USSR, consequently, the personification of the efforts of workers, peasants, and the working intelligentsia for the defeat of capitalism and the triumph of socialism.11

    In other words, to disagree with Stalin is to betray the Party, and hence socialism and the proletariat. Stalin’s words send shivers down my spine.

    Productivism and Carceralism

    The repressive and statist aspects of Stalinism were only one side of the coin: the other was primitive accumulation, in a nakedly brutal form. To be absolutely clear, Soviet industrialization was not uniquely violent. One only has to consider European wars of conquest, the genocide of Indigenous Americans, slavery, and the never-ending death toll of capitalist modernity. But neither was it uniquely peaceful and painless. The collectivization campaign, driving millions of peasants from the land, was proletarianization on an unprecedented scale and pace (only to be surpassed later by post-Mao China). Laws against absenteeism, internal passports, colonial relations with nomadic peoples (notably Kazakhs and Roma), and a general regime of labor discipline and modernization marked the political economy of Stalinism, its own mirror image of “the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”12

    Perhaps this is one of the most important lessons of Stalinism: that certain institutions and economic imperatives command their own logic, relatively autonomous from political ideology or “class” (itself a fraught and culturally/historically contingent category). In this sense, there’s no “class character” to labor camps, industrialization, mass execution, secret police, and the like. No matter who is in charge, these institutions will likely operate on similar lines. I believe this is especially true of the economic necessities of industrialization, which by necessity squeeze the peasantry and discipline a laboring class, whether or not this process of primitive accumulation is led by the State or by market forces. This, to me, is a more compelling critique of Stalinism than the anti-revisionist accounts of socialist collapse: it is not the danger of a new or reconstituted bourgeoisie, but rather the institutions themselves and the dynamics they engender.

    Stalinism may be appealing because it appears to be a radical break from the neoliberal consensus, but in fact its mechanisms of population control, mass incarceration, and labor discipline were endemic features in its contemporary counterparts, both liberal and fascist. For example, concentration camps, a hallmark of Stalinist political repression, were first pioneered by the British in India and South Africa. Similarly today, camps in Xinjiang and El Paso are both manifestations of the policing and disciplining paradigms of modern global capitalism. We don’t have to accept the now discredited totalitarian paradigm to recognize the authoritarian and violent nature of Stalinism’s core political and legal institutions. The Great Terror (which claimed the lives of at least 600,000 people) was in many ways a unique historical event, but its carceral backdrop was not unlike those of other nation-states of capitalist modernity.

    The Question of Liberalism

    On a broader point, I think the legacy of 20th century state socialism proves that Marxism in fact never really squared the circle in terms of its relationship with political liberalism and democracy. Some argue that Marxism is a negation of political liberalism; others its culmination. I think it’s a bit of both. But one thing is clear, the profound strides in positive and material rights (housing, food, education, healthcare, etc.) made under state socialism were unfortunately not paired with an equal increase (or in some cases, even maintenance) of democratic rights in the tradition of the French Revolution’s liberalism and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It is too simplistic to denounce political liberalism as “bourgeois”, for it is readily apparent that workers themselves did not enjoy certain freedoms under Stalin. For example the right to an attorney and a fair trial was not awarded until Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign.13

    At stake here is the question of universal principle. Are we to organize to abolish the death penalty under capitalism only to reinstate it under a socialist regime?14 Stalinism answers this question by rejecting universal principles, making allowance for various mechanisms of violence as long as they serve the “class interests” of a mystified proletariat. However, I believe Marxists should hold onto at least some notion of universal principles. The ends do not necessarily justify the means: “Alright, I can see the broken eggs. Where’s this omelette of yours?”15 Not only do repressive measures such as torture and mass execution likely warp the psychology of their purveyors, but additionally, plenty of innocent workers, peasants, and revolutionaries got caught up in the dragnet of a carceral system ostensibly functioning on their behalf.

    Czechoslovak dissident Jiri Pelikan wrote in an open letter to Angela Davis, urging her to support Czechoslovak political prisoners:

    … [my Western friends] reply that of course it’s a disagreeable situation but that one mustn’t say so too openly so as not to “play into the hands of socialism’s enemies,” and that one must start from “a class position.” But what “class” can benefit if people are arrested without trial, if trade unions are enslaved, if all free discussion is suppressed, if socialist countries accuse each other of imperialism, betrayal, revisionism, and invade each other by turn?16

    Tragically, Angela Davis’s response was not sympathetic. According to the London Times, “a close friend of Angela Davis, who claimed that she spoke on her behalf, said that Angela Davis held the view that those who were jailed in Eastern Europe were trying to undermine their governments and that those who went into political exile were attacking their own countries and therefore undeserving of her support.”17 This sadly mirrors the logic used to vilify political dissidents in capitalist regimes. Even if one by-and-large supported the political systems of the Eastern Bloc, it’s difficult to imagine that support extending to such repressive measures.

    On “Necessity”

    If it is simplistic to dismiss democratic rights as bourgeois, is equally simplistic to apologize for Stalinism’s crimes and the limitations on democratic rights just because they were “historically necessary.” As Calvino said:

    Stalinism relied on necessity, things could not happen any other way from the way they happened, even though the face of that history had nothing pleasant about it. Only when I managed to understand that even inside the most iron necessity there is a point where choices are possible, and Stalin’s choices had been largely disastrous, did any justification of Stalinism become unthinkable.18 (emphasis original)

    When we investigate the specifics of the Stalin era, it becomes apparent that few if any of the worst excesses could be explained away as “necessities.” But the point of this essay is not to argue that Stalin’s crimes were indeed abhorrent and unnecessary. Only the most hardened apologists would deny as such; I used to be one of them, and one thing I believe is that they can only change their minds by their own accord. Lord knows no person, fact, or book could have changed my mind about Stalin when I was so dead set on defending his every action.

    While there are many lessons to learn from 20th century state socialism, positive and negative, a critical appraisal of our past is only possible by shedding the apologist mindset of modern Stalinism. My hope is that a critical distance from past and present State doctrines will allow us to reinvigorate Marxism’s spirit of “ruthless critique” and a robust commitment to intellectual honesty.

    Further Reading

    • Italo Calvino, Hermit in Paris
    • Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet
    • Arch Getty and Oleg G. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks
    • Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism
    • Sheila Fitzpatrick, Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931
    • Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times
    • Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalinism: New Directions
    • Russell Jacoby, The Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism
    • Russell Jacoby, “Stalin, Marxism-Leninism and the Left”
    • Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century
    • Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Soviet Marxism
    • Raphael Samuel, The Lost World of British Communism
    • Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary
    • Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed
    • Slavoj Zizek, “Stalinism”

    Notes

    1. Although WWP had Trotskyist origins, Marcyist ideology trends towards a certain Stalinist logic especially around international politics and “defending” anti-American regimes. My problem with Marcyism, initially, was precisely that it was not Stalinist enough. But none of what I discuss below is characteristic of Trotskyism as such.
    2. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire.
    3. See Adam Hunerven, “Spirit Breaking: Capitalism and Terror in Northwest China” in Chuang 2: Frontiers.
    4. ‘September 1939. Hitler and Stalin have just carved up Poland. At the border bridge of Brest-Litovsk, several hundred members of the KPD, refugees in the USSR subsequently arrested as “counter-revolutionaries”, are taken from Stalinist prisons and handed over to the Gestapo. Years later, one of them would explain the scars on her back — “GPU did it” — and her torn fingernails — “and that’s the Gestapo”. A fair account of the first half of this century.’  Gilles Dauvé, “When Insurrections Die,” Endnotes 1.
    5. Italo Calvino, “The Summer of ‘56” in Hermit in Paris 203.
    6. Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 441.
    7. The latter case was taken to its extreme with the Maoist concept of “two-line struggle” and the identification of individuals with classes based on their views.
    8. Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century  105.
    9. Raphael Samuel, “The Lost World of British Communism, Part III” New Left Review 57.
    10. Robert Kurz, “The German war economy and state socialism.”
    11. Stalin to Kaganovich and Molotov.
    12. Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, “Chapter 31: The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.”
    13. Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century.
    14. It is worth noting that the Paris Commune abolished the guillotine, that timeless symbol of Jacobin radicalism. See Crimethinc, “Against the Logic of the Guillotine.”
    15. Panait Istrati, quoted in Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 323.
    16. Jiri Pelikan, “An Open Letter to Angela Davis.”
    17. Ibid.
    18. Italo Calvino, “Was I a Stalinist Too?” in Hermit in Paris 195.

    Originally posted at The Left Wind.

  • The UK Election: A Car Crash on the Left Side of the Road

    The UK Election: A Car Crash on the Left Side of the Road

    It was probably no surprise that Joe Biden announced that the huge victory for Boris Johnson and the Conservatives and the mauling defeat of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s radical leadership was a warning to fellow Democrats to shun the leftism of Sanders and Warren and seek safety in the political center if they hoped to beat Trump in 2020. In fact, in this nasty slugfest between the now seriously right-wing Tory party and left social democratic Labour there was little space for centrists. Despite gathering in a slice of the remain vote, the high hopes of the Liberal Democrats collapsed, their leader lost her seat to the (social democratic) Scottish Nationalists, while all the “moderate” defectors from both main parties who ran as Lib Dems, the Independent Group for Change or as independents lost badly.

    Thirteen of these centrist candidates (2 Lib Dems, 4 Change, and 6 independents) lost seats to Corbyn’s allegedly ultra-left Labour Party. Another 25 loudly proclaimed moderates (10 Lib Dems, 1 Change, and 14 independents) lost their seats to the Tories or withdrew before the election. Nor were self-proclaimed Labour centrists, such as Blairite Phil Wilson in Tony Blair’s old mining town seat, spared defeat at the hands of the Tories. As lefty commentator Owen Jones wrote in the Guardian, “… there is still no sign that voters have a burning appetite for centrism in any form.”

    In terms of absolute losses, Labour’s decline of 2.6 million votes cost them 60 seats: 6 to the Scottish National Party (SNP), 6 to the Tories in Wales and 48 to the Tories in England, 45 of those in the old Labour heartlands of the heavily deindustrialized Midlands and North. According to YouGov’s exit poll, Labour retained 72% of its 2017 vote, with the net shift to the Conservatives amounting to 11%. Labour also lost an estimated 9% of its previous pro-EU remain voters to the Lib Dems. Some Labour votes also went to former UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s newly minted Brexit Party. These, however, are total percentages which don’t tell us where votes were won or lost. Labour’s losses to the Lib Dems was concentrated in those heavily middle class remain areas in the South of England where the Lib Dems have 6 of their 7 English seats and gained most of their 1.3 million votes. All of this would have had little or no effect on working class defections or votes in the formerly industrial Midlands and North. Labour’s lost votes that counted were mainly those in these two deindustrialized regions of England. More on this below.

    As Table II shows, the younger the voter, the more likely they were to vote Labour. Despite an upsurge in youth voter registration, however, the expected “youthquake” was more a tremor with turnout of new voters far less than expected. Indeed, a study at Brunel University showed that constituencies with a higher proportion of 18-24-year-olds had a lower turnout rate than those with fewer. Furthermore, the percentages of young people voting for Labour were lower this time than in the 2017 general election. The 18-24’s went 67% for Labour in 2017 compared to 57% this time, while 58% of the 25-34s voted Labour in 2017 compared to 55% in 2019. Voters 18 to 24 also voted at a higher rate than average for the Brexit Party.

    The big tectonic shift in demographic terms was that of class, as defined here by occupation in line with the British classification system. In 2017, 39% of skilled workers voted for Labour while the semi-and unskilled and pensioner group voted Labour by 46%, compared to 30-31% and 34-37% respectively this time as Table II shows. The inescapable conclusion is that it was working class voters who made the difference. The question is why?

    Analysis or blame game?

    In the debate now raging in and outside the Labour Party fingers have been pointed at two major sources of blame for the defeat: Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn. The media certainly helped demonized Jeremy and his ambitious Manifesto (party program). Corbyn’s opponents blame him, his politics, and to a lesser extent his radical Manifesto. Corbyn supporters counter that it was Brexit that led traditional Labour voters who voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum to turn to the Tories in 2019. Indeed, the correlation between those previously Labour electoral constituencies (districts) that voted for Brexit in 2016 and Tory in 2019 is too great to doubt that this was a major factor in the shift of Labour voters to Conservative. Boris Johnson’s misleading slogan of “Get Brexit Done” not only appealed to hard core Brexiteers, but to many of those “undecided voters” weary of three years of wrangling and indecision on what to do about the EU as well.

    The primary motivations for many of those who voted in favour of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum were informed by English nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, but in 2019 these were reinforced by the argument that a democratic decision had been made, the people had decided. Attempts to impose another referendum on EU membership were seen as undemocratic. Furthermore, the problem of holding on to Labour’s remainers (those who voted to stay in the EU in 2016) while abiding by the 2016 vote was a serious dilemma for the party as a whole. The choice Corbyn and the leadership made in 2019 to fudge the matter by promising to negotiate a “soft” exit deal with the EU, put it to a vote (the second referendum hated by Brexiteers), and then remain neutral on how to vote alienated both remainers and leavers. It also contributed to the impression that Corbyn was an indecisive leader in a time of crisis. Labour was damned if it did and damned if it didn’t, but ultimately double damned by doing neither. So, many of Labour’s remainers voted Lib Dem, while leavers voted Tory or to a lesser extent for the Brexit Party which in parts of the North and South Wales got more than 15% of the vote.

    The main criticism from Corbyn’s internal opponents wasn’t about the fudge on Brexit, however, but about Corbyn himself. The endless attacks on Corbyn from Labour centrists, magnified by both the right-wing and liberal media (Guardian and BBC included), helped convince many that Corbyn was, indeed, an ineffective leader. The evidence that Corbyn was disliked by many traditional Labour voters is strong. A poll of those who usually voted Labour but rejected it this time found that 37% blamed the leadership and 21% Brexit. Anecdotal remarks from many Labour campaigners also revealed a dislike of Corbyn among working class voters. For most such voters, of course, the only way they knew much about Jeremy other than that he was from London was through the media or from the Tories and Lib Dems who repeatedly said he was personally not fit for office and politically out of touch with moderate “hard working” England. As one Labour MP put it, “How can anyone like Jeremy when all they hear about him is bad.” The relentless campaign against Corbyn explains part of the difference between the 2017 election and this one. Labour did well in 2017 when Corbyn was relatively new and not yet thoroughly demonized, picking up both votes and seats and depriving the Conservatives of their majority. Such attacks as took place on Corbyn between his taking leadership in 2015 and the 2017 election were not enough to cost Labour seats. Yet they certainly accelerated in the last two years.

    That said, in 2019 Corbyn failed to handle a number of important issues or problems well. In strategic terms the (unconscious?) decision to take the Northern working class vote for granted was a disaster. Labour’s new, enthusiastic members and those in Momentum went after marginal seats and for the most part left MP’s in the Midlands and North to their own devises. As a result, 45 of the 48 seats Labour lost in England were in the North (29) or Midlands (16). The impression that there is a London/South England bias in the leadership whether accurate or not was reinforced by this practice. To make matters worse, Jeremy’s handling of the charges of antisemitism was poor. Despite the fact that those accusing Labour of failing to take antisemitism in the party seriously or even that Labour was allegedly “institutionally antisemitic” came back again and again, Jeremy seemed perpetually unprepared to answer direct questions about antisemitism in the party or what the party was doing about it. This despite the fact that the party was processing accusations, suspending and even expelling members. Nevertheless, so poor was the leadership’s handling of this that surveys showed that many people thought that a third or more of Labour Party members were accused of antisemitic remarks or attacks, when in fact it was fewer than one percent—a proportion bad enough to require a far more satisfactory response. How many of even these incidents of alleged antisemitism were actually criticisms of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians or of Zionism, rather than anti-Jewish statements was never publicly considered.

