Six days of G-20 actions in Pittsburgh highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the left, but also the raging hypocrisy of those who rule.
Though the G-20 was rejected by other cities, the City and County officials of this Western Pennsylvania metropolis leaped at the chance to welcome 19 national leaders for the public spectacle of determining the destiny of the world in the period ahead. Long the target of democratic forces, the G-meetings expose the elitism and arrogance of the most powerful nations in a way that cries out for protest. Flaunting the credible though flawed, more democratic mechanism – The United Nations – G-meetings send the clear and shameless message that the wealthier countries and their ruling classes are in full control of the world’s affairs. While little more than wining, dining, signing off on previously determined policies and vague statements is accomplished, its all done with feudal-like ceremony and conspicuous pomp.
The Pittsburgh elites saw this circus as an opportunity to show case the “new” Pittsburgh – a glitzy Potemkin village hiding the devastated, neglected neighborhoods and towns of this once industrial giant. Today’s Pittsburgh – out-of-sight of the world’s leaders – is a depopulated, low income, aging city weighted down by decades of debt accumulated from ill-conceived, but highly profitably development schemes. The tax base has been scooped out to retain extortionate corporate giants and to lure new businesses that seldom come. The formerly well-paying manufacturing and mining jobs have disappeared only to be replaced with low-paying, benefit-lacking, service sector employment. Decades of political leadership rigidly wedded to corporate obeisance have left the region with a broken infrastructure, decrepit public services, and crippling poverty. If anything, Pittsburgh is a lesson in the destructiveness of unfettered corporate governance. The loss of good-paying industrial jobs has been most devastating to the African-American community: the city is one of the most segregated in the US with African-American poverty, infant mortality, crime, and abject poverty rivaling any city in America.
The city spared no expense in polishing the downtown buildings, streets, and public spaces where world leaders or the media might cast a critical eye. But, more than anything, Pittsburgh committed to an unprecedented show of force to confront anyone bent on crashing the party: nearly twenty-million dollars and 6,500 police (most imported) and National Guard. Despite the natural security advantages of the so-called “Golden Triangle” – a confined area at the convergence of two rivers – the heavy-handed security arrangements insured that downtown Pittsburgh was essentially a ghost town for two and a half days. The fears generated by the hysterical media (demonstrators will hurl bags of excrement, wield weapons, assault by-standers, etc. etc.) along with the barriers, choke points, and security check points virtually guaranteed that no visitor would cast an eye upon the peasants dependent upon downtown employment. Pittsburghers got a harsh taste of what life must be like in Baghdad or Kabul.
The week’s events kicked off with a jobs rally and march from Monumental Baptist Church in the city’s predominantly African-American Hill District neighborhood to the storied Freedom Corner, a landmark of civil rights activism. Around five hundred marchers echoed probably the week’s most militant and focused demands for social and racial justice with a strong anti-capitalism voice. Like this rally, other events held at the Church reflected the widest diversity of all of the many held during the week. The rally enjoyed endorsements from both the Steelworker’s union (USW) and the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), representatives of which spoke at the concluding rally along with other union leaders and the indomitable Pennsylvania State Senator, Jim Ferlo, who castigated President Obama for his disdainful dismissal of the anti-G-20 movement.
The police presence at the rally was only a foretaste of the Storm trooper tactics to be displayed later in the week after the “guests” arrived. Police made a provocative and thorough photographic record of the participants and leaders, a practice that accompanied all of the mass events to follow. Pittsburghers can be assured that these photos and other reports and records will be retained and researched. If the city didn’t have a “Red Squad” before, it has one now.
The Authorities
Led by the Secret Service, the local security apparatus exacerbated tensions by denying permits to assemble and march until the very last minute and only with ACLU legal prodding. Clearly they hoped to dampen participation and thwart planning. The huge police presence received training modeled after counter-insurgency tactics with units organized in platoon-sized groups fitted with full body armor and armed with assault rifles and shotguns. They maintained a steady helicopter presence above the skies of this city under siege. Before the actual meetings, police conducted raids on city gathering places as innocuous as urban gardens. We visited one such garden placed under constant surveillance by a well-placed camera fitted just for the G-20 meeting.
Their security plans became apparent as the week proceeded: they located any gathering, surrounded the participants, and ordered dispersal with the slightest provocation. This tactic guaranteed confusion and confrontation. Repeatedly, participants reported that they were unable to exit when dispersal orders were issued.
The authorities engaged a new weapon in Pittsburgh: a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) that sends a loud, 150 decibel sound into crowds, leaving victims confused and disoriented. This weapon, used by the US in Iraq, is ironically the same device recently employed against the Brazilian Embassy sanctuary to dislodge the elected president, Zelaya, who was deposed by a military coup. Agents of repression think alike.
The Ghost of Alexander Berkman
Like their Yippie and Weatherman predecessors, the anarchists were the specter that haunted respectable Pittsburgh. For months, the media, especially the local talk radio, made every effort to conflate anarchists with terrorists, portraying them as feces-throwing, window breaking nihilists hiding in abandoned buildings, patiently waiting for the right moment to strike. Veterans of the left have encountered the black-garbed, bandana-wearing youth at demonstrations for many years. To my admittedly jaded mind, many, if not most, are the sons and daughters of the upper reaches of the middle-class playing at revolution. Like their predecessors, they refuse to accept the discipline of Marxist or labor-led struggle. And like their predecessors, some will mature politically and some will move on –disappointed with the backwardness of the masses – to take their places in the capitalist hierarchy. Nonetheless, they cut a rakishly revolutionary figure and have an understandable appeal with some angry youth.
In Pittsburgh, they planned an un-permitted march to disrupt the G-20 on Thursday. Gathering at a Pittsburgh park, several hundred anarchists and sympathizers drew an even greater force of police for the moment of which the media had prepared everyone. Preempting the march, the police declared the gathering illegal and demanded that the crowd disperse. In short order, the LRAD weapon was employed (some say, for the first time in the US), sending the crowd to re-organize a few blocks away, only to be gassed and sent scattering. The police, supported by helicopter surveillance, attempted to corral any remaining groups by surrounding them with massive forces. Police tactics moved mobile units in a chess game to block both the advance and withdrawal of any groups, tactics that virtually guaranteed confrontation and an excuse to make arrests. Rocks were thrown, some windows broken, and dumpster barricades were constructed, but resistance was no match for gas and rubber bullets. The TV-ready confrontation exhausted both sides by nightfall with little more damage and casualties than the aftermath of a Pittsburgh Steeler victory rally. Nonetheless, the residence of several Pittsburgh neighborhoods got a taste of what the authorities have in store for any vigorous resistance movement.
The action plan of the security forces was calculated and provocative and the sight of massive, storm trooper-like maneuvers left many by-standers alarmed. What they saw as kids-at-play was met with enormous, repressive force. The reckless use of gas in the narrow streets and alleyways of Pittsburgh neighborhoods troubled many. Was this the face of Pittsburgh’s future? It is the height of foolishness to think that the tactical police will simply go back to business as usual after this repressive exercise. The toothpaste is out of the tube.
The Battle for the University
The G-20 planners organized few glitzy events outside of the high-security “Green Zone” constructed downtown. One was a reception near the University of Pittsburgh. Essentially an Oscar-like fashion show for the G-20 celebrities and the media, organizers had no intention of allowing ordinary folks that are normally drawn to such extravaganzas. University students – idled for two days by the G-20 – quite naturally gathered to get a glimpse of the People Magazine-worthy dignitaries. But the police – battle-hardened by the afternoon skirmish with the anarchists – would have none of it, pressing the students away from the event and demanding that they disperse. The heavy-handedness of the police was met by some resistance, but resulted largely in panic, fear, and some arrests.
Undoubtedly many students – seeing the face of police thuggery for the first time - were moved to join the Friday march in solidarity with those abused and arrested Thursday evening.
After the close of the G-20, students gathered again near the site of Thursday’s action and were again attacked by the police. For the most part, the 400 students gathered Friday night were more social than political. Nonetheless they were subjected to the LRAD weapon, batons, and rubber bullets. The violent police assault resulted in 110 arrests, including members of the media. The police could not resist one more strike against civility and Constitutional guarantees.
The Media
Sensationalism drew the media like a moth to a light. The local media bought the official public relations effort in its entirety, bombarding people with a catalogue of benefits that would surely befall the city with the hosting of the G-20. Pittsburgh media has always ignored the critical reports of the city’s decline, showcasing the profit-driven promises of developers and consultants who have driven the region into unprecedented debt. Neighborhood needs, public services, minority set-asides, and good paying jobs have always been overshadowed by the grandiose urban revivals imposed by the city’s wealthy and their political minions. The old legacy of a few dominant families, like the Mellons and Scaifes, telling people how to think has never been completely shed.
