Economic Conditions and Hollow Victories

Among the very few things to look forward to on Labor Day is Jack Rasmus’s annual report on the state of US labor. Rasmus, an accomplished political-economist, riffs on the famous Frederick Engels book with Labor Day 2024: The Condition of the American Working Class Today. It may come as a surprise to some, but academically-trained economists are among the most intellectually shallow and ideologically tainted practitioners of the social sciences. Some are so in awe of their own academic specialty that they paint all economic trends through specialist lenses. Still others are so tied to their political biases that they cannot resist slanting their conclusions to reinforce their loyalties to one of the two political parties that we are currently allowed.

Rasmus is the rare university-educated purveyor who knows where to look, looks critically, and clearly synthesizes the data to draw broad and useful conclusions for working people. For a philosophically-trained skeptic and self-styled Historical Materialist, I have grown to trust Rasmus’s digest of the meaning of arcane, jargon-filled, often-misleading government reports.

Of course, we have had earlier times when similar data were available. For over three decades, Labor Research Associates-- a group of Communist and left researchers-- published a comprehensive Labor Factbook every two years that addressed “labor trends,” the “social and labor conditions” of the period, “people’s health,” the “trade unions,” “civil liberties and rights,” “political affairs,” and “Canadian labor developments.” This comprehensive book armed working people who cared to advance the cause of workers with a cache of ammunition in the class war. We don’t have Labor Factbook, but we are lucky to have Jack Rasmus’s report.

What does his report tell us?

● Despite $10 trillion in stimulus since the pandemic, the US economy has only produced an anemic recovery: GDP of 1.9% (2022), 2.5% (2023), and 2.2% (2024, to date).

● And the US worker fared even worse: “...with regard to wages, the American worker has not benefited at all from the $10 billion-plus fiscal-monetary stimulus. Real Weekly Earnings are flat to contracting. And take-home pay’s even less.”

● The great US job creation machine that US politicians celebrate is not performing so well: “It is important to also note that the vast majority of the net new jobs created have been part-time, temp, gig and contractor jobs. In the past 12 months, full-time jobs in the labor force [have] fallen by 458,000, while part-time jobs have risen by 514,000.” 

Typical of an election year, official reports grab headlines, exaggerating job gains, only to be corrected later: “The jobs reports over the past year are revealing as well. They continually reported monthly job gains of around 240,000. But the Labor Department just did its annual revisions and found that for the period March 2023 thru March 2024 it over-estimated no fewer than 818,000 jobs!” [The September 6 employment report downgraded June and July’s job growth by a further 86,000 jobs!]

“The Wall St. Journal further reported that up to a million workers have left the labor force due to disability from Covid and long Covid-related illnesses. Neither of those statistics [is] factored into the government’s unemployment rate figures.”

● For working-class citizens, debt has been a paradoxical life-saver, supplementing slack wage growth. But it continues to grow at a dangerous pace and with increasingly unsustainable interest rates: “The last quarter century of poor-wage increases has been offset to a degree by the availability of cheap credit with which to make consumer purchases in lieu of wage gains and decently paying jobs. Actually, that trend goes back even further to the early 1980s at least.”

“Household US debt is at a record level. Mortgage debt is about $13 trillion. Total household debt is more than $18 trillion, of which credit-card debt is now about $1 trillion, auto debt $1.5 trillion, student debt $1.7 trillion (or more if private loans are counted), medical debt about $.2 trillion, and the rest installment-type debt of various [kinds].

American households carry probably the highest load of any advanced economy, estimated at 54% of median family-household disposable income. And that’s rising.

Debt and interest payments have implications for workers’ actual disposable income and purchasing power. For one thing, interest is not considered in the CPI or PCE inflation indexes and thus their adjustment to real wages. As just one example: median family-mortgage costs since 2020 have risen 114%. However, again, that’s not included in the price indexes. Home prices have risen 47% and rents have followed. But workers pay a mortgage to the bank, not an amortized monthly payment to the house builder.

One should perhaps think of workers’ household debt as business claims on future wages not yet paid. Debt payments continue into the future for purchases made in the present, and thus subtract from future wages paid.”

Since Rasmus penned his report, the Census Bureau released its report on household incomes. While there was an uptick in 2023, median household income adjusted for inflation remains below the levels of 2018, explaining why poll respondents (and voters) are feeling insecure about the economy. In fact, household incomes have only increased around 15% over the last twenty-three years-- hardly a reason for a victory lap by the last four administrations… or the capitalist system!