    Watching Jeremy answer tough questions on this and other matters in various TV interviews was agonizing. Corbyn supporter Owen Jones’ remark that the leadership “was often afflicted by a destructive bunker mentality” was also painfully on the mark. The presentation of the leadership’s radical program for change was haphazard and unsystematic giving the impression Labour was promising some new freebee each day in hopes of garnering votes instead of a worked-out plan for change—even though most of the individual proposals were popular. The Manifesto that finally presented the program was over a hundred pages long and also seemed more like a shopping list than a plan with the finances behind it in a separate document. As a result, the attacks on its credibility from Tories, the media, Lib Dems, etc stuck.

    In the final analysis, however, I think the most fundamental problem behind Labour’s loss of much of its traditional base lay in what Corbyn and the radical movement he inspired didn’t do over the past four years. Namely, the undoing of the previous weakening of Labour’s most basic local branch and constituency organizations, on the one hand, and the technocratic centralism of the party that was the legacy of Blairism, on the other. “Reform” of the Labour Party’s structure, its relationship with the affiliated unions, and the role of the membership has been an ever changing, often confusing process for decades. Tony Blair, in line with the “Third Way” of doing things, however, knew just what he wanted from his “reforms” in the 1990s: an efficient, professionalized, centralized party machine; diminished influence for the unions; and a large, but fragmented, individualized membership.

    Blair: From mass party to hollow shell

    There is no doubt that since the 1980s and the deindustrialization of much of industry in Scotland, the Midlands and North of England, the old working class culture, the informal political education provided by shop stewards and (some) lefty activists, along with the intense union organization of the pit villages, steel towns, and urban “engineering” (metal working) and shipbuilding communities of these areas that supported Labour for generations has been undermined even though union density remains much higher in the North than the rest of England. This led to a sharp decline in Labour Party membership in the 1980s and contributed to a long string of electoral defeats. Tony Blair’s attempt to make the Labour Party electable, “a party of government”, involved reviving a slumping membership on a large scale, while professionalizing the party’s central apparatus as well as introducing an allegedly “realistic” neoliberal program. Flooding the party with new members and increasing the role of individual voting in electing officers and other matters was meant to dilute the influence of the left and its local activists who Blair saw as an obstacle to dumping the party’s old socialist baggage and introducing his “Third Way” political and economic program.

    The model for party growth was his Sedgefield constituency in Durham’s former coal mining country which grew to 2,000 members by 1997. The national party did, indeed, grow from a little over 300,000 in 1994 to just over 400,000 in 1997, the year Blair became Prime Minister. But the influx of thousands of individual members was not the same thing as building a stronger organized base or regular engagement in community and class issues. After the initial growth the result was, as one study put it, “a significant decline in activism both in long-term members who were less participative than they had been and the new members who were less engaged in party activities than the more established participants.” The strategy produced a large, but passive and as it turned out temporary membership.

    By the time Blair was replaced as party leader by Gordon Brown in 2007 the party was down to 176,891 members. Many had simply let their dues lapse, something that is much less likely to happen when there is more intense organization. No doubt his policies were behind much of this decline. The “parachuting” in of middle class candidates by Blair’s central apparatus also aliened local members. The number of constituencies with more than 500 members dropped from 132 in 1993 to 54 in 2010. The average size of a party constituency declined from 591 in 1997 to 279 in 2010. Significantly, by 2010 Blair’s Sedgefield “model” constituency party had lost 80% of its 1997 membership and the local Labour club had closed. Similarly, Gordon Brown’s Dunfermline constituency, the model of New Labour growth in Scotland, which initially tripled its membership had lost 70% of its members over this period. Presumably, other constituencies in the North and Scotland followed a similar course. This obviously contributed to the weakness that would underlie the future defeats in 2010 and 2015. What this demonstrates is that simple growth in numbers as desirable as that may be does not equate to strong, well-organized local or national party organization.

    Since 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn ran for and won party leadership, Labour Party membership has soared from about 200,000 in 2014 to a high of 564,442 in December 2017. Furthermore, despite the efforts of centrist MPs, Corbyn has been elected party leader twice indicating popularity among party members for himself and the sharp left turn he proposed. Yet, evidence is strong that once again solid organization at the base did not follow numerical growth or leadership popularity. Constituency membership figures are no longer published, but it is significant that according to a survey by Queen Mary University’s party members project, 64% of those who joined between 2014 and 2017 did so via the national party rather than through a local branch or constituency organization and did so mostly at their personal initiative. Furthermore, 53% of those surveyed joined as a result of “observation of political news in the national media” rather than any efforts by the party. Contrary to some impressions, only 5% joined due to party communications on social media. Clearly growth was not a consequence of conscious, let alone systematic organizing efforts on the part of the party or its leadership.

    Active participation has also been low. A 2019 report by the House of Commons Library published before the election that year found that only 23% of Labour Party members had even attended “a party meeting” (emphasis added) and only 28% had “delivered party or candidate leaflets in an election”. These may not sound so low to Americans where parties have no members and, hence, no tradition of regular participation, but they were the lowest rates of actual participation of any political party in the UK! None of this indicates organized grassroots recruitment, integration or likely retention under Corbyn’s leadership. To be sure, large numbers of new members and Momentum’s activists played an important role in the 2017 and 2019 general elections, but such relatively brief mobilizations are not the same things as participatory organization. And, indeed, by late 2019 before the election party membership had fallen by nearly 80,000 members since 2017.

    There are also indications that much of the new membership comes from middle class backgrounds in the South of England. Indeed, the proportion of party members from London and the South of England has risen from 39% in 1990 to 45% in 2010 and 46% by 2017 when Labour hit its highest membership level since the 1950s. In class terms, only 23% of members are from the social categories representing Blue Collar workers of all skill levels, the unemployed, those on “welfare”, and pensioners. Despite the decline of the Blue Collar working class, these groups still represent 45-47% of the UK population: i.e., about twice their representation in the Labour Party. These are precisely the groups that compose much of the so-called “left behind” working class in the North and Midlands that Labour lost in 2019.

    This was not inevitable. The Tories had been gradually gaining both votes and seats at Labour’s expense in the North and Midlands for the last couple of elections. The party leadership ignored the signs of votes lost to the Tories in 2017 when despite doing well overall, significant shifts in votes from Labour to Conservatives occurred in about four dozen constituencies that Labour held in that year. Most of these were in the North or Midlands in many places where Labour would lose in 2019. This is all the more shocking as a pamphlet entitled “Northern Discomfort” was submitted well before the election to the leadership by members of Corbyn’s own “shadow cabinet” which warned that some 50 northern seats were in danger. According to one of the authors, the pamphlet was “unwelcome and suppressed” by the leadership. (This pamphlet is not to be confused with a post-election Blairite pamphlet of the same title which blames the defeat entirely on Jeremy Corbyn.)

    That much of the Midlands and the North did not receive aid or reinforcements during the 2019 election from the party’s center or its new troops, who were busy storming marginal seats rather than old “safe” Labour seats, can be seen in the complaint of an MP who lost her Greater Manchester area seat. She told the Guardian “I feel that the party was complacent about my seat. Most mornings I would have a team of half a dozen fantastic local activists. In the afternoon, I’d get two or three people and then a few more in the evening…I was eventually sent an organizer for the last few days, but it was too late.” Obviously, such a small cadre of activists is not enough to deal with a constituency that had 80,000 voters. Another MP who lost her northern seat also complained to the Guardian of a lack of support from Labour HQ and there were certainly others who felt the same.

    The weakness of local organization in many of the lost constituencies shows up in the differences in regional voter turnout with the average in the South at 70% while that in the North and Midlands averaged 65%, a 5-point spread. It is further suggested by the below average turnout in over half of those constituencies lost in England in 2019. Of the 48 English constituencies Labour lost, 26 had turnout rates at least two percentage points below the average of 67.4% for England. This may sound respectable to many in the US where turnout is lower, but in Britain turnout in general elections ran above 70% from the mid-1960s through 1997 and was 69% in 2017. Some English constituencies fell near or even below 60%, while a few were below 50% in 2019.Virtually all of these were in the Midlands or North. Many of these constituencies also had a low turnout in 2017 indicating that the problem is not new or simply a result of displeasure with the party’s radical program, its leader, or even its confusing Brexit position.

    Putting aside a scandal of Trumpian proportions or other unforeseeable catastrophic events the Tories will rule for five years with a solid majority. Labour in parliament can do little to stop their rampage. Corbyn will be replaced as leader, but the left may hold on to the leadership in what is already a nasty contest for a post-Corbyn party leadership. If that is the case, action on building or rebuilding a left Labour Party from the ground up needs to be a priority—even to stem the tide of slumping membership. That will have to be done in the streets and workplaces around issues that matter to local people in working class areas as well as the big issues like living standards, inequality, the NHS, climate change, etc. which, tragically, played too small a role in the general election despite Corbyn’s best efforts. On top of all of this, Labour will increasingly face a new type of “foreign” policy challenge as the United Kingdom moves past devolution toward disintegration.

    Four elections and a funeral

    The story above is mostly one about England rather than the UK. The 2019 British election was really four elections: one for each UK nation with distinct characteristics. The big Labour meltdown this time was largely an English affair. Of the total of 60 seats lost by Labour 48 were in England. 345 of the Tories’ 365 seats are in England. Wales saw Labour lose six seats but remain the dominant party in that small nation with 22 of its 40 seats at the Westminster parliament. On the other hand, Labour had been all but wiped out in Scotland in 2015 when it lost 40 of its 41 parliamentary seats. It regained 6 in 2017, but lost those in 2019, retaining only one seat in Scotland—a virtual funeral for Labour “north of the border” in what was once a Labour stronghold. The Labour Party as such never had a presence in Northern Ireland, which has its own distinct party system.

    In Scotland and Northern Ireland social democratic leaning nationalist parties won gains. In Scotland the Scottish National Party (SNP) took 48 of that country’s 59 seats in Westminster, setting it on course for another independence referendum. In Northern Ireland, the two Irish nationalist parties, Sinn Fein with seven seats and the Social Democratic and Labour Party with two composed a majority of seats for the first time, while the “cross-community” Alliance Party took its first seat. The right-wing unionist (British nationalist) Democratic Unionists (DUP) were down to seven having lost two seats and the Ulster Unionists (UUP) with none were out of the picture This political shift has enormous implications for the future of Northern Ireland as those favoring union with Great Britain lose ground to those seeking a united Ireland.

    Brexit played a role in these elections by convincing more voters that the English-dominated parties and the Westminster parliament really didn’t take their interests or concerns at all seriously. This increased nationalist sentiment toward a break with the United Kingdom. In Scotland, which had voted by 62% to remain in the EU, the imposition of Brexit by Westminster and the Tories is seen as defying the will of the Scottish people and has renewed the demand for another independence referendum. In the case of Northern Ireland, the Tories’ agreed to a border in the Irish Sea between the island of Ireland and the rest of Britain as part of the Brexit agreement with the EU. This, along with changing demographics contributed to a nationalist political majority and, for the first time ever, a slight majority (51%) in some opinion polls for uniting with the Republic of Ireland.

    Although Corbyn and Labour’s “shadow chancellor” John McDonnell personally favour a united Ireland and may be sympathetic to Scottish independence on principle, the Labour Party is officially committed to preserving the “union” of the four nations of the United Kingdom. The Tories under Johnson have made it clear they will refuse Scotland a legal referendum. Just what the SNP, on the one hand, and Labour in England and Wales under a new leadership (left or otherwise), on the other, will do about this while they are also trying to resist a new era of privatization, deregulation, a “hostile environment” toward immigrants, and unequal trade with the United States is hard to imagine.

    What seems clear, however, is that if the left is to keep Labour on a radical course, and at the same time make it viable in electoral terms both locally and in a future general election, the activists will need to do more than elect a new leader, fill up a left-leaning “shadow cabinet”, pump up the numbers, and take comfort in their written program. It also seems clear that dependence on one person, “The Leader”, is always a mistake, one that tends to go with electoralism and that is too frequently repeated; be it a Jeremy, a Bernie, or anyone else.

    To save what was a promising movement Labour must win back and win anew the working class base its name bespeaks. This includes not only those “left behind” in the Midlands, North and elsewhere, but those in newer working class occupations around the country who are sinking into poverty and need help unionizing, as well as those in-and-out-of-work. The election season activists need to become perennial participants in branches, constituencies, unions, and workplaces who go beyond electoral mode to on-going grassroots organization, support for union struggles, and mass direct action. If, that is, the project Jeremy Corbyn almost inadvertently launched in 2015 and thousands picked up is to outlive his formal leadership.

    The if signifies the reality that the precedents for transforming a social democratic party into a radical, not to say revolutionary, class-based movement are not encouraging. The demands of electoralism, further distorted by the increasing digitalization of political strategy and outreach and the built-in careerism of elected politicians, do not encourage grassroots democracy or transformational politics. Nor will the party’s center and right sit still in the face of the recent defeat or cease to believe that the electoral pot of gold lies not at the end of the rainbow, but at its center.

    Still, few past efforts at changing the direction of Labour in the last few decades have seen the type or size of the influx that the party saw between 2015 and 2017. It would be a tragedy to lose the momentum (small “m”) or see this upsurge squandered either in continued mass exit or simply internal squabbling. Although this movement has taken an electoral form initially, it is, after all, part of the worldwide social and political upheaval now in progress. There are workers’ struggles to be supported, the NHS to be defended, and the planet to be saved. As left journalist Gary Younge put it mildly in the Guardian, “In a moment when we can expect a significant attack on living standards, workers’ rights, environmental protection and minorities, the left might focus more on local and national [issue] campaigns than holding positions and passing resolutions.”

  • Beyond Impeachment: Challenges Facing the U.S. Left in 2020

    Beyond Impeachment: Challenges Facing the U.S. Left in 2020

    So, Trump has finally been impeached—or at least sort of. The House voted two articles of impeachment—one for abuse of power for withholding military aid to Ukraine unless it provided Trump with dirt on Joe Biden, the other for trying to undermine Congress’s investigation (it did not however charge Trump with the much more serious crime of obstruction of justice). However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has deferred for now sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate because of a dispute with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the terms and procedures of the trial to be held there. That suits McConnell and the Republicans just fine, since they don’t want a trial in the first place—even though it is perfectly clear that if one is held they will acquit him on all counts.

    Hence, as of this moment (December 22) Trump hasn’t actually been impeached and won’t be until the Senate trial is held. It is not clear what leverage Pelosi and the Democrats have at this point to extract concessions from Senate Republicans over the rules and procedures, but this much is clear: the rather rushed and narrowly-focused impeachment process has not substantially moved the needle one inch in terms of undermining Trump’s hold on power.

    This is not to say Trump doesn’t deserve to be impeached for flagrantly trying to pressure a foreign country to interfere in a U.S. election and lying through his teeth through the whole process. Yet it’s also the case that he should have been impeached long before his call to the President of Ukraine for far much more egregious crimes.

    What about his disastrous unilateral immigration policies, which include tearing children from their arms of their parents—a policy that has led to at least a dozen deaths and produced trauma in many children that may take decades to mend? When Obama used an executive order to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, many Republicans immediately began to talk of impeaching him for “violating the Constitution.” But when a small but important number of left-wing Democrats in the House raised the specter of impeachment over Trump’s actions on immigration, Pelosi waved them off as irrelevant.

    And what about his infamous phone call with another President, this one Erdogan of Turkey, in which Trump gave him the green light to attack the Kurds of northern Syria with the clear intent of destroying the zones of liberation in and around Rojava, which had provided the best hope for a democratic, feminist, and socialist alternative in the Middle East? Thousands have died because his actions (in no doubt at least in part inspired by his own business interests in Turkey) but somehow that didn’t make the articles of impeachment either.

    One can of course list a whole litany of crimes committed by this racist demagogue, not least of them appointing as Attorney General William Barr, who clearly cares nothing about the rule of law but serves exclusively as Trump’s private attorney on all matters. Trump used to boast that he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue and still retain his supporters; it’s now gotten to the point that the Attorney General of the U.S. would officially sanction it!

    When it comes to the political impact of the impeachment process one cannot blame Pelosi and the centrist Democratic Party leadership for the fact that the bulk of Trump’s backers continue to support him. The vast majority of that ilk would support him whatever the case because they favor his decrepit policies. The Republican Party today is less a party than a cult—a cult centered on egotistical self-aggrandizement run amok. For a large section of bourgeois society, there is nothing to believe in any more other than grabbing as much as you can at the expense of those less privileged than yourself—even if it means destroying society in the process.

