Ill-Liberalism? Or, Rather, Is It “Far Left” Malaise? (A Critical yet Comradely Response to the Baffler on Liberalism)

 This was sent to the left-wing magazine The Baffler around Memorial Day 2024, but not published.  But it's too good not to share--GF

I’ve been subscribing to the Baffler for the past three years, ever since the May/June 2021 issue, and just renewed my subscription.  I confess to not reading a lot of the Baffler’s articles that have appeared, but then, I subscribe to a number of small magazines of the left and center-left, and don’t always read a lot of what’s in them, either.  But when I do read something that especially strikes my mind, sometimes it moves me, as a published writer and poet, to comment publicly.  And so I do so here, hopefully in the irreverent, snarky style the Baffler is noted for—although, I must admit, my arguments may be too earnest to entirely lend themselves to that approach!

 

Specifically, as an anti-authoritarian democratic socialist very much disenchanted with the results of the Bolshevik-legacy experiments in what Jacobin and others have called “state socialism,”  from the supposedly halcyon days of Lenin and Trotsky in power through the dark nights of rule by Stalin and later, Brezhnev, to foreign acolytes such as Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Cubans indigenous and transplanted such as Fidel, Raúl and Che right up to present-day Cuban “maximum leader,” Díaz-Canel, the more I’m struck by how they all failed to create a “workers’ paradise.”  Worse.  What they actually created was a world of Gulags and 3 AM knocks on the door by the political police, a world where even a supposedly innocuous critical comment could get one in deep trouble with the authorities, and where reformers ranging from 1956 Hungary’s Imre Nagy to 1968 Czechoslovakia’s Alexander Dubček to 1950s Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas right down to “official” reformers such as Khrushchev and Gorbachev all ended up banging their heads futilely at firmly-embedded brick walls; that is, when they weren’t killed, unceremoniously sacked, or jailed.  And that’s just to name a prominent few.  Many others not as well-known simply disappeared into the labyrinths of the various Gulags.  As, Bertrand Russell, someone with impeccable left-wing bona fides. noted in his 1920 study of Revolutionary Russia, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, written after visiting there in 1919 with the delegation of the British Independent Labour Party:  “…while some forms of socialism are immeasurably better than capitalism, others are even worse.  Among those that are worse I reckon the form which is being achieved in Russia, not only in itself, but as more insuperable barrier to further progress.”[1]  This is the same Bertrand Russell who writes two pages earlier, “The existing capitalist system is doomed.  Its injustice is so glaring that only ignorance and tradition could lead wage earners to tolerate it.”[2]  Other valuable eyewitness accounts of disillusionment with revolutionary Russia by eyewitnesses with impeccable left-wing bona fides include Emma Goldman’s My Disillusionment in Russia and Left Menshevik leader Iulii (Julius) Martov’s World Bolshevism.

 

There’s much other relevant literature available, needless to say, on other Bolshevik-legacy regimes, from post-World War II Eastern Europe to China, Vietnam, and Cuba from other critics with left-wing bona fides. 

 

All of which brings me back to the Baffler and my democratic socialism, or as others would put it, my “mere social democracy” and appreciation for DSA founder Michael Harrington’s “left wing of the feasible.”  I like a socialism that works and works well, and to date such has not come from the influence of Bolshevism, but from the European social democracy, and in the US, the legacy of the New Deal and yes, even the better aspects of the Great Society of LBJ.  This is not a political tradition, from what I’ve read in it, that the Baffler is particularly enamored with, but it has proved itself in actual practice to be a more workable one than that which has been handed down now for over a hundred years by the adherents of Bolshevism. It has also materially and psychologically benefitted millions across Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the US; has made for workers’ entry into the “middle class” and built trade unions; and, especially in the US, has created institutions such as Social Security, minimum wage guarantees, unemployment and workers’ compensation, Medicare and Medicaid which are not only taken for granted, but which have benefitted millions now for more than a few generations; as well as being programs that reactionaries love to hate and accuse of being fiscally irresponsible!  Yes, compared to the promises of “pie in the sky” in the world “after the Revolution” they are but “half a loaf.”  But truly, “half a loaf” is preferable to no loaf at all, especially one that is nowhere on the actual political horizon of 2024.  When one will settle only for “all or nothing,” one shouldn’t be at all surprised when one gets—absolutely nothing!  (For a good overview of what social democracy accomplished in Western Europe and Scandinavia, see Donald Sassoon’s 1996 One Hundred Years of Socialism [New York: The New Press].)

 

But the Baffler didn’t see this at all, particularly in its Sept. Oct. 2021 issue (#59), thematically titled “Ill Liberalism,” and which thinking in that issue still permeates the Baffler’s political approach.  It took liberalism to task in several leading articles, all designed to expose the inherent weaknesses of “mere liberalism” and demolish its pretentions,   It especially  took to task one of the smallest of small magazines, Liberties, a journal so small it’s truly obscure, though still publishing.  Further, the Baffler conflated liberalism as a political philosophy with “corporate liberalism” and “woke” corporations, neither of which is, or ever has been, as liberal or as awake as its PR portends (or is that, more properly, “pretends”?!)  But changing demographics do make for newly emerging markets, and today’s youth, the coming-of-age denizens of that prime buying group (those aged 25-55) do tend much more to the left, and far more conscious and supportive of social movements for racial and gender equality domestically than do past generations, as well as being more critical of US foreign policy.  Meanwhile, many of those in the ”Revolutionary Youth Movement” of the 1960s and 1970s have conservatized and drastically aged (and also, were vastly inflated in numbers in the first place), and are now those forlorn Baby Boomers who are on the way out.  “‘Woke’ corporations,” contrary to what people such as Ron DeSantis would have one believe, are not revolutionary firebrands whose “pernicious” influence is omnipresent, and is undermining capitalism and “traditional values”:  rather, they are savvy marketeers adopting to new market trends as they manifest themselves among those of prime buying age!  Rather than Revolution 101, “corporate ‘wokeness’” is far more an application of Marketing 101, taught in all the business schools worth their “genuinely organic” salt across this “land of the free, and home of the brave.”  It’s also a certain twinge of conscience (let’s be fair) among corporate elites, who feel one does not have to be an absolutely ruthless, heartless, dictatorial Robber Baron to make a decent profit.  Indeed, I, along with many on the left, might even feel more comfortable with sharing a beer and polite conversation with them than I ever would with someone such as Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, or J.D. Vance!  “So what?” goes the appropriate question. 

 

So, to put it in more directly left political terms (pace, Baffler!), the problem with liberalism is not so much that it is evil as it is seemingly inadequate.  It is applying a bandage when a torniquet is needed, according to those more attuned to the “far left.”  But this particular leftist, me, myself, and I, regard liberals of the ordinary grassroots stripe as the—Near Left!  Yes, they are “incrementalist;” yes, they are closer to the center than to the left, particularly the “far left;” yes, they are more comfortable with “piecemeal” solutions, and want to make sure something is tested and true before being implemented.  So what?  That makes liberalism cautious, that’s all.  The same charge was leveled against the European social democrats who put into place social democracy and the welfare state (more successfully than was done in the US).  “Why settle for mere national healthcare when you can have a thoroughgoing Revolution?” the critics’ refrain went.  Why?  Because the thoroughgoing Revolution is a pipe dream, that’s why!  We can look to Bolshevik-legacy “state socialism” and see that, and more—not just Gulags, but vital material goods shortages!  Not just censorship, but interminable queues!  As a democratic socialist quite “satisfied” to “settle for” a greater social democracy in this country, and hope to hell my hopes aren’t dashed by the triumph of a fascistic Christian Nationalism and recrimination such as that associated with today’s Donald Trump and the Republican Party, that is why I’m going to reach out to the Near Left of grassroots liberalism, and try to win them over as coalition allies!