Pittsburgh media dwelled incessantly on the security needs for the world’s leaders, demonizing the arrival of anarchists and the potential for terrorism. During the week of political action, they trivialized the resistance events, singling out the most obscure and off-beat of demands in a crude attempt to render all participants marginal and frivolous. In gatherings, they showed a particular interest and fascination with the masked activists, hoping to paint the thousands committed to peacefully advocating a host of serious issues as bent upon some nefarious act of vandalism or outrage.
In one rare instance, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette broke through the wall of hypocrisy, describing fairly, fully, and with some outrage the police assault on the University of Pittsburgh students on Friday night. No doubt this was because the rioting police assaulted and arrested one of their own: a young reporter. That made all the difference.
Labor
Leo Gerard, the President of the Steelworkers (USW) union, seemed to be everywhere, speaking on many occasions and with passion about the sins of the G-20. The union’s endorsement of events, including the opening and closing marches was significant and commendable. A few other unions made notable contributions; most were not involved. Yet there was little mass participation by labor in the week’s events. In a city and region famous for its concentration of organized labor, rank-and-file labor participation would have made a truly qualitative difference in the impact of the G-20 protests. With thousands of members and retirees in the area, it is hard to believe that any great effort was made to mobilize members in support of these events.
The wide gap between official endorsement and member participation points to the long period of labor’s dependency on electoral strategy and faithfulness to the Democratic Party. The machinery of mass action has grown rusty from disuse and desperately in need of repair. The bodies and voices of the rank-and-file were sorely missed at the G-20. Without some official distance between the labor movement and the Democratic Party, members are understandably reluctant to protest an event hosted by President Obama. Needless to say, with few exceptions, Democratic Party leaders were nowhere to be found amongst the anti-G-20 folks.
The Big Finale
Friday’s concluding march brought thousands to the streets of Pittsburgh in a show of resistance unseen in this city since the highpoint of anti-Vietnam War activities. Eight, perhaps nine, thousand marchers trekked to the heart of Pittsburgh to hear speakers positioned at the City-County Building, before marching on to the city’s Northside. This final, permitted march brought together all the causes advocated over the six days of protest in a peaceful, joyful celebration of dissent from the G-20 agenda.
Thanks to the energy and determination of the event’s sponsor – The Thomas Merton Center, a long-time catalyst for social justice – and its indefatigable organizer - Pete Shell - the Friday march was a success on ever level. Despite further intimidating police presence, there were no clashes (rumors abounded that the police planned to stage a provocation, a suspicion reinforced by the staging of mounted police and a mass of riot police near the City-County Building).
For the final march and throughout the week, Shell made a conscious effort to center the events around issues of peace, equality and economic justice, a task made difficult by the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, agendas of the many participants. The lack of focus has plagued all G-protests and, though no threat to unity, has blunted the critique of the undemocratic, corporate-friendly essence of the G-20.
The clarion call of the marchers – “This is what democracy looks like” – stands in sharp relief to the call to arms of the G-20 organizers. Those participating in opposition might point to the huge gathering of the tools of repression and say with equal vigor: “This is what fascism looks like”.
The best laid plans of the security agencies failed to frighten thousands from participating in G-20 activities. Yet far more can be mustered if we could find a way to bring rank-and-file labor into the streets. Far more would join us if we could better integrate African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minority peoples and their issues into the struggle.
Traditionally, it has been the role of the left – especially the Marxist left – to make these connections, to bring clarity and focus to the issues. But for some time, the left has been split into narrow sectarians and timid apologists for a broken, backward political and economic regime.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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Monday, September 28, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Why is Marxism a “Science”?
The claim that Marxism is a science is particularly pertinent in light of the same, but dubious claim made on behalf of modern economics. The economics taught in most universities, alongside physics, chemistry and biology, surely has only a loose claim on that honorific title after its abysmal performance explaining and taming our tenacious economic crisis. Despite all of the formalisms, quantifications, models, and theorems (the trappings of modern science) bloating the books and papers of academic economics, the discipline has a rather weak record in steering economic life towards rationality, efficiency, and, of course, justice. If physics were as mired in conventionality as economics, we would still be searching for phlogiston. Despite the wealth of new data, computational tools, and economic experience, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the conceptual toolbox collected by the Classical Economists –Adam Smith and David Ricardo – would have served us as well in understanding and addressing the current economic storm.
But the failing of economics, or sociology, or social psychology, in no way proves that an alternative approach – for example, Marxism - is superior or more scientific.
I was reminded of what makes good science by reading a recent opinion piece written by Richard Dawkins, the distinguished evolutionary biologist, and appearing in The Wall Street Journal (“Evolution leaves God with Nothing to Do”, 9-12/13-09). Though Dawkins ostensible target was the existence of God, I was drawn to his splendid defense of Darwinism and the scientific world-view. We would do well to reflect upon one particular passage:
This passionate defense and crystal clear exposition of the place of Darwinian evolution in the body of science could equally serve as a defense and exposition – with the replacement of a few key words – of Marxism as science. Society, like life, shows a vast array of forms with distinctive patterns of development. Society, like life, changes over time in adaptive ways that spring from seemingly random factors. At the heart of both processes – biological evolution and societal transformation – is the struggle to survive and thrive, a natural process that separates the rocks, gas clouds, and whirlpools that Dawkins mentions from amoeba and social institutions. It was Marx and Engels’ great insight in 1845 and 1846 (in writing The German Ideology) to view social change as an evolutionary pattern generated by this struggle. It was Darwin’s great insight in 1859 (with The Origin of the Species) to see the vast, diverse mass of living things as the result of an intelligible evolutionary process. Where Darwin’s great insight drew upon an enormous survey of the diversity of life, Marx and Engels drew upon an enormous wealth of social and historical data. Both investigations revealed patterns: species evolution in the former case, societal evolution in the other.
This common insight, a centerpiece of all biological sciences, but largely scorned by the social science establishment, stands as the pillar of Marxism’s claim for scientific stature. Before Darwin’s landmark work was published, Marx and Engels identified a social evolution that mapped the continuous development of humans and their social organizations, driven - as with biological evolution - by a struggle with nature. In order to better meet the challenges of nature – climate, scarcity, security, disease, etc. – humans created more and more complex social relations that improved humanity’s chances in the battle for survival. The dramatic increase in the life expectancy of humans from pre-historic times demonstrates vividly this process, a success unmatched by any other biological organism. The biological development of consciousness, self-awareness, and symbolic representation birthed the construction of community and social relations, accounting for this distinct advantage accruing to humans in the survival of the fittest.
For Marx and Engels, the fittest social organizations survived and thrived just as the fittest biological organisms survived over their less adapted rivals. They saw the creation of an economic surplus – a reserve of the means of sustenance - as determinative of a society’s edge in the struggle against nature and rival social organizations. The more that a community could accumulate the material means of survival, the more it could take steps to accumulate even more of these material means and further advance in the struggle for survival. But accumulation is slow and limited in a community lacking both domination and privilege; early egalitarian, peaceful societies tended to seek little more than enough to overcome pangs of hunger, avoid pain and mortality and reproduce. In this regard, they mirrored the behavior of other species. But thanks to the unique features evolved by humans, communities emerged with an evolutionary advantage: they took to plundering and domination. With the material advantages gained by these survival adaptive activities, these societies were able to both expand and protect their privileges; new social structures emerged that elevated the material means – the adaptive sustainability – of a few by dominating the many.
It was this engine of domination and primitive exploitation (little different in the beginning from what we now call “thievery”) that Marx and Engels placed at the center of social evolution. As social scientists, they viewed this coldly as an essential process of social transformation (though as humans, they could not help but vividly paint the pain and degradation of the process). Moreover, they saw this social process as the basis for the creation of divisions of labor – workers, soldiers, etc. – and class differentiation (insofar as this process may mirror a society of bees, it must be remembered that humans generated these divisions socially and not genetically).
Just as with species evolution, some paths of social transformation were unsuccessful or preserved by natural boundaries or isolation, leaving societies sustainable, but frozen in time. But the mechanisms of exploitation and class dominance marched on in others, producing greater and greater accumulated surpluses. Marx and Engels identified the patterns of exploitation – slavery, serfdom, and the purchase of the power of free labor – that established distinct markers in the social evolution of humans. Drawing upon their careful studies of these previous changes, Marx and Engels foresaw a time when the mechanism of exploitation would not only outlive its usefulness in driving social development, but, indeed, become a restraint upon human survival. I would argue that we are well into a period where that projection is a reality. The dominant form of social organization – capitalism – now threatens human survivability on so many fronts – war, environmental chaos, extreme poverty, declining living standards, cultural degradation, loss of community, hollow values – that further transformation is not only desirable, but necessary.
