Black Book of Capitalism

Catching me reading through The Black Book of Communism, my wife asked me if there were a Black Book of Capitalism.

Interesting question.

The purpose of the BBoCommunism is to document and tally the non-war deaths attributable to communist governments for the purposes of furthering their policies. They concluded that about 100 million citizens have been killed by their own governments. So the deaths attributable to Capitalism would have to be tallied similarly. Let's give it a try.

First, let's sort between those governments that are capitalist, i.e. people who favor a minarchist or night watchman state, and those governments that are capitalist, i.e. people who make their living by renting capital. Note that libertarians favor the former rather than the latter, though people typically accuse them of the latter out of ignorance or intellectual dishonesty. In their defense I will say that the latter may clothe themselves in the guise of the former, but they are easily spotted. Hamilton, for example, was in favor of strong national laws and institutions such as a central bank to support business. Note the instant expansion of government beyond the night watchman role.

Using the former definition of capitalist, I count all the states that match that definition and witness the effect of their policies. Saga Iceland, lasted about 300 years, collapsed in a series of blood feuds that were the result of overly aggressive individuals, not any government per se (indeed, one could point at this as a failure of that type of government). British-ruled Hong Kong. Maybe a few hundred or thousand deaths.

Okay, let's relax the rules a little. Let's just say that a capitalist nation is one in which the government is mostly in night watchman mode, but there are some additional roles for government. Perhaps we can point at the early United States, baroque to colonial era Great Britain, and a few continental powers in the 19th century. The non-war deaths attributable to those governments in pursuit of policy goals might number in the low millions? Maybe? I know it's de rigeur to attribute all native American deaths to capitalism and/or wars, but truthfully many of those were the result of accidental contact and the spread of disease. And Columbus, whose expedition was financed by a Queen, was not exactly a capitalist, was he?

Right. Let's relax the rules a little more. Let's allow such things as wars of expansion such as the US and Britain engaged in during the phase in which they were shifting from merchant capitalism to finance or managerial capitalism. Certainly these seem to tally up millions, perhaps tens of millions over the course of two centuries. Then there are those who would want to throw in the crimes of Hitler and Pinochet because, after all, they allowed or even encouraged private enterprise to exist.

At some point, it seems fruitless to keep relaxing the rules since we will eventually end up describing the modern state-capitalist system which is no longer capitalist of the first sense. Perhaps this comes too close to the defense of the Marxists who claim that Stalin is not what they meant? Furthermore, we are no longer talking about the same thing: most of the deaths attributable to the state capitalists are the result of imperialist wars. But war dead were explicitly left out of the BBoCommunism counts, so we're no longer comparing apples and apples or even apples and oranges, now we're comparing apples and automobiles.

Perhaps, though, we should back up and point out that the comparison on this basis is fruitless since we are comparing a system that favors government as its primary institution with a system which favors anything but government as its primary institution? How many deaths, then, may be attributable to the direct actions of greedy businessmen?

I think here it would again be useful to distinguish between those businessmen who actually tried to operate a private enterprise and those who operated private enterprise with the aid of the state since the incentives inherent in each are different. Also, it seems useful to distinguish between deaths caused by the actions of the capitalists and deaths caused by those associated with the capitalists. After all, if an individual working for a capitalist defies orders and kills someone, and is later punished for doing so, that seems very different than someone acting on orders to carry out policy regardless of death. Such events may also occur in socialist systems, but were not counted among the deaths in the BBoCommunism.

Let me throw in some examples from an era untainted by regulation (in other words, from a purer capitalism): The earliest industry undertaken on a mass scale, textiles, has a reputation of running horrific factories populated by small children and victimized women. Yet many of the pioneers were renowned humanitarians. Francis Cabot Lowell's system was noted, even by the ever-dour Charles Dickens, for its clean, healthy conditions. And no less than Robert Owen was a mill owner/operator.

Later in the 19th century, J. J. Hill, owner of the Manitoba railroad (later the Great Northern) had standing orders that no train would exceed 25 mph, and they even installed a recording mechanism to verify it. Any engineer caught exceeding the limit was fired on the spot. Hill had written on the railroad's first timetable, "Study well the regulations for the running of trains and directions concerning signals. Important changes have been made, which must be understood alike by all. In cases of doubt, take the safe course. [emphasis added, though the entire statement was in boldface in the original]" According to biographer Albro Martin, Hill preferred to practice a friendly paternalism with his employees:

When H. M. Jordan, a hostler in the roundhouse at St. Cloud, wanted to get his wife, 'who has bin [sic] sick,' down south for the winter, he had only o ask for a pass and one was granted. Did Peder Rasmusson, who was injured on the ill-fated gravel train, need further treatment? Twenty-five dollars was forthcoming [this in an era when a locomotive cost $6000]. When passenger rates were lowered 20 percent in January 1880, wages were cut the same amount [this in an era when wage cuts were preferred to layoffs in reaction to the business climate, which by the late 1870s was pretty competitive]. Later in the summer it was decided that the wage cuts could be partially restored, and it was done "without either demand or request on the part of the employes[sic]," the Globe noted, admiringly.

In 1879, a train engineer on the Manitoba backed a train too quickly around a curve, derailing and rolling it, resulting in the deaths of 13 men. Now, the hard core anti-capitalist would point at this as a result of greed. Yet, if anything was true, the engineer had done this in spite of Hill's policies, not because of them.

Indeed, such "examples" of greed-based industrial accidents have a long sordid history. Few attempts are made at looking at such deaths and determining the linkage between the greed and the action; greed is assumed because a tenuous link can be made between "speed" and "profits" whether or not the link is explicitly understood and whether or not the actions, given the costs of lost capital (human* and material). Individuals make mistakes of judgment within socialist frameworks as well as capitalist frameworks, and yet the deaths are attributed in the latter to greed and in the former to chance. 50 workers die in mine collapse in China: poor guys, too bad. 50 workers die in mine collapse in West Virginia: greedy bastards. I work with a man whose father was a die-hard union miner, and he tells me of incidents in which the union-paid timber inspectors looked the other way when faulty shoring timbers were delivered. Surely that is an act of greed on the part of the union inspectors and the timber company. Does socialism or regulation prevent such crimes? I would argue that they absolutely do not: if the union inspectors won't do it, you will have a difficult time convincing me that appointed bureaucrats will. There is a reason that the Kursk sank, or why the Aral is a desert and it is very unlikely to have had anything to do with capitalism.

