Alfonso Fanjul and the Cuban Revolution

 

By Steve Halpern

Today I read the obituary of Alfonso Fanjul Jr. in the New York Times. Mr. Fanjul and his family made a fortune because workers toiled in unimaginably horrendous conditions to produce sugar in Cuba. Clearly this wasn’t how the New York Times reported his business dealings. So, perhaps a bit of background to the political-economic system of capitalism would be useful.

Adam Smith and David Ricardo both gave the definitive versions of how capitalism works. They called this the “labor theory of value.” In other words, labor is the essential ingredient in producing all wealth. 

Sugar cane workers routinely toiled under the scorching sun to cut the sugar cane that gives the world sugar. However, in Cuba, before the revolution, these workers only had work for three months during the year. There was no unemployment insurance for the rest of the year. These workers had little or no access to education or health care.

To maintain that inhuman system, there were the rural guards who did literally whatever they wanted. Resistance to the rural guards was punished by torture or death. Clearly these stories weren’t reported in the press. 

Maintaining these conditions was how the Fanjul family grew their fortune to encompass 90,000 acres, mansions, as well as expensive art collections. 

Then came the Cuban Revolution. Alfonso Fanjul learned about the Cuban Revolution at a New Years Eve party he was celebrating at the Havana Yacht Club.

Then he described a meeting between the Fanjul family and representatives of the new Cuban Revolutionary government. Clearly, this new government had more in common with the sugar cane workers than the Fanjul family and their friends at the Havana Yacht Club. So, the new government representatives started the meeting by placing machine guns on the table.

Because the Cuban government supported the interests of workers and farmers, the people began to have rights they never had before. After the revolution there was a literacy campaign where nearly everyone on the island learned how to read. Health care and education became lifetime rights for all Cubans. This was made possible because the Cuban government prioritized workers and farmers before the interests of who profited from their labor.

The Fanjuls then moved their business to South Florida and profited from Jamaican workers who cut the sugar cane. They gave generously to candidates in both the Democratic and Republican Parties. Those contributions were rewarded with tariffs that made the cost of sugar three times higher in the United States than it would have been without those tariffs. Consumers paid billions of dollars in inflated prices to further enrich the Fanjul family.

Alfonso Fanjul also gave $2.5 million to the political campaigns of Donald Trump. The Fanjuls also had holdings in Central Romana Corp. that invested in the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic. 

The Biden Administration had a ban on sugar imports from the D.R. because of allegations of forced labor. The Trump Administration lifted that ban, giving the Fanjul family the opportunity to make more money. However, among the attendees at Alfonso Fanjul’s funeral were former President Bill Clinton, as well as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Apparently, when it comes to enriching billionaires, the democrats and republicans have little to argue about.   

Yes, there is a clear disparity between the politics of Alfonso Fanjul Jr. and the politics of the Cuban government. The New York Times estimates the wealth of the Fanjul family at $4 billion. Although Cuba is a poor country, Cuban doctors have been treating some of the least affluent patients all over the world. Students from numerous countries learned to be doctors because they were trained in Cuba free of charge.

I believe that health care and education in Cuba are more important priorities than the drive to enrich the former members of the Havana Yacht Club. Clearly the United States government doesn't agree with this opinion. That is why they have been working to overthrow that government since 1959. When we look at the current drive to starve the Cuban people with an oil embargo, we might consider the times when the Fanjul family lived in opulence while the Cuban people struggled to survive.

The Sheer Insanity of Capitalism

 

By Steve Halpern

Today there is a growing disconnect between political office holders and the majority of the population. The idea that politicians support the interests of working people is growing very thin. So, I would like to look at the seeming insanity of what the normal functioning of the capitalist system looks like.

The insanity

First, employers hire workers for one reason. That is to gouge out profits. Although the government doesn't directly generate profits, history has shown that government officials have consistently supported capitalist interests. The so-called "non-profit" organizations rely on funding from profitable corporations. So, in one way or another, we all work to enrich some of the most affluent people in the world. 

In order to understand the totality of capitalism, we need to look at a few facts. Yes, employers are in business to generate profits. However, employers generally have expenses that add no value to the goods and services we want and need. These include: interest payments to banks, insurance premiums, advertising, corporate law firms, landlords, and the so-called "war or defense department."

Thinking about this reality, we might make a basic conclusion. Working our entire lives so employers might profit, should be enough to provide for our basic needs. Well, that's not the case. 

In addition to generating profits for employers, we need to pay taxes. Since the government works to support employers, we need to ask the question: In reality are we paying taxes, or are taxes, in effect, unpaid wages? 

Is this a "democracy"?

The the so-called "news media" argues that government officials are elected, and therefore the actions of the government are ultimately the result of a "democratic" process. 

However, there are many political parties that run in the elections. There were about 15 parties that were on the ballot in several states in the Presidential elections. However, the news media consistently ignored the campaigns of all these parties except for the Democrats and Republicans. These happen to be the parties that have consistently supported capitalist interests. 

One of the priorities of these candidates is to fund the police and the Defense or War Departments. They argue that we need to fund these agencies so we can be safe. 

So, there are the local, state, and federal police forces. Then, there is the National Security Agency that keeps an eye on everyone here. There is the Central Intelligence Agency that keeps an eye on nations around the world. The military in this country has been used for aggressive military actions all over the world.    

But all these investments are inadequate to keep us safe. We need to pay astronomical amounts of money to insurance companies, just in case something might happen. Before we pay out this money, we all know that insurance agents will never directly give us health care, or repair our automobiles, or rebuild a damaged home. No, insurance companies are in business to profit from the uncertainty that is a constant feature of the capitalist system. 

So, since this system makes no sense, why do people put up with it? In answering this question, first it is useful to look at nations where people overthrew governments with political revolutions. There were revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba. In these nations, masses of people began to realize that the political system they lived under was no longer tolerable. That sentiment, combined with a competent leadership allowed those revolutions to erupt.

