Which Side Are You On?

Couldn't be much clearer. An email from the local Democrats states: "We are capitalists!" Obviously the recent success of Democratic Socialists running for office has caused some consternation, along with the red-baiting that is now coming out of the White House and Republican headquarters. It always eventually comes down to this; we saw it with Bernie and AOC: how do you talk about capitalism. The local Dems want to insist there is a kinder, gentler capitalism that they are working to achieve. They are both liberal and "progressive". They want to separate political economy into two spheres, claiming they can make the system of liberal democratic capitalism work for everybody. That we can have a modern New Deal where everyone shares in the growth. But this is all a fantasy, as the last seventy years has shown. "Democratic" capitalism is an oxymoron. If you claim to be a capitalist you are claiming allegiance to a class and claiming you will work in the interests of that class. Simple and clear. So it is good they are so out front about where they stand. Now it is up to workers to decide where they stand. As the old John Sebastion song says: Did you ever have to make up your mind? Of course we know that when push comes to shove ( as it will) the Dems will hang the far left out to dry. It's always the damn radicals who spoin their dream of labor peace and the rising tide lifting all boats yada yada. The dream of government of, by and for The People. Of environmental laws that protect the environment. Of justice for all. Yada Yada. Along these same lines of acknowledging the unity of politcal economy, I wish Nate Hagens, who pilots the Great Simplification project, would acknowledge the Marxian critique of Capital when he describes what he calls the "Superorganism". Capital is a superorganism in the way it encompasses systems of law and governance and politics and cutural production along with the economic. He may simply have the same issue Michael Albert has, that it sends the wrong rhetorical signal or there is too much historical baggage with Marx. But we need to give credit where credit is due. Marx saw the catastrophe Nate describes 140 years ago. He predicted "the common ruin of the contending classes" and that the "metabolic rift" with the earth's natural systems would be our civilization's undoing. Capital's Achilles heel. I think Nate is doing great work but it wouldn't hurt to have someone on who could talk about Capital. Just sayin.

From Hero to Zero

Poor Graham Platner is headed back to oysters and he must be wondering why the Groper In Chief gets away with it and he doesn't. Damn those double standards! And why wouldn't a candidate with lots of skeletons in the closet be able to represent his constituency? Headline in Wall Street Journal: World’s largest meat group JBS scraps a key climate goal. Like all the big investor groups and Fortune 500 companies. A piece in the Times titled How American Socialism Changed never mentions the labor movement or unions. Nor does it mention class. This new socialism wants a little redistribution of wealth (call it "progressive") but nor property. A bridge too far. EJ Dion argues that conflating socialism with social democracy is a good thing and we should all stop arguing about ownership of the means of production. Black and brown folk are upset about these mostly whiite, young socialist interlopers in their neighborhoods but as I've argued, they have themselves to blame. From todays Times : "Just five years ago, Eric Adams’s victory in a hotly contested Democratic mayoral primary seemed to signal a high-water mark for Black political power. Mr. Adams would become only the city’s second Black mayor; Alvin Bragg was to become the Manhattan district attorney; Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn congressman, was on a path to become the House minority leader." The lesson here is clear folks. Your centrist politics suck. To wrap up, here is more liberal faith in a "sane" world with "rational" politics. Bill Mc Kibben talks to Ezra Klein and holds out hope in the price of renewables, in enlightened politicians, in fewer bureaucratic regulations. The only concern is climate change. Nobody has to sacrifice anything (maybe the evil fossil fuel majors) and technology will come to the rescue. in other words, same old same old. Like me , Bill is getting old but still writes books advocating a common sense approach. In classic contradictory fashion ( disavowal) he recommends Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's new book yet maintains that totally discredited liberal faith in "democratic" capitalism.