On a final note, Dawkins makes passing, casual reference to the laws of thermodynamics, noting that those who see a conflict between these laws and Darwinism are ignorant. He is referring, with this aside, principally to the Second Law of Thermodynamics – the irreversible increase in entropy within closed systems. Increasing entropy - crudely, the tendency of order to dissolve into disorder – represents a unique law that introduces directionality into physical processes. Where most processes are reversible – water into steam and back into water – the Second Law posits a process that will, in the long run, reduce what we perceive as order or organization into a bland, random disorder: our shoes wear out, our sandcastles deteriorate, our mountains erode, and our muscles weaken. But this randomizing often generates interesting new combinations, such as life itself. This fascinating organic accident bears an equally interesting feature: though life has a fragile hold on its advantage, it succeeds by harnessing random changes to improve its survivability. The evolution of new species has managed to stay a step, a tenuous step, ahead of the increasing entropy in our closed system. All but the ignorant recognize this as both consistent with and dependent upon the Second Law.
Like Darwinian evolution, the Marxist theory of social transformation – commonly called “Historical Materialism” – embraces the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but in this case, by the persistent re-organization of society to battle entropy’s infinite challenges to human survival: disease, starvation, environmental calamities, and self-destruction. As with biological evolution, social evolution is a fragile process that, under the best of conditions, stays a step ahead of the dissolving forces of nature. But in the case of society, it is not random changes selected by fitness to survive, but conscious human constructions selected in their resistance to the challenges of nature and human folly that is determinative.
Engels, writing in the Introduction to the Dialectics of Nature, acknowledged the science of Darwin while foreseeing the enormous possibilities unleashed by an understanding of the science of society:
It is this deeper search for an understanding of societal evolution that Marx and Engels brought to science. It is this science that is so sorely needed to address the problems of our times.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
But the failing of economics, or sociology, or social psychology, in no way proves that an alternative approach – for example, Marxism - is superior or more scientific.
I was reminded of what makes good science by reading a recent opinion piece written by Richard Dawkins, the distinguished evolutionary biologist, and appearing in The Wall Street Journal (“Evolution leaves God with Nothing to Do”, 9-12/13-09). Though Dawkins ostensible target was the existence of God, I was drawn to his splendid defense of Darwinism and the scientific world-view. We would do well to reflect upon one particular passage:
The laws of physics, before Darwinian evolution bursts out from their midst, can make rocks and sand, gas clouds and stars, whirlpools and waves, whirl-pool shaped galaxies and light that travels as waves while behaving like particles… But now enter life. Look through the eyes of a physicist, at a bounding kangaroo, a swooping bat, a leaping dolphin, a soaring Redwood. There never was a rock that bound like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate… Not once do any of these creatures disobey the laws of physics. Far from violating the laws of thermodynamics (as is often so ignorantly alleged) they are relentlessly driven by them. Far from violating the laws of motion, animals exploit them to their advantage as they walk. Run, dodge and jink, leap and fly, pounce on prey or spring to safety.
Never once are the laws of physics violated, yet life emerges into uncharted territory. And how is the trick done? …Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information.
This passionate defense and crystal clear exposition of the place of Darwinian evolution in the body of science could equally serve as a defense and exposition – with the replacement of a few key words – of Marxism as science. Society, like life, shows a vast array of forms with distinctive patterns of development. Society, like life, changes over time in adaptive ways that spring from seemingly random factors. At the heart of both processes – biological evolution and societal transformation – is the struggle to survive and thrive, a natural process that separates the rocks, gas clouds, and whirlpools that Dawkins mentions from amoeba and social institutions. It was Marx and Engels’ great insight in 1845 and 1846 (in writing The German Ideology) to view social change as an evolutionary pattern generated by this struggle. It was Darwin’s great insight in 1859 (with The Origin of the Species) to see the vast, diverse mass of living things as the result of an intelligible evolutionary process. Where Darwin’s great insight drew upon an enormous survey of the diversity of life, Marx and Engels drew upon an enormous wealth of social and historical data. Both investigations revealed patterns: species evolution in the former case, societal evolution in the other.
This common insight, a centerpiece of all biological sciences, but largely scorned by the social science establishment, stands as the pillar of Marxism’s claim for scientific stature. Before Darwin’s landmark work was published, Marx and Engels identified a social evolution that mapped the continuous development of humans and their social organizations, driven - as with biological evolution - by a struggle with nature. In order to better meet the challenges of nature – climate, scarcity, security, disease, etc. – humans created more and more complex social relations that improved humanity’s chances in the battle for survival. The dramatic increase in the life expectancy of humans from pre-historic times demonstrates vividly this process, a success unmatched by any other biological organism. The biological development of consciousness, self-awareness, and symbolic representation birthed the construction of community and social relations, accounting for this distinct advantage accruing to humans in the survival of the fittest.
For Marx and Engels, the fittest social organizations survived and thrived just as the fittest biological organisms survived over their less adapted rivals. They saw the creation of an economic surplus – a reserve of the means of sustenance - as determinative of a society’s edge in the struggle against nature and rival social organizations. The more that a community could accumulate the material means of survival, the more it could take steps to accumulate even more of these material means and further advance in the struggle for survival. But accumulation is slow and limited in a community lacking both domination and privilege; early egalitarian, peaceful societies tended to seek little more than enough to overcome pangs of hunger, avoid pain and mortality and reproduce. In this regard, they mirrored the behavior of other species. But thanks to the unique features evolved by humans, communities emerged with an evolutionary advantage: they took to plundering and domination. With the material advantages gained by these survival adaptive activities, these societies were able to both expand and protect their privileges; new social structures emerged that elevated the material means – the adaptive sustainability – of a few by dominating the many.
It was this engine of domination and primitive exploitation (little different in the beginning from what we now call “thievery”) that Marx and Engels placed at the center of social evolution. As social scientists, they viewed this coldly as an essential process of social transformation (though as humans, they could not help but vividly paint the pain and degradation of the process). Moreover, they saw this social process as the basis for the creation of divisions of labor – workers, soldiers, etc. – and class differentiation (insofar as this process may mirror a society of bees, it must be remembered that humans generated these divisions socially and not genetically).
Just as with species evolution, some paths of social transformation were unsuccessful or preserved by natural boundaries or isolation, leaving societies sustainable, but frozen in time. But the mechanisms of exploitation and class dominance marched on in others, producing greater and greater accumulated surpluses. Marx and Engels identified the patterns of exploitation – slavery, serfdom, and the purchase of the power of free labor – that established distinct markers in the social evolution of humans. Drawing upon their careful studies of these previous changes, Marx and Engels foresaw a time when the mechanism of exploitation would not only outlive its usefulness in driving social development, but, indeed, become a restraint upon human survival. I would argue that we are well into a period where that projection is a reality. The dominant form of social organization – capitalism – now threatens human survivability on so many fronts – war, environmental chaos, extreme poverty, declining living standards, cultural degradation, loss of community, hollow values – that further transformation is not only desirable, but necessary.
On a final note, Dawkins makes passing, casual reference to the laws of thermodynamics, noting that those who see a conflict between these laws and Darwinism are ignorant. He is referring, with this aside, principally to the Second Law of Thermodynamics – the irreversible increase in entropy within closed systems. Increasing entropy - crudely, the tendency of order to dissolve into disorder – represents a unique law that introduces directionality into physical processes. Where most processes are reversible – water into steam and back into water – the Second Law posits a process that will, in the long run, reduce what we perceive as order or organization into a bland, random disorder: our shoes wear out, our sandcastles deteriorate, our mountains erode, and our muscles weaken. But this randomizing often generates interesting new combinations, such as life itself. This fascinating organic accident bears an equally interesting feature: though life has a fragile hold on its advantage, it succeeds by harnessing random changes to improve its survivability. The evolution of new species has managed to stay a step, a tenuous step, ahead of the increasing entropy in our closed system. All but the ignorant recognize this as both consistent with and dependent upon the Second Law.
Like Darwinian evolution, the Marxist theory of social transformation – commonly called “Historical Materialism” – embraces the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but in this case, by the persistent re-organization of society to battle entropy’s infinite challenges to human survival: disease, starvation, environmental calamities, and self-destruction. As with biological evolution, social evolution is a fragile process that, under the best of conditions, stays a step ahead of the dissolving forces of nature. But in the case of society, it is not random changes selected by fitness to survive, but conscious human constructions selected in their resistance to the challenges of nature and human folly that is determinative.