● Rasmus brings a necessary sobriety to the discussion of the state of the organized trade union movement in the US. While there are many exciting developments, the goal of building a formidable force to advance the interests of working people remains far off: “Since 2020 union membership has declined. There were 10.8% of the labor force in unions in 2020. There are 10.0% at end of 2023, which is about half of what it was in the early 1980s. Unions have not participated in the recovery since Covid, in other words, at least in terms of membership. Still only 6% or 7.4 million workers of the private-sector labor force is unionized, even when polls and surveys in the past four years show a rise from 48% to 70% today in the non-organized who want a union.”

“Recently the Teamsters union under new leadership made significant gains in restoring union contract language, especially in terms of limits on temp work and two-tier wage and benefit structures. The Auto workers made some gains as well. But most of the private-sector unionization has languished. And over the past year it has not changed much.

About half of all Union members today are in public-sector unions. It has been difficult for Capital and corporations to offshore jobs, displace workers with technology, destroy traditional defined-benefit pension plans, or otherwise weaken or get rid of workers’ unions. The same might be said for Transport workers, whose employment is also not easily offshored but is subject to displacement by technology nonetheless. But overall, union membership has clearly continued to stagnate over the past year, as it has since 2020.”

Rasmus’s candid conclusion: “The foregoing accumulation of data and statistics on wages, jobs, debt and unionization in America this Labor Day 2024 contradicts much of the hype, happy talk, and selective cherry picking of data by mainstream media and economists. That hype is picked up and peddled by politicians and pollsters alike.”

*****

And speaking of politicians…

A recent Jacobin piece stands as a sterling example of torturing facts and logic to build the case that Democratic Party politicians got the “stop the genocide” message at the Party’s national convention. Waleed Shahid writes that “the Uncommitted movement didn’t win every immediate demand…” in his article Why the Uncommitted Movement Was a Success at the DNC. The Uncommitted Movement didn’t win any demand-- immediate or otherwise-- at the DNC! 

It takes some skill and determination to recast a near totally effective effort to stifle the voice of pro-peace and pro-justice participants and protesters into “not just a fleeting victory — it is the beginning of a strategic shift in how the Democratic Party grapples with its own contradictions.” Sad to say, it takes a twisted perception to see “victory” and “a strategic shift” while convention-goers derisively and dismissively stroll past demonstrators reciting the names of civilians murdered by the Israeli military.

Shahid attempts the impossible in likening the 2024 Democratic Convention to the 1964 Convention, when brave civil rights activists shamed the Democratic Party before television cameras and journalists into negotiating with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (See this sharp comparative account in Black Agenda Report). There was neither shame nor negotiations in 2024.

Like Democratic operatives before him, Shahid scolds those expecting more from Democrats to-- in the future-- “out-organize” the Neanderthals controlling the party. In other words, force them to do the right thing!

When one finds a credible political party to support, it should not be one that must be coerced to support justice.

*****

It is a commonplace on the soft left to advocate a broad coalition or united front to address the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and North America. Building on the ineffectiveness of the long-ruling centrist parties, the French RN, Germany’s AfD, the US’s Trump, and a host of other populist movements have mounted significant electoral campaigns. The knee-jerk left reaction is to advocate a broad popular front of all the oppositional parties or movements, a tactic modeled crudely and inappropriately on the Communist International’s anti-fascist tactic. 

Most recently, the French left conceded to an electoral “popular front” with the ruling president, Emmanuel Macron’s party and other parties in opposition to Marine Le Pen’s RN. To the surprise of many, the left won the most votes and should have-- by tradition-- organized a new government. But President Macron “betrayed” popular-front values and appointed a center-right career politician, hostile to the left, as prime minister. To add insult to injury, Macron consulted with Le Pen for approval of his appointment.

Consequently, despite commanding the largest vote, the popular front is in a less favorable position and the right is in a more favorable position than before the electoral “victory” (see, for example, David Broder’s Jacobin article for more). 

This move by Macron should sober those who glibly call for a popular front as the answer to every alarm, every hyperbole regarding the populist right. 

Because of this gross misapplication of the united-front tactic, I can enjoy an I-told-you-so-moment. I wrote in late June: “The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois ‘solidarity’ only goes so far.” Where the left selflessly threw its support behind Macron’s party where it needed to win, Macron through his deal with Le Pen, threw the left under the bus! 