    The more pertinent issue is whether the impeachment process as conducted by the House Democrats has done anything to mobilize the majority of people in this country who oppose Trump and want to see him gone? There is little evidence that it has. If anything—and especially thanks to the recent British elections—there is a growing sense of despair that he may be headed to re-election.

    If you face a powerful and serious enemy, you’ve got to fight him with all the political ammunition at your disposal. Narrowing the terms of impeachment to two items in a series of hearings (initially closed to the public at that!) and which lasted barely a month hardly counts for that.

    Moreover, that the effort to undermine Joe Biden spurred the Democratic establishment to impeachment makes it clear that the gravest affront in their eyes is to come after one of their own. Would they have tried to impeach Trump if he were recorded trying to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders? It’s hard to imagine that they would, since the emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016 purportedly obtained by the Russians showed that the DNC and Hillary Clinton conspired, in ways bordering on illegality, to deny Sanders the nomination.

    Despite the mess that the House Democrats may have made of things, this is no time to despair, withdraw from politics, or presume that denying Trump a second term doesn’t really matter. It does matter. Political democracy is under attack around the world today, from Iran and Turkey to China, from Poland to Russia, from Brazil and Bolivia to India. Trump is just the vile American expression of a global phenomenon. If this effort to undermine and destroy political democracy succeeds, the door will be closed to even discussing the path to a new, non-capitalist future, let alone actualizing one. Trump will remain in power through 2020, regardless of the impeachment process; our job is to ensure he remains there no longer.

    Originally posted at The International Marxist-Humanist.

  • Mataron a Frank Ordoñez

    Mataron a Frank Ordoñez

    [This article also appears in English here. Este artículo también se encuentra en inglés aquí.]

    El jueves 5 de diciembre de 2019, Frank Ordoñez, de 27 años de edad, un chofer de UPS y padre de dos hijas, fue matado en un tiroteo entre la policía y dos sospechosos que huían de la escena de un robo. Ordoñez fue tomado como rehén mientras le cubría la ruta a otro conductor que estaba enfermo cuando el camión que conducía fue secuestrado. Ambos sospechosos, Ordoñez, y un transeúnte, Rick Cutshaw, de 70 años de edad, un representante sindical con OPEIU Local 100, fueron asesinados en la balacera en una intersección llena de gente en Miramar, Florida.

    En este momento, no se ha determinado oficialmente si las balas que acabaron con la vida de Ordoñez fueron disparadas por la policía o por los secuestradores, aunque las versiones de los testigos coinciden en que la policía le disparo centenares de veces al vehículo mientras peatones y otros vehículos estaban presentes; la Asociación Benevolente de la Policía de Broward confirmo que por lo menos 18 agentes de policía le dispararon al vehículo. Steadman Stahl, presidente de la Asociación Benevolente de la Policía de Sur de la Florida, defendió las acciones de la policía: “Si nos disparas, vamos a enfrentarte. Vamos a para la amenaza.” 

    La familia de Ordoñez ha sido clara en que culpa a la policía por la muerte de Frank. Genny Merino, la hermana de Ordoñez, dijo en Twitter: “Hoy perdí mi hermano por la puta negligencia y estupidez de la policía. En vez de negociar en una situación de toma de rehenes simplemente le dispararon a todo el mundo.” El padrastro de Ordoñez, Joe Merino agregó, “Esto fue como el viejo Oeste…Estoy seguro de que si el rehén hubiera sido alguien como un hijo del alcalde hoy estaría vivo.” Luz Apolinario, la madre de Ordoñez, una inmigrante de Ecuador, dijo, “No puedo creer que mataron a mi hijo. Yo vine a este país a salir para adelante no para que me maten a mi hijo.”

    Al comentar sobre la muerte de su empleado mientras trabajaba, UPS le dio las gracias a la policía, “Apreciamos el servicio de las fuerzas del orden y cooperaremos con las autoridades mientras continúan la investigación” UPS tiene vínculos estrechos con departamentos de policía en todo el país; la compañía contrata a muchos agentes de policía en su tiempo libre y a antiguos agentes del FBI en su departamento de “Prevención de Perdidas.”

    Los actos de solidaridad por parte de los compañeros de trabajo de Ordoñez han sido poderosos. Compañeros de trabajo y demás miembros de la sección 769 del sindicato de los Teamsters cubrieron el carro de Frank, todavía estacionado en el lote de UPS después de su muerte, con fotos, cartas, y flores en su memoria. Cientos de Teamsters, choferes de entrega de paquetes, y miembros de la comunidad fueron al funeral a presentar sus últimos respetos. La pagina de GoFundMe de la familia para apoyar a la familia de Frank, pagar el entierro y contratar a un abogado recaudó mas de diez veces su meta dentro de pocos días de su lanzamiento.

    Miles de choferes de UPS después organizaron un momento de silencio para honrar la vida de Frank Ordoñez el 10 de diciembre a las 5pm. Fueron acompañados por trabajadores de UPS en el Reino Unido como también por demostraciones de solidaridad por parte de choferes de FedEx y otras compañías de entrega de paquetes. Estos actos de solidaridad son normalmente reservados para huelgas u otras acciones en el trabajo. UPS, al recibir criticas por sus declaraciones iniciales y al darse cuenta de que no podían impedirlo, reconocieron y transmitieron el breve paro de trabajo. El apoyo generalizado y los actos conmovedores en honor a Frank Ordoñez revelan la profundidad del dolor y la identificación con las condiciones de trabajo para choferes de entrega de paquetes a través de los Estados Unidos. Cada día en las calles de EE.UU. hay 60,000 vehículos de UPS, un numero equivalente de FedEx, un creciente numero de Amazon, y muchos mas del venerable correo postal USPS.

    Mientras muchas secciones de los Teamsters han emitido declaraciones de apoyo y hecho esfuerzos para recaudar fondos para la familia de Ordoñez, la respuesta de la Hermandad Internacional de los Teamsters ha sido limitada. El Presidente General de los Teamsters James P. Hoffa difundió un breve mensaje: “Los pensamientos y las oraciones de los 1,4 millones de miembros del Sindicato de los Teamsters están con la familia del Hermano Ordoñez, sus amigos, colegas, y compañeros del Local 769.” Esta apagada declaración refleja la que fue emitida después del asesinato de Philando Castile, quien también fue un Teamster del Local 320, y fue matado por la policía en Minneapolis. Los Teamsters, como muchos otros sindicatos, representan decenas de miles de policías, ayudantes de alguaciles, empleados de las cortes, oficiales que supervisan a presos con libertad condicional, y guardias de prisiones a través del estado carcelario, y tienen un fondo para la defensa legal de los policías.

    La trágica muerte del chofer de UPS Frank Ordoñez también recalca los riesgos que los trabajadores de entrega de paquetes corren a diario. Aunque los secuestros y los tiroteos pueden ser raros, los robos, asaltos, amenazas, acoso sexual, y riñas de tránsito son comunes. Un chofer de UPS en Ohio recibió un impacto de bala en octubre, y varios robos de camiones de UPS ocurrieron en California en los primeros días de diciembre. En general, los conductores de comercio y de entrega de paquetes son quienes sufren las tasas de homicidio en el trabajo mas altas en los EE.UU.

    A estos riesgos hay que sumarle las realidades para las y los trabajadores de UPS de presión intensa de productividad, vigilancia constante, la falta de respeto por parte de los jefes y un racismo sistémico. El asegurar el bienestar físico de los trabajadores en UPS, por parte de la gerencia, es reducido a entregar agua y bananos durante los meses de calor en el año y echarle la culpa a los trabajadores cuando se lesionan. A la vez que lamentamos la muerte del Hermano Ordoñez es también un momento para preguntar que han estado (o no) haciendo los patrones de UPS para proteger a los choferes de la violencia cuando están afuera trabajando sus rutas.

    Si el pasado es un indicio, muy pocos policías van a ser juzgados y hechos responsables por la masacre que ocurrió. La única justicia para Frank Ordoñez y Rick Cutshaw será la justicia que ganen la familia, la comunidad y los compañeros de trabajo. UPS se sintió obligado a retirar lo dicho inicialmente y a permitir que se hiciera una pausa en la jornada de trabajo no solo por la furia publica, sino porque los Teamsters de UPS se organizaron ellos mismos y no le pidieron permiso a la compañía – enfrentados con esta movilización, UPS tuvo que obeceder. La increíble resonancia de la muerte de Frank entre los trabajadores de entrega de paquetes ilumina el deseo que existe para luchar contra sentirse uno como desechable, en el trabajo y en la calle. Las y los trabajadores están dirigiéndose a sus sindicatos para direcciones sobre como defenderse de abuso por parte de los empleadores, acelerones en el trabajo, racismo, y, si, la violencia de la policía – si va a haber una revitalización del movimiento laboral, los sindicatos van a tener que ofrecer mas que condolencias y apoyar las luchas de sus miembros en cualquier forma que tomen.

    Por favor contribuyas a la pagina de GoFundMe de la familia Ordoñez y al fondo de la seccional 769 de los Teamsters para los sobrevivientes de la familia de Frank Ordoñez; escribe “For the family of Frank Ordonez” en el cheque:

    Envíalo por correo postal a:

    Teamsters Local 769

    C/O The Ordonez Family

    12365 West Dixie Hwy

    North Miami, FL 33161

  • A Juarez Refugee Christmas

    A Juarez Refugee Christmas

    As temperatures dip near or below freezing, scores of Mexican refugees huddle in their makeshift tents of layered plastic sheeting at the foot of the Santa Fe Bridge that connects Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, with El Paso, Texas. Many small children form part of the group. No colorfully wrapped packages wait below a Christmas tree. No heart warming lyrics from mariachi singers enliven the site, though a small figurine of the Virgin of Guadalupe watches over the people who wait and wait and wait for their chance to argue a case for political asylum in the United States.

    Some of the asylum seekers report a presence at the bridge of two months, and like others in their predicament before them recite a litany of aggressions and atrocities that expelled them from their homes: murders of relatives, gang extortion and the forcible recruitment of the young, teenagers, into the criminal underworld, or as many contend, the real government where the line between officials and outlaws melds into one obscure if powerful and suffocating structure.

    “We are fleeing delinquency,” they exclaim almost in unison.

    Many former residents of Guerrero and Michoacan, states long embroiled in narco-violence, constitute the group encamped along a narrow side street. For the southerners from warmer climes, the borderland’s deep December chill presents a real challenge. El Diario de Juarez reported that the temperature plummeted to 25 degrees Fahrenheit on December 18.

    Like their recent predecessors, the campers complain of lack of support from the Mexican government. No portable bathrooms, such the ones installed at a similar encampment outside another international bridge a few miles down the road, service the site; two men say they must pay five pesos to access the bathrooms on the Mexican portion of the Santa Fe Bridge and 50 pesos to take a shower in nearby hotels.

    Food and clothing, however, are provided by a voluntary outpouring of Good Samaritans from Juarez, El Paso and other parts of the United States, especially from Christian churches. “Really, the local people have behaved beautifully,” an asylum seeker says. As the man talks, smiling folks swoop through the camp, delivering fresh burritos. If it weren’t for the civil society solidarity, hunger would prevail, he says.

    In contravention of U.S. asylum law, two men say they were prevented from entering El Paso on multiple occasions, according to one man’s words, about “30 times” by CBP guards posted on the Santa Fe Bridge who argue there is no room to accommodate them at the moment.

    Instead, they are part of a “metering” system in which families and individuals are called in small groups by CBP to come over and make their initial asylum claim. According to the Santa Fe Bridge group’s spokesperson, 67 families and 250 persons are currently on their list to cross.

    A man who claims two months at the bridge says nobody was allowed into this country the day of interview, one family was permitted in the day before and not a single soul two days prior.

    Many people who were previously at the encampment gave up and returned home, he adds. A group of women complain that children, including toddlers, who did make it across were asked inappropriate questions for their age by U.S. immigration authorities about violence.

    In recent days, about 50 people from the Santa Fe Bridge encampment who were earlier permitted to enter the U.S. were deported back to Juarez, according to a pair of men. The asylum hopefuls report that some members of their group who were admitted into the U.S. wound up with family members, while others were held in immigrant detention centers in El Paso and New Mexico- sometimes for weeks at a time.

    Dashing along the line of rudimentary tents, a young man says he was released from a New Mexico detention center after a judge decided he had no “credible fear” and agreeing to a voluntary departure instead of appealing the case. For now, he’s waiting for his brother to be released from immigrant detention. What will the siblings do?  “We don’t have family here,” the rejected asylum seeker says.” They’re all over (in the U.S.). My brother and I will return alone.” The U.S. officials have given him no real option, he says, even though the cartels pose a danger in the particular neck of the woods he fled.

    He makes a prediction based on his experience with the U.S. asylum process: Many more deportees are going to trod through the streets of Juarez soon. And he gives the new deportees a moniker: “No Credible Fears.”

    As pointed out by the Texas Tribune’s Julian Aguilar in a recent article, the sending of migrants back to Mexico stands in contrast to the Trump administration’s travel warnings to U.S. citizens about Mexico. An updated State Department travel advisory dated December 17, warns U.S. visitors to not visit either Guerrero or Michoacan, places from which many of the refugees stranded in Juarez hail. Similar warnings stand for Tamaulipas, Colima and Sinaloa.

    Added to this contradiction can be the White House’s insistence on building a border wall as well as the President’s contemplation of designating the cartels as terrorist groups. In other words, the same country is not safe for U.S. citizens but safe for Mexican citizens, according to the varied pronunciations of federal officials.

    At a December 17 meeting in Juarez, Mexican municipal, state and federal officials along with unnamed migrant advocates discussed consolidating the interview wait lists from the three international bridges in the city where refugees are camped out. In a press release, Rogelio Pinal, chief of Juarez’s municipal human rights department, was quoted as saying that children’s exposure to the cold and health conditions was likewise considered by the participants.

    According to Pinal, the number of people at the camps has dropped to 650 individuals. Other accounts report that some Mexican asylum seekers are not camped out at the bridges because they have found lodging with relatives or friends or at hotels if they can afford the rent.

    Separately, El Diario cited a senior Chihuahua state migrant official December 18 as stating that time has run out for the campers at the bridges and authorities would place the asylum seekers in migrant shelters. “They can’t be (there) any more, for the safety of the children,” Enrique Valenzuela of the Coespo state migrant agency was quoted.

    Until now, many refugees at the Santa Fe Bridge have opposed to moving to the migrant shelters because of their distance from the international bridges and due to fears of losing a place on the waiting lists.

    A fellow who’s says he’s left everything behind-job, property and home-and waited patiently for his turn at an asylum claims he will weather the bitter winter. He vows not to agree to voluntary departure, struggle through the entire legal process and endure detention if that is what it takes.

    “We are looking for protection, not to live the good life as they say,” the man insists. “The American Dream doesn’t exist.” New people are still trickling into the refugee camp, but at far lower numbers than in recent months, he reports. But in his estimation, that situation could change after the winter passes and more people undertake a risky asylum odyssey.

  • On Student Peer-to-Peer Economic Power

    On Student Peer-to-Peer Economic Power

    You can’t get the right answers if you don’t ask the right questions.

    “What are the jobs of the future?” is the wrong question to ask about both work and education. It presumes a capitalist class determining the structure of employment and therefore the structure of schools.

    The right question is: “How will communities organize themselves to meet their needs?”

    A democratic system of education should never accept the neoliberal economy as a given. Instead, we should understand how a new economy, a new politics, and a new educational system must all be created together.

    Emerging out of Ella Baker’s work in the 1960s with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Algebra Project is exploring this nexus of economics, politics, and education. In Baltimore alone, Algebra Project students have earned more than $4 million over the last decade by sharing mathematical and organizing skills with their peers. Their local organization is a youth-run, democratically governed collective that has inserted itself into political questions at the local, state and national levels while advancing the participants’ education—both inside and outside of school. (See, for example, The Nation’s 2012 article, “Baltimore Algebra Project Stops Youth Detention Center.”)

