People Before Profit blog

Thoughts on the Occupy Movement

Political Affairs — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:56:00 -0500

The Occupy movement has left a distinct mark on the political landscape. It is hard to overestimate the degree to which it has changed the political discourse, raised the sights of other social movements, and stimulated mass action.

Currently it is in a process of regrouping, hastened by the forced evictions from public spaces in recent months. What direction it will choose to go in is still unclear.

Many readers of this article have participated in Occupy events, some have helped organize them. Though I have attended some Occupy events I can't claim to be an active participant. But I do have a few general thoughts about the Occupy movement in this country.

First of all, the Occupy movement has an important role going forward. That a section of the young generation has battled Wall Street and inspired others to do the same is to be greatly welcomed. But it is ill advised to try, as some have done, to turn the Occupy movement into a "vanguard" organizing center leading a diverse coalition of political/social forces to "a brave new world."

In the late 1990s well-meaning people attached that role to young people in the anti-globalization movement, but it never materialized. Young people bring energy, boldness, and imagination to social struggles. He or she who has the youth, it is said, has the future. But it doesn't follow that the young generation is the main, and certainly not the singular, social force in any assault on entrenched power.

That role lies with the multi-racial multi-ethnic working class and its organized sector, especially in an advanced capitalist society like ours. The working class has changed dramatically in its composition, size and life circumstances over the decades. Not everyone wears a blue collar or carries a lunch bucket to the workplace. But its social power and experience in class and social struggles remain, giving it the potential to be a leading agent for change, and a radical change at that.

Of course, it will fulfill this potential only in close alliance with its main allies - the racially oppressed, women and, not least, young people. Such an alliance is necessary for near-term as well longer-term victories. Go-it-alone strategies in this era by any social grouping are self-defeating.

It follows that an imperative task of Occupy is to deepen and extend its connections to labor, people of color, youth, and other social forces - connections that are crucial to its mission to construct a more egalitarian society.

Second, many of the occupiers worry about cooptation, that is, subordinating oneself to other social forces such as the Democratic Party, labor, MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream, etc. Concern about maintaining its organizational independence and unique style is legitimate. And yet if taken too far it can be counterproductive. After all, any movement that hopes to influence millions has to rub shoulders with diverse social forces who are not always of like mind, and has to participate in arenas of struggle not always of its own choosing.

Which brings me to this year's elections. My impression is that some - maybe the majority - in the Occupy movement see the election process in its two-party form as an invitation to cooptation, and therefore they adopt an attitude of electoral abstentionism.

This is mistaken in my opinion. Such a posture isolates Occupy from the main social forces and organizations in the country whose energies and resources will be focused in the electoral arena of struggle this year.

Moreover, the outcome of the election will set the broad parameters of struggle in the coming period. The defeat of the Republican right will position the people's movement to address, among other things, the inequality and exploitation that is built into our (capitalist) 1 percent vs. 99 percent society. On the other hand, a victory by the right will set the stage for the right to complete and consolidate a counterrevolution that began with the Reagan presidency three decades ago.

Third, the fight against racism by the Occupy movement is of utmost importance. As the Republican primaries unmistakeably reveal, racism is alive and well. And if victories are to be won against the 1 percent, the 99 percent have to reject divisions along racial lines. Such divisions have always been the Achilles' heel of the progressive movement.

Finally, the struggle for alternatives to the crisis of capitalism, say a sustainable green economy, by Occupy and other left movements for that matter has to combine with full immersion in the struggle for partial and immediate solutions to crisis conditions. To hang one's hat only on one or the other is wrongheaded and self-defeating.

No doubt Occupy has a future. And like any movement, it will learn lessons from its experience and adjust accordingly. May we hope that it continues to be a thorn in the side of the 1 percent.

We're All in the Same Boat? On the Topic of Obama, the GOP Can't Even Blush Anymore

Political Affairs — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:03:00 -0500

If Hollywood gave Oscars for shamelessness, the Republican responses to President Obama's State of the Union speech last night, Jan 24, would have swept the field.

Take Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels, who gave the official GOP response:

"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," he said. "As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat."

Amazing. One top GOP candidate, Newt Gingrich, is running around the country attacking Obama as the 'Food Stamp President,' while the other, Mitt Romney, whose newly released tax returns show he takes in more in a day than a well-paid worker does in a year, critiques Obama's business skills using a shuttered factory as a stage prop.

Obama, of course, never shut down a single factory, yet that was precisely the business Mitt Romney and his outfit, Bain Capital, was famous for, including shutting down a factory in Florida, where his video message was being recorded.

"All in the same boat" and 'castigating others' indeed. Governor Daniels uttered these words as the state he presides over is currently engaged in a notorious 'right to work for less' battle to strip Indiana's workers on their ability to bargain collectively.

Like many Americans, I watched the President's speech with a critical eye. As he detailed a number of manufacturing and alternative energy industrial policies, I thought, finally, he's giving some voice to his 'inner Keynesian' and forcing a crack in the neoliberal hegemony at the top. I cheered when he took aim at Wall Street and declared, "No more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop outs." On the other hand I winced more than once at the glorification of militarism and the defense of Empire-I'm one quick to oppose unjust wars and who has long believed a clean energy/green manufacturing industrial policy needs to trump a military-hydrocarbon industrial policy.

This speech was also Obama in campaign mode. One thing we've learned over the last four years is that his governing mode is not the same thing, and requires much more of us in terms of independent, popular and democratic power at the base to make good things happen.

But one thing is clear. My critical eye has nothing in common with what's coming from the GOP and the far right. The first Saturday of every month, the pickups trucks from the local hills and hollows, growing numbers of them, fill the parking lot of the church on my corner, picking up packages from the food pantry to help make ends meet. In these circumstances and lacking better practical choices, I'll go with the 'Food Stamp' President any day of the week.

All in the Republican Family

Political Affairs — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:01:00 -0500

In a way it’s too bad that someone will in the end have to win the Republican nomination. They could turn this farcical “ race” into a sitcom that could last for years. Or a reality show that would combine Survivor and the Great Race with the Kardashians and the Biggest Loser.
I can think of many real life plot s that our American audience hasn’t yet discovered. For example, I recently discovered that Rick Santorum, former rightwing Republican Senator from Pennsylvania ,comes from a great family in Italy, a family that all of our readers would respect and admire.

Italian journalists interviewing some of Santorum’s relatives discovered that they were staunch, proud, and in the case of his grandfather prominent Communists. His grandfather, Pietro, according to a quote from an 83 year old relative in the Italian journal, Oggi, and his uncles in Italy were “Red Communists to the core.”     She and others compare him to a fictional TV hero whose battles with a local rightwing priest later became the basis for a popular Italian television series.

I can imagine Santorum continuing to run for the GOP presidential nomination only to come home and be denounced by his relatives as a fascist, a black shirt, and a class traitor. But, he would say, in America we Republicans represent the “red states” and remember Garibaldi was a republican (but, his relatives would say, not your kind of Republican, Duce Rick).
In any case, Santorum would try to silence his relatives by telling them to stay in Italy and offering them Godfather’s Pizza franchises in order to make them good capitalists.   They would of course, being very fine people, indignantly refuse, seeing this as an insult to their principles, their commitment to the working class, and Italian cuisine.
But this would only be the beginning. The series would then take an interesting turn as Gingrich, who in the 1990s once called Bill Clinton a “Stalinist” (you can’t make this up) would learn of Santorum’s  family roots and  announce that “I have here in my hand list of 205 of Santorum’s Communist relatives who will get jobs
in the State Department if Santorum is elected President.”

Santorum would counter with his own list.

And, with a tip of my hat to a British humorist who came up with this line for our present society, all the Republicans would unite around a slogan that will sum up the philosophy of their party and be their forever after answer to Marxism, socialism, communism, even liberalism: “From each according to his vulnerability to each according to his Greed.”

Of 410 women that Gingrich offered at various times to both marry and divorce. If Gingrich became  president, he would say, all his alimony payments would become public and substantially ncrease the national debt.
Gingrich, feeling vulnerable, would then go on the attack against Romney, accusing Romney of undermining family values when he was governor of Massachusetts by raising marriage license fees. Romney would reply that raising marriage license fees was a deterrent against serial grooms like Gingrich. Ron Paul would then chime in that he is the only real conservative in the group, against more and more spending and more and more marrying.
Gingrich, becoming more and more desperate, would join with Santorum to accuse Romney of plotting to use the presidency to mandate polygamy in the United States. Santorum would further claim that Romney has not released his tax statement because it would show that he has five wives. Romney would counter that it is well known that Communists believe in “free love,” which should convince all voters that Gingrich, like Santorum’s relatives in Italy, is a Communist!
The series season finale would have all of the candidates agreeing that the Obama health care legislation would be a disaster for America. They would all stand with pointers around a blow up picture of New Jersey governor Chris Christie and warn that this is what the Obama health care legislation would make America look like.
In the best case scenario, the Republicans in 2012 will all go down to a crushing defeat and their series will be renewed. In 2013, Chris Christie will join the series after going down to a crushing defeat and failing his written test to get a teacher’s license and numerous physical exams to join local New Jersey police and fire departments.

Michelle Bachmann will also be back with her new husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Herman Cain, having opened up a chain of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek eggroll restaurants in Alaska, will also hit the campaign trail with the slogan, 98.6, 98.6, 98.6—a promise to everyone for a 98.6 normal temperature, a life expectancy of 98.6, years and a 98.6 % return on all investments. And he would be the Republican front-runner for 2016.

Memories of Martin Luther King

Political Affairs — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:09:00 -0500

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. It has been a national holiday for a generation-even though Ronald Reagan and other rightwing Republican politicians delayed that for years after King's 1968 assassination.

Public offices and schools will be closed. There will be some ceremonies in communities and most people will do what they do on most holidays, both religious and non-religious (what they are expected to do) go shopping, watch sports events on television, and prepare for work the following day.

There will be references of course to King's legacy. Republican politicians (many of whom fought for years to prevent his birthday from becoming a national holiday) will distort everything that King lived and died for.

In the process, they buried in rituals of celebration the reality of segregation, de facto and de jure, disenfranchisement, supported terroristic violence represented in the 1920s by a KKK that numbered in the millions.As for African Americans, when they were remembered before positively before the civil rights movement it was through a handful of individuals, the accommodationist leader Booker T. Washington, the scientist George Washington Carver, and most of all the fictional character, Uncle Tom, in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and of course W.E.B. Dubois who had long himself as a scholar and activist with a global reputation simply didn't exist in the conventional reality of their own country.

They will make him into an opponent of affirmative action, economic and social integration as "reverse racism" (they usually throw in John F. Kennedy's. speech about "taking race out of American politics" for good measure )when they have done routinely for many years.. Other "conservatives " will also damn King with false praise, crediting him with ending segregation and thus eliminating racism from U.S. politics and society.