Hollow victories, indeed.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

What History Teaches…

The years of reaction (1907–10). Tsarism was victorious. All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression, demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism; mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle. It is at moments of need that one learns who one’s friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson. V I Lenin, “Left-wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder

What does history tell us about where we are today, well into the first half of the twenty-first century? 

It surely tells us that capitalism remains the greatest obstacle to solving the manifold injustices, irrationalities, and existential threats that face humanity. History also teaches us that the false answers of nationalism, racialism, and social exclusion remain leading obstacles to overcoming capitalism and the class divide at the center of capitalist social relations. Division-- the separation of potential allies in the struggle against capitalism-- remains a deep infection immobilizing those seeking social justice for all, a lesson the advocates of both casually chosen and deeply personal identities seem to have missed. 

We are even further removed from defeating capitalism when we construct unlimited identity barriers to unity, when who we are as an individual comes before who we are as a class. 

History’s lessons are easily lost to hasty generalizations and wishful thinking. The “victory” of the US over the Soviet Union in 1991 was thought to usher in the end of history and, in the mind of celebrated intellectual, Francis Fukuyama, the global ascension of US values and US rule over the global order. Within a decade, this conclusion met determined resistance on many fronts, as the US attempted to enforce its dominance, only to be challenged on all counts by independent rising powers, insurgencies, and defiant forces in Asia, the Middle East, and South America. The two-decade long war in Afghanistan is but one dramatic example of that stubborn resistance to US power.

Unfortunately, popular resistance in the capitalist powers of Europe and North America took a different turn after 1991. A “third way” center left, buoyed by the setback to Communism, abandoned class politics for “a rising tide lifts all boats” economic policy, as well as cultural politics, the chosen field of battle favored by the political right. This “respectable” left-- respectable to power and wealth-- paid an electoral price over the following decades with the erosion of working-class votes. Today, the Euroamerican center left, along with its center-right counterpart, struggle weakly to dominate politics, as they have since World War II.

The multifaceted crises of capitalism-- unemployment, slack economic growth, inflation, recession, political illegitimacy, inequality, eviscerated social services, rotting infrastructure, and environmental degradation-- have all struck at one time or another since capitalism’s “triumph” in 1991. The lowering of mass expectations and the rising of mass deprivation have presented the radical left with the objective opportunity for change only imagined in earlier generations. 

But the radical left was not ready for the challenge, convinced after 1991 that socialism, as we came to know it, was either impossible or too far off in the distant future to be our project. The self-annihilation and mutation of Europe’s two largest Communist Parties only added to the pessimism. It was a time not unlike the years after the failed 1905 Russian revolution, as described by Lenin: 

Tsarism [capitalism] was victorious. All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression, demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism; mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle.

Except the radical left largely drew no useful lessons from the 1991 setback, beyond the abandonment of the socialist project. When jobs migrated in huge numbers to low wage countries, the left blamed “globalization” -- a process commonly and frequently encountered in the capitalist accumulation process. It is far easier, but far less effective to fight a phase --- a phase soon to be transcended by a resurgent economic nationalism-- for society’s ills than to attack its parent: capitalism. It is as though people believed that they could actually turn back the clock to some imagined, more benign era of capitalism.

Others in the diluted socialist movement designated the enemy as another phase of capitalism: “neoliberalism” -- a set of ruling class policies designed to escape the 1970s collapse of the post-war Keynes/demand-side paradigm. 

During that lost decade, Stagflation and aggressive foreign competition brought the class-collaboration model into disrepute, with the monopoly corporations turning viciously on their counterpart, the class-collaborationist labor leadership; decades of capitalist offensive followed, with a rout of working people’s liberal and “progressive” former allies; many past gains were reversed. 

After 1991 and with far too many having abandoned the socialist project, the broad left chose not to attack the cancer of capitalism, instead, choosing to try to dull the painful symptom of neoliberalism. 

The drift to “philosophical idealism” described by Lenin was everywhere in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. Academics diminished Lenin’s theory of imperialism, with wild fantasies of the decline of the nation-state (a fantasy embarrassed by the aggressive global reach of the US empire-- the preeminent, most powerful nation-state of all time). Other thinkers saw transnational capitalist corporations overshadowing and superseding the nation-state, as though the nation-state was not intimately fused with monopoly capital. This drift from Lenin’s historical-materialist analysis reached its ludicrous peak with the infamous tract of Hardt and Negri, Empire, positing that history was now grounded in a mysterious, totalizing force that they called “Empire,” an obscure, ineffable entity rivaling Hegel’s Absolute. 