Cognitive bias is also a factor here. For one, there is the availability heuristic: our attention is drawn by the occasional terrible incident, and we tend to estimate that such things are more likely to happen. But there is another bias, one that I can't find a name for. Let's say that 0 represents the state in which some factor - greed, capitalism, management - is neutral, while 1 is an indication that the factor causes beneficial outcomes, and -1 is an indication that the factor causes negative outcomes. So all the deaths and injuries associated with businessmen accumulate -1s, and the normal operation in which nobody dies but nobody gets fabulously wealthy accumulates 0s, and all of those times when businesses save lives accumulate ... um, ... hmmm, nobody seems to be writing about all of those benefits of business. And the average score of a few -1s, a lot of 0s, and no +1s is ... ? It seems that this scoring system is automatically biased towards scoring capitalism negatively.

In fairness, the same could be said about government. It could be said that in a night watchman state, the state provides protection from criminals, which is beneficial but hard to measure because thwarted evil doesn't show up in statistics. The socialist state might provide some tangible benefits. But the point of the BBoCommunism was to point out that those systems systematically killed their citizens as a matter of policy. Stipulating that the sum of happiness provided by the two systems are the same, industrial accident statistics pale in comparison to the tally of the people killed and maimed by communist governments.

Yet another attempt may be made by simply calling any western, non-communist government "capitalist" and including any war, regardless of the parties to it. That is the result of the work of another French group who wrote a BBoCapitalism in response to the BBoCommunism (as translated by babelfish]. There results are then:

• Draft of the blacks with 17th and 18th centuries: 10 000 000
• Liquidation of the Indians of America of 1500 to 1860: 70 000 000
• Crimean War: 252 000
• (Fr and GB counter Russia) in 1854 of which
  Russians: 100 000
  French: 93 000
  English: 22 000
  Tricks: 35 000
  Piedmontese: 2 000
• American American Civil War 1860-1865: 617 000
• War of 1870 (France against Germans): 220 000
• Crushing of the Commune of Paris in 1871: 20 000
• Colonization of Algeria, by the france in 1840: 10 000
• Colonization of Africa, by France at the 19th century: 112 000
• Colonization of Congo, by the Belgians at the 19th century: 1 000 000
• War the United States - Spain in 1898: 100 000
• War of Boers in South Africa in 1900: 57 000
  of which Boers: 35 000
  English: 22 000
• War 1914-1918: 10 000 000
• War of Spain 1936-1939: 410 000
• War 1939-1945: 50 000 000
• Repression of the army Fr, in Madagascar in 1948: 80 000
• War of Algeria: 380 000
  Of which Algerian: 350 000
  Fr: 30 000
• War of independence of Vietnam: 3 107 000
  of which
• against Fr
  Vietminh: 500 000
  Fr: 100 000
  Civil: 1 000 000
• against American
  Vietnamese Vietcong and north: 750 000
  Americans: 57 000
  Southerners: 200 000
  Civil: 500 000
• Repression anticommunist in Indonesia in 1965: 500 000
• Repression May 68 in France: 4
• Massacre of student in Mexico City avt J.O. of 1968: 400
• War of Biafra 1966-1969: 1 000 000
• Dictatorship in Chile 1973-1990: 3167
• Dictatorship in Argentina 1976-1982: 30 000
• Escadrond of the dead one: 50 000
• Guatemala and Salvador 1975 - 2000
• war of the Falklands: 1005
  England-Argentina in 1982
• Industrial accident in Bhopal (India) in 1984: 2900
• War of the Gulf in 1991: 160 022
• of which Iraqi: 160 000
• Allies: 22

Total: 147,387,051

The definition of "capitalist" is stretched thin by this listing. Repressions in France and Mexico City in 1968 are capitalist deaths? In what sense is a dictatorship "capitalism"? Certainly not laissez-faire capitalism. They threaten to add the deaths of anyone who has ever died of anything because they believe that any death that is theoretically preventable is attributable not to the wretched governments, mostly socialist, that run the Third World, but to the capitalists, who have failed to provide them with the means to save their own lives. It escapes their attention that the depraved capitalists are the only ones creating those means (such as cures for AIDS) -- perhaps nobody has ever read them the story of the Goose that Laid Golden Eggs?

Ultimately, I think all of these attempts to compare capitalism and communism are fruitless except for the very first one or two (night watchman or nearly night watchman states). In trying to compare one system to the other, a certain amount of self-deception is necessary on the part of anyone seriously attempting the task. One system relies on an institution whose basic nature is mass coercion, while the other relies on a set of institutions whose basic nature is persuasion. Sure, each uses the non-dominant means of coordination, but to a far lesser extent. When we try to compare those two things, we either get radically different outcomes (duh), or we have to start relaxing the definitions until we are no longer talking about the actions of capitalism's institutional actors, we are talking again about government, the 400 pound gorilla of institutions. Hmm, the problem with communism is government, the problem with capitalism is its use of government? Reminds me of the words of a former communist (Willi Schlamm?) who said that the problem with socialism is socialism, while the problem with capitalism is the capitalists. Of the two, the latter are a lot less dangerous to the rest of us when deprived of tool favored by the former.

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*Yes, that is a cold way of looking at it: I use the reference to human capital intentionally. It seems cold, but this is the assumed state of mind of the capitalists themselves. Somehow their accusers cannot manage to be consistent in their accusations: they accuse them of being coldly calculating, and interested solely in costs and return on investment (profit), but do not follow that through to the logical conclusions with regard to the cost of (investment in) training.