 

Because that’s what real-world politics is all about: building coalitions to achieve positive results in the here-and-now.  Period.  Not demanding agreement on all points, only ones that mutually concern us at the present, to achieve realistic goals now and in the foreseeable future.  Not, decidedly not,  for the Final Result in the chiliastic Millennium where everything, yes, everything, is “perfect forever”!  In doing this, I don’t reach out to potential coalition partners the way I would to potential members of an affinity group, or those whom I want to put on the guest list for my trendy party.  No, I just want coalition partners who are dependable enough to work constructively with me to achieve concrete goals that are “the left wing of the feasible.”  So, let that be “incremental.”  I can also fight for more on the day or days after the initial victory, and victories, even if small, are always better at morale-building than defeats, no matter how glorious the defeated cause.  That, my Baffler friends, is how Politics 101 is actually done in the real world.  That is what Bernie Sanders did in 2016 and 2020 with such great success.  The “far leftists” accused Sanders of mere “sheepdogging” for the Democratic Party, but truth is, Bernie Sanders did more to build what today we can call a reasonably vibrant left than did all the “communists,” “Marxist-Leninists,” “pure Marxists” and “anarchists” who preceded him.  Thanks to Bernie, we have more vibrancy on the left, and more left politicians in office, than we had before his two “sheepdogging” campaigns—and I say, let us never forget that!

 

As for issues to emphasize, I would recommend domestic issues that attract the interest of millions, and stay clear as much as possible from emphasizing foreign policy issues on which only a handful are really expert (despite all sorts of pretensions otherwise), and which easily degenerate into “left” sectarian dogfights, as we are currently seeing, e.g., on Gaza, the Ukraine, and China.  Keep demands simple and direct, and don’t worry overmuch about whether they are “merely incremental” or not.  On the immediate issue of Gaza, which is certainly not going to go away anytime soon, a simple demand for a “ceasefire” enforceable on both parties, Israel and Hamas, is all the realistic left can ask for, and still get widespread public support.  Without widespread public support nothing gets done effectively, and certainly not in a society with democratic norms and practices.  If the reluctant masses do acquiesce in being forced to follow a particular course, they do so sullenly and passive-aggressively, as the whole sorry history of Bolshevik-legacy “already existing socialism” (to use Brezhnev’s euphemistic phrase) so amply shows.  That, my Baffler friends, is what I recommend on politics and dealing with liberals as a democratic socialist in the tradition of Michael Harrington’s “left wing of the feasible."           

 

---

[1] From the 1962 edition published in the US by Simon and Schuster, p.21.

[2] Ibid., p. 19.

The 75th Anniversary Issue of Monthly Review, and Left Nostalgia

 

The May 2024 issue of the self-described “independent socialist magazine” Monthly Review was its 75^th Anniversary issue.  Founded in May 1949 by two 1930s socialist radicals who became its first Editors, economist Paul Sweezy and labor journalist Leo Huberman, Monthly Review declared itself to have no allegiance to any particular left or socialist party, although its articles all veered to the “far left,” or “revolutionary left,” especially to those declaring themselves Marxists of one sort or another.   Over the decades, Monthly Review carried articles mainly by intellectuals of Trotskyist or Maoist persuasions, as well as more orthodox communists and even neo-Stalinists, but decidedly not those who were anarchists or social democrats, as Monthly Review’s orientation was for “revolutionary socialism” as opposed to “mere reformism.”  (However, Monthly Review did once carry an article by Marxist-turned-anarchist Murray Bookchin highly critical of Mayor Bernie Sander’s socialist programs in Burlington Vermont.)    Monthly Review, of course, catalogued the various ills and crises of capitalism while always saying the only remedy was socialism.  But as it was overwhelmingly an intellectual journal, it was appealing not so much to a beleaguered proletariat to make the Revolution as it was for left and socialist intellectuals to educate for socialism, especially among the young, and proclaim themselves socialists instead.  In fact, Monthly Review steered clear of discussing programmatic proposals, of answering the question, “What Is to Be Done Next?” except on only one occasion, when in 1969 it effusively supported SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, the leading 1960s New Left group in the US) recognizing the Black Panther Party as the revolutionary “vanguard.”  That was its only direct foray into concrete left politics of any day, although it did also, in 1966, openly support the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and split on the Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, with Editor Leo Huberman roundly denouncing it while the other Editor, Paul Sweezy, stayed airily above the fray and discussed “revisionism” in abstract terms, indirectly accusing Dubček and his Czech allies of engaging in it.  Further, while in 1957, on the 40^th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which had installed the “temporary” Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the Editors did say critically that “forty years was too long” for such a dictatorship, during the Sino-Soviet Split Monthly Review came out firmly on the side of the Chinese, who were even more hardline and authoritarian than the Soviets!

 

Monthly Review has gone through many Editors since then, replacing the deceased Leo Huberman with Harry Magdoff, and then, after the retirement and death of Paul Sweezy, having as Editors Ellen Meiksin Wood, Robert McChesney, and presently, John Bellamy Foster, all the while keeping its “revolutionary socialist” orientation intact.  Bellamy Foster is very much the orthodox Marxist, looking especially to the 1930s and 1940s Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) as the halcyon model of socialism in America, still awaits the final collapse of capitalism, and, as someone particularly ecologically-minded, sees Marx as especially someone with full-throated ecological concerns, a harbinger of contemporary ecological thinking on de-growth and only limited sustainability being possible in a world of finite resources—something this author sees as highly improbable coming from a thinker living entirely in the 19^th Century (1818-1883, as did his friend and collaborator Frederick Engels [1820-1895], when developmentalism and unlimited growth were in intellectual vogue.  Although, even then, Marx and Engels had serious environmental reservations about unlimited capitalist growth.)  But that is Monthly Review—for whom Marx and Engels were not so much great, incisive thinkers as they were infallible prophets, whose insights are eternal and never wrong, irrelevant, or even conditional.

