Reflections on sixty-nine revolutions around the sun

 

A few days ago, I celebrated my sixty-ninth birthday. Because of the advances in the internet and the kind thoughts of my friends, I received over 100 birthday greetings. This year I thought of writing down some extended remarks to all those who sent  greetings, as well as for many who don’t know me. 

This past year I managed to complete my reading of the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx. Although Marx wrote this book about 150 years ago, most of his arguments continue to be relevant today. One of those arguments is that because of the capitalist system, we continually face abstractions, as well as the objective reality. 

    Abstractions and the objective reality

There is a new book about the most affluent 9.9 percent of the population. This group consists of about thirty-four million people. In order to be among the 9.9 percent, one needs to have at least $1.2 million in assets. 

I believe we can speculate that there are many in this group who actually believe in the abstraction that we live in a “democracy” where there is “liberty and justice for all.” 

We might also look at the abstract and objective character of that thing we call “money.” Clearly, we can use money to purchase many of the things we need and want. However, money is also an abstraction because it is only a means of exchange. We wouldn’t wear clothes made of money or ride in a car made of money. 

Ultimately money only has value because it can be used to purchase commodities that have real value. Here we see the objective reality. Each and every commodity that has ever been produced was the product of the labor of the working class of the world. Capitalists, who like to throw their money around, rarely, if ever, directly contribute to producing all those commodities.

My opinion is that in the year 2021, increasing numbers of people have seen the abstractions we see all the time stripped away. We are seeing larger numbers of people being thrown into poverty, while four individuals own hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. Clearly there is nothing abstract about that reality.

In June of the year 2020, I was one of 100,000 people who came to the Philadelphia Art Museum to protest murders by the police officers all over the country. I would say that about 90% of those who demonstrated were under the age of thirty. Thinking about that turnout and having attended many meetings with young people, made me think of how the world is changing.

Young people in the year 2021

What does it mean to be a young person today? In the past young people routinely moved out of their parent’s homes when they were eighteen. Today about half of the population under thirty years of age lives with their parents. Many young people have a choice between a dead-end job, and an astronomical debt that would be a requirement for a college education.

The government has responded to this reality by increasing the number of people who live in the dungeons of this country from about 300,000 to about 2,000,000. The government also deported millions of people solely because they were born in another part of the world. A truly vicious aspect of those deportations was the fact that thousands of immigrant parents were deported and separated from their children who were born in this country.

Seeing this reality, many young people understand that they will not have the opportunities their parents had. Perhaps this might be why so many young people are taking to the streets and protesting against injustice. Perhaps this might explain why so many workers are going on strike demanding that we be treated has human beings, and not merely as things to be used to generate corporate profits.      

So, as the abstractions continue to be stripped away, we can begin to see the essence of the problems we face. Most of us were born into a world where we need to go out and find an employer who is willing to purchase our labor. Those employers will give us money we can use to purchase a bundle of life-sustaining commodities.

In exchange for that money, employers demand that we do as we are told, or to operate within the parameters they establish. In other words, for us to have the things we need and want, employers require workers to dedicate our entire lives to creating an enormous amount of wealth for them. I believe this is the essence of Karl Marx’s argument in his book Capital.

The vicious arrogance of Donald Trump and the capitalist system 

When we think about this reality, we might understand why the title of a biography of former President Donald Trump was “Rage.” The definition of the word rage is violent or uncontrollable anger. Perhaps what made many people enraged about Donald Trump was his arrogance. 

My dictionary definition of the word arrogance is: “an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people.” So, the question is: Why were so many people enraged by the arrogance of Donald Trump?

Workers are routinely confronted with the arrogance of employers. While employers argue that we are all members of the same “team,” the reality is a bit different. When employers require us to do more work, their profits increase, while the value of our labor effectively goes down.

So, if we routinely see arrogance in our lives, why are so many people enraged by Donald Trump? My opinion is that people, and especially young people, were justifiably enraged by Trump’s arrogance because he was President. Trump’s pathetic and racist arguments were a clear message that people need to accept the status quo that he represents. 

