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March 9th, 2021

First of all, I would like to thank Paul Demarty for his incredibly thoughtful reply to The Platform is the Message. His point about party media primarily taking the form of newspapers, podcasts and so on is very well taken and it was absolutely a glaring omission on our part. While we did address questions of accountability for party members with public influence within contemporary social media platforms like Twitter, Paul is completely correct that issues of accountability for the editorial staff and writing staff of political publications is of vital importance. In the absence of meaningful protocols for accountability to an organized movement, it often takes the form of self-appointed arbiters of acceptability who’s only qualification is their own personal brand and following among activists, or who were wronged in some ethical sense, to hold publications to account. For instance, the debacle with Commune Magazine where the publication was ultimately dissolved because of the inability of its editorial board to reach some acceptable resolution with a survivor of abuse by a former member of their team. There’s also important questions about Jacobin’s relationship to DSA, as the semi-official mouthpiece of the core leadership clique, that we could have explored.

I also think that Paul is correct to point out the “real subsumption” of legacy media to social media. Beyond “fake news”, even local news seems increasingly Buzzfeedified in some sense, with even serious content taking the form of clickbait. And his example of Corbyn-aligned media in the UK is a great example of how this structures the way popular leftist media is impacted in a very practical way. The hard problem we have to face though, is how do we deal with this structural reality now that we’ve diagnosed the problem? For my part, I don’t have an answer here. I think that on some level we probably do have to lean in to creating media that requires little mental investment to create an impression like clickbait because otherwise we just won’t reach people. But at the same time, as socialists we do have an ethical and strategic duty to avoid misleading people while also helping them get real class consciousness (which includes being able to think for one’s self). It’s a very tough needle to thread.(edited)

Where I part ways with Paul is in my evaluation of mass social media platforms in themselves. It’s true that having a single platform where all people interact isn’t necessarily more ‘economical’ than distributed and siloed forums (except for ad profits), but there are real benefits to being able to find people and connections you wouldn’t have otherwise that platforms like Facebook do provide. There are increasingly fewer people in the younger generations who don’t have at least some associates who they would not have met except through shared interests identified on some kind of mass social media platform like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter etc. Whether or not those benefits are worth the losses of unique forum cultures is a valid question, but the principle problems with Facebook are other than its mass size. I don’t think there’s much of an objective answer other than that the genie is already out of the bottle, and without overt censorship and negative control over the internet, some kind of mass forum would be rebuilt in all likelihood even if we shut down all existing social media. So the question of a program for social media becomes how do we want to consciously structure the dynamics of a platform the revolutionary movement would throw its weight behind, unless we are content with leaving its development to the spontaneous work of technical specialists who in all likelihood do not share the movement’s values.

Comradely,

Amelia Davenport

March 7th, 2021

Comrades,

A few thoughts on Amelia Davenport and Renato Flores’ The Platform is the Message.

I think the comrades are on the right track in their analysis of social media. They correctly steer between contemporary liberal hysteria about its malign effects, and the same liberals’ absurd over-enthusiasm for these platforms which obtained ten years ago. They are also right to analyse media in terms of their political economy.

There are a couple of striking omissions in their analysis, however. The first has to do with working class media. There is discussion of sea shanties, blues and political fiction, but oddly no discussion at all of the things we would more ‘obviously’ put under that heading: the newspapers, journals and (today) websites, podcasts and so on associated in one way or another with the socialist and labour movements. The history here is quite germane to some of their other concerns (for example, part of the democratic centralism discussion in the pre-war German socialist movement concerns how accountable papers must be to the party; whether, say, Vorwärts could call itself a party paper while simultaneously acting as a mouthpiece for the revisionist minority).

An important effect of social media platforms today is, if you will, the real subsumption of ‘legacy media’ to social media, by which I mean the form of the newspaper article, the film and so on gets shoved into the Procrustean bed of the social platforms. This phenomenon is now decades-old, starting with SEO, and going through clickbait stylistic forms, the use of short, context-free video clips and so on. Everyone from the New York Times to the average Trot paper gets sucked into this. Though the Times and other bourgeois ‘legacy’ outlets still largely drive the actual news agenda, they must increasingly do so on terms dictated by the platforms.

And the same is true of left media, or so it seems to me. In Britain, for example, the Corbyn movement threw up a number of prominent websites which aimed to counter the lies of the mainstream media – The Canary, Skwawkbox and so on – but they all exhibited the same defects, being entirely dependent on the patronage of the leaders’ office cliques and, by extension, the individual celebrity of their patrons. The result was (frequently dishonest) clickbait articles to boost their particular allies in the court of King Jeremy, and now impotent squabbles in the ruins. What we didn’t get was a party media in the true sense, something that could serve as a platform or set of platforms for true mass decision-making (the left-Labour project of striking grand bargains with the centre, of course, prevents any such platform emerging by definition). Our interactions with the extant social media platforms must, surely, point however weakly towards the social media platforms of our own we need.

Secondly: the authors bracket the question of a “communist programme for the social industry”, but perhaps shouldn’t. The question as to whether such a thing exists is a real one. I hope we would agree that there is no such thing as “a communist programme for the atomic weapons industry”, or at least only a purely negative programme (the industry should cease to exist and its products be safely destroyed as promptly as possible). It is clear that the internet represents great technological progress over previous information infrastructure, but it is not clear that – say – Facebook represents progress over the thousands of small forum communities that some of us remember from the early 2000s and before. One should not over-romanticise such things, of course, but I would argue that there is no economy of scale in actual social interaction, which is to say, our social lives are not improved by being able to insult complete strangers on Twitter, or happening to use the same Facebook as two billion others with whom we have effectively zero social intercourse. Having one giant social network with everyone on it is not an advance on having an ecosystem of more authentically social platforms (as even the old forum culture was), any more than it is progress to replace every pub in the world with one single Wetherspoons the size of the great Eurasian steppe (or, to return to our earlier analogy, a larger-yield thermonuclear device represents ‘progress’ over a smaller-yield one).

