General thread about Jacobin Mag + American railroads discussion

Nothing more than left-keynesianism redressed with pop-art and a red paint. International Socialist Review was independent and international. It published european left-wing Marxists who were not popular even in Europe. Its goal was really international; as many members of the ISR proved with their staunch internationalism during the WW1. ISR inquired and challenged and stayed away from frontism and populism. Jacobin on the other hand is a pet project of a stratum of disgruntled professional activists, single issue campaigner political science graduates, young AFL-CIO organizers etc, and their professors i.e. an increasingly precarious segment of the establishment left. Due to the crisis their social position and welfare is threatened and they fear for their own future more than they trust the working class. In that sense they resemble more to Syriza and Podemos. Jacobin (as an aspiring representative of this group) doesn't challenge capitalism/state in a systematic, organized and radical way. Instead it provides a platform/a kind of eclectic united front for left-technocrats to prepare themselves for future opportunities.

So if the ISR swam against the stream the Jacobin is just riding on the tide. Saying that, having International Socialist Review reborn in a new form would be absolutely amazing...

I wholeheartedly agree with Mikail. There's no Mary Marcy at Jacobin. And no anti-war internationalists like her either. It smacks too strongly of grad students in the ascendancy of their careers.

Personally, I still read the The New Yorker out of my neighbor's recycling bin. Some of their coverage of Silicon Valley tech is the best stuff I've read.

Not socialist in any way. But pretty. And that's something. I guess.

was tempted, read a few things, stopped. i agree with all above.

I remember an article from the original ISR at the time of the split in the Socialist Party (1914 maybe?).

It's a story where a Socialist farmer in Nebraska sees a notice in the paper that anyone who supports "direct action" will be expelled from the Party. He's not sure what all the fancy talk about "direct action" means, but thinks back to when he was a homesteader in the 1870s, building his house, and had to fight off the local Native American residents. He reasons that that's probably what "direct action" is and supposes that the hullabaloo from the right wing is actually directed against reasonable folks like him.*

That was the glorious left wing of American Social Democracy at its height.

Here are some things I like about Jacobin:
It's ambitious - as far as I can tell, no other left-wing publication in the US actually wants to have a mass readership. This is the thing I like most about it.
It runs pieces that talk about work and workers, in ways that are readable - some I agree with more than others, but again this is actually a pretty rare thing for an American leftist rag.
It's not tied closely to any particular sect or even one sect's outlook. I agree with Juan that the left-DSA thing is pretty accurate for most of the editors and probably the more active readers as well, but they run a pretty wide gamut of stuff. They actually run interesting articles, about interesting topics, arranged in a visually interesting way. Again, almost unique on the American left.

I want to see Jacobin succeed because I think their success could inspire competition. It would be great to see other left-wing magazines with similar ambition and production value, but centered around different subjects or political positions.

The last thing that I find interesting about them is that they've had success where so many micro-sects have failed, and are a successful example of what Hal Draper called a "political center" as a nucleus which could completely avoid the route of the micro-sect.

If some comrades think the politics of Jacobin are shit, then outperform them with a politically better magazine. But otherwise some of the comments seem colored by envy, not to mention removed from reality - the idea of a group of grad students "In the ascendancy of their career", or preparing themselves to become "left technocrats" makes for great comedy but poor political analysis.

*I've been trying to find this ISR article for years, and haven't been able to - does it ring a bell to anyone?

OliverTwister

*I've been trying to find this ISR article for years, and haven't been able to - does it ring a bell to anyone?

No. Sounds like an urban legend.

Jacobin is like junk food: pretty packaging, satisfies all our unhealthy cravings on the tongue, but once it's in your gut for a while you're not only unsatisfied, but actually so unfulfilled that you're craving more junk. Break the habit and find something wholesome.

OliverTwister

I want to see Jacobin succeed because I think their success could inspire competition.

This is a joke, right? A little competition to bring out better commodities?

I actually got in an argument with an older Bordigaist ("Tugboat," who Oliver has met), where I ended up defending Jacobin. He claimed that none of the authors had ever worked, even if they're writing about work conditions and the working class (erroneously assuming students, professors, journalists and bureaucrats aren't workers). I pointed out some piecards who used to work, but had a hard time finding articles by workers in the sector they're writing about. So his criticism has validity.

And why do we need more magazines? The medium is dying, as much as that saddens me. I'd much prefer to see projects like Stan Weir's Singlejack Little Books. Portable printed works written by workers about their sector, explicitly for other workers.

Hieronymous

OliverTwister

*I've been trying to find this ISR article for years, and haven't been able to - does it ring a bell to anyone?

No. Sounds like an urban legend.

Jacobin is like junk food: pretty packaging, satisfies all our unhealthy cravings on the tongue, but once it's in your gut for a while you're not only unsatisfied, but actually so unfulfilled that you're craving more junk. Break the habit and find something wholesome.

Where is the "wholesome" food that you suggest? Aufheben? Insurgent notes? Boring. I mean, I'm glad they exist, and I like to read them sometimes, but the world would be so much more boring if all we had was quinoa and black beans, flavored with Bragg's amino acids (and on Friday night, perhaps some Sri Racha).

Also, as Juan confirmed after you, the ISR article I'm describing is real, not an urban legend. I read it years ago, but haven't been able to find it since then. Also, what's so incredible about the American left of the 1910's uncritically engaging with farmer/homesteader populism and ignoring the intensified genocide that accompanied the recent Westward expansion?

OliverTwister

I want to see Jacobin succeed because I think their success could inspire competition.

This is a joke, right? A little competition to bring out better commodities?

I actually got in an argument with an older Bordigaist ("Tugboat," who Oliver has met), where I ended up defending Jacobin. He claimed that none of the authors had ever worked, even if they're writing about work conditions and the working class (erroneously assuming students, professors, journalists and bureaucrats aren't workers). I pointed out some piecards who used to work, but had a hard time finding articles by workers in the sector they're writing about. So his criticism has validity.

And why do we need more magazines? The medium is dying, as much as that saddens me. I'd much prefer to see projects like Stan Weir's Singlejack Little Books. Portable printed works written by workers about their sector, explicitly for other workers.

OK. Jacobin published an article about the importance of the oil strike, which presumably wasn't written by an refinery worker. My own organization, the IWW, completely ignored the oil strike. They published an article about right-to-work in Wisconsin, written by the co-presidents of the Teaching Assistants Association at UW, so presumably they work at UW and are affected by right-to-work (the article was favorable to the ISO, but I have no idea if anybody else in Wisconsin has written anything). The IWW also ignored right-to-work in Wisconsin.

Lest I appear to be throwing stones only in my own glass house, a quick look at the most recent Insurgent Notes shows nothing about work or workers except for a review of a book about the Detroit Newspaper Strike.

Maybe it's my inner bolshevik, but if there aren't any revolutionaries working in oil refineries writing about the strike, I'd still rather acknowledge its importance and debate how to intervene in it. If "revolutionaries" want to ignore what's happening in Wisconsin, I'd rather read a report from left-social democrats than join in ignoring it.

Your criticism that Jacobin only features non-workers writing about places they don't work, is only valid if the quinoa-and-black-beans communists that you support are doing anything different. Which they aren't, because the only radical press in the US that emphasizes direct workplace reporting is the Industrial Worker.

Anyways, if the magazine is a dying form, why is Jacobin succeeding? (Perhaps it's because they have been a hybrid on-and-offline publication from the start?) Why criticize them specifically when there are so many boring magazines which are not succeeding?

Why do you bring up Insurgent Notes? That's just a pet project of a single person who's financially secure and doesn't need to work.

As for the USW refinery workers strike, the only credible information I found about it was from rank-and-file workers themselves (a couple of whom identify as "revolutionaries," whatever than means in a non-revolutionary time). All the other stuff, including Jacobin, was fluff about Naomi Klein's book, peak oil, social-democratic public ownership schemes and abstract contemplations about its relevance to climate change (none of which are irrelevant, but the main issues in the strike were around safety and workers' ability to shut down the production process for grievances over these safety concerns).

I found better coverage of the refinery worker strike in the Wall Street Journal.

And please stop putting words in people's mouths (I wrote "wholesome" metaphorically, not to start a debate about gluten-free food, trans-fats and veganism). Is this your "inner Bolshevik" overriding your inner Menshevik?

So the words that you use, I shouldn't quote them? The metaphors that you make, I shouldn't point out their conservatism?

