Grace Lee Boggs: 1915 – 2015
The passing last week of Grace Lee Boggs brought an era to a close. Boggs was one of the leaders of the Johnson-Forest tendency, but who was neither Johnson (CLR James) nor Forest (Raya Dunaveyska). The fourth member of the unofficial leadership was Martin Glaberman who died in 2001. I met her only once, at Marty’s memorial meeting in 2001.
Boggs was born in Rhode Island and became in politics in Chicago where she joined Max Shachtman’s Workers Party. She met CLR James while in Chicago, but later moved to New York. Boggs was one of the translators of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and also wrote the philosophical essay in the Johnson-Forest pamphlet The American Worker.
Boggs and her husband James Boggs eventually moved to Detroit where they broke with James in 1962 (Dunayevskaya had split several years earlier). The most common terms applied to her life after this point is to say she became a community activity – a term that narrows considerably her work. A review I wrote of her book Living for Change can be found here.
When I moved away from Trotskyism two decades ago, it was initially to Socialisme ou Barbarie and Solidarity, Anton Pannekoek, and the Johnson-Forest tendency I turned for a sense of understanding. Despite the fact, she had long moved away from those ideas, Boggs’ early contributions were a part of that important clarification for me.
The Heartless Bastards and Friends – A Brief Review
Argh. Another review that got away from me. I hope to have that Widowspeak review up tomorrow because there’s a Luna one coming soon too.
The Heartless Bastards played this year’s TURF festival, but in a nice little bonus, the organizers (I assume) also arranged club dates for some of the acts, so we got the chance to see them in a somewhat more intimate setting. And the Horseshoe Tavern is certainly that.
Opening the show were Alberta Cross, a country-rock band from the UK , though now based in Brooklyn. They played a brief rootsy set that owed a debt to Whiskeytown. Nice.
If the truth be told, it wasn’t the Heartless Bastards I cam to see, but the middle act of the night, Kitty, Daisy and Lewis. I fell in love with this lot earlier this year and saw the expanded set at a show at Lee’s Palace. The three sibling band was joined on stage by mum and dad who played bass and guitar respectively and Tan Tan on trumpet. The set and even the stage banter were pretty much the same as the Lee’s set, but who cares? The mix of blues, salsa, jazz, rockabilly and more is irresistible. I almost left after their set, thinking that would be the peak.
It was, but that doesn’t mean the Heartless Bastards were a disappointment. They were. I’ve seen the band three times now (once opening for the Decemberists and a headlining set at the Horseshoe). The animated blues rock and Erika Wennestrom’s stage presence make their sets an experience.
It’s not often that you get to see three great bands in a small club. If you were there, you did well; if you weren’t, better luck next time.
Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla: Which Flavour does the Middle Class like?
Interesting piece published in Monday’s National Post. The opener being the most interesting, that contrary to received wisdom, there is very little to separate the parties. Of course, with the Conservatives you get a little more overt racism (quite a lot more these days as the Niqab takes centre-stage in the conservatives’ campaign); with the Liberals and the NDP you get a little sugar, but not a great deal of difference from the Conservatives.
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Apart from being the longest federal campaign in living memory, this has to be the most chaotically confused; not because of the great variety of ideologies on offer, but rather the lack of them.
For if you cut past the partisan babble, you will discern a striking unanimity among Conservatives, New Democrats and Liberals — whether it be legal restrictions on smoking pot (all contemplate reform to one degree or another), or climate change (the provinces will lead, no matter the election result), or the federal share of sales tax (which will not budge even if tax-and-spenders storm the castle Oct. 19).
The middle class, all major parties agree, is the holy of holies. The only serious discord, on economic matters, is over which of them can most credibly lay claim to loving “everyday Canadians” best and rewarding them most, through the sundry goodies of tax cuts, spending and benefits.
But the “middle class,” as it turns out, is actually a proxy in a more elemental struggle, not over social inequality, but over power. The class distinction is code: it represents the demographic fulcrum, perhaps no more than 10 per cent of eligible voters who in Canada determine the outcome of elections.
When Trudeau emerged from his post-boxing-match triumph in 2012 to gallop to the head of the Liberal party, he did so with rhetoric about the middle class already fully formed.