The economy of scale that benefits Facebook is in something else – advertising, perhaps the worst defect of capitalist culture; our immediate demands for ‘the social industry’ must surely include severing it entirely from advertising revenue, which will in fact destroy the industry as it exists at a stroke. The need for an escape from the behaviourist nightmare-world of ad-funded social platforms is one more reason why we need an alternative media ecosystem, with its own social media platforms, operated on co-operative socialist principles, ASAP.

Comradely,

Paul Demarty (CPGB)

February 27, 2021

February 17th, 2021

Today, I would like to discuss the DANGEROUS topic of DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM.

Why is that idea so DANGEROUS?  By using DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, our Federal Government will ascribe to the ROBIN HOOD EFFECT. By being true to the principles of the RHE, we could create a society that CARES for every citizen, even the wealthy elites.

We CONSISTENTLY hear about the evils of DEMOCRATIC socialism from the Republican Party; they fear that they will LOSE their POWER AND INFLUENCE in the Federal Government.  INFLUENCE AND POWER has allowed them to keep a VIRTUAL MONOPOLY on wealth accumulation.  I like to think of it as the “ALL FOR ME AND NONE FOR YOU” Effect.

Let us consider one benefit of DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM – the disappearance of charitable organizations.  In a more DEMOCRATICALLY minded SOCIALIST society, large charitable organizations do not need to exist, because much of the PROFITS made by corporations FLOW EFFICIENTLY into the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S bank account.

With the required funds in the bank, RESPONSIBLE PLANNERS in the Federal Government could allocate this money quicker to programs that support PROACTIVE ACTIVITIES such as ensuring there is an adequate supply of emergency items in our healthcare system.  Additionally, councils could ensure that these critical businesses were subsidized to REMAIN within the United States.  This would prevent America’s dependence upon the MERCY AND WHIMS of other nations.

Also, the RESPONSIBLE PLANNERS in the various agencies could develop a cornucopia of programs that effectively address the ISSUES OF EVERY CITIZEN.  By being FREE from the pressure to make profit, these governmental planners could develop more EFFECTIVE and COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTIONS to the issues that AMERICAN CITIZENS encounter.  They would be CITIZEN-RESPONSIVE solutions providers.

While I was in the graduate Industrial and Systems Engineering program at the University of Florida, one of my professors had a saying that I have never forgotten: EFFECTIVENESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EFFICIENCY.

Since 1980 or so, we have heard from the Republican Party that BUSINESS is BETTER EQUIPPED to utilize scarce resources such as MONEY more efficiently.  Well, it is not difficult to see that they are right!  All money flows efficiently and effectively to CLUB EXCESSIVE WEALTH in our country; they are WEALTH ELITISTS.  We have allowed the wealthy club to EFFICIENTLY ROB our Federal Government of effective programs that were developed as a result of the Great Depression; in this SANCTIONED THEFT, this group has ROBBED from the AMERICAN PEOPLE of the OPPORTUNTIES verbalized in the PREAMBLE of OUR CONSTITUTION.

Critics will say, “Ah, but Andrew PROVIDES NO PROOF Of these allegations!”  THEY ARE RIGHT!  To fully understand what is happening in our country, one must do much READING AND THINKING on the topic of DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM.  Data EXISTS on this SANCTIONED THEFT by the WEALTH ELITISTS; see Thomas Piketty, Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, Naomi Klein, George Carlin, etc.

With this pandemic, I do not believe that private industry will effectively save us; much less the sacred market.  I would like to think that OUR Federal Government WILL SAVE US; hopefully, it will.  A GOVERNMENT is the MOST EFFECTIVE TOOL in generating jobs for many.  The Federal Government responded appropriately during the Great Depression, and I believe that it can do it again with the Great Pandemic of 2019+.  We may need to REDESIGN our economy as a result of the Great Pandemic of 2019+, and I think that this would be a great time for the Federal Government to take a PROACTIVE LEADERSHIP ROLE in this redesign.

My critics will respond, “Ah, but Andrew, we are against BIG GOVERNMENT.  It is wasteful.  It is inefficient.  These things are better left in the hands of the market.”  Guess what?  THEY ARE RIGHT!  They will make sure that the money continues to flow to their WEALTH-ELITIST CLUB; business as usual.

Only a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT can ensure that we achieve LESS INCOME INEQUALITY.  Keep in mind that we will always have economic inequality; however, we have the TOOLS to LESSEN THIS INEQUALITY, and we do not have to hide behind the marketing MYSTICAL names such as artificial intelligence, machine learning or data science.

Our Federal Government needs to hire more people who have the SKILLS necessary to implement scientific management approaches such as Six Sigma; at a MINIMUM, they need to IDENTIFY these people in their agencies, and they need to use these people to IMPROVE how our government RESPONDS to its CITIZENS.  The application of scientific project management can alleviate the problems many Americans encounter on a daily basis.

I ascribe to the EXISTENTIAL idea that Eric Berne proposed: “I’m ok, you’re ok.”  When one takes this position, one is accepting of the other.  One treats the other as she or he needs to be treated, and that is a BETTER idea of INDIVIDUALISM.  That is DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM.  The HUMAN is at the CENTER of all activity.

It is “NOT OK” to allow sanctioned theft of money from the American people by the wealth-elitists of this country.

Finally, if LINDSEY GRAHAM cannot figure out where our government is going to get the money needed to SAVE AMERICAN CITIZENS, I will give him an EFFICIENT SOLUTION: The Robin Hood Effect.  Those financial elites have CONSISTENTLY STOLEN from the AMERICAN REPUBLIC since the end of World War II.  It is time they are HELD ACCOUNTABLE for their actions.

“En las cenizas del fracaso está la sabiduría”

“In the ashes of failure, there is wisdom.”