 

But back to the 75^th Anniversary issue.  Monthly Review commemorates its anniversary with four particular cases of left nostalgia.  First is a long article by Editor John Bellamy Foster (who always writes a long article monthly for the magazine, or else is featured in a long interview.  These are featured as “Review of the Month,” a practice begun under Huberman and Sweezy.) on how Albert Einstein created one of his best-known essays outside of physics for the first issue of the magazine, his short introductory essay on the topic titled “Why Socialism?”  Like all such “Reviews of the Month,” it is excruciatingly and pedantically footnoted with every possible reference or aside, in this particular case, with 91 such.  This author took to re-reading Einstein’s “Why Socialism?” and found it a good essay, but not a great one.  Only eight pages long in this author’s copy of the Einstein anthology Ideas and Opinions (New York:  Crown Publishers, 1954), Einstein’s actual discussion of the ills of capitalism and the consequent necessity of socialism takes up only the last three of these pages, and Einstein’s brief for socialism only the last two paragraphs!  (Making it indeed a—brief brief!  Yes, pun intended.)  However, in the very last paragraph, Einstein does raise the possibility that the benefits of a planned economy under socialism could be thwarted or denied if it degenerated into bureaucracy—a notable caveat, given than on the left, especially the orthodox Communist left, adulation of the Soviet Union under Stalin (which prided itself on a planned economy) was de rigueur for anyone calling himself socialist or communist, or in many cases, even liberal or progressive!  Monthly Review’s willingness to discuss and publish such straying from orthodoxy even got it called out by the CPUSA for possible “Trotskyite or Titoite” deviations!  (Huberman and Sweezy responded by firmly upholding Monthly Review as not “Titoite,” and did not even deign to address whether it was “Trotskyite”!)

 

In addition to being a socialist, Einstein also viewed himself as a Zionist, and had been ever since the rise of Nazism in his native Germany in the 1920s, which the May 2024 “Review of the Month” tried manfully, though unsuccessfully, to downplay.  Yes, Einstein was a humane Zionist, meaning nothing more than he believed in a Jewish home in what was then Palestine, and little more; although, citing Ideas and Opinions once again, Einstein pointedly noted that, with the emancipation of the Jews in Europe from the ghettoization and discrimination inflicted previously on them, many Jews gave up their Jewish ways and tried to assimilate—only to be thwarted by antisemitism, by being painfully reminded that, to the European Gentiles, they remained Jews, and would always remain Jews! (pp. 181-82)  Hence, his humane Zionism.

 

As for the other three pieces of nostalgia in this particular issue, there is a “Notes from the Editors” (another regular feature of Monthly Review) on then-Editors Huberman and Sweezy’s essentially dismissive take from 1974 that Watergate was of no major political import as far as maintaining capitalism was concerned, and that also, Huberman and Sweezy’s preoccupation with pollution as a specific environmental threat brought Huberman and Sweezy into accord with Bellamy Foster’s radical ecologism.  There is a also a brief quote from Paul Sweezy that, in response to his left critics who state otherwise, he still upholds Marx’s Theory of Value, and a 2000 note by then-Editors Harry Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney that the beginning of the 21^st Century was no time to abandon belief in revolutionary socialism, and that Monthly Review readers should still keep the socialist faith.  All reminiscent of the old saying, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”  Yes, since 1949 Stalin, Brezhnev and Mao have died, Khrushchev and Gorbachev tried to reform Soviet Communism and were deposed for their efforts, the dictatorial socialist Soviet Union became the kleptocratic capitalist dictatorship Russia, China dabbled in capitalism and transformed its formerly  “pure socialist” economy from underperformance to  world-power status, the welfare state waxed and waned but never disappeared despite capitalist wishes otherwise, public opinion in the US and other Western parliamentary democracies went from largely center-left to now substantially center-right, and much else besides, yet the hoary shibboleths traceable back to Marx and Engels are still as relevant as they ever were!  Supposedly.  What will Monthly Review write on its 100^th Anniversary?  No, the whole world is not waiting and wondering!   

Gorbachev’s Passing, and the Socialism That Might Have Been

 

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Premier of what was then the Soviet Union, died August 30, 2022, at age ninety-one.  He was a Promethean yet tragic figure, brought down by the very dragons of “glasnost” (transparency) and “perestroika” (restructuring) he’d unleashed—ironically, to save the Soviet system, not collapse it.  But things had just gone too far when Gorbachev came to power in 1985:  the repressive regime that had been in power since 1917, ruled for sixty-eight years, was too far gone, too rigid and unyielding, for his reforms to take hold.  The Russians and other nationalities that made up the Soviet public, for nearly three generations, had never known freedom or democracy, nor had the generations before it, under the Czars; fragile, newborn democracy in Russia and the other Czarist-held territories was definitely a fragile, newborn thing, existing substantively only from February 1917 to October 1917, by the old Russian calendar—only from the overthrow of the last Czar until the coming of the Bolshevik Revolution; and during this time the Russian government was weak, inept, and saddled with participation in the unsustainable World War it had inherited from the very Czar it overthrew.  Freedom and democracy in such a Russia took on the dimensions of a Greek tragedy:  where the very Fate the protagonists do not understand, and had no role in deliberately creating, are yet undermined by, and driven to destruction, by it.  Such was the fate of Gorbachev’s “glasnost” and “perestroika”—the newly-found freedom and democracy they created became a centrifugal, dividing, force, not a unifying, constructive one.

Gorbachev was born March 2, 1931, in a small village in southern Russia, which of course, was later collectivized under Stalin.  Gorbachev’s father, a Communist Party member, became manager of the collective farm.  His two grandfathers, however, became victims of the Gulag, but, unusually, survived and returned home to their villages.  Gorbachev entered Moscow State University, the Soviet Union’s most prestigious, and joined the Communist Party in 1952.  Much an orthodox Soviet Communist, his eyes began opening under his experience at the University, and later, by Khrushchev’s famous speech on Stalin, which Gorbachev called “courageous.”  While at Moscow State, he befriended a young Czech student, who became both his lifelong friend and a leader in the Prague Spring of 1968.  As a rising Communist, Gorbachev visited France, Italy, Canada, and West Germany, and was struck by how much higher the standard of living was in those countries as compared to the Soviet Union, even though the Soviet Union was also a developed country.  He also visited Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring, and became a supporter of it.  A member of the Central Committee, and later the Politburo, Gorbachev acceded to power in 1985 at the youngish age of fifty-four, after not only the death of septuagenarian Brezhnev, but also the death of near-septuagenarian (69) Yuri Andropov, who succeeded Brezhnev only to die a short while later; and then octogenarian Chernenko, who also died shortly thereafter.  Now Premier and head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev embarked on his course of reform, in which he met heavy opposition from both Party hard-liners and from vested interests, notably the collective farm and military-industrial complex lobbies.  Gorbachev also had the misfortune to accede to power during the tenure of Ronald Reagan as President of the U.S., an inveterate (invertebrate??) Cold Warrior and far-rightist who spurned Gorbachev’s peace and arms reduction proposals with harsh “evil empire” rhetoric directed as the Soviet Union and the regimes of Eastern Europe.  So, despite high initial promises and expectations, Gorbachev’s ambitious agenda of “glasnost” and “perestroika” sputtered, and he found himself isolated until, finally, his former ally, now nemesis, Yeltsin, walked into Gorbachev’s office on Christmas Day, 1991, and bluntly told Gorbachev the Soviet Union was over, and that he was out of a job. 

