June 2025 – Anthony G. Flood

“Affordability”: Communism’s latest economically illiterate lure

Zohran Mamdani speaks during the 'Zohran For NYC Election Night Party' in New York City, USA. — Marxist Muslim Zohran Mamdani, candidate for New York Mayor running as a Democrat, June 25, 2025

At what rate should scarce resources—in land, labor, or capital—exchange? In plainer English, how much “should” I be paid for the services I render, and how little “should” I have to pay for the things I need? The answer will expose the economic astuteness, or ignorance, of the respondent. If the answer is a function of the pseudo-concept of “affordability,” about which the Democrats, especially their frankly communist faction, cannot stop yapping, then we know it’s ignorance when not also wrapped in mendacity.

**June 24, 2025:** Guests attending the wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez observed Amazon’s packaging standards by placing each gift in a box at least four sizes larger than the item.

Maybe Joe Blow can’t spend even a hundred bucks on his wedding, while another JB, Jeff Bezos, can afford to spend $50 million on his. But how did Bezos amass such purchasing power, and whence the ingredients of everything he ever bought and consumed either for business or pleasure? The answer: privately owned scarce goods traded on more or less free markets.

Without respect for property rights in the aforementioned resources, there’s no way to calculate how much of any good or service (and therefore all of them) should be produced and offered for sale. (Keep in mind that we implicitly impute the value of consumption goods back to the ingredients of their production. For example, we value rare earth minerals not because we consume them directly, but because they’re essential ingredients of the goods we do consume.)

Therefore, if you’re an enemy of said rights, then you invite chaos into every economic calculation, yours and mine, Bezos’s and Blow’s, chaos that will inexorably degenerate into a living hell. For that is how shortages and gluts, two cold analytical terms, cash out experientially. And that makes you my enemy: you’re not someone I debate, but someone against whom I arm myself should the state’s monopolized police, courts, and armed forces break down and no free-market alternatives to such socially necessary services are available. Continue reading ““Affordability”: Communism’s latest economically illiterate lure”

Trotskyist power didn’t “degenerate” into slavery, but began with it. The irony of C. L. R. James’s support for compulsory labor.

(The series continues)

The essence of War Communism [1918-1921] was that we actually took from the peasant all his surpluses, and sometimes not only the surpluses, but part of the grain the peasant needed for food. We took this in order to meet the requirements of the army and to sustain the worker.—Vladimir Lenin [1]

Kronstadt sailors, 1921, posing with a flag vowing “Death to the bourgeoisie.”

Every communist intellectual, no matter how humanistically educated, has an ethical Achilles’ Heel. C. L. R. James was no exception. For years, I’ve been fascinated by his story and ideas. (Feel free to search his name on this site.) Every so often, however, I splash my face with cold water to remind myself of the horrors that James shut out of view (when he didn’t rationalize them outright). If I’ve created the impression that I’m starry-eyed over an intellectual’s literary achievement at the expense of flesh-and-blood victims of the policies he owned, then I must counter that impression.

In the mid-1930s, James was an apologist for Lenin and Trotsky’s “War Communism,”[2] i.e., bloody totalitarian dictatorship, including their suppression of the revolutionary sailors at the Kronstadt naval base in March 1921.[3] That is, the Pan Africanist James sided with a social system as evil as the one that had enslaved Robert Alexander James, his grandfather, in the New World.

After creating the Red Army, Trotsky introduced into factories and fields an army’s characteristic regimentation of labor, thereby helping to install new slave masters to replace Russian serfdom’s. Some socialists noticed. As Paul Avrich, cited in the first note above, wrote:

Menshevik leaders compared the new regimentation to Egyptian slavery, when the Pharaohs used forced labor to build the pyramids. Compulsion, they insisted, would achieve no more success in industry than in agriculture.[4] Continue reading “Trotskyist power didn’t “degenerate” into slavery, but began with it. The irony of C. L. R. James’s support for compulsory labor.”

Did Richard Wright want to “kiss the hand of the man who wrote American Negro Slave Revolts”? Yes, according to that hand’s owner. Notes on a mutual suspension of hostilities.

(Continuing the series)

I was taken aback when I first read those words.[1] I reproduced them in my review of Gary Murrell’s biography of Herbert Aptheker: “A biographer must leave out many things, of course, but one wonders why this meeting had to be one of them.”[2]

Aptheker, didn’t take kindly to apostates from Communism, the God who had failed the famous black novelist.

According to Aptheker, however, they agreed to meet in a Manhattan hotel room (almost certainly Wright’s). In fairness to Murrell, upon reflection, I believe Murrell omitted this story because no one else could corroborate it.[3] We have only Stuckey’s citation of Crowder’s interview referenced in a paper by Stuckey that Murrell otherwise drew upon several times.

Aptheker’s choice of words, however, makes it hard to question his veracity: the verb that would occur to me, were I making the whole thing up, would be “shake,” not “kiss.” But why would Aptheker confabulate such an event? Continue reading “Did Richard Wright want to “kiss the hand of the man who wrote American Negro Slave Revolts”? Yes, according to that hand’s owner. Notes on a mutual suspension of hostilities.”