The irrational justifications of capitalism

The capitalist system needs to continually grow. We see this every day in the increasing stock market prices. Banks only invest money because they can get a larger return on their investments. 

This need for capitalism to grow partially explains why there have been significant improvements in the standard of living. The other reason has to do with the labor, civil rights, and women's movements demanding improved living standards, as well as equality. 

Workers understand the profound injustice of working so someone else can profit. However, when the standard of living was improving, many workers tolerated this obvious injustice.

For the past fifty years, the standard of living has been deteriorating for the majority of the population. Millions of manufacturing jobs were automated or left the country. Prices for health care and education have skyrocketed. Yet the stock market is at an all time high.

Some people were attracted to Donald Trump when he argued that he wanted to, "drain the swamp." However, after he became President, his basic policies were in fundamental agreement with the mainstream of the democratic party. He adamantly supports Israeli organized genocide. He aggressively works to deport people who were born in other countries. 

Clearly, Trump's tactics are more aggressive than the democrats. However, Trump and the democrats are both in favor of the economy that enriches billionaires while subjecting millions of people to struggle in abject poverty.  

While Trump and the democrats are agreed with maintaining the gross inequality here, they work to glorify this country and its history. Trump has gone to the extent of posting signs at museum entrances warning visitors of "inaccurate information." Then, there is James Loewen's 1995 book titled, "Lies My Teacher Told Me."

In 2008, the stock market crashed. The investment companies Bear Sterns and Lehmann Brothers went out of business. This crash didn't happen because of mistakes or insensitivity. That crash, like the one in 1929, were inevitable because the contradictions of the capitalist system cause the system to explode.

We are the working class of the world

One of the ways capitalists maintain their power is to create divisions in the working class. They create divisions between Black and white workers, women and men, citizens and immigrants etc... 

Capitalists also want us to identify with the United States. However, the owners of corporations profit from workers all over the world.

The facts are that our interests are in common with workers in other countries. We all need a place to live, food to eat, health care, and transportation. Yet capitalists profit off of all those goods and services. 

This means that we have a real interest in identifying as workers of the world, and not as citizens of one or another country. Looking at politics from this perspective, working people have a real interest in fighting against all racist and sexist discriminatory practices. Immigrants aren't a problem, but our sister and brother workers. An injury to one is an injury to all.

The working class of the world is a sleeping giant. Since we produce all the goods and services, we have real potential power. As capitalism continues to deteriorate, we can use that power to end the sheer insanity we live with every day.             

The Similarities and Differences Between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler

 

By Steve Halpern

Since the election of President Donald Trump, there has been an increasing consolidation of power by the executive branch of government. The drive to deport people who were born in other countries has accelerated. The government openly supports the Israeli organized genocide, as well as an unprovoked war against the people of Iran. 

Masses of people protested against this consolidation in demonstrations demanding "No Kings." Some people have gone so far as to argue that today the United States is a fascist dictatorship. So, I believe it is useful to look at the historical record to determine what are the similarities and differences between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. 

To begin, both Hitler and Trump operate within the capitalist political-economic system. The essence of capitalism is the antagonistic relationship between the working class and the capitalists. While the working class produces everything, capitalists own the corporations where we work. Yet, the so-called news media calls this same system a "democracy."

One of the laws of capitalism is the need for the economy to continually grow. We see this in the increasing stock market prices. Yet as this market increases, tens of millions of people struggle to have enough food to eat. 

Capitalism in decline

So, we can say that both Hitler and Trump came to power during times when the capitalist economies in their countries were in periods of decline.

Germany lost the First World War. The allied powers made an agreement at the Versailles to punish Germany for the war. As a result, inflation in Germany skyrocketed. Middle class people saw their life savings disintegrate. The price of basic food items became unaffordable. 

In the United States there was an economic upturn from the end of the Second World War until the 1970's. During the beginning of this period, the United States produced about 60% of the commodities in the world.

Then, the United States needed to pay for the war against Vietnam and President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard. Millions of manufacturing jobs either went overseas, or were automated. Today about 50% of the commodities in the world are manufactured in Asia.

So, since the 1970's millions of manufacturing jobs vanished. Those jobs were replaced with lower paying jobs. Presidential candidates argue that the rate of unemployment has gone down. Well, there are more jobs because wages and benefits have deteriorated. This happened because of the continual drive to lower production costs.

As a result, over 700 hospitsls closed, while health care costs have skyrocketed. 

Corporations did away with tens of thousands of pension plans. Now workers need to pay for their own pensions with 401K savings plans. 

Tuition at Rutgers University went from $200 in 1972 to $17,900 today. 

The prison population ballooned from about 300,000 to about 2,000,000 today. In the past, workers might earn $20 per hour at a factory job. Today inmates in prisons are paid about $2 per day and the government pays for housing prisoners in their dungeons. 

Creating scapegoats

So, in both Germany and the United States there was a justifiable rage against the deteriorating standard of living. Both Hitler and Trump created scapegoats to deflect the anger away from the real cause of the deteriorating conditions. These were the capitalists who continue to gouge out profits, even when the economy is in decline.

Hitler blamed the crisis on communists and Jews. Trump blamed the deteriorating conditions on immigrants. Recently, Trump followed Hitler's lead and falsly pointed to communists as the source of our problems.

In Germany there were Socialist and Communist Parties that combined to have the support of the majority of the population. Yet, while those parties claimed to support Marxism, they didn't take steps to lead a revolution that would have created a genuine workers government. 

So, both Hitler and Trump were elected with a minority of the voting population. Hitler came to power because of the division between the Social Democrats and the Communists. Trump initially came to power because of the undemocratic Electoral College. 