Some on the international left saw a possible socialist revival in the righteous rejection of US domination by social movements in Latin America, the so-called “pink” revolution. Elections brought to power several promising charismatic leaders who openly and strongly defied the long-imposed dictates of US imperialism. Most notably, Hugo Chavez mocked and scorned US government arrogance, establishing an independent foreign policy and embarking upon a generous and humane welfare state based on Venezuela's then-ample resource revenue. 

Other leaders in Central and South America were inspired to join this anti-US imperialist, social democratic front, with the goal of Bolivarian independence from neo-colonialism (a sovereignty project) their most common feature. Because of “socialist” rhetoric, many on the left elevated these multi-class, reformist movements to the status of “twenty-first-century socialism”. In fairness, some leaders truly aspired and envisioned socialism, though they lacked a program, a revolutionary party, and the necessary understanding. 

Twenty-first-century socialism, without an existential confrontation with capitalism, has proven to be an elusive goal, especially with a US-supported domestic bourgeoisie still holding vast economic power. The social democratic dream of taming, while partnering with capitalism has nowhere sustained the support of the working classes. With a hostile behemoth on its doorstep, it is not succeeding in Latin America, either.

The latest notion distracting the left from socialism is the doctrine that global multipolarity --removing the unipolar US from the pinnacle of the imperialist heap-- will somehow produce a more just world and even move us closer to socialism. While capitalists in many countries would welcome leveling the economic playing field and freeing markets for others to exploit, a multipolar world offers no obvious benefit to working people. Without question, the iron grip that US capitalists have had on international economic institutions and the promiscuous use of US sanctions and tariffs has incensed US rivals and weakened US hegemony. But their success in blunting US power holds little consequence for exploited workers in Asia, Central and South America or Africa, who continue to be exploited. 

Like the period after the 1905 Russian revolution described by Lenin, the period after the exit of the Soviet Union has been difficult for the international left. After dalliances with bizarre, “novel,” and foolish answers to what many perceive as the failure of socialism, the left has offered a beleaguered working class few victories. In the last thirty-three years, theorists have contrived new enemies: neoliberal capitalism, disaster capitalism, racial capitalism, crony capitalism, hyper-capitalism, coronavirus capitalism, unipolar capitalism and a host of other hyphenated capitalisms. What all of these theories share is a fatal hesitation to call out the capitalist system itself. They all share a faith in a reformed, managed capitalism that --shorn of its deviations-- will somehow serve all classes. 

After thirty-three years, this experiment in rescuing capitalism from itself should be discarded. It is time for the left to draw “a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle,” in Lenin’s words. If defeating capitalism is our goal, it requires tried and tested forms of political organization: a revolutionary political organization. It requires a bold, independent party embodying both democracy and centrism-- a Leninist party-- with a clear program based on enlisting working people to the greatest project of the twenty-first century: winning and constructing socialism. That is what history teaches.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Venezuela: Where Next?

We must speak the truth: therein lies our strength, and the masses, the people, the multitude will decide in actual practice, after the struggle, whether we have strength. VI Lenin, 1905

Hugo Chavez will live on as one of the most outstanding foes of US imperialism in our time. His defiance of successive US governments was truly remarkable. Situated in the US backyard, Venezuela-- under Chavez’s leadership-- brought joy and admiration to millions throughout the world and inspired others in Central and South America to mount their own response to US domination. Faced with foreign intervention, coup attempts, and a vicious domestic opposition, Chavismo will be honored for rebelling against US arrogance and aggression long after his death.

However, Chavismo was not socialism, nor did it construct a path to socialism. Chavez brought a Christian love and respect to the poor and disadvantaged and offered a dash of utopian “socialism” gleaned from Western leftist “advisors.” The movement was multiclass, with the working class playing no special role. The transformation of the state into a peoples’ democracy was never projected. In short, a radical transformation was not and is not secured against the maneuvers of the domestic bourgeoisie and foreign intervention.