Too Long, Too Clever, both by half

Lewis Mumford's The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects is a canonical work, and perhaps deservedly so. By that I mean that it certainly covers a lot of ground*, for which he deserves credit. Unfortunately, Mumford tries too hard to shove history into Karl Marx's neat little Hegelian theory and then ultimately fails to bring his analysis closed to a successful conclusion. And for something that pretends to be The History of The City, it certainly lacks the non-Western perspective, as if this was the work not of a world historian but of a well-traveled American or Englishman. Perhaps it should have been called, "The City as Tool of Oppression in Western History".

As an example of the first problem, his explanation of early cities leaves much to be desired. Here we have neolithic man living in villages and tending crops, the happy idyllic life, a primitive utopia starring the Noble Savage. Rather than offering a sampling of theories as to how the city and king-based government came about, he forces the dialectic into the tale by bringing paleolithic man back and putting him in the place of the brutal warlord-king. Rex ex machina, I thought at the time. It was truly bizarre and forces all of the explanations to be backwards from what is most likely the truth. Mumford seems to imply that the savage, paleolithic hunter-gatherers came back, built cities, and then forced the farmers to move into them when I suspect a much more organic process was involved in response to ... what? Marauding bands of warriors? What is the relevant scarcity that would have caused people to gradually transfer their own sovereignty to the king? Mumsford's treatment of the subject is unsophisticated.

He demonstrates appreciation for Classical Greece, then nearly spits as he goes through the Roman period, and then comes back into his stride when discussing the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. I actually found this to be an enlightening section of the book; it explains what I like about cities like Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and what I dislike about Washington D.C. In fact, I think one could skip ahead to that part, and stop reading once you hit the early 19th century. From the standpoint of someone who dislikes much of what the modern world has become, mostly due to an overweening tendency toward centralization and rationalization of that which cannot or should not be rationalized**, I think that the future should look much more like the Medieval period without all the bad stuff (yeah, that is a breathtaking simplification that I don't intend to defend here).

After that, the book becomes a one-sided discussion of the evils of capitalism. Once again, Mumford stops being a historian and tries to interpret everything through a Marxist lens. For a counterpoint to this, I would recommend some of the work of T. S. Ashton.

I tend, however, to agree with Mumford on his observations about the impact of the automobile, but not the cause of it. "Capitalist" has two meanings: one is a person who makes a living renting capital, the other is a person who believes in a system with minimal state involvement***. The latter is the opposite of a system which provides government subsidization of the automobile culture the way we do in the US. Prior to the railroads, many turnpikes were privately owned and operated, but Americans loved first the idea of the railroad and then the idea of a system that freed men from dependence on the railroad ... to which they had given birth just 60 years before. The result today is a leviathan which we keep trying to control by ever larger public projects and programs, funded and operated by ever larger, more distant agencies. In fact, today people are advocating more railroad-based traffic even though they were condemning it just 100 years ago. It is to Mumford's credit that he seems to be a thorough Marxist in the sense that at least he does not follow his fellow-travelers down the road toward central governance. For those socialists who want to define socialism by what Marx said, I doubt they'll find much support for limitless expansion of that which Marx believed will whither away.

In the end, Mumford fails to provide any substantive suggestion as to which way we should turn to create a more livable city. The suburbs and freeways, as unpopular as they are, seem to still be dominant, but I think a generation of people exposed to Mumford's description of the livable Medieval city are starting to do something about it. Unfortunately, the people who share Mumford's politics are now the defenders of the status quo -- in San Francisco, for example, defending their own real estate investments, opposing building, and forcing people to spend ever more time on the concrete-and-asphault shackles that bind yet divide our cities.


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* I decided to read the book last weekend after coming across multiple references to it in my other recent reading material, and then a reference by Kevin Carson to it sealed the deal. Just kidding - the book is over 700 pages long, no way could I read that in a weekend.

** This is, believe it or not, not a bias toward irrationality or Romantic ideals, but rather towards rational rationality that reflects the fact that the future is uncertain and humans are neither means to others' ends, nor members of a unified collective, but rather individuals with social skills and needs too varied to be able to plug into a set of equations, pamphlets, or budgets. Perhaps Shaw sums it up best: "A reasonable man adapts himself to his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." This is a brilliant, self-referential, seemingly illogical bit of wisdom that forces you to question whether the perfectly rational, centrally directed state with answers to all of life's problems (which Shaw, ironically, seemed to believe in) would be dynamic or static.

*** My standard example is that Ted Turner is the former type of capitalist but not the latter, while I am the latter and not the former. This is true of most libertarians, which is why the claim that we are looking out for "our" class interests is not only an ad hominem argument, but an unfounded one at that. Indeed, it is ironic that many if not most libertarians are academics, but most academics are not libertarians by any stretch of the imagination. Also, not that while most libertarians mean "laissez faire capitalism" or "merchant capitalism", many people intentionally or unintentionally conflate "finance capitalism", "state capitalism", and "laissez faire capitalism" as if they all meant the same thing.

Progressive Wonkism

So, I don't like having to pump water by hand, or carry my farm produce to market with a horse and wagon, and I don't like paying tolls on the turnpike. I encourage my representatives to support land grants to railroads. It's great to have all these long and fast railroads, especially now that they've begun competing directly with one another. They tried cooperating, but that doesn't seem to work out, so they now they've integrated large systems. The freight traffic East is great, but the railroads don't like sending empty cars West and they seem to prefer regular traffic, so they started using differential pricing schemes and that irks me because it doesn't seem fair. Anyhow, now that we have railroads, cheap coal, and steam-powered factories, I think I'll move into the city and get one of those high-paying factory jobs.

Well, I don't like all that Trust and rebate business, so I tell my representative to regulate the hell out of those railroad guys. And I started supporting my local Wheelmen's Association. We are trying to get my representative to support public road building. In fact, this is great: let's build roads everywhere so it makes it cheap and easy to drive my new car. You have to have government build roads - a private road would have to charge fees, and everyone knows there's no way to feasibly operate a road that way! Now that I have this car, I think I'll move out to the suburbs. It's great out here, I'm away from the noise and pollution in the city, even though I spend two hours in the car. I can't say that I like the size of my gas, income, and property taxes, but as long as I don't have to toil on the farm or in the factory any more, I can live with it.