Come on, the thing reads as if it were written by and for "radical" political economists. Plus, I don't know about you but I'm not all that enamored of the Jacobins-- it was after all the government of the radical bourgeoisie who, under Robespierre, did attack the commune. If you want a revolutionary club, go for the Cordeliers

1) There's a reason why the figure in the masthead is dark-skinned, not light. Whatever the founder may have taken as inspiration when he started it, they've made a lot of effort to tie the name to CLR James' Black Jacobins. Now OK maybe that's appropriation or whatever, but Jacobin doesn't just mean Robespierre. Which leads me to...

2) The terms 'Jacobin' and 'Gironde' were used during the entire period of the Second International to refer to the left-wing and the opportunists of the movement. Again perhaps it's not a great term, but it's a term with a lot of history behind it.

OliverTwister

So the words that you use, I shouldn't quote them? The metaphors that you make, I shouldn't point out their conservatism?

Fellow traveler (Bolshevik or whatever), you need a time out.

OliverTwister

1) There's a reason why the figure in the masthead is dark-skinned, not light. Whatever the founder may have taken as inspiration when he started it, they've made a lot of effort to tie the name to CLR James' Black Jacobins. Now OK maybe that's appropriation or whatever, but Jacobin doesn't just mean Robespierre. Which leads me to...

2) The terms 'Jacobin' and 'Gironde' were used during the entire period of the Second International to refer to the left-wing and the opportunists of the movement. Again perhaps it's not a great term, but it's a term with a lot of history behind it.

Yeah, and the Bolsheviks referred to themselves as Red Jacobins and all that, and it only showed how fucked up the Bolsheviks were; how incapable they had become of distinguishing the proletarian revolution from that of radical capitalists.

But whatever. That stuff about the Jacobins was supposed to be a bit humorous-- although I much prefer the Cordeliers.

They publish an interesting article worth reading from time to time, but politically they are rather tame. And as a grad student, I'd agree with the analysis that it's a magazine for up and coming academics. Certainly reads that way....

Another good Jacobin article I read the other day:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/logistics-industry-organizing-labor/
It's about logistics and class composition

Looks marginally better than Red Pepper.

Also worth pointing out that they've published stuff critical of Podemos, and that they're probably the most reliable source for information in English on and from Syriza's left wing and internal critics.

Whether or not Syriza's left wing is worthwhile could certainly be an interesting debate. But they're certainly not a mouthpiece for Tsipras or Varoufakis.

ETA: Frankly one of the worst things they've published is this crap, from Staughton Lynd. But Staughton gets published on Libcom too, so not worth a boycott.

In an interview with the New Left Review, the founder of Jacobin talks about it representing the middle ground "between Leninism and social democracy" and describes himself and some of the contributors as the "left-wing of the Democratic Socialists of America". That's actually a pretty good description.

Doesn't this kind of make any further critique almost unnecessary. Between "Leninism and Social Democracy"? What's that supposed to be? Like between the rock and the hard-place? Like between scylla and charybdis? Like between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party in Allende's Unidad Popular government?

And "left wing of the Democratic Socialists of America"? Wasn't that Michael Harrington's group? Tucked into the pocket of the Democratic Party in the US? Endorsing the US in Vietnam? Or is this a different Democratic Socialists of America?

DSA, reaching out to the youth:
https://dsausa.nationbuilder.com/swagshop

iexist, what is ulatra-leftism to you? after checking out there website i see nothing that would give me the impression that they are ultra-left or left-communism.

Juan,

The "headline" on the thread was "what do you think about Jacobin...?" "Not much" is the answer, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is their self-description. Good production values, interesting articles? OK, in the US The Nation has interesting articles and good production values, plus, if you've got the green, you can take a two week cruise in the Caribbean with your favorite liberals. Includes all you can eat buffets, and a "swim-up" bar in the Olympic size pool.

I think calling yourself the "left wing" of the DSA, a group that did support the US in Vietnam, and is tucked firmly into the pocket of the big D Democrats is enough to warrant dismissal-- and all the references to CLR James Black Jacobins, which work has serious problems of its own, is pretty much irrelevant, given in particular James' record in participating in bourgeois governments.

I do think on the question of Syriza and Greece is a litmus test, like the Unidad Popular in Chile was the litmus test 1970-1973. And like Chile, the outcome of the struggle in Greece will set the tenor for class struggle over the next 25 years.

It is essential for communists to take Syriza, Podemos, and Jacobin journal in the US very seriously. They are not just tendencies "in the middle" between bourgeoisie and the working class since there can be no such middle ground. This illusion of middle ground itself is the creation of the stagnant nature of the contemporary class struggle. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote opportunism is a species that grow only in slow streams and muddy waters.

And this professional activist/success hungry academic type is the class that tend to become more aggressive in historical conditions like we are living through. Their historical mission is to smoother the edge of struggles, if possible. As Pannekoek wrote;

A ruling class cannot voluntarily give up its own predominance; for this predominance appears to it the sole foundation of the world order. It must defend this predominance; and this it can do only so long as it has hope and self-confidence. But actual conditions cannot give self-confidence to the capitalist class; therefore it creates for itself a hope that has no support in reality. If this class were ever to see clearly the principles of social science, it would lose all faith in its own possibilities; it would see itself as an aging despot with millions of persecuted victims marching in upon him from all directions and shouting his crimes into his ears. Fearfully he shuts himself in, closes his eyes to the reality and orders his hirelings to invent fables to dispel the awful truth. And this is exactly the way of the bourgeoisie. In order not to see the truth, it has appointed professors to soothe its troubled spirit with fables. Pretty fables they are, which glorify its overlordship, which dazzle its eyes with visions of an eternal life and scatter its doubts and dreams as so many nightmares. Concentration of capital? Capital is all the time being democratised through the increasing distribution of stocks and bonds. Growth of the proletariat? The proletariat is at the same time growing more orderly, more tractable. Decay of the middle class? Nonsense; a new middle class is rising to take the place of the old.

This is from an excellent essay by Pannekoek, which was published in English first in the ISR. (here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1909/new-middle-class.htm)

Lefty professors, activists campaigning for single issues, graduate students with a lot of conscience and a huge appetite for competition and career; this strata constitutes the wide pool that bourgeoisie picks its soothsayers from. As Pannekoek wrote:

All the regular bourgeois prejudices strike deepest root in this class, further, because its members are nourished on the study of unscientific theories. They regard as scientific truth that which existed among the small bourgeois as subjective, unreasoned opinion. They have great notions of their own education and refinement, feel themselves elevated far above “the masses”; it naturally never occurs to them that the ideals of these masses may be scientifically correct and that the “science” of their professors may be false. As theorizers, seeing the world always as a mass of abstractions, laboring always with their minds, knowing nothing of little of material activities, they are fairly convinced that minds control the world. This notion shuts them out from the understanding of Socialist theory. When they see the masses of laborers and hear of Socialism they think of a crude “levelling down” which would put an end to their own social and economic advantages. In contrast to the workers they think of themselves as persons who have something to lose, and forget, therefore, the fact that they are being exploited by the capitalists.

Take this altogether and the result is that a hundred causes separate this new middle class from Socialism. Its members have no independent interest which could lead them to an energetic defense of capitalism. But their interest in Socialism is equally slight. They constitute an intermediate class, without definite class ideals, and therefore they bring into the political struggle an element which is unsteady and incalculable.

In great social disturbances, general strikes, e. g., they may sometimes stand by the workers and so increase their strength; they will be the more likely to do this in cases in which such a policy is directed against reaction. On other occasions they may side with the capitalists. Those of them in the lower strata will make common cause with a “reasonable” Socialism, such as is represented by the Revisionists. But the power which will overthrow capitalism can never come from anywhere outside the great mass of proletarian.

Today from Gezi revolt to Occupy and Indignados, the proletariat could not yet form itself as a united class. it could not solidfy its self-confidence. Since the proletariat cannot see communism on the horizon yet, this class of professorial elite is seizing the day. They are forming technocratic parties with left-nationalist slogans and slowly succeeding in countries where the bourgeois illusions like "democracy" or "stability" are openly collapsing. They are cynically and ignorantly stealing the names and concepts of the past proletarian organizations and eclectically coating their statist theories with those. On their part this is of course dangerous business. Raising the dead spirits and all that. But anyway this is what Jacobin and the likes are; they are so low in the business of bourgeois lackey-ism and their numbers grew so much during the long years of post-WW2 "prosperity" that they feel the heat of the crisis most. This already dying "new middle class" is all the more dangerous because it is so shameless in manipulating Marxist and anarchist theories for its own benefits and so bold and shameless in defending its bourgeois program. Not even fascists are so self-confident. That is why I think Jacobin and its kins represent a huge danger today.