When in power, Gorbachev realized just how much the military defense was draining the Soviet economy, now that he had access to statistics denied even to high-ranking Central Committee and Politburo members—and was shocked to find out that the Soviet military-industrial complex absorbed 40% of state spending, an unsustainable reality for his plans for a better society, in which ordinary citizens would also gain to benefit.  He did succeed in arms reduction deals with his U.S. counterpart, Reagan, despite the latter’s Cold Warrior intransigence.  But his dreams or “glasnost” and “perestroika” never really took off:  what Gorbachev planned as a unifying course of action turned out to be a disintegrating one, as long pent-up individual, societal, and ethnic people’s animosity, now unleashed, became centrifugal forces that tore apart, rather than rebuilt, the Soviet Union.  (The whole of this struggle on the part of Gorbachev is told very well, and in much more detail, by a young scholar, Chris Miller, in his 2016 book, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press].)  Thus did Gorbachev see his visions of “glasnost” and “perestroika” not galvanize Soviet society and public opinion, but instead, pent-up demands by non-Russian peoples for independence dismantled the Soviet state; U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs’s notion of economic “shock therapy,” i.e., overnight transformation of the economy from a state-owned collectivist one to a neoliberal capitalist one, carried out under Yeltsin, who succeeded Gorbachev in power in the Russian state, completed the death sentence of Soviet-style “socialism.” 

Gorbachev was also a critic of strongman Putin’s dictatorial ways.  Today, Russia has reverted to what it was in Soviet times, a one-party dictatorship under one “maximum leader,” Putin, who carries out only sham elections and imprisons, and even kills, his opponents—same as was done under Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev!  (Only a capitalist one, of course.)  Further, while the Soviet Union had been a superpower, second only to the United States in many areas, now it is a much-diminished economy and society, with a GDP today only about the size of Texas. 

Gorbachev, the last “Leninist” in power in the Soviet Union due to his heading the Communist Party, was as innovative as had been Lenin—in ways antithetical to Lenin, of course, and in an attempt to further, not truncate, socialist democracy.  His was a failure, but to this author, a glorious failure.  We of a socialist bent would be better to hope for more Gorbachevs, and fewer Lenins.  More socialist democracy, and less authoritarian collectivism dominated by the state, and the one-party clique that controls the state:  which made Soviet-style “socialism” more akin to a company town, where the controllers of the state are both monopolists, selling “their” workers the goods and services they need and want, and monopsonists, the sole purchaser of labor power.  The only exceptions are those specifically carved out by the state:  exceptions to the rule that are officially allowed; with the only other course being the black market.  Such is hardly an inspiring “socialism” that would attract millions of toiling masses in capitalist societies—and indeed, such a “socialism” has failed to do so.  Let us of a socialist bent be honest about this, and admit it.

After removal from power, Gorbachev became a has-been in the new Russia, ignored when not despised for allegedly “destroying” the Soviet Union.  His “communism” was more social democracy than Leninism, and he himself admitted admiration for the German Social Democratic Party, and chaired the small Social Democratic Party in Russia until 2004.  If he was a nearly forgotten has-been in his native Russia, he won accolades and awards in the West.  And yes, his vision of socialism through “glasnost” and “perestroika” is compelling, and a far cry from what we and generations of leftists before us have come to regard as “socialist.”  But imagine:  a socialism without Gulags, or the dreaded 3:00 A.M. knock on the door.  A socialism where everyone has the right of free speech and speaking their minds, reading a free press, writing what they wish to write, without fear of censorship, or feeling the “necessity” of self-censorship.  A socialism that is governed by a free and fair democratic electoral system, with multiple candidates vying for office, and multiple parties running candidates.  As socialism that enshrines the “bourgeois freedoms” as enshrined in, say, the Bill of Rights, where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” can be taken for granted.  And, of course, a socialism where not everything is controlled by the state, and is allowed only under state aegis, but where the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” to quote from the Communist Manifesto.  In short, a socialism where the individual, as well as the collective, matter, and where the individual finds his and her self-determination naturally, “with liberty and justice for all.”  Such is the socialism that might have been, had Gorbachev succeeded, and for the lack of which we as socialists will continue to pay for—through the nose, if history is any guide.      

 

Anarchist economics and political economy

Posted in the now-defunct Left Eye on Books, November 2012.  Slight editorial changes to bring up-to-date--GF

 

Political economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy) is the name originally given to economics during its early days of development under the classical economists such as Adam Smith, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith) David Ricardo, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo) John Stuart Mill, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill) and its enfant terrible, Karl Marx. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx) But I want to use it in a different, a “new,” sense here, as the intersection of politics and economics; because, while economics itself has become a highly technical field, it is more often politics that informs economic policy and practice—that is, just what is done to create jobs, promote equality, produce goods and services that benefit all, and basically provide for the material benefit of society.  Further, while much of economics, or classical political economy for that matter, is implicitly or explicitly pro-capitalist, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism), significant objections to capitalism have been raised through the economic analysis of capitalism itself, as well as through the positing of an alternative political order to capitalism—chiefly, of course, by the left.  Both historically, and in the present, the left divides broadly on the alternative polity to capitalism into two main camps: socialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism) and anarchism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism)

 “The Accumulation of Freedom” (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0) develops both the anarchist critique of capitalism and the project of an anarchist society and its achievement through 19 essays written by anarchist scholar/activists, not all of them professional academics.  This scholarly activism is exemplified in the biographies of the three editors themselves, Deric Shannon, (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0) Anthony J. Nocella II (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0) and John Asimakopoulos (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781849350945-0).  Appropriately for the discussion of “new” political economy and economic analysis as seen through anarchist eyes, “The Accumulation of Freedom” is subtitled “Writings on Anarchist Economics.”

 

Anarchist critiques of both capitalism and socialism have taken on an active new life in recent years on the left, and anarchist movements are now an integral part of it.  The anarchist notion of direct participation in the restructuring of society, the notion of non-hierarchical social arrangements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_organization), and full democratic participation in all decision-processes have become integrally part of the world left theory and practice, often displacing previous left attraction to socialism and Marxism-Leninism. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_Leninism) Anarchism and anarchist movements have come prominently into play since the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization) in 1999, (http://socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19622) and are integrally involved in both the activism and the political theory of Occupy movements. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement) The “Postscript” in “The Accumulation of Freedom” written by the three editors in November 2011, at the height of Occupy Wall Street, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street) expresses both the indebtedness of anarchism to the Occupy notion, its cross-fertilization by Occupy, and posits directions within an anarchist perspective that build on and extend Occupy notions.

An important development concomitant with the rise of contemporary anarchism is the notion of effective socialist-anarchist alliances around issues of common concern, and friendly, if critical, dialogue between socialists and anarchists.  Three contributions to this notion of positive socialist-anarchist alliance have been articulated by socialists who see commonality despite differences with anarchist activists.  The first of these was Ursula McTaggart’s “Can We Build Socialist-Anarchist Alliances?” in the socialist bimonthly Against the Current 141 (July/August 2009). (http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/2263) A more restrained, but equally positive, assessment of socialist-anarchist alliances was given by Marvin Mandell in his review article in New Politics 47 (Summer 2009), “Anarchism and Socialism.” (http://newpol.org/node/75) Mandell ends his review by writing, “I think Marxists and Anarchists can learn from each other and, in fact, need each other.”  George Fish also contributed to the positive discussion of socialist-anarchist alliances from a socialist perspective in his review of Noam Chomsky’s “Chomsky on Anarchism,” in New Politics 49 (Summer 2010), “Chomsky, Anarchism, and Socialism,” (http://newpol.org/node/423) and reviewed “The Accumulation of Freedom” in New Politics 54 (Winter 2013), http://newpol.org/content/anarchist-economics-and-socialist-anarchist-dialogue.