Engels, writing in the Introduction to the Dialectics of Nature, acknowledged the science of Darwin while foreseeing the enormous possibilities unleashed by an understanding of the science of society:
Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for men in their aspect as species. Historical evolution makes such an organisation daily more indispensable, but also with every day more possible. From it will date a new epoch of history, in which mankind itself, and with mankind all branches of its activity, and especially natural science, will experience an advance that will put everything preceding it in the deepest shade.
It is this deeper search for an understanding of societal evolution that Marx and Engels brought to science. It is this science that is so sorely needed to address the problems of our times.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The “Mystery” of Unemployment
As the stock market rebounds and key statistics show some slowing of the pace of economic decline – even some growth – economists and forecasters are hailing the recovery. At the same time, they are wringing their hands and bemoaning the increasing unemployment, as though there are no connections between the two events.
To read the mainstream media, one gets the distinct impression that unemployment is a calumny that descends upon the economy like locusts. Where any other economic problem requires attention and repair, the unemployment problem – apart from issuing unemployment benefits – must run its course. Maybe, the pundits say, employment will begin to grow next year or perhaps it won’t improve until even later. Banks, of course, get immediate attention - as do other ailing corporations. But the unemployed must suffer quietly until the self-regulating market regulates itself and jobs miraculously reappear.
Lost in all of this nonsense is the fact that unemployment is the result of a conscious, deliberate act on the part of employers. Bosses terminate workers because they see some gain from doing so. Of course there is much regret –real or feigned – and “I feel your pain” parting of the ways, but in the end, the decision to fire, lay-off, or dissociate is made to somehow gain an advantage. It’s a simple truth, yet of great consequence.
In a time of systemic profit decline like the current crisis, the employer grasps every opportunity to restore profitability. The kept press obscures this motive as a noble desire to contain and reduce costs. Of course “costs” in this downturn is simply shorthand for “labor costs”. The other factors of production - raw materials and fixed capital – offer little opportunity for savings. For some time, energy and raw material prices have been creeping back. Fixed assets are more costly when capacity is dramatically underutilized. Therefore, profitability is directly connected to labor costs. If they can be reduced, then the decline in profitability can be abated.
But it is not enough to reduce labor costs in proportion to production, which can, at best, only stabilize an undesirable situation. The employer must decrease labor costs more deeply in relation to the level of production in order to regain profit growth. This is the categorical imperative of capitalist management.
Thus, the recovery of enterprise profitability is intrinsically tied to paying workers less and/or reducing the number of employees – the only two routes to shrinking labor costs. Both are features of the current crisis and both tactics are obscured in the popular celebration of recovery. The drive for greater profits explains the persistence of unemployment.
Yet we have more than a credible argument to make this case. We have the facts.
Second quarter labor productivity growth was an astounding 6.6%. Quite simply, the same worker who produced a hundred widgets in spring of 2008 produced nearly 107 in the spring of 2009. Bearing in mind that the unemployment rate grew by roughly 4.5% in that period, every remaining, employed worker was required to make up for those fired and produce yet even more. At the same time, payrolls dropped over 4.5%, in step with the orgy of layoffs. This dramatic increase in the productivity of the labor force demonstrates how prevalent the tactic of reducing labor costs through layoffs has been. The desired level of production has been achieved by driving fewer workers to produce far more.
But has this tactic improved profitability?
Decidely. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 8, 2009 that 75% of companies included in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index reported earnings over analyst’s expectations in the last quarter, the highest recorded figure since calculations began in 1994. Moreover, the Dow Jones industrial average has leaped by approximately 50% since March, indicating a strong rebound in the corporate bottom line.
We get an even sharper understanding of this process when we turn to the language, the framework of Marxism. For Marxists, the ratio of surplus value or profit to labor costs is definitive of the rate of exploitation of labor, a notion foreign to the thinking and language of academic economics. When employers (capitalists) force labor costs down while extracting greater profits from the production process, they are taking a greater portion of the social wealth created in that process. This notion of exploitation is central, at the core of Marxist political economy and marks a sharp line between the Marxist point-of-view and that of liberals, social democrats and other progressives. While many non-Marxists admirably decry the uncertainty, pain and destruction of mass unemployment, they fail to acknowledge the plight of the working masses suffering the life-threatening, spirit-draining effects of intensified exploitation. One can search wide and far in the popular media for even a hint of the exhausting grind of today’s workplace. Only Marxism offers the theoretical machinery to reveal this harsh reality behind producing more for less.
Marxists also link the rise of unemployment with the disciplining of workers who retain their jobs. Marx called mass unemployment “the reserve army of the proletariat”. When millions are without work, they constitute a reserve that would eagerly work for less to survive the ravages of unemployment, an extortionate force that restrains workers from demanding a greater share. Thus, high unemployment serves to dampen, even quench the fight for better wages and working conditions through the fear of being discarded into “the reserve army”.
The “mystery” of unemployment evaporates when we understand that it is not a direct result of economic ills, but the result of conscious decisions meant to restore and grow profitability.
With an understanding of exploitation, we see that forced unemployment is a direct attack not only upon those forced out of work, but those still employed. It is a vicious assault in the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class.
With this understanding, we see why corporate-friendly politicians and policy makers are in no hurry to either attack unemployment or see its demise.
With this understanding, we see why it is fool’s gold to stake the fate of workers on a capitalist recovery.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
To read the mainstream media, one gets the distinct impression that unemployment is a calumny that descends upon the economy like locusts. Where any other economic problem requires attention and repair, the unemployment problem – apart from issuing unemployment benefits – must run its course. Maybe, the pundits say, employment will begin to grow next year or perhaps it won’t improve until even later. Banks, of course, get immediate attention - as do other ailing corporations. But the unemployed must suffer quietly until the self-regulating market regulates itself and jobs miraculously reappear.
Lost in all of this nonsense is the fact that unemployment is the result of a conscious, deliberate act on the part of employers. Bosses terminate workers because they see some gain from doing so. Of course there is much regret –real or feigned – and “I feel your pain” parting of the ways, but in the end, the decision to fire, lay-off, or dissociate is made to somehow gain an advantage. It’s a simple truth, yet of great consequence.
In a time of systemic profit decline like the current crisis, the employer grasps every opportunity to restore profitability. The kept press obscures this motive as a noble desire to contain and reduce costs. Of course “costs” in this downturn is simply shorthand for “labor costs”. The other factors of production - raw materials and fixed capital – offer little opportunity for savings. For some time, energy and raw material prices have been creeping back. Fixed assets are more costly when capacity is dramatically underutilized. Therefore, profitability is directly connected to labor costs. If they can be reduced, then the decline in profitability can be abated.
But it is not enough to reduce labor costs in proportion to production, which can, at best, only stabilize an undesirable situation. The employer must decrease labor costs more deeply in relation to the level of production in order to regain profit growth. This is the categorical imperative of capitalist management.
Thus, the recovery of enterprise profitability is intrinsically tied to paying workers less and/or reducing the number of employees – the only two routes to shrinking labor costs. Both are features of the current crisis and both tactics are obscured in the popular celebration of recovery. The drive for greater profits explains the persistence of unemployment.
Yet we have more than a credible argument to make this case. We have the facts.
Second quarter labor productivity growth was an astounding 6.6%. Quite simply, the same worker who produced a hundred widgets in spring of 2008 produced nearly 107 in the spring of 2009. Bearing in mind that the unemployment rate grew by roughly 4.5% in that period, every remaining, employed worker was required to make up for those fired and produce yet even more. At the same time, payrolls dropped over 4.5%, in step with the orgy of layoffs. This dramatic increase in the productivity of the labor force demonstrates how prevalent the tactic of reducing labor costs through layoffs has been. The desired level of production has been achieved by driving fewer workers to produce far more.
But has this tactic improved profitability?
Decidely. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 8, 2009 that 75% of companies included in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index reported earnings over analyst’s expectations in the last quarter, the highest recorded figure since calculations began in 1994. Moreover, the Dow Jones industrial average has leaped by approximately 50% since March, indicating a strong rebound in the corporate bottom line.
We get an even sharper understanding of this process when we turn to the language, the framework of Marxism. For Marxists, the ratio of surplus value or profit to labor costs is definitive of the rate of exploitation of labor, a notion foreign to the thinking and language of academic economics. When employers (capitalists) force labor costs down while extracting greater profits from the production process, they are taking a greater portion of the social wealth created in that process. This notion of exploitation is central, at the core of Marxist political economy and marks a sharp line between the Marxist point-of-view and that of liberals, social democrats and other progressives. While many non-Marxists admirably decry the uncertainty, pain and destruction of mass unemployment, they fail to acknowledge the plight of the working masses suffering the life-threatening, spirit-draining effects of intensified exploitation. One can search wide and far in the popular media for even a hint of the exhausting grind of today’s workplace. Only Marxism offers the theoretical machinery to reveal this harsh reality behind producing more for less.