AMERICANUS

February 10th 2021

Dear Comrades,

I would like to share with you my opinion related to the people who write for your magazine.  I think that Cosmonaut Magazine needs to encourage its contributors to write articles with more accessible language, so that their great efforts may have wider appeal to general society.  Also, I believe that contributors ought to use more literary metaphors.  I state my opinions on the assumption that creating mass appeal is part of Cosmonaut Magazine’s goal.  If it is not, please disregard this letter.

I will cite two examples in history that support my arguments.  Both examples come from documentaries: 1) The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (2017) and 2) The Fog of War: An Errol Morris Film (2003).

In Episode 2 (Riding the Tiger) of The Vietnam War, the narrator describes that the United States and North Vietnamese governments knew that it was important to win “the hearts and minds” of the South Vietnamese people.  Incidentally, Robert McNamara describes similar efforts in his book titled In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1996).

Ultimately, the United States failed, because they did not know the Vietnamese people; they did not know Vietnamese history.  Further explanation of this ignorance is documented in The Fog of War.

How did the North Vietnamese win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people?  Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader, understood human nature.  He was a well-educated person who had many diverse living experiences before returning to Vietnam.  The narrator of the second episode of The Vietnam War says that Ho Chi Minh changed his appearance to that of an old man; he grew a long beard, and he dressed humbly.  Minh changed his physical appearance, because he knew the Vietnamese custom to honor and respect elders.  When he spoke to people, Minh used common language.  Those simple actions helped the North Vietnamese to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people.  These are the things the Americans did not get.  How could they?  They were foreign invaders who were ignorant of Vietnamese history and society.

Turning to Errol Morris’s documentary, I will cite the points made related to the Cuban missile crisis.  Robert McNamara was John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, and he was ever-present during the strategy sessions that would ultimately find an adequate solution to that crisis.

As stated by McNamara on multiple occasions throughout The Fog of War, the Kennedy administration was ignorant of Vietnamese history; however, he asserts that they knew the Soviets.  One of Kennedy’s advisors, Tommy Thompson, had lived with Nikita S. Khrushchev and his family.  Thompson knew Khrushchev’s behavior from personal experience, and because of that insight, McNamara states that the United States government avoided a nuclear confrontation with Cuba and the U.S.S.R.

McNamara quotes one specific telegram from Khrushchev that was dated October 26, 1962 at 7 p.m.  Khrushchev’s words affected McNamara greatly, because one can observe it on McNamara’s face during that part of the documentary.  Khrushchev wrote:

“If, however, you have not lost your self-control and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose.”

Now, I am not asking Cosmonaut Magazine contributors to abandon the use of science to analyze the problems that world society faces due to the capitalist class and their Satanic mills; undoubtedly, they are causing much unnecessary pain and suffering for everyone else.

I am a man of science too.  I earned a master’s degree in operations research years ago.  I live and die by stochastic analysis of systems; however, I have learned that most people do not care about science and mathematics.  Most people do not care about Marxian techniques of analysis.  Yes, these facts are truly disheartening, because scientific thought can be the key to ending much widespread misery.

Most people care about metaphors, simple concepts, and uniting ideas.  If that were not the case, we would not have so many people voting against their own best interests here in the United States with the Republican Party.

Sincerely,

Andrew

P.S. Here is the entire telegram sent by Nikita S. Khrushchev:

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d65

November 10th 2020

Greetings,

[This letter is partly a constructive criticism of a July article submitted by Katie Paige, Kelly Alana, and Renato Flores, but may not be related to that article at all.]

“Food is a working-class issue, and a system that perpetuates hunger while overproducing food at the expense of workers and the environment must be done away with at once, which is why we as socialists have an obligation to stand up and fight for food justice for all,” wrote Katie Paige, Kelly Alana, and Renato Flores back in July.

What their article did not discuss, however, is one particular angle that deals with both food production and the geographic urban-rural divide.  A serious Marxist approach to food production and political program should not hesitate to mention vertical farms and facilities for lab-grown meat, as a solution for the here and now.

Marx and Engels were wrong in advocating “gradual abolition between town and country” in their approach to the urban-rural divide, and I am stating this as a millennial Marxist with an urban “identity” and with keen awareness of environmental issues.  Only greater urbanization can facilitate meaningful environmental restoration and protection of what is left of the “countryside.”

Food sovereignty is essential, but it has to be on the basis of urban independence in food production.  With today’s technology, however, such urban independence can be won only with vertical farms and lab-grown meat.  Urban independence in food production has the political upside of making rural livelihoods no longer economically viable, and compelling rural people (who are generally more economically right-wing) to resettle in urban settings.

“Industrial policy” promoting vertical farms and facilities for lab-grown meat, with an end goal of public ownership, would promote real food sovereignty for urbanites.

Comradely,

Jacob

July 29th, 2020

Dear Comrades,

July 26th, 2020

I’ve written a couple articles for Cosmonaut on Jewish things but by trade I’m a cheesemonger, so I read with interest the recent article on food production. I have no real critiques of the piece. It’s a necessary dive into the exploitative practices that make Western luxuries possible. With regard to specific food like cheese, we can look at histories that reveal how factory production has disrupted age-old practices. The US was the first country to produce cheese en masse and this screwed up international markets so bad that they did not recover for decades; scores of cheesemakers, whose families had been producing unique recipes for centuries, were put out of business.

July 16th, 2020

[What follows has been inspired by political anger of sorts.  This is aimed at police problems that have come to the forefront, due to personally inspirational expression by certain individuals in social media.  Eric Levitz was not one of them only because he wrote a full-blown article!  Meanwhile, political anger is also aimed, perhaps too personally, at online hypocrisy that I may have been exposed to within that same social media.]

Political kudos is in order for Eric Levitz’s article “Defunding the Police Is Not Enough“:

Bringing justice and peace to disadvantaged communities throughout our country will undoubtedly require much more than “police reform.”

But doing so will also require more than cutting police budgets.

The article demonstrates robust distinction between political education and political agitation.

