Marxism International

Heard from my friend Warren out in Montana this morning.   He has a 1939 John Deere model “A” that I would like to buy as soon as I can afford it.    He has gone completely through it and hearing it tells me its a sound runner.   I will probably re-do the block if I can find some original Deere cast .45 NOS (New Old Stock) pistons, just to give it a bit more pep.  Plowing in New England’s rocky ground takes a bit more horsepower.

I really like this tractor.  Growing up, I used to watch old Bill Gladding plow for potatoes in very early March with a tractor exactly like this one.  There is something about the sound of those two cylinders cutting through the frost of a late winter’s morning.  Something exhilarating and early Springish.   Could stand a little of that now on New Years’ Eve.  Bill also had a newer John Deere “B”, which now sits in my barn.  I like old farmers like Bill Gladding; they were honest and self-reliant.  They never hired except maybe a week or two at haying time.  They did their own work.  Antone Vieira had horses.   So did Ernie Hull.  And, I think, Enos Gomes.  Now yuppies and lawyers own the farms, picturesque replicas of a generation ago.  I liked the old-timers better, though, and I think about them once in awhile.

We had a horse, too.  His name was Midnight Star.  I was the least of his favorites.  Star was a five-gaited American saddle horse from Kentucky.  He was quite good at herding the cows up to the barn at milking time.  He dearly loved the little children, especially when their pockets sagged with sugar cubes, molasses candy, and slices of cinammon apple.   Star was almost uniformly gentle in fact except when, upon encountering a real estate agent or a lawyer unlucky enough to venture onto a pasture or hay field, he would rise up on his hind hooves and lash wildly out at the miscreant.  Several times during haying I would look up to see papers and briefcases flying in all directions as their terrified owner scrambled for safety back over the neighbors’ wall.

But, tractors remain my favorite.  My father had several Fordson model “F”s, with steel wheels, the kind Henry Ford sold Stalin back in the 1920s.  Stalin said that one Fordson was worth “100 foreign Communists”.   By God, he was right.

Have a Good New Year!                

“SHOOTING” Anthony Hayes during the last five minutes of his life

I‘ve been trying to find out something about the (apparently schizophrenic) 38 year old black man who was surrounded by about one dozen New Orleans police officers on Monday, and then shot down.   He used to eat at the neighborhood MacDonalds.  Anyone know him?   I tried Google.   “Black Man Shot By Police New Orleans” returns 1,870,000 hits.  And only two were about this particular incident.  Kind of amazing.  

Was it murder?  The police a couple of hours ago said that the man lunged at the officers with a knife, but that part of the video is missing.   Confrontations involving blacks thought to be deranged and police officers end in black fatalities at three times the rate of those involving whites.   And blacks are twice as likely to be denied medical treatment for mental and emotional disorders.  

So, has someone published a code of conduct for urban blacks?  And at what point does erratic behavior warrant a fusillade from the guns of the police?   And, while we’re at it, what kind of person straps on a gun to carry against his own people for money?  And willingly identifies himself with such a malignant cause as the modern capitalist state?

Yesterday was Christmas.  Today marks the birth of someone whose life, too, was of great significance to humanity.   Both grew to precipitate enormous changes in the affairs of men.   Both were hailed as superhuman, one as the Savior, the other as “the red sun in the center of our hearts”.   Both can take credit for the frightful suffering left in their wake.  But, then, the Christian ethos, like that of the Communism of Mao, preached a sort of redemption through suffering and self-abnegation, Maoism in this life, Christianity in the next. 

And, yes, there are morbidity statistics for each.   Taking into account the Christian legacy of the Crusades, chattel slavery and the settlement of the Americas to 1700, The Good Lord has Mao beat by about 200 million lives.   This, even by the most outlandish estimates of Mao’s many detractors in the West (and nearly all of his most devout haters are westerners, either by birth or, baroquely, by choice).  Of course, Christ and his progeny have had two millenia to make mischief; the Maoists, barely a few generations.