Marxists also link the rise of unemployment with the disciplining of workers who retain their jobs. Marx called mass unemployment “the reserve army of the proletariat”. When millions are without work, they constitute a reserve that would eagerly work for less to survive the ravages of unemployment, an extortionate force that restrains workers from demanding a greater share. Thus, high unemployment serves to dampen, even quench the fight for better wages and working conditions through the fear of being discarded into “the reserve army”.
The “mystery” of unemployment evaporates when we understand that it is not a direct result of economic ills, but the result of conscious decisions meant to restore and grow profitability.
With an understanding of exploitation, we see that forced unemployment is a direct attack not only upon those forced out of work, but those still employed. It is a vicious assault in the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class.
With this understanding, we see why corporate-friendly politicians and policy makers are in no hurry to either attack unemployment or see its demise.
With this understanding, we see why it is fool’s gold to stake the fate of workers on a capitalist recovery.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Illusions Breed Disillusionment
I read this week in the voice of liberalism, The New York Times, that President Obama’s supporters have been “punked” and “duped” by the Administration. Both liberal icons Frank Rich and Paul Krugman expressed outrage – as much as prominent, officially acceptable liberals can be outraged – by the Administration’s retreats on health care reform. The word “betrayed” is spreading like a wild fire through the liberal blogosphere.
This expression of anger is entirely misplaced. Once bitten, twice bitten, thrice bitten, ad infinitum, one wonders how many bites it takes before so-called progressives will study the history of the two-party system and its sordid, ever-expanding corruption and draw some sane conclusions. Perhaps it takes a dose of Marxism to heal the myopia of our liberal and progressive allies who rise to every Democratic Party electoral victory and see a new day dawning.
This is no defense of Obama: he is no worse or better than his counterparts over the last many decades. In fact, given the continued debasement of US democracy, he may well be marginally better than his Party's predecessors. Surely no one realistically believes that a Clinton, Edwards, Biden, or any other prominent, sufficiently funded, Democratic Senator or Governor would offer a more progressive Presidency.
Now is not the time for bitterness, anger, blame (or even “I told you so”). It is the time, however, for thinking hard and seriously about alternatives to the two-party monopoly of political power. It is the time to press aggressively for an independent people’s agenda, beginning today with an all-out effort to force single-payer, universal health care – an urgent and immediate need – on to the legislative front burner… with or without President Obama.
Mindful of the spreading cynicism among liberals, I offer below an article posted on MLToday some time between the November election and the Obama inauguration, where I forecast the trajectory of the incoming Administration and warn of the danger of illusions and a blank check. See also The Political Economy of the Elections (http://mltoday.com/en/the-political-economy-of-the-elections-394.html) written during the primary season.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
This expression of anger is entirely misplaced. Once bitten, twice bitten, thrice bitten, ad infinitum, one wonders how many bites it takes before so-called progressives will study the history of the two-party system and its sordid, ever-expanding corruption and draw some sane conclusions. Perhaps it takes a dose of Marxism to heal the myopia of our liberal and progressive allies who rise to every Democratic Party electoral victory and see a new day dawning.
This is no defense of Obama: he is no worse or better than his counterparts over the last many decades. In fact, given the continued debasement of US democracy, he may well be marginally better than his Party's predecessors. Surely no one realistically believes that a Clinton, Edwards, Biden, or any other prominent, sufficiently funded, Democratic Senator or Governor would offer a more progressive Presidency.
Now is not the time for bitterness, anger, blame (or even “I told you so”). It is the time, however, for thinking hard and seriously about alternatives to the two-party monopoly of political power. It is the time to press aggressively for an independent people’s agenda, beginning today with an all-out effort to force single-payer, universal health care – an urgent and immediate need – on to the legislative front burner… with or without President Obama.
Mindful of the spreading cynicism among liberals, I offer below an article posted on MLToday some time between the November election and the Obama inauguration, where I forecast the trajectory of the incoming Administration and warn of the danger of illusions and a blank check. See also The Political Economy of the Elections (http://mltoday.com/en/the-political-economy-of-the-elections-394.html) written during the primary season.
Let Obama be Obama?
Written by Zoltan Zigedy for Marxist-Leninism Today
Disenchantment is setting in... Among those who describe themselves as "progressives" (an umbrella-term re-invented to avoid the pejoration of "liberal" and to encompass liberals and the non-Marxist left), the infatuation with President-elect Obama has began to sour. As thousands prepared to join the inaugural celebrations in DC, the announcement that Reverend Rick Warren would invoke the ceremonies sparked a decided outcry from progressive Obama supporters. The right-centrist Cabinet appointments - earlier indications of Obama's governing posture - were largely sloughed off by left supporters as Lincoln-esque maneuvers or practical accommodations. But honoring Warren stretched the credulity of even the most smitten. While Warren has shown a tad more tolerance and compassion than the worst of the evangelical right, he is still a member-in-good-standing of the cabal of fire and brimstone reactionaries.
Who is Obama?
Has Obama betrayed his progressive promise? Obama never made a progressive promise. The idea of Obama as a water-bearer for liberal or progressive reform came not from Obama's mouth, but from the sheer wishes and dreams of the left. They took the vacuity of the "change" slogan as something more than the usual hyperbole of two-party politics despite the fact that it is hurled at every lame duck or incumbent. They saw rhetorical, fuzzy commitments to constituents of the Democratic Party base as more than they have been in every previous Democratic campaign. They took youth, energy, and elequence as a mark of liberalism in a way not seen since the JFK campaign. In short, Obama ran a predictable, well executed Democratic Party Presidential campaign and the left took it to be a people's crusade.
The "democratic" component of the campaign - the internet engagement - was seen as a departure from business-as-usual even though it was used effectively by Howard Dean four years earlier and spawned no new, progressive movement. It is not yet clear how the post-election internet pollings will differ from the numerous Democratic Party postal fund-raising appeals that I receive, masquerading as polls. Republican strategists are now planning a similar "grass roots" strategy for coming elections. The mass mobilizations may well have surpassed previous ones, though, as in past campaigns, the organizers asked for no programmatic commitments or concessions. The efforts were gratefully received as "gifts" and not leverage.
Obama has effectively postured as his political career demanded. His social agency beginnings in Chicago coincided with the mayoral incumbency of an authentic progressive and reformer, Harold Washington. Yet there were no strong ties to either Washington's program nor his legacy.
Obama took liberal positions while dependent in his political advancement upon the liberal Hyde Park constituency and, at the same time, courted moneyed interests in Chicago - interests that would boost his advancement even more. His subsequent career generally followed these lines, balancing policy positions with constituency and fund-sourcing. In this regard, Obama's career parallels that of other centrist Democrats, no better or worse. But certainly nothing in Obama's career would warrant counting him among the Democratic Party's more progressive leaders, for example, Dennis Kucinich or John Conyers.
In fairness, Obama has betrayed no one. His vast centrist following and the Democratic Party Old Guard have shown no fear of Obama's perceived "progressive" agenda, an agenda that appears to be more and more in the minds of a self-deluding left. Obama's appointments and positions have produced no panic among big capital, which showered an unprecedented amount of financial support onto his campaign.
Seventy-six years ago, Walter Lippmann, an astute political observer, made similar observations about a Democratic Party nominee named "Franklin Roosevelt". As cited in Frederick Lewis Allen's Since Yesterday:
Walter Lippmann warned those Western Democrats who regarded Roosevelt as a courageous progressive and an "enemy of evil influences" that they did not know their man."Franklin D. Roosevelt" wrote Lippmann, "is an amiable man with many philanthropic impulses, but he is not the dangerous enemy of anything. He is too eager to please.... Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President".
Lippmann's assessment of Roosevelt before his election loosely fits our President-elect. Of course Roosevelt went on to be celebrated as the father of the New Deal and the symbol of the US welfare-state, such as it was. But as every careful read of the Great Depression history shows, the New Deal reforms were the result of independent mass pressure enabling and forcing these changes (see The Real Lesson of the New Deal for the US Left MLToday).
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Monday, August 17, 2009
Budd Schulberg’s Legacy
Zoltan Zigedy is on vacation. Billy Dannreuther authored the following in his absence. Please address any comments to ZZ's e-mail: zoltanzigedy@gmail.com.
Writer Budd Schulberg died on August 5, 2009 at the age of 95. Schulberg was one of the last of a generation of writers who achieved fame as screenwriters in the 1940’s and 1950’s at a tumultuous time in Hollywood. His two most notable works were On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd – the former film lavished with praise and the latter languishing, apart from a cult following.