“The great economic success stories of the recent past are really stories of middle class growth,” he said in his launch speech. “China, India, South Korea and Brazil, to name a few, are growing rapidly because they have added hundreds of millions of people to the global middle class.”
Then more darkly: “The news on that front is not so good at home; I don’t need to tell you that. You, like our fellow Canadians all over the country, live it every day. Canadian families have seen their incomes stagnate, their costs go up, and their debts explode over the past 30 years.”
It was a message repeated in countless of his speeches thereafter; it was soon picked up by Mulcair’s New Democrats. The following year, now Liberal leader, Trudeau recruited journalist Chrystia Freeland, who would become the MP for Toronto-Centre; Freeland was the author of Plutocrats, a best-selling work of popular economics that explored the global phenomenon of rising inequality and income stagnation among the middle class. The NDP found its own inequality specialist, crusading left-wing journalist Linda McQuaig, who published a book with Neil Brooks in 2010 drawing on similar themes, The Trouble With Billionaires.
Though McQuaig and Freeland reached quite different conclusions, both books beat the drum about the spectre of a new “gilded age.” Soon, Liberal and New Democrat MPs could be seen hurrying around Parliament Hill with one book or the other under their arms; papers by the leading researchers in this field — Miles Corak at the University of Ottawa, Mike Veall at McMaster, Kevin Milligan at UBC, Mike Moffat at Western, Stephen Gordon at Laval, David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — became required reading for Canadian politicos.
The data revealed, in a nutshell, that inequality has, indeed, been in a long-term rising trend, since the early 1980s. In examining tax filings going back to the 1920s, Veall found the top one per cent of earners’ share of total income spiked above 15 per cent just before the Great Depression and just before the Second World War, after which it dropped steadily for the next 40 years, reaching a nadir of about eight per cent in the early 1980s, Then, it began to steadily rise, helped by a neo-liberal policy wave across the Western world.
Canadian after-tax household incomes, critics of the middle-class mantra have often pointed out, have risen steadily over the past 30 years and have never been higher than they are today — but this is only because of a prolonged upward spike in the numbers of women working outside the home and a corresponding increase in women’s wages. Median full-year earnings among men, adjusted for inflation, are flat or down since 1980.
It’s a legitimate long-term policy concern. And it might make a compelling case for a sea change in federal tax policy, were it not for this: according to all the data, Canada has been bucking the long-term trend for the past 10 years — since the Conservatives took office. Veall’s data show the sharpest upward spike in inequality of modern times occurred in the 1990s under the Liberals, and topped out in 2005, with about 14 per cent of income in the hands of the top one per cent. That share has since declined to about 12 per cent.
Lest anyone think this is purely coincidental, along came the Parliamentary Budget Officer in May 2014, with a 57-page analysis of the combined effect of federal tax policy changes in 2005-13: “Cumulative tax changes since 2005 have been progressive overall and most greatly impact low-middle income earners … effectively resulting in a four per cent increase in after-tax income.”
Then there’s this: by global measures, Canada’s middle class is doing fine. In April 2014, The New York Times published a study, based on the Luxembourg Income Study database, showing median incomes in Canada had moved ahead of those in the United States and other leading economies. The federal Conservatives, predictably, did cartwheels. The loonie’s recent slump has made us poorer once again, relative to our American cousins. But Canada remains among the world’s wealthiest countries and also among the most equal. Redistributive taxation, implemented by nominal conservatives, is one main cause.
The answer lies in the groundbreaking work of a former Conservative strategist, Patrick Muttart, and the two smart political operatives who’ve adopted his data-driven methods — Brad Lavigne of the NDP and Gerald Butts of the Liberals. It is no surprise, given the three major parties’ strategies are built around market information gathered from the same populace, that their platforms now look similar. What’s remarkable is that there remain any variances at all.
Readers of Susan Delacourt’s superb 2013 book, Shopping for Votes, will be familiar with Muttart’s story. In the lead-up to the 2005-06 campaign, he determined the Tories could make inroads by micro-segmenting their appeal to the “Tim Hortons” crowd, shorthand for middle-and working-class voters. He further discovered that elections often turn on the decisions of a relatively small cohort of swing voters who are apolitical, not interested in process and liable to vote their family’s economic interest first.