Hitler burned down the Reichstag that was the German capital. He replaced all government officials. He sent political opponents to concentration camps. After about six years, he consolidated power and began sending Jews, gays, and Gypsies to concentration camps. 

The secret to the upturn in the German economy under Hitler came from the fact that real wages plummeted by about 50%. Protesters against these conditions would be murdered or sent to concentration camps. 

Donald Trump is obsessed with issuing huge tariffs on nations all over the world. He argues that this will encourage manufacturing here. What are the facts?

Today, 50% of all manufactured commodities in the world come from Asia. Everyone knows that these industries will not return to the United States. So, the tariffs only benefit the most affluent people in this country who profit off of international competition.

Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the central leader of the Russian Revolution, argued that "Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism." He documented how in the early 20th century imperialist cartels dominated economies all over the world. This drive to dominate the world was the primary reason why two world wars erupted.

Hitler understood that for the German economy to rebound, he needed to dominate nations all over Europe. Part of his economic recovery plan was about supporting massive investments in the military.

We might consider that the United States was the world's superpower since the Second World War. The U.S. dollar has been the international currency. 

The U.S. military went to war against the nations of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The U.S. government ended those wars either with a defeat or lacking a decisive victory. 

Today several countries are breaking away from U.S. dominance. Yet, just as in the case of fascist Germany, capitalism in the United States is in the position of trying to maintain the dominant position in the world.

This led the Trump Administration to kidnap Venezuela's President Nicholas Maduro and his wife. Today the Trump Administration has expanded the embargo against Cuba to prohibit the island from getting the oil it needs to function.

President Trump argues that he is at war against Iran to prevent that nation from getting atomic weapons. However, Iran made extraordinary concessions to ensure that they would not develop atomic bombs. The United States rejected these efforts.

The real reasom for the war against the Iranian people is the U.S. drive to control the oil resources of the world.   

During the Battle for Stalingrad during the Second World War, Hitler's general pleaded with him to retreat, rather than face total defeat of his army. Hitler refused and demanded that his forces fight to the death. 

Today, the U.S. armed forces have been effectively defeated in its war against Iran. Yet President Trump demands that the military continue the war, and that the government give him more billions of dollars to murder more Iranians. 

As Lenin argued, these were not military mistakes in judgement. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Trump argues that the "War" budget be increased to $1.5 trillion. He makes this argument knowing that tens of millions of people in this country struggle to have enough food to eat. 

We can also say that President Biden increased funding to Israel to about $20 billion. This allowed Israel to unleash a genocide against Palestinians. This while working people here have experienced a dramatic decline in the standard of living.

Thinking about this seeming madness, I believe we can say that Presidents Obama, Biden, and Trump are in agreement with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she argued that "there is no other way."

There is another way

Well, I believe there is another way. However, that way requires a complete break from capitalist political-economic relations.

We all contribute to several enterprises that add no value to the goods and services we all need and want. I'm talking about profits to corporations, interest payments to banks, insurance premiums, advertising, corporate law, landlords, and the military.

Imagine for a moment, that the resources that support these enterprises were used to supply everyone with the goods and servies we all need and want. We would all have an improved standard of living, while working fewer years to provide for all the things we need.

Today, I disagree with those who argue that we live in a fascist environment. If that was the case, protest meetings and demonstrations would be prohibited. I would be arreated for writing this blog. Yet we see how the government is moving in that direction.

I don't believe that the working class will tolerate a continual world-wide depression. Yes, we are justifiably angry because of our deteriorating standard of living. This while billionaires are laughing all the way to the bank.

Working people are beginning to see that we don't have much of a future with the current system. When that system collapses, people will be looking for answers to fundamental questions. 

If working people fail to make a basic transitional change, then we will be seeing the unimaginable horrors of what fascist Germany brought to the world.

Caste—The Origins of Our Discontents

By Isabel Wilkerson

Random House—2020, 2023

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

When I attended public schools, my teachers asked me to stand up every day, place my hand over my heart, and pledge allegiance to the flag. Included in that pledge were the words that this country representes "liberty and justice for all." 

Then, there were the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that argued how the word "equality" is supposed to represent something in this country. Based on these facts, my teachers argued that the United States is an exceptional nation that has the greatest democracy in the world.

Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste—The Origins of Our Discontents gives us a different view of this country. She argues that our reality is made up of dominant and subordinate castes. She compares what she calls the caste system here to the caste system of India and the vicious anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany. 

Wilkerson's book has a similar theme as Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow—Mass incarceration in the age of color blindness, and the book The 1619 Project edited by Nicole Hanna Jones. These three books present the evidence of how discrimination against Black people has been a constant throughout the history of this country.

For me, there are positive and negative aspects to Wilkerson's book. She is an excellent writer and presents evidence to support her point of view that is thoroughly documented. She also gives recollections from her personal experience that corroborate her conclusion. Unlike other contemporary books about the history of racist discrimination, her book gives parallels to the caste system in India and the Nazi organized Holocaust. 

The basic problem with Wilkerson's book is that she all but ignores the fact that the capitalist political-economic system dominates the world. With capitalism there is the capitalist class that owns the means of production. Then, there is the working class that produces all the goods and services we need and want.

While capitalists, as well as their supporters in the government, argue that they support everyone's interests, the reality tells another story. Because capitalists produce no useful commodities, they are motivated to maximize profits from the production of all commodities. Therefore, the interests of capitalists and workers are antagonistic in spite of all arguments to the contrary. 

Wilkerson argues that people who are a part of the working class have the potential to escape that class and become professionals or small business owners. However, Black people who escape the working class continue to be Black and continue to be exposed to discrimination. While this is true, the facts are that the working class was created to serve the interests of capitalists. As long as capitalism exists, there will be a working class. 

Another problem with the book Caste is that Wilkerson skims over the root causes of why there was a caste system in India, as well as why there was and is racist discrimination here. In order to understand the causes for these systems we first need to see how and why feudalism is different from capitalism. 