If one reads the Washington Post obituary of Schulberg, one would never know of the storm of controversy surrounding his Communist Party membership and his friendly testimony – naming the names of CP members – before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He, like his collaborator on On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan, offered open testimony vilifying the Communist Party and identifying Communists in Hollywood. As a result of their testimony and that of others, “un-friendly” witnesses were to be publicly ostracized and blacklisted from working in Hollywood by the Congressional inquisition. Those - like Schulberg and Kazan - who cooperated were allowed to continue their film industry employment. Those - like Ring Lardner Jr., Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, and many, many others who refused to cooperate - were denied employment for a decade or so. Some never returned to the industry.
For those victimized by the HUAC hearings, the friendly witnesses were viewed as “snitches” or “finks” – the labor movement term for those who informed on fellow workers to the boss. They bought continued employment by groveling before an “un-American”, rabidly anti-Communist Congressional committee determined to destroy the left and the progressive labor movement in the US. Friendly witness collaboration not only shattered the left in Hollywood, but, in the broadest sense, crippled the left and the labor movement to this day. After the inquisition, political, social, and economic opposition was reduced to pro-imperialist, corporate-friendly liberalism and timid “bread and butter” unionism. And in Hollywood, film production was similarly reduced, with only a few exceptions, to conventionality, commercialism, and unchallenging entertainment until the rise of independent filmmaking in the 1960’s.
It is in this context that we should view and assess the work of Budd Schulberg.
Many will, however, argue that the politics of the time have nothing to do with the quality of Schulberg’s work. They represent the extreme aestheticism of film criticism that attends only to the formal aspects of film making: visual beauty, creativity and a good story. In its crudest form the aestheticism position would find no fault with Citizen Kane if Charles Foster Kane were a stereotypical Jewish banker hostile to flag-waving patriotism and a promoter of liberal policies. For them, the innovative directing and clever writing trumps any consideration of politics or ethics.
A variant of this view, more common today than in the Cold War era, argues that politics or topicality have no place in film making, reducing a pure art form to “preachiness” or propaganda. For adherents of this view, telling a story is everything, making a point is a distraction.
Still others would argue that the content of film – the kind of story told, its message - is everything in judging film. The old left bromide that “art is a weapon” falls into this category. Though never a dominant Communist standard, some have urged this, especially in revolutionary situations, and of other revolutionary artists.
None of these views is coherent. The dialectics of form and content are complicated, but suffice it to say that it is impossible to separate the two elements of film making without doing violence to the pleasures of film viewing. Too often the formalists forget that viewers always bring their understanding of the world to the experience of viewing film. To pander to the lowest understanding is crass commercialism; to enrich that experience is good film making. Think of two hours of The Lion King without human-like behavior and human dialogue to direct the narrative. Where would we find the illusive ingredient: meaning?
Similarly, to ignore the role of craft in film making is to lose the distinction between good technical film makers and bad ones. Bad craftsmen fail to enrich by reducing content to the clumsy narrative of bar room tales.
So, yes, it is legitimate and appropriate to consider Schulberg’s political status, motives, and the historical context of his writing in judging his legacy. To fail to frame his work in the historical moment of its production would give a distorted view bereft of any interpretive meaning.
On the Waterfront enjoyed great critical acclaim, dominating the film industry’s Academy Awards in 1955, just three years after Schulberg’s HUAC testimony. With his best screen play award, Schulberg reached the pinnacle of his career. His screen play told of a corrupted longshoremen’s union led by gangsters and the heroics of a tough dockside priest successfully coaxing a young, confused worker into breaking the code of silence to expose the gangsters. Marlon Brando’s performance as the dock worker – a frustrated boxer – was deservedly praised, though a bit overwrought and stylized. Compare “Terry Malloy” to a similar character, “Rocky Balboa”, of Rocky fame and one’s appreciation of Brando soars. Elia Kazan’s directing highlights his superior craftsmanship.
And yet the film is deeply flawed in its content, its writing. The film is basically a typical Hollywood gangster movie, but corrupted by what the writer adds to the usual formulae. Unlike nearly all other films of the era, On the Waterfront incorporates a working class theme. But the workers on the docks are essentially wooden, simple and, except when shamed by Malloy’s severe beating, cowardly. As a heroic figure, Malloy displays even more ignorance, simplicity, and naiveté then his fellow workers. Brando’s stylized mumbling exaggerates this characterization. Like African-Americans in The Birth of a Nation, workers are little more than ignorant sheep. Of course, Kazan and Schulberg knew of better images of working people from their Communist past, but they chose to serve up a depiction more in step with middle-class critics and anti-union viewers. For a more balanced, realistic view of working people and class solidarity one could do no better than the much later work of blacklisted, “unfriendly” witnesses Martin Ritt and Walter Bernstein (The Molly Maguires, 1970).
Schulberg’s script has no bosses. While the gangsters are vile, there is no indication of who determines the wages and working conditions of the employees. The Schulberg image of dock work gives no understanding of why the workers leave their homes and families and unload cargo everyday. There is no indication of the historical truth that bosses and owners welcome, if not encourage, gangster-led unionism in order to restrict wages and benefits. This failure leaves the script and storyline one-dimensional. Imagine a boxing film without managers and promoters. Again Kazan and Schulberg knew better, but chose to pander to the backwardness of the time.
Lastly, the film legitimizes the role of an informer precisely at a time when the nation was consumed with anti-Communist hysteria and widespread suspicion of everyone from the President to the school janitor. Insofar as Terry Malloy glorified the role of informer, he performed the same role as hip hop thugs do in promoting “gangsta” culture or Jack Bauer does in the television series 24 in justifying torture. All pander to the most backward sentiments of the moment.
For Schulberg and Kazan, both notorious informers, to structure the film around commending informing was an unabashed act of crass self-justification unequaled in cinema history. It would be as if George W. Bush commissioned a film on preemptive invasions. Nor was it unnoticed that On the Waterfront appeared just two years after screenwriter, “unfriendly” witness, and later blacklistee Carl Foreman’s High Noon, a thinly-veiled condemnation of mass hysteria, group fear, and betrayal. Where Foreman used a metaphorical Western to swim against the tide of diminished freedom of speech and undemocratic bullying, Kazan and Schulberg added legitimacy to an element of that tide and earned Academy awards in the process.
Paradoxically, the elite film establishment – a staunch defender of the pure, non-political art form – heaped praise upon this decidedly political and contemptible film.
Three years later, Kazan and Schulberg collaborated again on one of the most remarkable films of the 1950’s, doubly remarkable because most likely only they could have made it. A Face in the Crowd appeared with little fanfare and little critical support. With On the Waterfront under their belt, they had earned the right to go beyond the constraints of Cold War mythology and strike deeply at the hypocrisy and corrupted power relations of the era. Ostensibly television was the target, an arch enemy and fast emerging competitor to the film industry. But A Face in the Crowd is subversive: the real target was media manipulation and the corruption of power.
Where On the Waterfront exploits a popular, but twisted image of working people, A Face in the Crowd launches from the depths of the lumpen-proletariat: a Southern jailhouse. Schulberg’s script brings the drunks and petty criminals in contact with an Eastern-educated, patronizing, and sensation-seeking radio reporter, Marcia Jeffries, played effectively by Patricia Neal. In her quest for sensation, she encounters a shrewd, suspicious, talented, but manipulative drifter, Lonesome Rhodes. Andy Griffin soars in this role – the best performance of his life – exposing a complexity of personality and challenging motivation that far exceeds the simple character of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. Blinded by class prejudice, Jeffries and the media figures who nurse his career see Rhodes as a raw and naïve talent who can be manipulated into a media success. Instead, Rhodes demonstrates a far deeper understanding of the media game and adroitly steps on and over all of his handlers while taking Jeffries along for the ride. Along the way, Rhodes encounters – and outfoxes – all the forces determined to exploit his celebrity: media executives, advertisers, public relation managers, Madison Avenue corporate figures, and hypocritical, cynical right-wing politicians. In short, the rich and powerful, the bosses who are so glaringly missing from On the Waterfront.
In the end, Rhodes is brought down, a fall that permits conventional, mainstream critics to view the film as a trivial story about unbridled ambition and arrogance resulting in deserved failure. Speculation abounded over whether Lonesome Rhodes was a surrogate for Arthur Godfrey, Tennessee Ernie Ford, or Will Rogers. But this completely misses the force of Schulberg’s writing and turns the film into a shallow bi-optic. In truth, A Face in the Crowd is a scathing critique of the media machine and the money, greed and power that lubricates and fuels it; it pulls that curtain back to expose the manipulation and hypocrisy employed to exploit the consumer society; and it reveals the cynicism and brutal treachery of those engaged in this ruthless game.