Delacourt refers to an article by Henry Olsen, written for the American Enterprise Institute in January 2011, in which Muttart is cited as “perhaps the leading authority on working-class voters in the English-speaking world.”
In Political Marketing in Canada (UBS Press 2012, edited by Alex Marland, Thierry Giasson and Jennifer Lees-Marshment), contributor André Turcotte writes: “The party’s polling program was designed to first understand the composition of the political marketplace and then to identify the values and policy positions of certain segments of the electorate that would maximize their electoral market share.”
After a disappointing result in 2008, as the NDP’s Lavigne recounts in his 2013 book, Building the Orange Wave, the party also embarked on micro-segmented analysis of target voters, resulting in its first concerted move to the centre under Jack Layton and laying the foundation for its breakout in 2011.
The humiliation of that experience for Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals, in turn, caused a fundamental re-assessment of that party’s policy-making, led primarily by Butts. The Liberals’ signature economic platform, which lowers the marginal tax rate for earnings of $44,701-$89,401 and boosts child benefits for middle-income families, is classic Muttartian thinking. It’s a wonder the Tories didn’t propose it themselves, or the NDP for that matter. Each seeks to capture the same voter, after all.
Some will lament this as the end of leadership; others will celebrate it as a great democratizing trend. Either way, it means Canadians will not only get the government they deserve, but also the policies they want — regardless of who wins, by and large. The Oct. 19 vote is not primarily about setting a direction for the nation. It’s about picking a leader. In 2015, that’s the only big decision left.
National Post
The Cribs in Toronto ( A Brief Review)
This one is a true note from underground, but more on that in a minute.
Third time’s the charm for this band. I missed the Cribs once because of a ticket mix-up. I want to see another act the same week, delayed getting a ticket and missed my chance. Last time I got a migraine a few hours before the show, and missed that too. But this time…
The Adelaide Hall is near Adelaide and McCall, but the entrance is round the back in an alley, and then you go downstairs (see?). Once I got inside it was a pleasant surprise. The club might hold 250 at a squeeze and the sight lines were really good. I came in just as the opening band were finishing up, so I had no real sense of them, but judging by the applause, they did the job. .
The Cribs are three brothers, lads from Yorkshire who play an exhilarating, intelligent, knock about punk rock. They played a soaring 70 minute set with old tunes “Hey Scenesters” and “Man’s World” along with tracks from their newly released For All My Sisters. The show was a sweaty moment that seemed to draw from the audience to feed the band’s energy. I’m sorry I missed their two previous appearances, but better late than never, even with no encore.
More Notes on the Power of Dog (Because That’s What People Really Want)
With another mass shooting in a school, I almost started another post about the decadence of capitalism, its cannibalistic and self-destructive tendencies and all that usual, familiar stuff. But nobody really seems to care. The headline in The Onion best summed it up: “No Way To Prevent This” says only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
As WYNC noted, lines pulled from the article are of course familiar:
- ...citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded… that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place.
- “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said _______ resident ________, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations.
- At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
Pretty much Jeb Bush’s response. “”Stuff happens” may be the most callous fuck you uttered in a while. Perhaps, a Trumpian, “Hey, I like people who didn’t get killed.”
So instead, I thought I’d reprint something else from the Onion. A little lighter. A few more laughs.
Bringing a dog into the family can be as difficult as it is rewarding, and pet owners must set rules and boundaries for the newest members of their household. Here are The Onion’s tips for training your dog:
- Start with simple commands like “sit” before working your way up to the more complicated ones like “fill the gaping void in my life.”
- Remember that consistently good behavior will take time. You’re letting a fucking animal loose in your house.
- Set a good example for your dog by never chasing after squirrels, no matter how badly you want to.
- It’s important to establish dominance. Show your dog who’s boss by cleaning up its waste and paying for all its food.
- Consistency is key. Remember to use the same expletive every time your dog chews up your shoes.
- Dogs crave clear direction, so be sure to schedule yours for quarterly performance reviews.