The primary classes of feudalism are the royal families, the religious clerics, the craft guilds, and the peasantry. In this system, religious clerics have real power. Many settlers came to this part of the world from England to escape religious intolerance. When the U.S. Constitution argued for freedom of religion, this was a truly revolutionary statement.

So, Indian religious clerics designed the caste system to adopt to the reality of feudalism in India. The Brahmin caste was the most prestigious. The Dalit caste otherwise known as the untouchables, was the subordinate caste. Although the Indian government officially abolished the caste system, the traditions of the past continue.

The United States was born in a revolution against feudalism and colonialism. The colonists replaced the rule of a royal family with the rule of an elected government. There were and are three branches of the federal government that operate in a supposed system of checks and balances.

However, those three branches of government have consistently supported the interests of the affluent. The President isn't elected by popular vote, but by the electoral college. The members of the Supreme Court are appointed. Initially members of the Senate were appointed by state governments. The Congress is the only branch of government that was directly voted for by citizens. 

The central leader of the Russian Revolution was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin who wrote a pamphlet titled State and Revolution. In that pamphlet Lenin argued that the state was invented to serve capitalist interests as a "special instrument of repression."

We see this in the very first actions of the United States government. This government continued the genocidal war against Native Americans. They continued the institution of chattel slavery. They used armed force to suppress both the Shay's and Whisky rebellions.

However, this new ruling power wasn't about enriching royal families. Capitalists used international trade to profit from the sale of commodities. 

So, the systematic discrimination against Black people was always about the exploitation of their labor. Racist attitudes weren't about maintaining a caste system, but about generating profits to the owners of capital. While there were clear similarities between racist discrimination and caste rule, those systems operated under different driving forces.

The very idea of race originated with capitalism to rationalize the theft of Black people and their labor. As Wilkerson and many other authors have pointed out, there is absolutely no scientific basis for separating people in racial groups. All human being have basically the same genetic makeup. There was a need for people to toil under unimaginably brutal conditions. This explains why the ruling powers promoted the absurd idea that Black people were less than human. 

However, the slave system had its own dynamics. Slave owners wanted an agriculturally dominated nation where slave labor was the norm. Northern industrialists wanted to develop industry with workers who are paid a wage. Workers and small farmers also preferred wage labor and free farmers to chattel slavery. These contradictions sparked the Civil War.

After the Union forces defeated the army fighting for slavery, there was a period of reconstruction. In that brief period, there were the beginnings of democracy where Black people would begin to gain real equal rights. However, as we have seen, the idea of equal rights were never a real priority for the United States government.

So, the federal government abandoned reconstruction and effectively gave power to terrorist gangs like the Ku Klux Klan. Those gangs overthrew the reconstruction governments by force. Then, all branches of the federal government actively supported the flagrant violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Black people were effectively stripped of their citizenship rights with the system of Jim Crow segregation. 

After 350,000 Union soldiers died in the Civil War, we can ask the question: Why did officials in all three branches of government agree to reimpose many of the aspects of slavery with Jim Crow segregation? The clear answer is that capitalists needed people to do to worst jobs at the lowest pay in order to gouge out profits. This was and continues to be the driving force of institutionalized racist discrimination.       

The Invisible Man

In the year 1952 Ralph Ellison published his groundbreaking novel, The Invisible Man. Ellison's main character was rejected in his many efforts to live a somewhat normal life. Responding to those rejections this Black character viewed himself as "invisible" to the mainstream world.

Today, while institutionalized racist discrimination continues, Black people are no longer invisible. The primary reasons for this were the mass movements that demanded fundamental change. These included the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, and the hundreds of rebellions that erupted in towns and cities all over the country. Elizabeth Hinton reported on the history of these rebellions in her book America on Fire.

All these movements created a change in consciousness to the point where a majority of the population voted for Barrack Obama to become President. So, we can ask the question: If there has been a change in consciousness with respect to race relations, why does institutionalized discrimination continue? 

The fundamental problem with Wilkerson's book Caste is that she ignores the idea of class. She is not alone in this. When we look at the news stories emanating from the mainstream news media, it would appear that the working class doesn't even exist. For them, we are invisible.

We might consider that literally everything we need and want is produced by working people all over the world. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the homes we live in, and the cars we ride in are all produced by the working class. 

When we need medical assistance, we try to see a doctor. That doctor wouldn't be able to function without the support of entire staffs of housekeepers, laundry and dietary workers. Yet many people, including the press and government officials, view these essential workers as invisible. As we know, a disproportionate number of people who have these jobs are African American. 

The fifty year decline in the economy of the United States

At the end of the Second World War the United States became the superpower of the world. The economies of the other major capitalist powers had been destroyed in the war. As a result, about 60% of the commodities in the world were manufactured in the United States. This financial upturn lasted up until the 1970's.

Today, about 50% of the commodities in the world are manufactured in Asia. This shift in production, as well as the ruthless drive for automation, caused the elimination of tens of millions of manufacturing jobs here. 

Yet politicians argue that they somehow create jobs. Yes, there were many new jobs added to the economy since the 1970's. However, most of those jobs have fewer benefits and effectively less pay than the manufacturing jobs of the past. 

One of the effects of this profound change has been a dramatic increase in inequality. The section of the working class that has been hit hardest by this deteriorating standard of living has been the least affluent 20% of the population. Black people are disproportionately represented in this part of the working class.

Isabel Wilkerson, as well as many others, argue that there can be profound inequality contained in a system they feel is democratic. This idea goes back to the revolution of the thirteen colonies that established the nation called the United States of America.

Before the revolution, affluent people like Benjamin Franklyn were second class citizens. The inherited class of gentleman held power. 