I hear that the professorial elite is behind the missing Malaysian Airlines flight too!

Since Pannekoek became a part-time professor in 1925, and then a full-time professor in 1932, I guess his work from 1909 is alright. But if we want to be rigorous, we should reject Lenin as Philosopher (1938) and Worker's Councils (1947).

Also, I was surprised to find that there is a "class" of professorial elites! What would Bordiga say about the discovery of a new class?

OliverTwister

What would Bordiga say about the discovery of a new class?

Who knows what he would say, but his inner-Social-Democrat would be swayed by the Noam Chomsky testimonial and Yanis Varoufakis articles and would bust out some plastic for the $295 lifetime subscription (but really for the "special gift"; I could easily imagine him wearing the aesthetically quite beautiful new Jacobin t-shirt to a Strike Debt meeting or the Left Forum or a Fight for $15 civil disobedience at a McDonald’s shareholder meeting). His eager reading of all the books published in partnership with Random House and Henry Holt & Co. would rekindle his desire for cultural polemic and he'd join one of the study groups, coming out as a professional leftist intellectual pushing -- from the left -- for DSA (and Syriza, Podemos, and the Jacobin journal itself) to move in a more "reasonable" Socialist direction.

Pannekoek was also an astronomer, diverting the working masses attention from the everyday struggle to the ethereal world of stars!

jura

Pannekoek was also an astronomer, diverting the working masses attention from the everyday struggle to the ethereal world of stars!

Sky pilot!

He's third from the left. The other four around him are the editorial board of Jacobin. Bordiga stayed on campus for a 3-way debate between the ISO, Richard Wolff, and Platypus.

Bordiga would say the same thing that he did when the idea of a "managerial class" first started flowing out of France in the '50s: that new classes enter the stage of history with a bang, and not a whimper.

I'm disappointed to think of all the implications of the professorial elite class analysis. I've always thought Mike Davis was alright but now I realize that City of Quartz is really just another attempt by a power hungry academic to keep the proletariat from coming to consciousness during the crisis of capital!

Hey have you guys read the CGI's analysis of Aids? It has about the same level of relationship to reality, and the same chance for changing reality, as an analysis that considers any publication less orthodox than Aufheben to a conspiracy on the part of the "professorial elite".

OliverTwister

I'm disappointed to think of all the implications of the professorial elite class analysis. I've always thought Mike Davis was alright but now I realize that City of Quartz is really just another attempt by a power hungry academic to keep the proletariat from coming to consciousness during the crisis of capital!

Is he really "power hungry," as his academic-activist-celebrity and 6-figure salary is well established? Or are his grad students, the ones doing all the research? Who's most concerned with their careers? And who's labor is being most exploited?

And you should be disappointed with all Davis rubbish about "surplus population," and other ahistorical nonsense trying to make working class immigrants the passive victims of history. But Davis never denied his social-democratic soft-Trot politics.

Wait a second, I'm confused: are his grad students passive victims or active ascendant future left technocrats?

I think weed could solve 99% of the problems in this thread.

OliverTwister

Wait a second, I'm confused: are his grad students passive victims or active ascendant future left technocrats?

Future middle managers, the sensitive kind, who want to create micro-finance schemes to solve Third World (whatever that is) poverty.

It has about the same level of relationship to reality, and the same chance for changing reality, as an analysis that considers any publication less orthodox than Aufheben to a conspiracy on the part of the "professorial elite".

Don't much care for Aufheben either.

Look, the issue is... what's the issue? Jacobin is exactly as it has been described, as it describes itself-- an effort from and appealing to those who imagine there is even such a thing as the left wing of DSA, which organization is the official US affiliate of the Socialist International.

That's all there is to it.

And yeah "hedging" on Syriza, which includes offering support to a "left-wing," is literally supporting capitalism. That may be "between Leninism and social-democracy" but it's occupying "middle ground" in the territory called capital.

OT;

I thought Pannekoek was pretty clear with his conception of the new middle class, which has nothing to do with the theories about the "managerial class". If I was your professor I would have to pass you with a mere D, and that is only for your eagerness. Respect for people with status and hostility to radical working class left outside of the academy are unfortunately not enough for a perfect humanities career (even though they are ok for the a beginning) :( Sorry...

OK, what do youse guys think of this?

I think it's a crock of shit, but maybe that's just me.

Juan Conatz

Haven't read it. Don't really have any interest in Die Linke, and I can imagine what a Jacobin interview with them would be. Although I'm not really sure if you have a point here, other than maybe than trying to get me and Oliver to denounce it to ease the fears of our ultraleft elders. Should I plan on a series of Hail Bakunins?

Nah, not necessary. Don't much care for Bakunin.

You asked what we thought of Jacobin. It claims to be a political site. So I wondered what people think of the politics it presents; the content. My mistake.

what is ultra leftism then? is it a tendency that advocates entryism? cause i think you may have it confused with trotskyism.

I had always understand the ultra left as a pejorative towards left communism.

Jacobin is one of the best designed and easiest to read left mags around, I keep forgetting to subscribe to it...

My only question is who is the audience and why do they/we require it?

Outrageous!

OliverTwister

Outrageous!

It is a pretty bad article, but it's hyperbolic to call it outrageous. Railroad workers are not increasingly rejecting the old “jobs versus environment” story yet, but the conferences were hopefully a start in that direction. As the RWU sisters and brothers pointed out, the industry is still plagued by "redneck chic" with ol' timers grandfathered into wages and conditions making them almost a labor aristocracy. So they often take reactionary, defensive positions when they feel their jobs are threatened by environmental regulation.

One of the railroaders said that the questions in Trish Kahle's interview were "loaded," as she kept trying to peg them on the question of "political power" and "the state." Since that wasn't germane to the interview, they simply blew it off. But it was clear she was proving her bona fides to the ISO (as is also demonstrated in her sloppily argued polemics in the Socialist Worker -- and her strident defense of "SEIU leadership," some of whom are ISO cadre).

I find the on-line version to be interesting and informative. Doesn't mean I agree with it, but there's some awright stuff posted.

I'd be happy if any other left-wing source promoted, supported, or paid attention to RWU. The IWW first of all.

OliverTwister

I'd be happy if any other left-wing source promoted, supported, or paid attention to RWU. The IWW first of all.

The presumption in the interview is that IWW-style organizing is wrong, because it has neither a transitional program nor aspirations for state power.

Compare this lame article with the ones on RWU in Labor Notes. The latter might have a pro-trade union bias (as in not critical enough of BLET, SMART and the other 11 craft unions), but they lack the slightly-veiled ISO ideology.

1. The explosion in Lac Megantic was due to, IMO, negligence. Corporate negligence, operating negligence, and personal negligence. All you need to know is that the locomotive engineer left the train on a 1% downhill grade, with the air brakes on the train in the release position; without a single handbrake applied to any one of the 77 tank cars. The errors, violations of operating procedures and practices that led to this are legion, absolutely legion. They might have something to do with the "great deregulation" after the "praise the lord" Staggers Act, and the way secondary railroads operate to maintain profits, but you don't get any of that from this article.

2. "bomb trains" is not a new term; and hazardous material releases are not new events. More than 30 years ago, the Illinois Central Gulf (now part of CN) used to run a train from the petrochemical plants in Geismar, La to Chicago that was known throughout the ICG system as "the rolling bomb." This train derailed around a curve, due to multiple rule violations by the locomotive engineer (including drinking, letting his girlfriend sit on his lap and operate the train), and the resulting explosions required the evacuation of 5500 people.

3. The Class 1 carriers have indeed "admitted" that crew fatigue is a problem, and FRA has altered the hours-of-service regulations to reduce the number of "higher risks" shifts that employees can work, and shifts of any sort that can be worked in sequence. One of the problems that hasn't been addressed is medical fitness, including testing for sleep apnea. Part of the obstacle here is the labor organizations who envision wholesale disqualifications of employees if such fitness standards are developed, or management using it to retaliate against workers. Another part of the problem is that there is a record of management using programs (such as drug and alcohol testing) in the attempt to intimidate workers.

4. The operation of freight trains with 2 person or 3 person crews is no guarantee of increased safety. The history of railroading in North America is littered, and I mean littered, with the wrecks of trains that had 2 or 3 or 4 people in the operating cab.

Automatic train control, automatic speed control, positive train control are guarantees of increased safety.

5. "The oil industry is dying"??? What fucking planet are these people on? Look at the portion of GDP, capital investment, and profits that go to oil and gas extraction worldwide and tell me that again.