In the 1920s, novelist Sinclair Lewis at the time of the opening of the Lincoln Memorial wrote cynically that Abraham Lincoln was the "patron saint of America," the common man who freed the slaves and then, Christ-like, died for the sins of the Republic. Today there are those who seek to make Martin Luther King into a sort of "patron saint" for fictional U.S. where racism no longer exists. And there are many more who control school curricula who teach children that the most important thing about King was that he preached and practiced non-violence-in essence he was the "good Black" in contrast to Malcolm X, the "bad Black," (although you usually have to get to high school and sometimes to college to hear Malcolm X mentioned in school curricula).

But the real King and his real legacy lives on directly today in peoples struggle-most dramatically in the Occupy movements through the nation.

For King non violence was both a strategy and a philosophy united by the concept of "positive peace," peace with social justice. He agreed with Mohandas K Gandhi, the teacher/activist who led the Indian Independence movement that poverty was the greatest violence. He rejected entirely the view that integration without any change in the distribution of income, without large advances in economic and social equality, was either possible or desirable

He broke with the Johnson administration that advanced through its war on poverty and civil rights legislation everything that he had fought for on the Vietnam War because he realized that war itself, imperialist war with in this case a clear and large racist subtext was the worst enemy of positive peace.

And he at the end of his life organized a "Poor Peoples Movement, of all ethno cultural groups in poverty to launch go Washington, not simply to march but to stay there, the way the bonus marchers did in 1932, to force the Johnson administration to confront the gap between and its promises of a war on poverty and a great society and the realities in the U.S..

And he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, supporting a strike of public employees, African-American sanitation workers, who as workers, public workers, and African Americans in a "right to work," segregationist state which chronically underfunded education and other public services, were triply oppressed.

This was the real Martin Luther King and he lives today directly in the Occupy movement everywhere. He lives also in public employees everywhere he are fighting against draconian anti-labor actions being pushed in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and many other states.

He lives also in the opposition to both wars and a military budget over 600 billion dollars(ten times greater than it was during the Vietnam War ) and a federal deficit more than fifty times greater than it was, thanks to military spending and tax cuts, then it was at the end of the Vietnam War.

We have an African American president, Barack Obama, attempting to advance progressive policies by cautiously moving through the political mine fields of four decades of reactionary Republican (Nixon through W Bush) and collaborationist Democratic (Carter+ Clinton) policies, zigging and zagging while seeking to move forward.

I think the King would like Obama, not because of the color of his skin, but because of the content of his character. He would also probably be amused as the politicians who, proclaiming that Obama's election is evidence that racism no longer exists in the U.S out of one side of their mouths, try to make him into a national scapegoat for all of the society's problems, seeing him not as a servant of the people but as a servant above his station out of the other sides of their mouths.

The real King was always an optimist about what could be accomplished in this society and we should remember that he was the most important leader of the most important movement in the United States in the second half of the 20th century, a movement which he always understood that the struggle to advance equal rights and social-economic justice for an oppressed minority and for the whole society were both independent and dialectical, changing and interacting, either strengthening or weakening each other. By combining that optimism and that realism, we can honor him best and help ourselves achieve through struggle the positive peace that he believed in and stood for.

Working Class LGBT people isolated from wider LGBT movement.

Political Affairs — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:09:00 -0500

In this day and age being gay is a whole lot easier than it was say thirty to fifty years ago. Talk to any LGBT senior citizen and listen to them as they talk about things such as the Stonewall Riots and the AIDS crisis.

These things are a part of history and have helped to define the modern day LGBT rights movement. On the outside the movement looks united and fluid. Mainstream organizations like the Human Rights Campaign regularly lobby, fundraise, and release endorsements of corporations and big stars. The sad part of the LGBT rights movement is that there is the same fractures and divides that there is in the broader struggle for human rights.

There is a big divide. It is the same divide there is between worker and corporation. At the top of the LGBT rights movement are several powerful and very wealthy individuals who control the direction of the movement and all the money. The current focus of LGBT rights is the fight for marriage equality. But there are things that transcend marriage equality that need to be addressed.

Most rank and file sexual minorities are working class men and women. They may or may not have some kind of post secondary education; but they are not the rich and powerful corporate moguls that control all the wealth in the LGBT movement.

Poverty racks the LGBT community. 15% of gay and bisexual men live in poverty. The famous Kinsey study suggests that gays and bisexuals make up 10% of the population. So if our current population is 300,000,000 that means there’s about 30,000,000 gay and bisexual men. Add in the 15% and were looking at astonishing numbers of poverty.
Lesbians and transgender individuals are even at higher rates of poverty at 24% and 60% respective. So not only is there a disconnect between the working class of the LGBT community and its wealthy bankrollers but there are other factors as well.

If one is a racial minority such as African American, Latino, or Native American and happens to be LGBT it’s a double edged sword. Not only are they dealing with poverty and discrimination from general society but they often face internal discrimination and stigmatization within their own communalities as well.

A gay Latino man faces a culture of Machismo or an overt masculine influence and the need to conform to traditional gender roles. A gay African American faces hostility from much of the traditional African American civil rights movement that circles around traditionally African Churches. Internal discrimination against LGBT Native Americans generally varies from tribe to tribe but it exists.

Another minority of LGBT people where discrimination and poverty exists heavily is LGBT people with disabilities. There’s no numbers or specifics generally on these people specifically. 62% of peoples with disabilities are unemployed. Millions live in poverty because of lack of services and job opportunities. Medical bills just simply pile up as these people struggle on a daily basis to care for themselves or to make it. LGBT people with disabilities face discrimination from their own fellow gays and lesbians. The casual observer including a gay man would assume that disabled people are asexual and incapable of having sex or a relationship.

The LGBT community is far from united. To the casual observer they seem to be quite happy with the progress their making. If anything could be further from the truth; in the community there’s racism, poverty, sexism, ableism etc. The list goes on and on.

So many gays and lesbians are marching forward on the marriage banner that they’re leaving broken pieces of other people and groups behind. If the LGBT movement would expand their objectives to cover issues like racism, poverty, income inequality, sexism, transphobia, and disability discrimination the movement would be much more inclusive and united and would be a true front for the working class.

Robert Shrum -- Bloice's Quote of the Day January 14, 2012

Political Affairs — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:03:00 -0500

'Romney, not Obama, betrays our history. And Mitt's explanation for his job-destroying profiteering at Bain Capital reprises the rationalizations of the malefactors - when they bothered to have them. Romney insists that objections to what he did at Bain represent "envy" - that he was merely practicing the capitalism of "creative destruction." Ironically, the phrase derives from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, although it was finalized and popularized by the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter. As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan - no
liberal, to say the least - has observed: "The problem with creative destruction is that it is destruction" - and we "must address the problems [of] those who are on the destruction side." For Romney, the problem is that his version of the process created hundreds of millions of dollars for him - and the destruction of the livelihoods of ordinary hard-working Americans who are
already telling their stories on television. '

Columnist Robert Shrum
The Week
January 13, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/6qtrm6g

Capitalism among the Vultures

Political Affairs — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:09:00 -0500

I confess that I don't watch Republican debates too much. It is very bad for my acid reflux. But something very funny is happening. Mitt Romney, the front runner of a very backward running pack, is being "criticized" by his rivals as a Vulture Capitalist. Republicans using such language. Now my first thought was that this was like the 1920s gangster Bugs Moran criticizing front running rival Al Capone for violating the Prohibition laws. Then I thought that the GOP was being "brainwashed" by partisans of socialism. But then I began to thin a little more seriously about it First of all, the phrase "vulture capitalism has been around for many years. It no more originated with reactionary Texas governor Rick Perry than the death penalty, of which he and his predecessors have been so fond, originated in Texas.

It is essentially play on the words of "venture capital" and has been used by militant opponents of virtually everything all of the Republican candidates stand for decades. You can find it in Michael Moore's" Capitalism A Love Story" and in the work of brilliant popular political economist Naomi Klein(who also has given us such better terms as "Casino Capitalism" and "Disaster Capitalism." It was even the title of a 2002 novel.

The difference between Romney and his rivals is that he is a bona fide contemporary finance capitalist, not merely a servant and propagandist for the capitalist system, He is someone seeking the Republican presidential nomination not only to get rid of Obama and gratify is own ego but to eliminate the middle man. And he looks and acts the part.

Vultures feed off the dead and a system of deregulated unchecked capitalism creates many corpses. No one would seriously say that vultures represent the Social Darwinist interpretation of "survival of the
fittest"

But others look at it differently, namely the proponents of venture capitalism: meaning "private equity firms" which raise and invest capital stress the achievements of such firms from the 1950s on in funding new businesses, "startup firms," which bolster economic growth, jobs and income., advancing "high tech," making "Silicon valley" possible, etc.

But most students of financial capitalist history (including its supporters) mention that with the deregulation of the Reagan era and the proliferation of such private equity firms, these firms competing with each other for capital (with a government that let them do pretty much what they wanted) moved away from investing in new companies to "investing in" aka leveraging aka hostile takeovers of established firms and inflating the stock market value of such firms.

Along with super profits, these policies caused extensive layoff of employees, pension fund raids against employees of the firms , and of course a mountain of debt which often turned the firms into skeletons whose flesh had been devoured by the venture turned vulture capitalists before they moved to new firms to devour.

All sorts of booms Internet booms were then followed by all sorts of busts, further deregulation, Internets bubbles, NASDAC crashes, etc. and of course the big bust of 2008, wreaking miserty and suffering through the economy

Of course, this all reflected to and for its supporters what that old economist of the right Joseph Schumpeter, once called capitalism work for "creative destruction" paving the way for new developments and breakthroughs out of the debris of shattered industries and workers without jobs.

Unfortunately, like real vulture, vulture capitalists feed off the dead; they don't make existing firms, to use the old Reagan era cliché "lean and mean." And they don't destroy to create but to amass profits in ways that have
stifled development in the U.S. -not only in regards to the purchasing power of workers but also the introduction and development of new technologies to upgrade the infrastructures of production and distribution.

But what about Mitt Romney. He certainly is a vulture capitalist regardless of who is calling him that. The son of a former Michigan governor and CEO of American Motors he started his own venture capitalist firm, Bain Capital in 1984 Lleveraged buyouts followed along with layoffs,(his supporters don't from my readings even seriously claim that he was funding "start up firms) although his supporters do claim that "new jobs were also being created to off-set those lost (I forgot to tell you that these funds have been able to hide all kinds of information about their activities which makes both their assertions and those of their critics had to prove)

Romney "retired" from Bain Capital at the turn of the 21st century more than a decade ago to pursue political and other activities, serving as Governor of Massachusetts between 2003 and 2007. In that position he cut funding for all forms of education massively, advanced a deregulation state program for business, increased fees for drivers licenses, registration, marriage licenses pretty much everything that he could . And he was hailed as a financial statesmen who turned a large budget deficit into a surplus.