With the revolution, there was upward mobility for anyone who could organize profitable enterprises. The priority of the government was to serve this affluent class, while pretending to serve the interests of everyone.

Within this system workers won various rights over the years. However, because the government always supported capitalist interests, they resisted the demands of labor, as well as equal rights for women, Black people, Native Americans, and people who are gay.

So, when Wilkerson and many others argue that we might be loosing our so-called democracy because of President Donald Trump, we might ask the question: When was there ever a genuine democracy in the United States?

The seemingly invisible people consist of the working class of the world

Presidents Barrack Obama and Donald Trump both support policies to deport millions of people from this country. Why in the world would a working person support the idea of deporting a coworker? Just as Black people had the worst jobs here, today many of those jobs are being done by immigrant workers. 

The facts are that capitalists see the world as their nation. When President Trump recently travelled to China, some of the most powerful CEO's travelled with him. They didn't do this to improve the standard of living for working people here. No, they went to China in an attempt to profit off of the labor of our sister and brother Chinese workers. 

In fact, capitalists profit from the labor of workers all over the world. They use the immigration laws in a similar way as politicians used the Jim Crow laws to intimidate Black people from demanding higher wages.

Capitalists also support wars in order to dominate capitalists in other nations. President Trump ordered the military to kidnap Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro. Then he ordered the military to go to war against the nation of Iran. These actions were about controling the flow of oil in the world. These actions were ultimately wars against the international working class. So, while the working class experiences the unimaginable horrors of war, capitalists use war to gouge out obscene amounts of money.

Empathy and solidarity

Isabel Wilkerson argues that the way to escape what she calls the caste system is through empathy. There is some truth in this statement. For the working class to advance, we need to be aware of the history and continued discrimination against Black people. 

There is absolutely no way the working class can advance unless we work to do away with all forms of discrimination. Wilkerson's work as well as books written by many others give us a clear view of the vicious discriminatory history of this country.

However, when we look at all the successful movements of the past, we see that they all had something in common. Those movements went beyond awareness of the injustices of this country. People came together in acts of solidarity. They began to understand that the only way for working people to make meaningful change is by organizing mass movements. 

Another weakness of Wilkerson's book is that she neglected to link the discriminatory policies and attitudes of this country to the decades long atrocities committed against Palestinians. Today millions of people are organizing all over the world to end the unimaginable genocide organized by the Israeli government.

Clearly we do not know what will happen in the future. However, when we look at the past, we see how mass movements have the potential to make significant change. As the capitalist system continues to fall apart, I believe the working class of the world has the potential to rebuild the world on new foundations.        

Mailman—My wild ride delivering mail in Appalachia and finially finding home

 

By Stephen Starring Grant

Simon & Schuster 2025

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

In our day to day lives, we depend on millions of workers who toil to produce the goods and services we need and want. One of those services is the delivery of the mail by the women and men who work for the postal service. However, most of us aren't aware of the immense challenges postal employees face every day.

Stephen Starring Grant has a masters degree in fine arts. He parleyed that degree into jobs with marketing companies and lived in New York, Los Angeles, and London. Then, one day his boss informed Grant that his marketing job was over. 

At the time, Grant was living in the area of Blacksburg, Virginia. His father moved the family there to take a job at Virginia Tech University. Because of the astronomical cost of living in New York City, Grant moved his family back to Blacksburg. 

At this point, Grant felt he needed a job with health care insurance and there was a job opening at the post office. Because of the brutally difficult working conditions, jobs at the post office aren't difficult to get. Holding on to those jobs is a totally different story.

I should say that I was also hired by the post office. While I'm in fairly good shape, I was hired when I was about 60 years old. Grant was hired at the age of 50. Being a starting letter carrier favors workers who are younger. 

While I was on probation, I developed a herniated disk in my back. I was in unimaginably excruciating pain. I called out for work. The person I spoke to told me that if I wanted the job, I would need to come to work. 

On my way to the doctor's office I needed to rest before I could walk one block. The intense pain caused my blood pressure to jump to 190 while 120 is normal. Needless to say the manager at the post office found a way to fire me, even though it is supposed to be illegal to fire someone for a job related injury. 

Just as in my case, Stephen Grant was overwhelmed with the job of letter carrier. The combination of sorting the mail, traveling to the many mail deliveries, and then finding where the mail needs to go can seem to be an insurmountable task for a new employee. One of Grant's older co-workers said she cried every day for three months after she started the job.

Then there is the transportation to and from the deliveries. Grant was a rural carrier and delivered most mail directly from a vehicle. He wasn't issued a post office truck and needed to use his own pickup. The problem is that mail trucks have steering wheels on the right side. Grant's truck, like nearly all vehicles has the steering wheel on the left side. 

This meant that Grant needed to do his job as a contortionist. He needed to sit on the right, while steering, accelerating, and breaking from the left side. Had grant been given a postal vehicle, this would have been sweltering hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.

Stephen Grant and his editors brought together a compelling story. They gave us a vivid portrayal of his many adventures delivering the mail. One story was especially compelling. Grant carried two refrigerators on his back to a home that was way off the main road. On the way to this home, he needed to take off his shoes and socks to walk through a stream. At one point he was waist deep in water.

Grant's book reminded me of several other books that reported on the unimaginable difficulties working people experience every day. One is the late Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain reported on his job as a chef. He routinely worked in cramped hot spaces as fast as he could, juggling many ingredients, surrounded by all kinds of profanity on sixteen hour shifts. The one expression not allowed in his work life was; "That's not my job."

Then there was Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle. This book documented conditions in the meat packing industry in Chicago, published in 1906. Then there was the French author Emil Zola's book Germinal that documented the unimaginably horrendous conditions of French miners published in 1885.  

Clearly many working conditions have improved over the years. However, Stephen Grant's book demonstrates that there continues to be profound problems facing workers. We might also say that the problems faced by Grant appear to be minor compared to about 80% of the workers in the world who are paid about $10 per day or less.