I don’t believe there were many people who actually expected that President Joe Biden’s policies would be significantly better than the policies of Donald Trump. However, many young people celebrated in the streets after Trump was defeated in the election. These people were tired of listening to a lunatic preaching to them about how they need to accept the status quo he helped to create. 

What would a truly representative government look like?

So, thinking about the objective reality and not the abstractions, we might consider what a genuinely representative government might look like. We can begin to answer this question by asking: What might be some reasonable expectations from that kind of government?

First, we might expect that if a government were truly representative of the population, their first priority would be to eliminate poverty in the world. Right away, many would respond to this with the argument that eliminating poverty would make things worse for the so-called “middle class.”  

Here again, I believe we need to strip away the abstractions from the objective reality. During literally every minute we are on the job, and for every commodity we purchase, we contribute to services we do not need or want. These include corporate profits, insurance, advertising, corporate law, and let’s not forget the thousands of atomic bombs capable of eliminating the human race.

If we didn’t need to contribute to all of those fundamentally useless services, there could be tremendous resources used to greatly improve the standard of living for the working class all over the world. If working people had real power to determine how the environment we live in is organized, I believe most people would be inspired by that atmosphere.

So, now we can ask another question. How is all of this relevant to our reality today?

As more and more people see the abstractions stripped away, we begin to see how humanity can work to begin to transform the world and rebuild it on new foundations. Why sit back and allow capitalists to throw millions into poverty, while they are swimming in hundreds of billions of dollars? 

While our immediate future is uncertain, today increasing numbers of people are becoming open to the idea that workers all over the world need to be treated with the human dignity we all deserve.

Thanks again for all those who wished me a happy birthday. Wishing you and all those you care about the best in the coming year. 

How and why the government created the so-called “labor shortage”

 

By Steve Halpern

Anyone who drives through the commercial areas of this country will see numerous “Help Wanted” signs. Many restaurants closed and others operate short staffed. So, it may come as a surprise to learn that the United States government has effectively told millions of workers not to work at those jobs.

Reading that sentence might cause many people to ask a few questions. Doesn’t the government normally support the interests of businesses? So, if that is the case, preventing workers from working would cause corporations to lose a lot of money. Why would the government do something that doesn’t appear to make any sense at all?

I can begin this story by looking at the reality of immigration in the United States.

Immigration

There is one issue where the Democratic and Republican Parties are in full agreement. That is their willingness to deport millions of people who were born in other nations and came here so they might have a better life.

Clearly no one has the power to choose what nation we are born in. So, when someone is deported from this country, the reasoning for that deportation is only about punishing people for an issue they had no control over. 

Then, we can say that thousands of immigrants who come to this country have children who were born here. When the government deports the parents, the children oftentimes are placed in foster care, never to see their natural parents again. 

We might think about the reality of those immigrants. First, we can say that about 80% of the world’s workforce receives about $10 per day or less in wages. About half of the world’s workforce receives about $2 per day or less in wages. Understanding these facts, we can see why workers from many countries would be eager to come here and work for wages that might be $10 per hour or more.

We can also say that during the 1960s the United States actively recruited immigrants to come here because of a labor shortage. European nations also had initiatives to attract immigrants. 

Then, starting in the 1970s many manufacturing corporations moved to nations where there were much lower prevailing wages. Presidents of the United States began to implement policies aimed at deporting millions of immigrants. The government invested billions of dollars to restrict immigration and to deport immigrants living here. Let’s not forget all of money spent to build a wall, making it more difficult to immigrate to this country. 

We also might consider that the twelve million immigrants living here provide essential services. Those jobs include farm workers, meat packing workers, restaurant workers, health care workers, as well as workers in research and development. Apparently, the government in this country prefers these workers to live in their country of birth and receive $10 per day, rather than live here and receive a living wage.

Two million people who live in prison

Beginning with the presidential administration of Bill Clinton, the prison population in this country has skyrocketed from about 300,000 to about 2,000,000. There are about six million people who are in prison, parole, or probation. Many former prisoners are prohibited from working jobs because of their prison record. 

We might consider that for each prisoner, the government pays about $60,000 for their maintenance in the dungeons of this country. We might also consider that many prisoners work at jobs while they are incarcerated. The wages of those jobs average at about 63 cents per hour. 