By the way, as Romney was carrying out these policies in Massachusetts, he, as part of his "retirement" from Bain Capital, continued to receive millions annually from the profits of a number of the firm's activities,
including leveraged buyouts which continued to cost workers jobs through the country.

Not that his main opponent is that much better. Newt Gingrich since he left Congress has made many millions through "consulting firms" for both the "health care industry" and Freddie Mac, the federal home mortgage company. While his wealth is much smaller than Romney's he is a millionaire many times over whose hands may be at least as dirty as the man he and his associates today call a vulture capitalist. .

But to return to our major point, Casino/Disaster/Parasitic/Vulture capitalism is the capitalism that reactionary public policy in recent decades has produced

If Gingrich could somehow gain the presidency, he would in all likelihood advance the same anti-labor, anti-social welfare policies with which he was so closely identified in the 1990s. If Romney could somehow gain the presidency, he would in all likelihood advance the "austerity" policies with which he was so closely identified with as governor of Massachusetts-raising regressive social security payroll taxes and encouraging state and local governments to raise regressive property taxes and fees while he provided greater subsidies to large corporations and banks.

And these are reasons why neither one of them or any of the Republican candidates offer any solution to the economic crisis. The policies which all of them are associated with have played a central role in bringing about the crisis; and they have viewed the crisis as an opportunity to gain or regain political power for themselves by hovering like vultures over frightened and insecure working people as real as trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

The general solution to the problems of capitalism is to abolish it and replace it with socialism. The specific and immediate solutions to "vulture capitalism" is to advance the reregulation of finance and industry and the public protection of the jobs, pensions and benefits of employees to both drive the vultures away and create a healthy political and social economy which will prevent them from feeding.

BRUTE FACTS AND POLITICAL CHOICES: THINKING ABOUT 2012

Political Affairs — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:19:00 -0500

The year 2011 has truly been an exciting year for progressives. Arab spring sent shock waves across the Middle East, launching a campaign for democratization that will ultimately impact every regime in the region. Also Arab spring showed the rest of the world, and particularly the young, that mass mobilization, challenging economic control and military might with people power, can affect history.

The spirit of grassroots anger, activism, a growing sense of solidarity across races, gender, class, and national boundaries planted the seeds for the rise of a new age out of the old. As the young people in Tahrir Square knew from the beginning of their protest, the struggle will be long, sometimes bloody, but the 99 per cent, in the end, will win.

But 2011 also showed the world that politics can be ruthless. Masses of people died in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan and in various locations in Africa, Europe, and North America. The United States shifted priorities from sending the military everywhere to supporting private armies and high tech drone warfare. Secret intelligence agencies now define the threats to the United States who are targeted for assassination. Meanwhile the mass media has celebrated executions abroad and at home and the deaths of ostracized leaders. In many ways 21st century global culture, has become a “death culture,” in its entertainment as well as its politics. Killing has become fun.

Within the United States, political forces have been unleashed that are trying to return politics to the Dark Ages:

-escalating the shift in wealth and power from the many to the few
-destroying the historic right of workers to organize to better articulate their interests
-privatizing education, health care, and basic concern for the environment
-transferring control of women’s bodies from themselves to various churches and private interest groups
-increasing the power of police to control people’s lives, using pepper spray, SWAT teams, covert operations, and spying to serve the status quo
-eliminating longstanding legal procedures that have given some protection to people, particularly minorities, who have been accused of crimes
-using, abusing, and disposing of immigrant workers.

So at the dawn of the 2012 the world continues its contradictory path. And as the forces of light and darkness contend, progressives once again are confronted with political choices. As the debates escalate, particularly in the electoral arena, some of the summary data I accumulated just after the 2010 election remains relevant:

“From data reported in the media between November 3rd and 10th, 2010 the new United States Senate will be comprised of 51 Democratic Senators and 2 Independents and 47 Republicans. The Republicans experienced their biggest gains in the House of Representatives winning 239 seats to 189 for the Democrats…. The 2011 distribution of the governorships will include at least 29 Republicans and 18 Democrats. In sum, the elections brought Republican control to the House of Representatives and significant shifts in gubernatorial contests which will impact on the redistricting of House of Representative districts for the next decade.

At the state level, Republican candidates won 650 seats in legislative assemblies, taking control of 19 legislative bodies from Democrats. For example, Republicans gained both state houses in Alabama, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They won an additional house to take control of both houses in Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Through gubernatorial and legislative victories at the state level Republicans will control the designation of 170 congressional districts while Democrats will control 70. The rest, about 200, will be determined by bipartisan bodies.

Republicans won three state legislatures in the Northeast, eight in the South, nine in the Midwest, and five in the West. Looking at a USA map of red and blue states, 27 states will be red in the next period.”

As I write, Indiana workers are marching inside and outside the state capital protesting the backroom passage of a new Right-to-Work law. Indiana has not been a right to work state since the 1960s. In 2008, the Indiana House of Representatives consisted of 52 Democrats and 47 Republicans. Today the House has 60 Republicans and 40 Democrats.

And as a result of the 2010 election, not only is it likely that Right-to-Work legislation will become a reality in Indiana but education and resources for women’s reproductive health will be even more vulnerable.

There are similar stories to be told in each and every state, as well as in the national political arena. And, at the same time, there are differences in politics and history in each state and locale. And make note: none of this has much to do with the selection of nominees for president of the United States. That story is the circus, the Super Bowl--Romney or Santorum, the “moderate” Republican or the “social conservative.”

So progressives have a lot to think about in 2012: how to protect the people, the 99 percent, from all the hurt that they increasingly will experience in the short-run while at the same time moving “inch by inch, row by row” to the vision that animated Arab Spring, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin.

See my blog at www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com

Cyber War: Reality or Hype?

Political Affairs — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:05:00 -0500

During his confirmation hearings this past June, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned the Senate, “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.” It was powerful imagery: a mighty fleet reduced to smoking ruin, an expansionist Asian power at the nation’s doorstep.

But is “cyber war” really a threat? Can cyber war actually “cripple” the U.S., and who might these computer terrorists be? Or is the language just sturm und drang spun up by a coalition of major arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, and Internet security firms, allied with China bashers aimed at launching a new Cold War in Asia?

The language is sobering. Former White House Security Aide Richard Clarke, author of “Cyberwar”, conjures up an apocalyptic future of paralyzed U.S. cities, subways crashing, planes “literally falling out of the sky,” and thousands dead. Retired Admiral and Bush administration National Intelligence Director, Mike McConnell grimly warns “The United States is fighting a cyber war today and we are losing.”

Much of this rhetoric is aimed at China. According to U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, the Chinese government has launched a “predatory” campaign of “cyber theft” that has reached an “intolerable level.” U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) charges that a “significant portion” of “cyber attacks” on U.S. companies “emanate from China.” Former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden told Congress, “I stand back in awe of the breadth, depth, sophistication, and persistence of the Chinese espionage effort against the United States of America.”

China has been accused of hacking into the Pentagon, the International Monetary Fund, the French government, the CIA, and stealing information from major U.S. arms maker Boeing, and the Japanese firm Mitsubishi. The latter builds the American high performance fighter, the F-15.

The Pentagon has even developed a policy strategy that considers major cyber attacks to be acts of war, triggering what could be a military response. “If you shut down our power grid,” one Defense official told the Wall Street Journal, “maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”

But consider the sources for all this scare talk: Clarke is the chair of a firm that consults on cyber security, and McConnell is the executive vice-president of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Both are currently doing business with the Pentagon.

Arms giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and other munitions manufactures are moving heavily into the cyber security market. In 2010, Boeing snapped up Argon ST and Narus, two cyber security firms with an estimated value of $2.4 billion. Raytheon bought Applied Signal Technology, General Dynamics absorbed Network Connectivity Solutions, and Britain’s major arms firm, BAE, purchased Norkom and ETI.

“There is a feeding frenzy right now to provide products and services to meet the demands of governments, law enforcement and the military,” says Ron Deibert, director of the Canada Center for Global Security Studies.

There are big bucks at stake. Between the Defense Department and Homeland Security, the U.S. will spend some $10.5 billion for cyber security by 2015. The Pentagon’s new Cyber Command is slated to have a staff of 10,000, and according to Northrop executive Kent Schneider, the market for cyber arms and security in the U.S. is $100 billion.

But is cyber war everything it is cracked up to be, and is the U.S. really way behind the curve in the scramble to develop cyber weapons?

According to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in his New Yorker article “The Online Threat,” the potential for cyber mayhem has “been exaggerated” and the Defense Department and cyber security firms have blurred the line between cyber espionage and cyber war. The former is the kind of thing that goes on, day in and day out, between governments and industry, except its medium is the Internet. The latter is an attack on another country’s ability to wage war, defend itself, or run its basic infrastructure.

Most experts say the end-of-the-world scenarios drawn up by people like Clarke are largely fiction. How could an enemy shut down the U.S. national power grid when there is no such thing? A cyber attack would have to disrupt more than 100 separate power systems throughout the nation to crash the U.S. grid.

Most financial institutions are also protected. The one example of a successful cyber attack in that area was an apparent North Korean cyber assault this past march on the South Korean bank Nonghyup that crashed the institution’s computers. But an investigation found that the bank had been extremely remiss in changing passwords or controlling access to its computers. According to Peter Sommer, author of “Reducing Systems Cybersecurity Risk,” the cyber threat to banks “is a bit of nonsense.”

However, given that many Americans rely on computers, cell phones, I-Pads, smart phones and the like, any hint that an “enemy” could disrupt access to those devices is likely to get attention. Throw in some scary scenarios and a cunning enemy—China—and it’s pretty easy to make people nervous.

But contrary to McConnell’s statement, the U.S. is more advanced in computers than other countries in the world, and the charge that the U.S. is behind the curve sounds suspiciously like the “bomber gap” with the Russians in the ‘50s and the “missile gap” in the 1960s. Both were illusions that had more to do with U.S. presidential elections and arms industry lobbying than anything in the real world.

The focus on the China threat certainly fits the Obama administration’s recent “strategic pivot” toward Africa and Asia. China draws significant resources from Africa, including oil, gas, copper, and iron ore, and Beijing is beginning to reassert itself in south and east Asia. The U.S. now has a separate military command for Africa—Africom—and the White House recently excluded U.S. military forces in the Asia theatre from any cutbacks. Washington is also deploying U.S. Marines in Australia. As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the National Defense University this past August, “We know we face some long-term challenges about how we are going to cope with what the rise of China means.”

But James Lewis, an expert on Chinese cyber espionage, told Hersh that the Chinese have no intention of attacking U.S. financial services since they own a considerable portion of them. According to Lewis, “current Chinese officials” told him “a cyber-war attack would do as much economic harm to us as to you.” The U.S. is China’s largest trading partner and Beijing holds over a trillion dollars in U.S. securities.