This brings me to a story in Grant's book that puts this in perspective. Grant was faced with an abusive customer who refused to cooperate and told Grant to "take responsibility" for the fact that she hadn't received her package. 

For the rest of the day Grant was angry and took this out on his wife and two daughters. His family was concerned about him. Then with tears in his eyes he said: "Everyone is worried about me because I'm a goddamned loser."

For me, this story gets to the heart of the problem. Inequality is one of the very foundations of the political-economic system of capitalism. There are workers who toil every day to produce the goods and services we all depend on. Then there is the tiny minority of capitalists who produce nothing, but have more wealth than they could use in 100 lifetimes. 

Before Grant found another job in marketing, the savings he had accumulated were nearly gone. This meant that his salary at the post office was inadequate to provide for his family. However, in the past postal employees could have provided a comfortable living for their family members. This underscores the fact that there has been a decline in the standard of living for most workers in this country. 

So, for a moment allow me to speculate about the possibilities of what a socialist workers government could accomplish. First, I read this book in paperback because of a recommendation by a sales clerk in a book store. Normally read books on my electronic tablet. 

While I respect people who like to read paperback or hardcover books, electronic tablets have many advantages. On my tablet, I can highlight passages and make notes on what I read. This is more awkward with a paperback. I can point to a word I don't understand and immediately get the definition. I don't need to leave the home where I live to purchase an e-book. I can also read the e-book on my cell phone.

Stephen Grant told a story of how he needed to fill his pickup truck with law books a father was sending to his daughter who was a law student. All those books could have fit into one or two tablets that could fit into the glove box of his truck. 

So, how can society be reorganized in a much more rational way? We all need to have about eight things for our entire lives. These include food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to cultural activities. In order to purchase these goods and services, we need to pay for profits for manufacturing, transport, and sales, then there is the interest to banks, insurance, advertising, corporate law, landlords, and the military. None of those enterprises contribute any value to the goods and services we need and want. Yet we are paying for all those enterprises all the time.

Saying this, we can reorganize the world where all work and commercial activities are centralized. Since largely unproductive work is done in skyscrapers, we can convert these buildings into multi-story farms or garment shops. This would reduce the need to transport commodities all over the world.

Instead of subsidizing enterprises that add no value to commodities, workers governments would make it their top priority to insure that everyone has all the goods and services we need and want. Automotive transport can be transformed into efficient mass transit rail systems.

Today there is a controversy about Artificial Intelligence or A.I. Many people are opposed to this because it would use tremendous amounts of electricity and eliminate jobs. Well, what about all those enterprises that also use tremendous amounts of electricity, yet add no value to the goods and services we need and want? 

We are also living at a time when fundamental change is happening. Banks have issued loans that appear to be leveraged to the stratosphere. Because of the war against the people of Iran, the availability of oil and other needed materials has been greatly curtailed. These events can and will have the potential to crash the economy.

In this environment, people are beginning to look for fundamental change. Reading Stephen Grant's book about his experiences as a mailman show us how workers confront seemingly impossible obstacles every day. Understanding this, as well as the immense challenges we face, I believe that a profoundly better world is possible.

Juneteenth

 

By Steve Halpern

There was a time when people 

were treated worse than animals.

They were called slaves and worked 

from can’t see in the morning, till can’t see at night.

The requirement was to pick 

100 pounds of cotton under blazing hot sun.

The punishment for failure was a beating.

There were people thought this system would last forever.

But the slave owners weren’t satisfied.

They wanted the entire nation to 

consist of slave plantations.

Many opposed that idea.  

So, a Civil War erupted. 

350,000 Union soldiers died. 

The Constitution was Amended,

and there was a celebration called Juneteenth.

Politicians take an oath to defend the Constitution.

But all branches of government decided 

to flagrantly violate the Constitution.

They effectively gave power to the Ku Klux Klan.

The Constitution argued that slavery was illegal.

So, the Klan created chain gangs.

The Constitution argued for “equal protection under the law.”

The Klan instituted Jim Crow segregation.

The Constitution argues for the right to vote.

The Klan adopted laws making it 

impossible for most Black people to vote.

Then, because of the Civil Rights movement

 Jim Crow segregation was no more.

Yet today the Supreme Court 

has decided to violate the Constitution again.

They decided to compromise the right of Black people to vote.  

Today, we continue to celebrate Juneteenth.

For me, this is a celebration of the possibility 

that profound change can actually happen.

And the struggle continues. 

 

Here Where We Live Is Our Country—The story of the Jewish Bund

By Molly Crabapple 

One World—2026

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

The title of Molly Crabapple's profoundly important book underscores one of the most important themes of our times. "Here where we live is our country." Those words undercut the ideology of the political movement known as Zionism. Supporters of Zionism argue that the true home of the Jewish people isn't where we live, but in the nation of Israel formerly known as Palestine.

The history of the Jewish Labor Bund that Crabapple documented shows how most Jews actively opposed the idea of Zionism for about half of a century. There were two primary reasons for this opposition that continue to be relevant today. Zionists were in fundamental agreement with vicious anti-Semites who argued that Jews did not belong in Europe. Both left and right wing Zionists supported the brutalization and expulsion of the indigenous and majority Palestinian population. 

So, what were the politics of the Jewish Labor Bund? The Bund worked to establish alliances of Jewish and non-Jewish labor organization with the goal of establishing a workers government where Jews would have equal rights. 

Crabapple started her study of this history by looking at her family members who had been active in the Bund. In his groundbreaking book, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, Rashid Khalidi also related his family to the history of Palestinian resistance to colonization. 

I happen to be Jewish and one of the reasons why I find Crabapple's book fascinating is because of my background. My four grandparents were Jewish and immigrated to this country from Eastern Europe. Three of my grandparents came from the Pale Settlement of Czarist Russia where most Jews lived for about 1,000 years. My other grandparent immigrated from Hungary. 