Another interesting fact is that about half of the prison population consists of people convicted of drug related offenses. Yet the nation of Portugal legalized drugs that are illegal here and the drug problem diminished as a result. 

So here again we see again how the government has instituted policies that prevent able bodied workers from working at the same time as there is a labor shortage.

Conclusion

One conclusion we can draw from this reality is that the politicians in the United States are plum stupid. Why would they support policies that prevent workers from working while there is a labor shortage?

Then, we might argue that there are evil geniuses behind these policies. Clearly those people who have power would rather that workers receive salaries of $2 per day rather than $10 per hour. This is what happens when workers are deported or sent to prison.

However, I do not agree with those arguments. In my opinion, we are beginning to see the economy of the United States fall apart. Large and small corporations are going out of business. Corporations as well as the government have no concrete strategy to get us out of this morass. All they can say is “Get your vaccination.” Well, that advice will do nothing to feed the 42 million people in this country who don’t have enough food to eat.

The solution to this problem, as well as the solution to most problems workers face lies in building a political movement aimed at overturning the capitalist system. A government that represented the genuine interests of workers would make human needs and not profits the fundamental priority. That kind of government would give meaningful aid to nations where working people live on the knife edge of survival. That kind of government would work to ensure that everyone’s needs were provided for throughout our lives. Confronting the pandemic, that kind of government would do what is necessary to battle this disease, without any concern for corporate profits.

Many will argue that this kind of strategy is totally unrealistic. However, the political and economic crisis we experience today is not the result of failure. No, the fact that 42 million people in this country do not have enough food to eat is the result of over two centuries of capitalist policies that have been viewed as a success. Given this history, the only logical answer to our problems is to put in place a new government that will confiscate the largest corporations and make the human needs of everyone an absolute right. 

The capitalist system needs to have an international economy that doubles every twenty-five years. We will discover how that kind of growth will ultimately be impossible. So, working to advance the interests of the international working class is the top priority for the entire human race. When more and more people realize that this is our only chance for a meaningful future, then, the seemingly impossible can become a reality. 

The Ballot or the Streets or Both – From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution

 

By August Nimtz

2019 Haymarket Books

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

For quite a while millions of people from all over the world have asked the question: How can we begin to resolve the enormous problems we all face? 

Every year, the press implores us to vote for political candidates who routinely fail to make any meaningful change in our lives. We have seen the massive demonstrations against police brutality all over the world, as well as the massive demonstrations in the Arabic world known as the Arab Spring. Yet while there have been a few changes, we continue to confront enormous challenges. In the United States there are about 42 million people who don’t have enough food to eat, while there are three people who personally own $300 billion in assets. 

In his book, The Ballot or the Streets or Both, August Nimtz gives us a history of how three revolutionaries worked against seemingly impossible odds to create a movement that continues to be relevant today. Those three revolutionaries are Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Marx and Engels

When many people think of the names Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, they think of two authors who wrote a comprehensive critical analysis of the capitalist system. Many are also aware that Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto. This pamphlet is a brief summary of how and why workers throughout the world have an interest in overthrowing the capitalist system and rebuilding the world on “new foundations.”

The Communist Manifesto was written in the year 1848. This was the year that revolutions were erupting in Europe. By the year 1850 Marx and Engels wrote about the lessons of those years to the Communist League. That speech by Marx and Engels written in 1850 is included in an appendix to this book.

We might consider that in the year 1850 much of Europe was ruled by feudal monarchs. So, Marx and Engels formed alliances with liberals who favored capitalist relations and an end to feudalism. However, they also argued that once capitalist relations became the norm, then it was absolutely necessary for working class parties to maintain complete independence from those supported capitalism.

By the time of the Civil War in the United States, Marx understood that the war to abolish slavery would be one of the most important events of his life. He postponed his writing of his three volumes of Capital so he could focus his attention on propagandizing in support of the Union army within Briton where he was living at that time. 

Marx supported the war against the slave owners to end the horrors of slavery. He also felt that the interests of the working class would be compromised as long as chattel slavery continued. However, Marx argued that the working class could only achieve full liberation with a proletarian revolution.