On the other hand, political criticism is in order for Eddie Ford’s article in the Weekly Worker calling for the immediate abolition of the police:

The left should learn from this and once again take up the cudgels of consistent democracy. That must include the demand for a popular militia and the abolition of the police […]

By calling merely for a people’s militia to replace the police, the comradely article does not demonstrate the same level of distinction between political education and political agitation.  Popular militias are needed here and now for the freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association of the dispossessed, but not for either premature r-r-r-revolutionary impulses or replacing the concept of policing.

In the middle stands Julien Salingue’s orthodox Trotskyist article in International Viewpoint:

To advocate the disappearance “here and now” of the police is to ignore this difficulty, and it is one of the worst means of combating the illusions according to which one could build a global alternative to the police force without posing the question of the abolition of the state. In this sense, it is important to articulate immediate demands to weaken the police and fight against their violence, alternative practices tending to demonstrate that the police are not a “necessary evil”, and an overall political project of overthrowing capitalism.

[The positioning of the article is not a surprise to comrades who have noted the broader organization’s careful reconsideration of the revolutionary strategy of Orthodox Marxism itself, Second International Marxism, as adapted to today’s circumstances, leaving behind all the other Trotskyist sects.]

Advocates of racial justice have put forward, rather concretely, “alternative forms of community-based violence prevention and conflict mediation,” to quote Levitz, which would be much more competent than popular militias.

Long-Term Programmatic Considerations

The recent policing debates do bring forward distinctions between the core elements of the Marx-Engels minimum program – strictly political measures of participatory-democratic overhaul based on those enacted by the Paris Commune, all of which culminate in the strictly political dictatorship of the proletariat – and the Orthodox Marxist perspective on the minimum program, which made the historic mistake of conflating bourgeois-constitutional overhaul with substantive democratic overhaul.

A fully educated Marx-Engels minimum take on the policing question should unquestioningly articulate a comprehensive solution well beyond “abolition of the police” and fetishes for popular militias.

An equally educated take, at the level of immediate and real reforms, should not settle for defending civil or other democratic rights here and now (a form of broad economism plaguing much of the left today), but should advance them now while being quite cognizant of the need above.

Neo-Orthodox Perspective

As noted by Salingue, “abolition of the police” is conceived by the collective A World Without Police as the triptych “disempower, disarm, disband.”  For the purposes of a neo-orthodox perspective, “disband” needs to be set aside until more appropriate circumstances for the broader working class.  In its stead should be laundry list of additional d-words.  “Disarm” could use another word, since deprivation of mere handguns is not being envisioned.

The suggested words below for accompanying “disempower” are by no means comprehensive.

Demilitarize: This would be a more appropriate substitute for “disarm” in the immediate here and now.

De-unionize: While police forces exist within the wage-labour system, they are one of a few occupations that do not contribute to the development of society’s labour power and its capabilities.  Because of this, they do not belong to the working class proper.  Given the long history of anti-labour repression by the police, mere defunding, such as advocated by socialists like Kshama Sawant, is insufficient even economically.  This economic term goes substantially beyond that.

De-immunize: This refers to qualified immunity, which provides police officers a great deal of legal protection from litigation concerning police brutality, other blatant civil rights violations, and anti-labour repression.

De-task: The word “disempower” typically refers to matters other than the purposeful establishment of alternative forms of community-based violence prevention and conflict mediation, and the transfer of mandates and resources to them.  This term focuses on what is more important than the number of police stations, the number of police units, the recruitment of new police officers, etc.  Included within the scope of this term would be the removal of police officers from schools, however lightly armed.

Overall, something like this:

The disempowerment and demilitarization of the police, the de-unionization and de-immunization of all police officers, and the de-tasking from all police departments of functions more suitable for alternative forms of community-based violence prevention and conflict mediation.

Again, the suggestions above are by no means comprehensive.

– Jacob Richter

June 20th, 2020

This letter is a separate, constructive criticism of comrade Jean Allen’s article on management. In writing this, I am siding with the likes of comrades Amelia Davenport, Paul Cockshott, and Paul Adler, in defense of business management. I mentioned Paul Adler precisely for his business education background, something which he and I have in common.

First and foremost, comrade Jean Allen makes the grave mistake of confusing effectiveness and efficiency. This is an elementary error that nobody with a business education background makes. Being effective is about doing the right things. Being efficient is about doing things right.

The necessity of a certain degree of “authoritarianism” in the workplace, apart from German industrial relations concessions in areas such as workplace safety, is not about efficiency. Being efficient is the responsibility of all the “grunts” subordinate to the management team, the leading group responsible for planning, organizing, directing, and control those subordinate to it. Note that I have specifically used the business term “management team”
instead of the singular “manager,” as the comrade is clearly not up to date on business management approaches.

The necessity of a certain degree of “authoritarianism” in the workplace has everything to do with effectiveness. Historian Christopher Read’s Lenin: A Revolutionary Life described the management incompetence of particular workplaces during the early Soviet government. To use his words, the workers supervision movement “usually meant the takeover of individual factories by their individual workforce. This then turned factories into
support networks for their workers, not efficient production units.” In my words, these particularly parochial workers supplied their own demand and their own demand only. Talk about not doing all the right things, to say nothing about not doing things right! No wonder the Lenin of the Russian Civil War turned to one-man management!

There are other non-capitalist stakeholders besides management and non-management employees: suppliers, creditor institutions, government agencies for regulation and taxation, local and higher-level communities, and activist groups. A certain degree of “authoritarianism” in the workplace facilitates effective collaboration with external stakeholders, and especially stakeholder co-management, that self-management cannot do,
time and again. By all means, I am quite open to Pat Devine’s rotational proposition concerning the managerial, creative, skilled, unskilled, and caring divisions of labour.

However, contrary to the Lenin of State and Revolution, a cook cannot become a prime minister without appropriate breadth and depth of competencies, to proudly use more professional language. Those who have rotated into management teams should, by their qualifications, have the final say during their managerial rotations.