    Another Algebra Project affiliate, The Young People’s Project (TYPP), has sites in many states where young people have earned millions more dollars in a cascade of near-peer relationships. College students teach math and coding to high school students, who run number theory games with middle and elementary school students. The National Science Foundation has awarded TYPP extensive grants to try to understand better how this structure helps construct mathematical identities.

    We should understand these initiatives and others like them as much more than a “program” supplementing existing educational structures. Paying young people to share knowledge and skills with peers is an organizing strategy to challenge the distribution of economic and political power. In fact, this strategy could be key to the long-term success of the new radical teacher movements and to bottom-up, community-based political insurgencies.

    Millions of oppressed young people in the United States and elsewhere have already rejected schooling as a false promise. Their power is greatly underestimated. Even unorganized they interrupt the educational authorities at every turn. They have made sure that every technocratic reform for fifty years has failed miserably. Those reforms would work if young people just did what they were told. But they don’t. They refuse to learn what they are “taught,” and instead they learn what they want—which is a great deal, but it doesn’t show up on the schools’ tests.

    Young people under oppression interrupt the educational authorities because they have correctly analyzed the economics and the politics of neoliberalism and racial caste. There’s no room for the poor, except as disposable, part-time, seasonal, low-wage labor at best. In the Algebra Project, we label what the schools offer now as “sharecropper education.” Sharecroppers were only allowed as much education as they needed to do the work allotted to them—planting and harvesting crops owned by someone else on land that wasn’t theirs. Millions of public-school students today also receive only as much education as they need to do the work allotted to this generation: sweeping malls, cleaning hotels, working cash registers, patrolling whiter spaces as security guards. Six years after graduation, the median annual earnings of former Baltimore City high school students is $15,000. Those students have been “prepared” for $15,000 a year jobs. The official line is that they’re entitled to a “world-class” education, but the masters won’t invest in what that takes. They won’t invest because they only need oppressed poor to perform low-skill work, so why educate for better? Most young people see through the ruse by about the sixth grade.

    The Algebra Project, The Young People’s Project and similar organizations create economically viable structures parallel to schools where young people from schools of poverty are startled to find (1) that they can learn, (2) that they can organize for power, (3) that money isn’t only given by capitalists to wage-earners like food to dogs, but can be generated and shared by collectives through work that is democratically determined. The experience of participating in such an organization creates radical consciousness and leads to new possibilities of many kinds.

    Changing the structure of education in poor communities to accommodate paid peer-to-peer knowledge work will also change economic and political structures. Throw out the 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. babysitting structure. Picture this instead: A group of friends starts their day going to a local rec center for an exercise class taught by paid peers, cooling down afterwards at a student-run snack bar/teen-health hub that offers nutritious food, health information, referrals for students with worries, and free condoms. They then go to their own jobs at a nearby elementary school where they do math with fifth graders. Their specialty, for example, might be geometric art, showing the amazing but relatively simple forms that can be constructed with a ruler and compass, or with dynamic software on a computer or phone. Their fifth graders eventually share with parents how they make circles inscribed in triangles by finding the intersection of angle bisectors. The high schoolers then make their way to their own high school math class, where, in addition to a skilled teacher, older or same-age peers help them learn new ways to explore circles and triangles at a more advanced level, using ideas from trigonometry, for example. In the afternoon, one of the friends attends play rehearsal, run by paid peers, where she is developing a role in an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, while another friend goes off to work on an oral history project with some paid youth researchers. A third member of this group goes to a scheduled stint at a worksite, learning from a peer how to do electrical wiring in a house that is getting renovated, supervised by a licensed electrician from the community. Another student, a strong athlete, ends the afternoon in a varsity practice, and another, who loves basketball but isn’t very good at it, plays in a youth-run intramural league. In the evening the friends watch a live-streamed political poetry slam managed for pay by some other young people at a cultural center downtown.

    The academic and economic benefits of such a structure are immediately obvious. No one doubts, and all available research confirms, that young people like to learn from other young people. They also like to teach each other. In fact, they exchange knowledge all the time outside the competitive confines of modern schooling: transportation routes, dances, gaming strategies, relationship networks, apps, song lyrics, fashion. Many schools do dabble in peer or near-peer tutoring, but very few think much beyond a tutoring relationship and almost none include wages in the structure.

    For students in poor communities, the wages are crucial. Pressure mounts on adolescents to bring home cash as their needs begin to expand. They eat more, take up more space, care more about how they look, stay more connected to their peer group, travel further afield, and develop more interests than they did when they were small. All those things cost money. Teenagers can bring home cash. They have most of the capacities of adults. But our current political economy is structured to keep adolescents economically inactive—except for menial or underground labor.

    When democratic practices are added to peer-to-peer knowledge structures, possibilities expand even further. Students learn that they don’t have to defer to people who are older, but undertake to make their own work assignments, budgets, and program plans. They negotiate contracts with schools to pay them for leading study groups or athletic camps. They even market themselves as capable of running professional development activities for teachers. Why not? They know how young people learn. Their knowledge is valuable. All these things take place currently in Baltimore’s peer-to-peer organizations.

    Harold McDougall in his wonderful book Black Baltimore explains how grassroots political organizing requires “base communities”—bigger than a family, smaller than a church. A base community is a place where communities in struggle develop political skills, make plans, reflect on what is working and what is not, regroup and hold each other accountable. The Algebra Project founder, Bob Moses, explains that small, grassroots meeting spaces served the same function for what he calls the “Mississippi Theater” of the Voting Rights Movement in the early 1960s. I have heard the same sentiment from veterans of the South African freedom struggle: the oppressed learn in small spaces how to make demands on themselves and on each other, so that they can grow strong enough to turn outward and make demands on the larger society.

    Peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges create exactly this kind of base community. They meet young people’s need for cash at the same time as they shift community understanding of who produces knowledge: not only a teacher, not only an employer, not only adults, but also young people themselves. Two Baltimore students—now adults—who “grew up” in after-school structures like these are working on a film project to show how a different economic and political consciousness can develop. They remarked that virtually every employed young person depicted in film or television is flipping burgers, washing cars, or sweeping something. Their film, by contrast, shows typical Baltimore scenes and dramas, but the heroes do peer-to-peer knowledge work, and so operate with a different consciousness. They expect each other to know things of a technical nature. They have experience determining their own employment structures. They have some understanding of the intersection of politics, economics, and education, and they have collectively intervened in the arrangements society has made for them, to make those arrangements better.

    The new, radical teachers’ union movement across the United States is crucially important. And we should also remember that the interests of public-school teachers are not always identical to the interests of public-school students. Radical teachers recognize that supporting youth power strengthens teacher organizing, but organized young people may sometimes push their own agendas, and teachers should be prepared to follow them. They want to work, and they want to work in jobs that advance their education and their interests, not jobs that track them towards the bottom.  They want a say not just in the dynamics of classrooms, but also in the structure of schools more generally, in the relation between school and work, in requirements for diplomas, in curricula that addresses their material and cultural needs, in who they allow to teach them, and in how public resources are allocated. Currently, the most adults generally envision is “youth voice.” What young people want is youth power.

    The great benefit of youth employment in knowledge work for teacher/student partnerships is that older students can mitigate one of the major problems radical teachers face: large class sizes, too much student need, and disengaged students. Bored high school students waste their days avoiding adult authority, while a few blocks away distressed teachers try to respond to thirty young children’s needs and demands all at once. Help the high school students organize themselves into knowledge-work collectives, and then pay them to spend part of each day inspiring elementary schoolers with their commitment to learning and youth power. In the process, radical teachers get breathing room to support great lessons, positive community relationships, and a new vision of economic and political possibility. Young people learn to differentiate people—old and young—who are supportive of what they themselves identify as in their interest, as opposed to others—mostly older—who are afraid of them, judgmental, or dismissive. Many radical teachers do ally with student leaders. We need to go a step further so that radical teachers understand how to create space for and then support a whole economy of student knowledge production which will necessarily evolve its own politics.

    What do we need to make these visions a reality? Three things:

    First, we need great lessons, curriculum, things to do with students that respond to their material and cultural conditions. Work on this front has been going on all over the country for decades and is flourishing. It’s not mainstreamed for the most part, but it’s also not hard to find.

    Second, we need money to pay young people year-round, and to support 20-30-year-olds in full-time careers giving stability and continuity to the youth-run enterprises. In Baltimore we estimate that 10% of the city’s education, police, and carceral budgets would be enough to fund $5,000-$10,000 a year in employment for every high school student in the city, with millions left over to pay for a cohort of 20-30 year old near-peer leaders.

    Third, we need organizers to find adults who already have great relationships with young people (both inside and outside of schools) and to help them develop peer-to-peer structures that match young people’s interests and community needs. Organizing strategies need to be developed bottom-up so that students can, for example, earn credit through their participation in a peer-to-peer activity instead of through seat-time in a boring class. And strategies need to be developed to interrupt schooling and policing as we know them, so that funding can start to get reallocated into youth employment in knowledge work.

    In many parts of the country, these three pieces are nascent and ready to combine in powerful ways. Building awareness of the radical change emerging from paid peer-to-peer collectives will be an important next step. Millions of young people are essentially sitting idle. They represent billions of hours of lost productivity in economic terms, and they represent a source of political energy that in historical terms has been crucial to most revolutions. We should hold their gifts in high esteem, and should listen to their own articulations of what they need in order to commit themselves to organized struggle. They need cash, and they need meaning.

  • A Brief Introduction to the Saga of the Labor Movement for Emerging Militants

    A Brief Introduction to the Saga of the Labor Movement for Emerging Militants

    This piece is the text of a talk given to the Democratic Socialists of America Lower Manhattan Branch’s Political Education Working Group on December 4, 2019, serving as introduction to “Bernie and Labor” part of its series “Why Bernie?”

    The picture on the right represents the Haymarket Riot, Chicago, May 4, 1886, when police attacked a labor demonstration demanding the eight-hour day and protesting the May 1 disruption of an earlier protest march. The massacre was one of many attacks by police against labor initiatives.

    I have ten minutes to present the briefest of introductions on some few salient points pertaining to a history of workers’ struggles in the U.S. Good luck to that! Offering a systemic view of the nearly 200 years of domestic labor struggles, triumphs, tragedies and legacies in just one sixth of an hour is akin to tackling the briefest histories of the Roman Conquests, resurrection in the fractured Holy Roman Empire and its homicidal if not its farcical reiteration in the Nazi Thousand Year Reich that mercifully lasted just 12 years. But like a centurion, I shall soldier on.

    What follows are some basic if necessarily sketchy assumptions.

    First, we need to understand that most if not all of labor’s key breakthroughs, including the huge industrial union upsurges that followed immediately after World War I and then repeated so magnificently in the 1930s, were not primarily the product of either progressive politicians such as FDR and his brain trust or even talented, foresighted labor leaders like John L. Lewis, but were initiatives originating at the base.

    We can thank the late former seafarer, longshoreman and talented socialist writer, Stan Weir, for developing the idea of informal work-groups that in the worst of times for labor maintained a militant resistance on the job to capital’s many plans, especially for slowing down production and asserting workplace rights. It was their solidarity at work that was the seedbed for future breakthroughs. To put it simply, it was a centuries long battle over workplace control.

    Even from the heights of wisdom of a Eugene Debs, who presciently said “I would not lead you to the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out,” to the depths of the mendacious Dave Beck, the corrupt leader of the 1950s Teamsters Union, who bragged that “unions are big business. Why should truck drivers and bottle washers be allowed to make big decisions affecting union policy. Would corporations allow it?” I would argue that the key to union success is less the talented perpetual leader and more the recognition and nurturing of rank-and-file working class self-activity. For DSA work in labor, even more than the recognition and lionizing of a scattered, precious few sublime labor leaders—and such did and do exist—it is working class self-activity that ought to be our socialist lodestone

    Even prior to the three huge, radically lead strikes in 1934 that preceded and were catalytic in forming the mass unionization drives of the 1935-42 period –those being the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike, lead by independent radicals, the Minnesota Teamsters Trotskyist militants successes in organizing over-the-road drivers and the Communist-led San Francisco General Strike—was the prior growth of those informal work groups that determined the real pace of work and became the shock troops for effecting mass actions in the face of business and government opposition.

    Working people were their own emancipators when it came to halting such malign corporate practices as upping the speed of the line, promoting the discriminatory tyranny of the “Open Shop,” using invidious race and gender discrimination to divide workers, and encouraging vigilante and private police attacks. Theirs was in great measure if not exclusively a movement from below, and much ensuing labor history was a struggle not just between unions and management but just as today between rank-and-file workers and an increasingly bureaucratic trade union leadership counter-intuitively comprising even former shop-floor militants doing management and government’s job of tamping down shop-floor militancy, all in the name of labor peace and contract unionism.

    The term of art used to describe the goal of workers enfranchisement was “industrial democracy,” meant as the corollary to “political democracy” and itself understood by socialists as far more subversive than were such palliatives as German-style “co-determination” and “labor-management teams” expressing an alleged but bogus cross-class interest.

    Industrial democracy was always about control of the workplace. The early strategy for achieving that control goal was to form industrial unions, that is, unions representing not just skilled workers, the modern equivalent of artisans, but all workers, be their skills and/or payment high or low. The early Knights of Labor, formally the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin, was an industrial union. It couldn’t survive police and military repression or one of many economic downturns.  The unions that emerged in the late 1930s to become the core of the Congress of Industrial Organizations were at long last industrially based, though entire histories are now being written showing that even these unions were laggard in enfranchising women and people of color into leadership positions.

    The American Federation of Labor (AFL), founded in 1886, was a coalition of existing craft unions representing skilled artisans and journeymen—yes, exclusively white, non-immigrant men—that eschewed not only semi- and unskilled workers, but for the most part refused to admit women, blacks and new immigrants. Its saving grace over earlier union efforts was its ability to survive a series of economic collapses, the first U.S. labor organization to do so. Its fault, as socialist saw it, was practicing “business unionism” in contradistinction to a much preferred and necessary “class struggle” unionism.

    An exception to the rule of AFL affiliates abjuring the unskilled was the Mine Workers, established on industrial lines and who organized every worker it could involved in bituminous (or soft coal) and anthracite (or hard coal) extraction.

    But for radicals, the sterling example of organizing across craft and unskilled lines was the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, the Wobblies) who stressed direct action and not contracts to win what workers needed. (And note the IWW’s correct name. I wish I had 100 dollars for every time I saw the name rendered as International Workers of the World; I’d have retired earlier than I did.) The IWW’s strength, as you’d expect from syndicalists, was in leading direct-action struggles. Their weak point was an aversion to signing any contracts, no matter how fine-tuned the package, an expression less of ideological rigidity than a reflection of their origins in the American West, where work was seasonal and employers rapacious.

    Unlike the Wobblies, socialist trade unionists sought to “bore from within” the AFL in an effort to make it representative of all industrial workers, not just the skilled; their intentions were anti-capitalist. A sterling example was the post World War One Trade Union Education League, led by former Wobbly and sadly later Stalinist hack William Z. Foster, who in his better days was a key organizer of the massive but ill-starred 1919 Steel Strike. As an ex-Wobbly professor of mine once joked, “boring from within means you can only bore half way.”

    Another point worth stressing in trying to get a handle on labor history is distinguishing between strategies and tactics. The two are not the same, though they are commonly rooted, and they bear understanding in current DSA discussions about industrializing comrades into union jobs. The effort to do so is indeed tactical, but that doesn’t minimize its importance. A tactic is what enables a strategy to succeed. It is the workable adjunct of an overarching strategy. If as I would argue, the left’s strategy regarding labor is to assist its worker members and allies in forming a militant minority in the workplace—a strategy best if not only exemplified by the militant shop stewards’ movements in both Britain and Germany post WWI—the process of implanting young radicals as catalysts into key union work-sites is the tactic most likely to build a coherent, fire-breathing opposition in workplaces. Salted as they will be, they can come to understand that the fight is not just for wages, hours, and health care and retirement benefits, but is just as viscerally to challenging the employers’ right to manage. From the imposition of time and motion studies (Taylorism)  to maximizing a workers’ output  unto exhaustion, including today’s battle with the predatory Amazon over turning workers into adjuncts of robots, the battle for control over the pace of production and distribution is ongoing still.