Marx believed that while capitalism is an advance over feudalism, capitalism came into the world oozing from every pore with blood and dirt. Today we see the legacy of that birth when we go to work and follow the commands of employers, so they can maximize profits on their investments. So, while media pundits argue that we live in a democracy, in our day to day lives we see how this country is run by a tiny minority that has absolute control over the productive forces.

So, in their 1850 speech to the Communist League, Marx and Engels argued that the liberation of the working class would not come about because of decisions made by a capitalist parliament, or congress. Because the capitalist government will only support a minority of the population, the only way to establish genuine democracy is to arm the working class. 

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

During the past fifty years, I’ve attended many demonstrations in support of workers rights with respect to numerous issues. In one of those demonstrations, we were teargassed by the police, but no one lost their lives in those demonstrations. I should also mention that in the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam several people were murdered by the national guard and police agencies.

In the year 1905 there were demonstrations in the then Russian capital of Saint Petersburg demanding basic reforms. Mounted Cossacks attacked one of those demonstrations and murdered hundreds of the participants. This was an example of how Tzarist Russia was a place where absolute power by a feudal monarch was the norm.

However, the Tzar knew that when masses of people mobilized, they indeed had the potential to remove monarchs from power. Several feudal monarchs had been executed. So, as a result of the 1904 and 1905 rebellions, the Tzar allowed for an elected parliamentary congress known as the Duma.      

Today we are all faced with a barrage of information about the elections. Clearly the right to vote was established with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The government enacted this law because of the pressure of the civil rights movement. However, we can also say that while capitalist politicians implore us to vote for them, no significant changes happen because one or another candidate is elected to office. 

For those reasons, there were many revolutionaries who opposed participating in the elections to the Duma. Lenin argued against this point of view and eventually won support from his comrades. 

Clearly those who supported the Bolsheviks in the Duma were a small minority. However, by participating in the Duma large sections of the entire population began to appreciate the political orientation of the Bolsheviks. 

That orientation demanded land for the majority of the Russian population who were peasants. When Russia entered the First World War, the Bolsheviks argued for no support for that war. The Bolsheviks also argued that the workers counsels known as the Soviets were better representatives of the workers and peasants’ interests than the Duma. 

In advancing this perspective, Lenin learned something interesting. In those years, a fascist organization known as the Black Hundreds had their representatives in the Duma. The Black Hundreds carried out raids in the Jewish communities where they would murder hundreds or thousands. These raids were similar to the raids by the Ku Klux Klan in the Black communities in this country.

What Lenin discovered is that many people who agreed with the Bolsheviks with abandoned their working class orientation because they feared political victories by the Black Hundreds. Lenin argued that ultimately the only way to defeat the Black Hundreds would be by mobilizing the working class in an armed struggle to defend their rights. 

Because Russia at that time was a monarchy, the Tzar had the power to dissolve the Duma and he did this several times. However, the Bolsheviks continued to advance a perspective aimed at establishing a worker’s government.

By the year 1917, a revolution forced the Tzar out of power. A provisional government took power. August Nimtz makes a convincing argument that Lenin’s electoral strategy was one of the necessary factors that prepared the Bolsheviks to take power.

Another important initiative was the fact that the Bolsheviks formed Soviets within the military. At that time, the Russian armed forces lacked necessary supplies and had no hope in defeating Germany. In all, millions of Russian soldiers would die in World War I. Under those conditions many soldiers were attracted to the Bolshevik demand to end the war. That demand was included in the slogan Peace, Bread, and Land.

So, by October of 1917, the masses of Russia’s population began to see that the only way out of the morass they experienced was to either support the Bolsheviks, or not to resist their coming to power. Because of this support as well as the support of large sections of the military, the October 1917 Russian Revolution had very few casualties.

Upon the Bolshevik victory, the demands of peace, bread, and land became the top priority of the government. A peace treaty was negotiated with Germany. Peasants received titles to land they worked. The government took extraordinary measures to ensure that everyone had access to food. So, while Russia experienced many hardships, including a Civil War supported by 14 nations, the Bolsheviks gained the popularity of the people.

However, the new Soviet Union was impoverished and isolated in the world. This led to the rise of Joseph Stalin who organized to betray the Russian Revolution. Literally all the leading members of the Bolsheviks were murdered because of the Stalinist purges.    