Reading Read’s words led me away from models of systemic collective worker management based mostly or entirely on negotiated coordination. These range from the participatory economics of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel to the guild socialism of Pat Devine. The only feasible models of systemic collective worker management have been advanced by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, on the one hand, and Paul Adler, on the other. One model
doubles down on computerized directive planning and suggests the replacement of conventional enterprises by something akin to full-blown business projects managed in accordance with project management methodology; this tackles the notorious Soviet bureaucratic tussles between the enterprise manager, the economic ministry official, and the so-called “central” planning administrator – a larger-scale version of comrade Jean Allen’s reference to the silo effect within the workplace. The other model lies in between this model and the negotiated coordination models, recognizing explicitly the possibility of accommodating more local decision-making once the environmental and other global crises have been overcome.

In the immediate transition, negotiated coordination could still fill a meaningful niche of decision-making: traditional industrial policy, or indicative planning. Here, a lot of economic affairs, beyond mere fiscal budgets or monetary adjustments, tend to be determined. While computerized directive planning should apply at the microeconomic level, negotiated coordination could apply at the macroeconomic level.

– Jacob Richter

June 2nd, 2020

Hi, big fan! I heard the latest episode of the podcast reading the article Brick by Brick and was curious on your thoughts on physical fitness as it relates to gender. As a transfemme person, I have an odd interpersonal relation to my body that causes me to often neglect parts of it while I exercise. I rarely exercise my arms because I am self-conscious about how they look. This is not necessarily specific to the trans experience. Many cis women have similar issues.

So in arguing that physical fitness and strength training are important parts of socialist praxis, what then is your definition of “fit” and how does that adapt to people who—for one reason or another—are unwilling to fulfill certain expectations of fitness?

– Bee Swagtastic

May 26th, 2020

I appreciate comrade Rosa Janis’s full-blown Cosmonaut article written in response to my letter or short article, even its acknowledgement of my being “an early proponent of the ‘neo-Kautskyism’ that influenced us” (although I was much, much more aggressive than that).

More importantly, I appreciate the disclaimer about the article having a polemical tone.  I will endeavour to respond as level-headed as I can. Yells of “stupidpol” or “chauvinist,” without proper disclaimers for constructive discussion, are hardly productive, to say the least.

First and foremost, I would like to clarify that, on sociocultural issues (not political economy), I’m not a working-class social conservative, but rather a working-class social utilitarian or social “opportunist.” This has absolutely nothing to do with Lenin’s use of the term from 1914 onwards, much less any hint of renegacy on my part, thankfully. That said, I favour the greatest good for the greatest number. This submission is not the best place to articulate, for example, my act-utilitarian views on abortion, up to and including the third trimester.

Second, I am also very much aware that today’s working-class elements amongst the Millennial generation, including “Millennial Socialists” and the “Millennial Marxist” subset therein (including me), are unprecedentedly more progressive on sociocultural issues. Not even more socially conservative elements desire to bring back the social conservatism of the 1950s.

Third, I don’t see how the rest of the article’s second paragraph demonstrates that I’ve abused something.

While I do agree with the bottom half of the fourth paragraph, I must disagree with the top half. My class analysis has always been different from the “traditional” Marxist understanding of having a large, heterogenous petit bourgeoisie pool, but is also different from the popularization of the professional-managerial “class.” Very professional workers, like myself, are professional workers, and still belong to the working class. Those who are responsible for productive coordination of labour belong to the coordinator class.  Those who are responsible for managing capital belong to the modern bourgeoisie outright, as functioning capitalists (the terminology from Engels). I presented this class analysis even during the earliest days of being a ‘neo-Kautskyism’ proponent.

The fifth paragraph is correct only in reference to chauvinist social conservatism: faith, family, and folk.  It is incorrect in reference to non-chauvinist social conservatism, the latter of which forms the basis of working-class social conservatism.

Between the fifth paragraph and the Historical Responses section, I honestly think we are arguing over each other over semantics.  Victorian social conservatism was mentioned, and this is, in my opinion, an example of bourgeois social conservatism and not petit-bourgeois social conservatism. Let’s get out of the way my non-political support for legalization and protections for sex workers (i.e., supporting it but outside the context of a class political program).  Since this section mentions one detail of non-gendered bodily autonomy (sodomy, as opposed to abortions, which is gendered bodily autonomy), I would also like to mention two things: that the Erfurt Program was thankfully not modified in any way, shape or form to accommodate “Sexual Revolution” agenda items, and that I’m not exactly supportive of nudism.

Now, nowhere in my letter or short article did I suggest accepting chauvinist social conservatism as an authentic class position. I certainly did not say that comrade Paul Cockshott’s views on gender are an example of real working-class social conservatism.  I did say that they are not “economistic.”

Moreover, I did suggest accepting non-chauvinist social conservatism as an authentic class position. Again, I am not arbitrarily labelling certain positions petit-bourgeois social conservatism and other positions working-class social conservatism. My semantics are based on enough concrete sociological history.

With more than enough precedents to support my own position, I would like to reiterate that identity issues beyond basic civil rights need to be left out of any worker-class movement’s program. Neither the Eisenachers nor the Lassalleans saw the need for them.  Neither Marx nor Guesde saw the need for them. Neither the pre-WWI SPD nor the inter-war USPD saw the need for them. Neither the Old Bolsheviks nor the 1917 Bolsheviks saw the need for them.  Unfortunately, even my act-utilitarian views on abortion are not important enough to merit “sociocultural section” consideration. I would also like to reiterate the “opportunist” need to insert a select few Prohibition or Nanny State planks, here and there.

As before in working-class political history, games of chance and gambling should be banned, hooliganism should be deemed a criminal offense, and violent video should be prohibited.  Going against Lenin’s grain, for example, that nudism has not been fully legalized may be a good thing. Outdoor golfing is a “1%” sport, and calling for its prohibition for environmental reasons may be an imperative, but a better solution would be to replace outdoor golfing altogether with its ecologically-friendlier and more working-class alternative: indoor golfing.