But, what about today, on the 112th anniversary of Mao’s birth?   The great movement of the triumvirate of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, which defeated fascism, broke the chains of colonialism, and built socialism in countries where poverty and serfdom had largely prevailed, that movement is now in eclipse.  In the West, partisans of Jesus occupy nearly all of the top positions in government, the military and business.   Banking and finance are in the hands of those not unfriendly to Christian capitalism and, save for a handful of neighborhoods in Peru, Nepal, India, and the Philippines, Mao seems to have fallen out of fashion.  Modern China is still on nodding terms with its founder, but it is out of fealty, rather than devotion.

But, if “Maoism” (his followers insist his is the third, and highest, “stage” of Marxism-Leninism) is in retreat, its nemisis, capitalism, clearly, is in steep and irreversible decline.   Its epitaph is already being written in unemployed Europe, “neo-liberalized” Latin America and in the decaying hell-holes that are America’s cities.   It has nothing to offer the future except the apocalypse, the natural successor to an increasingly threadbare protection racket beguiling a sullen and exhausted population.   Soon, even Christ Himself will be “downsized” into a parody of his former self, “outsourced” to the vagaries of a capitalism gone mad and turned in on itself.

It is precisely here, within the conditions of apocalypse that Maoism finds it natural element, where suddenly all of its faults become virtues.   This is partly why I believe it will be the Maoist and not the Christian believer who will prove most durable in history’s Long March.

Happy Birthday, comrade.

Any one who doubts we are on the cusp of fascism in America should try reading the Washington Times (the print edition and not the comic book version we see on the cable talk shows after 5 pm Eastern).   Mr Paul Craig Robert’s Christmas column is a good place to start.   It encapsulates the thinking of the ”modern” western fascist on the relationship of religion to capitalism.   Too, he has some telling things to say about Christmas rituals, like gift-giving.  Or, rather, the long road travelled from the self-abnegating early Christians to those of today who find in American materialism just what the Holy Spirit Ordered.

Mr Roberts begins like a true disciple of the Modern Christ, lamenting the “decline” of religious values in America, and especially on our college campuses, while excoriating a noxious and uncritical “multiculturalism” threatening our core capitalist values.   These as all good American fascists know are derived directly from God especially through the agency of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  For people like Mr Roberts, the decline of Christianity in America is coextensive with the decline of capitalism.  For the foundation of American liberty and prosperity can be found in the teachings of none other than Christ Himself. 

Does Mr Roberts really believe this, or is he speaking merely to amuse the constituencies upholding a failing capitalism?

I wonder if Mr Roberts has seen Adam Curtis’ new film, The Power of Nightmares?  It contains a convincing argument that the western democracies have lost the ability to inspire their people with hope and so have decided to control them by means of fear.   Christ and the electric chair, rather than divinely-inspired “values”, have held capitalism together for the past century or so.  Now, even they are proving of little use.

Most American fascists are in or around the Republican party, but the atittudes underpinning the Fascist Ideal which informs our modern culture is prevalent in both major parties.   Mr Roberts’ column and indeed the columns found in most national newspapers like the Washington Times could be credibly written by either sober Republicans or drunk Democrats, caught with their candor showing.   This is why the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon (short of us finally giving up and simply buying off the natives), why Americans will continue without health care or tenable jobs or a decent education, why our cities will continue to fester into uninhabitable hell-holes, and so on.   There is no tenable alternative; history, instead, will create one.

The Christian ethos, and the dispensation on which it has rested for nearly two millenia, is now passing into history.   Its successors are taking many forms.  Each is descending into its own compost of greed, corruption, and murder.  And each is increasingly dependent upon the state to fulfill the role for which it lacks the moral authority to realize; that as an agent of class control.   The rants of the Paul Craig Roberts of western Christendom will increasingly ring hollow as their fate becomes clear.  The old world has become untenable; the new world is yet to be born.   “Christ” as a moral absolute is finished.  He cannot save a capitalism riven by the various insects that now feed off of it.  Capitalism itself is guilty of the most “original” Sin of all.  It has outlived its usefulness.

My advice to Mr Roberts; drop your lap-top and take up Chinese.  They at least know how to make the system work.  Perhaps they will put our tattered model out of its agony.   And free us from the excrescence that is now hissing and spitting everywhere among us.   From 5 pm on.