- Remain patient during training sessions with your dog, as English is not its first language.
- Rather than simply saying “no” to your pet, engage it in a constructive dialogue about the moralistic implications of the undesired behavior.
Excerpts from the Left in Britain: 1956-1968
I was thumbing through David Widgery’s compilation The Left in Britain: 1956-1968 last week. It’s an odd little look at the British left in the period between the Hungarian Revolution and the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia and published by Penguin Books. Widgery was a member of IS (now the SWP), and the collection leans towards their worldview, but it is broader than that. Some very interesting, and quite rare leaflets and interviews, but anyone with a working knowledge of the left at that time will enjoy the glossary.
Funny, but not always accurate. Here are a few of my favourites (NB- the entries quoted below are much longer for each in the original are longer
- Socialist Charter – “Pressure group of the Labour Left… Known as the Lunar Marxists in view of their way-out inconsistency.”
- International Socialists – “Tend to regard themselves as a development of the Leninist tradition rather than as Trotskyists. Known for their members sense of humour except when people laugh at them.”
- Socialist Party of Great Britain – “Indefatigable, old-fashioned propagandists of the virtues of socialist society…Denounced the Russian Revolution as state-capitalist within hours of hearing about it.” [Funny comment, but quite untrue]
- English Student Movement – “Tiny Maoist religious grouping which flourished in Sussex University in the late sixties. Marxist-Leninist Children of God who guru is Hardial Bains, a Canadian ‘Internationalist.’ ” [Upon his return to Canada, Bains founded the equally loopy Communist Party of Canada Marxist-Leninist]
- Socialist Labour League – “Orthodox Trotskyist group founded in 1969…members tend to look tense and aggressive.”
- Internationalism – “Sophisticated international ultra-left theoretical journal of the state-capitalist, council-communist persuasion. English edition incorporated into the quarterly World Revolution in May 1974. Attitude to trade unions drawn from Spanish Trotskyist Grandizio Munis’s Unions Against Revoluion.
No doubt, more to follow.
Music Notes September 2015
A little bit of this; a little bit of that
- Wolf Alice – My Love is Cool
Any band that names itself after an Angela Carter short story can’t be all bad can it? Well, yes and no. The album is rather mixed in styles which means that any listener is liked to find some songs that appeal, but not all. I rather like the post-punk garage sounds, but found myself skipping over the ethereal pop numbers at the start of the record. Not bad for a debut.
2. Chrissie Hynde – Stockholm
The album got mixed reviews when it came out, but there’s plenty of timeless Pretenders style pop here. And Ms. Hynde still has a great voice.
3. Chrissie Hynde – Reckless: My Life as a Pretender
Just got this and have only read the first chapter (maybe I should have waited?). It’s a good intro and Chrissie Hynde’s is a great story. The superficial reader in me needs to point out some cool punk pictures scattered throughout the book.
4. David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights – End Times Undone
Fuzzy psyche-pop from the leader of New Zealand’s The Clean. Anything I can add is unnecessary; just listen to it.
5. The Weather Station – Loyalty
This Canadian folk band is a little too mellow for my tastes, but it’s great Sunday morning music. I’m sure it would be a great road trip soundtrack as well.
6. Spacemen 3 – “Big City”
On the Simpsons? Spacemen 3? I confess I stopped watching the show years ago, but I’m going to hunt it down now. Here’s an article by Stereogum on the music in the episode.
7. Michelle Shocked – Arkansas Traveler
Before there was such a thing as Alt-country or Americana, and long before she flipped out, Michelle Shocked recorded this curious little beast. Among the guests on this homage to the musical heritage of the south are Uncle Tupelo and Alison Krause. When it works (“Cotton-eyed joe”) it’s amazing. But some parts are a little embarrassing (“Jump Jim Crow”).
8. Shellac- Dude Incredible
Oh it’s incredible alright. The latest release from Steve Albini’s minimalist trio. Pounding rhythms, shouted vocals. Abrupt tempo changes. don’t listen to it before going to work. Or maybe do.
9. Van Morrison – Playlist (The Very Best of the Bang Masters)
Interesting little comp of Bang material. Featuring an outstanding “TB Sheets” and an alternate take of Brown Eyed Girl. Well worth a listen.
