Happy Birthday, Karl Marx

Saturday was Karl Marx’s 200^th birthday. It’s dangerous to even wish Mr. Marx a happy birthday, because his name has become so closely associated with dictatorship and mass murder in the 20^th century. But Marx killed nobody and never advocated killing anyone. He spent his life fighting against repressive monarchies in the 19^th century.

Marx criticized the governments and societies he experienced in Europe, because they limited the freedoms of the majority. Hereditary monarchy, surveillance of political meetings, censorship, and banning of labor unions were discriminatory against the working class.

Marx’s political program for workers was remarkably progressive in the middle of the 19^th century and includes ideas that should be familiar to Americans. The “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany” in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 included: the right to vote for everyone (probably he just meant men) over 21; a free justice system; “universal arming of the people”; universal free education; strongly progressive taxes; and separation of church and state.

Marx signed a letter by the International Working Men’s Association congratulating Abraham Lincoln on his 1864 reelection, which ended: “it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.” Marx died in 1883, long before anyone who called himself a “Marxist” entered the political arena.

Marx experienced capitalism in its rawest form. The painfully detailed descriptions of the lives of early English industrial workers by Marx’s collaborator Friedrich Engels led them both to see the social, economic and moral flaws in a system where some own property and others work for them for wages. In today’s economically wealthy Atlantic world, where their demands for political change have been met for a century or more, their criticism of economic inequality as the basis for political inequality is still valuable.

Besides critiquing the world’s economic system based on the system’s own statistics, and calling for its overthrow, Marx occasionally imagined what real personal freedom for everyone would be like, with no company and no government telling people what to do. In the “German Ideology” in 1845, he wrote: “each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” He argued that such many-sided activity was most likely to produce happy and fulfilled people, willing to cooperate with each other, rather than compete against everyone.

There are strong resemblances to the extreme libertarian wing of Republican politics in America, but they won’t admit it. Marx is an emphatic punching bag for the right, because his writings lay bare the poverty of their appeal to people without property.

Every idea has dangerous possible consequences. Medieval Popes and critics of the Papacy like Luther both thought the Bible admonished them to demean and even kill Jews. People who called themselves Marxists killed millions during the 20^th century.

Thoughtful, courageous, honest and ethical Marxists were inspired by the vision of a free society of free individuals to oppose Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, and their versions of Marx’s ideas, often losing their lives in the process. Marxists, both intellectuals and workers, became leaders in the deadly struggle against fascism in Europe, along with certain religious Christians. Christians who risked their own lives to hide Jews from the Germans, and sometimes their own police, demonstrated the hopeful humanitarianism of the Christian message. Does it make sense to toss them in the same pot as Torquemada?

Blaming Marx for the history of the Soviet Union or Communist China is like blaming Jesus for the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition.

On Marx’s birthday, as I do most days, I spent a few hours in my office, dug in my garden, read, and amused myself sharing the NBA finals with my wife. The productive, creative and self-regulated life appeals to me. I don’t like being told what to do or need a boss to tell me to how be useful to society. I like collaborations among equals. I see honor in all types of honest labor and don’t think that the work of executives is worth more than 300 times the work of average employees. I believe that humans become stunted intellectually and morally by a lifetime of one-sided dependent labor. We flourish best when we are able to do many things, develop many talents, control our own destinies.

For those ideas and others for which there is no space here, I am grateful to Marx. I wish the ideologues who perverted his ideas in order to justify becoming political tyrants had paid closer attention to what he meant.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal_Courier, May 8, 2018

People Keep Asking “Why Trump?”

Seventeen months after the 2016 election, people still wonder why Donald Trump won. As in any presidential election, there were many overlapping reasons why Trump won a majority of electoral votes, although he lost the popular vote.

Clinton’s negatives are easy to see. Conservatives had hammered at Hillary for two decades, creating a fictional monster whom some voters hated so much that they wanted to lock her up. James Comey’s decision to announce just before the election that her emails as Secretary of State were again being investigated played into these beliefs that she was unusually dishonest. Her campaign ignored warning signs in key northern states, choosing to chase votes in solidly Republican states.

The positives for Trump are more puzzling and controversial, and will occupy social scientists for decades. A new study by Diana C. Mutz, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, offers valuable insight. Mutz argues against the idea that has become a commonplace in discussions of 2016: that working-class voters, who had been left behind by economic change, voted for someone who seemed to promise them economic redemption. According to this theory, key voters thought about their “pocketbooks”, to use familiar political jargon.

Instead, Mutz supports a different explanation for Trump’s victory, one that also has been much discussed since the election: groups of Americans with traditionally high status felt threatened and voted for the candidate who seemed to support their continued dominance. White Christian men who were concerned about social changes in recent decades gravitated to Trump, whose rhetoric and behavior consistently prioritized whiteness, maleness, and Christian belief.

Enough voters were pushed into the Trump camp by the efforts to reverse traditional discrimination against blacks and women, by the increasing diversity of American society and a future when whites will be a minority, by the fact that Democrats had produced a black President and a female presidential candidate. Mutz summarizes her findings by noting “a sense that white Americans are under siege”.

Trump said things during the campaign about Mexicans and women and other people whom he did not respect that could raise doubts about his character, but in the overheated atmosphere of a presidential campaign, supporters tend to ignore any negatives about “their” candidate. Since then, however, Trump’s character has been displayed much more clearly: he lies about everything; his ego overwhelms all other considerations; he is ignorant about most areas of public policy; his treatment of women, including his wives, is despicable. Trump’s blundering performance as President brings up the second big question about current American politics: why do his voters keep supporting him?

Gallup weekly polls show little change in approval of Trump for the past year: 38% to 40% approve of him as President, and 56% to 59% disapprove. Among Republicans, his approval rating has bounced around between 81% and 89% for more than a year.