Consequently, Venezuela’s path is very susceptible to detours, reversals, and backsliding, especially in the face of potent domestic reaction and foreign intervention. History has shown that mobilization and empowering of the working class is the most important barrier that a government can erect against the machinations of hostile class forces. The ready cooperation of the parties of the most militant workers-- the Communists-- is essential to this effort.

Yet, the Maduro government not only rejected the collaboration of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), but effectively banned the PCV and obstructed its electoral participation. This unprincipled attack on the PCV is well documented; no one among the international solidarity community has disputed its veracity. 

Yet those who know of the complicity of the Venezuelan Supreme Court in enforcing the ban choose to ignore the Court’s failure. They choose to look away from the denial of any hint of due process or transparency in the Court’s slavish toadying to the Maduro government. 

It speaks poorly of a left that indignantly rallies against comparable politically tainted decisions of the highest courts in their own lands.

The recent Venezuelan election is the object of intense contention. Ultimately, the Venezuelan people will resolve the question of its legitimacy, as they, and they alone, must do. 

Does it help Venezuelans find the truth for some to pretend that the most recent electoral process measured up to the past practices applauded by a number of recognized international observers? One prominent left commentator appealed to the Venezuelan Constitution to sheepishly note that the Constitution did not mandate that the electoral council respect those past practices-- hardly, a ringing defense of the results that he, and many others, stoutly maintain.

Of course, it is scandalous that the Maduro government marked “Paid” on the election results through the same compromised Supreme Court that attempted to arbitrarily shape the outcome beforehand by denying ballot status to some parties, including to the Communist Party.

To be sure, the Venezuelan people will overcome this blemish on the legacy of Hugo Chavez and return to a political process that will welcome the most ardent champions of working people, the Communists.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

 

Searching for JD Vance

What explains the meteoric rise of a little-known principal at an investment firm to one of the youngest, least politically experienced Vice-Presidential candidates in US history? How did Senator J. D. Vance rise from relative obscurity in 2016 to become the current running mate to Donald Trump?

Simple: groveling service to the ruling class.

In 2016, Vance published a book describing his youthful hardships growing up in the Midwest, the Rust Belt, or Appalachia, depending on what you choose to call the vast lands impoverished by corporate deindustrialization in the late twentieth century. The social, political, and economic disruptions that ensued affected millions of industrial workers and their families. 

Throughout the Midwest, plant closings left-- in their wake—low-paying jobs, poverty, crime, drug and alcohol addiction, broken homes, unhealthy lifestyles, and a host of other tragedies associated with economic dislocations. 

Vance was one of the few who escaped this fate, joining the Marine Corps after high school and using the tuition benefits from military service to attend and graduate from Ohio State University, and pursue a law degree from Yale. Soon, he felt the need to tell the public of “the anger and frustration of the white working class” and satisfy his hunger to “have someone tell their story.” 

But the story was not one that we might expect or hope for. Vance did not offer sympathy to the victims of corporate policy and political neglect; Vance did not call for help to those left unemployed, desperate, or without options; Vance did not plead their case to those dismissive of their despair.

Instead, he offered his own Horatio Alger, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps “success” story, urging the losers to take responsibility for their own choices. “Those of us who weren’t given every advantage can make better choices, and those choices do have the power to affect our lives…” 

The long-standing myths of self-help and individual initiative so beloved by those born on third base find confirmation with Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy. Consequently, the book became a darling of the corporate media across the political spectrum-- from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal. I wrote in 2016:

Nothing reveals the distance of the upper classes from the realities of working-class life like the current media fascination with the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Writing as one of their own, J.D. Vance… relates his unhappy working-class childhood to book-club liberals and country-club conservatives.

In 2016, it was remarkable that Vance’s account appealed to the elites-- the upper economic strata-- whether they otherwise counted as liberal or conservative. Of course, the book allowed a peek into the world of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables,” satisfying the voyeuristic urges of the elite. But more importantly, Vance’s advance from an abused “hillbilly” youth to the higher rungs of finance capital bolstered the ethos that anyone and everyone can make it in the land of opportunity. 

It was a message that both Democratic and Republican leaders and pundits like to hear. The New York Times lauded the book as a key to understanding Trump’s presidential victory, and he was “the voice of the Rust Belt” to The Washington Post. As I wrote in 2020:

Vance’s book came out at a convenient time-- 2016-- when East and West Coast elites sought explanations for Donald Trump’s success in the Midwest. The corporate Democrats had long taken these Midwesterners for granted, Obama calling them gun-toting religious zealots and Hillary Clinton famously describing them as “deplorables.” It was left to a “survivor” -- JD Vance-- to expose the pathologies and missteps of these flawed creatures. Vance had-- himself-- found the grit to escape the working-class ghetto of Middletown, Ohio and parlay an elite law-school degree into the riches of high finance.

