Politics and Baseball: The Death of Hugo Chavez and Cowardice of the Miami Marlins

As some of you may know, and I would guess that many of you, dear readers, do not, the World Baseball Classic is currently taking place.  The WBC is an international tournament that takes place every 4 years during Major League Baseball's spring training season.  It is commonly accepted that "baseball" countries other than the United States take the WBC more seriously than most Americans (both players and fans) do.  This can be clearly seen by the players who choose to participate, with many top talent American players skipping the tournament while players such as Miguel Cabrera leave their major league training camps to represent their home nations.

It is no accident that I bring up Cabrera.  He is a native of Venezuela.   The Venezuelan national team (with Cabrera) played an exhibition game against the Miami Marlins on March 5th.  Prior to the game the Venezuelans requested a moment of silence to honor recently deceased leader Hugo Chavez.  This request was denied, with the cited reason by the Marlins being there was "not enough time". 

I love the game of baseball, but I will also be the first to admit that it is not the most action packed sport for the casual observer.  "Not enough time", is that really the best the Marlins management could come up with?  The 3 hour broadcast must have been too packed with adds for McDonald's "Fish McBites"?  (Which have a ridiculous and somewhat hilarious jingle, you can listen to it here) to include a moment to honor a fallen world leader?

Why do the Marlins, and by association Major League Baseball have such a hard time being honest?  They probably don't want "America's Game" associated in anyway with a leader who was openly critical of American consumerism, of US leadership as well as US foreign policy, not to mention being a self described socialist, and having a record of nationalizing most major Venezuelan industry and conducting major land reform.

I could easily argue that Chavez did a lot of good in Venezuela, and that many people there are far better off than they were before he came to power.  It would be completely in line with the general theme of this blog to make such statements.  For some statistics on the improvements under Chavez please see this chart, posted on a blog I read regularly. 

The truth is that I don't know as much as I should about Chavez and Venezuelan politics, and I don't want to comment where I don't have anything informed to contribute.  What I do want to add is that I think this is just another example of cowardice and poor leadership by the Marlins organization.  Either state that Chavez was not popular in the United States and you don't want him honored in your stadium, or accept that Chavez was a major world leader, and honor the Venezuelan team's request for a moment of silence before the game.

Bottom line; if a US leader was to pass away while in office and one of our national teams was denied a moment of silence to honor him during a sporting event in a foreign country we would likely go to war over it.  I don't think the Marlins ownership has the right to deny something like this to team Venezuela, and if they are going to deny the request, they should at least have the cojones to admit that they are doing it for a reason other than "being short on time".

This is just the latest in a long line of examples of the Marlins ownership/management treating baseball fans like we are a bunch of idiots, that rant will have to wait for another post.  I sincerely hope this becomes a major problem for the team.  From what I know, no one deserves the negative attention more.  Marlin's owner Jeffrey Loria and his management team should be ashamed of themselves. 

The Next Time Someone Asks Me for a Cigarette...

...I am going to denounce them as a communist and suggest they move to Russia with their like-minded brethren. 

I suppose this post would be more accurately titled:  "Some Thougths on the First 100 pages of David Graeber's "Debt the First 5000 Years", but the cigarette example, lifted from Graeber's book, has more literary flair.

I have been reading Debt: The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber
In "Debt" Graeber is bold enough to suggest that at the most basic level many human interactions are communistic in nature. He suggests that  "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is how we respond to many situations in life.  Graeber suggests that people act according to this tenant of communism in many daily situations including those in which a smoke is "bummed".   

I have the ability to give someone else a smoke, they have the need for it.  The person asking me doesn't think much of the asking (according to Graeber they think far less of asking for a smoke than they would think of asking me for an equivalent amount of money or food), and I am not meant to think much of the giving.  It is second nature to provide for each other in a community setting.  If nothing else being a communist costs me at least half a pack of smokes a week.  That aside, Graeber's book seems interesting so far:  The argument that "communism" is not a system of political organization (he brings up the point that most prominent regimes have tagged themselves as "socialist" and "communism" will come far in the future after Marx's "withering of the state"), but rather something that is one of the basic (Graeber describes 3) ways in which humans interact with each other daily in regards to our material world is something that I would like to explore further.