    That’s a key reason why I believe the “rank and file strategy” much bruited about in DSA makes sense. It’s a mistake to write it off, as some have, as “fetishizing” a tactic at the expense of strategizing. If any fetishizing goes on, it doesn’t so much come from advocates of industrializing as from academicized and literary Marxists who sadly view our class in the abstract. It means at bottom that militants have to fight on two fronts. The first is the widely understood need to defend and advance labor interests against employers. The second is no less important: to build militant oppositions capable of turning unions into democratically run, fighting organizations against entrenched, compromised leaderships.

    Spend any time in a unionized or non-unionized job and any romantic notions are replaced with some hard if countervailing facts. Working people are exploited, abused, and in a key position to be their own liberators. Nothing in that vein at least has changed for centuries.

    Case in point as to what’s really missing on the left: I spent two hours at a Verso event recently. The topic was Bernie, whom all the speakers supported. So far, so good. The use of “working class” was also much cast about by panelists, but with almost no specificity. Ditto labor. Unions in that discourse didn’t exist, even as targets for needing to get aboard Bernie’s bandwagon, which to date they have not. Even the ostensibly pro-worker Working Families Party has opted for Elizabeth Warren. No mention by panelists even of the exemplary if sparse cases so far (ex: the National Nurse United, the United Electrical Workers and especially how the huge UTLA teachers union in Los Angeles county is the sterling example of getting Bernie right, despite its parent union the AFT tops’ aversion to the left and the mainstream twaddle that dominates the Teachers union here in NYC, which recently honored Joe Biden). The Verso meeting’s exchanges were all inside the beltway politics, though thankfully of a better and more thoughtful kind at least than the pap routinely exuded on CNN and MSNBC.

    The reality is that the left will never be a force against capital so long as key sections of its proponents are not largely at the point of production and distribution, both leading and learning. As Sean O’Casey once put it to a young radical miner looking for advice on how to become a writer, “A Communist [for that was what he was] has to know how to talk to a shepherd about sheep.” But most of all, O’Casey added, “he has to know how to listen.”

    To my mind, helping to build a militant minority in the workplace is in many ways even more important than electoral work, if dealing a death blow to capital is the long-term goal, though the two needn’t be counterpoised. Bernie himself knows this, as when he says “I can’t do this alone.” The old socialist isn’t just calling for more door-knockers, nor should we DSAers.

    Today’s labor movement shows signs of reviving, even though much needs to be done. In 1955, when the AFL and CIO merged, slightly more than one in three workers was organized. Today less than one in ten are represented by unions, with the largest number being public sector employees. Growth since the 1970s has been largely in the public sector; private sector workers comprise just some six percent of the total.

    A late 1940s effort to organize the South, “Operation Dixie,” in a section of the U.S. notorious for stymieing union efforts, is explainable in part due to the unions’ failed efforts to bridge the racial divide along with its purging of Communists and assorted radicals from union positions—in effect crippling the organizing effort by expelling some of its most talented organizers. A post-1998 effort to create a more robust trade union alliance, lead by the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and a few others went nowhere, while seriously disrupting long-needed organizing efforts aimed at growing the movement and ginning up the bulk of the remaining AFL-CIO affiliates. The effort was then sold as building “union density,” which in practice meant selling out present workers, forcing through inferior contracts, trusteeing dissident locals—all to acculuate new if ill-served members, in effect a zero-sum game.

    SEIU’s then president, Ivy League graduate Andy Stern, is gone from the labor movement and now a prime adviser to the nefarious, privatizing Broad Foundation, a billionaire-backed charter-school group. The renegade Stern sits on other corporate boards, advocating for a universal basic income in contradistinction to empowering a resurgent labor movement.

    Without necessarily buying into the conservative argument that explains such selling out as part of an “iron law of oligarchy,” it is worth noting that it’s what the class does as a whole and not the depredations of individuals that is key. Without discounting setbacks, from the routinization of the talented and innovative William Z. Foster to the once seemingly sparkling and now despicable Andy Stern (how naive we were!), or today’s emerging scandals attaching to top leaders in the United Auto Workers and American Federation of Government Employees, to name a few, it’s what the class does in the main that matters most. Anything we Reds can do to advance that insurgent control agenda by the base of our working class needs doing now.

  • Rank-and-File Journalist Wins Presidency of NewsGuild/CWA in Re-Run Election

    Rank-and-File Journalist Wins Presidency of NewsGuild/CWA in Re-Run Election

    After a much contested election process, the largest union of journalists in North America has chosen a 32-year old reporter at the Los Angeles Times to be its new leader, in the U.S. and Canada.

    Jon Schleuss helped win union recognition and a historic first contract at The Times (a non-union paper for 136 years) before ousting NewsGuild President Bernie Lunzer, a three-term incumbent twice his age.

    In the first round of balloting last Spring, Lunzer beat Schleuss by a margin of 261 votes out of 2,300 cast. With backing from many upset members, Schleuss challenged those results, based on election irregularities.

    To avoid a further appeal to the U.S. Department of Labor, the NewsGuild ordered a re-run, with voting overseen by the American Arbitration Association, a neutral third party. When the AAA completed its tally in New York City on Tuesday, Dec. 10, Schleuss emerged as the victor, receiving 1,979 votes vs 1,514 for Lunzer.

    The challenger’s stronger showing this time was partly the result of more Guild members participating in their union’s unusual one member/one vote system of electing top officers. Overall turnout increased by more than 15%.

    Schleuss, a data and graphics reporter, also benefited from a flurry of new endorsements. He was backed by past Guild officials, including former president Linda Foley, key Canadian Guild members, and activists at newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, and Indianapolis.

    In her statement of support, Foley recalled that she was once part of a generational challenge to older Guild leaders in the mid-1990s—who similarly opposed her bid to become the union’s first female president because of her alleged lack of “experience.” Foley lauded the role played by Schleuss and his co-LAT workers in a unionization campaign which helped “inspire and empower a new generation of journalists and media workers.”

    Foley believes that, as Guild president, Schleuss will promote “more organizing and a collective bargaining program to give members real voice and power” in a “news industry fraught with problems and promise.”

    A Rare Candidate Debate

    Schleuss will now also replace Lunzer on the international executive board of the Communications of Workers of America (CWA), a much larger AFL-CIO affiliate that includes 20,000 NewsGuild members. Among the highlights of the Guild presidential campaign was a debate between Lunzer and Schleuss that will hopefully create a precedent for candidate debates in other CWA internal union elections.

    Debates may be a familiar part of campaigning for public office. But, within a supposedly democratic labor movement, they are fairly rare. For example, very few CWA local unions ever host candidate forums, where members can listen to and question competing candidates for local officer or executive board positions.

    Higher up in CWA, contested elections for national officers and regional vice-presidents are decided by union convention delegates, not rank-and-file voting. Unfortunately, there is no tradition or requirement of candidate debates at CWA conventions either.

    During two past races for CWA Executive Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer (that I was personally involved in) neither of the candidates who were executive board incumbents deigned to face their challengers—a practice continued by Lunzer when he initially spurned a debate proposed by Schleuss.

    After Schleuss ran strongly in the first Guild election and a re-run was ordered, Lunzer still avoided any face-to-face exchange, in the front of a live membership audience. But he did agree to a joint conference call with his opponent that was moderated by retired CWA President Larry Cohen. On October 26, many Guild members were able to listen in and submit questions—either in advance or by text and email during the debate itself.

    Issue-Oriented Exchange 

    For ninety minutes, Lunzer and Schleuss fielded questions about their respective records and plans to strengthen Guild organizing, bargaining, and membership mobilization. Lunzer argued that his four decades of local and and national Guild leadership had long produced concrete results, like 4,000 new members being organized in recent years.

    Schluess insisted that there was still much “need to reform and modernize the union,” which has faced stiff “new media” organizing competition from the Writers Guild of America-East.

    Among the other challenges discussed was how to boost membership in the Guild’s “open shops” at the Washington Post, Bloomberg/BNA, and Associated Press; how to encourage more free-lancers to join the Guild (as three of its local unions already permit them to do); how to recruit more non-journalists who work for non-profit groups (the Guild already has about 1,000 members of this type); and how to respond more effectively to newspaper industry restructuring and ownership changes.

    Job Security Threat

    This last threat looms large in the daily work lives of many media workers, particularly the 1,100 Guild members in 33 bargaining units likely to be adversely affected by the pending merger of GateHouse Media and Gannett, Inc.

    In a recent letter to the CEOs of Gannett and New Media Investment Group, which owns GateHouse, ten U.S. Senators expressed deep concern that management’s drive “to increase profits and shareholder value,” via post-merger cost-cutting, will result in further “hollowing out of newsrooms” and reduced local news coverage.

    Both Lunzer and Schleuss agreed that the Guild must wage stronger labor-community fights against newspaper take-overs by “hedge-fund owners intent on looting the place and destroying journalism,” as Schleuss put it. To do that, the re-run election winner said he would seek more resources from the CWA national union and new ways of “tapping the creativity of the members” in stepped up contract campaigns.

    In Schleuss’s view, there is no substitute for “members standing up in the newsroom, arm in arm,” as Los Angeles Times staffers did during their three-year struggle for union representation and a first contract covering 475 workers.

    As Guild president for the next four years, Schleuss will now have to encourage—on a much larger scale—the same kind of rank-and-file initiative and grassroots organizing that turned his own paper into a union shop—and then fueled his successful challenge to Lunzer.

  • Where Is Iranian Socialist-Humanist Intellectual, Yashar Darolshafa?

    Where Is Iranian Socialist-Humanist Intellectual, Yashar Darolshafa?

    On Thursday November 21, five days after the outbreak of a popular uprising against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Yashar Darolshafa was violently arrested by government authorities at a friend’s home and taken away. Since then, family and friends have not heard from him. Subsequent efforts by family members inquiring about his status, have not led to any results.

    Darolshafa is a 33 year old PhD candidate in the School of Health and Social Welfare at Tehran University, a journalist and an activist with deep interest in student, labor, women’s and oppressed minority struggles and rights.  He represents the combination of brilliance, erudition  and compassion.

    He has paid a heavy price for his critical thinking and commitment to human emancipation. His efforts in producing a youth journal, Sarpich (Insubordinate) with a special 2009 issue critically evaluating the 1979 Revolution, landed him in prison for the first time. Later he was sentenced to five years in prison for his participation in the 2009 Green Movement.

    While in prison (2012-2016), Darolshafa continued his research with an extensive critique of the Iranian Shi’a reformist thinker, Ali Shariati. He also closely followed the Syrian uprising against the brutal Assad regime and the Kurdish struggle for self-determination in Rojava, northern Syria.

    After  he was released on parole in late 2016, despite extreme pain from beatings in prison, he was drafted into compulsory military service. He then returned to his graduate studies in sociology, health and social welfare.

    He responded to the December 2017-January 2018 popular uprising in Iran by writing a series of articles on the history of Iranian labor struggles from the early 1900s to today. He also wrote about and strongly supported women’s rights activists known as the Girls of Revolution Avenue who took off their scarves in public to oppose the compulsory hijab.

    Most recently Darolshafa was writing an essay, comparing and contrasting Ali Shari’ati and Frantz Fanon with the aim of reclaiming Fanon’s critique of Third World nationalist intellectuals.

    Darolshafa is a unique type of humanist intellectual activist who has broken with the dogmatism, nationalism and sexism of many members of  previous generations of Iranian socialists.  His contribution to emancipatory thought and struggle at this critical moment in Iran’s history is urgently needed.

    We urge socialists around the world to publicize the case of this brave intellectual activist, demand to know where he is being held, hold the Iranian government accountable for his safety, and call for his immediate release.

    He needs and deserves our support!

    Please send signatures to Frieda Afary at fafarysecond@yahoo.com. Please respond by Friday, December 19 and say how you would like your signature to appear.

  • They Killed Frank Ordoñez

    They Killed Frank Ordoñez

    This article also appears in Spanish here. Este artículo también se encuentra en español aquí.

    On Thursday, December 5th 2019, Frank Ordoñez, 27, a UPS driver and father of two, was killed in a shootout between police and suspects fleeing the scene of a robbery. Ordoñez was taken hostage while covering for a sick coworker when his delivery vehicle was hijacked. Both suspects, Ordoñez, and a bystander, Rick Cutshaw, 70, a business agent with OPEIU Local 100, were killed in the exchange of gunfire at a busy intersection in Miramar, Florida.

    At this time, there is no official determination on whether the bullets that killed Ordonez were fired by the police or hijackers, though witness accounts agree that police fired hundreds of rounds at the vehicle while pedestrians and other vehicles were present; Broward County Police Benevolent Association confirmed that at least 18 police officers fired at the vehicle. Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, defended the police action: “If you shoot at us, we are going to engage. We are going to stop the threat.”

    Ordoñez’s family have made it clear that they hold the police are responsible for Frank’s death. Genny Merino, Ordoñez’s sister, posted to Twitter: “Today I lost my brother, because of the fucking negligence and stupidity of the police. Instead of negotiating with a hostage situation they just shot everyone.” Ordoñez’s stepfather, Joe Merino added, “It was like the Old West…I bet if the hostage were someone like a Mayor’s son he would be alive today.” Luz Apolinario, Ordoñez’s mother, an Ecuadorian immigrant, stated, “I can’t believe they killed my son. I came to this country for a better life, not for my son to be killed.”

    Commenting on the death of their on-duty employee, UPS thanked the police, “We appreciate law enforcement’s service and will cooperate with the authorities as they continue the investigation.” UPS has a close relationship with police departments all around the country; the company employs many off-duty police officers and former FBI agents in their “Loss Prevention” department.

    Acts of solidarity from Ordoñez’s coworkers have been powerful. Coworkers and fellow Teamsters from Local 769 covered Frank’s car, still in the UPS lot after his death, with pictures, letters, and flowers in memoriam. Hundreds of Teamsters, package car drivers, and community members later came to pay their respects at the funeral. The family’s GoFundMe to support Frank’s family, pay for his funeral and to hire a lawyer raised more than ten times its goal within days of launching.

    Thousands of UPS drivers then self-organized a moment of silence to honor the life of Frank Ordoñez on December 10th at 5pm. They were joined by UPS workers in the UK as well as displays of solidarity from FedEx and other delivering company drivers. Such acts of solidarity are usually reserved for strikes or other job actions. UPS, facing criticism for their initial statement and realizing that they could not prevent it, recognized and broadcast the brief work stoppage. The widespread support and touching memorials for Frank Ordoñez reveal the depth of pain and identification with the working conditions that delivery drivers face across the United States. There are 60,000 UPS package cars on the streets every day in the U.S., an equivalent number for FedEx, a burgeoning number for Amazon, and many more for the venerable USPS.

    While many Teamster Locals have issued statements of support and put their efforts into fundraising for Ordoñez’s family, the response from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been limited. Teamster General President James P. Hoffa issued a brief comment: “The thoughts and prayers of the 1.4 million members of the Teamsters Union are with Brother Ordonez’s family, friends, colleagues and fellow Local 769 members.” This muted statement mirrors the one produced upon the murder of Philando Castile, also a Teamster in Local 320, who was killed by police in Minneapolis. The Teamsters, like many other unions, represent tens of thousands of police, sheriff’s deputies, court employees, probationary officers, and prison guards throughout the incarceration state, and have a legal defense fund for police officers.

     

    The tragic death of UPS Driver Frank Ordoñez also highlights the risks that delivery workers face daily. While kidnapping and shootouts may be rare, robberies, assaults, threats, sexual harassment and road rage incidents are common. A UPS driver was shot in Ohio in October, and several robberies targeting UPS trucks took place in California in early December. Overall, retail and delivery workers experience the highest rates of on-the-job homicide in the U.S.