The theory that status threat motivated many of his voters offers a partial explanation. Every day the news about Trump offers support for white men and evangelical Christians who long to regain unchallenged dominance: his criticism of all organized efforts by black and white Americans to identify and resist racism; revelations about his pumped-up masculinity; his continued support for preventing Muslims from entering the US and for the evangelical political agenda. No other politician embodies so publicly the conviction that white Christian men should always be in charge in America.

But doesn’t character count? In particular, how could Trump continue to be so popular among evangelical Christians, who constantly talk about morality?

I have no study, no variables, no surveys to support the following idea, just intuition. I think Trump’s low character is in fact a significant part of his appeal, especially to the “moral minority”.

Nobody need feel morally inferior to Trump. Although he constantly boasts about his genius, nobody need feel intellectually inferior to Trump. As a person, Trump does not further threaten those who already feel their status threatened.

The fact that voters could give Barack Obama two terms as President and then elect Trump has caused no end of hand-wringing and confusion among political commentators. I believe that Obama’s obvious intellect, his high-mindedness, and his success contributed to the sense of siege among some worried Americans. A black man was better than they were at everything. Trump offers no such threat. It is easy to feel superior to Trump, even while supporting his political direction.

For the Trump voters who don’t believe that women, gays, blacks and immigrants deserve the same status as they do, Trump’s personal behavior is irrelevant. All they care about is making America great again, which they define as making white Christian males great again. Three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants believe American culture has changed for the worse since the 1950s, when women and African Americans were rigidly subordinated.

They don’t want to be lectured by a black or female Democrat about the virtues of diversity. They want an old-fashioned white male chauvinist pig to put them back on a pedestal. If that means more pollution, tax windfalls for the rich, and corruption in the Cabinet, so what?

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published by the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 1, 2018

What’s Wrong With Mainstream Media?

Sometimes I watch TV news programs in the evening, the much-maligned “mainstream media”. Lately the main subject has been scandals involving Donald Trump: adultery with a porn star and a Playboy model involving mysterious payoffs, and the long-running investigation of his and his campaign’s Russian connections. These are both complicated issues, involving his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, the “National Enquirer”, Sean Hannity, and many others.

Scandals involving an American President are genuine news. And these are genuine scandals. Although Trump and his allies constantly cry “Fake News!” the reporting about his ever-increasing problems has been professional and factual. The only things that have been fake have been the lies told by Trump and Co., which keep collapsing under the weight of new disclosures.

These are certainly headline stories. But the major TV news programs focus nearly exclusively and obsessively on the latest revelations, no matter how inconsequential. The announcement that Rudy Giuliani would be joining Trump’s defense team prompted countless long-winded speculations about why Giuliani was selected, what he might do, etc., etc. I’ve watched as one news hour with Famous Reporter A faded into the next news hour with Famous Reporter B, each inviting Expert C, D, and E to comment on the same bit of news.

Isn’t anything else happening in the world?

Contrast this TV “news” experience with reading a national newspaper. After Page One’s top stories, an international section offers a look at the world, where wars in Syria and Afghanistan and Niger involve American soldiers risking their lives. Remarkable political changes are happening on the Korean peninsula between North and South.

A national section offers stories about a day in American life, mostly outside of Washington, not involving famous politicians, but important to our own lives. Public school teachers are waging an unprecedented nationwide battle for decent school funding. In every state, local politicians are preparing for elections in November, which might result in an historic shift in national politics. Violations of the privacy of millions of people threaten to bring down some of the biggest companies on earth. The economy, whose fluctuations affect us all directly, is booming now, but warning signs are scary.

Not to mention all the interesting and sometimes significant news about popular culture, sports, housing, and health that might interest you and me.

Although the folks around Trump seek to kill the messenger with accusations of fake news, lack of evidence is not a problem with the major news channels. The weakness of mainstream TV news is the obsession with scandal, the endless repetition of information, and the stretch into speculation in order to keep talking about one all-consuming story. The relatively new format of warring political commentators offering openly partisan remarks about every issue does a disservice to those of us who just want to know what’s going on. These “experts” give us contrasting spins, rather than reasoned analysis. The newscaster has become a host asking questions, rather than a voice who can be trusted to tell us all sides of an issue based on the latest facts.

It may be no surprise that I prefer a newspaper as a source of real news. Instead of celebrities who have just come out of the make-up room to center stage, real news is better conveyed by journalists on the ground, not anonymous but not famous, not glamorous but well informed, trying to convey the truths they have discovered. Instead of TV producers with ratings on their minds deciding which few stories to broadcast, newspapers give us a wide choice of readings, each with much more information than anything broadcast on TV.

Long ago, Pew Research Center contrasted TV and newspaper news stories. They found that TV news offers more personality and less policy, and focuses more on the media themselves.

But the news about newspapers is discouraging. Since 2000, the number of newspaper firms in the US has fallen from 6200 to below 4500. Advertising revenue has dropped by two-thirds. I know that most of the best newspapers are shrinking in coverage as their staffs get cut. The “Denver Post” recently announced a 30% cut in newsroom staff, after many other recent cuts. There have been significant staff cuts at papers in Los Angeles, Montana, Jacksonville, FL, San Francisco, San Jose, Portland, OR, and Chicago, just to mention this year’s bad news.

I get my news from print journalists whom I read on my computer. The internet allows me to sample good writing on whatever topic I am working on from all over the world. I can easily check whether some story or piece of evidence has been made up by somebody or is being reported by many reputable journalists. I also subscribe to my local newspaper and to the NY Times. Wherever I am, I buy a newspaper.

That costs more than my “free” TV news. But you get what you pay for.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, April 24, 2018