Conclusion

Today, there are many people in this country who favor increased government regulations with respect to the ownership of guns. Clearly many people lost their lives because of murders that take place in this country.

However, there is another issue that the press rarely reports on. That is the fact that there are about forty-two million people in this country who don’t have enough food to eat. Yet, there are also three individuals who own $300 billion in assets. 

Clearly there are many differences between the reality in this country today and the reality the Russian people faced in the year 1917. However, in both cases a tiny minority controlled and continues to control the politics and economics of Russia before the revolution, and the United States today.  

Today we also see the profound instability of capitalism. In the years 2008 and 2020 millions of workers lost their jobs and homes. Anyone who sees this history, as well as the profound instability we all face today, will anticipate more profound crisis. 

This means that increasing numbers of people will begin to organize to put in place a government that makes rational and necessary changes. As August Nimtz argued, this will require replacing all departments of the government, as well as the banks and corporations, as well as the news media. It will require the educational system to teach students that human needs are more important than the drive to maximize corporate profits.

As Malcolm X argued, this struggle will be waged by “any means necessary.”

The contrasting politics of Michelle Alexander and August Nimtz

 

By Steve Halpern

Michelle Alexander and August Nimtz have both dedicated their lives to liberating humanity from the exploitative system we live with today. In doing this, they have both worked to unmask the reality that working people routinely experience. Saying that, they both have differing perspectives on the strategies needed to advance the interests of those who have been victimized by the political economic system. In order to begin to look at those differences, it is useful to look into the background of these two leaders.

Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander is a Vanderbilt graduate and received her law degree from Stanford University. She briefly practiced corporate law, but then took a sharp wage cut to work representing people who had been abused by the police.

One day Alexander interviewed a nineteen-year-old Black man who thoroughly documented all of the numerous times he had been abused by the police. Initially Alexander thought that this young man would be an excellent spokesperson for all those who experienced police brutality. 

Then, she learned that this young man had a drug conviction. Alexander told this young man that she couldn’t represent him because those who defended the police would argue that his drug conviction entitled law enforcement officials to harass him. 

This young man then became enraged and argued that the police initially beat him up and framed him. They threatened him with ten years in prison if he didn’t confess to the drug charge. Clearly, because he feared a long sentence in prison, this person pleaded guilty to the drug charge and was sent home.

Then, this young man found out that by pleading guilty to that charge, he would be denied a job, housing, food stamps, and even the right to vote for the rest of his life. So, understanding his reality, he accused Michelle Alexander of being no different from the police. While the police framed him, at this time Alexander didn’t believe he had the right to a defense because of his drug conviction. Alexander would later discover that the officers who framed this young man had been exposed for routinely abusing and framing young Black men on drug charges.

This encounter made Alexander reflect on the effectiveness of what she was doing. Eventually she began to do the research for her book The New Jim Crow – Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. 

Alexander found that police departments all over the country were being rewarded by the federal government for the high numbers of drug related arrests. While all nationalities were affected in these arrests, the police routinely targeted Black men. 

So, the numbers of people who live in the dungeons of this country skyrocketed from about 300,000 in the 1970s, to about two million today. In all, there are about six million people who are in prison, parole, or probation. In the city of Chicago, about 80% of the Black male population has a prison record. These policies were promoted by both Democratic and Republican politicians. 

Alexander concluded from this reality that the Black community was experiencing a, “New Jim Crow.” The old system of Jim Crow segregation denied Black people of basic citizenship rights in this country. They were prohibited from using the same restaurants, hotels, bathrooms as people who had a light skin color. 

Alexander pointed to the facts that today millions of Black people continue to be denied basic rights, not because of Jim Crow, but because of the system of mass incarceration.

Alexander argued that the reason for this new Jim Crow was the backlash by white workers to the advances of the civil rights movement. Because of those advances, many white workers needed to compete for jobs with Black people. 

In an atmosphere where millions of jobs were being automated or sent overseas, many white workers unjustifiably felt that the cause of their problems were those Black people who were now competing for jobs. We might also say that the unions in this country failed to educate workers to the fact that the loss of manufacturing jobs was about the corporate drive for profits.

Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow had an initial printing of 3,000 books. Then it stayed on the New York Times best seller list for about 250 weeks. Alexander was invited to speak to thousands of people all over the country.  

However, while speaking to those large audiences Alexander thought about the words, “sound and fury signifying nothing.” In other words, she was coming to grips with the fact that while many people wanted to hear her arguments, nothing was changing significantly with respect to the so-called criminal justice system.

In fact, Alexander stopped educating people about their so-called rights. Clearly people have the right to refuse to allow the police to search an automobile. However, experience has shown that when people exercise those rights, they have been brutalized by the police. So, while people need to know their rights, they also need to be fully aware of what might happen when they demand that those rights be respected.

In Alexander’s opinion, Black people represent a cast, or a permanent underclass in this country. That opinion is supported by Supreme Court decisions that have defended chattel slavery, Jim Crow discrimination, as well as the mass incarceration we see today. 

When asked if she is a socialist, Alexander argued that she is friendly to many things that socialists support. However, she believes that socialists are fixated on the idea of class, and that fixation compromises the legitimate struggle against discrimination and the unconditional liberation of Black people.   

So, from what I can tell, Michelle Alexander argues that we need a mass movement in this country to abolish the prison system. She believes this will happen because there will be a movement similar to the civil rights movement, and that will create a moral awakening making the prison system in this country intolerable.

August Nimtz

August Nimtz is a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. He specializes in African and African American studies. Throughout his adult life, Nimtz has supported the politics of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. One of the reasons for this political orientation was the fact that Nimtz was born in 1942 and experienced the Jim Crow segregation of New Orleans, Louisiana.

One of Nimtz main activities has been solidarity with the struggle to end the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Because of his academic credentials, Nimtz has been able to legally travel to Cuba since the 1980s. Most people in the United States are prohibited from travelling to Cuba because of restrictions by the Treasury Department. Since the 1990s, Nimtz has been active in a Cuba solidarity organization in Minneapolis.      

Nimtz has written several books. His primary concern has been to expose the myth that the capitalist system consists of a genuine democracy. He agrees with the Marxist viewpoint that capitalism can only exist when a small minority of the population effectively controls political power. To correct this problem, Nimtz has documented how throughout history Marxists have made it their goal to organize a political movement that gives political power to the toiling masses, who comprise the overwhelming majority of the capitalist world.

Currently, I’m reading Nimtz’s book, The Ballot, or the Streets, or Both – From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution. In this book, he argues that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were primarily political activists who worked to empower the working class. Their theoretical writings were focused on unmasking the numerous myths promoted to rationalize support for the capitalist system. They believed that by advancing this kind of movement, the working class would gain the confidence to organize and put in place a political economic system that made human needs and not profits the central priority. 

Today, we routinely hear capitalist politicians argue that their brand of politics supports the interests of everyone. That argument ignores the reality that most people need to go to work in order to make a living. At work, employers have control of what we do during the time we are laboring for them. We receive a bundle of life-sustaining commodities, while they receive the profits derived from our labor. This is the reality capitalist politicians are determined to ignore. 

Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow gives evidence of the fact that millions of Black people in this country have been disenfranchised because of the so-called war on drugs. We can also say that the government denies citizenship rights to twelve million immigrant workers living in this country. The Department of Agriculture argues that there are about 42 million people in this country who don’t have enough food to eat. Yet, with all these people being denied basic human rights, politicians argue that we live in a democracy where there is “liberty and justice for all.”

In the summer of the year 2020 millions of people from all over the world demonstrated against the routine murders of Black people by the police in this country. Because of his experiences in Cuba, Nimtz has argued that there are no George Floyd’s in Cuba. While the Cuban government has made determined efforts to combat racist discrimination, eliminating all forms of discrimination that existed on the island for 400 years has proven to be difficult. However, today no Cuban fears the use of lethal force because of a conversation with a Cuban police officer. Why is the Cuba reality so different from the reality in this country?

In the year 1959 the Cuban Revolution erupted. One of the first measures of the revolutionary government was to take over all the police stations. We might consider that in pre-revolutionary Cuba tens of thousands of people were murdered by the police. Thousands more were tortured. So, when the revolutionaries took over the police stations, that measure was immensely popular on the island.