No film of the 1950’s rivals A Face in the Crowd for its cultural criticism of the wasteland of conformity and shallowness left in the wake of post-war US reaction. Nonetheless, someone else will have to forgive Schulberg for his betrayal of his comrades and appeasement of the dark forces that dominated the US in those ugly times.
Billy Dannreuther
Footnote: Interestingly, two other exceptional films of the era were based upon screenplays by another ex-Communist and friendly witness, Clifford Odets. With Sweet Smell of Success and The Big Knife Odets also lanced the boil of decadent culture in that period.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
A Remembrance of Things Past: The GDR
For an old Cold-Warrior like Der Spiegel – the influential German newsweekly, recent opinion polls in Germany brought considerable alarm. After nearly two decades of German re-unification, pollsters found that a majority of citizens living in the former German Democratic Republic – what Westerners call “East Germany” – defend the former socialist state.
In the face of a continuous onslaught of triumphal propaganda demonizing the GDR, eastern Germans still hold a positive view of that country. In Germany – as in the US – every aspect of life in the GDR is painted as evil: GDR border guards killed border-crossers, as though US border guards never killed border-crossing Mexicans (the crucial difference, I guess, is which direction they are going!). The Stasi spied on GDR citizens, as though the odious berufsverbot and political snitching never occurred in The Federal Republic (not to mention the many domestic surveillance and blacklistings that have befallen US citizens). It was not enough that the achievements of German socialism were never acknowledged in the West, the end of the Cold War brought a savage assault on every feature of life under the “dictatorship”. Even The GDR’s most celebrated cultural gems – like Bertolt Brecht – were transformed into unhappy captives of Communism (in spite of the consistent content of his works).
But the people of the Ost, after a constant bombardment of thought control and twenty years of capitalism, think differently. According to Der Spiegel:
Instead of taking these results as a serious reflection of popular sentiment – perhaps re-examining some of the Cold War assumptions – author, Julia Bonstein, embarked on a mission to diminish the poll results. She found a ready ally in Klaus Shroeder, director of an academic institute that studies the GDR. He, too, is alarmed that “Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service” – a finding he relays from his 2008 study of school children. He faults them for defending the GDR based upon family conversations rather than the official textbooks. Imagine challenging textbooks! “These young people cannot, and in fact have no desire to, recognize the dark side of the GDR,” he remarks.
Schroeder received over 4000 responses to his study, many outraged at his outrage. A sampling provided by the Der Spiegel article:
The audacity of these former citizens of the GDR! Undeterred by these rebuffs to the official media line, author Bonstein sought some personal responses to the unpalatable poll results. In the cock-eyed contemporary media version of “balance and fairness” she located some prosperous former GDR citizens who would surely share her shock at the attitudes of the misguided multitudes. Surely Germans who were successful after the Wall came down would see the vast superiority of capitalism over the “drabness” of socialism.
Not so.
Thorsten Shoen, a 51 year old with creature comforts sufficient to impress Bonstein, vigorously defends the GDR:
Hmmm… This is not the picture paraded in the media. But, of course, who knows more about life in the GDR, Cold-warriors or the citizens of the former socialist country?
Another younger man, Birger, interviewed in a café, also defends the GDR: "Most East German citizens had a nice life… I certainly don't think that it's better here." He goes on to subtly prick the smugness of the Der Spiegel writer: "I know, what I'm telling you isn't all that interesting. The stories of victims are easier to tell… In the public's perception, there are only victims and perpetrators. But the masses fall by the wayside." Indeed, they do, especially when viewed through the eyes of privileged capitalist commentators who find a cause in every dissident, every unpublished poet, or every café intellectual crowing about the lack of freedom. But dry figures of income distribution, employment, social security, education and cultural participation make for boring copy… except to the masses.
The Cold Warriors at Der Spiegel will never grasp the meaning of the poll results, but hopefully their message will not be lost on those who seek a better life for working people in the US.
(The full Der Spiegel article is available on-line at the MLToday website: http://mltoday.com/en/majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-642-2.html)
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
In the face of a continuous onslaught of triumphal propaganda demonizing the GDR, eastern Germans still hold a positive view of that country. In Germany – as in the US – every aspect of life in the GDR is painted as evil: GDR border guards killed border-crossers, as though US border guards never killed border-crossing Mexicans (the crucial difference, I guess, is which direction they are going!). The Stasi spied on GDR citizens, as though the odious berufsverbot and political snitching never occurred in The Federal Republic (not to mention the many domestic surveillance and blacklistings that have befallen US citizens). It was not enough that the achievements of German socialism were never acknowledged in the West, the end of the Cold War brought a savage assault on every feature of life under the “dictatorship”. Even The GDR’s most celebrated cultural gems – like Bertolt Brecht – were transformed into unhappy captives of Communism (in spite of the consistent content of his works).
But the people of the Ost, after a constant bombardment of thought control and twenty years of capitalism, think differently. According to Der Spiegel:
…57 percent, or an absolute majority, of Eastern Germans defend the former East Germany. “The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there,” say 49 percent of those polled…
Instead of taking these results as a serious reflection of popular sentiment – perhaps re-examining some of the Cold War assumptions – author, Julia Bonstein, embarked on a mission to diminish the poll results. She found a ready ally in Klaus Shroeder, director of an academic institute that studies the GDR. He, too, is alarmed that “Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service” – a finding he relays from his 2008 study of school children. He faults them for defending the GDR based upon family conversations rather than the official textbooks. Imagine challenging textbooks! “These young people cannot, and in fact have no desire to, recognize the dark side of the GDR,” he remarks.
Schroeder received over 4000 responses to his study, many outraged at his outrage. A sampling provided by the Der Spiegel article:
"From today's perspective, I believe that we were driven out of paradise when the Wall came down," one person writes, and a 38-year-old man "thanks God" that he was able to experience living in the GDR, noting that it wasn't until after German reunification that he witnessed people who feared for their existence, beggars and homeless people.
Today's Germany is described as a "slave state" and a "dictatorship of capital," and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic.
The audacity of these former citizens of the GDR! Undeterred by these rebuffs to the official media line, author Bonstein sought some personal responses to the unpalatable poll results. In the cock-eyed contemporary media version of “balance and fairness” she located some prosperous former GDR citizens who would surely share her shock at the attitudes of the misguided multitudes. Surely Germans who were successful after the Wall came down would see the vast superiority of capitalism over the “drabness” of socialism.
Not so.
Thorsten Shoen, a 51 year old with creature comforts sufficient to impress Bonstein, vigorously defends the GDR:
"In the past, a campground was a place where people enjoyed their freedom together," he says. What he misses most today is "that feeling of companionship and solidarity." The economy of scarcity, complete with barter transactions, was "more like a hobby." Does he have a Stasi file? "I'm not interested in that," says Schön. "Besides, it would be too disappointing."
His verdict on the GDR is clear: "As far as I'm concerned, what we had in those days was less of a dictatorship than what we have today." He wants to see equal wages and equal pensions for residents of the former East Germany. And when Schön starts to complain about unified Germany, his voice contains an element of self-satisfaction. People lie and cheat everywhere today, he says, and today's injustices are simply perpetrated in a more cunning way than in the GDR, where starvation wages and slashed car tires were unheard of. Schön cannot offer any accounts of his own bad experiences in present-day Germany. "I'm better off today than I was before," he says, "but I am not more satisfied."
Schön's reasoning is less about cool logic than it is about settling scores. What makes him particularly dissatisfied is "the false picture of the East that the West is painting today." The GDR, he says, was "not an unjust state," but "my home, where my achievements were recognized." Schön doggedly repeats the story of how it took him years of hard work before starting his own business in 1989 -- before reunification, he is quick to add. "Those who worked hard were also able to do well for themselves in the GDR." This, he says, is one of the truths that are persistently denied on talk shows, when western Germans act "as if eastern Germans were all a little stupid and should still be falling to their knees today in gratitude for reunification." What exactly is there to celebrate, Schön asks himself?
Hmmm… This is not the picture paraded in the media. But, of course, who knows more about life in the GDR, Cold-warriors or the citizens of the former socialist country?
Another younger man, Birger, interviewed in a café, also defends the GDR: "Most East German citizens had a nice life… I certainly don't think that it's better here." He goes on to subtly prick the smugness of the Der Spiegel writer: "I know, what I'm telling you isn't all that interesting. The stories of victims are easier to tell… In the public's perception, there are only victims and perpetrators. But the masses fall by the wayside." Indeed, they do, especially when viewed through the eyes of privileged capitalist commentators who find a cause in every dissident, every unpublished poet, or every café intellectual crowing about the lack of freedom. But dry figures of income distribution, employment, social security, education and cultural participation make for boring copy… except to the masses.