While Vance earned a place on the talk-show circuit and a calling as a cable TV expert, it wasn’t until 2020 that his national political career got a boost. Director Ron Howard-- a master of feel-good movies-- brought Hillbilly Elegy to the silver screen and to NETFLIX. Reaching a much broader audience with his success-in-the-face-of-adversity tale, Vance was ready to pick a party and run for office. He chose the Republican Party, influenced primarily by wealthy donors, but through no great ideological commitment. Indeed, during the years of Trump’s political prominence, Vance frequently expressed scathing public criticisms of Trump and Trumpism, only to join his ticket in 2024.

For a dedicated servant of wealth and power, consistency is no obstacle. Vance can pose as the spokesperson for neglected white workers at one moment, while carrying water for ruthless capitalist billionaires like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen at another. He can be the darling of patronizing liberals when called on, while serving Donald Trump’s political machine when invited. 

In that regard, he has a Democratic counterpart in Senator John Fetterman, who-- like Vance-- opportunistically pushed himself onto the national political stage. 

But unlike Vance, whose roots drew a broader, sympathetic audience, and whose background earned a measure of street credibility, Fetterman came from privilege. Consequently, he had a more difficult journey to establish himself as a savior of the forgotten or discarded. He chose to adopt a small, neglected, predominantly Black, Rust Belt community on the outskirts of Pittsburgh as a personal experiment in elite colonization. 

Fetterman convinced a critical mass of liberals that this scion of Republican parents was a legitimate answer to the souls lost to deindustrialization. 

Taken in by his reverent deference to liberal social conventions, his “cool” trademarks of cargo shorts, hoodies, and tattoos, and his marijuana radicalism, he was quickly elevated to the status of a progressive icon, a fearless defender of the little people. 

All this was sheer nonsense to those of us living in his backyard, watching his careful cultivation of his political opportunities. Today, after a swift rise to the US Senate, Fetterman eagerly renounces his “progressivism,” embraces Israeli genocide, and constructs a safe, centrist image.

The ruling class needs the Vances and Fettermans to benignly explain the anger and despair of those bulldozed by deindustrialization. They serve as a buffer between wealth and power, and the unruly masses.

They represent the new phony populist faces of both parties, offering bogus gestures of sympathy and loud, but meager support for  destitute workers– Black and white.

More than fifty years ago, the ruling class sought similar interpreters and explainers of justifiable Black rage. Patronizing white intellectuals sprang up with comforting analyses and for-hire solutions (think Robin DiAngelo, more recently, in the Black Lives Matter moment), and many ambitious African Americans eagerly brought their political aspirations forward to dilute the rage and redirect the energy into the two-party charade. Then, as now, serving the ruling class pays off handsomely.

Vance, like Fetterman, exemplifies the current breed of bourgeois politicians of both parties, totally devoid of principles and unabashedly pledged to the service of the ruling class.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Multipolarity and BRICS Once More

The debates over “multipolarity” and the significance of an allegedly multipolar BRICS grouping continue. In an opinion piece in People’s Voice (Multipolarity, BRICS+ and the struggle for peace, cooperation, and socialism today, June 16-30, 2024) writer Garrett Halas mounts an earnest defense of multipolarity and the BRICS+ “as a positive step towards socialism.” 

Halas joins many others in envisioning all twenty-first-century resistance to US imperialism and the imperialism of its (largely ex-Cold War) partners as the same as resistance to imperialism in general. They divide the world into the US and its friends and those who, to some extent or another, oppose the US. Sometimes they characterize this as a conflict between the global North and the global South. Sometimes they refer to the imperialist antagonists collectively as “the West.”

From the perspective of the multipolarity proponents, if the countries resisting the US should neutralize US domination and that of its allies, then the world will become peaceful and harmonious. In their view, it is not capitalism that obstructs enduring peace, but US imperial aspirations alone. Accordingly, in the idealized future, multiple friendly, cooperative states (poles) will engage in peaceful, equitable economic transactions that all agree will be mutually advantageous-- what Chinese leaders call “win-win.” If this isn’t achieved immediately, it will soon follow. Is not socialism down the road?