There is also a certain irony to the accusations aimed at China. According to theNew York Times, the U.S.—and Israel—designed the “Stuxnet” virus that has infected some 30,000 computers in Iran and set back Teheran’s nuclear program. The virus has also turned up in China, Pakistan, and Indonesia. In terms of cyber war, the U.S. is ahead of the curve, not behind.

What all this scare talk has done is allow the U.S. military to muscle its way into cyber security in a way that could potentially allow it to monitor virtually everything on the Internet, including personal computers and email. In fact, the military has resisted a push to insure cyber security through the use of encryption because that would prevent the Pentagon from tapping into Internet traffic.

Does China really pose a threat to the U.S.? There is no question that China-based computers have hacked into a variety of governmental agencies and private companies (as have Russians, Israelis, Americans, French, Taiwanese, South Koreans, etc.—in short everyone spies on everyone), but few observers think that China has any intention of going to war with the much more powerful U.S.

However, Beijing makes a handy bug-a-boo. One four-star admiral told Hersh that in arguing against budget cuts, the military “needs an enemy and it’s settled on China.” It would not be the first time that ploy was used.

If the Pentagon’s push is successful, it could result in an almost total loss of privacy for most Americans, as well as the creation of a vast and expensive new security bureaucracy. Give a government the power to monitor the Internet, says Sommers, and it will do it. In this electronic field of dreams, if we build it, they will use it.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship --- Bloice's Quote of the Day - Jan 13, 2012

Political Affairs — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:50:00 -0500

via Carl Bloice

Quote of the Day
January 12, 2012

'In an era of gross inequality there's both irony and
relevance in Woody Guthrie's song. That "ribbon of
highway" he made famous? It's faded and fraying in
disrepair, the nation's infrastructure of roads and
bridges, once one of our glories, now a shambles
because fixing them would require spending money,
raising taxes, and pulling together.

'This land is mostly owned not by you and me but by the
winner-take-all super rich who have bought up open
spaces, built mega-mansions, turned vast acres into
private vistas, and distanced themselves as far as they
can from the common lot of working people - the people
Woody wrote and sang about.

'True, Barack Obama asked Bruce Springsteen and Woody
Guthrie's longtime friend Pete Seeger to sing This Land
is Your Land at that big, pre-inaugural concert the
Sunday before he was sworn in. And sing they did, in
the spirit of hope and change that President Obama had
spun as the heart of his campaign rhetoric.

'Today, whatever was real about that spirit has been
bludgeoned by severe economic hardship for everyday
Americans and by the cynical expedience of politicians
who wear the red-white-and-blue in their lapels and
sing "America the Beautiful" while serving the
interests of crony capitalists stuffing SuperPACs with
millions of dollars harvested from the gross inequality
destroying us from within.'

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
truthout
January 12, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/72xnoqz

Engles on Authority

Political Affairs — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:12:00 -0500

At a certain point...and some comrades and friends would argue that we've passed this point...the Occupy Movement is going to have to come to terms with the fact that higher forms of organization are needed. Others will say that the current level of organization is just fine. Some wll argue against even keeping what little organization exists.

Read this [below], then put it in your files or in your backpack for future reference. I promise you it'll prove useful......Gary Hicks

Frederick Engels, 1872: On Authority

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

WEB DuBois: The African Roots of War...prefatory notes and link

Political Affairs — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:45:00 -0500

Semper novi quid es Africa. Always, Africa gives us something new.

So wrote W.E.B. DuBois in his oft- forgotten article, "The African Roots of War", published in the May 1915 Atlantic Monthly, nine months after the beginning of the so-called War to End All Wars.

The article is about the imperial scramble for African territory, and the resources on and under the land. It tells of near-wars, and actual wars that took place on the continent in the three decades leading up to World War 1. Present in this article are Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and others, all angling for political leverage. We are given accounts of Britain and France almost going to war over who is going to control Fashoda, a strategic location on the Nile River; of the Boer Wars between the British and Dutch-descended Afrikaners about who will control the gold and diamond riches of South Africa. There is Kinng Menelik of Ethiopia rendering a mighty blow to the italian invaders at Adwa. And the Mahdi wiping out the British garrison at Khartoum.

These conflicts pale [the pun is intended!] in comparison with an ongoing contradictions conflagrations that, since DuBois wrote this article, has yet to run its course almost 100 years later. This war is [DuBois] "the result of jealousies engendered by the recent rise of armed national associations of labor and capital whose aim is the exploitation of the wealth of the world mainly outside of the European circle of nations".

Here in this essay is also to be found the history of how the European slave trade segued into colonialism based upon the seizure and exploitation of gold, diamonds, ivory and other inventory, small pickings compared with what has been discovered in Africa since the 1870s.
In the past two decades alone there have been millions of violent deaths, torture, rape, and maiming of African non-combatants, caught up in civil wars in the mineral- rich Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ... just two of some fifty-plus nations on the African continent.

In reading DuBois's article, i had to pinch myself several times to remind myself: he is writing in 1915 and not 2011. We have witnessed this past year, struggles for democracy in North Africa, in Tunisia and Egypt, U.S.- led military intervention in Libya and the targetted assassination of its president, Moammar Ghadafy, the increased military ventures of AFRICOM and other U.S.military entities. The increasing collusion and contention... mostly the latter... of U.S. and Chinese presences on the continent.

Ninety six years after the publication od DuBois's article, the night is dark. And we are still far from home.

http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/digital/dubois/WarRoots.pdf

Carl Bloice's Quote of the Day -- Jan 9, 2012

Political Affairs — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:27:00 -0500

via Carl Bloice

Quote of the Day
January 8, 2011

'Unionized workers earn more and get more generous
benefits. In 2010, wages of workers in unionized
manufacturing companies in Indiana were 16 percent
higher than in nonunion plants. One study concluded
that the decline in unionization since the 1970s is
responsible for one-fifth to one-third of the growth in
inequality in this country. Voters, unionized or not,
should recognize the new "right to work" push for what
it is: bad economics and cynical politics.'

Editorial
New York Times
January 8, 201

Self-interest and incentivizing membership: Building the Communist Party through reciprocity

Political Affairs — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:10:00 -0500

What follows is meant as a continuation and expansion of some of the ideas outlined in my article "The organizational rubric, power and relevance: A hard look at a proud organization." That article dealt with organizational rubrics and outlined possible approaches to assessing and evaluating our work, some tactics for organizational growth, and questions of accountability and power.

My main focus here is to deal with the seeming lack of clarity surrounding member and organizational self-interest, incentivizing membership and reciprocity. In my opinion, we need to incentivize membership by developing an organizational culture based on reciprocity - in our interactions with both individual members and coalition partners.

Furthermore, I analyze the utilization of material incentives (services) and the utilization of ideology in our collective attempts to build the Communist Party. In this article, I use the words incentives and services interchangeably.

I argue that while ideology is important, material incentives are equally important, and that in my opinion, we have an over-abundance of the former and very little of the later, which is objectively a reflection of our organizational capacity and infrastructure - something we should analyze deeper, and be very honest about.

Additionally, I argue that our long-held organizational practices and assumptions regarding the prominence of ideology have lead to a lack of reciprocity in our organizational culture. Reciprocity is simply defined as the expectation that people and institutions will respond to each other in similar ways, ideally in mutually-beneficial ways.

As part of this analysis, I ask an important, though largely ignored question: Do our long-held practices and assumptions regarding Communist Party organization and the prominence of ideology work to create disincentives for new member recruitment and consolidation, and in the process hinder our political, organizational and financial capacity for change?

My aim in this article isn't to rehash, restate or redefine general ideas that have broad consensus. In fact, I think restating general ideas that have broad consensus is a poor organizational substitute for critical thinking that encourages original initiatives and experimentation. My goal is, however, to deal with controversial issues, tough questions and sacred cows; my goal is to engage and hopefully help spark new approaches - or remind us of old and successful approaches - to building our organization, as stagnation and retrenchment are not an option.

Additionally, I want to make clear from the start that I have the utmost respect for the comrades - especially Roberta Wood - who have contributed, and will likely continue to contribute, to what has been a multi-year discussion around the nature, role and work of the Communist Party. This article is meant as a comradely contribution and continuation of that long-term discussion.

And finally, as someone who has spent all of their adult life in the Communist Party, I feel compelled to share my ideas - ideas that beg for evidence-based analysis to be proven or disproven - with people I respect, admire and trust. My over-arching assumption is: Only a high degree of openness, internal democracy, organizational flexibility, political courage and honesty will transition the Communist Party USA from a small organization of thousands to a mass organization of hundreds-of-thousands.

Ideology and incentives

To begin with, I work under the premise that people, not ideology, organize people. Organizationally, we have a tendency to over-rely on words, ideas and slogans, i.e. on ideology, in-spite of the evidence.

While I undoubtedly agree with the old saying "The pen is truly mightier than the sword!" - Marx and Engels' little 'Manifesto' is a perfect example - I also think that the pen will likely continue to lose its relevancy, especially as social-networks and news from 'friends' eclipse traditional forms of information dissemination, especially for external audiences, audiences out-side of the small though consolidated Party base.

Additionally, as we become more and more of a niche-society based on instantaneous information, soft-relationships and 'friends' will likely play more and more of a role in our daily quest for information.

Therefore, regardless of what is being said, as we move forward, it is more likely that the messenger, not the message, will be the first criteria when external audiences select information sources. So while ideology is still important, its level of importance is directly connected to the relational dynamic between the messenger and the recipient, which we should acknowledge, embrace and use to our advantage.

For example, in a world where institutions (churches, unions, block-clubs, etc.) have become less-and-less relevant we should ask: Do our words, ideas and slogans, our ideology, increasingly disseminated through non-traditional, non-institutional means, lend them-selves to institution building? I ask because, obviously we want to build our institution. If the answer is 'no' - if ideology in today's world does not lend itself to institution building - then we have to create other avenues that facilitate the types of relational dynamics that makes us the messenger of choice, and there-by build our institution.

Furthermore, it is evident from a wide variety of indicators that the Communist Party - like the labor movement generally, churches, and other seemingly permanent institutions - has been in a state of progressive-decline for many years. In fact, our organizational capacity and infrastructure, and the financial and human resources at our disposal, have been in a state of decline for at least 40 years. Our optimism, recent up-surge in grassroots activism and increased online membership, primarily due to new technology, should not obscure this fact.

In short, our progressive-decline should not be in dispute. We should acknowledge our current modest growth within the context of this longer-term trajectory of decline, and discuss it honestly, especially among our members and leaders, as acknowledging facts will help us change and adapt to reality. We should acknowledge that we are in the process of re-building a democratic institution. Our work should honestly reflect this reality.

Furthermore, to say that we are in a state of progressive-decline isn't an attack on the Communist Party, its history or its leaders. It is an impersonal, objective, scientific assessment of our actual ability to service our members' needs - and the needs of the working class generally.