“The Accumulation of Freedom” reciprocates this socialist appreciation by several contributors borrowing much of their analyses and critiques of capitalism from socialist and Marxist sources and, in some cases, openly expressing appreciation for Marx and Marxist ideas themselves.  This is sometimes quite hard to do for anarchists, as Marx was a foremost critic of anarchism and engaged in vigorous polemics with two of its leading proponents, Mikhail Bakunin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin) and Pierre-Joseph Prudhon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon) Yet in many ways the socialist and anarchist critiques of capitalism dovetail, and few socialists would have quarrel with the extensive critiques of contemporary capitalism and its destructiveness laid out here.  Further, these analytical essays, contained in Parts 2 and 3 of the book, are extensive, well documented, and well done, giving great elucidation and development to the topic.  The only analytical essay in these sections I was disappointed with was Abbey Volcano and Deric Shannon’s “Capitalism ion the 200s: Broad Strokes for Beginners,” which I found more descriptive than analytical, but perhaps that is why it is subtitled as it is—it is aimed at beginners to economic analysis of capitalism, not so much at veterans like me.

There are many essays that discuss the how-to-do-it aspect of anarchist social transformation, but they all share in common the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and cooperative, mutual aid and support approach that is an integral part of contemporary anarchism.  Unlike many socialists, anarchists rely more on direct action and determined groups of people just doing it, from Occupy movements to workers taking over factories and running them themselves, as detailed in Marie Trigona’s (http://www.blogger.com/profile/14345188450610946384) “Occupy, Resist, Produce! Lessons from Latin America’s Occupied Factories.”  Here anarchists differ in emphasis and tactics generally from socialists in that they are impatient with socialist efforts to gain control of state power and use the power of the state to transform capitalism and create the new socialist state order because, of course, anarchists oppose the very existence of the state itself.  But they also believe that the people themselves can organize to provide for their needs and wants independently of, and without reliance on, the state and state power.

“The Accumulation of Freedom” also contains useful guides on tactics of resistance, protest and effective opposition.  Chief among these is Robin Hahnel’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hahnel) “The Economic Crisis and Libertarian Socialists,” based on a speech Hahnel gave in Greece to anti-austerity activists.  Hahnel lays out a multi-point guide for political action to restructure the European economies such as Greece’s that have been devastated by neoliberalism, and articulates in this a program many a supposedly “tamer” socialist would heartily agree with.  D.T. Cochrane (http://yorku.academia.edu/DTCochrane) and Jeff Monaghan’s “Fight to Win! Tools for Confronting Capital” draws lessons on tactics and strategy from anti-corporate struggles that have been found useful and effective in a number of cases, from opposing sweatshops to getting divestment from arms manufacturing to stopping destructive research on animals.

The “Introduction” by the editors, “Anarchist Economics: A Holistic View,” the “Preface” by Ruth Kinna, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Kinna) and the “Afterword” by Michael Albert, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Albert) “Porous Borders of Anarchist Vision and Strategy” articulate points of convergence and divergence among anarchists themselves, and elucidate in detail that there is no more only one sole variety of anarchism than there is only one sole variety of socialism.  These three essays are especially useful for beginners in anarchist thought, though they have much also to teach the veterans, and they teach positively to all across the board—anarchists, socialists, as well as to interested political science and economic specialists and students who are neither.

Nor are people of color, both in the US “internal colony” and the Third World, slighted; Ernesto Aguilar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Aguilar) takes note of their struggles in “Call It an Uprising: People of Color and the Third World Organize against Capitalism,” emphasizing a positive intersection of race, class and resistance in sparking rebellion of the darker-skinned vast majority of the world’s oppressed against global capitalism.  While insightful in many ways, I did find this essay burdened too much with rhetorical flourish when it seemed to need more in-depth analysis. Aguilar raises many an intriguing thought, but then drops it without further discussion.  

But all this only demonstrates an extensiveness and diversity to anarchist thought and proposals that is rich and intriguing in itself, and certainly belies any notion of an anarchist “party line” or generic “one-size-fits-all” variety of anarchism.  The essays are well chosen, expressive of a wide diversity of approaches, and interesting and exciting to read.  I read ‘The Accumulation of Freedom” virtually nonstop; once I started, I simply could not put it down.  “The Accumulation of Freedom” is an important contribution to the study of this “new” political economy defined at the beginning, and is a book to heartily recommend.

*****

George Fish is a veteran socialist writer and poet in Indianapolis, Indiana, who has contributed to many left and alternative publications.  He has appeared in New Politics (http://newpol.org), In These Times (http://inthesetimes.com) and Socialism and Democracy (http://sdonline.org), among many others.  He has written on economics (in which he has a university degree), Marxism and socialism, mental health issues and pop music, formerly wrote on Indiana and Indianapolis as a journalist for Examiner.com, and has a political blog, “Politically Incorrect Leftist,” http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com.   

  

THE “JOBS FOR ALL” LETTER AGAINST THE CURRENT NASTILY REFUSED TO PRINT

Recently, I tried to post the following Letter to the Editors of Against the Current on Occupy movements and the unemployment crisis:

To the Editors of ATC:

While I appreciate the coverage of left movements I get from Against the Current (ATC), including the extensive posts on the Occupy movements in the latest issue, #156, January/February 2012, as a very much "self-interested" unemployed worker I have to object to the consistent exclusion of articles in ATC that has been going on for the last couple of years (only one exception), the unemployment crisis, which is at the heart of the people's massive misery caused by the Great Recession. I can't help but personally feel that this exclusion flows from the fact that the left generally has no personal understanding or awareness of the severity of the crisis, and cannot seem to grasp its devastating impact on the unemployed themselves, who often feel psychologically as though trapped in the lowest rungs of Dante’s hell.

Noted socialist writer Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." That doesn't just apply to the business and managerial classes alone--I submit, it can also apply to those who are economically comfortable either as workers or as retirees--and thus have no inkling of what it's like to be one of the working poor, what it's like to be chronically unemployed and "living" on a mere $600/month in unemployment compensation, to live constantly desperate. Such as I do, even as a college graduate (but with the "wrong" degree for the job market!), along with my college graduate friends who also have the "wrong" degrees, who are also older (as I am), who have to try and subsist on only temp agency work that pays $10/hour or less (as I had to do for 10 years, before being cut loose even from this kind of employment!) And yes, Upton Sinclair's remark applies to many a putative socialist as well, and to numerous "activists" in Occupy movements and left groups who don't have to worry about the economic wolf at the door, at least for the time being.