Alan Greenspan's Ghost

Too bad Alan Greenspan didn't live long enough to see the election victory of the Democratic Socialists. The obituaries all mentioned the fact that Alan, as chairman of the Fed, admitted his "mistake" to Congress; he assummed Markets worked, that they factored in risk perfectly. Oops. The obits wanted us to believe that this error only applied to the 2007-8 financial meltdown but of course Markets still aren't pricing in the risk posed by ecological collapse. Economists believe they can calculate "the social cost of carbon" but it is a wildly random estimate with a huge range. And that's just carbon- no one is calculating the cost of crossing all the other planetary boundaries. That would crush the fantasy. Instead they keep talking about the price of oil and about raising interest rates and AI IPO's blah blah blah. Good luck with that. Speaking of hyperscalers and super intelligence, they plan to focus on putting their energy-gobbling data centers in the rural south, where intelligence is a rare commodity. This could replace the tobacco and textile industries. The Wall Street Journal has a quiz you can take to find out what class you belong to. "See what your lifestyle says about your economic class" and we are given these categories: upper, upper middle middle, working and lower. This is the thing Marxists like Vivek Chibber have so much trouble accepting; conciousness has been traded for identity. Consumption won. Do you shop at Nordstroms or K Mart? With a large enough line of credit you can join the upper class for a few hours, even days. Till the bill shows up anyway. I'm not sure if working or middle classes shop at Wal Mart or who it is that has an REI membership. Does the upper-middle go on Princess Cruises but have their own hot tub? Who gets to fly first class? Then there is the all-inclusive approach, from a member of DSA New York: "Mr. Custodio, a 28-year-old investment researcher, has a ready reply. “If you’re someone who has to work for a living, and you’re not living off a trust fund, you are part of the working class,” he says. There goes the Proffessional Managerial Class. Now a bank president or CEO is as much "working class" as a plumber with investments. But will they join the revolution?

Blame Yourselves

When Bernie Sanders tried to disrupt the Democratic establishment by running to the left of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 he could not get the support of black voters. In both instances black voters preferred the establishment candidate. Now they are being systematically shut out of power. Ooops. They listened to old leaders like James Clyburn, who said Berie was too radical. They thought neoliberalism, as represented by the Clintons and Bidens of this world, was working for them and they thought Bernie's social democracy was scary. Oops. They thought after Obama, they were in the catbird seat, that they might tag along when Whitey went to the moon, when Whitey gave us the "information economy" and deportation and an "all of the above" energy policy. Ooops. Like most Americans, blacks will keep believing the arc of history bends toward justice, that democratic capitalism can work for them, that they can be part of the middle class and that the Bill of Rights will protect them. On another note, what might some of the less-talked about aspects of Trump's legacy be? We may look back on this period as the beginning of the end for the popular support for Zionism. Ever since I can remember, the word remained unspoken or if acknowledged at all it was simply an assumed aspect of support for Israel. But the legitimacy of both the State and the ethnic project are now questioned thanks to first Biden's complicity in genocide and now Trump being played by Netanyahu. Here is why class is simply an identity with no link to conscious solidarity. From the NY Times: Here is why class is simply an identity with no link to conscious solidarity. From the NY Times: 'In a recent report, we measured class using constant, inflation-adjusted thresholds. The “core” middle class shrank, but so did the classes below the middle — the poor, the near-poor and the lower middle class." Using income as a metric for class position means you are always trying to escape your class and "move up". We all hate the rich but we all wish to be them. Black, brown, white or purple.

Feeling Safe

During the protests against Israel's assault on Gaza we often heard Jews saying that they "didn't feel safe". Now we see the justification of Israel's expanding incursion into Lebanon as the need to feel safe. But what if their fear is pathological? What if Jews can never "feel" safe, no matter objective conditions. It may be that Zionists will dominate the entire region militarily and still not "feel" safe because the feeling is the result of historical trauma for which there is no cure. This is not to minimize actual threats and an actual persistant anti-semitism, but it should be easy to see the circular aspect of this pathological violence. : Back to disavowal: An opinion piece in the Times described the effect of our newest technology on our ability to know very well but all the same act as if we don't: "You can know that the scroll is erasing the war from your consciousness in real time and keep scrolling anyway." With the algorythm quickly sending us bites of information? Knowledge? Belief? it all becomes flattened and hollowed out, finishing off what little agency we had to effect change." How about this amazing example, Tucker Carlson speaking about Trump: " I think the Venezuela operation allowed him to retreat into a kind of fantasy in which he told himself this is going to be easy. But I don’t think he believed that." The relationship between knowledge, fantasy and belief is key here. This could prove problematic: "Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow — from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth’s food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even people who consume enough calories won’t get the nutrients they need to thrive." I'd not heard this type of analysis before. I wonder if there is a connection between nutrition, CO2 and stupidity? Speaking of, I keep seeing these interviews with people who voted for Trump but now feel betrayed. People who listened to ANY politician and believed he/she was going to do what they said and make your life better. Really? What alternate universe do they live in? Why would people refuse to learn from experience? They know perfectly well that politicians will let them down and yet...