Directly related to this long-term trajectory of decline are questions of member services. Currently, our main service is ideological or educative, which provides a very limited range of options to a very limited range of potential members. In fact, I would argue that we are trying to provide a service that most people just don't want. Again, at least that is what the evidence indicates.

However, by re-balancing our organizational priorities from one based largely on ideology to one based equally on other types of member services, we can increase the range of options and there-by attract a larger pool of potential members.

As I wrote in "The organizational rubric," "We should not work under the illusion that large numbers of people will join or fund our organization for anything other than self-interest. In my opinion, we should embrace and acknowledge that people will join our organization, fund or volunteer for it, because it is in their self-interest to do so."

And "If self-interest is identified as a key reason for joining or funding our organization, it is easily a matter of deduction to assess whether-or-not we are living up to our part of the tacit member-to-organization relationship. In other words, we will be able to assess if we are in-fact getting the type of on-the-ground results that justify membership."

As an organization that is fighting for the welfare of the working class, providing a range of concrete, tangible member services and incentives that tap into a wide variety of self-interests should be a no-brainer, as people's lives cannot be improved in the abstract.

Historically, the Communist Party and its affiliated organizations have been very successful at providing member services and creating member incentives. Whether through immigrant fraternal organizations, mutual benefit societies, legal defense associations, continuing education collectives, relief kitchens, strike committees, social groups, dance and sport clubs, concerts, summer camps, child care centers or 'Friendship' vacation tours - just to name a few of the most obvious - the Communist Party has historically incentivized membership by providing services.

Some of these services were directly managed, funded and lead by the Communist Party and its various organizational and economic entities (on club, district and national levels); others were initiated, lead and given political direction by individual communists within allied organizations or transitional formations.

Most importantly though, these services not only benefited our members and the quality of their lives, they also benefited the Communist Party as an institution, its financial, political and organizational infrastructure.

Regardless, this fact cannot be disputed: The Communist Party has a proud tradition of providing services and incentives to membership. So what I am suggesting is not new to our history. Additionally - and I believe the overwhelming evidence supports this thesis - our longest periods of sustained membership growth were also periods when we had numerous incentives for membership, and provided numerous services.

In short, there is a direct relationship between incentivizing membership, providing services and organizational growth, as there should be. However, understanding and acknowledging this complex relationship is necessary if we are to fully grasp our organizational self-interest.

For example, material benefits (services and incentives) wedded to membership creates a relational dynamic of mutual self-benefit - which is a good thing! In my opinion, the hallmark of any healthy relationship (personal or organizational) is mutual self-benefit, is reciprocity. Undoubtedly, we want to engage our members and would-be members (and coalition partners) in a way that not only benefits them, but also benefits us - the Communist Party.

In fact, we should expect that our dues-paying members will want to engage in a reciprocal relationship with us. They value our work and want to see us succeed, just as they value themselves and want to succeed personally. Concomitantly, our organizational structures should facilitate success by incentivizing membership.

In my opinion, the incentivizing of membership can and will take many different forms. In fact, I believe it should take different forms that are reflective of our various local, regional and national capacities and infrastructures.

For example, in some Districts the Party can act as a clearing house that actively funnels activists and members into union jobs, as we should. In other Districts, the Party can act as a gateway to social service networks, shelters and pantries for families in need, as we should. In other Districts, the Party can provide continuing education opportunities that help people get their high school diploma or GED, as we should. And in other Districts, the Party can provide a safe place for children in troubled homes, as we should. Each of these activities - and others - provides a clear incentive to membership.

Let me be clear: It isn't that we don't do these things. It's that we do these things hap-hazardly. It's that we lack a conscious approach to doing these things, an approach that makes us the messenger of choice and there-by alters our members' substantive relationships with their Communist Party. Simple, kind services very often have a physiological impact that builds identity. We should embrace and acknowledge this fact. Our goal should be to create identity defining group experiences.

Of primary importance here is the creating of substantive relationships that build our institution.

Additionally, we should expect that our dues-paying members will want us to engage in a reciprocal relationship with our coalition partners, as reciprocity will help us grow financially, politically and organizationally, while strengthening the movement for social and economic justice.

Ideally, our institution (the Communist Party) would articulate a message, an ideological vision (which we currently do), and incentivize membership to attract dues-paying members (which we currently do not do), there-by creating a relational dynamic based on mutual self-benefit, based on reciprocity. We, in-return receive increased dues, ensuring our financial self-sustainability, and increased organizational capacity significant enough to enable our organization to impact - not just analyze - the political balance of power.

Obviously, our dues structure and payment expectations will have to be dramatically restructured and increased. Currently, in my opinion, our dues are so insignificant as to be almost meaningless; if we don't value ourselves no one else will.

Additionally, relational dynamics based on mutual self-benefit are an organizational model employed by all membership-based, dues-paying mass organizations - from the NAACP to the AARP, from unions to community organizations, from the Chamber of Commerce to the Small Business Roundtable, from Triple A to local community credit unions.

In other words, there is no reason why we can't duplicate successful models employed by a wide variety of mass organizations. If we hope to bring large-numbers of differing constituencies into our organization - because it is in our obvious organizational self-interest to grow and remain financially self-sustaining - we should create incentives for those constituencies to join.

Currently however, we do not speak in the language of membership 'advantage.' Our ideological dissemination is divorced from our organizational capacity, our actual, on-the-ground ability to deliver any material benefits, which is a huge disincentive to membership. Just as unions have what's called a 'union advantage' in wages, health care, pension and other benefits - advantages that incentivize membership - we should have a 'communist advantage' that provides material benefits to dues-paying members.

Simply put, our words, ideas and slogans (the People's World, Political Affairs, etc.) are generally designed to support and agitate non-members, not better the lives of dues-paying members. Arguably, we spend more time, energy and money educating and agitating non-members than we do servicing our dues-paying members, which raises a lot of questions regarding problems of resource allocation, and creates another disincentive to membership. We have to ask the question: Who wants to be a member of an organization that spends more of its resources on non-members than on dues-paying members?

Don't misunderstand me, I fully agree with and support the outward, internet-focused direction of our current ideological and educative work. For example, we are on track to have close to twenty-thousand Facebook 'friends' by the end of 2011, and about 200,000 regular, monthly People's World readers. These are accomplishments we should be very proud of. However, these accomplishments do not answer the question: What incentives are we creating to compel these 'friends' and readers to join our organization, pay-dues and engage regularly in our work? What incentives are we creating to compel these people to build our institution?

Additionally, in today's world, our over-reliance on ideology is organizationally short-sighted. It is a mistake we should remedy, especially as our growth in online members - after a huge financial investment and substantial increases in daily online ideological production - has not resulted in substantial dues increases or financial donations.

Furthermore, online members join our ranks intrigued and excited by what they read on our websites. Their perception of the Communist Party is usually romanticized; factors like youth, isolation and very little experience lend themselves to romantic notions of struggle.

This is a sincere concern, and I think it is one of the reasons why so many new / online members join and then leave with-in a relatively short period of time. Their communist identity is wrapped-up in ideological symbols - symbols that rarely match their reality. And their membership expectation is one largely based on discussion of those same ideological subjects, not on building our institution.

The harsh reality of hard, unglamorous, thank-less work - be it for workers' rights to join a union, health care, candidate campaigns, stopping foreclosures, or coalition building, etc. - combined with a lack of member services creates a disincentive for pro-longed membership. It is too much work and too little reward.

Inevitably, this disincentive weeds-out everybody but the most ideologically committed, which is no way to build a mass organization.

Reconciling the contradiction between our stated desire to be a mass organization with our lack of material incentives for mass membership is something we need to come to terms with as soon as possible.

Put simply, if our goal is to build a broad-based, mass Communist Party capable of addressing the needs of differing constituencies then we should create incentives for those constituencies to join our organization. Ideology, while acutely important, is not enough, as it isn't the only reason why people join the Communist Party, nor should it be.

Concomitantly, if we hope to influence - not just analyze - the political balance of power (locally, nationally and internationally), then we shouldn't shy away from making long-overdue changes to long-held organizational practices and assumptions.

I think the practice and assumption is: If we produce it - articles, reports, newsletters, educationals, videos, conference calls, meetings, etc. - they will come. Unfortunately though, the evidence does not support this conclusion.

As I wrote above, more important than the message (in all its various forms), is the relational dynamic between the messenger and the recipient, and the clear understanding of what each expects from the other.

We can change the form of our interactions with members or would-be members as often as we like. However, the evidence suggests that changing the form of our interactions has not significantly changed the composition or size of our organization. That is because, it is the why of membership that needs to change, not the form of our interactions. In short, the reason why people choose to become communists, the substantive relationships, is what needs to be addressed. Incentivizing membership will help us address this why of membership.

As I wrote in "The organizational rubric," "we want to build a new membership and investor base of people who are invested in our success precisely because their success depends on our effectiveness," which would fundamentally change the reason why people join our organization; consequently, it would also likely change the type of people who join our organization - which would be a good thing!

Put simply, if our goal is to grow into a mass organization with hundreds of thousands of dues-paying members - people who engage reciprocally with us as an institution - then we should provide more than an educative service, as most people do not join an organization to be educated. They join because it makes their life better in concrete, tangible ways.

Additionally, we should not create additional hurdles to membership by asking people to give (dues, sustainers, time, energy, etc.), but not receive. It is the hallmark of an unhealthy relationship. It is counter intuitive; it goes against logic; it is unscientific. And it is unreasonable to expect hundreds-of-thousands of people to join our organization (and stay!) if they get no material benefit from their membership. It is not in their self-interest to do so. Additionally, as the history of red-baiting and anti-communism makes abundantly clear, membership usually brings with it career obstacles, family hardship and political isolation.

Furthermore, by creating material incentives for joining the Communist Party we provide a distinctive identity by-which we can differentiate ourselves from other ideological organizations, which we desperately need to do. Distinction and differentiation are absolutely necessary if we hope to grow in an increasingly niche-obsessed market of ideas. We should not underestimate the power of identity, especially when it is wedded to services that benefit people's lives here, today!

While, member incentives and services give constituents an organizational identity, it also gives them a reason to recruit their family, friends and co-workers, precisely because they want to share the benefits of membership with those they care about. They want to see their family, friends and co-workers succeed. We should help facilitate that success.

My point: Ideology cannot substitute for implementing a broad-range of long-term goal oriented organizational practices designed to build our local, national and international capacity and infrastructure. These practices should be results-based and incentivize membership. We need to provide material benefits and services to our dues-paying members, as they enable us to target differing constituencies and build constituent bases. Also, we need to put a premium on adaptability and flexibility; our bulls-eye should be to facilitate identity defining group expectations - the expectation that members will get a return on their investment.