Apparently my neighbors like it, too, because now everyone is moving out here. Sure, it takes hours to get to any store, especially during rush hour, but ... hey! what the heck is happening to these gas prices! This is making me mad as hell. We need government to do something about this illegal gouging! It's not like I have a choice: I *have* to pay for gas. Anyhow, as I was sayin... gee, it sure is warm out here. Y'know, I was reading about how cars are responsible for the Greenhouse Effect, and how we would all be better off if we simply had a high tax on fuel like they do in Europe. But that'll be hard on poor people, so we need a program that will reimburse them for their gas tax payments. And also, it would be better if we had more public transport and rail systems like they do in Europe. Here, we leave that stuff to the free market, so only rich people can afford those things.

Wouldn't it be nice if we simply all went to using bicycles and using a less energy intensive lifestyle? For example, if we all lived on small farms, and used low intensity or renewable energy sources, like vegetable, animal, wind, or people power, to haul our goods to market? But we won't be able to get there because that fascist bastard George Bush has built this huge federal government system for his buddies in the oil business, and they won't let us. And worst of all are those crazy libertarians who think that you could actually have things like private roads. Don't they realize that optimizing social welfare and efficient use of resources requires government intervention because of the Prisoner's Dilemma? And don't give me any of that state's rights crap - it's obvious on it's face that one government agency is more efficient than 50 state agencies. Bigger organizations are always better because of scale economies.

And don't give me any of that slippery slope baloney: We could cure what ails our government simply by electing Democrats, because Democrats are against subsidies to Big Business. Instead of providing corporate welfare to Big Pharma (Merck), Big Oil (BP), and Big Agriculture (ADM), Democrats would improve social welfare by spending it on free health care and drugs, solar power, and ethanol, because that's what we need now. Well, that and high tariffs to stop imports in order to help poor people in Third World nations while protecting our own manufacturing laborers and farmers because those are the best jobs. Instead of building a huge, military, fascist state, Democrats would build a nimble, responsive, democratic system -- financed by taxes on the rich -- to help fight poverty, save people from their own poor judgment, and curb the unfortunate results of hyperindividualism.

Just give me a few minutes to tick off all of the programs that will be required to produce this utopia, and don't worry about unintended consequences. I've thought of all of them. Well, this has me a little perplexed (watch the linked video), but anyhow ....

Mystery Socialist wrap-up

So here we have our protagonist, growing up in a country noted for its early embrace of socialism, exposed to war profiteers in the period of collapse, and developing a socialist's sense of poverty and the solutions to it. He embarks on a third path between the Marxists on one hand and the "individualists" or "Manchesterites" on the other, both of whom he perceives as exploiters of the worker for their own nefarious ends (detailed in this post).

He rises to the head of a worker's party, recruiting from the laboring classes as he goes. The program (detailed in this post) is one which favors labor, small merchants, and small farmers in opposition to the landed classes, usurers, and exploiters. In a nation in which the Communist Party refers to the Socialist Party as "social fascists", it is no surprise that his party is also labeled as right wing despite its socialist foundations. It doesn't help that our protagonist obtains his funding from the other anti-semitic businessmen in the country; but, as we have seen, Europe's problems with anti-semitism even infected the wealthy Marx and and industrialist scion Engels themselves, so these traits are not reliable indicators of a person's political orientation.

And yet today, after having witnessed the similarities between his policies after his party achieved electoral success and those of men like Stalin and Castro, they are all somehow viewed as not socialist. Apologists at the time cited them as examples we should follow. The results are all the same.

I'll say it again: The Left may not favor the police state, but they are for a police state. The Right is just the opposite: While they claim to be against a powerful, central government, they keep building the powerful, central government.

Socialists and the Jewish Question

Part of an ongoing series:
Number 3: Internal Squabbles of the Socialists
Number 2: State and National Social Programs
Number 1: The Social Question

My anonymous author has also been, unfortunately, noted for his enthusiastic anti-semitism. Even more unfortunate is the fact that most of his intellectual predecessors are different only in degree, not in kind.

This problem seems to be much worse in Europe than in America. I conjecture that the reason is that partly due to the historical association European Christians made between Jews, who were not bound by Christian laws against usury, and partly due to the influence Karl Marx asserted onto socialist dogma. The former led to such oddities as rumors that the Black Death came from Jews' poisoning of wells. The latter is a subject of great controversy.

Karl Marx came from a line of rabbis. However, his father had himself baptized as a Lutheran in order to keep his job as a lawyer. The start of Marx' antisemitic actions is the essay "The Jewish Question". Although Marxists would defend the essay by accusing the critic of only making a superficial reading, the accusation is not that easy to dismiss. The essay's approach is three-sided: 1) Jews are "hucksters", 2) that is not really an argument against Jews, per se, but against religion and its entrapping nature. However, he is basically saying that (3) religion is bad, and since Jews are by definition identified with their religion, it follows that they are bad. They wouldn't be, if they would only swear off religion. It is the intellectual's equivalent of the school bully's tactic of saying hurtful things but then excusing himself with, "just kidding - you know it's only a joke, right?"

If this essay, penned by a 25 year old Marx, were all to the story, we could simply dismiss it as the work of a confused young man. Unfortunately, Marx' antisemitism seems to run deeper. As Joshua Muravchik explains in Heaven on Earth, the sentiments contained in this essay recurred in his private correspondence. A year after this essay, he distinguished between "theoretical" activities and "dirty-Judaic" practical activity. 12 years later, he wrote "Christ drove the Jewish money-changers out of the temple, and that the money-changers of our age enlisted on the side of tyranny happen again to be Jews is perhaps no more than a historic coincidence." Three years later, he mocked the nose of Joseph Moses Levy in something otherwise masquerading as political work. Finally, in Das Kapital, he wrote that "The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy the may look, or however badly they smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcized Jews. " Muravchik also notes in a footnote that Marx' personal correspondence was particularly hard on his rival for the control of German Socialism, Ferdinand Lasalle, referring to him as "Itzig" (something like "Himey"), our n*****, and "the Jewish n*****" (yes, that n-word), references to Lasalle's "swarthiness".