My parents carried on some Jewish traditions, but like many Jews, they weren't religious. My parents also lived in the years of the Nazi organized Holocaust that caused the deaths of one out of every three Jews in the world. The ultimate goal of the Nazis was to eliminate Jewish people altogether. The fact that I was born and lived for 73 years is evidence that the Nazis failed to achieve their repugnant goal. 

Given this background, my parents, as well as other Jewish parents of their generation felt it was important for their children to be exposed to Jewish culture. So, for several years I attended Hebrew School, and at the age of thirteen I was Bar Mitzvahed. 

During the years when I attended Hebrew School, my teachers gave me a completely uncritical view of the nation of Israel. In other words, my teachers indoctrinated me into the ideology of Zionism. Then, at the age of nineteen I met a Palestinian woman who began to destroy my illusions in the state of Israel. 

I was raised in the city of Newark, New Jersey and attended a high school that was overwhelmingly African American. During those years I became aware of the profound disparity between the inner city schools in Newark and the affluent public schools in the suburban communities. 

These were also the years of the movement that protested the U.S. government's war against the Vietnamese people. I began to realize that the injustices I witnessed weren't about mistakes in judgement or a lack of sensitivity. No, the problems of inequality and war were clear examples of how there was something profoundly wrong with the political economic system of capitalism. This was the atmosphere that caused me to develop a socialist consciousness and look more closely at the myth of Zionist ideology.      

The Pale Settlement

The Pale Settlement was a section of the Czarist Empire located in the area of the Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania. This is where millions of Jews lived and were routinely exposed to vicious discrimination. 

In Czarist Russia the Black Hundreds were a prominent political party that also routinely organized raids that murdered thousands of Jews. The Yiddish word pogrom was invented to identify those raids. In the United States, similar raids by the Ku Klux Klan murdered thousands of African Americans.

Under Czarist rule, Jews were not allowed to live in the largest cities of Saint Petersburg or Moscow. There were quotas of how many Jews were drafted into the Russian armed forces. Those terms of service might extend to twenty-five years. Jews who had been drafted oftentimes divorced their wives because serving this long military sentence could mean they would never see their family again.

The 1905 Russian uprising

The Russian defeat in the war against Japan caused an economic crisis. Workers strikes became commonplace throughout the country. At that time, working people and peasants of Russia did not have basic human rights. Workers were incarcerated for merely having meetings. So, under those conditions worker's organizations came together to form Soviets, or worker's councils. These Soviets protested the victimization of their leaders. The Soviets engaged in political strikes where they demanded basic rights for workers. Political strikes were rare in the United States.

In 1905 there was a mass demonstration in Saint Petersburg that asked the Czar to listen to worker's grievances. The Czar ordered the mounted Cossacks to attack the demonstration. The Cossacks then murdered hundreds of demonstrators.

In the Pale Settlement the Jewish Labor Bund and socialist organizations organized armed uprisings that, for a while, were effective. Then with the defeat of the 1905 uprising there was a wave a pogroms throughout the Pale Settlement.

The Bund, the Mensheviks, and the Bolsheviks

As with any revolutionary movement, there are disagreements as to which strategy will be most effective. The Bund agreed with the Menshevik wing of the resistance movement. The Mensheviks argued for a decentralized organization where various chapters would adopt to their particular environment. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin of the Bolsheviks argued for a democratic centralized organization. This meant that there would be a democratic discussion at national meetings, but once decisions were voted on, the entire membership would be required to carry out the line of the party.

The differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks mushroomed when Lenin returned to Russia in April of 1917. At that time, a popular insurrection forced the Czar to abdicate. A provisional government ran the day to day functions of the nation. The Soviet workers councils represented workers and soldiers who deposed the Czar.

At that time, literally millions of Russian soldiers died in the First World War, and there was no chance for a Russian victory against Germany. There was famine in the cities. Peasants had few, if any rights and usually worked on land owned by affluent landowners.

Lenin argued that the people wanted peace, bread, and land. He felt that the only way for this to happen was to take power away from the provisional government and give all power to the Soviets.

The Mensheviks as well as their supporters in the Bund opposed that perspective. Molly Crabapple agreed with this perspective of the Bund. She argued that the Bund members had dedicated their lives to liberating Jews and all working people. She implied that Lenin's perspective ignored the life experience of the leaders of the Bund. 

What is a political discussion?

In order to put this disagreement into perspective I think it is useful to ask the question: What is a political discussion?

In the United States there are highly publicized events called "elections." While the news media gives a tremendous amount of publicity to Democratic and Republican Party candidates, candidates of other parties are largely ignored. 

In the last Presidential election Donald Trump and Kamala Harris agreed on most major issues. They both supported the Israeli genocidal campaign against Palestinians. They both supported mass deportations. They both had essentially no problem with the gross disparity of wealth in this country. Their one disagreement was about what to do with the demonstrators who attacked the capital on January 6, 2020. 

Donald Trump was apparently frustrated by the fact that his politics weren't essentially different from the politics of Kamala Harris. So, he made the insulting and repugnant remark that Haitians "eat cats." Kamala Harris responded, not by denouncing the statement, but by laughing because she thought this was funny. 

Harris criticized Trump for being "weak." Trump criticized his opponents for being "lightweights." In other words, elections in the United States aren't about arguing for or against issues that people care about. No, elections are mud-slinging festivals where candidates argue that one candidate isn't quite as horrendous as the other.

However, in 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued about real issues and organized rank and file workers around those issues. In his polemics, Lenin made forceful arguments, but he never questioned the integrity and commitment of those who disagreed with his perspective. 

Before the October 1917 Russian Revolution Lenin argued that, history would not forgive the Bolsheviks if they failed to take power. Today we can put those words into perspective.