6. Yes, there are grade crossing accidents. How many people there are in a locomotive has never been shown to have any importance regarding grade crossing collisions. But this

Let’s take a scenario with a single-employee train crew. So as the operator, I would throw the train into emergency, contact the dispatcher. While I’m waiting to hear from the dispatcher and relay that information, the train is stopped, and I’m wasting valuable time because I can’t go back there until I finish talking to the dispatcher.

really takes the cake.

First, making a radio report to the train dispatcher which includes identifying your train, your location, and what has occurred will take all of 30 seconds. Maybe. Then consider this:

You are on a freight train traveling at 40 mph carrying 10,000 tons. You see a tanker truck on the grade crossing 1000 feet ahead of you. Guess what you do NOT do? You DO NOT PUT the train into emergency braking. You absolutely do not do that as a) you will never stop in time anyway b) emergency braking will set up in-train forces along the length of your train that will break couplers, draft gears, and probably lead to a derailment c) your best bet of surviving the collision with the tanker is if you are going fast enough that the lead locomotive makes it through the collision before the gasoline or whatever is in the truck ignites. I know a locomotive engineer who survived such a collision because he did just that-- he put the throttle into "run 8" (highest power) and hit the deck. The gasoline exploded behind his locomotive.

Moreover, even if you put the train in emergency, you stop say 2500 feet beyond the point of collision, it will take you at least ten and probably 15 minutes to walk back to the collision. What's the point to immediately get off the locomotive? To render assistance? Not likely you'll be able to do that in a timely manner even with 2 or 3 people on the crew. Inspect your train? There's no rush for that. Clear the crossing? Well, until certain measurements are taken, like where the locomotive stopped, the locomotive probably is going to stay right where it is. To discover if a tank car in your train is leaking? Ummhh, guess what? Grade crossings are equipped with information giving a telephone number to contact the railroad in case of emergency. By the time any crew member gets back to the point of collision, any leak occurring at that location will have been reported. Does having a multiple person crew make recovery easier if the train has separated, or has a damaged car that must be set to a siding track? Absolutely, but that's not an issue of public safety.

Grade crossing collisions, unless we have a case of intentional or unintentional negligence, or grade crossing protection failure, are caused by the road vehicle drivers. Or as a locomotive engineer told me on my first road run back in the day, "I've never seen one of these locomotives jump off the track and chase a car up its own driveway."

I happen to support 2 man minimum crews for freight trains of a certain size operating over a certain distance. I don't think you can go to 1 person crews until the technology is such that you can safely operate the train from a remote location, like a drone. But arguing for multiple person crews because of the frequency of grade-crossing accidents does nothing to eliminate the grade crossing accident, which is where the focus should be.

7. Yes, railroading can be dangerous-- mass and velocity equal a lot of force and even more energy. However, look at the records of US railroads over the last 35 years-- there has been a systematic decline in accidents, hazardous material releases, collisions, fatalities. Now the need for profit is the need for profit, but there is simply no linear correspondence between higher profit and lower safety. To argue that is to argue that exact twin of the "free market" rangers who argue that "deregulation" and lack of government supervision have made the railroads safer, when in fact it has been the development and enforcement of effective regulations, and advanced technologies that have contributed to the improved safety.

8. "And so railroad workers are relatively secure."???? Huh, really? Industry employment plummets over the course of 50 years, while ton-miles soar, and the workers are "secure"?

9.

So I guess I tend to think that the more environmental protections we have, actually the better the job situation will be. Some of the best protections we can have in the particular issue of what they’re calling “bomb trains,” or oil trains, is better track maintenance. Well, that requires more people on the job. Shorter trains is another way to prevent these trains from derailing. Well, that requires more crews to transport the crude oil.

Better track maintenance, like better anything, requires improved productivity of labor, i.e. the use of advanced technologies to detect flaws. Ultra-sound, "machine visions," vertical and horizontal load detectors, are far more capable of detecting flaws before they become "condemnable" than the human being. Having 1000 track inspectors instead of 100 inspectors assigned to 100 miles of track does not mean you are improving your track or your inspections, as it's all about time-- the time on track the inspectors can get will the railroad operates. To maximize the time available, you need to utilize automatic systems, mobile systems, sensors embedded in the tracks and affixed to the rolling stock.

As for the shorter trains-- the "bomb trains"-- with the Bakken crude generally operate as "unit trains" and are not of the massive length of container trains. There is no indication that train length or train handling by the locomotive engineers (use of the brake, or throttle, in a fashion that sets up dangerous in train "draft" forces) has played a part in the derailments involving this oil. The Bakken crude itself is highly volatile, with more dissolved gas than other crudes. Until this month, the crude was NOT required to be stabilized (have its volatility, as indicated by the pressure exerted by the gas, reduced). North Dakota recently enacted regulations requiring stabilization of crude prior to shipment. The derailment in West Virginia was of unstabilized crude from Bakken. Eagle Ford crude is stabilized although almost all of it moves by pipeline.

Other than these minor points, the article is spot on.

I heard the founder (Bhaskara) give a talk in San Francisco. He defined their purpose straight-away as state socialist, coming out of left wing of DSA. That said, the mag has some half-way decent articles & does try to produce stuff that is clearly written. They had a recent piece on Taylorism that i thought was pretty good.

I was at the Railroad Workers United conference. Clearly an event organized by a "militant minority" among railway workers, who do want to develop a worker/enviro alliance.

Grade crossing accidents are a product of actions by highway drivers, and investment in grade separations is really a subsidy to auto & truck travel, when you get right down to it. Irrespective of whether the arguments given for two person crews based on such accidents are a good argument, a person who doesn't support the workers in the struggle against one-person crews puts himself on the side of capital, the other side of the class line. Maybe Artesian should keep that in mind next time.

iexist

Hieronymous

OliverTwister

I'd be happy if any other left-wing source promoted, supported, or paid attention to RWU. The IWW first of all.

The presumption in the interview is that IWW-style organizing is wrong, because it has neither a transitional program nor aspirations for state power.

Compare this lame article with the ones on RWU in Labor Notes. The latter might have a pro-trade union bias (as in not critical enough of BLET, SMART and the other 11 craft unions), but they lack the slightly-veiled ISO ideology.

Are u RWU?

Don't work in the industry, but am a "solidarity" member. Since we're interested in global production and supply chains, my comrades and I have worked quite closely with RWU. Like participating in meetings of the local RWU chapter, along with railroaders participating in our logistics study group. It's become a healthy cross-pollination, with the goal of supporting class struggle and solidarity down global supply chains (since our group includes maritime workers and others formerly active in longshore organizing).

syndicalistcat

Grade crossing accidents are a product of actions by highway drivers, and investment in grade separations is really a subsidy to auto & truck travel, when you get right down to it. Irrespective of whether the arguments given for two person crews based on such accidents are a good argument, a person who doesn't support the workers in the struggle against one-person crews puts himself on the side of capital, the other side of the class line. Maybe Artesian should keep that in mind next time.

Reading comprehension not your strong point? I explicitly stated that I support 2 person crews for main line freight service. Perhaps you should have kept that in mind this time.

Making a weak argument for a position, i.e. grade crossings, is not exactly a revolutionary strategy. Same thing with those who want to argue that railroads have sacrificed safety over the last 30 years.

Same arguments were made when cabooses were removed from trains-- about essential role the staffed caboose played in train operations. Of course, no decline in safety followed.

Do railroads has a "calculus" a "cost benefit" matrix regarding safety programs, safety technologies, safety devises. Absolutely.

What you need to remember is that no matter how "radical" the argument might appear, all these demands are, first and foremost, bargaining positions in contract negotiations and are not likely to become anything more than bargaining positions in contract negotiations.

So... you want to make an argument for 2 person crews? That's fine. I do too. I can make good ones. Anybody trying to tell you that crew size will change response times re auto collisions is simply making shit up.

In my personal opinion, the advances for class struggle are to be found elsewhere; other than in trying to support bargaining positions with false or mistaken claims. Keep that in mind next time.

iexist

Hieronymous

iexist

Hieronymous

The presumption in the interview is that IWW-style organizing is wrong, because it has neither a transitional program nor aspirations for state power.

Compare this lame article with the ones on RWU in Labor Notes. The latter might have a pro-trade union bias (as in not critical enough of BLET, SMART and the other 11 craft unions), but they lack the slightly-veiled ISO ideology.

Are u RWU?