Unfortunately, the socialists' antisemitism did not share Marx' grave. Engels wrote, "Jews are known to be cheated cheats everywhere, but especially in Austria." And others, including Kautsky, seemed to accept many of the antisemitic sentiments without accepting the "solutions" proposed to the "Jewish Question". Lenin and Stalin were not noted for being friendlier to Jews than the Tsar's family. Indeed, I am struck by the fact that in those countries where socialism took hold first and deepest, the anti-semitism seems to have been part and parcel of the conversion: the Dreyfuss Affair in France, the various purges in Russia, and finally the abomination in Germany, cradle of socialism. Antisemitism is not a subject about which I read, so I'm afraid I can't get any deeper into it, but it seems to me that my protagonist for the past few posts is not terribly far out there in terms of *what* he believes, but only in *how strongly* he believes it.

Internal Squabbles of the Socialists

Continuing my series of posts (Number 1 and Number 2) on a little-recognized socialist European politician,

As the Empire collapsed in a wave of strikes and violence, the center-left socialist government took over only to find that ruling wasn't as easy as it looked. During one of the subsequent strikes, the hardline communists stepped in and declared themselves to be the new government. The socialist government found itself aligned with one of the anti-communist, right-wing militias which put down the communist uprising. Thus began one of those "strange bedfellows" stories of which political legend is born. From out of that background, our protagonist found himself proposing a third path to the Marxists and laissez-faire (or liberal, in the continental sense) parties. In the wake of the suppression, the communist party papers began referring to the Social Democrats as "social fascists", and not surprisingly began to paint our man with the same brush. The two sides are fighting for the same soldiers -- the workers -- to participate in more general strikes and confrontational campaigns so they could seize power not through bourgeois democracy, but through demonstration of real political power: direct action, even if it means violence.

There is nothing extraordinary about this set of circumstances. Socialists like any party have their internecine struggles. However, since the time at least of Lenin's creation of the Comintern (the so-called Third International), some of them have been deadly.

• Russia, in the revolutionary period, saw plenty of violence erupt not only between the communists and the Tsar, but also among themselves. It was the Bolshevik against the Menshevik. When the Jewish Bund walked out, Lenin finally captured power for himself, followed by continuous purges of both rightist "White" counter-revolutionaries and leftist factions. The purges accelerated under the ultra-paranoid Stalin, whose actions included the persecution and eventual assassination of Trotsky, the man who led the Red Army against the Kronstadt Rebellion.
  

• Germany - The rise of the trade unions ended WWI, whereupon the social democrats took over and founded the Weimar Republic. However, a series of minor adjustments, strikes, and growing disillusion culminated in the Spartacist Uprising. The Social Democrats enlisted the aid of the Freikorps to put down the squabble; in the process, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebkenecht were murdered, but their murderers received no more than a slap on the wrist. The Social Democrats left the Freikorps in place as a protection against the Comintern-backed, very violent KPD. All of this set up the Beer Hall Putsch, for which again Hitler and his Freikorps comrades received no more than a symbolic punishment.

• Spain - as Franco and the Nationalists attempted to seize control of the Republic, the anarchists responded and kept him in check until Stalin, by way of the Comintern and NKVD (forerunner to the KGB). The communists turned the fight against the anarchist workers, and Franco carried the day. In many ways, the Spanish Revolution was a proxy war between Stalin and Hitler (and Mussolini) in which the workers' anarchist groups (including the POUM, for whom Orwell fought) were forced to fight both sides and, consequently, lost.

• Italy - Mussolini began life as a virulently socialist student, raised by a father who was a member of the International and who read Marx at the dinner table. Benito rose as high as one could in the party without actually leading it; he was the editor of the party's paper, *Avanti!*, meaning "Forward!" He and Lenin both responded to the collapse of the Second International in the same way: as various members voted for war credits in their national legislatures (Karl Kautsky, for example), they both commented that the International was dead. Eventually, however, Mussolini changed his mind about the war, deciding that war creates a sense of comraderie, that nations must achieve equality before citizens can, and that war was a leading edge of the anti-bourgeoisie revolution. He asserted a new type of system called "fascism" and entered into struggle with his former socialist mates over tactics, but was in fundamental agreement about the ends of politics.
  

One of the ways that our protagonist and his party differentiate themselves is to suggest that the world needs not just universal suffrage of citizens, but strong leadership for people to vote for. This is, after all, -- and aside from the antisemitism that he shared with a number of notable Marxists (see next post) -- a strongly moral man from nearly any perspective. He demonstrated his courage by receiving decoration as a war hero. He is a vegetarian who rails against womanizing. This last point sets him off against other socialists who, since Lassalle, have had some problems in this and other areas. However, it draws obvious parallels with the path taken by Mussolini; not coincidentally, I see it as an parallel with modern Americans who believe in the myth of the strong leader (coincidentally, see this post from Gene Healy at The Agitator blog: Gene hopes to write a book on the problem).

State and National Social programs

In the previous article, I noted the socialist theories of a radical European politician. In this article, I intend to describe some of the programs pressed by him in an attempt to recruit party members, votes, and representation in the legislature.

As noted earlier, our author was sympathetic to the idea that social justice could be found through two paths: trade unions and social legislation. These are necessary -- in his terms -- to protect labor from the greedy, close-minded bourgeoisie who work for their own interests only. Among other things, this social program calls for universal representation by citizens, guaranteed provision of a livelihood by the government, equal rights and obligations of citizens (including the powerful elite, and especially the obligation to work), outlawing of unearned incomes (interest on capital) and "rent-slavery", confiscation of war profits, nationalization of trusts, division of profits in heavy industry, wide expansion of pensions, communalization of warehouses and low cost provision to small firms, recognition of small firms in public contracting, land reform, public lands, abolition of land speculation, strong penalties against usury, widescale public education reform and provision of higher education and identification and support of gifted children, family protection (generous support for mothers), outlaw of child labor, establishment of physical fitness programs, freedom of religion, and other reforms as necessary to make it clear that the society comes before the individual.