    These risks are on top of the reality for UPS workers of intense productivity pressure, constant surveillance, disrespect from supervisors and systemic racism. Worker safety at UPS, on the part of management, is reduced to handing out water and bananas during hot weather and blaming workers when injuries do occur. As we mourn Brother Ordoñez it is also a time to ask what UPS management has been doing (or not) to protect drivers from violence when they are out on their routes.

    If the past is any indication, few police will be held accountable for the massacre that took place. The only justice for Frank Ordoñez and Rick Cutshaw will be the justice that is won by the family, community and fellow workers. UPS was forced to walk back their initial statement and allow a pause in the working day not only because of the public outrage, but because UPS Teamsters self-organized and did not ask for permission from the company — faced with this mobilization, UPS had to stand aside. The incredible resonance of Frank’s death among package delivery workers sheds light on the desire to fight a feeling of disposability, both at work and on the streets. Workers are looking to their unions for direction on how to defend themselves from employer abuse, speedup, racism and, yes, police violence – if there’s to be any labor revitalization, unions need to offer more than condolences and take up their members’ fights in whichever form they take.J

    Please contribute to the Ordoñez family GoFundMe and Teamsters Local 769’s fund for Frank Ordoñez’s surviving family; write “For the family of Frank Ordonez” on the check:

    Mail to:

    Teamsters Local 769

    C/O The Ordonez Family

    12365 West Dixie Hwy

    North Miami, FL 33161

  • Call for Solidarity with Uprisings in the Middle East & North Africa

    Call for Solidarity with Uprisings in the Middle East & North Africa

    This is a critical moment in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2019, uprisings have emerged in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. All have opposed authoritarianism, neoliberalism, poverty, corruption, religious fundamentalism and sectarianism. Women have been active participants and often in the forefront. The participants are mostly working-class and unemployed youth. They are not content with the ouster of individual ruling figures but want to change the socioeconomic and political system. For all these reasons, the revolts could mark the beginning of a new progressive and revolutionary chapter for the region as a whole.

    Authoritarian rulers and systems however, will not be easily pushed back. In Sudan, the army has struck a deal with the opposition coalition for now. Some success has been achieved as Sudanese transitional authorities recently approved a law to dissolve the former ruling party and repealed a public order law used to regulate women’s behavior. In Algeria, the army continues to hold on to power despite ongoing mass protests. In Lebanon, despite prime minister Hariri’s resignation, the sectarian and neoliberal political parties still oppose any radical change demanded by large sectors of the protest movement. In Iraq, popular protests in Baghdad and the Shi’a south are being brutally attacked by the Iranian-backed Iraqi government with support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian sponsored Shi’a militia, Hashd al-Sha’bi. Lately, small but increasing expressions of support for the uprising have emerged in majority Sunni and Kurdish areas.

    Iranian forces have brutally suppressed the nationwide popular protests that broke out in Iran on November 15 in opposition to a rise in the price of petroleum. According to Amnesty International, at least 208 people were killed by government forces. The New York Times reports of up to 450 or more killed in four days of intense protest, with up to 100 killed by the IRGC forces in the city of Mahshahr in one protest alone. Another unconfirmed report from Iranian activists provides a list of 928 people who have been killed.  According to the United Nations, at least 7,000 people have been arrested.

    In the face of this reality, how can progressives around the world help the recent popular uprisings reach their potential and not be crushed?

    First, we cannot have any illusions about the U.S. government or any other international powers or any regional powers coming to their aid. Imperialist powers prevent radical change from below and seek forms of authoritarian stability.

    Secondly, progressives have a special responsibility to publicize the cases of those killed and arrested in these uprisings as well as other political prisoners who have been languishing in prisons around the MENA region. In Iran in particular, activists fear that the government would impose another internet blockage and commit mass executions of political prisoners soon. They warn of a scenario similar to 1988 when several thousand political prisoners were executed in a few days and buried in mass graves under an order by Ayatollah Khomeini. Bashar al-Assad’s mass executions of political prisoners in Syria is a more recent carnage that has been taking place under Iranian and Russian government backing.

    Thirdly, we have a responsibility to give voice to the struggles/demands of feminists, labor activists, progressive and democratic intellectuals, and oppressed minority groups such as the Kurds in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the Black population of Darfur in Sudan, the Bahais of Iran, and the LGBTQ community in the region.

    Publicizing the cases of those who have risen up to take the MENA region out of the hands of authoritarian, religious fundamentalist, exploitative misogynist systems is not only about helping the suffering people in that region. It is a way of participating in an effort to shift the current direction of our world away from hate and toward international humanist solidarity.

    Indeed, the current global wave of protests not seen since the 1960s reveals that the global population could be open to a new anti-capitalist direction that is also humanist and affirmative.

    At the same time, in the face of these developments, authoritarian rulers and systems are trying to find new ways to strengthen themselves. The Iranian government counts on a recent agreement made with China which offers Iran a $400 billion investment in oil, gas and other infrastructure development, and 5,000 Chinese security forces to protect Chinese investments in exchange for Iranian oil, gas and petrochemicals at a 30% discount. This agreement which involves additional Chinese investments every five years, commits both parties for 25 years and offers ways to circumvent the U.S. sanctions.

    Other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Israel are also turning to China and Russia for arms, investments and strategic partnerships.

    Given these realities, will the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa succeed in moving the region in a progressive and revolutionary direction, or will authoritarian regimes simply change face, survive and engage in endless wars?

    Which scenario will prevail? Much depends on what progressives around the world do at this critical moment to express their solidarity with these revolts. The current international mobilizations especially of environmental activists and feminists against capitalist exploitation and oppression of humanity and nature are promising.  Our destinies are linked.

  • Corbyn’s Defeat and the Democratic Socialists of America  

    Corbyn’s Defeat and the Democratic Socialists of America  

    We in DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, will have to be able to understand and explain this: Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party won the British general election by a landslide, defeating Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn largely because they broke the “Red Wall” of working class votes in northern Britain’s old industrial region. The region, sometimes compared to the American “rust belt” in the Northeast and Midwest, has seen employment, labor unions, and the standard of living all decline, together with morale. The working class in Britain rejected Corbyn, Labour, and socialism. What does this mean for DSA’s support for Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders?

    Boris Johnson’s landslide victory over Jeremy Corbyn—43.6% to 32.%—raises important questions for the Democratic Party, for its left candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but perhaps especially for Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). DSA was transformed by the thousands of young people who joined between 2015 when Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy and 2016 when Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Sanders became DSA’s standard bearer and DSA members developed a special affection for Jeremy Corbyn, seeing him as the British version of DSA’s hero Sanders.

    At the 2017 DSA Convention where a Corbyn surrogate spoke, those in the front of the hall broke out singing “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” to the White Stripes’ song “Seven Nation Army.” DSA members established close ties to Momentum, the left-wing caucus within the Labour Party that backed Corbyn. One group within DSA even called itself Momentum (later changing its name to Bread and Roses). In late 2019 DSA officially endorsed Corbyn and some DSA members pledged to go to Britain to work on his campaign. Jacobin, DSA’s unofficial online publication, and its British affiliate Tribune, ran rafts of articles about Corbyn, partisan, uncritical, and expecting great things from Corbyn and perhaps even victory.

    Many in DSA, like many in Momentum in Britain, believed that Corbyn would do well in the election that has just taken place and might even win, and in their political imaginations many DSA members linked Corbyn’s presumed victory to the coming triumph of their champion Bernie Sanders. They saw both Corbyn and Sanders fighting for socialism, or more realistically for a revival of social democracy in Britain and of the New Deal in America and winning. The two leftist candidates British and American both put forward political platforms that emphasized social programs: health care, education, housing, and the like. Corbyn and the Labour Party adopted a radical “Manifesto” that called for taxing the rich by another US$107 billion to pay for the nationalization of industries and for universal social programs. DSA and Momentum members believed that the program was the key to victory. It was not. Corbyn, the Labour Party, and the Manifesto spoke directly to the needs and interests of the British working class—but the working class turned its back on them.

    Erosion of Democracy Was Not the Issue 

    With Corbyn’s defeat, DSA National Political Committee (NPC) published an expression of solidarity and sympathy for British Labour Party comrades but without much reflection or analysis. DSA’s explanation for the defeat is found here:

    Labour’s loss does not mean that socialist politics are unpopular or unnecessary in this moment. Rather, this loss reflects the ongoing erosion of democracy at the hands of the ruling class and the shutting-out of the working class from the rooms where its own fate is determined.

    For a group that emphasizes the importance of democracy, this is a very strange explanation. Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party just won an election in which 31,897,334 British citizens voted, representing 67.23 percent of eligible voters, down just 1.5 percent from the 2017 election. So if there is an erosion of democracy taking place it is not in the electoral arena. And those more than two-thirds of British citizens who voted cast their ballots against socialist politics, which suggests that indeed socialism is unpopular or at least not popular enough to win votes.

    “Erosion of democracy” is an odd explanation because for months Momentum and other Labourites were expecting Corbyn to do well, and if he had done well or even won, they surely would have claimed that as a victory for democracy and for themselves. We might note that British elections are more democratic than U.S. elections. While the corporate media plays an enormous role in British election, corporate financing is not as significant. The erosion of democracy was not the principal issue in the Labour defeat.

    The problem is that in this democratic election British citizens were less moved by Corbyn’s economic program than by Boris Johnson’s nationalist position. It was Brexit, the question of staying in or leaving the European Union, that gave nationalism a major opportunity. The battle was fought out for three exhausting years between the bourgeois globalizers who wanted to stay in the EU and the bourgeois nationalists who wanted to leave—while Corbyn and Labour never clearly took a side and never found an attractive alternative. So Johnson and the nationalists, taking advantage of middle-class and working class anger about the country’s decline, won the election. Nationalism tinged with nostalgia, the promise to defend Britons, the historic white Britons, not only represented a rejection of the European Union, but was also an expression of the growth of racism and xenophobia among the British population, including the working class. Boris Johnson, with his record of racist and sexist remarks, personally embodied the racist politics of his nationalist program.

    The Alternative is Class Struggle 

    The British Labour Party, much like the Democratic Party, has not found a strategy for challenging and defeating a demagogue with a nationalist politics that appeals to racism and xenophobia. The problem is that the alternative is not a leftist political program and more canvassers, as Momentum and Labour learned. The alternative is a higher level of class struggle so that working people begin to see themselves and their movement as actually having the power to influence politics. When there is class struggle and a demonstration of working class power that can (but does not necessarily) provide a powerful alternative to racist nationalism. And neither a candidate like Corbyn, nor a caucus like Momentum, nor a political party like Labour can determine the level of class struggle, though when it happens they can influence its direction and provide it with a set of objectives.

    The level of class struggle in Great Britain has been until very recently at its lowest level since the 1890s, though there was a small uptick in 2019 with strikes on the railroads and in the universities. If there is no working class movement, then workers cannot see and understand a political party and a candidate as giving expression to their movement, because they don’t have a movement. And a political campaign, while it may take on some of the characteristics of a movement with marches and rallies, really has nothing in common with the demonstration of class power that one finds in a strike that shuts down an industry. Only a real working-class movement that demonstrates power can provide the social weight to lead a political movement that will change society. The problem for us socialists is that we cannot make class struggle happen on a mass scale, we can only attempt to bring our politics to it when it happens.

    Clearly, if one accepts this analysis, there are serious implications in the United States for the Democrats and for DSA. After the late 1980 recession, American working class militancy declined dramatically for almost forty years, though we have recently seen an uptick with the inspiring teachers’ strikes of 2018 and the more recent teachers’ strikes in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2019. Inspiring as they are, these strikes have been, they do not represent a general working-class movement.

    The private sector has in recent years seen few strikes, though this year there was a pretty big exception, the UAW strike against General Motors, where 45,000 workers struck for six weeks. This was not an inspiring movement, however; the union leadership was being investigated by the FBI for corruption, the strike was not well prepared or executed, and the contract was disappointing. While some rank-and-file members criticized the contract there was little rank-and-file organization and certainly not enough to challenge the leadership. As Kim Moody wrote recently, we’ve just remembered how to strike and, I would add, the working class needs a lot more practice. The point is that, as in Great Britain, we have a left-wing “socialist” candidate who has what for our times is a radical New Deal program—but we don’t yet have a working-class movement that might find itself reflected in Sanders, his program, and the Democrats.

    If Sanders Loses

    DSA meetings often begin or end with people chanting, “I believe that we will win.” Presumably this means that one day socialism will be victorious, but it also applies to DSA’s candidate Bernie Sanders. DSA members want Bernie Sanders to win and they work for his victory in the Democratic Party primary, and in that campaigning mode have not by and large been prepared to think, talk, or write about the possibility that Bernie Sanders may lose, no doubt because entertaining thoughts of defeat while campaigning for victory seems some how to be disloyal. If the thought of Sanders defeat is entertained, it is principally to argue that DSA should not support any other Democrat. In fact the DSA Convention of 2019 adopted such a position. The point of this, which is important, is to keep DSA from becoming again what it once was, a ginger group within the Democratic Party. Still, if Sanders loses, this position does not prepare DSA members to face the future.

    Clearly, since the organization grew with Sanders from a few thousand to 56,000, there is an understandable fear that its membership might just as dramatically decline if he loses. While DSA has lots of other irons in the fire, from local political campaigns to organizing around a wide variety of issues from feminism and racism to the environment and from to rank-and-file labor organizing and work on immigration, it is Sanders that has provided the group with its idealistic, optimistic, and uncharismatically charismatic figure. His figure and politics have largely glued DSA together.

    Yet, we know that the American capitalist class and the corporate media hate Sanders and what he stands for, as does the entire political establishment, including the Democratic Party leadership, which loathes him. From the beginning, a Sanders victory has been a long shot. Corbyn’s defeat does not necessarily mean that Sanders will be defeated, but we in America face the same central problem as the British. We do not have a level of class struggle that might propel Sanders to the presidency together with a large number of Democrats into the House and Senate, which is the only way that he could affect the political direction of America.

    We find ourselves in the uncomfortable position—not so uncommon for socialists at different periods over the last 170 years since the Communist Manifesto—of having to recognize that the working class is not yet prepared to act on its own. We will continue organizing and fighting for our politics in the labor and social movements, while waiting for the event that will trigger the eruption of the mass movement without which our politics have no vehicle.

  • Where Are the Teamsters Going?

    Where Are the Teamsters Going?

    The Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) held its 44th annual convention in Chicago in early November, where it endorsed Sean O’Brien for General President and Fred Zuckerman for General Secretary-Treasurer in the 2021 Teamster election. They will run on the “Teamsters United” slate and challenge the incumbent leadership, whether it is led by the incumbent General President James P. Hoffa, Jr. or an anointed successor.

    TDU’s endorsement is crucial for any candidate seeking to run as a reformer against the Teamster establishment — notorious for its bloated and corrupt officialdom and ties to organized crime. TDU has been the leading voice for reform in the Teamsters for four decades and played a major role in Zuckerman’s 2016 election challenge, when he came within a few thousands votes of toppling Hoffa from power. Now, it’s O’Brien’s turn to lead the slate.

    But TDU’s endorsement of Sean O’Brien didn’t pass without controversy. O’Brien was a notorious Hoffa supporter — before he was fired by Hoffa — and has a well-deserved reputation for thuggery. Some current and former TDU supporters took to social media to criticize the endorsement, while raising serious concerns about the future of the reform movement.

    Since the TDU convention, unease about O’Brien increased after he called off his local’s eighty-four day strike against Republic Services, the second-largest waste management company in the country. The strike ended in a complete defeat, raising questions about O’Brien’s leadership. As we enter the twilight years of the Hoffa era, where are the Teamsters going?

    Hoffa Jr. in Twilight

    Rumors of Hoffa’s impending retirement have been circulating for some time now. He was expected to announce his retirement at the October General Executive Board (GEB) meeting at the union’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. and dictate a successor. With a comfortable majority on the board, an easy transition was planned. But the meeting came and went with no announcement.