Merry Christmas

                             ”Iranian Women”      

Whatever other qualities Iran’s new president may possess, reticence is not among them.   Since taking office in June Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rebuked moderates and enthralled supporters by expanding Iran’s nuclear “energy” program, banning western music on state media, and waging class warfare against local “malefactors of wealth”.  He has ratcheted up tensions with Israel, first calling for the destruction, of “the zionist entity” , and then modifying that demand to one for ”moving” the Jews to Western Europe.   He has increased spending on the poor in defiance of IMF dictates and has followed through on an election promise to turn cultural sites back into mosques. 

Mr Ahmadinejad’s latest public imbroglio is a deusey.  Last week, he was quoted as saying that the “legend of the Holocaust” had been used by Jews and westerners to dispossess the Palestinians.   This was quickly and widely (mis)translated into a claim that the Holocaust itself was a “myth”.   Whatever was meant by his remarks, condemnation was immediate and near universal, with some states calling for Iran’s expulsion from the UN. 

The howls of disapproval continue to echo throughout Iran’s diplomatic missions.   Even Russia and most of Asia, including China, which hopes to do energy business with Iran, have privately told the Iranians that they’ve gone too far, though China, especially, has kept shut in public. 

The controversies have eclipsed larger questions about what, exactly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is up to.   A former intelligence officer, university professor and mayor of Tehran, is he the fundamentalist ignoramus famously pictured in western media?  Or, is the west once again famously over-reacting?  

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a hotly contested election last June against a “moderate” opponent who had been calling for the normalization of ties to the West.   Unfortunately for the reformers,  Hashemi Rafsanjani was popularly seen as indifferent to the needs of the poor, which comprise the overwhelming majority of Iranians.   Mahmoud ran as a self-deprecating alternative who would better the lot of the impoverished, wipe out corruption, and rule Iran as a force to be reckoned with.  He won in a runoff with more than 62% of the vote.   In his victory speech, the new president promised to make Iran a “modern, advanced and Islamic role for the world”, while raising living standards for the indigent and putting “corruption” and “western decadence” on notice.

Mahmoud Ahmadlinejad’s election was greeted with gloom by governments throughout the west.   Of the new president’s background, little was known.  Early rumors of involvement in the 1979 seizure of the American embassy in Tehran were later proved false.   It is now known that Ahmadlinejad worked for Iran’s intelligence servies during the 1980s and that his background suggests that a compromise with the West should not be ruled out.  

Mahmoud, it is clear, is neither all mouthy fanatic or principled anti-imperialist, but a devout and self-abnegating muslim nationalist combining elements of the two.  His aim is to get a better deal for Iran as a regional power, rather than steer it toward a potentially catastrophic showdown with Israel or the west.   He wants at least as much from the west as it wants from him.   Maintaining agreeable regimes in the islamic world has always been a dangerous and expensive business for the imperialist powers and now, as in the past, delicate and creative bargaining will see off the present crisis.

Indeed, what is emerging from the past six months of Iranian history is something like a re-figuring of the ambitions of the old Persian empire, seeking as in the past historic alliances to the east as well as with the west, while positioning itself as a power to be reckoned with.   In neighboring Iraq, it has been reaching out to the lackey regime (which Iran views as ephemeral, but important enough to court the ethnic and religious elements contained within it).   Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows that with Saddam in irons, the active leadership of the “anti-zionist” camp will naturally fall to him.   The trick for him is to use that as an organizing force for islamic unity (with Iran as its titular head) without going so far as to provoke an attack from Israel or the United States.

Of course, Mahmoud will not be the first to lead his country from the “frying pan” of globalization into the “fire” of nationalism.  No matter what happens, the poor and workers of Iran have very little to gain from any of the major actors currently on stage in Tehran.

Nonetheless, the new president sees his country as a “model” for the Islamic world–powerful, independent, and “advanced”, yet flexible enough to profitably exploit the vagaries of modern international politics.   Despite the rhetoric, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad truly wants to engage the West in the tradition of past islamic regimes, but on terms that take into account Iran as a growing regional power.  Whether that will translate into a better life for Iran’s poor has been answered in other contexts; sadly, it will not.

“Revised” economic report will reveal the Chinese are “healthy” consumers, after all.

If there is one thing Beijing and Washington have agreed upon during the past year, it is the need to “rebalance” China’s economy in favor of greater domestic consumption at the expense of “excessive” foreign investment.   China worries about a new currency crisis while the U.S. laments its growing trade deficit. 