Finally, results-based goals that incentivize membership and provide services are especially suited for peoples' organizations. Organizations with finite resources - all people's organizations, including ours - should be especially aware of results and services, as they do not have the time, money or resources to waste. Additionally, member services are especially important to those organizations that are responsive to and have an active and engaged membership base, a membership base that makes an investment and expects a return on their investment, which is the type of organization we need to be - if our real goal is to grow dramatically into a mass organization. Producing results and incentivizing membership will legitimize our organization to a broad public, a public that will want to 'buy-in' if they get something in return.

Conclusion

Above I asked: Do our practices and assumptions regarding Communist Party organization and the prominence of ideology work to create disincentives for new member recruitment and consolidation, and in the process hinder our political, organizational and financial capacity for change?

Obviously, I believe the answer is 'yes.' Furthermore, if we collectively do-not begin to address these long-held organizational practices and assumptions that create disincentives for membership we will not grow in a way that facilitates a mutually-beneficial relationship between our dues-paying members and their Communist Party.

Undoubtedly, we have been trying to build the Communist Party in the same way for a long time; while the forms may have changed, the substance is very much the same. We over-rely on ideology, and under-rely on everything else.

We need to proactively adapt to better fit today's and tomorrow's projected organizational realities; we need to plan ahead and put time, money and resources into figuring out what we want our organizational reality to look like 5, 10, 20 years from now - if we are serious about growth. In short, it is up to us to define our organizational reality, and our efforts should be based equally on ideology, self-interest and incentivizing membership.

As I wrote earlier, I've been in the Communist party all of my adult life, and for the entirety of that time our organizations' actual, dues-paying membership size has changed very little. Some argue that objective factors have hindered our long-term ability for sustained growth.

However, I don't agree with that assessment. I think we let ourselves (the leaders of the Communist Party) off the hook way too easily by ascribing our lack of sustained growth to objective conditions. I think it is lazy Marxism. I think our members deserve a better, more nuanced analysis. I think our members deserve more of us. They deserve results.

If objective factors were the driving force in the 1930's and 40's, then why aren't we noticing the same dramatic growth in membership today, as objective factors are very similar? Could it be that our over-reliance on objective factors is wrong? Could it be that we aren't equipped to actually know what is objective? Could it be both? Could it be that we don't know as much about our history as we think we do?

For example, during the 1930's and 40's, during a time of unprecedented growth and activity, when we had hundreds-of-thousands of members our mass approaches serviced people's real-life needs. People got something tangible out of their membership at least that is what an objective assessment of the evidence indicates.

For example, when someone came to a class on Marxism, they got soup and bread too! They got warmth and shelter from the cold and rain! They made friends! And I'm willing to bet that those who came back did so for a multiplisity of reasons. Because of the soup and bread. Because of the shelter. Because of the comradery, not just because of the ideology!

Their substantive relationship to the Party was altered or changed by the service we provided! We cannot be so naive as to ignore the service orientated reasons why people join organizations.

I think an equally plausible reason - a reason supported by evidence - for our long-term progressive-decline is that we have forgotten one of the basic reasons for membership organizations to exist - to service their members' needs. This is why most people join organizations, any organization. As I wrote above, we used to service our members needs in multiple ways, and we did a damn good job of it!

In fact, I think, when the new histories are written about the Communist Party during its defining moments - when it represented hundreds-of-thousands of dues-paying members, when its membership size and influence directly impacted the political balance of power, when it was host to immigrant fraternal organizations, mutual benefit societies, legal defense associations, continuing education collectives, relief kitchens, strike committees, social groups, dance and sport clubs, concerts, summer camps, child care centers and 'Friendship' vacation tours - we will find that member services and material incentives played and equal, if not greater, role than Marxist Ideology.

Colloquy on China

Political Affairs — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:33:00 -0500

Erwin Marquit:

Despite our positive view of China's socialist-oriented market economy, we should not be blind to the possibility that an imperialist character can emerge from its foreign investments if the CPC does not consciously take measures to counter it. See how this is problem emerges on China-Wire, a Chinese News Service that provides news about China's economic development. http://china-wire.org/?p=16823. I reproduce the text below:

China’s Harsh Squeeze in Zambia’s Copper Belt

A tense link between a copper mine strike and Zambia's new president is troubling Chinese companies.

A rhetorical U-turn by Zambia's new President Michael Sata recently brought at least some relief to Chinese investors rattled by strikes and his anti-China campaign speeches. But Chinese companies in Sata's resource-rich country - including mining, power plant and construction concerns - remain seriously challenged in the face of Zambia's fluid business conditions, labor relations, public sentiment, and an awkward political environment.

"My dear Chinese brothers and sisters, Zambia welcomes you," Sata declared at an October 26 luncheon in Lusaka for more than 100 Chinese business leaders. "Because we are all-weather friends."

For several months before the luncheon, and during his successful campaign, Sata's harsh criticism of Chinese businesses put investors on edge. His outspokenness strained executive nerves at hydroelectric plant builder Sinohydro Group, general contractor Jiangxi International and several mining companies with Zambian investments worth billions of yuan. Fresh in mind at the luncheon was an acrimonious, two-week strike by workers at a copper mine owned by NFC Africa Mining Corp., a subsidiary of government-owned China Nonferrous Metal Corp., that had ended just a week before. Today, Sata calls himself a friend of Chinese business. He's also promised to work with Chinese investors to boost economic development in his country all through his five-year presidential term.

Some Chinese business leaders working in Zambia and interviewed by Caixin say they're not entirely sold on Sata's apparent change of heart. Yet for now, they're willing to stay in Zambia. They're also trying to ascertain the president's - and his people's - true attitudes toward Chinese companies. And in the wake of the latest NFCA strike, every foreign mining company in Zambia is now waiting to see whether Sata will adjust the nation's labor laws, minimum wages, corporate taxes and state shareholdings in ways that affect their bottom line. Caixin also interviewed Sata for his views on how Zambia can balance economic development and foreign investment. He hinted that Chinese companies may not be permanent fixtures in his country.

"We do not possess some specific skills, for which we need help from foreigners," he replied. "At the same time, we're eager to become self-reliant.

"If you understand that African education is still very backward, this is not a question of a choice between foreigners or self-reliance," the president said. "If we can do it ourselves, there is no need for foreigners."

Copper Crisis

The October walkout at NFCA's Chambishi mine by about 2,000 workers was the longest ever for a Chinese company in Zambia, and came at a time of political tension following Sata's inauguration. The antagonism between the unionized miners and company managers was so great that it pulled the new president into the fray.

Sata was elected September 22 after he stoked Zambian hostility toward Chinese investment throughout his campaign. Indeed, he ran on a platform that openly opposed Chinese investment, and called for improved working conditions at Chinese-owned businesses. So emotions were running high when the Chambishi miners struck, demanding higher pay and better conditions. NFCA and miners' union officials told Caixin the strike broke out without warning.

NFCA executives were uncertain about what to expect next, given the political climate. They felt like "a lone boat on the ocean being tossed about in a fierce storm," said a company insider. "An extreme situation could have occurred at any moment. "We prepared for the worst - being expelled from Zambia - in which case all the money invested over the years would be gone." NFCA, China's biggest miner in Zambia, has sunk about US$ 1.4 billion into its copper facilities - an amount that eclipses all other Chinese financial interest in this landlocked country. Since 1964, when Zambia won independence, some 300 Chinese concerns have invested a total US$ 2 billion.

The company bought Chambishi for US$ 80 million in 1998, and to date has earned about US$ 200 million, all of which the company says it has reinvested at the site.

Industry sources said China indirectly or directly is the final destination for most of Zambia's copper output, which totaled about 800,000 tons last year. Zambia is Africa's largest and the world's fourth-largest copper-producing country.

The Chambishi purchase 13 years ago was the first overseas non-ferrous metal mine buyout approved by the Chinese government. NFCA started work at the site in 2000, and three years later started churning out ore. The company expects to produce 25,000 tons this year. The operation turned profitable in 2005, following a US$ 160 million investment. The company plans to invest another US$ 800 million at a neighboring pit. On the 12th day of the strike, NFCA management announced that Chambishi workers who refused to return that day would be dismissed. They were also given 48 hours to appeal if they want to return to the job. NFCA Chairman Tao Xinghu said the threat was designed to get workers back into the pits as quickly as possible. According to management and the union, the strike was technically illegal. Zambian law says the two sides can negotiate new contract terms within three months of an old contract's expiration.

But the Chambishi workers struck before contract talks start, demanding a monthly salary hike of about 2 million kwacha, or about US$ 400, from the current average US$ 334. Moreover, according to a worker, NFCA management pledged last March to improving working conditions, but took no action. On October 11, Zambian Mines Minister Wylbur Simuusa began mediating the dispute on behalf of the new president. That led to an agreement signed by two union officials - the chairman and general manager of the Mining Worker Union for Kitwe City - and NFCA President Wang Chunlai. The union promised all workers would return by October 22, and Chambishi's managers promised reinstatements for all. After that, a cooling-off period began during which the two sides were to negotiate salaries.

Many workers were still angry when they returned to work after the strike. They complained Chinese mining companies pay less than others in Zambia, and are run by arrogant, stubborn managers who refuse to listen to dissatisfied workers.

Yet if NFCA would meet all the strikers' demands, the Chambishi workers would be the highest-paid in the industry in Zambia. Wang says that would be unreasonable, given that the mine's ore grade is about 2 percent - below grades found at other mines, which makes extracting from Chambishi costlier.

Wang said Zambia's largest copper miner, Indian-owned Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), averages 20 tons per worker a year, for example, while Chambishi gets only about 70,000 tons. The strike was the third at an NFCA facility so far this year. Earlier disputes occurred in January and March. Altogether, the company said, it's lost one month's production this year, costing about US$ 16.8 million.

Anti-Chinese Slogans

Management wants workers to come to grips with the reality of business conditions for Chinese copper mine companies. In Wang's eyes, that means they should accept the company's pay offer. "Zambia has several dozen mining companies," said Wang. "Our production scale is fifth in the industry, and our salaries are at mid-level, corresponding to our position in the industry." He noted that KCM's average wage exceeds US$ 600 a month. Wang said NFCA is still investing in its Zambian operations and cannot afford to pay workers as much as other foreign mining companies. Yet he admits the dispute seems to be about more than wages. Some strikers shouted anti-Chinese slogans on the picket lines. Others demanded dismissals for Chinese managers, or that NFCA should get out of their country altogether.

NFCA was not the only Chinese company hobbled by labor strife in recent weeks. In September, for example, short-term walkouts were held at Jiangxi International and Sinohydro worksites. Some industry insiders say these labor issues have been politicized amid Zambia's changing political situation. Sata's campaign speeches were peppered with anti-Chinese, anti-Indian, anti-Lebanese rhetoric. Indian and Lebanese companies have also invested heavily in Zambia. Sata once claimed that if elected president, he would expel all Chinese investors. He also campaigned on a promise of "more work and tax cuts, so there is more money in your pocket." It was a slogan that apparently made a deep impression on the public mindset. While the fledgling Sata government has yet to propose a specific policy path for labor, or push for raising the minimum wage and updating labor laws, the nation's workforce seems eager to act, particularly at Chinese job sites.