Czarist Russia had the largest land mass of any nation in the world. After the Revolution, Russia became the Soviet Union and was attacked by fourteen nations on all of its borders. The Russian armed forces had just been decisively defeated by Germany in the First World War.

Leon Trotsky, who was Jewish and raised in the Ukraine became the commander of the Red Army. In a period of two and a half years, the Red Army defeated all of the invading armies. So, we can ask the hypothetical question: What would have happened if the Bolsheviks failed to take power?              

The Nazi invasion of Poland

Molly Crabapple gave a comprehensive history of the Bund before during and after the German Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland. During this entire period, that included the Holocaust, there were vicious and murderous attacks on millions of Jews. 

An inspiring aspect of Crabapple's book is her documentation of the resistance organized by the Bund during this entire period. She showed how Bernard Goldstein was the leader of an armed resistance to vicious anti-Semitic pogroms. Goldstein brought together Bund members, with gangsters, Polish socialists, and workers to do armed combat with those who attempted to murder Jews.

The Bund also organized relief for the poor, sanatoriums, summer camps for children, a newspaper, sports contests, and schools etc... The Nazis weren't even able to shut down the Bund newspaper during their occupation of Poland. 

Marek Edelman was a member of the Bund and a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He and other Bund members put aside their differences with the Zionists to do battle with the Nazi mass murderers. Edelman survived the uprising and after the war he continued to live in Poland and became a cardiologist. 

There was one persistent problem that plagued the Bund and all Polish people during the years the Nazi occupation. Rank and file Polish people did not have guns and the armed forces who had the guns refused to distribute those guns to the people. 

Because the Bolsheviks took power they were able to arm the people, and, in spike of tremendous obstacles, they succeeded in defeating the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Stalin and Trotsky

While Molly Crabapple's book is well worth reading, it has another weakness. Because Crabapple supports the Menshevik perspective of the Bund, she neglects to mention the profound difference between the politics of Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. 

Trotsky argued that Stalin betrayed the essence of what the Russian Revolution was about. Stalin organized show trials that led to the murders of most of the leaders of the Revolution, including Trotsky. He made a disastrous non-aggression pact with the Nazis. Then he supported the nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek after Chiang murdered thousands of members of the Chinese Communist Party in 1927. Stalin gave arms to the Zionist terrorist organization Haganah that led to the establishment of the state of Israel. 

While the Soviet Union eventually defeated the Nazis, literally millions of Russian people died as a result of Stalin's deal with Hitler. This left the Soviet Union unprepared for the Nazi invasion. However, because the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, the people of the Soviet union were armed, and in spike of Stalin's stupidity, the Red Army defeat the fascist invasion. 

Trotsky also ridiculed Stalin's argument that members of social democratic parties were "social fascists." Because of this perspective the German Communist Party refused to unite with the social democrats to defeat the Nazis in the German elections of 1933. Stalin's armed forces organized to murder leaders Victor Adler and Henryk Erlich of the Bund because of his seemingly insane view that they were "social fascists."

Trotsky understood what it would mean when the Nazis came to power. He broke all relations with the Soviet government when Hitler came to power without any of the German socialist parties firing a single shot in resistance. Even the Nazis acknowledged that in their early years they could have been easily defeated had the workers parties organized to stop their advance.              

Given this history, I believe it is clear that Lenin and Trotsky's politics were the complete opposite of the politics of Joseph Stalin.

Today, the United States government is trying to overthrow the Cuban government. They use an oil blockade to starve the Cuban people and might be preparing for an invasion of the island. However, the Cuban people have an advantage that the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto didn't have. The people are armed and will meet any invasion with millions of Cubans who have guns.

Palestine

The Bund sent their leader Victor Adler to Palestine to investigate and report on the Zionist movement before the establishment of the state of Israel. While Jewish immigrants worked to integrate themselves into the culture of the United States, Jewish immigrants to Palestine had a different approach. 

While Palestinians were the vast majority of the population, Zionists felt they had a right to the land and were taking as much Arab land as they could. The European Jews in no way identified with the indigenous Jews of Palestine who normally spoke Arabic. Adler had a discussion with a leading Palestinian who was critical of the Zionist drive to steal his homeland. This leader had no problem with Jewish immigration, but wanted Palestine to have equal rights for Jews and Palestinians.

Crabapple quoted the Bund leader Henryk Erlich as to why he opposed the Zionist ideology. "If a Jewish state should arise in Palestine, its spiritual climate will be eternal fear of the external enemy (Arabs); eternal struggle for every bit of ground with the eternal enemy (Arabs)...Is this a climate in which freedom, democracy, and progress can grow? Indeed is it not the climate in which reaction and chauvinism ordinarily flourish?"

After close to three years of genocide against Palestinians and 76 years of Israeli organized brutalization, this statement by Henryk Erlich rings just as true today as it did before the establishment of the state of Israel. However, there is another aspect to Zionism that is just as insidious.

The Zionist leaders actually believed the racist stereotypes used by vicious anti-Semites. These were the ideas that Jewish people didn't belong in Europe and that the Holocaust happened because Jews are inherently "weak."

Because of this perverted perspective literally all Zionist leaders changed their names to take on a new identity. Golda Meir's initial name was Goldie Mabovitch. David Ben-Gurion's initial name was David Grün. The primary language of the Jewish communities in the Pale Settlement and in the United States was Yiddish. The national language of Israel is Hebrew.  

Molly Crabapple's book gives us an inspiring chapter in the history of the worker's movement in the world. Reading her book, we can also view the seemingly insane defense of the criminal policies of the state of Israel from a different perspective. That is how for half a century most Jews rejected the Zionist perspective because it rejected the essence of who Jewish people are. So, in spite of it's limitations, I highly recommend reading Molly Crabapple's history of the Jewish Labor Bund.