I can personally testify to the fact that on May Day in the years 2017 and 2019 I viewed over one million Cubans marching in Havana enthusiastically supporting the government. Seeing this, I asked myself the question: Why is it that so many Cubans support their government, while in the United States more and more people are losing all trust in the government?

The answer I came up with has to do with the idea that because of the Cuban Revolution, the people on that island now have a government that makes the needs of each and every Cuban its top priority. Clearly Cuba is an underdeveloped country that lacks in many of the material commodities workers in this country take for granted. However, when it comes to health care, and education literally every Cuban has a lifetime right to those services. The fact that there are significantly fewer numbers of COVID-19 deaths in Cuba is clear evidence that the Cuban initiatives have been effective. 

So, when we look at the Cuban reality and the history of the Marxist movement in the world, we see that there is no permanent underclass in the United States. Cuba has a similar history of racist discrimination as this country. Yet the facts show that there are no George Floyds in Cuba. This means that if an effective working class movement advances in this country, we can realistically expect that there will be the beginnings of an unconditional liberation of Black people as well as the entire working class.

The liberation of the working class will not happen without an uncompromising struggle against discrimination

So, now we can come back to Michelle Alexander’s point where she feels that when socialists emphasize class, they are undermining the struggle against discrimination. I agree with August Nimtz when he argues that we can gain insight into this question by looking at the politics of Frederick Engels, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and Malcolm X. 

In his pamphlet The State and Revolution Lenin quoted from Engels when he argued that the state, as we know it, was invented as a “special instrument of repression” to enforce the rule of capitalists over the working class. 

Malcolm X asked people to place the system of Jim Crow segregation in perspective with his statement, “Stop talking about the South. If you’re south of Canada, you’re in the South.” In my opinion, these two statements reflect a similar point of view. We might also argue that Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow also advances a similar perspective. 

However, the question remains, why is the Marxist perspective in harmony with the struggle against discrimination?

Lenin answered this question in a pamphlet he authored on the many nationalities in tzarist Russia. During those years Russia had the reputation of being a prison house of nations. In fact, the tzar supported the organization known as the Black Hundreds who murdered thousands of Jews in raids known as pogroms. Those raids were similar to raids on the Black community by the Ku Klux Klan.

Lenin argued that the Russian revolution could only succeed if it advanced the demand of self-determination for all those nationalities that routinely experienced vicious discrimination. The new name of the nation that used to be known as Russia became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Clearly, the goals of the Revolution were compromised with the betrayal and counter revolution of Joseph Stalin, but the initial efforts attempting to establish a genuine democracy are there for all to see.

When we look at Michelle Alexander’s arguments, she rarely talks about the politics of the world. August Nimtz supports Lenin’s argument in his pamphlet Imperialism – The highest stage of capitalism. Today, we can do a Google search of the question: How many people in the world live on ten dollars per day or less? The answer is about 70% or 80% of the population of the world.

Lenin understood that imperialism doesn’t happen because capitalists made mistakes. No, imperialism is a necessary consequence of the normal functioning of the international capitalist system. So, Lenin concluded that supporting the rights of immigrant workers was a necessary part of the struggle to advance the interests of the working class of the world.

So, while both Michelle Alexander and August Nimtz are a part of the struggle to liberate humanity, in my opinion Nimtz gives us a better idea of the kind of movement that has the potential to liberate the working class and smash all forms of discrimination.

The Closure

 

By Dave Chappelle

Distributed by Netflix

A review by Steve Halpern

Dave Chappelle’s recent comedy performance has stirred up a bit of controversy. When I viewed this show recently, I can understand why. 

In this show, Chappelle, who is no fan of modesty, labelled himself as the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). Clearly Chappelle has comedic skills that has endeared him to a large audience. However, I would not call him the GOAT.

Hopefully one day someone will write a history of comedy in this country. That history would, no doubt, include the names of Richard Pryor, Redd Fox, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, and let us not forget Moms Mabley. Personally, I’m not going to rank Chappelle above those performers.