Don't work in the industry, but am a "solidarity" member. Since we're interested in global production and supply chains, my comrades and I have worked quite closely with RWU. Like participating in meetings of the local RWU chapter, along with railroaders participating in our logistics study group. It's become a healthy cross-pollination, with the goal of supporting class struggle and solidarity down global supply chains (since our group includes maritime workers and others formerly active in longshore organizing).

What group is that?

The Global Supply Chains study group, which contributes to the Empire Logistics mapping project (here's our blog on libcom).

rail workers piss all over the far left in terms of organising capacity.

This thread has not done well for the whole "at least we're not trainspotters* position, in fairness.

The railroad discussion is interesting to me as I'm trying to get a job with one of the class 1 railroads right now.

S. Artesian-
"I happen to support 2 man minimum crews for freight trains of a certain size operating over a certain distance. I don't think you can go to 1 person crews until the technology is such that you can safely operate the train from a remote location, like a drone."

This makes it sound like you don't have a problem with a 1 person crew in some cases or even drone trains if the tech gets better. Is that the case? Are you currently a railroad worker?

EDIT: Removed Post

One person crews, using RCL (remote control locomotive) technology is/are a reality on Canadian, US railroads. Such reduced crew operations are usually restricted to yard service, or local industry switching service.

Do I "have a problem" with that? What do you mean by problem? Do I think it's unsafe? No, I do not. Analysis shows lower accident/injury rates with RCL operations.

Do I think RCL use is intensified capitalist exploitation of labor power? Sure thing.

When workers themselves oppose RCL operation as a threat to their livelihoods, do I, should we support that struggle? Sure thing, but that opposition in itself is/ becomes a dead end. It becomes a bargaining position, that's all.

Drone trains? Look, I don't support capitalism in any way shape or form, so if the bourgeoisie develop tech that supports drone trains, I don't support the bourgeoisie using drone trains, no more than I support the bourgeoisie closing a factory. BUT, I do not support the bourgeoisie opening a factory either. If we oppose capitalism laying off workers, that doesn't mean we then support capitalism hiring workers.

My objection has been to making bad, and false, arguments re safety, when the real issue is class struggle. Claiming that railroad profits correspond to declines in safety over the last 30 years is just bullshit, pure unadulterated bullshit. I have a problem with bullshit.

I think there is in fact a conflict between profit & safety, and not only on railways. I recall very well the big crash on Santa Fe in Corona in the '90s. Three person crew eastbound was in the siding inching forward at 5 mph, waiting for inbound for Los Angeles. Outbound train over ran the switch at end of the siding, head on collision with a train whose locomotive had a "hardened" cab. The three crew were killed in the eastbound train. They were asleep at time of crash. Santa Fe was calling people back with inadequate rest & running crews for very long turns, say 17 hours sometimes. They didn't want to hire more crew members. Forced overwork is done to lower labor costs.

Yes, such things occur. So please account for the dramatic decline in employee fatalities, train accidents per train miles, injuries per crew hour, etc. registered since 1982, at the same time as profits have increased dramatically over the last 30 years on the railroad. You don't think that improvement has cost money?

Look, I personally know of a specific number of accidents cause by employee use of drugs and alcohol. That doesn't mean the use of drugs and alcohol has worsened on railroads. In fact, given the limits of our measuring systems, the use of drugs and alcohol has declined dramatically on railroads since 1986. Now, what caused that? Less of a concern for profits? Not fucking hardly. Federal law? Exactly. Imposition of random and mandatory drug and alcohol testing has been the single most important factor in improving operating safety on railroads.

We're not talking anecdotes here; we're talking systems; hard numbers; what actually takes place over the entire rail network. Now you can argue that such stats are irrelevant or falsified, but then you need to explain, as with everything, else the changes in operating safety. We know railroads are more safe now than in 1970s, a period of lowered profits. Do you have any data that says safety has deteriorated on the railroads since 19?? due to increased profitability; or attempts to improve profitability?

And yes, I've worked on Class 1 railroads and passenger railroads for about 40 years, in positions from brakeman to chief train dispatcher to chief of field operations.

you're not dealing with the issue i raised tho. long hours, erratic scheduling. you want to argue this has no effect on safety? i know about the turn around in profits. but there has been a huge turn around since '70s in traffic & marketing. Giving up money losing passenger ops to the state. Off shoring of manufacturing connected to increased IT control of logistics to manage far flung supply chains. Inter modal as huge growth sector. New type of auto carrier designed to protect vehicles led to winning back new vehicle transport. Cutting loose less profitable branches into non-union short line operators (like the outfit using one-man crews that had that crash at Lac Meganic).

Sorry, you're the one not dealing with the issue. How can you say safety has been sacrificed to profits on the railroad when the dramatic, I'm talking 10 fold, improvement in safety is coincident with the increase in profits?

What safety has been sacrificed to achieve those higher profits; as opposed to the safety that was in place prior to the restoration of profits?

I know all about deregulation under the Staggers Act, as I was working for Conrail at the time. I also know how much greater effort railroads put into improving safety at the same time.

I know, for example, that removing cabooses and utilizing EOT [end-of-train devices] improved safety, and helped increase profits-- didn't have to service and maintain cabooses anymore.

Where exactly was the existing level of safety in 1985 degraded in the service of profit?

It's just not the case that railroads disregard safety. Doesn't mean the bourgeoisie aren't bourgeoisie, but if your issue is employment levels or wages, then argue that as being an attack on the well-being of the class. But don't make a bullshit arguments about safety when all the available data shows a truly remarkable improvement in train safety.

Lac Megantic wasn't a crash. There you have a single person crew, and the single person violated the most basic of railroad operating requirement-- securing the train properly when leaving it unattended.

You are using sloppy and wishful thinking because you have an ideology that says that profit is always opposed to safety.

Well show me the data. I lived through this. I was responsible for making improvements for safer train operations. I never found a conflict between safer train operations and more efficient, productive train operations.

Yes railroad workers can work long hours-- although not as long as before with the changes to hours of service laws. Yes, railroads require "extra-board" engine and train crew personnel to work various shifts. These indeed are problems that need to be addressed. But that's the nature of the business, and I do mean business. Exactly what do you expect to happen when the traffic that makes up a train is released from industries at various hours, is collected and transported to a yard at various hours, gets made up into departing trains usually within 24 hours of receipt?

Could railroads be safer? Sure thing. Do railroads "balance" cost vs. benefit when it comes to vetting a new safety initiative? Absolutely. But if you think the profitability of railroads depends upon degrading safety, there is only evidence to the contrary...which BTW is why the RWU will prove itself to be but another lame organization only too happy to dissolve itself into the trade union swamp of US labor.

The issue is where do the improved profits of the railroads correspond to degraded safety over the past 30 years?

I've run railroads. I've been responsible for operating safety. I made decisions based on hard data, not on somebody's bullshit supposition, ideology, that in fact had another purpose in mind.

You can blame the engineer for not securing the train at Lac Meganic. how likely would that have been if there had been a second person in the crew?

From what I hear railroad workers say, the staffing practices do not take account of adequate time between shifts for rest and excessively long shifts.

The railroad industry is clearly in much better financial shape in recent years than in the '70s. They have put profits into improved infrastructure, so improved safety is believable. It's also in their financial interests to avoid crashes, within the limits of what makes sense from a capitalist point of view, that is, in terms of pay off relative to cost.

First off, the NorthAm rail industry I know from nothing. So I don't have a specific contribution to that debate.

But for a general picture, I can certainly see a scenario where an industry is overall maintaining (or even raising) profitability while at the same time investing in capital spend and improving both labour productivity and safety. But within that overall picture, there can always be a minority of poorer performing operations that, for one reason or another, are struggling to maintain operating profitability, such that they're pushed into attempting a strategic regression from relative to absolute surplus value production by freezing capital investment, skimping maintenance and squeezing staffing levels and extending hours. Given that statistically accidents are more likely to happen in the riskiest parts, it may well then be that the accidents that do occur are implicated with poor operating practice. Taking a string of these accidents in isolation, you could draw misleading conclusions that the industry as a whole had a safety problem, even when the overall industry safety figures say the opposite. (Hasty generalization fallacy).

From an organizing point of view, the idea of selling the "industry safety problem" story to the media might be tempting in terms of providing the kind of easily-digestible "shock, horror, won't somebody please think of the children!" story that journos like. But long-term it probably won't help you build too much credibility among your target audience - the people who work in the industry and know more than the general media-consuming public, enough to know that you're not telling the whole story.

There are other challenges though, in terms of trying to set standards of best practice for the industry that will keep workers safe whether they're working in the relatively safer, profitable "mainstream" of the industry, or in the more disadvantaged marginal operations.