Of course, in order to build a Parliamentary majority, these were presented to different groups and different regions (analogous to States in the US) according to what was perceived to be in their own interest. For example, land reform, protectionism (basically autarky), and agricultural cooperatives are emphasized to small farmers; anti-usury proposals, guarantees of a profession, and education and pension benefits are emphasized to working class districts; and measures designed to support small business are emphasized when talking to artisans and small business associations. According to party enrollment figures and voting patterns, these seem to have been successful after some time with broad swaths of the population.

This is essentially an appeal to what might be distinguished as the "old middle class" -- farmers, artisans, shopkeepers -- as against the "new middle class" of white collar workers and clerks. This is entirely consistent to what we see in many countries such as France and Germany where protectionist policies shield farmers and small businessmen against foreign competition, theoretically preventing the commoditization and vulgarization of those honorable professions. Today, it is generally accepted that those countries have superior cuisine (see, for example, Tyler Cowen's discussion) in part because they have superior ingredients courtesy of those protected farmers. This is an intelligent strategy for a politician, especially a European politician.

It also appears that our man and/or his party generally are generally influenced by Keynes. Not only did Keynes happen to write about things that they happened to support, but they apparently draw heavily from Keynes in an attempt to support their platform of full employment. No attempt is made here to say that Keynes, who died in 1946, favored this party, only that they happen to have converging views in some areas and that the party would seem to have followed a Keynesian economic program.

In future discussions of this man, his party, and his program, I intend to discuss internal squabbles among the socialists and odd problems that pertain to European politics in particular.

The Social Question

Lately, I have been trying to figure out what makes socialism distinguishable from other mainstream political beliefs. I began with a question on how to define socialism, concluded that the distinctive definition is that no decisions are reserved exclusively for private individuals, and now I have moved on to the study of European politicians. Please consider the following passages from a socialist politician:

After the turn of the century, [it] was, socially speaking, one of the most backward cities in Europe.

Dazzling riches and loathsome poverty alternated sharply. In the center and in the inner districts you could really feel the pulse of this realm of fifty-two millions, with all the dubious magic of the national melting pot. [...]

Yet not only in the political and intellectual sense was [it] the center of the old [...] monarchy, but economically as well. The host of high of officers, government officials, artists, and scholars was confronted by an even greater army of workers, and side by side with aristocratic and commercial wealth dwelt dire poverty. Outside the palaces [...] loitered thousands of unemployed, and beneath this [...] dwelt the homeless in the gloom and mud of the canals.

In hardly any [...] city could the social question have been studied better than [here]. But make no mistake. This 'studying' cannot be done from lofty heights. No one who has not been seized in the jaws of this murderous viper can know its poison fangs. Otherwise nothing results but superficial chatter and false sentimentality. Both are harmful. The former because it can never penetrate to the core of the problem, the latter because it passes it by. I do not know which is more terrible: inattention to social misery such as we see every day among the majority of those who have been favored by fortune or who have risen by their own efforts, or else the snobbish, or at times tactless and obtrusive, condescension of certain women of fashion in skirts or in trousers, who ' feel for the people.' In any event, these gentry sin far more than their minds, devoid of all instinct, are capable of realizing. Consequently, and much to their own amazement, the result of their social 'efforts' is always nil, frequently, in fact, an indignant rebuff, though this, of course, is passed off as a proof of the people's ingratitude.

Such minds are most reluctant to realize that social endeavor has nothing in common with this sort of thing; that above all it can raise no claim to gratitude, since its function is not to distribute favors but to restore rights.

I was preserved from studying the social question in such a way. By drawing me within its sphere of suffering, it did not seem to invite me to 'study,' but to experience it in my own skin. It was none of its doing that the guinea pig came through the operation safe and sound.

Upon first reading that passage and others like it, I noted in the margin something to the effect that this was some of the most interesting prose Molly Ivins had ever written. I was not aware that she had ever been outside of Texas. Perhaps this was Austin? But no, this is Europe, and the author may have been somewhat effeminate, but he wasn't Molly.

The author continues, now sounding somewhat like Upton Sinclair:

Yet among these 'emigrants' [from the farm] we must count, not only those who go to America, but to an equal degree the young farmhand who resolves to leave his native village for the strange city. He, too, is prepared to face an uncertain fate. As a rule he arrives in the big city with a certain amount of money; he has no need to lose heart on the very first day if he has the ill fortune to find no work for any length of time. But it is worse if, after finding a job, he soon loses it. To find a new one, especially in winter, is often difficult if not impossible. Even so, the first weeks are tolerable. He receives an unemployment benefit from his union funds and manages as well as possible. But when his last cent is gone and the union, due to the long duration of his unemployment, discontinues its payments, great hardships begin. Now he walks the streets, hungry; often he pawns and sells his last possessions; his clothing becomes more and more wretched; and thus he sinks into external surroundings which, on top of his physical misfortune, also poison his soul. If he is evicted and if (as is so often the case) this occurs in winter, his misery is very great. At length he finds some sort of job again. But the old story is repeated. The same thing happens a second time, the third time perhaps it is even worse, and little by little he learns to bear the eternal insecurity with greater and greater indifference. At last the repetition becomes a habit.

And so this man, who was formerly so hard-working, grows lax in his whole view of life and gradually becomes the instrument of those who use him only for their own base advantage. He has so often been unemployed through no fault of his own that one time more or less ceases to matter, even when the aim is no longer to fight for economic rights, but to destroy political, social, or cultural values in general. He may not be exactly enthusiastic about strikes, but at any rate he has become indifferent.

With open eyes I was able to follow this process in a thousand examples. The more I witnessed it, the greater grew my revulsion for the big city which first avidly sucked men in and then so cruelly crushed them.