While Marx may have been argued about the need to replace the wage system altogether, not just to have “fair wages,” and while shorter working hours as a necessity has been discussed, the lumpen “right to be lazy” is not the way to go. This tends to alienate people even from the full potential of, according to socialist Pat Devine, rotating between the managerial, creative, skilled, unskilled, and caring categories of labour. Still, any working-class opposition to the “right to be lazy” is no excuse to entertain “shirkers vs. strivers” garbage, by being prejudiced towards actual lumpen people.

– Jacob Richter

April 9th, 2020

Two articles were written in recent months on the subject of “socialy conservative leftism,” an earlier one by comrade Donald Parkinson on Cosmonaut ( https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/12/28/faith-family-and-folk-against-the-trad-left/ ) and another by Benjamin Fogel and Paolo Gerbaudo on Jacobin ( https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/02/blue-labour-party-uk-miliband-blair-immigration ).  This is intended to be constructive criticism of both of them.

At least much of the working class is socially conservative, it has been argued over and over again.  Only with Thomas Piketty’s publishing of Capital and Ideology has it been proved more definitively.  Despite this definitive revelation, the three aforementioned authors have argued against a strawman.

The strawman in question is the assertion that petit-bourgeois social conservatism and real working-class social conservatism are identical.  They are not. Nobody these days is a full-blown social conservative.

“Faith, family, and folk” are indeed examples of petit-bourgeois social conservatism.  The likes of Blue Labour, UKIP, and so on, embellish the notion that much of the working class is socially conservative, yet most of their socially conservative social solutions come straight out of petit-bourgeois social conservatism.  These so-called “social conservative” loudmouths who rail against “Political Correctness” because they are right-populists or outright fascists are only socially conservative in their preferred policy areas. In others, as will be discussed shortly, they are quite socially liberal.

On the other hand, working-class social conservatism is real.  The two articles above have not acknowledged this. [One of the articles goes on a character attack detour, highlighting the former Blairite backgrounds of Blue Labour proponents.]

Long ago, at least much of the Protestant blue-collar base of the pre-WWI Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), the then-Marxist and Old Bolshevik role model for a vanguard party-movement, was socially conservative.

Long ago, at least much of the blue-collar elements of Stalin’s “Lenin Levy” – those who supported him against everyone else – were socially conservative, which would explain the whole raft of socially conservative policies that were implemented not long afterwards.

Long ago, at least much of the blue-collar bases of “Eurocommunist” parties were socially conservative.

More recently, at least much of the blue-collar elements within Chavismo were also socially conservative.

“Radical Center”

What distinctions can be made between petit-bourgeois social conservatism and working-class conservatism?  Enter Michael Lind and his advocacy of the “Radical Center” on sociocultural issues:

As Tanenhaus notes, the phrase “radical center” was originally used by the sociologist Donald Warren in the 1970s to describe swing voters who combined center-left economic views with center-right opinions on civil rights, illegal immigration and identity politics (though not necessarily on abortion or other issues more associated with the Protestant religious right).

[ https://www.salon.com/2010/04/20/radical_center_revisited/ ]

So-called “identity politics” beyond basic civil rights is one area of real working-class social conservatism.  Comrade Parkinson was rash to use the term “economism,” because the core elements of the Marx-Engels minimum program – strictly political measures of participatory-democratic overhaul based on those enacted by the Paris Commune, all of which culminate in the strictly political dictatorship of the proletariat – did not and do not include western Maoist and/or New Left innovations.  The demarchic likes of comrade Paul Cockshott could hardly be called an “economist” simply because of pre-Sexual Revolution views on certain sociocultural issues. This is, in fact, one area where petit-bourgeois social conservatism is fundamentally different, given recent alt-right tendencies to advocate “identity politics” of the majority: white identity politics.

Another key policy area of difference is one that unites these three historical measures: the banning of games of chance and gambling by the Paris Commune, the making of hooliganism a criminal offense in the Soviet Union, and the prohibition on violent video games by the Bolivarian government of the late Hugo Chavez.  This is better known as Prohibition or the Nanny State. This is one area where petit-bourgeois social conservatives tend to be quite liberal, or else they would not be able to rail against “Political Correctness.”

Accommodate One But Not The Other

Petit-bourgeois social conservatism should be argued against consistently and, as comrade Parkinson acknowledged, without resorting to slurs and ad hominem attacks.  However, real working-class social conservatism should be accommodated. That the class-struggle left should simply shut up on so-called “identity politics,” like Lenin did, goes without saying.

Going further into the subject of political program and public policy, real working-class social conservatism should even be accommodated.  To be clear, though, only areas of concern by supporters of real working-class social conservatism can be accommodated. For example, racial prejudice would also be out of bounds, more in line with petit-bourgeois social prejudices, not to mention too close to right-populism or outright fascism.  Pro-police law-and-order planks would also be out of bounds. Prohibition or the Nanny State, however, ought to be accommodated, as appropriate to working-class conditions.

– Jacob Richter

March 15th, 2020

Some of the first ronderos were organized by liberation theology priests (who also had a history of pro-military connections going back to the 1970s military dictatorship). Ronderos were armed pro-government “village defense forces’ assigned to kill Shining Path organizers and sympathizers — they were often gangs of village bullies armed and trained by the government who carried out their own reign of terror over the people (and were backed up when needed by regular army forces).

And so the identification and punishment of informants and ronderos got reported (internationally) as “Shining Path guerrillas execute villagers and rival leftists.”

That narrative was often just a crude lie, and almost always a crude distortion. And, as someone who watched the anti-Shining Path disinformation campaigns happen — it was carefully focused. In trade union and social democratic leftists circles, it was said “Shining Path simply kills trade unionists.” In liberal catholic circles it was said “The Shining Path kills priests and nuns.” (And little was said, interestingly enough, of the Catholic left forces who joined the Shining Path at key moments.) And in the organized left it was said “The Shining Path killed other leftist forces in a murderous sectarianism.” And so on.