"Chinese people pay the lowest wages," one mine worker told Caixin. He linked these arguably depressed salaries to speculated corruption involving Chinese businesses and the administration of the nation's former president, whom Sata replaced, Rupiah Banda. "In the past, there was a good relationship between China and the Banda government," he said. "The Banda government was corrupt and didn't listen to us. Now Sata has come to power, and he will help us get back what we deserve."

Meanwhile, Chinese company managers are quick to complain about Zambian workers, labeling them inefficient, lazy, unskilled and disloyal. They also fault them for being unwilling to accept performance-based pay that includes penalty clauses. Zambian workers are aware of these complaints. "We are badly in need of work," said another miner. "But just because you give us work doesn't mean you can exploit us like slaves. Why would we want a job that doesn't pay enough to support ourselves?"

An NFCA executive mused that Chinese companies in Zambia will not find China-like business and labor conditions. And that's troublesome for some managers.

"The Chinese way doesn't work here, and copying it will make trouble." he said. "But I still don't know how to improve labor productivity."

Chinese companies in Zambia are also challenged by communications issues involving their headquarters bosses back home. Some struggle to explain the business environment to people who've never worked in Africa. "We can't apply Chinese standards when making demands of Zambian workers," said another NFCA executive. "But headquarters uses Chinese standards to make demands of us. "We've had several strikes this year, but production targets from headquarters have not changed. When we look at the striking workers outside the window, we get very anxious."

By staff reporters Shen Hu and Han Wei in Zambia.

PA Writers Comment

W.A. Halabi:

Erwin, thanks so much for posting this article. We must face the truth. There have been other developments like this, in Africa and elsewhere, and they can do enormous harm to the real interests of the PRC and the international working class.

One approach I have recommended with comrades from China is -- the PRC government can and should propose development initiatives, such as in Zambia. But the trade unions should weigh in on the proposal, from the point of view of protecting workers' interests, both of Chinese and Zambian workers laboring in the project, and in consultation with Zambian unions if they exist. Environmental organizations must also be consulted. And the Party should weigh in from the point of view of the historic and general interests of the working class, in consultation with the Zambian party, if there is one.

The PRC government should abide by the principles of non-interference. The labor unions and the Party must be guided by the interests of international class solidarity and unity. State policy needs to emerge from discussions between government, unions and party.
A proposed Zambia project may then proceed, or it may not. Achieving balance between domestic development and other tasks, including union, equality and international labor solidarity tasks is very difficult but essential.

This approach is outlined in 'Checks and Balances after a Socialist Revolution' and 'Understanding China and its Unions', both published in PA (the former in a print issue as well as on line, the latter in an editors' blog in Nov.2011).

In solidarity

Norman Markowitz:

This is interesting and I agree with Wadi in thanking Erwin for posting it to us. But, not knowing too much about Zambia, my question would concern SATA--even though there may be legitimate grievances is he a political adventurer, attacking Chinese and Indians in his campaign. Generally, many of my friends, while critical of Chinese economic involvement in Africa, see the Chinese so far giving African nations a better deal than European companies, but there actions conform to capitalist relations, since if they didn't they would see profit margins drop, and that is the crux of the matter. The question is this--can the PRC play a role in limiting its firms exploitation of foreign labor, advancing policies that aid foreign workers on the grounds that this is in the interests of the PRC in preventing foreign workers from reducing the value of Chinese labor and also in providing foreign workers with greater purchasing power to purchase Chinese goods.

Gary Hicks:

comrades

this is an interesting thread, one very well posting to pa at some point.

however, i would like to see us place such discourse in the context of a bigger and central reality....that of the g-2 collusion/contention, becoming more heatedly contentious thanks to our capitalist-serving government.

as a political journal, we need to be giving political, theoretical, ideological, and perhaps organizational clarity to the question of china and ourselves. and we need to be combatting the anticommunist and xenophobic offensives against china, understanding that this is a dimension of defending our class and our party.

so let's keep up this dialogue, but let's not for a moment forget who is our real enemy. and let's not overlook the real consequences of china no longer being socialist...it will make the events of 1989-1991 look like a picnic.

John Case:

I submit the following for consideration:

1. Globalization is an objective, not subjective set of processes. In the current international economic environment, no nation has the choice to separate itself from these processes without abandoning growth.

2. No predominantly agricultural country can industrialize in the globalized environment without relying heavily on exports.

3. China's export-oriented sections of its economy has created huge reserves of capital denominated in foreign currencies -- mainly, but not only, dollars. It has tried to use those dollars to re-invest in the US. So far, this has been largely blocked by Congress. So it has chosen to invest them across the undeveloped world in exchange, usually, for raw materials which it must import. The investments have been heavily targeted toward large capital projects that raise the industrial potential and assets of the target nation. But they are not gifts. They are capital investments, that will seek a net positive return over the scope of the deal made with the target/host country.

4. As a side effect, China has NOT followed the course of EITHER the US or the USSR in demanding a political or military alliance in exchange for the investments, or the trade. They have deliberately steered clear of imperial entanglements of the political kind (puppet governments, etc), trusting principally in the inherent values of the development stimulated by the investments to speak for themselves.

5. The text of Lenin's imperialism is frankly not sufficient to fully understand or evaluate these relationships, which in 1916 were infinitely less entangled than now. That was BEFORE two world wars arising from all the evils of direct imperial domination that came with trade of that era were concluded. Are the relationships between Chinese firms and partners capitalist? YES, with all that that implies about the management of the enterprises in question. Are they of positive development value for the host country? YES. Are they subject to Chinese State direction -- YES and NO. Foreign investments are constrained by the treaty and trade agreement terms negotiated with each country, including, usually, strong industrial policy values, as well as the strong non-political-interference policy of Chinese foreign policy. Chinese firms will NOT expect the Chinese military to come to their aid if they get in so much trouble or bad relations with the host country that they end up taxed or nationalized. But are the firms guided by socialist principles beyond a general industrial strategy?? -- NO.

6. The class struggle will persist throughout the era of both capitalist -- OR -- socialist-, workingclass- or communist-led development of mixed economic systems, until such time as wealth in public goods truly overshadows commodity production. That happens when the means of the higher standard living we now seek and must obtain through commodities -- cars, houses, washing machines, furniture, food, etc --- become sufficiently abundant and cheap that they are no longer scarce, no longer commodities, but universal rights. This happens by a combination of technology and struggle. Not just one or the other, but both.

7. 75% of the workers of the world work in agriculture, much of it primitive and subsistence. There is no path of liberation and emancipation that does not turn this 75% into 3%; that path mandates industrialization; industrialization can be initiated, supported, stimulated by government -- but it cannot develop or be fully deployed in vast economies apart from commodities and commodity relations. Commodity relations do not advance without a) effective property and b) a division of labor and capital. That part is elementary Marxism.

8. An indispensable component of capitalist development is the development of the culture and skills and productivity of the working class. But capitalist enterprises do not spontaneously perform this task. In fact each firm resists it. Instead, they are compelled to repeated re-divisions of labor and repeated ever-higher cycles of technological investment by both competition AND the fight of working people against exploitation. The entire social democratic class and political struggle -- including both socialist revolutions and elected governments of workers and alllies --- plays, thus, a vital role in pushing commodity production and relations and socialization ever upward to the levels where commodities recede relative to public goods -- and services. The latter do not require, fundamentally or by their nature, the same divisions of labor and capital as commodities do; they do not stand in the way of non-commodity, non-capitalist relations in the same way. They do not inherently or objectively block non-capitalist reorganizations of society.

9. China is plowing new and revolutionary ground in managing the titanic transition at work in their society. But Workers in Chinese enterprises -- in China or around the world --- don't need to tip their hat to any boss --- regardless of his political color. They should approach their struggle exactly the same as any other employer, demanding the highest protections and compensation possible by any means at their disposal. They are their own protection -- as always -- and should organize both politically and economically for themselves. No "waiting for Lefty" to save you, as Clifford Odets' old play warns --- no matter what he calls himself --- stand for yourselves!!!

peace

Gary Hicks:

two points for consideration, in response to john's points for consideration....

1. if you put aside [but not eliminate] point 5, john's points for consideration make a lot of sense. and we should do some discourse, in fact lots of discourse.

2. point 5 is a separate-but-necessary discussion. however, IM[not-so]HO, it adds nothing to the other eight points that john makes.

J. Thomas Riggins:

What is "socialist-oriented" about the Chinese relation to the Zambian workers? It seems that there is more than a possibilty that the Chinese are exibiting imperialist characteristics if the China-Wire story is any indication.

Emile Schepers:

There are complaints about Chinese enterprises in other places also. If I am not mistaken, the oil strike in Kazakhstan is directed against a Chinese firm. But at the very least, Chinese investment, competing with the investment of the US, Euro zone, Japan, S. Korea etc. could give poor African (and other) countries some leverage. Unfortunately, with opportunists like this Sata seems to be, the leverage may not accrue to the benefit of the toiling masses, but only to the ruling elites. I will write more later, but let me just mention that I have recommended to our International Dept that we have in the near future a teleconference on AFrican developments. We will keep everybody posted on that idea.

Norman Markowitz:

Let me take a few friendly issues with John

1. Globalization should not be seen in a mechanical materialist way, stages, inevitability, etc. Relations are dialectical. workers struggles, divisions among capitalist powers, the overall balance of political forces make imperialism(which I prefer to globalization as a concept) vulnerable. Economic "growth" is also a capitalist category that we should deal with critically, since imperialism is about taking raw materials out cheap and selling goods dear, and of course exporting capital, making goods for capitalist markets

2. Exports of what. Raw materials.

3. I would not dump on the Soviets. What they did was to invest in public sector construction, infrastructure development, etc, in order to gain political support(not only formal alliance systems) in economic terms they really did not profit so much from these investments and lost a great deal in places like Egypt when they were expelled.

4. I agree completely that China is not seeking to build either a military alliance or send troops to defend its companies investments. I have got to go now but I also agree that China is on a course of development which cannot be seen as either the old imperialism or the socialism of the past, but the U.S., Europe, Japan, etc, are in all areas except their relationship to China in those imperialist relationships

I have to run, but I will try to get back to this

Phil Amadon:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The question, "what constitutes the rule of the working class" or "what does dictatorship of the proletariat mean in the 21rst century" is decisive for the global workers movement. Communists recognize this question as one of the cutting edge differences with social democracy and we justify our existence as a separate non- sectarian party within the workers movement. The fate of the USSR was wrapped up in this question. Lenin's last writings provide the best framework for 21rst century answers. The fate of the PRC is tied to this question as well.