    Speculation then turned to why it was taking so long. Hoffa is seventy-eight years old after all, and recent subpar performances at national Teamster conferences has led to a lot of gossip that he’s not up for the job any longer. The last national contract that he had a hand in — the 2018 national UPS contract — was voted down by the membership but “ratified” by him in a highly unpopular maneuver. Picking a successor may be more difficult than Hoffa expected.

    Rumored successors such as Terry Hancock of Chicago or Kevin Moore of Detroit have serious baggage. Hancock, the president of Chicago Teamster Local 731, is embroiled in a hostile and unpopular takeover of another local union. Moore, the president of Detroit Local 299, the home local union of the Hoffa family, has proved to be an unpopular carhaul director.

    Hoffa’s delayed retirement may have to do with him positioning the union to play an important role in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. For example, on December 7, the Teamsters cosponsored a Democratic presidential forum on workers rights in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, two months before the Iowa caucuses. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were the candidates who attended.

    Despite having endorsed Hilary Clinton in 2016, this is something of a political pivot for Hoffa who earned a reputation as one of President Donald Trump’s most reliable union supporters on trade and infrastructure projects, including the environmentally disastrous Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines and the ongoing trade war with China. Lately, however, Hoffa has soured on Trump. He told the Huffington Post in late October:

    He [Trump] made promises about how he would be [a workers’] champion. I think he can do better than what he’s done. I think he could have done more to help us with collective bargaining, more to help us with pensions…. I think he could have done more for us. I do.

    Hoffa admitted in an October interview that many Teamsters voted for Trump in 2016. Hoffa also predicted that many “Teamsters are likely to vote for Trump again in 2020, regardless of who the Democratic nominee turns out to be.” Such honesty may be refreshing from the likes of Hoffa. He may have astutely judged that there is a battle on the horizon for Teamster votes, especially in Michigan, the home state of the Hoffa family with a large active and retired Teamster voting bloc. In an April 3, 2019, Detroit News column titled “Michigan Will Play Critical Role in 2020 Election,” Hoffa wrote:

    Michigan finds itself at the forefront of the 2020 presidential election conversation. Thanks to the slim victory voters gave to President Trump here in 2016, those running for president this time know they need to win the Great Lakes State if they want to reach the White House.

    Some Teamster votes were responsible for Trump winning in Michigan — and other states in the upper Midwest — which allowed him to eke out a victory in the Electoral College, bringing catastrophe to us all.

    A Fraying Old Guard

    Hoffa’s old guard has been fraying for the past two Teamster elections, with previous supporters — many of whom were pillars of his coalition — running against him. In 2011, Hoffa was challenged by longtime supporter and Wisconsin Teamster leader Fred Gegare, who told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he decided to run because “James Hoffa Jr. is dismantling the union his father built, piece by piece.”

    Gegare’s sudden conversion from hack to opposition candidate was greeted with mockery from TDU. In an informational bulletin about Gegare’s candidacy titled “Why He Can’t Win…and Why That’s a Good Thing,” TDU asked, “Why is Gegare running against Hoffa?”:

    That’s a good question. Gegare is long-time Hoffa loyalist. As a candidate, he criticizes Hoffa’s handling of the Central States Pension Fund and Hoffa’s concessions to UPS and UPS Freight. But Fred’s rhetoric doesn’t jibe with his record.

    Despite the weak basis of Gegare’s campaign, Hoffa’s aides and campaign staff were unnerved by the revolt of loyalists, including Fred Zuckerman, President of Local 89 in Louisville, Kentucky, who also ran on Gegare’s slate. Hoffa’s inner circle was so desperate that they offered a bribe to Zuckerman. “They expected me to support the Hoffa slate and not run against him,” Zuckerman reported to the Teamster election supervisor Richard Mark.

    In the end, Hoffa handily won reelection with 137,000 votes against Gegare and TDU leader Sandy Pope. Gegare won a little over 54,000 votes, while Pope also did surprisingly well: supported by a small number of dedicated volunteers but little money, she received nearly 40,000 votes. Pope was also the first woman to run for the top spot, a milestone in the U.S. labor movement.

    “Teamsters United” was born out of the veterans of Gegare’s old slate and TDU supporters and members. For the 2016 Teamster election, Teamsters United first nominated Tim Sylvester, the President of Local 804 in New York City, to be candidate for General President. Sylvester, a former UPS driver, was a veteran Carey supporter and activist.

    Sylvester won the race for the leadership of Local 804 in 2009 on the 804 Members United slate, beating the incumbent two to one. The local was the longtime political home of Ron Carey, the first and only reform leader of the Teamsters. Under Sylvester’s leadership, the local made important gains in contract negotiations against UPS, by far the biggest employer for Local 804 members.

    While Teamsters United got off to a strong start, it was badly jolted when Sylvester narrowly lost reelection for local office after a highly factionalized and destructive campaign in 2015. As a result, Sylvester switched positions on the slate to run for General Secretary-Treasurer. Fred Zuckerman stepped forward to run for General president. He was Hoffa’s carhaul director before being fired by him. Despite this blow to the campaign, Zuckerman rose to the occasion. He was a down-to-earth person with a straight-talking style, which had a great appeal to Teamsters used to bluff and bluster.

    Zuckerman made a name for himself on the campaign trail for his aggressive attacks on Hoffa’s unnecessary concessions to UPS in 2013, the lack of organizing in freight and carhaul, and — most importantly in the Midwest and South — the looming bankruptcy of the Central States Pension Fund on Hoffa’s watch. Sean O’Brien came in for a special skewering because he the coordinator of the UPS contract supplement that were repeatedly voted down but ultimately imposed by Hoffa.

    When the ballots were counted Hoffa nearly lost the election, and his regional vice presidents were wiped out in the Midwest and the South, replaced by virtual unknowns from the Teamsters United slate. Chicago-area Teamsters voted for Zuckerman and Teamsters United by a slim margin, something inconceivable in previous elections. A large minority of Teamsters were prepared to vote for any credible alternative to Hoffa.

    Yet apathy and cynicism was also hallmark of the 2016 election, which had the lowest turnout since the first rank and file election in 1991. It should be noted that during this time, Sean O’Brien was a menacing Hoffa loyalist.

    “Old-School Values”

    It’s been an open secret for many years that Sean O’Brien wants to be General President of the Teamsters. He was thirty-four years old when he was elected president of Teamsters Local 25 in Boston in 2006, making him the youngest person elected to that position in the local’s history. Local 25 has over 12,000 members in a variety of industries, but the largest employer by far is UPS, the logistics giant.

    Teamsters Local 25 has never had a good reputation. Boston Magazine summed up its sordid history pretty well a few years ago:

    The union had ties to Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang; one of its former presidents spent time behind bars; its rank-and-file members have been convicted of crimes ranging from armed truck robbery to embezzlement; its officers once had a reputation for shaking down movie crews. In 2011, a retired union member was found dying on a train platform carrying $180,000 in mysterious cash.

    Local 25’s long time president was William J. “Billy” McCarthy, sometimes called “mad dog.” He ruled the local from 1955 to 1992. McCarthy was a longtime associate of organized crime. McCarthy’s successor was George Cashman, who styled himself a “New Teamster” and allied himself with Ron Carey, but he let the gangsters run amuck in the local’s movie division. According to Boston Magazine writer Michael Damiano:

    Local 25’s movie crew, where Sean O’Brien worked and his father was a transportation coordinator, was earning a reputation for extorting Hollywood filmmakers. In 1994, a top representative of Local 25’s movie crew was convicted on federal conspiracy charges connected to a mob-related scheme to extract bribes from movie executives.

    In 2003, George Cashman pled guilty to two counts of conspiracy in relation to embezzlement and extortion schemes and was sentenced to federal prison. O’Brien ran for local office in 2006 on what Damiano called a “conservative pitch.” “We needed to go back to our old-school values,” O’Brien exclaimed. “Go back to what made us successful.” “Old-school values” is a loaded phrase in Teamster politics, harkening back to the days of mob control and violence with a heavy dose of nostalgia for a “strong leader.”

    O’Brien quickly allied himself with Hoffa on the national level and was rewarded by being added to Hoffa’s slate. He was elected an international vice-president for the eastern region in 2011. Hoffa rewarded O’Brien again by naming him the coordinator for the supplements and riders to 2013 national UPS contract. While the 2013 national contract passed by a slim majority, the supplements were repeatedly voted down because of membership anger at unnecessary concessions.

    “O’Brien coordinated supplemental contract negotiations in 2013,” according to the Teamsters United website, “when a record 18 regional and local supplements and riders were rejected by the members.” Hoffa, prefiguring his actions in 2018, nevertheless imposed the national contract and supplements on an angry membership in 2014. O’Brien said and did nothing to oppose this.

    In 2013, Rhode Island Teamsters got a taste of O’Brien’s “old-school values” when he directly intervened in the election of Local 251. Faced with a strong challenge from the TDU-aligned slate of reformers led by UPS driver Matt Taibi, the old guard incumbent Joe Bairos called in O’Brien for help. At a fundraising rally, O’Brien threatened retaliation against anyone who voted for Taibi and his United Action slate:

    “I’ve got news for you, anyone who takes on my friend, Joe Bairos and his team, or Local 251, they’ve got major problems,’’ O’Brien said, according to transcripts of the union hall rally in Rhode Island during late summer. “They’ll never be our friends. They need to be punished. They need to be punished, and they need to be held accountable for their actions, trying to divide and tear down this local.’”

    O’Brien was charged with intimidating members and suspended for fourteen days by the Independent Review Board, a disciplinary body created by the federal consent decree in 1989 that guaranteed rank-and-file elections free from the threat of violence and intimidation.

    But by far the most notorious episode of O’Brien’s reign was the Top Chef fiasco. The popular cooking series on Bravo is hosted by former model Padma Lakshmi. On June 10, 2014, Top Chef was started filming at the Steel & Rye restaurant in Milton, a suburb of Boston, without union labor. A Local 25 picket line was set up and led by Secretary-Treasurer Mark Harrington.

    Instead of focusing on the use of nonunion labor, an explosion of racist, sexist, and Islamophobic slurs took place, including the threat, “That’s the pretty one. We want to smash her face in.” The activities of O’Brien’s crew were almost entirely recorded by cell phone. Federal prosecutors in Boston, who have a long antiunion record, quickly jumped on the case and indicted five Local 25 member including Mark Harrington for extortion under the Hobbes Act.

    Harrington was so certain he would be convicted that he pled guilty, while four others went to trial. Luckily for the labor movement, the jury returned a not-guilty verdict. A conviction would have had serious repercussions for the rights of workers to picket employers across the country. The jury’s decision doesn’t, however, absolve the racism and bigotry displayed by O’Brien’s men. Charges of racism were at first dismissed by O’Brien as “fiction at best,” but he was forced to eat his words after the recording of his men surfaced.

    O’Brien once again displayed his “old-school values” by verbally assaulting reform delegates at the Teamsters convention in June 2016 in Las Vegas. His behavior and that of other Hoffa delegates was investigated by the Office of the Election Supervisor of the Teamsters, and while it wasn’t deemed to have risen to the level of preventing nominations, one investigator reported that O’Brien “lied” to them. O’Brien went on to deliver a solid block vote from his local union that endorsed Hoffa’s reelection.

    For his loyalty, Hoffa appointed O’Brien director of the Teamsters Package Division in February 2017, setting him up to be the chief negotiator for the 2018 contract. “With Sean’s experience, enthusiasm and commitment I am confident that he will lead the fight for our members to achieve a strong contract,” said Hoffa

    Fred Zuckerman was not so pleased, “UPS Teamsters voted for new leadership to fight for a strong contract,” he said. “Instead, Hoffa is serving up a retread who screwed up the last negotiations and imposed weak contracts and concessions.” O’Brien’s subsequent falling-out with Hoffa blocked his rise to Teamster General President, and so he has sought another route. Given O’Brien’s clear record, it is a serious mistake for TDU to endorse him for General President and bestow on him the image of a reformer.

    Where Are the Teamsters Going?

    James P. Hoffa Jr. has been leader of the union for twenty years. He’s won five successive elections. Despite his winning streak, Hoffa has never been a particularly popular leader. If he retires as expected, it very probable that the old-guard coalition he relied on as his power base will crack up into competing factions, possibly reflecting regional rivalries.

    As past Teamster elections have shown, if the old guard is split in two or three parts, reformers have their best chance of winning; that’s what happened in the first rank-and-file election that brought Ron Carey to power in 1991. Still, with nearly two years to go before the election, it’s anyone’s guess how many candidates and slates will be campaigning for the top spots in the union and whether a reform slate stands a good chance.

    All of the announced or probable candidates for General President — by far, the most powerful position in the Teamsters — carry huge political baggage with them or have potential skeletons in their closets, so it’s hard to know how many of them will make it to the finish line. For example, another ambitious Teamster leader, Rome Aloise, the Secretary-Treasurer of Local 853, whose two-year suspension from the union ends later this year, plans to run for General President. How can he possibly think he can be a candidate without being subjected to greater scrutiny?

    The issues the next Teamster leadership will face — the continued rise of nonunion giant Amazon, the prospects of the next recession savaging the traditional freight industry, self-driving trucks, surveillance in the workplace, the dire issues of environmental destruction and the union’s posture towards a Green New Deal — aren’t going away. None of the announced or probable candidates running for Teamster General President are up to the task of confronting them. The Teamsters are long overdue for a fundamental change in direction after two decades of stagnation.

    https://youtu.be/iONMQovpQvo

    This article was originally published on Medium.

  • Noel Ignatiev, 1940–2019

    Noel Ignatiev, 1940–2019

    This article by John Garvey on the late Noel Ignatiev was originally posted by The Brooklyn Rail as an introduction to a piece by Ignatiev on Frederick Douglass. Given Ignatiev’s importance as a writer on race and class in the U.S., we are re-posting Garvey’s commentary on his life and work. The photo of Ignatiev was taken by Rachel Edwards. — NP editors

    Noel Ignatiev, the author of the following essay on Frederick Douglass, died on November 9th of this year. Although he had been ill, he wasn’t expecting death in the immediate future. In fact, he was looking forward to the publication of the essay in The Brooklyn Rail. The brief period of time since his death has witnessed a good number of formal obituaries and less formal reminiscences in The New Yorker, Commune, and The New York Times, which provide both biographical facts and descriptions of his impact and influence on students, friends and political comrades. I will try not to repeat too much of what has already been written.

    Noel was a radical activist for more than 60 years. While still a teenager, he joined an obscure group called the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (POC), on the “ultra-left” of the Communist Party (CP). Meaning, for example, that it supported the 1956 Russian invasion of Hungary to stop the revolution in that country and opposed the moves by the Russian CP towards a policy of “peaceful existence.” While the POC initially recorded some successes in local organizing (especially in fighting police brutality against Blacks), over time it became more cult-like and obsessed with its own internal purity. Nonetheless, Noel was a diligent member and rising star of sorts in the Philadelphia branch of the group. He was shocked to be expelled in 1966, but then thrilled at having been set free to develop his own views. Years later, Noel would say that his time spent in POC had not been a complete waste and that the group’s commitment to Black liberation and Puerto Rican independence, along with the opportunities he had to work alongside Black and Puerto Rican members, had deeply influenced his own subsequent views.

    His first noteworthy contribution in writing occurred in 1967 with the publication of a pamphlet titled “White Blindspot,” consisting of a critical letter from Noel (then Ignatin) to the Progressive Labor Party (PL) and a letter from Ted Allen (later author of The Invention of the White Race [2012]) supporting Noel’s arguments. (PL was another group that had emerged from a split within the CP.) His arguments focused on PL’s position that the Black liberation struggle was outside the class struggle and advanced the notion that the struggle against white supremacy (and the associated privileges provided to white workers) was fundamental to the possibility of effective working class solidarity.