Why, that sounds exactly like the story of Jurgis, does it not? And the value-laden prose closely echoes Sinclair. He continues, paralleling the story of Jurgis' descent into alcoholism:

The consequence is that once the man obtains work he irresponsibly forgets all ideas of order and discipline, and begins to live luxuriously for the pleasures of the moment. This upsets even the small weekly budget, as even here any intelligent apportionment is lacking; in the beginning it suffices for five days instead of seven, later only for three, finally scarcely for one day, and in the end it is drunk up in the very first night. Often he has a wife and children at home. Sometimes they, too, are infected by this life, especially when the man is good to them on the whole and actually loves them in his own way. Then the weekly wage is used up by the whole family in two or three days; they eat and drink as long as the money holds out and the last days they go hungry. Then the wife drags herself out into the neighborhood, borrows a little, runs up little debts at the food store, and in this way strives to get through the hard last days of the week. At noon they all sit together before their meager and sometimes empty bowls, waiting for the next payday, speaking of it, making plans, and, in their hunger, dreaming of the happiness to come.

And so the little children, in their earliest beginnings, are made familiar with this misery.

It ends badly if the man goes his own way from the very beginning and the woman, for the children's sake, opposes him. Then there is fighting and quarreling, and, as the man grows estranged from his wife, he becomes more intimate with alcohol. He is drunk every Saturday, and, with her instinct of self-preservation for herself and her children, the woman has to fight to get even a few pennies out of him; and, to make matters worse, this usually occurs on his way from the factory to the barroom. When at length he comes home on Sunday or even Monday night, drunk and brutal, but always parted from his last cent, such scenes often occur that God have mercy!

I have seen this in hundreds of instances. At first I was repelled or even outraged, but later I understood the whole tragedy of this misery and its deeper causes. These people are the unfortunate victims of bad conditions! Even more dismal in those days were the housing conditions. The misery in which the [...] day laborer lived was frightful to behold. Even today it fills me with horror when I think of these wretched caverns, the lodging houses and tenements, sordid scenes of garbage, repulsive filth, and worse.

What was - and still is - bound to happen some day, when the stream of unleashed slaves pours forth from these miserable dens to avenge themselves on their thoughtless fellow men?

Clearly, this is the work of a man who understands the dehumanizing effect of poverty and modernity. From there, he notes that these problems are problems of social structure, not moral character, and begins to outline the social program needed to prevent them:

If I did not wish to despair of the men who constituted my environment at that time, I had to learn to distinguish between their external characters and lives and the foundations of their development [emphasis added]. Only then could all this be borne without losing heart. Then, from all the misery and despair, from all the filth and outward degeneration, it was no longer human beings that emerged, but the deplorable results of deplorable laws; and the hardship of my own life, no easier than the others, preserved me from capitulating in tearful sentimentality to the degenerate products of this process of development.

No, this is not the way to understand all these things!

Even then I saw that only a two-fold road could lead to the goal of improving these conditions:

The deepest sense of social responsibility for the creation of better foundations for our development, coupled with brutal determination on breaking down incurable tenors.

Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention in preserving what exists, but in breeding offspring to carry on the species, likewise, in human life, it is less important artificially to alleviate existing evil, which, in view of human nature, is ninety-nine per cent impossible, than to ensure from the start healthier channels for a future development.

During my struggle for existence in [the city], it had become clear to me that social activity must never and on no account be directed toward philanthropic flim-flam, but rather toward the elimination of the basic deficiencies in the organization of our economic and cultural life that must - or at all events can - lead to the degeneration of the individual.

[...]

Since the [...] state had practically no social legislation or jurisprudence, its weakness in combating even malignant tumors was glaring.

So now we have come back from the Sinclairian description of the problem to the Ivins-esque solution. Clearly, the state is the instrument by which social ills should be addressed, and those ills should be attacked at their roots with vigor and sincerity, not "philanthropic flim-flam" or condescension.

But another institution suggests itself, too. The author notes that the working classes struggle for more concrete goals, but are opposed by the middle classes (bourgeoisie) at every step.

Since on innumerable occasions the bourgeoisie has in the clumsiest and most immoral way opposed demands which were justified from the universal human point of view, often without obtaining or even justifiably expecting any profit from such an attitude, even the most self-respecting worker was driven out of the trade-union organization into political activity.

Millions of workers, I am sure, started out as enemies of the Social Democratic Party in their innermost soul, but their resistance was overcome in a way which was sometimes utterly insane; that is, when the bourgeois parties adopted a hostile attitude toward every demand of a social character. Their simple, narrow-minded rejection of all attempts to better working conditions, to introduce safety devices on machines, to prohibit child labor and protect the woman [emphasis added], [...] contributed to drive the masses into the net of Social Democracy which gratefully snatched at every case of such a disgraceful attitude. Never can our political bourgeoisie make good its sins in this direction, for by resisting all attempts to do away with social abuses, they sowed hatred and seemed to justify even the assertions of the mortal enemies of the entire nation, to the effect that only the Social Democratic Party represented the interests of the working people.

[...]

As long as there are employers with little social understanding or a deficient sense of justice and propriety, it is not only the right but the duty of their employees, who certainly constitute a part of our nationality, to protect the interests of the general public against the greed and unreason of the individual [emphasis added]; for the preservation of loyalty and faith in the social group is just as much to the interest of a nation as the preservation of the people's health.

Both of these are seriously menaced by unworthy employers who do not feel themselves to be members of the national community as a whole. From the disastrous effects of their greed or ruthlessness grow profound evils for the future.

To eliminate the causes of such a development is to do a service to the nation and in no sense the opposite.

Let no one say that every individual is free to draw the consequences from an actual or supposed injustice; in other words, to leave his job. No ! This is shadow-boxing and must be regarded as an attempt to divert attention [emphasis added]. Either the elimination of bad, unsocial conditions serves the interest of the nation or it does not. If it does, the struggle against then must be carried on with weapons which offer the hope of success. The individual worker, however, is never in a position to defend himself against the power of the great industrialist, for in such matters it cannot be superior justice that conquers (if that were recognized, the whole struggle would stop from lack of cause)-no, what matters here is superior power. Otherwise the sense of justice alone would bring the struggle to a fair conclusion, or, more accurately speaking, the struggle could never arise.