The Cold Warriors at Der Spiegel will never grasp the meaning of the poll results, but hopefully their message will not be lost on those who seek a better life for working people in the US.
(The full Der Spiegel article is available on-line at the MLToday website: http://mltoday.com/en/majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-642-2.html)
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Thursday, July 23, 2009
The Pace of Exploitation Quickens...
Folks on the political left mock The Wall Street Journal. True, the editorial pages contain some of the most scurrilous, ugly commentary imaginable. The papers editorial stance would win praise from Benito Mussolini, if not Josef Goebbels.
Yet the economic data, analysis, and reportage is unmatched by any other English language mainstream news source, including The Financial Times and The New York Times. A friend once offered the explanation that “the ruling class needs hard facts to make informed decisions while propaganda is left to The New York Times and the other mainstream news outlets”. Perhaps that is so, but I can attest that I’ve found no better source for pertinent economic information even under its ownership by Rupert Murdoch. Part of the answer lies in their staff of 700 researchers, reduced under Murdoch, but surprisingly unfettered by editorial imperatives. Of course a reader must dig through or behind many of the articles to grasp the meaning of the proffered analyses, but its there to be mined by the diligent Marxist.
A case in point is a recent article by Ellen E. Schultz carrying the title “Top Earners’ Pay Is Seen Eroding Social Security” published on July 21, 2009 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124813343694466841.html). This remarkable article is based upon a clever examination of Social Security data on payroll taxes. Generally, salary and wage data are not distinguished by class when collected by our capitalist-friendly government fact-collectors. Consequently, separating income by class becomes a somewhat speculative and contentious issue among commentators. But the Social Security Administration, in its wisdom, excuses the wealthy from paying SS taxes on income above a certain level, arguing that this would be an onerous burden on the high income class. WSJ researchers take this divide as a credible break between “executives and other highly compensated employees” and the rest of us. They then sort the SSA salary and wage data using this divide, an unspoken, but most suggestive cleavage between the working class and the ownership class. They draw the following conclusions:
● Over one-third of all wages go to the “executive and other highly paid employee” class – the top 6%. The other 94% of employees share the remaining two-thirds.
●The portion going to the top 6% grew from 28% in 2002 to 33% in 2007, a share increase of almost 18% in only 5 years!
●The pay of the top 6% increased by 78% over the past decade while the rest of us saw a pay increase of 61%.
● In the 5 years from 2002 to 2007 – “recovery” years of strong growth – the “executive and other highly compensated employee” class enjoyed a 48% gain while the working class employees’ wages grew by only 24%, half the growth of the wealthy.
●The data on the top 6% vastly underestimates the growth in income of the ownership class by excluding unvested employer contributions, unvested interest credited to deferred-pay accounts, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock, incentive stock options, “carried interest” income, income categorized as benefits, and undoubtedly many other actuarial categories of hidden income.
●Elimination of the SS tax ceiling would guarantee, by the most conservative actuarial projections, the Social Security trust funds’ solvency for the next 75 years.
After digesting the shock of the extreme inequality of wage differences, special note should be taken of the trends in inequality demonstrated by the SSA numbers. Inequality has actually accelerated over the last decade, with the widely hailed “recovery” from the dot-com recession generating an even greater disparity of wages. Note, also, that SSA data does not reflect the economic crisis of 2008/2009, though the previous trend would suggest strongly that an even greater increase in inequality is in store for the lower 94% of employees in any coming recovery.
The trajectory of the incomes tracked in The Wall Street Journal study demonstrates a decided and growing partition of the fruits of labor in favor of the ownership class and its minions. In Marxist terms, this indisputable fact signals a parallel increase in the rate of exploitation. For workers, the only remedy will be found in determined, class-conscious militancy. Based upon the accelerating rate of exploitation, one is forced to conclude that the leadership of organized labor has failed to abate this class offensive against labor. The approaches of the past will fall far short of what is needed to win social justice for working people.
Attention must be paid to The Journal’s final point about Social Security which suggests a simple, painless solution to the contrived, exaggerated crisis of Social Security: eliminate the cap on the Social Security tax. I am reminded every day – as I glance at an old button circulated by the inestimable, late labor activist, Fred Gaboury – of the demand for an elimination of the cut-off on the flat tax funding the Social Security trust fund. Fred’s button read: Scrap the Cap. When the button was produced the tax was voided for incomes above $72,600. Today that limit has reached $106,800. Years have passed and we still can’t generate the political will to take this small step for justice and fairness. Shame on our corporately-owned politicians…
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Yet the economic data, analysis, and reportage is unmatched by any other English language mainstream news source, including The Financial Times and The New York Times. A friend once offered the explanation that “the ruling class needs hard facts to make informed decisions while propaganda is left to The New York Times and the other mainstream news outlets”. Perhaps that is so, but I can attest that I’ve found no better source for pertinent economic information even under its ownership by Rupert Murdoch. Part of the answer lies in their staff of 700 researchers, reduced under Murdoch, but surprisingly unfettered by editorial imperatives. Of course a reader must dig through or behind many of the articles to grasp the meaning of the proffered analyses, but its there to be mined by the diligent Marxist.
A case in point is a recent article by Ellen E. Schultz carrying the title “Top Earners’ Pay Is Seen Eroding Social Security” published on July 21, 2009 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124813343694466841.html). This remarkable article is based upon a clever examination of Social Security data on payroll taxes. Generally, salary and wage data are not distinguished by class when collected by our capitalist-friendly government fact-collectors. Consequently, separating income by class becomes a somewhat speculative and contentious issue among commentators. But the Social Security Administration, in its wisdom, excuses the wealthy from paying SS taxes on income above a certain level, arguing that this would be an onerous burden on the high income class. WSJ researchers take this divide as a credible break between “executives and other highly compensated employees” and the rest of us. They then sort the SSA salary and wage data using this divide, an unspoken, but most suggestive cleavage between the working class and the ownership class. They draw the following conclusions:
● Over one-third of all wages go to the “executive and other highly paid employee” class – the top 6%. The other 94% of employees share the remaining two-thirds.
●The portion going to the top 6% grew from 28% in 2002 to 33% in 2007, a share increase of almost 18% in only 5 years!
●The pay of the top 6% increased by 78% over the past decade while the rest of us saw a pay increase of 61%.
● In the 5 years from 2002 to 2007 – “recovery” years of strong growth – the “executive and other highly compensated employee” class enjoyed a 48% gain while the working class employees’ wages grew by only 24%, half the growth of the wealthy.
●The data on the top 6% vastly underestimates the growth in income of the ownership class by excluding unvested employer contributions, unvested interest credited to deferred-pay accounts, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock, incentive stock options, “carried interest” income, income categorized as benefits, and undoubtedly many other actuarial categories of hidden income.
●Elimination of the SS tax ceiling would guarantee, by the most conservative actuarial projections, the Social Security trust funds’ solvency for the next 75 years.
After digesting the shock of the extreme inequality of wage differences, special note should be taken of the trends in inequality demonstrated by the SSA numbers. Inequality has actually accelerated over the last decade, with the widely hailed “recovery” from the dot-com recession generating an even greater disparity of wages. Note, also, that SSA data does not reflect the economic crisis of 2008/2009, though the previous trend would suggest strongly that an even greater increase in inequality is in store for the lower 94% of employees in any coming recovery.
The trajectory of the incomes tracked in The Wall Street Journal study demonstrates a decided and growing partition of the fruits of labor in favor of the ownership class and its minions. In Marxist terms, this indisputable fact signals a parallel increase in the rate of exploitation. For workers, the only remedy will be found in determined, class-conscious militancy. Based upon the accelerating rate of exploitation, one is forced to conclude that the leadership of organized labor has failed to abate this class offensive against labor. The approaches of the past will fall far short of what is needed to win social justice for working people.
Attention must be paid to The Journal’s final point about Social Security which suggests a simple, painless solution to the contrived, exaggerated crisis of Social Security: eliminate the cap on the Social Security tax. I am reminded every day – as I glance at an old button circulated by the inestimable, late labor activist, Fred Gaboury – of the demand for an elimination of the cut-off on the flat tax funding the Social Security trust fund. Fred’s button read: Scrap the Cap. When the button was produced the tax was voided for incomes above $72,600. Today that limit has reached $106,800. Years have passed and we still can’t generate the political will to take this small step for justice and fairness. Shame on our corporately-owned politicians…
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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