An idea that has been nagging me for awhile is that as we form groups and arguments, (and yes...institutions as well) to organize production, we are essentially just expanding upon interactions that we are already familiar with from the processes of our daily lives, childhoods, etc.   The past is of course the strongest predictor of the future.  Reading the beginning of Debt, (for the record, is itself critical of capitalism), has brought back to the front of my consciousness the idea that the way out of capitalism (as well as its contradictions and problems), and into another system (albeit with its own sets of contradictions and problems to be sure), with a stronger sense of justice from a class perspective, might be steps towards decentralization of power and slightly more anarchy in our organizational processes (both political and economic).  The idea, somewhat re-introduced by Graeber that many humans default to a variety of communistic practices in our daily interactions revives my hope that post 20th century capitalism our material lives can remain rich, while at the same time becoming less institutionally exploitative of each other, if we work at it that is. 

There is tone to Graeber's analysis that suggests an arrogant rationalism behind many of his arguments, This is perhaps not a bad thing as the implications I have drawn out of the first 100 pages of his book seem quite positive, and possibly even hopeful for our future as a society.  So far "Debt" is proving to be an enjoyable and thought provoking read.  Chances are I will have more to write about it here in the coming days (especially if I find something to be more critical about).  

A (massive) Failure in Bourgeois Society

Hypothetically speaking (not that I encountered this on the way home from work...hmm...),  And I am prepared to be ripped to shreds for this post.), is it a personal, educational or societal failure to ask; (when having $2.35 on my food stamps card, and $3.00 in cash, and attempting to buy 2 gallons of milk, and  6 Boston cream donuts)  "How many packs of cigarettes can I get with the change?" 

Needless to say, the poor economist behind you in line just wanted a lo-calorie Gatorade and is now forced to stand in line for 15 minutes in the early hours of morning. 

I would argue that such a question being asked does a few things.  It precludes that tobacco should be illegal (it certainly hasn't helped me in any way), it suggests that our society needs to seriously reexamine benefit programs (and massively expand them, into many areas, including education), and most importantly, it suggests that a society devoid of bourgeois desires would never experience such a question in the first place because a young mother wouldn't need to buy donuts for her child at 3 am. 

Socialism, Utopian (if not Scientific)?  In many ways yes!  I don't even know where to direct my anger without it. 

Pew Results, Positive and Negative, Capitalism and Socialism by Demographic

These numbers, published by the Pew Research Center are a little disheartening.  Mostly because of the title they place on them of "Little Change...". 

I ask this:  Do we need a survey to know that old rich white people like capitalism and don't like socialism?  (Check the numbers people) 
I also ask this:  How many people that support the Tea Party movement have even a faint inkling of what socialism would look like (that isn't based upon American propaganda of the bleak government controlled East circa 1970)?

Numbers are fun, the work from the Pew here is a great example of that, if nothing else.

As an aside regarding my graphic for this post.  Anyone else annoyed by Lenin being included here?

Religion as the Opiate of the Masses

I think this famous Marx quote first appears in the introduction of Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, and I think it is famous from being in the Communist Manifesto, correct me if I am wrong here?

The form of the quote in "The Critique" is "It (religion) is the opium of the people". This quote is often cited, and often taken at face value to mean that religion is not for enlightened person, but rather something indulged in by the ignorant. Those who accept this quote at face value view religion as just something the ruling class keeps in place to pacify the exploited in an anti-revolutionary manner.