It is literally shameful the way the U.S. left has ignored the unemployment crisis, either slighting it through silence altogether, or not proposing bold Keynesian measures such as a new WPA, which created 8.5 million jobs in the 1930s and provided paychecks to 9.7 workers then, according the UCubed, the "union of the unemployed" set up by the Machinists' union (but which is not conceived as an "unemployed council" such as were established in the 1930s, but merely as a voting bloc to pressure Obama and the Democratic Party to "do right."). The reformist socialists such as DSA and CCDS only advocate for Obama's tepid jobs program, which will create merely 1.2 million jobs in an economy with a far bigger workforce than existed in the 1930s. The "revolutionary" socialists are even worse, aiming their fire at the "inadequacy" and merely "reformist" measures that would result from implementing Keynesian measures such as were instituted during the New Deal. So afraid of "saving capitalism," our "revolutionaries" would rather sacrifice the unemployed upon the altar of ideological purity, thus presenting themselves through their inaction as tacitly “aligned” (though for much different reasons) with the obstructionist Republicans and Tea Partiers--who also don't want any Keynesian measures applied to help the unemployed by providing decent-paying, productive, valuable jobs that fulfill real economic needs such as repairing infrastructure, and can actually become Green jobs.

Fortunately, there is one honorable socialist exception, the semi-Trotskyist/Third Camp socialist journal and website New Politics, http://newpol.org, of which ATC Editor David Finkel is a Sponsor, and of which leading Solidarity member Dan La Botz is an Editor. I published on New Politics online on February 3, 2011 my "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" calling for a new WPA, http://newpol.org/node/425; in this I was ably seconded by Brian King's supportive article and history of the WPA, "Jobs for All," http://newpol.org/node/445. Radical historian Jesse Lemisch also contributed mightily to this discussion with two articles on New Politics online, "Occupy the American Historical Association: Demand a WPA Federal Writers' Project," http://newpol.org/node/555, and "A WPA for History: Occupy the American Historical Association," http://newpol.org/node/582. I also briefly discussed Occupy youth and their roles as probably unemployed workers once they leave the student confines in "Carl Davidson, Bill Ayers, and Zig Ziglar Moments," http://newpol.org/node/568, where I pointedly noted in a footnote that, according to the New York Times, only 56% of the graduates of the Class of 2010 had found jobs by 2011! But these are virtually unique in what is otherwise a blackout of articles and analyses on the unemployment crisis in "revolutionary" socialist publications!

Jack Rasmus’ article in ATC 135 (July/August 2008), “A New Phase of Economic Crisis,” http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/1608, which was touted to me by one of the Editors of ATC as an exception to my claim of silence on the unemployment crisis, is no exception, really, to this blackout. Much of the article is but a compendium of economic statistics that leads only to the weak, deterministic conclusion that essentially the unemployment and ancillary crises caused by the Great Recession can’t even be seriously ameliorated under capitalism. A “revolutionary” call to passivity in concrete action now while calling for the overthrow of capitalism in the indefinite future. Certainly not a call for a “Jobs for All” new WPA as we called for in New Politics, which, while possibly “saving capitalism from itself” (albeit with major restructuring of this “saved” capitalism), would directly benefit millions, galvanize and energize them, and draw them into more militant political action precisely because they would now feel a sense of real hope and empowerment—plus having the material means to live a decent life, not merely scrounge to survive! Same as the (admittedly) reformist and inadequate New Deal did in the 1930s—which aside from achieving real changes in the way capitalism worked, also radicalized millions and pushed the “limits of the possible” much further to the left. Good things, yes? One would really think so, especially on the part of the “revolutionary” left as represented by ATC and Solidarity, but—these “revolutionaries” tragically disappoint by only wanting to say “no” to this.

But as my comrade and fellow New Politics contributor Brain King put it in an e-mail comment to me that was shared with this ATC Editor, “Why don't ‘Socialist’ groups and journals want to support ‘Jobs for All’? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called ‘socialism’ than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called ‘socialists’ don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.” [As originally written by King—GF]

Leaving socialists such as myself, Brian King and Jesse Lemisch who are aware of the horridness of the unemployment crisis and the sting of unemployment between the Scylla of reformist tailing after Obama's inadequate approach, or the Charybdis or the tacit “alignment” with the Republicans against Keynesian measures that would actually work by the "revolutionary" left (although, again, for entirely different reasons), as demonstrated by the deafening silence coming from the "revolutionaries”!

I write this letter out of my great respect and appreciation for ATC.

George Fish

This was a revised version of an earlier draft I’d sent to this socialist bimonthly—most notably revised from the original in that I’d excised some language that Against the Current Managing Editor and Editorial Board Member David Finkel had vehemently objected to. For in the original I’d talked of persons on the left not understanding what it was like to be unemployed because many of them were among the “smug employed” and the “smug retired.” Finkel also drew my attention to the article by Jack Rasmus, on which I commented in the revised letter. Those were the two notable changes made, and made specifically to answer Finkel’s objections; and so I sent off the revised letter to Against the Current for re-consideration. Despite Finkel’s nastily reproachful tone, I’d been professional enough to take his objections into consideration, and revise accordingly. I expected no problems with the revised letter, even though personal relations with him were strained, had been for some time, and in the fall of 2010 Finkel personally instigated proceedings that led to my expulsion from Solidarity, the socialist grouplet (only 200-some members nationally) that publishes Against the Current as a ‘broader” left magazine. In fact, many’s the time I’d previously published in Against the Current, frequently with Finkel’s previous encouragement and approval. (It should be mentioned here that David Finkel is also a listed Sponsor of the New Politics hard-copy journal.)

What I got instead from Against the Current was this below, directly from Finkel:

My final note to you, last week, very explicitly stated that “…you don’t need to send us any more ‘letters to the editor’ or proposals for articles, and in fact you can stop sending messages here on anything whatsoever. If there is any part of the above that is not clear, please re-read as many times as necessary.” There is no way to make the point clearer. We will not acknowledge or respond to any further communications from you.

There it is, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades! Just like Lucifer, I’ve now been cast into the pit of hell by Almighty God himself, in the form of a Managing Editor of a small, and to most people, highly obscure, magazine of the left with which I’d been associated with before; and had even been told by Finkel himself that I could submit proposed articles and letters to Against the Current even after I’d been expelled from Solidarity.

What’s particularly interesting, I think, in all this is not any objection to “offensive” language (which had been excised, anyway, in my revision) on the part of Against the Current, but the fact that, like much of the left today, it doesn’t really want to talk about “Jobs for All” new WPA-style programs. New Politics online has been the only notable (and to me, honorable) exception, having first published my awkwardly-titled "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" that called for such a new WPA, which was ably seconded on New Politics online by Brian King; further, also on New Politics online, radical historian Jesse Lemisch posted three articles in support of a WPA-like proposal for unemployed cultural and intellectual workers. (Two of Lemisch’s articles are linked above in the letter, as are King’s and my articles).

That “Jobs for All” programs and the left’s failure to adequately address the unemployment crisis because new-WPA proposals are seen as either inherently “reformist,” or conversely, other elements of the left don’t want to destroy “unity” by going beyond what Obama’s proposed, seems to me what’ at the ideological crux of Against the Current’s refusal, not language that had since been removed. That was seen to be the ideological issue involved by Brian King and three other friends and comrades of mine, who sent me the following remarks on my original draft, and whose words of support had been passed on to Finkel. They wrote, from a variety of political orientations, as seen below.