The reality is that as important as resisting US domination and aggression surely is, its decline or defeat will not put an end to imperialism, as long as monopoly capitalism continues to exist. 

In the history of modern-era imperialism, the decline of every dominating great capitalist power has spawned the rise of another. As one power recedes, others step up and contest for global dominance-- that is the fundamental logic of imperialism. And, all too often, war ensues.

• CLASS: Glaringly absent from the theory of multipolarity is the concept of class. Advocates of a multipolar world fail to explain how class relations-- specifically the interests of the working class-- are advanced with the existence of multiple capitalist poles. Halas tells us that the “BRICS+ is a coalition with a concrete class character rooted in the global South” but he doesn’t tell us what that “concrete class character” is. This is a critical question and a significant problem, given that Halas concedes that “most BRICS+ nations are capitalist”! Of the original BRICS members, capitalism is unquestionably the dominant economic system in Russia, India, South Africa, and Brazil. Of the candidate members scheduled for entry in 2024-- Argentina (likely a withdrawal), Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates-- all are capitalist. The idea that working class interests will be served, and socialism advanced by this group seems far-fetched.

• CLASS CONFLICT: Class struggle-- the motor of the struggle for workers’ advances, workers’ power, and socialism-- has been stifled by the governments of nearly all the BRICS and BRICS+ countries. In Iran, for example, Communism is illegal and Communists have been executed in large numbers. Communism is likewise illegal in Saudi Arabia. Modi has conducted class war against India’s farmers. South Africa’s working class has seen unemployment and poverty rise under the disappointing government. Egyptian workers labor under a brutal military government. How does their entry into BRICS promise socialism?

• GLOBAL NORTH/GLOBAL SOUTH: Halas and the “multipolaristas” would have it that the “contradiction” informing multipolarity is the clash between the “global north” and the “global south” or, paradoxically, the “West” and the rest of the world. Apart from the fact that the geographical division captures little—other than the imagination of social-media leftists-- it gives the impression that Australia and New Zealand have something in common with impoverished Burundi. Or that Serbia and Germany are Western partners in exploiting small African countries. There is, of course, a division between wealthy countries and poor countries, between exploiters and exploited. Historically, the sharpest fault lines have been defined by colonialism and its successor, neo-colonialism. But the imperialist cards are shuffled from time to time due to resource inequities, uneven development, or other gained advantages. For example, the Arabian Peninsula was once a dominated colony of the Ottoman empire. That empire’s dissolution and subsequent developments led to an emergent Saudi Arabia infused with resource wealth and high up on the imperialist hierarchy. Today, India has three of the top 20 corporations in Asia by market value, larger than all Japanese corporations except for Toyota. India’s Tata Group has a market capitalization of over $380 billion, with its tentacles spread to 100 countries. The June 28 UK Morning Star editorial informs us: “Tata Steel’s threat to shut the blast furnaces at Port Talbot three months earlier if Unite goes ahead with strike action is blackmail. The India-based multinational does not believe steelworkers should have a say in the plant’s future… It’s outrageous that the future of British steelmaking should be at the whim of a billionaire on a different continent.”

• DECOUPLING: Halas suggests that BRICS+ offers an opportunity for countries to break out of the capitalist international financial structures imposed after World War II and the dominance of the dollar in global transactions. Such an option may exist in the future, but clearly it is intended as an option and not a substitute for existing structures and exchange instruments. As recently as late June of this year, PRC Premier Li Qiang said that “We should broadly open our minds, work closely together, abandon camp formations, (and) oppose decoupling…” [my emphasis] It is clear that the picture of global country-to-country relations-- as envisioned by Peoples’ China’s second most prominent leader, Li, at the “Summer” Davos-- offers no challenge to existing financial arrangements or to the dominance of the dollar. The antagonistic conflict between the old order and the new multipolar order is more a fantasy in the minds of some on the left than a real policy goal of the leading country in BRICS.

• ANTI-IMPERIALISM: Halas would like us to believe that twentieth-century anti-imperialism is multipolarity embodied in BRICS. He cites the UN votes on Palestinian status and oppression (predictably vetoed by the US) as an example of “global south” anti-imperialism. While symbolic and not without significance, it is hardly the principled anti-imperialist action we came to know in earlier times. It is worth reminding that Saudi Arabia was on the verge of abandoning Palestine for better relations with Israel before October 7. Egypt has long sold out the cause of Palestine, as has much of the Arab world. According to Al Jazeera, India is currently selling military supplies to Israel. Virtue-signaling at UN forums is not a substitute for concrete, material solidarity.