Marx's meaning is actually far deeper and more relevant. The quote in "Critique" is in the context of religion being dialectically both an "expression of real suffering, and a protest against real suffering". Without real suffering even the (ignorant or not) masses would feel no need to turn to religion. Religion is not always imposed by an aristocratic ruling class (as in pre-bourgeois revolutionary France), sometimes it is used by the oppressed as a means to get through the day. For a good example of this look up "Liberation Theology"

I read Marx's point to be that there is real suffering in the world, and we need to remove religion to begin to address it (this is contrary of course to Liberation Theology, which is part of the reason I think they are no better than social-democrats). When suffering is removed in the mind from the realm of the real into the realm of the supra-real it becomes impossible to address in the real. If I am poor and jobless because God is angry then the solution is to sacrifice my favorite sheep (or Lily). On the otherhand if I am poor and jobless because the demographically tiny capitalist ruling class has crashed our economy, evaporating the jobs of millions of proletarians (and however you want to define service workers) then the solution may be to remove the capitalists.

It goes without saying then that religion and socialism are incompatible. Many have argued that socialists are "soulless", and that it is impossible to be both socialist and believe in a higher power. I think socialism is incompatible with religion, but does not have to be with spirituality or belief in a higher power. I myself lean towards atheism in terms of a god who takes an active interest in our lives, but if Stephen Hawking doesn't know what happened before time started at the big bang then I sure as hell don't. So that being said it is possible to be spiritual and socialist, just not religious and socialist.

As Marx himself said (also in the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right "It is the task of history, therefore, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world." ie. it is our task as Marxist historians to pull back the veil of religion and establish the truth of the material world, and thus capitalist exploitation. (Yes Ian I know that was a very "Orthodox" statement to make.

Religion is the opiate of the masses, not that it makes them feel warm and fuzzy and forget their pain, but rather that it fogs their minds and causes them to misplace their suffering onto something out of their control. The true path to the end of misery for the human race is neither god nor the end of exploitation, but one leads nowhere and the other is a step in the right direction.

A New Generation

Those of us born in the 1980's and later never lived under the cold war proper, sure I remember a bit of the Regan and Thatcher shit and the decline but I never remember it being a serious topic in the household, or feeling any kind of threat from the soviets.
I believe that this generational difference in terms of propaganda exposure will become important. For the young supporters of president Obama the response to calling the president's programs socialism is not always "no they are not" but more along the lines of "so what if they are?".
Obviously someone from my position on the political spectrum thinks that any bourgeois government cannot by definition be socialist, but point aside, Our generation will relegate iron curtain politics to be nothing more than a historical curiosity. Sure the capitalist propaganda is just is strong now as it was during the cold war, but the old linguistic fight over words such as "socialism" just does not hold the same terror for us in the younger generation.
This brings me to my most important point of this post. As this younger generation experiences their first economic crisis as adults (I was born in 81 and don't remember having very many peers effected in the dot com recession of 01 as we still were in school.), now is the time for us to be doing everything possible to explain....Socialism, Communism, these are NOT historical curiosities, these are NOT things that were in place in the former Soviet Union, These are NOT things that were tried and failed. Now is the time when this generation will be most open to hearing that the system the live in may need to be removed. No one likes change when they are comfortable, but when a person is feeling bad about them self for being unemployed, a wonderful time to explain that it is not only their fault, the system is partially to blame.
What we need is for this younger generation to see socialism and communism as possible (if partial) solutions to some of the types of hurt and suffering around us, as alternatives to the system that has left some of us unemployed and wasting our lives, while some of our childhood friends become unbelievably, and decadantly and wastefully rich. (no blame on them of course....or is it time to start)

Generations of social thought

It strikes me (after reading Lebowitz's piece in Feb 09 MR) that the first generation after the revolution will be the most difficult, and in many ways dictate the path a new society will follow (how is that for deterministic thinking!).

Nonetheless it cannot be argued that successful socialism and social thinking will be the most difficult when those practicing it are born and raised under capitalism. The true hope for collective democracy will lie with the children of the revolution.
This clearly was not the case in the former USSR, however collective socialism was never attempted there, and I don't know enough of the history to know if successive generations were more accepting of the state capitalism that emerged?

Hope for the future remains slight but bright.