It's undeniable that the number of accidents on railroads is decreasing. Yet some avoidable accidents still happen. In talking with railroaders, the #1 reason is fatigue.

Listen for yourself (click the link and then the "play" button to listen):

Caller 1

Caller 2

Caller 3

Caller 4

Caller 5

Caller 6

Caller 7

Caller 8

Caller 9

Caller 10

Caller 11

Caller 12

Caller 13

Caller 14

Caller 15

Caller 16

Caller 17

It comes down to being unsafe to operate a train (or any machinery) while fatigued. Period.

At the railroad safety conference in Richmond, CA on March 14, 2015, that was the main safety issue for all the railroaders, whether on freight (BNSF, CSX, NS, UP) or passenger (Amtrak & BART). But it wasn't just railroaders, it was for all industrial workers -- the USW refinery workers at the conference said they had the same safety issues around irregular schedules, forced overtime and fatigue. A power plant worker said she had the exact same safety issues around irregular schedules and fatigue too. Driving a motor vehicle while sleep-deprived is one of the biggest killers on the road.

There were 7 Amtrak workers at the conference and they all talked about how their schedules ruin family and social life. They can't go to their kids graduations or meet their kid's teachers, they can't make birthday parties, they can't make social appointments, and their whole life schedule is dictated by the arbitrary scheduling rules of the railroad.

Here were some more examples from the conference, about when disasters occurred:

Chernobyl: 1:23 a.m.

Bhopal: 12:40 a.m.

Three Mile Island: 4:00 a.m.

Exxon Valdez: 12:04 a.m.

most mistakes on railroads: 3:00 - 5:00 a.m.

Shift-Work Sleep Disorder (SWSD):

U.S. Mine Rescue Association

A sleep disorder that affects people who frequently rotate shifts or work at night. Schedules of these people go against the body’s natural Circadian rhythm, and individuals have difficulty adjusting to the different sleep and wake schedule. SWSD consists of a constant or recurrent pattern of sleep interruption that results in insomnia or excessive sleepiness. This disorder is common in people who work non-traditional hours – usually between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Fatigue-related accidents (sources: AAA Study, J. Stutts, UNC 1999):

● 6 times greater for night shift workers

● 2 times greater for rotating shift workers

Other risk factors:

● getting less than 6 hours sleep

● being awake more than 20 hours straight

● operating a vehicle between midnight and 6:00 am

Of course fatigue is an issue. There's no denying it. But changes have been made to increase rest and reduce the number of "extra hazardous" shifts, and the total number of shifts an employee can work in any two week period. EDIT: removed irrelevant material.

The only thing I wanted to point out is that it is nonsense, based on available data to say that railroad worker safety is being degraded in order to increase profits. That's just not true. Do railroads make compromises between safety and efficiency? Of course. Everything a railroad does is a compromise between safety and efficiency. The British railway engineers used to explain it this way: "All signals are red. All trains are stopped. The railway is now perfectly safe." Of course, it's not exactly functioning as a railway anymore, but that's the point.

And... you cannot go around providing bullshit explanations, i.e. crude oil tank car derailments have increased due to railroads mandating use of dynamic and independent braking to reduce energy costs, and expect not to be challenged, and shown to be ignorant, by those who actually investigate the derailments, and are responsible for safe train operations.

So what is the IWW or the ultraleft going to do to be a competing political center? For Anarchists / Libcoms specifically, Jacobin has as an objective to win against the Anarchist / anti state turn of the Left. Read it from the editor himself.

Sure I find it interesting, I also find it depressing.

Do you have a link, Klas?

Bhaskar Sunkara: The intended audience is connected to the two distinct goals of Jacobin. The first is an intra-left goal to reassert the importance of class and Marxist analysis in the context of an increasingly anarchist-inflected left.

https://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/jake-blumgart-next-left-interview-bhaskar-sunkara

Thanks for that, and there is this beauty from BS:

I’d rather engage with the mass mainstream of U.S. liberalism. That’s the future of any left: people who identify as liberals, some of whom would be attracted to a structural critique of capitalism, especially if it offers a coherent, sane intellectual vision that’s both radical and pragmatic at the same time.

they've been pushing the various au courant electoral parties as well, such as podemos, syriza, die linke, etc.

Well, not surprising... I guess.

Any actually communist (anarchist/leftcom etc.) alternative must engage liberal arguments to rebut them, but must have it's focus on the working class, in terms of it's audience. True, elements of other classes (intellectuals, professionals) will be involved, but our focus should be basing our program and debates around it, on the interests of the working class.

Certainly we can propose a communist vision that is

coherent, sane intellectual vision that’s both radical and pragmatic at the same time.

This should be easy because liberal politics, and the keynsian policies of Syriza etc. DO NOT MEET THESE CRITERIA.

We should also be flashy and slick

:P

While I'm not going to say that I haven't read interesting material on the Jacobin, the project is fundamentally oriented towards social democracy. This orientation reflects both the explicit political allegiances of the contributors and editors (like Sunkara) as well as what I would say is a reflection of the overwhelmingly academic social position of the avid readership and contributors (from the people that I personally know). It may be confusing to the Europeans here, but there definitely is a trend in the U.S. towards simplistic boosterism of European style social democracy, despite its long history of failure, repression, and war-mongering. A capitalism managed by social democratic parties makes sense to those embedded within academic institutions, with its bureacratic methods and modicum of welfare policies.

Sunkara has been explicit about wanting to contest the anarchist turn in the American left since Occupy. The articles in the Jacobin lack any significant concrete proposals for activity. In my readings, most function as sophisticated moral outrage. The subjects that the contributors tend to be particularly weak on are: social democracy (interviewing Die Linke and not mentioning the past 30 sorry years of the SPD and the Green Party in Germany), leftist Latin American states, and unions (they are very naive over the actual functioning of the so-called progressive unions in the U.S. while supporting a fossilized change-the-leadership strategy).

I've got to agree with gram negative

also sites have changed up a bit, but for a little while they were almost identical.

at this point the magazine I think is basically the unofficial theory arm i'd say of DSA

http://www.dsausa.org/

https://www.jacobinmag.com/

now they are providing politicians a platform to defend their repressive practices: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/ecuador-rafael-correa-alianza-pais-quito-conaie-peoples-strike-protest/

So Stephanie McMillan recently wrote an anarchist/libcom critique of the role NGO's, non-profits, and business unions play in dampening class struggle.

http://skewednews.net/index.php/2015/10/13/ngos-leftish-nonprofits-suck-4-reasons/

It ends with this note:

"This article was initially solicited by Jacobin magazine, went through several versions of editing which included, at their request, making the language less informal and more “academic,” and culminating in what I interpret as blatant attempts to erase the working class from its content (the editor disagrees with my interpretation). It was finally rejected by them. This is very close to my original version. Another version exists, which is co-authored—Vincent Kelley of Grinnell College kindly converted it to “academic” language when the article was still in play with Jacobin, and the content of that version still corresponds to our shared political line. Once it is also posted somewhere, I plan to add the link here."

I read the on line stuff. Don't agree with their politics, but have done interesting pieces
Like everything, you get and take what you want out of it

I missed this thread the first time around, but agree Jacobin contains a mixture of readable articles (although pretty much always compatible with a left social democratic approach), alongside things with horrible politics that wouldn't be out of place in a mainstream liberal op-ed.

There was this interesting exchange:

1. A really bad right wing social democratic take on prisons from Roger Lancaster: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/prison-abolition-reform-mass-incarceration

2. A response piece from prison abolitionism activists who work on restorative justice, bail funds, things like this https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/prison-abolition-reform-mass-incarceration

3. A further response from the IWW IWOC (not in Jacobin) that pointed out that the response to Lancaster has failed to mention prison organisers - especially given the multiple prison labour strikes in recent years: https://www.iww.org/content/%E2%80%9Cdestroy-all-prisons-tomorrow%E2%80%9D-iwoc-responds-jacobin

The first article was just bad, the second article was OK but missed out some of the most radical organising against the prison system, the third article I don't think would get into the pages of Jacobin.

While I don't think it's great praxis to spend a lot of time writing responses to things in Jacobin, I do think that exchange showed the limitations of the politics of the magazine, and it's also a way of responding to it that can (for a few people at least), make it a funnel rather than a cul-de-sac.

Also to Juan's point in relation to some earlier statements on the thread. The influx of new members into DSA has involved a lot of anarchists and various categories of marxist, so that Jacobin (especially the editorial group) is in the centre or right of the politics of that organisation now (although not it's central positions which don't show much sign of changing yet). There was a funny tweet when the DSA communist caucus launched where Sunkara said he'll stay in the Democratic Socialist caucus.