• CHINA: This is not the place for debating whether the Peoples’ Republic of China is a socialist country, a favorite parlor game of the Euro-US left. However, it is worth stating that-- as the only self-acclaimed socialist country currently in BRICS-- the PRC does not claim to be advocating, encouraging, or materially aiding the struggle for socialism outside of China. Unlike the former Soviet Union, the PRC does not prioritize or privilege investment or material support for countries embarking on the socialist path. The word “socialism” is largely absent from its foreign policy statements. While the Chinese leadership defends its outlook as “socialism with Chinese characters,” it does not demonstrably support “socialism with anybody else’s national characters.” Yet, some on the left see multipolarity and a largely capitalist BRICS as a road to socialism for the rest of us?

• WE HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE: In the 1960s, it was common for the left in Europe and the US to lose hope in the revolutionary potential of the working classes. Where working-class movements in Europe aligned with Communist Parties, they fully committed to a gradualist, parliamentary road to socialism. An anti-Communist New Left proposed a different vehicle of revolutionary change: The Third World. In the common parlance of the time, the Third World was the newly emergent, former colonies that were neither in the US camp nor the Soviet camp. Per this view, revolutionary change (and ultimately) socialism would grow from the independent road chosen by the leaders of these emergent nations. But instead, they were overwhelmed by the neo-colonialism of the great capitalist powers and absorbed by the global capitalist market, with few exceptions.

• AND EVEN EARLIER: Karl Kautsky, the major theoretician of the Socialist International, anticipated multipolarity in 1914, introducing a concept that he called “ultra-imperialism.” Kautsky believed that great power imperialism and war had no future. The imperialist system would, of necessity, stabilize and, due to declining capital exports, “Imperialism is thus digging its own grave… [T]he policy of imperialism therefore cannot be continued much longer.” For Kautsky, a stage of “concentration” of capitalist states, comparable to cartelization of corporations, will lead to inter-imperialist harmony. Lenin rejected this theory out of hand. For a discussion, go here.

Imperialism is not a stable system. Capitalist participants are always seeking a competitive advantage against their rivals. Sometimes they find it useful or necessary to form (often temporary) coalitions or alliances with others in order to protect or advance their interests. One such alliance was forged by the US after the Second World War in opposition to the socialist bloc and the national liberation movements. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US sought to keep existing coalitions intact by selecting or devising new enemies-- the war on drugs, the war against terrorism, and wars of humanitarian intervention. Beneath these political ties existed a US established and dominated global economic structure privileging the US, but deemed necessary to protect the capitalist system.

This politico-economic framework served capitalism well, until the great economic crash of 2007-2009 and the ensuing cracks and fractures in the framework. The turmoil unleashed by the crisis dampened the pace of growth in international trade and accelerated the competition for markets. Further challenging the US-centered framework was the ability of People’s China to navigate the crisis rather painlessly. Where the US ruling class formerly saw the PRC as an opportunity, it began to see China as a rival in the imperialist system. 

The post-Soviet global market-- cemented by the so-called “globalization” process-- began to unravel in the wake of twentieth-century economic instability, especially the 2007-2009 crash. Rather than defend existing free-trade dogma, capitalist countries were drawn to protectionism and economic nationalism. Beginning in the Trump Administration and accelerating during the Biden Administration, the US waged a tariff-and-sanctions war against economic competitors. US dominance of international financial institutions and the nearly universal dependence upon the US dollar gave US leaders even more weapons in this competition. 

The US “pivot” to China in its defense posture and its growing hostility to Russia were reflections of its losing ground to the PRC’s growing economic might and Russia’s dominance of Eurasian energy markets. 

Understandably, in this new era of economic nationalism, Russia, China, the leading power on the subcontinent, India, Africa’s top economic power, South Africa, and the largest economy in Latin America, Brazil, would look to counter aggressive US and EU competition. The era of mutual cooperation was ending, and the era of intense rivalry and national self-interest was emerging. It was in this environment that BRICS was born. 

It was a capitalist response to a capitalist problem, not a path to socialism.

The main task for Communists and progressives is not to take sides, but to fight to ensure that these fractures and frictions do not explode into war.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com