    These arguments were especially convincing to members of SDS who were trying to defeat the efforts of PL to take over that organization and, soon afterwards, Noel was recruited to join SDS. He became a principal spokesperson of the short-lived RYM II (Revolutionary Youth Movement II) within the dying student organization. It should be noted that, at the time, Noel still considered himself a Marxist-Leninist (in other words, a Maoist opponent of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), as did Ted Allen. On the other hand, a close reading of the text reveals an independence of thought and spirit—Noel quotes George Bernard Shaw (which he continued to do for decades) and Ted insists on the importance of the development of subjectivity (including an attentiveness to matters of morality) as an essential part of revolutionary class consciousness. And both Noel and Ted relied on a close reading of W.E.B. DuBois’s Black Reconstruction as foundational. Noel retained an appreciation for Maoism because of the emphasis it had placed on the significance of individual and collective will in changing the course of history. I believe it was the commitment to act that placed him outside the comfortable conformism of the Communist Party. Eventually, though, his restless intellect and his passionate commitments would lead him far beyond the Maoism of his younger years

    Over the next 50 years, Noel was a prolific author of leaflets, articles, essays, and books and the editor of a number of publications. When he wrote, he was a meticulous craftsman and consistently drew upon an extensive knowledge of history, literature, and popular culture. He was associated with three significant political projects: the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO) from 1969 to the mid-80s, Race Traitor from 1993 to 2005 and Hard Crackers from 2016 to the present.

    Noel was a member of the small group that established STO in Chicago. That organization, which endured into the mid-80s, would not have been what it was without Noel’s contributions, but Noel would not have become who he did without being part of the group. There is an invaluable history of the organization by Michael Staudenmaier, Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization: 1969–1986 (2012) that illuminates his role. Not surprisingly, Noel did a great deal of writing for both internal discussions and public distribution. He also served as the principal editor of Urgent Tasks, the organization’s theoretical journal.

    Staudenmaier suggests that, in spite of significant changes in the group’s political assessments and priorities over time (which, among other things, resulted in numerous intense debates and a number of important splits) there were enduring convictions which distinguished it from other left organizations of the time:

    In every area and at every point in time STO emphasized the importance of mass action, the rejection of legal constraints on struggle, the question of consciousness within the working class, the central role of white supremacy to the continued misery of life under capitalism, and the necessity of autonomy for exploited and oppressed groups not only from capitalism and white supremacy but also from their supposed representatives, various self-proclaimed vanguards, and any other “condescending saviors.”

    In 1976, Noel authored a pamphlet titled “No Condescending Saviors,” an attempt to come to grips with the legacy of the Russian Revolution. This excerpt from the concluding chapter well represents Noel’s thinking at the time:

    The communist parties of the various countries, strongly influenced by the Russian model, are products of that stage in development in which the working class is not yet capable of establishing its own class rule. These parties have been, on one hand, more or less effective instruments for waging the class struggle and, on the other hand, terrible weapons for the suppression of all strivings of the proletariat to express itself as a class independent of their control.

    The working class in the developed countries no longer has need of these revolutionary mandarins. To take the most well-known of recent examples, in May of 1968 the French working class, acting under the guidance of no leading party, showed that it is “disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production,” and is capable of standing at the head of the nation — so much so that President de Gaulle went on a secret inspection tour of French military units in Germany, unable to rely any longer on those stationed in France itself, who had been exposed to the revolutionary virus.

    If the general strike and factory occupation of 1968 did not lead to the conquest of power by the proletariat, it was not because the workers were insufficiently organized, or did not possess adequate weapons, or lacked means of communication, or any of the other reasons that revolutionary attempts have failed in the past. It was because the workers themselves lacked an appreciation of their own capacity to rule.

    Workers do very revolutionary things, but they think of them in old ways. The French workers, who demonstrated their ability to carry out a nation-wide movement, create forms of direct democracy and regulate their relations with non-proletarian social strata—the essential tasks of any government—were unable to see that in their own actions lay the foundations of a new society. There were signs of the beginnings of such an understanding on the part of the workers, but they were stamped out by the official trade union and Communist Party leadership, which sought to interpret the events as simply a massive demonstration of the need for reform.

    So long as the only models of social action articulated to the workers are either continued subordination to the bourgeoisie—the line of social democracy—or reliance on the all-knowing vanguard party to lead them to socialism in its own good time, they will be unable to arrive at the new consciousness of themselves as a potential ruling class, and thus all their movements will inevitably be contained within the framework of capitalism.

    This did not mean that Noel or the organization had abandoned the traditional conviction that the working class needed a Leninist party, although its notion of what such a party should look like was quite different from others.

    From the start, the group’s evolution was strongly influenced by its engagement with the ideas of C.L.R. James who was in Chicago for part of the time. That encounter was decisive in enabling those within the organization who had retained a sympathy for Stalinism (including Noel) to make a final break. In 1981, Noel devoted a special issue of Urgent Tasks to James’s life and work. I’d suggest that every political project that Noel participated in from that moment on was infused with a Jamesian sensibility. His written words tell the story.

    In the first issue of Race Traitor, Noel wrote in an editorial:

    Race Traitor exists, not to make converts, but to reach out to those who are dissatisfied with the terms of membership in the white club. Its primary intended audience will be those people commonly called whites who, in one way or another, understand whiteness to be a problem that perpetuates injustice and prevents even the well-disposed among them from joining unequivocally in the struggle for human freedom. By engaging these dissidents in a journey of discovery into whiteness and its discontents, we hope to take part, together with others, in the process of defining a new human community.

    Really, there are two questions—who are our readers and who are our writers? We imagine that both will be quite diverse. We expect to be read by educators, by clergy, by scholars, by parents, by teenagers—in short, by many people for whom the willingness to question their membership in the white club might be the only thing they hold in common. We anticipate that if we are successful, those individuals will come to have a great deal more in common.

    You may wonder what kind of articles we want. We want to chronicle and analyze the making, re-making and unmaking of whiteness. We wish neither to minimize the complicity of even the most downtrodden of whites with the system of white supremacy nor to exaggerate the significance of momentary departures from white rules. We want to get it right.

    We should say that there are some articles we are not interested in publishing. Since we are not seeking converts, we probably will not publish articles which lecture various organizations about their racial opportunism. Also, we probably will not publish articles promoting inter-racial harmony, because that approach too often leaves intact differential treatment of whites and blacks and provides subtle confirmation of the idea that different races exist independently of social distinctions.

    A full set of the Race Traitor issues is available online.

    In 2015, Noel and I wrote a bit of a post-mortem on Race Traitor as part of an essay on the Rachel Dolezal controversy. It was published in Counterpunch:

    … we were interested in breaking up the white race to establish the basis for working class solidarity. Many years later, we continue to argue that the time-honored “Unite and Fight” approach will lead nowhere. Instead, when it comes to slogans, we prefer: “An injury to one is an injury to all,” or, the same thing in a different idiom: “Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.” Solidarity premised on the reproduction of inequalities within the working class, with the elimination of those inequalities to come later in “the sweet by and by,” is no solidarity at all.

    In retrospect, we believe that RT provided a coherent framework for examining and discussing race. As we acknowledged in an essay published in our next-to-last issue, we could have and should have approached some things differently—perhaps especially about the relationship we saw between the abolition of whiteness and the possibility of an anti-capitalist revolution. But we believe that much of what we wrote remains valuable today.

    We emphasized the cross-class character of the white race formation and repeatedly acknowledged that being in the white race did not exempt its working-class members from poverty or misery of all sorts. At the time, we pointed out that the privileges of membership were enough for almost all whites to want to remain members.   More than twenty years on, whiteness is not what it used to be, but it ain’t nothing.

    We never used, endorsed or promoted identity politics; we railed against multi-culturalism and diversity; we were scornful of those who wanted to preserve the “good aspects” of “white culture” or to rearticulate whiteness. We wanted nothing to do with the growing academic field of “whiteness studies.” We insisted that abolition was the goal of our words and our modest deeds.

    Although we were often accused of bashing white people, we actually think that we had more confidence in them than many of those who rush to diminish white workers’ responsibility for the perpetuation of racial oppression. We were partisans of the notion that new forms of consciousness can emerge from the working out of internal contradictions. While we agreed with David Roediger “that whiteness was not merely empty and false, it was nothing but empty and false,” we never thought that thinking of one’s self as white was an all-consuming affair (other than for white supremacists and “white nationalists”). We knew perfectly well from our own experiences in families, schools, work places and political organizations and movements that whites also identified themselves in many other ways.

    We never imagined that white and black were hermetically sealed realities or categories, and published more than a few articles that explored, and took quite different views on, various kinds of crossover phenomena. In that context, we articulated an appreciation for many elements of traditional African-American culture (which we do not regret to this day).  An aspect of that traditional culture was the willingness of black communities to welcome white defectors.   In spite of the wall between white and black, there have always been so-called whites, thousands of them (usually female), who married black partners, had children with them and lived in the black community (the only place they could live at the time)—without agonizing over their “identity.”
    …

    We did share some vocabulary with individuals and organizations that were travelling on different roads to different places. The most significant instance of this was the word “privilege.” In light of the political travesties that have developed under the term since, we wish we could have found some better way of differentiating ourselves from those who wanted to make careers (in journalism, social work, organizational development, education and the arts) by insisting that the psychic battle against privilege must be never-ending. The last thing in the world they wanted was for the white race to be abolished; if it were, they might have to make an honest living.

    Our voice was never dominant. “Privilege politics” became a way of avoiding serious thought or political debate and a way of avoiding direct confrontations with the institutions that reproduce race and with the individuals responsible for the functioning of those institutions. The focus shifted to an emphasis on scrutinizing every inter-personal encounter between black people and whites to unearth underlying racist attitudes and to guide people in “unlearning” them. This has developed into a tendency to strictly enforce the boundaries between the races—not only (as in the past) by white supremacists, but by proponents of what might be considered black advancement.

    Unlike some who see privileges as prerogatives worth defending or rights that some workers have won through struggle and that other excluded workers should be provided, we insisted then and now that privileges are not rights. We assume that our views on that matter will be no more persuasive today to the unthinking troops of the sectarian left than they were 20 years ago.

    At the present time, we acknowledge that the privileges have been eroded and that the protections once afforded to white people, and more specifically white workers, have become less significant than they were in the past. In that context, a constant hectoring of people about their privileges (which was never our approach) becomes an annoyance rather than a challenge. On the other hand, we would insist that something like race still matters a great deal—as is perhaps self-evident during a period of time characterized by a spate of police murders of black men and the murderous assault in the Charleston church. We would, however, urge people to look beneath the deeds that provoke immediate outrage from all sectors of society and appreciate the ways in which the everyday operations of institutions remain profoundly destructive of the well-being of African-Americans.
    […]

    Although some may think that we are living and dreaming in a different world than the real one, we want to note that we know that Barack Obama was elected as the first black president and that the ranks of the rich and powerful, and even the “middle class,” now include a significant number of black people in positions previously reserved for whites.   While such individuals are still subject to slights and insults from many quarters, and Charleston shows that even prominent black clergymen and state senators can be the victims of attack by white supremacist terrorists, their lives are not defined by official repression in the way they were in the past or the way the lives of people in the poor districts on the south side of Chicago, West Baltimore, Brooklyn’s East New York/Brownsville or many other places are today.

    It may be that race is again being redefined and that the degraded race will no longer be all those who share the characteristic of the visible black skin but only those who are poor and workers. Whatever its characteristics, the task of challenging those who enforce it will remain an essential one.

    In late 2015, several Race Traitor supporters urged us to resume publication of the journal. After discussing the matter, we decided not to do so but to initiate a new publication, with some new collaborators, that would represent both continuity and a new beginning. In 2016, Noel penned the introductory editorial for Hard Crackers:

    Attentiveness to daily lives is absolutely essential for those who would like to imagine how to act purposefully to change the world. During the 1940s and 1950’s The New Yorker ran a series of profiles by Joseph Mitchell of characters around New York. Mitchell wrote, “The people in a number of the stories are of the kind that many writers have recently got in the habit of referring to as ‘the little people.’ I regard this phrase as patronizing and repulsive. There are no little people in this book. They are as big as you are, whoever you are.” The profiles are collected in Up in the Old Hotel. A reader will find there hardly a single “political” reference, yet there is no doubt that Mitchell and many of the people he wrote about would have happily adapted to life in an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

    Hard Crackers focuses on people like the ones Mitchell profiled. It does not seek to compete with publications that analyze world developments, nor with groups formed on the basis of things their members oppose and advocate; still less does it consider itself a substitute for political activity. It is guided by one principle: that in the ordinary people of this country (and the world) there resides the capacity to escape from the mess we are in, and a commitment to documenting and examining their strivings to do so.

    “Hard Crackers” was a song popular among Union soldiers during the Civil War, a takeoff on Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times.” The Civil War and Reconstruction, viewed as a single event, was a revolution as great as any in human history, transforming property into strikers, soldiers, citizens, voters and legislators—a sequence unparalleled elsewhere. To get an idea of its radicalism, consider the following from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:

    Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

    Has any statement ever captured more succinctly the meaning of revolution? The Lincoln who spoke those words was not the moderate who came to office four years earlier seeking to maintain the Union at almost any cost. Revolution is a process, not a single event, and millions, including Lincoln, were changed by it. Although the leaders of that revolution undoubtedly made mistakes and did not realize all their hopes, neither did they disgrace with their own deeds the cause for which they had fought, or leave a stench in the nostrils of later generations, as did many of the revolutionaries of the next century. Hard Crackers identifies with that history, and especially with the experience “on the ground” of those who made it (see https://hardcrackers.com/about/). [I should note that Hard Crackers publishes a print journal and regularly posts other comments on its web page.]

    The last editorial Noel wrote for Hard Crackers appeared in the recently published Issue #7. He echoed familiar themes:

    The crimes and atrocities committed by the United States through its history are surpassed by no other country. Nevertheless, the U.S. has repeatedly given rise to mass movements that have been models for the whole world. It is a paradox; consider the following, by C.L.R. James:

    The unending murders, the destruction of peoples, the bestial passions, the sadism, the cruelties and the lusts, all the manifestations of barbarism of the last thirty years are unparalleled in history. But this barbarism exists only because nothing else can suppress the readiness for sacrifice, the democratic instincts and creative power of the great masses of the people.

    The present occupant of the White House has managed to maintain his base notwithstanding his failure to fulfill the promises that led many to vote for him. In some cases his supporters oppose programs that can be demonstrated to benefit them materially, and support programs that will hurt them—suggesting that they are motivated by considerations other than purely material, including dignity—a fact which has a hopeful as well as an obvious down side. Some expect that his tariff wars with China and the resultant damage they do to the “economy” will at last awaken his working-class supporters to their true interests. We doubt it. It is our view that for many who are fed up with contemporary society, nothing less than a total change can win them away from him.

    One of Noel’s favorite novels was Barry Unsworth’s masterful novel of sailor/slave revolt and utopian yearning, Sacred Hunger (1992). On board the slave ship, the young artist Delblanc, embarks on a campaign to persuade the miserable sailors that they could change the miserable world they inhabited:

    Anyone at all—the weasel-faced Tapley, swabbing down the decks, a disgruntled Billy Blair coming up from scraping the slaves’ quarters, Morgan in his galley trying to find some new disguise for the rotten beef—might find himself addressed by Delblanc and asked whether he did not agree that the state of society was artificial and the power of one man over another merely derived from convention. Delblanc’s manner was the same with all, friendly and open. At first, tactics lagging behind conviction, he made no concessions to any imperfections of understanding in his audience. “By nature, we are equal,” he said on one occasion to a vacantly smiling Calley. “Does it not therefore follow that government must always depend on the consent of the governed?” He even spoke to McGann, asking him whether he did not think it true that the character of man originated in external circumstances and could be changed as these were changed.

    The men listened, or appeared to listen, out of deference, because he was a gentleman, because he was paying for his passage. Delblanc saw soon enough that he was using the wrong language with them and was beginning to try out a different one until warned by Thurso [the captain] that if he persisted in distracting the crew, he would be confined to his quarters for the rest of the voyage. … One look at the captain’s face was enough to convince Delblanc. It was in his reaction to this threat that he showed the quick grasp of realities that later came to distinguish him. A man can do no good locked up in his cabin. He went more circumspectly thereafter.

    For me, Unsworth’s portrait of Delblanc has always seemed to capture something of the essential revolutionary passion and determination of my friend, of over 40 years, Noel Ignatiev.