October 13th, 2019 

Your recent essay “Building Unity Between Marxists and the Oppressed” is a piece of reactionary social-fascist garbage. By legitimating the Amerikkkan state and sham democracy you are at best creating untenable illusions in the minds of the masses. The People demand you stop this charade of phoney “Marxism” and publish a retraction and self-criticism. Failure to do so will seal your fate.

Long live the revolution! Long live the masses!

September 14th, 2019

Hello,

I would like to send a few thoughts on the most recent article. I recently joined Bread and Roses but have been following the debates around DSA very closely in the last two years.

I think the Trotskyist inheritance stuff is a bit overstated, but I can’t say for sure.

August 25th, 2019

Thanks for the interesting read on LaRouche. And good luck avoiding toxic sects and political dogmatism in the American Left. I’m sure success is just around the corner on that one.

July 6th, 2019

I haven’t had the chance to read the manifesto yet, but the vibe I’ve gotten from Sunkara and Jacobin as a whole is front window store socialist recruitment, with some exceptions, Cedric Johnson writes some great pieces. But strictly based on interviews I’ve listened to with Bhaskar, I’d say Greene’s criticisms ring correct, great essay. My 2 part question to Greene would be, is the DSA program, for all its historical dead end predecessor resemblances, something still worthwhile as a recruitment tool for ordinary masses to get them through the door of anti capitalist thought and practice, and if so, would it behove more radical leftists and communists to break with DSA ranks after we’ve amassed power and not before? 

Full disclosure, I self identified for almost 20 years as an anarchist but now that I’ve gotten older I’m realizing my politics between 1996 and 2014 was actually a growth from right to left collapsetarian. Doing research work in the Philippines pre-MAGA America broke me of that shit. Typhoons, earth quakes, dilapidated infrastructure, deprivation, plantation heir great grand-fail-children as the political aristocracy, goon police, open air septic systems, human beings walking about with visible tumors, but you know what else I saw, people doing heavy city scale industrial work in flip flops, no helmets, no high visibility vests etc. (Side note: labor activists in the PI who’s activism is strictly based on a progressive~OSHA~hazard pay praxis get disappeared) My point is people don’t lie down and die in apocalyptic situations. I think the US decay and decline will honestly resemble the USSR’s deterioration, implosion and fracturing mixed with the class divide of a banana republic. So circling back to Greene’s essay, I’m not a dues paying member but through labor and immigrant organizing I work with my local DSA, as well as some other anarchist and communist orgs, ought we be open to whatever recruitment brings people to socialism, and from there pull our comrades towards communism? Would it be easier to push towards communism from within DSA than it would be to drag DSA towards communism from outside sects. I welcome critique and push back because my ideas aren’t settled but are in motion with the changes I observe daily. 

Great pieces in Cosmonaut, keep it up!

Bo

June 30th, 2019

Greetings,

Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina’s article on Post-Keynesianism and MMT may be, I think, a tad too negative. While the criticism doesn’t go down the route of Michael Roberts’ The Next Recession blog site, I don’t think the notion that Post-Keynesianism and MMT are philosophically Idealistic, rather than Materialistic, is valid.

The criticism does not stress the crucial differences between Bastard Keynesianism – what passes for Keynesianism as per the Post-War Consensus – and Post-Keynesianism and MMT. Whether they like it or not, advocates of the latter are unconscious “supply-side” economists, but for labour instead of capital. What should be appealing to the left about Post-Keynesianism and MMT is their use for substantive left reforms, something missing from the Marxist tradition, which has been forced to tail the Bastard Keynesians.

I strongly urge comrades to consider a number of comments I’ve posted on heteconomist.com, a knowledgeable website that attempts to mingle Post-Keynesian and Marxian economic stuff together:

http://heteconomist.com/mmt-and-capitalism-from-a-marxist-standpoint/#comment-613067
http://heteconomist.com/fairness-and-a-job-or-income-guarantee/#comment-613066
http://heteconomist.com/fiscal-policy-and-the-inflation-constraint/#comment-613075

On that website, I’ve discussed things such as “Fiscally Conservative Socialism,” real problems with the Job Guarantee concept (and why particular forms of it should be supported, anyway), and the political reason why MMT should be preferred over Monetarism for the same reason Marx preferred direct taxation over indirect taxation.

Comradely,

Jacob

P.S. – Lakhdar-Hamina’s criticism is also a bit reductionist in using Anwar Shaikh’s argument for net profitability as a dividing line for the successes and failures of both Bastard Keynesianism and Post-Keynesianism. No, the fundamental dividing line should not be profit-based, but rather productivity-based. When real productivity growth is zero, capitalist growth has a problem.

June 1st, 2019

In your recent essay on Michael Harrington you have much of the story correct.  You also have some significant errors. Since the bi lines says that you are writing a book on Michael, I take a few moments to correct your issues.

BTW. it is interesting that you seem to recognize and understand Michael’s Catholic background.

Re: the North Star.  I am a member of the NS Steering Committee and the co- editor of the NS blog.
( i was an editor of the DSA blog Democratic Left from 2015- 2018).

George Fish is a member of North Star.  He does not speak for North Star.  Note that his post on Michael Harrington on our blog is immediately followed by a post from Maurice Isserman..
On our blog we post items from NS members, opinion pieces.  They do not necessarily reflect NS.

I have been in DSOC and then DSA.  I worked with Michael on a few items.

Few people who actually worked with Harrington, or with DSA refer to themselves as Harringtonites.   That is a George Fish inappropriate description.  I encourage you if you continue to discuss North Star to describe us accurately.  For example,  See our statements.

—————

Some places where I disagree, but I recognize your advocacy position,.

You overstate the realignment strategy and history.  While your view about working with liberals, Ted Kennedy, etc., is accurate, your description of the control of the party is less well formed.  You argue that the DP is controlled by the capitalist class.  True enough.

the difference is that the DP in 1980- 1988, was contested terrain.  The consolidation of capitalist class control occurred with Bill Clinton and the DLC.