The Closure

However, in his performance titled The Closure, there were several instances that I didn’t feel were funny. What was the theme of this performance? At the end of this show, Chappelle argued that he doesn’t want the LBGT community to “punch down” on the Black community. 

Clearly, I will not deny that among people who identify as LBGT, there are some who have racist attitudes. Clearly, Chappelle would be justified in calling out instances of discrimination in this community. However, allow me to look at the parts of Chappelle’s The Closure to see if he is making a legitimate argument.

In one skit in this performance, Chappelle talked about confronting a table of people who were gay who were filming him without his consent. Clearly Chappelle had a right to object to this. Then, Chappelle argued that someone at this table called the police. He then argued that Black people wouldn’t have called the police because of an argument.

I do not deny that Chappelle had this experience. However, when we think about LBGT people calling the police, we might also consider this information.

Over the past few years, I’ve attended political meetings where LBGT people talked about the issues they face. In those meetings there was a consensus that LBGT people never call the police. There are clear reasons for this attitude.

The police have a long history of raiding gay bars and taking people into custody merely because of their sexual preference. There is an international trend of murders of people who are LBGT. In the year 2013, 20% of the hate crime murders were of people who were LBGT. Hillary Swank won an Oscar for her role as a transsexual who was murdered in the film Boys Don’t Cry. 

As we might imagine, the police are usually, at best, indifferent to these murders. So, when Dave Chappelle criticizes LBGT people for calling the police, he should be aware of the fact that most LBGT people have excellent reasons for never calling the police. 

Then, Chappelle spoke about another incident involving a transsexual. He argued that this person attempted to assault him. Then, Chappelle boasted that he proceeded to beat this person up. Clearly Chappelle had every right to defend himself when he was assaulted. However, why did he boast about beating up a transsexual who became a woman? If this had happened to me, I would have considered myself lucky that this person didn’t pull out a gun and kill me. 

Allow me to ask a question. Suppose it was a Black man who attempted to assault a transsexual. Then the transsexual beat up the Black man. Do we think that boasting about beating up a Black man would be funny? I don’t think so. 

Empathy and solidarity

Then, Chappelle argued that Mohammed Ali endured more criticism for changing his name than the criticism of Caitlyn Jenner when she changed her sex. This statement by Chappelle gets to the heart of the problem with his performance. 

There are many oppressed people in the world. In this country, we are not only talking about LBGT and Black people. We are also talking about Native Americans, Latinos, immigrants, and women. Do we want to have a ranking system where we rank people as to who has experienced the worse discrimination? Or do we want to struggle against all forms of discrimination?

Bob Marley was one of my favorite performers. However, Dick Gregory was absolutely right when he spoke to Marley and was critical of his song “Buffalo Soldiers.” Those Buffalo Soldiers were used by the United States government to participate in the genocidal warfare against Native Americans. 

Clearly Marley believed that the Buffalo Soldiers were courageous fighters. In reality, their actions only served the the powerful interests in this country. We can also say that while Colin Powell and Barack Obama achieved many of their personal goals, their politics represented a disaster for working people around the world.  

In his performance in The Closure, Chappelle claims he has “empathy” for people who are LBGT. The definition of empathy is: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. 

Then, there is the definition of the word solidarity: Unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest.

So, what is my problem with Dave Chappelle’s performance The Closure? Chappelle feels that it is all right to ridicule the lives of LBGT people because there are some LBGT people who have racist attitudes. Well, there are some Black people who have sexist attitudes. That didn’t stop millions of women, from all over the world, from protesting the murder of George Floyd. 

I am in solidarity with all people who experience discrimination. I expect nothing in return for those expressions of solidarity. The only real strength of the working class is our ability to come together demanding that an injury to one is an injury to all. This requires an ongoing struggle against all forms of discrimination.

I noticed that in the audience of Dave Chappelle’s performance there were two white women who clearly liked most of his comedy. However, while most people laughed at most of Chappelle’s jokes, it became clear that those two women didn’t find many of his jokes funny.

Clearly, a comedian’s job is not to make everyone laugh. If I were a comedian, I would make it a routine practice to make billionaires and their supporters uncomfortable. However, my opinion is that Dave Chappelle will become a much better comedian when he makes those two women laugh at his jokes.