A new economic census will probably be good news in both capitals, though for Washington it may turn out to be a case of being too careless what you wish for.

The upward revision of China’s gross domestic product — perhaps by as much as 22 per cent — “enlarges” this Asian economy by roughly the size of Turkey and puts China squarely at number four among the world’s largest economies.  The new census, carried out by many millions of data collectors spread out over the entire country and recording economic activity usually missed by conventional methods, is expected to be released by the National Bureau of Statistics early next week.

A striking feature of the new figures is how badly the service sector has been undervalued in past economic surveys.   Too, they may put paid to the shibboleth of China’s “overinvestment economy” (under the old figures, investment accounted for more than half of China’s annual GDP growth) and provide a measure of re-assurance to China’s central bank, the scene of much nail-biting during the various currency crises of the 1990s.   Stronger domestic demand means an economy less susceptible to the winds of overseas investment.  And China still has very high investment and savings rates (China’s savings rate is close to 50% of GDP), probably high enough to weather all but the most catastrophic overseas economic crisis.

So, what is the bad news?   Given that small-scale services are much less labor (as well as capital) intensive than other segments of the economy, this may bode ill for employment growth in some regions. This, in turn, could have an ill effect on now-healthy growth rates in domestic consumption.

But the big news remains the startling development that the Chinese economy is larger — much larger — than practically anyone, especially the Americans, had figured.  Already there is talk in the European capitals of a China overtaking the West in economic clout within 15 years.   And, given the exponential growth in Chinese “soft power” throughout the developing world and its nascent alliances, particularly with Russia, it may be deja vu all over again — a truly bipolar world.

Just about an hour ago, word came down that the fate of reformed gang leader and convicted murderer Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams has been sealed.   California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declined to grant clemency and has ordered the death sentence for Mr Williams — first imposed 24 years ago following his conviction for several murders — to be consummated one minute past midnight tomorrow.   The Governor’s decision comes as no surprise.   Despite vocal and widespread support for sparing the life of a man who had devoted the past quarter century on death row to various redeeming activities (he wrote a number of books aimed at children extolling the straight and narrow and warning against the pernicious influence of gangs and violence), the old bugbears of racism and punitive capitalism — always a salient feature in southern California, especially — predictably carried the day.   And, the condemned man’s supporters, mainly has-beens from an era when the plight of black people occasioned some worry among the powerful, now seem arcane, even quaint.

Anyway, sun-up tomorrow will find Mr Williams having gone on his way and the rest of us moving on in ours.  Or maybe not.  When I heard the news of the governor’s demurral, I thought of Latasha Harlins, the 15 year old girl who was shot in the back in 1991 in Los Angeles by a Korean storekeeper after giving up an argument over the cost of a bottle of fruit juice.  Though a surveillance tape clearly showed the young girl leaving the store as she was shot, her killer, a middle-aged woman, was given five years probation.   The Judge in the case, Joyce Karlin, cited the climate of “fear’ that prevailed in the Korean-American shopkeeper community due to marauding blacks.   Apparently, a climate of fear engendered by the activities of an alien race constitutes extenuating circumstances in some places.   And, anyway, the shooting down of black youth, in its sheer ordinariness, hardly seems worth noting anymore.   Plenty more where they came from.

I am glad that Latasha has at least her own home page.   Mr Williams and Latasha have a connection of sorts.  She was murdered ostensibly because of an epidemic of fear occasioned by the Crips, a gang he helped found more than a decade before.   He is to die largely for killing a family of Korean immigrants who ran a flea-bag motel.   She died negotiating with a member of that community who made her money selling stale bread and overpriced canned goods to Latasha and countless thousands like her denied access to lower-priced supermarkets far from their neighborhoods.   Latasha’s story, and that of Mr Williams, has been emblematic of their community long before the Crips or the Koreans or governors who put pandering to the worst instincts of our insidious racism above all else.

So, Stanley Willliams is to die.   Was he sincere in trying to be a model White America could have pity on?   I don’t know.  Maybe if it had saved him.   It didn’t.   Fittingly, most of America will be asleep when Tookie, finally, solves the Great Mystery.  For Tookie, and for Latasha, a moment of reflection, please.   And draw your own conclusions.