Juan Conatz

Anarchism seems pretty marginalized now and no formal organization was really able to take advantage of its dominance as the default radical left orientation from the 1990s-2010s. Am I correct when I say that? I'm not connected to stuff like I used to, but that is my impression. If so, what does this mean?

In terms of formal organisations I think things are really bad. On the other hand on twitter and elsewhere there are thousands of people with some kind of anarchist/ultra-left/communist politics that are incredibly encouraging, a lot born in the '90s or even '00s with decent politics.

[It might have something to do with a site that makes it easy to learn about libertarian communist politics that they've more or less literally grown up with having available]. So I don't think there are less people, but they're either not in any organisation, or at least in the US, they're probably most likely to join the DSA.

Juan Conatz

It also seems like anarchists/libertarian communists really don't have an answer to this resurgence of social democratic reformism. "They're all the same" doesn't really resonate in any meaningful way when there are now some vast actual differences between the politicians.

Right it used to be both accurate, and also a common sense position (i.e. the response that a random non-voter might given if vox-popped as to why they don't vote). With the collapse of centrism since 2007, it's no longer the case. It's also no longer the case that a social democratic politician couldn't get elected in the US or UK - if Corbyn wins the next election there'll be one, question is whether there can be any meaningful reform in such a case. I think it's more likely that Corbyn ends up as a new centrism - slightly more national protectionism via state intervention in industry, but a lot less than the right wing of the Tory party wants (essentially high tariffs and isolationism as its default position as the cost of cutting immigration) at the moment, for example, which is why the CBI is quite positive towards him at the moment. So maybe a tiny rollback of some social protections removed in the past ten years, which just gets us to the end of Blair/Brown in terms of social spending, and that's going to look like 'radical left' politics.

It hasn't surprised me that people didn't make strong arguments, but it did surprise me that anarchists abandoned their own anti-electoral arguments and went pro-Corbyn.

I would say there are some answers though - like the explicit and clear support of Sanders and Corbyn for state violence (police, borders etc.) which a lot of their supporters are opposed to and which a social democratic politics can not break out of. It's seemed to me that the IWW-IWOC and IWW-GDCs offer at least a way to explicitly acknowledge that politics, but I don't really know how they operate internally or relate to the IWW as a whole. In the UK there is the anti-raids network and some local groups working against immigration detention and similar, as well as police monitoring groups, but not really the connections either between individual groups or with solfed/AF that there might be.

The strikes in the UK and US right now could also push communist politics back to the fore, but
Juan Conatz

I kind of agree that responding to Jacobin shouldn't be a priority, but it's bizarre to me that it isn't done more

This is more or less what I meant - I think there is some value in critiquing the specific ideas expressed in Jacobin that could happen more, although it should also not set the agenda of what gets talked about - but enough of us hate Jacobin there should be enough anger there to write some blog posts, it worked for me and Adolph Reed at least.

Juan Conatz

It seems like the IWW is in the best position to do this, but doubt this will ever happen.

Do you mean in print or online or both? I'd like this site to do that online, but it requires both the redesign (so it's easier to actually read things, especially on a phone) and a significant uptick in news articles and blog posts to get to a point where it's in some way keeping up with events. We've tried to broaden out the range of contributors with a degree of success but could do a lot more.

I havent read Jacobin much but I'd say that libcom isn't really the same type of thing. From a glance Jacobin seems to function like a magazine. Deadlines, editors, graphics. Whole other ballgame if you ask me.

Cooked

I havent read Jacobin much but I'd say that libcom isn't really the same type of thing. From a glance Jacobin seems to function like a magazine. Deadlines, editors, graphics.

It's a company producing a commodity with a more or less traditional magazine structure, it's received a lot of attention since the presidential election hence massive circulation increase.

However if we think that there is any value in communist writing on current events, which is at the 300-2,000 word length and accessible (i.e. not a theoretical journal, and not very specific like a strike bulletin), then we can compare the sorts of things that might get written about.

Let's take West Virginia, I only skimmed most of these:

Listicle of previous West Virginia strikes:
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-labor-history-teachers-strike

Very short boilerplate rank-and-filist opinion piece:
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginias-militant-minority

Interview with a striker who's also some kind of union activist:
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-teachers-strike-activist-interview

Opinion piece trying to make the strike the start of a rebirth of left-populist Democratic politics (retch):
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/02/west-virginia-teachers-strike-energy-industry

Slightly longer and slightly better rank-and-filist piece written by a teacher:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-janus-right-to-work-unions

If we look at the form of the better three articles:
- views from a teacher
- interview with a teacher actually on strike.
- very short article introducing basic historical background

These are all good genres of article that you would fully expect to see (even if we disagree with some of the specific politics expressed).

The last two:
- shoehorn into an article about voting from the Democrats - just evil and bad.
- "there is a strike and this is why we need socialist rank and filism" boilerplate - not very good but anarchist/communist groups not exactly immune from that genre of article.

Let's look at some communist articles to compare:

Linking the teachers strike to the Frontier one, good article from today:
https://anticapital0.wordpress.com/2-strikes-1-struggle-the-significance-of-the-communications-workers-strike-in-west-virginia/

And It's Going Down:

IWW quick article on the communication workers:
https://itsgoingdown.org/west-virginia-teachers-ignited-fire-spreading/

A bit 'join the IWW' for me:
https://itsgoingdown.org/west-virginia-extend-strike-build-long-term-power/

Another very short IWW how to support:
https://itsgoingdown.org/support-spread-west-virginia-teachers-strike/

Re-posted from anti-capital, it's decent analysis:
https://itsgoingdown.org/7-days-analysis-west-virginia-strike/

Short article on the decision to stay out against union recommendations to go back:
https://itsgoingdown.org/wildcat-roars-west-virginia-teachers-stay-strike/

IWW press release on same thing: https://itsgoingdown.org/west-virginia-teachers-rebel-union-attempts-end-strike/

Picket line report from Steel City John Brown Gun Club:
https://itsgoingdown.org/supporting-west-virginia-teachers-strike-on-picket-lines/

Might have missed one or two other ones (same for Jacobin).

It's Going Down function in between a media collective (I think they have one person full time funded by donations, although not sure exactly) and a newswire more like the old indymedias. Nearly all the West Virginia content is reposts, which is of course fine, so's ours at the moment.

I would actually say libertarian communists 1, Jacobin 0 on this, but it's pure reporting and quick-response analysis which is not really Jacobin's strength. It's Going Down is a lot more consistent at producing news stuff than libcom at the moment, although it's essentially US-only.

If we look at the differences, the big one is that the IWW/IGD/anti-capital articles are emphasising links to teachers in other states (Pittsburgh, Oklahoma) and other workers in the same state (Frontier) - that is being done in news-analysis hybrid pieces which is fine, and what you won't get from social democrats much. This is a reason to produce such content in the first place, to try to draw those links out.

I also think that libcom managed better coverage of Iran/Tunisia/Sudan at the beginning of this year than Jacobin although I personally put tonnes of effort into that which I just cannot do regularly and sustainably.

So for me it's not about trying to replicate the model, but have a bit better infrastructure and communication channels.

A few quick thoughts, sorry if this is slightly incoherent/excessively IGD fannish: that roundu misses the two longish audio interviews they did with a striking teacher and Wob, which are kind of essential IMO. Also, where would people fit Viewpoint into this ecology? Until pretty recently I'd definitely class them as writing for us Proper Communists, now I'd probably categorise them as a high-quality publication which is doing something different from what I'd think of as useful communist analysis, but also pretty different from Jacobin as well. I also think DD is unbeatable as a newswire. Uhh, I also have opinions about reformism and stuff but that can wait for another time.

Juan Conatz

It also seems like anarchists/libertarian communists really don't have an answer to this resurgence of social democratic reformism. "They're all the same" doesn't really resonate in any meaningful way when there are now some vast actual differences between the politicians.

this is a very important point, and will become more significant as the social dems start to win in some small ways.

Also, is it worth comparing Jacobin and Novara, or would that just be inviting cross-platform beef for the sake of it? Totally agree about how we've collectively got used to drifting by with a lazy critique that no longer works, my brief suggestion for a better one would be a) remember Syriza?, b) look at the record of local Labour councils, c) have you read that AWW article, it's good as hell, but I recognise that's not an entirely satisfactory line of argument, especially not in my phrasing of it.