No, if the unsocial or unworthy treatment of men calls for resistance, this struggle, as long as no legal judicial authorities have been created for the elimination of these evils, can only be decided by superior power. And this makes it obvious that the power of the employer concentrated in a single person can only be countered by the mass of employees banded into a single person, if the possibility of a victory is not to be renounced in advance.

Thus, trade-union organization can lead to a strengthening of the social idea in its practical effects on daily life, and thereby to an elimination of irritants which are constantly giving cause for dissatisfaction and complaints.

This author clearly understands that politics and economics are a struggle between workers and greedy, unreasonable individuals whose attempt to thwart the workers is an effort against society and the nation. The answer to bad working conditions is not the freedom to quit and look for employment elsewhere: the struggle must in fairness be won by the workers, and their only hope is to join together in order to face down the employer. The trade union is therefore among the best institutions for preserving a cohesive society in opposition to what he calls "Manchesterism", a pejorative coined by German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle in reference to the free trade policies promoted in England in the wake of Smith, Ricardo, and the struggle against the Corn Laws.

However, from this point forward, the author begins to differentiate between the Social Democratic Party as a purely political organ and the social ends to which its adherents aim.

[T]he trade-union movement had ceased to serve its former function. From year to year it had entered more and more into the sphere of Social Democratic politics and finally had no use except as a battering-ram in the class struggle. Its purpose was to cause the collapse of the whole arduously constructed economic edifice by persistent blows, thus, the more easily, after removing its economic foundations, to prepare the same lot for the edifice of state. Less and less attention was paid to defending the real needs of the working class, and finally political expediency made it seem undesirable to relieve the social or cultural miseries of the broad masses at all, for otherwise there was a risk that these masses, satisfied in their desires could no longer be used forever as docile shock troops.

The leaders of the class struggle looked on this development with such dark foreboding and dread that in the end they rejected any really beneficial social betterment out of hand, and actually attacked it with the greatest determination.

The author thus grapples with the same problem that had led to a split in the socialist movement in the period between the 19th and 20th centuries. As Kautsky and the supporters of Marx pushed for greater class cohesion and struggle, Eduard Bernstein noted the success of the Fabians and proposed to change the Marxist program from one of overthrow to one of perpetual reform. The response came from a group of radical Marxists who rejected such unscientific socialism, proposing that if the workers could be bought off with incremental and meaningless reforms that an elite vanguard should initiate and maintain a perpetual revolution for them. This of course was Lenin's response in What is to be Done?

We see the author above being largely in the camp of Bernstein, the Fabians, and the less radical reformers. He sees the trade unions and political reform as legitimate means for improving the lives of workers, and opposes the use of the workers as a "battering-ram" to be used to bring down the economic and state edifices. He perceives that the Social Democrats are using the workers as means rather than as end, and this puts him in opposition to them. It's a difficult position to be in because, in the normal understanding of politics as left vs. right, it puts him in opposition to the left, and therefore at danger of being labeled right.

In the next article in this series, I intend to discuss some of the author's socialist political programs.

Freedom Rides

On the way home last night, I listened to Terry Gross' interview of Raymond Arsenault, who has just written a book about the 1961 Freedom Rides. Like most people born after that era, my perspective is limited. However, when you really dig into what they faced from the perspective of the time it was happening, you can't help but admire people like that. It seems these days that the title of "hero" is bandied about for all manner of people; it particularly bothers me when it is given to people who happened to die with no knowledge of what was about to be unleashed upon them. I think that undermines the idea of heroism and reduces it to a meaningless term.

You want to see the face of a hero? It's not pretty.

























This is Jim Peck, who required 52 stitches after being beaten by a mob for riding a bus. I found this image from the badly in need of editing article on Wikipedia. It took me to something that nearly brought tears to my eyes.

The image was on the website of David Frankhauser, a professor of biology and chemistry at University of Cincinnati Claremont College. Frankhauser was part of the second wave of Freedom Riders. He was arrested for sitting in the Coloreds Only waiting room in Jackson, Mississippi, and subsequently spent time in the infamous Parchman Farm prison. His story is told here, and I highly recommend a visit to the page.

The method of non-violent civil disobedience is nearly irrational. The idea is generally credited to Gandhi, who developed the philosophy while trying to end oppressive taxation (notably of the Salt Tax), foreign rule, and widespread discrimination. The idea is to put yourself on the truly right side of the law (the side opposite the government, and in the case of Jim Crow, opposite violent gangs) and invite arrest, notoriety, beatings, and perhaps death in the process. Who would voluntarily do it? Especially given the high risk and potentially low payoff?

To listen to the rabid partisans, you would think that change only comes about at the hands of benevolent, powerful politicians. Note here that positive changes were brought about by private actors, despite the politicians. Segregation and Salt Taxes were the work of politicians, and creatures of the law, and change was inconvenient for the politically powerful.

Vulgar Second Best Theory: Salt edition

As before, this is a 3 step process with the following relevant variations:

1) Identify supposed market failure (iodized or iodated salt will be underconsumed in a free market)
2) Identify policy (mandate salt iodization)
3) Declare victory (assume policy has solved problem)

As usual, there is no emphasis on determining the truth of 1, the effectiveness of 2, or finding out whether there are other factors at work (sometimes from previous applications of this theory). Case in point: iodine levels are mandated in Guatemala, but outcomes are not met.

"A number of factors are known to influence the stability of iodine in salt, such as the duration of storage, size of salt crystals, impurities, moisture of the salt, ambient temperature and humidity, and sunlight exposure. Iodate, which is used to fortify salt in Guatemala, is intrinsically more stable than the iodide used in industrialized nations. The presence of an inadequate amount of iodine in salt suggests an attempt to fortify the salt at the site of production. Inadequate quality control and lax government monitoring and enforcement probably play a role in the genesis of most samples in the range of 5 to 29 ppm. For samples with lower iodine levels, we cannot discount the introduction of unfortified salt into the supply either as contraband from a neighbouring country or from national producers not in compliance with the legal requirements to fortify their product."

But they have such good intentions. Maybe the problem is not enough power in the hands of their government? Perhaps a salt monopoly is the answer? And stricter border control?

Okay, I think I've beat this topic to death now (1 and 2).