Greg King, member of CCDS, shop steward, SEIU Local 888, Boston city workers:

George, the Left hasn't been completely silent on the unemployment issue. They probably haven't devoted anywhere near as much time and energy to the crisis as it deserves. Discussing & pushing for solutions such as your WPA proposal would be a very good thing to do. Sometimes there is too much posturing and abstract theorizing, not enough attention to the real problems of real people.

Also, I didn't think your letter was that offensive. I thought it was well-argued and frank.

Harold Karabell, former left activist in Indianapolis, now living in St. Louis, Missouri:

In addition to infrastructure work, my own city could use a few thousand trees in various neighborhoods.

So perhaps it's time to revive the CCC as well!

Brian King, comrade from Seattle, long-time activist, contributor to New Politics:

I'm not surprised that ATC refused to publish your letter. For the record, I thought it was very good, and, for you, remarkably restrained. [I admit to sometimes getting carried away with harsh language—GF] My experience with all these guys (ATC, CCDS, DSA, Monthly Review, Nation) is that they are very uncomfortable with the idea of Jobs for All and the idea of building a movement for a new WPA. Actually, as far as I know, the only person of national prominence who supports us is Robert Reich, Clinton's old Secretary of Labor.

Why don't "Socialist" groups and journals want to support "Jobs for All"? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called "socialism" than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called "socialists" don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.

and Phil Davis, former member of Solidarity, unemployed recent college graduate:

I think Dave should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he agrees with it. He could perhaps publish it and then write a rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with you. Instead, he chooses not to publish it at all. This is sad and unfortunate and yes it is censorship…you are correct.

Yes, I agree with you that "Jobs for All" is the slogan we should be fighting for. As someone who is unemployed, I believe that's a very, very important demand. I think Finkel should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he personally agrees with it. He could always write some type of rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with it, but I guess he won't even be doing that.

Refusal to even discuss “Jobs for All” programs compounded by censorship. Those are the political issues at the heart of Against the Current’s vehement refusal to print my Letter to the Editors, nor even allow the issue to be raised, even in a miniscule journal of the U.S. left where, given the mood of the U.S.’s also-miniscule left as a whole, both the letter itself and the issues it addresses would soon be forgotten. If anyone on the left ever wonders why, in this time of continuing deep economic recession, there exists this historical anomaly of the great bulk of the 99% not identifying with the left, nor wishing to get involved, even in amorphous Occupy movements, we need look no further than this incident for at least partial explanations.

TODAY I STARTED LOVING YOU AGAIN?

An informal, experiential reflection on capitalism and capitalists, socialism and socialists.

I’ve never read former-leftist-turned-leading-neoconservative Irving Kristol’s essay, “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” but some recent, very wrenching, bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism have made me wonder seriously about left efficacy. And when I think about it, much as I really am committed to the socialist ideal as offering a positive alternative to the quagmire of global economic and social crises, and as much as I really am at heart opposed to capitalism in its present form, I have to admit that in many ways capitalism has been better to me, better for me, than many a leftist group, and many a leftist “comrade.” Considering the results of my interactions both with capitalism and with socialism I have to say “One-and-a-half cheers for capitalism.”

These recent bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism aren’t much worth going into; just suffice it to say they involved Marxist groups acting out that “revolutionary” ersatz that renders contemporary activist-group “Marxism” as something scripted by another type of Marxist, Groucho, in collaboration with Franz Kafka! But they have made me reflect not only on socialism and capitalism as abstract entities, but also on my life with real capitalism and real capitalists, and with real socialists of my acquaintance, and see that my real life experiences with capitalism haven’t always been negative, and my real life experience with socialists and other leftists haven’t always been positive.

After all, even though capitalism and the present recession it’s caused have resulted in my being seriously underemployed, it’s also that very capitalism that’s offered and given me employment—which I have to contrast to the great majority of my leftist “comrades” who, when I’ve been really down and out, wouldn’t even give me the time of day. My apolitical friends have been far more generous to me than my left political ones, and that’s simply a fact. It’s my apolitical friend John who pledged that “George, I’ll never let you starve or go homeless,” and he’s followed through on it with his limited funds, funds far more limited than those of many a left “comrade.” All too well do I remember the leading leftist here in Indianapolis saying to me back in 2009, when I was at a nadir of employment and desperate for funds to live on, “I wish I had your time for reading.” Somehow not noticing that the “time for reading” was more taken up with concerns about how I was to meet the rent and put food on the table, not to mention taking from that “time for reading” essential time to somehow find a nonexistent job. Hell, this leading leftist couldn’t even bring himself to buy me a cup of coffee as I outlined my economic difficulties to him!

But back to capitalist perks. While I make it a point to shop for groceries at a particular large chain that is unionized, I do so equally because I find its prices reasonable, even in this time of grocery price surges. Moreover—and this is important—also because I can get a 10¢ a gallon discount off the gasoline I buy at that same chain’s gas outlets. But I also shop at a certain convenience store/filling station chain, even though it’s owned by a vehemently anti-union oil company which treats its employees badly; something I know firsthand because I once worked for it myself. (In fact, even wrote and posted an article on my mistreatment: http://politicalaffairs.net/a-worker-s-vignette-suspended-for-being-sick/.) Not that I have a whole lot of choice in where I fill up my car’s gas tank, but generally this convenience store outlet has lower prices than others; also I get points for purchases both of gas and other items that add up for perks, and one of them, the one I regularly use, enables me to get 10¢ a gallon off my gas purchases there as well. Who doesn’t want 10¢ a gallon off their gas at today’s prices? Further, the office supply chain store I regularly buy my computer printer ink cartridges from gives me both discount coupons plus a points program that also leads to monthly discounts on purchases. So, despite my regular capitalist exploitation as a consumer, something I readily admit, I get some of that money back—on a tight budget, as almost all of us are now on, who doesn’t relish that?

Like most workers I have credit cards, and yes, those payments can indeed be onerous. But despite that, I’ve regularly made them, which has resulted in my being rewarded with increased credit lines on several of them. Not only that; because of my improved credit rating due to those payments, for the past two years I’ve also been rewarded with new lower monthly premiums for my state-required auto insurance. Not a whole lot, but it adds up.

Contrast that to the local leftists often denying me any financial assistance, even when it’s really urgent, because at the time I’m considered “politically incorrect.” But these same leftists will provide such assistance when I’m viewed as “politically correct.” Like so many other personal relationships on the left, it becomes a water faucet: sometimes turned on, sometimes not; sometimes with what comes out being scalding hot, other times icy cold, and sometimes comfortably warm, depending on the “comrade’s” judgment of my “political correctness” at that particular time. Then there are those “comrades” who provide me with long-term financial assistance due to my lack of steady employment (the vicissitudes of the job market here in Indiana have made me a permanent temp for the past ten years), but with a high rate of psychological interest charged. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. One particular example comes to mind of a rather sanctimonious Quaker woman, now deceased, who gave me a monthly stipend of over $200 a month, but expected in return I not criticize her, even though she’d actively blacklisted me and backbit me to all her local “progressive” friends here in Indianapolis for the previous 26 years, but had a moderate change of heart the last three years of her life. For which she wanted total forgiveness, even for her only half-hearted attempts to make amends—which she was willing to make as long as she didn’t have to go so far as to admit to the fellow “progressives” she’d severely misjudged me, something which would’ve damaged her aura of goodness and infallibility. As my friend John mentioned above said to me, “She thought she owned you.” Her monthly stipend had supposedly paid for me and my silence as though I were a slave, and here I now irritated her by deserved criticism; in her eyes I was acting like an “uppity
n—r”!