"Imperfect as it Was"

We notice how it has become standard practice to include a mea culpa when describing the present system: "imperfect as it is". Because only the fool expects perfection. And so yes, the status quo, the so-called "rules based order" of contemporary capitalist "democracy" may entail a bit of genocide, a bit of inequality, forever wars and ecological destruction, but c'mon, no one can expect perfection! Thinktankers express many opinions as they think deep in their tanks: "Cliff Kupchan, chairman emeritus of the Eurasia Group, a political risk assessment firm, said the risk of a months long shutdown of the strait was only beginning to “enter the collective mind of the markets.” And yet, imperfect as it still is, the Market's "collective mind" is still to be relied upon. We see much discussion about the "uncertainty index" and prediction markets, with insurance actuaries trying to parse the increasing chaotic tea leaves, yet day to day life in The West is an exercise in sublimating this anxiety and pathologically pushing ahead as if all was well. But all is not well. In the Manifesto, Marx presented history as the record of choices made, either "the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or the common ruin of the contending classes." It is clear which choice we are making here in the 21st century. As Benjamin pointed out, there is already a massive pile of wreckage built up behind us, but it is nothing compared to what lies in store. This is why "imperfect" is such an obscene description of the current system, and such an incrdible example of disavowal, the ability to wake up so as to be able to keep dreaming. And why "woke" is such an ironic expression of our current historical conjuncture. The true nightmare is that we can't actually wake up and face head-on the traumatic reality of our situation. Of course the ruling elite believe they have the wherewithall to escape ruin; spaceships and private islands, and OH YEAH, private armies. Here is a new threat that could prove critical, from the WaPo: "Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow — from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth’s food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even people who consume enough calories won’t get the nutrients they need to thrive."

Wile. E. Coyote

In my recollection, it was Slavoj Zizek (twenty-five years ago?) that first used Wiley and the road runner cartoon as a metaphor for our current reality, such as it is. Now I am watching Adam Tooze appropriate the same image of that goofy coyote lured off the edge of the cliff, suspended there as he realizes his predicament, not wishing to look down. As if magically, by not looking down, he will somehow escape his fate. Welcome to modern progress! For Tooze, the coyote is the financial and stock markets, oblivious to the overwhelming evidence of the polycrisis, assuming tomorrow will be like today. That there will always be a bailout, that the economy is too big to fail. But what about "pricing in the risk"? For instance, the type of brinkmanship that we are seeing in Iran, with the Revolutionary Guard daring Trump to invade or start more bombing. China daring the US to interdict one of its ships. And oh yeah, the planet heating past 1.5 degrees, bring super-storms and draught and mass migration. How would you actually price in that risk? You can't, obviously, so best to ignore it, pretend it will all work out. Pretend that you haven't run off a cliff. Just don't look down. After following the saga of The Straight of Hormuz for weeks now, I have decided it basically exists in a quantum state, a superposition, where it is both open and closed at the same time. This presents a dilemma for the Market, which has been bouncing like The Wham-O Super Ball, a famously high-bouncing toy invented in 1964 by Norman Stingley, made from a durable, synthetic rubber compound called Zectron. We citizens, however, are required to believe The Market is the best vehicle for pricing in risk, that insurance actuaries can tell us the future. What we know is that the longer this stalemate lasts, the less storgae capacity Gulf petro states have, forcing them to shut down wells. Some of which will be extremely difficult to get back online.The best strategy for investors is to just not look down. At some point I suppose we will have to open the box and see if Shrodinger's cat is alive or dead, but we can put it off as long as possible.