R Totale

Also, where would people fit Viewpoint into this ecology? Until pretty recently I'd definitely class them as writing for us Proper Communists, now I'd probably categorise them as a high-quality publication which is doing something different from what I'd think of as useful communist analysis, but also pretty different from Jacobin as well.

I get a bit confused by Viewpoint. Some of the things they write are very good, some drive me up the wall. To be fair, I feel the same about blogs on libcom, although we don't have editorial control over blogs beyond either refusing them in the first place or killing them off, so it's a bit different and an open editorial policy is not necessarily bad (if that's what it is).

https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/syria-seen-from-the-viewpoint-of-imperial-purity-the-crushing-narcissism-of-empire/ was a decent response to a recent piece that also got into the exasperating aspects of the project.

They are nearly all (or all?) academics or postgraduate students, including many of the contributors, but they're obviously also making an effort to write accessibly. Both Asad Haider and Shuja Haider have written for Jacobin too.

The sort of thing they try to write about, which we also do, but I do not see that much in publications-aimed-at-communists is something like:

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/01/23/postmodernism-not-take-place-jordan-petersons-12- no-one is going to go out and buy Jordan Peterson's book who's a regular reader of Viewpoint.

But, the other day standing in the queue at a sandwich shop two people behind me were discussing Jordan Peterson's interview on Channel 4, saying he'd demolished the presenter, he was an 'equalist' and pay differentials for women were due to different jobs rather than pay discrepancies in the same job so couldn't be discrimination (nice analysis of social reproduction and systemic discrimination you've got there etc. etc.). Kind of general bollocks right-libertarian stuff that is pushed a lot and entirely framed from the point of view of employers, against a straw man communism/leftism that 'everyone should get the same amount of money'. No mention of lobsters or globalist cultural marxist conspiracies though.

The Chomsky anti-anti-antifa article and the Jonathan Pie Spiked connnection ones are similar-ish, in that you have public figures being promoted to attack different aspects of working class organising.

You sort of hope that either:
- someone googling will come across that article, and realise Peterson or whoever the target is, is a fucking fraud.
- someone who's read it will have some easy ammunition if a discussion comes up with a co-worker/family member etc.

Again it shouldn't be the main focus of anyone, but a little bit of this does not hurt (and it's cathartic working on those articles so why not). Not sure if that's what you meant about their content though.

Jacobin Magazine is great, a lot of the criticisms in these threads seems to be because the magazine actually applies more to a lot of it's readers' daily lives and subsequently attracts and attains more readers, unlike some other magazines which are little more than closeted cabals preaching to the choir on the insane abstract.

And really, someone can only be taken seriously if they are actively employed in the sector they're talking about? Don't be absurd.

R Totale

Also, is it worth comparing Jacobin and Novara, or would that just be inviting cross-platform beef for the sake of it?

Novara has become embedded in Labour Party machinery in a way that Jacobin has not with the Democrats. But that may just be because the opportunity to do so in the US is not there yet.

Totally agree about how we've collectively got used to drifting by with a lazy critique that no longer works, my brief suggestion for a better one would be a) remember Syriza?, b) look at the record of local Labour councils, c) have you read that AWW article, it's good as hell, but I recognise that's not an entirely satisfactory line of argument, especially not in my phrasing of it.

I'd add
d) Tightening of immigration controls, and Labour's long history of doing that. Paul Mason being the most obvious embodiment of social imperialism.

e) extra police funding.

This also means better highlighting the groups fighting Labour locally like HASL, Elephant campaign etc. Birmingham bin strike.

Another publication not mentioned here is New Socialist, who I think are non-aligned Leninists and fairly pro Corbyn but very resistant to the positions on police and immigration. I don't understand this kind of 'principled social democrat' position but it's interesting seeing them try to do it.

I_Dont_Like_Your_Holy_Book

And really, someone can only be taken seriously if they are actively employed in the sector they're talking about? Don't be absurd.

Who said this?

When the uprising in Iran broke out in December/January, we were able to make contact with activists in Iran, published a piece from one activist, and also got some statements from the taxi syndicate and Haft Tappeh Sugar workers translated and an article from an Iranian blog (with help from a Persian speaker). To my knowledge we were the only English language place that did this, or one of very few - a french councilist site did the same in French though which was great. This seemed important because you had a combination of liberal calls for 'regime change', as well as those who were completely dismissing the strikes and street protests due to those liberal calls for regime change. The majority of left/ultra-left English language information on Iran is from people in exile (some better than others) and we reproduced some of those as well.

When the Birmingham bin strike happened, we asked a contributor to this site who happens to live in Birmingham to write about it. They're not a bin worker, but they had local background around the response to the strike, such as the Bearded Broz who were collecting black bags from some areas (while claiming they weren't strike breaking) that for example I'd completely missed looking at other reports, or were being uncritically promoted by other media.

These are perspectives you can't replicate without local knowledge of some sort. It doesn't mean any local person is going to be right, and it doesn't mean non-local opinions are worthless either.

We often write up things with no first-hand knowledge, let alone history where you're trying to write about events that might not be in living memory - but again to do that usefully you'll be researching other histories of those events, which if not written by participants might be based on things that were. If it's 3-500 words of 'this interesting thing is happening' then it's less relevant, but the article is not necessarily going to add a lot (except it can link to broader context).

Mike Harman

Novara has become embedded in Labour Party machinery in a way that Jacobin has not with the Democrats. But that may just be because the opportunity to do so in the US is not there yet.

Yeah, I think if Sanders had been as successful as Corbyn when it comes to playing the Democrats at their own game the whole Jacobin/DSA project would be in quite a different place right now. But I know Novara still have at least one (maybe more?) editors who identify as anarcho-communists, which I guess maybe puts them to the left and right of Jacobin simultaneously? I honestly don't watch/read/listen to enough of their stuff to have a firm characterisation of where they're currently at politically - the last video I watched of theirs was this, which seemed pretty unobjectionable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS8FZAIgdtI (if you can't be bothered to watch it, it picks out Picturehouse, the RMT guards dispute, Acorn, outsourced workers at UofL and the BiFab occupation as five class struggle highlights of 2017).

Other libertarian projects comparable to Jacobin: OT/Base seem OK, although again I don't read a huge amount of their stuff, and don't know how frequently they publish (and I personally would want to veto any project I was involved with from giving itself a name that translates as Al-Qaeda, but maybe that's just me). Might be controversial, but I actually think CrimethInc deserve a nod here - it's easy to hate on them for embarrassing stuff they said a decade ago, but in my opinion they tend to reflect the state of the class struggle, and they've improved massively with the development of various movements in the US since about 2011. And their production values have always been top-notch, definitely up there with the best when it comes to articles that look good and have good prose even when the contents are dodgy.

R Totale

OT/Base seem OK, although again I don't read a huge amount of their stuff, and don't know how frequently they publish

I really like Base, having not really paid much attention to the Occupied Times until the very end before they relaunched.

Several of the group are involved in local (to them, not me unfortunately) organising, and the politics (and aesthetics) of what they put out is excellent. It's infrequent though - maybe one issue every six months or similar.

I think there's a bunch of factors that explain why Jacobin and the DSA have grown so much in the past few years.

1. They're kind of an off-shoot of left-wing academia, the DSA itself seems to be mostly based around university campuses, and the majority of Jacobin contributors are grad students. Anarchists don't have a whole lot of penetration within academia so I think an anarchist competitor mag would struggle to find a lot of skilled writers that could contribute, at least in the same middlebrow, 'watered down cultural studies' manner.

2. They oppose Trump without being mainstream Democrat style liberals. They're probably the most visible non-Liberal anti-Trump force so they pick up a lot of people who hate the Republicans but are also dissatisfied with the Democrats. Sanders diehards, for instance, and twitter leftists.

3. They write about leftist ideas without delving into the clunky gibberish style of writing that charactarises a lot of left-academia. They've been openly critical of typical ideas of the academic left like post-colonialism, at least as it's normally understood. This appeals to people who like left ideas but are turned off by what they perceive as the left's rhetorical excesses. They buck the sadly all-too-common stereotype that the right wing promotes, of leftists being irrational people with blue hair that scream at strangers and are offended by everything.

There is a lot of potential for an anarchist or non-statist revolutionary magazine to come through, if it has the same kind of accessible tone. But it would be a struggle. Juan I think you're on the right track but I think the IWW's internal culture would be the least of your problems in editing such a magazine.

One of Jacobins new articles left me quite speechless: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/sam-gindin-socialist-planning-models

I would call this Liberal-Stalinism.