So there really is something positive, something to give one-and-a-half cheers for, in what Adam Smith expressed in the Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A similar thought was expressed succinctly in a left magazine: “As a pragmatist, I frankly don’t care about Edison’s politics, or Bill Gates’ economic theories. I want to know if the electricity works and if my computer program will run.” (Michael Hogan, “Green Revolution or Scorched Earth? Mexican and Cuban Responses,” Political Affairs, February 2006)

Milton Fisk, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Indiana University-Bloomington, titles a section in his book Toward a Healthy Society: the Morality and Politics of American Health Care Reform (University Press of Kansas, 2000), “The Decline of Compassion and Solidarity.”
While I think few of us on the left (and I regard myself as on the left) would dispute that’s the prevailing reality in our society as a whole, it’s a reality that’s also prevailing on the left today, and has been for a long time. Again, the old water faucet. And also, the notion that friendship, compassion for others simply because they are human in and of itself, is suspect, is a form of “right opportunism,” “liberalism” (as in Mao Zedong’s essay, “Combat Liberalism”), or “bourgeois sentimentality.” Because when “correct” politics are everything, there’s no room for anything else—certainly not something that might be perceived as “wavering” or “weakness.” After all, as Bukharin infamously wrote, there’s the “the necessity of breaking an egg to obtain an omlette.” And as so many of us on the left ruefully know, some of the least considerate, least compassionate people on the left will speak fulsomely of their love and devotion to persons of color, and in the Third World; the “good Quaker” mentioned above was one to these, which drew the cynical observation on my part, “The oppressed who are geographically and culturally distant from oneself are truly oppressed; the oppressed who are geographically and culturally ‘in one’s backyard’ are merely pests.” But as I’ve also expressed, “Cynicism is often the beginning of wisdom.”

This ugly reality was especially brought home to me back in 2005, when my very employability was at stake. At the time I was a long-term outpatient at a local mental health center, one of those “liberal, helping, social-safety-net agencies” that so many “socialists” and “progressives” have uncritical high regard for as “problem solvers” for the troubled and dispossessed—not realizing just how illiberal and unhelpful the actual “help” is (because they’ve rarely had to use them; or when they did seek psychological/psychiatric counseling, their wealth and insurance enabled them to utilize the private sector, rather than the classist “services” set aside for the indigent). Further, they tend to be blind to the fact that bigotry toward those who aren’t “quite right” expresses itself not just in hostility, but in condescension as well.

But at that time I was eligible for SSDI [Social Security Disability Income] as a “disabled” person (even though I was actually working, albeit only as an irregularly-employed temp, at a job I not only loved, but one that required my college degree); but in order to get it, I had to go through my dumb, computer-illiterate case manager who wasn’t getting it right, even after four months of supposedly trying. He would say he was trying but, “It’s not working. I don’t know why.” Needless to say, he would never tell me what he was doing or not doing that wasn’t working. After all, as a genuine “nutto/wacko/fruitcake” I had to be stupid as well. As this progressed, I became more and more anxious, as I really needed that SSDI income, and it was showing at work; not only causing me anxiety, but also absenteeism. Finally, after being prematurely “liberated” from my work project, I went to my case manager’s office to see just what was going on that wasn’t working. He went through his usual process, and I stood there dumbfounded. The case manager didn’t even know how to properly enter the mental health center’s name onto a website! (Instead of entering the full, official name, he entered only part of it, which naturally the completely literalist computer would reject, and had been doing for the last four months.) So I correctly entered the name and address as he stood there uncomprehending, as though he were an eight-year-old boy watching Daddy do what he couldn’t figure out, and voila! it all went through, and the whole process of applying for SSDI was now completed within the next 24 hours, and on the phone at that—so that, had I known what was going on, I could’ve corrected him over the phone, and not lost my job. (This case manager, named Bell, obviously didn’t have intelligence ringing clear as a bell; so I gave him the moniker, “Dull Thud.” Later, he would say with the usual condescending chutzpah so common among the “helping professionals,” “If I hadn’t messed up, would it have made any difference?”)

Needless to say, the local left wasn’t concerned about this problem. The “good Quaker” woman above had assured everybody that I was “blowup George,” hopelessly unstable, someone to be shunned; and that my anxiety and anger at what I was going through was just further confirmation. But this “instability” was somehow “overlooked” by my apolitical co-workers and supervisors, as they not only liked me, they also respected me as a highly intelligent, capable person! This especially came into play when the company that hired us temps through the temp agency on-site wanted me permanently removed from employment for my alleged disruption of the work environment. But my “capitalist pig” bosses knew that my behavior caused by all this was highly atypical, was not my usual excellent work performance—so the general manager of the temp agency, along with two of my immediate floor supervisors, voluntarily, on their own initiative, went to bat for me and saved my job!—a job I loved, where I had friends, and was respected. It should be added that the loss of this job would’ve not only rendered me unemployable, it would’ve absolutely destroyed my mental health altogether. But the mental health center literally didn’t care. (I’ve written and posted on the realities of psychiatric treatment, especially as available for those without money; see “Once a Nut, always a Nut?” at www.transformation-center.org/resources/recoverystories.shtml.)

“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” wrote Brecht in his 1938 poem “To Posterity”—a rather telling indictment of the left from a leftist, but one all too true all too many times. Even though he qualifies it in the lines preceding, “Even the hatred of squalor/Makes the brow grow stern./Even anger against injustice/Makes the voice grow harsh” and ends with the plea, “But you, when at last it comes to pass/That man can help his fellow man,/Do not judge us/Too harshly,” there’s something disingenuous, something that smacks of special pleading, in this. For if we of the left “Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” who else is going to be kind in our stead? And isn’t kindness, compassion and solidarity part of what’s going to make socialism better than capitalism, something that’s going to provide that necessary equality and self-determination that removes those capitalist shackles that bind us, those shackles of profit-oriented, bottom-line, subordination in the name of “economic-efficiency”? That makes for a better, more humane world as well as one where the wealth created that’s shared by all provides a greater material abundance for all as well? Isn’t it correct to state that such humane and humanistic goals require not only humane and humanistic means, those means need to be carried out by humane and humanistic persons as well if they are to be effective? Such persons as are not all that prevalent on the left as we’d like to believe? (I’ve written and posted something that expands positively on this, “Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness . . .,” http://newpol.org/node/493)

In conclusion, in stating what I’ve directly experienced from both socialists and capitalists as leading me to give one-and-a-half cheers for capitalism, am I perhaps echoing Merle Haggard, “Today I Started Loving You Again”? Not entirely. I still dislike and distrust capitalism, but I also like getting good things from what’s possible at the moment. And my socialist temperament leads me to truly believe that “An injury to one is an injury to all,” with “all” defined in an all-embracing, humanity-affirming way, not in a “politically correct” Orwellian way, where all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Capitalism is something we socialists have to improve on; but it’s not going to come from osmosis. It’s going to come from our being actively humane and liberatory ourselves.