10. X-Ray Spex – Oh bondage, Up Yours!
One of the greatest things to come out of punk. It was that moment of freedom, of liberation. Still brilliant almost four decades later.
Cool.
Ad Astra
I was at the annual Word on the Street festival today at Harbourfront. Imagine, in 2015, you can still have a festival devoted to the idea that there’s still value in putting words on a page (or screen I suppose). Ran into a friend from the Socialist Party of Canada and stopped by the People’s Voice table too.
Wanted to give a shout out to my friends at Ad Astra Comix though who will soon be publishing the North American edition of Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back! Looks good.
People Ain’t no Good – Part 2
Last week, I was driving to work in the fog. It wasn’t terrible, but visibility was reduced. I had my lights on. Many didn’t. I drove more slowly. Many didn’t. As I drew closer to my exit, signs appeared that all lanes on the highway were closed ahead. Luckily, I exited before the jam. The highway didn’t reopen until 4 in the afternoon. Turned out that there was an accident in the fog. An SUV was crushed between two tractor trailers. Two people died. Poor visibility due to fog.
You’d think that might cause some to pause to reflect upon driving habits.
The following day as I stopped at a red light just before I took the exit for the highway. I glanced at the car next to me. Usually you see people checking their phones or texting (how busy are you, really?). No. The guy was eating what appeared to be a bowl of oatmeal. It was definitely cereal, but I’m assuming oatmeal because the consistence would reduce spillage. Really?
I guess high-speed death doesn’t cause that pause after all./ Wonder why that is? Is it the culture we live in or something about driving that causes us yo perform some high risk activities without thought for ourselves or the others who might be caught up in the consequences of our activities. That will be another post I think.
John Cooper Clarke in Toronto; 44 Years in An Open Neck Shirt
The Garrison is a club pretty much without ambiance. Located just west of Ossington on Dundas, it’s a medium-sized room with a small bar at the back, a stage at the front, a few seats on the sides, and unfortunately given Toronto’s recent weather no air-conditioning to speak of. But maybe that’s an appropriate venue for John Cooper Clarke, the bard of Salford, who came to fame playing alongside punk’s legends. Nothing to distract; just the show.
I came early because of a review I’d read about openers Ronley Teper and the Lipliners. The eight-piece ambled on stage around nine and the band struck up a lazy jazz sound, settling quickly into a groove. So far so good, but when Teper began to sing I flinched. Imagine Gollum grabbing the mic, and you might have an idea of the affected vocals. And it continued, an easy background, and manufactured distracting vocals. Applause was polite, but audience conversations dominated. You know those shows where you feel the band is having more fun that you? Three songs later, Teper had donned falsies to sing about breast implants, a song which seemed to boil down to her wading through the audience encouraging people to yell out alternative names for breasts. And the band played on. But then came a surprise. The final number shed the pretentiousness of the rest of the set, and built slowly drawing the audience in. A great end to their set, so why wasn’t the rest like that?
John Cooper Clarke took the stage about fifteen minutes later, and held court for the next 75. When he wasn’t reading his poems, Dr. Clarke was cracking jokes or talking about his long career. Part stand-up comedian, full-time poet and entertainer. Clarke took the audience as he walked on stage, and never let go.
Clarke performed many of his greatest moments including “Beasley Street” (leaving out the great line: “Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies in a box on Beasley Street”), and the gentrified “Beasley Boulevard”, “I Wanna Be Yours,” and “Chickentown,” at breakneck speed which had him coughing through sections. I know the rapid-fire delivery is a hallmark of his shows, but they had me wishing for the slower versions which appeared on the records with the Invisible Girls.
But one little complaint. In 2015, jokes about Alzheimer’s, necrophilia and misogynist comments about women don’t work. If he’d thrown in a few mother-in-law jokes, I could have imagined I had gone to a Les Dawson show by mistake. Make no mistake, Clarke is a genius with an amazing gift for language, but these little points made it feel like something I thought we’d left behind.
On October 16, Clarke will be releasing a 3 CD/DVD book set called Anthologia. Something every home should have.