Harrington’s view of realignment was more realistic prior to the decline of organized labor and the growth of control of the party by finance capital.

Many of us thought that realignment meant, not taking over the DP, but that the party would split, and a left would emerge from its ashes. Such as the Labor Party.  We were wrong.  Instead, the DP split, and the control by the DLC/CLInton party was strengthened. Thus, you can not take an argument about realignment from 1978 and apply it accurately after 1992.  It was, and is different.

BTW. You mention that DSA did not support the Jackson campaign. That was true in 1984. but not in 1988.  We endorsed and worked hard for Jesse in 1988 still functioning within the realignment strategy.  We hired staff and worked to build a Labor for Jesse movement.

I encourage you to continue your writing on this topic.  And, I encourage you to be more careful in your selection and uses of sources.

Best wishes.

Duane Campbell

NS network.

October 25, 2018

MANIFESTO FOR ORGONE COMMUNE NAMED “TRANSCEND” OF EXTRATERRESTRAIL EDUCATION AND RESAERCH: BEHOLD! THE REICHEAN-POSADIST SYNTHESIS!

FOR MANY, THESE TWO METHODS OF DIALECTICAL ANALYSIS ARE NONCOMPLAMENTORY, HOWEVER THESE CONTRADICTIONS HAVE BEEN NEGATED! REICH POSITS THAT THERE EXISTS A FUNDMAENTAL ENERGY THROGHOUT THE UNIVERSE FROM WHICH ALL SUBSTRATUM OF NATURE DERIVES AND INTERACTS WITH. IT IS KNOWN AS THE ORGONE. POSADAS HAS SHOWN US THAT THE CLASS STRUGGLE MUST BE INTERGALATIC, THAT THE ONLY HOPE FOR SOCIALISM MUST COME FROM A VANGUARD THAT STANDS OUTSIDE SPACE AND TIME, WHOSE DIALECTICITAL ANALYSIS IS SO ADVANCED IT IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM MAGIC!

EXTRATERRESTRAILIST CIVILISATION, BY NECESITY OF THE LAWS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION WHICH MARX HAS SHOWN US, MUST HAVE NEGATED ANY CLASS CONTRADICTIONS! THEREFORE EXTRATERRESTRAILS MUST HAVE REACHED A POINT OF FULL COMMUNISM. A FULLY COMMUNIST SOCIETY MUST NECESARILLY MOVE BEYOND CRUDE EXTRATIVIST SOURCES FOR ENERGY, THEY MUST USE ORGONIC FORMS OF ENERGY! BECAUSE OF THE UNIVERSAL NATURE OF ORGONE, ANY ORGNOIC ACTIVITY PERFOMRED FROM EARTH IS LINKED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERGALATIC CONSCIOUSNESS WITH THE EXTRATERRESTRIALIST COMRADES! THUS THE OBJECTIVE OF THE WORKING CLASS AND TE TERRESTRAILIST LEFT IS TO: I) MOVE BEYOND TERRESTRAILIST THOUGHT AND IDEOLOGY! A NEW SYNTHESIS OF COMMUNISM MUST BE FORMED, ONE WHICH LOOKS BEYOND OUR SMALL PLANET , BEYOND PRODUCTIVISM AND WORKERISM II) CREATE INFRASTRCUTURE MEANTAL, SPIRITUCAL AND PHSYICAL TO BUILD UP ORGONE LEVELS AND RAISE ORGONIC CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS! tHIS CAN BE DONE THROUGH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ORGONE COMMUNES, SEIZURE OF AREA 51 AND A WORLDWIDE FEDERATION OF ORGONE ACCUMULATION COUNCILS!

THESE ARE THE CURRENT AIMS OF THE MOVEMENT WHICH AIMS TO ABOLISH THE PRESNET STATE OF THINGS!

LONG LIVE MARXISM-REICHISM-POSADISM!

LONG LIVE THE WORKING CLASS!

LONG LIVE LIVE THE SPACE COMRADES!

October 14th, 2018

Cosmonaut reeks of Leninist vanguardism and is just more of the same M-L crap in a new disguise. I can guarantee the writers at Cosmonaut do not think the working class can move beyond “trade union consciousness” on there own. Why do I guess this? Look at the article on “Why We Need A Program”, which assumes that a party will fight for state power and that this has anything to do with real revolution, the workers seizing the means of production to abolish the value form. The article on the Bavarian Revolution shows a deep contempt for the masses capacity to self-organization, essentially a rant against the idea of “all power to the Soviets”. The obsession is not the workers in the factories who were organizing workers committees and councils to actually change their condition of wage slavery, but the politics of parties and intellectuals. The lesson of the Bavarian Rev seems to not be the necessity of councils spreading, but the lack of a ‘proper leadership’. As if the masses can’t lead themselves! This is reflected in the most recent article which suggests the Paris Commune would maybe go differently with the leadership of Blanqui. This rumination of great leaders changing history shows the typical Leninist obsession with a petty-bourgeois intelligentsia introducing class consciousness onto the proletariat “from without” as Lenin himself says when quoting Kautsky. Cosmonaut seems to be advocating not for libertarian communism but just tepid state-socialism, while also offering high minded justifications of the Red Terror based on the “material conditions” meme-like response to whenever Leninists are confronted with the reality of their terror against the working class like in Donald Parkinson’s article. I’m sure we’ll get to hear more critiques of Communization and rants about “electoral strategy” in the future from this guy. In their mission statement, the editors mock Bakunin for emphasizing direct action over intellectualism and claim to want to revive ‘scientific socialism’, as if such an idea could be anything other than a perfection of domination by a totalitarian merging of state and capital. Let us never forget that Leninists are the aspiring state-capitalist class, trying to force workers to meet their ideals as intellectuals and dreaming of using the state to do this. They want to rationalize capitalism, not end the economy. I think Cosmonaut are merely wannabe vanguardists who have grad degrees and want power and it shows in their writing.

– Paul Duke

September 19th, 2018

(In response to ‘Where Does Power Come From?‘)