Lenin, in his last letters, articles and notes offers us the wisdom of a dying honest man who also happens to be the greatest Marxist theoretician of the 20th century. He makes clear in his scathing look at the state he had been in charge of, it's weaknesses and it's strengths. He shows that the communist party was holding power amongst a sea of experts, bureaucrats and former supporters of the old regime who were hostile to socialism. He argued it was still "the dictatorship of the proletariat" because the party could still enforce a set of socialist policies despite the opposition. At the same time he pointed out that hostile officials could quietly refuse to carry out the policies of the communists. Using dialectical materialist methodology he saw an ongoing struggle to restore capitalism or preserve socialism. He saw a worker peasant alliance developing through the voluntary spread of cooperatives, practical access to food and farm machinery, the spread of literacy, culture and science, and the electrification of the countryside. Lenin said the continued rule of the workers depended on this worker peasant alliance. Finally Lenin made clear that the grassroots socialist democracy of the early days of the revolution ("every cook should learn to run the state") needed to be revived with a "workers inspection bureau" enforcing workers rule in the state machinery and the revival of trade unions and their ability to strike to enforce workers power in industry, especially "state capitalist" industry.

Taken together the sign posts for a "bare minimum" dictatorship of the proletariat not involved directly in an acute war situation: 1.) A party in power that actually represents the real majority of the active working class and controls the commanding heights of the economy and the force component of the state. 2.) The workers party must, raise the standard of living of the masses in practical ways in a relatively short time. 3.) A solid real alliance must be built between the working class and its allies that relies in an ever increasing ways on persuasion based on improvements to real lives rather than "paper fulfillment" of quota's. 4.)Socialism can only win over decades by proving it is better in real life terms to the majority of the population. 5) The forces who wish to restore capitalism can only be defeated, except in the case of armed revolt, by democratic and economic struggle and competition, education, persuasion, culture and science. 6.)Workers power only stays "worker" by the growth of measurable, easily felt and believed growth in reality based socialist democracy where "every cook" is actually starting to "run the state,' and there is a real growth in independently verifiable democratic rights.

Norman Markowitz:

Phil's comments are quite good in terms of both theory and practice. We should I think, in fact we must, stand with workers fighting for their immediate class interests everywhere, but we would be wrong to both theoretically and tactically to call China imperialist although I would ask Phil if he believes that Chinese firms concretely out of competition with firms from capitalist countries are in their overseas operations not distinguishable from the bullies.

Here I would also go back to my own research in the distant past on the New Deal, Henry A. Wallace, the left New Deal planners around him during WWII in the Board of Economic Warfare and their failed attempt to have U.S. employers abroad and foreign employers(all of whom were in Latin America) improve the wages and conditions of workers using the New Deal 1930s model on the ground that such policies would mean longterm that those workers would not provide cheap labor that would lower U.S. workers wages and also that their increased purchasing power would make them a more valuable consumer market for U.S. goods(at the time the U.S. had more than a third of the industrial capacity of the world). Wall Stree hollered bloody murder, their was a mini crisis in the Roosevelt administration, and Roosevelt sided essential with capital on the issue, seeing wartime unity as the key issue.

But China, if indeed the rule of the working class is concrete rather than abstract, could and should develop economic relations with Africa and other regions that would reflect such ideals and would distinguish China clearly from the capitalist world.

Gary Hicks:

"But China, if indeed the rule of the working class is concrete rather than abstract, could and should develop economic relations with Africa and other regions that would reflect such ideals and would distinguish China clearly from the capitalist world."--Norman Markowitz

China's abstraction...socialism, capitalism, or otherwise... is largely in the minds of romanticists, from which marxists of all stripes contribute a significant quorum.

Concretely, China is a socialist country of six decades duration in a civilization of five millenia, at least two of these under feudalism, and about a hundred and ten years of imperial subjugation. Their ruling class is proletarian, largely in high tech[thanks to Jiang Zemin, following on policies initiated by Jiang Zemin], and their party...Communist...is in constant argumentation over what works in their world, to enrich the country, bring their people to middle-level development [think some hybrid of Singapore-Canada-Sweden] by 2050. And they are in full state-owned control of the commanding heights of the economy.

As a country engaged with the entire global economy, China engages in trade. the difference between between China and the capitalists is that with China, African nations are not subjugated to a colonial/neo-colonial mother country. Nor do the Chinese make economic, political, ideological demands on their trading partners. Now this doesn't mean that there won't be corruption and exploitation here and there. Even largely here and there. But China's school of international practice is governed by the Bandung Conference of 1955, not the Berlin Scramble For Africa of the 1880s......a fact that upsets the imperialists of the world to no end, and the basis for major drama between China and the US.

We need to keep these things constantly in mind as we whistle "Which side are you on?" in the dark corridors of our Wilderness of North America.

The Eﬀects of Racial Animus on Voting: Evidence Using Google Search Data

Political Affairs — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:55:00 -0500

A wonkish, but very interesting, study on the relationship of racism (derived from google search data) and voting patterns.

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sstephen/papers/RacialAnimusAndVotingSethStephensDavidowitz.pdf

Colloquy On the Final Statement of the Athen Conference of Communist and Workers Parties

Political Affairs — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:21:00 -0500

The final statement and "axes of action" as well as other documents and contributions of the 13th World Conference of Communist and Workers Parties became the subject of a PA Writers Colloquy. And edited version of this discussion appears below. Feel free to join in in the comments section.

John Case:

I only got as far as the finishing statement: http://www.solidnet.org/13-international-meeting/2289-13-imcwp-final-statement-en.

To me, the document reeks of sectarian rhetoric. Imperialism is receding, not escalating. Most -- not all, but most --- social-democratic forces are allies, not adversaries in the democratic struggles of working people, which are still the DOMINANT and PRIMARY tasks in the class struggle. A systemic crisis in a capitalist economy is NOT a sufficient political, or economic, condition for setting aside the primacy of the democratic struggle and replacing it with a call for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

Capitalism, as it turns out, even in socialist revolutions, does not get "overthrown" until both technology and very mature labor organization and advancement, make doing away with commodities possible. That condition has not yet arrived in any nation, although I believe a powerful argument can be made that it is coming much closer. Thinking the "dictatorship of the proletariat" could at command dispose of commodity relations was one of the biggest illusions of early 20th century socialism, and, I submit, the chief cause of the collapse of the USSR.

Real socialism is a mixed public/private economy under working class leadership -- or, at least, parity in political power with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces. China and Vietnam --- and now Cuba as well --- will prove that this can be a more powerful path of development than purely bourgeois--led development. Communist relations are a phenomenon more dependent on objective conditions than subjective ones.

Gary Hicks:

comrades...

1. the proper relationship of mixed economy socialism, with this-that-the other country's characteristics, is working class hegemony. this in the face of the reality that in socialism...the lower stage of communism...the petit bourgeois elements are constantly reproducing themselves. consequently, whatever they have to contribute is best had under conditions of proletarian supervision, as is the case e.g. in china, cuba, vietnam. lenin made this very clear in at least two articles [links below] worth reviewing, to contrast and compare the 1920s with 2011.

a. lenin, the state
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jul/11.htm

b. lenin, economics and politics in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/oct/30.htm

2. i also hold that when 50-plus communist and workers parties, of widely varying opinions, sign on to a common document such as the one below, then that document can at worst be accused of being written to satisfy everybody, or at least a majority present. if there is ultra-anything involved, it is the ultra-conditions of the general crisis of capitalism...financial, structural, governmental/fiscal, moral...which is at the center of our lived experience as a class. in such circumstances, communists will respond with organized, militant desparateness. it might very well be governed by yet another contribution from the past by lenin. WARNING...when reading this article, constantly pinch your wrist to remind yourself that lenin is writing about the kerensky regime of 1917, and not the u.s. regime of current years.

c. lenin, the impending catastrophe and how to combat it.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/index.htm

3. the document below needs to be published in our journal, as well as the axes of agreement, also linked to that document. our party attended the conference. if they made a presentation, it too needs to be published. if john's trepidations are of urgency, then thomas jefferson's axiom holds...sunlight is always the best disinfectant.

John Case:

The list of participants has some major missing players (China, Cuba, etc) and is a minority slice of the world working class movement, even if restricted to including only the sections of the working class that aspires to a socialist society. But lets not dwell on points of order.

Here is a quote from Lenin (State and Revolution) cited by the CP of India (Marxist) -- no doubt the broadest of the participating organizations: It is a concept (dogma, now, in my view) to which most in attendance at the Athens conference would still subscribe and underpins much other sectarian thinking derived from it.

"The essence of Marx's theory of the state has been mastered only by those who realize that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class society in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from "classless society", from communism. Bourgeois states are most varied in form, but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat."

I submit this statement is simply wrong as a general rule applying to all socialist transitions -- especially in the aftermath of WWII.

It certainly appeared to be true from the perspective of Russia in 1917 after the collapse of the Tsarist state. It would evenappear to be true from the standpoint of the paucity of genuine working class suffrage, rights and representation in virtually all bourgeois democracies in 1917. In the US, which Engels identified as the most advanced democracy, women, African-Americans, many immigrants (which heavily populated many early left and labor organizations) had little or no voting franchise, and even less representation in government. Industrial organization was repressed with terror.

But this is a lesson in how if appearance and reality were the same, there would be no need for science at all; and how quickly apparent truths vested with state and bureaucratic power can become dogma, not science.

Subsequent history has shown 1) that substantial democratic progress can be made within and against the capitalist system's tendencies to corrupt democracy, that capitalism's "dictatorships" can be eroded and challenged, that working people CAN create, contend and defend democratic institutions that serve them; 2) that substantial socialization, redistribution of wealth, rising working class culture and wealth, and steps toward socialism, CAN take hold alongside a viable, if smaller, market sector without dictatorship; 3) that ambitions and estimates of the "proletarian dictatorship" to quickly rise to communistsocial and economic relations were grossly exaggerated, that such relations cannot be willed or commanded into existence before the objective foundations for them are established, that any dictatorship established as a consequence of revolution that does not quickly return power to constituted, genuinely democratic, empowered and representative assembliesrisks corruption. The same could be said of Lincoln's denial of habeus corpus in the civil war -- but, fortunately -- the historical objective conditions for abolishing the classes of slave and slaveholder had arrived, and the job could be done relatively quickly without maintaining the "dictatorship" of 1861-65. Frankly -- even in Russia -- once it became clear, as it did to Lenin in 1921, that the transition to socialist relations would be harsh, long and arduous given the backward state of Russia in a hostile environment, that large numbers of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois forces would remain and be needed as citizens, managers and 'technicians', the revolutionary dictatorship (i.e. the denial of franchise to bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes) was doomed, IMHO. Given his arguments for the NEP and the famous commanding heights address to the CI in the years following "war communism" (1921-23), and the argumentation in Left Wing Communism, its hard to picture Lenin writing S&R the same way with 4 years of real state management under the Bolshevik's belt.

I would be interested in hearing the views of other PA writers on the appropriateness, in the US context, of engaging in the dialogs many who attended the Athens conference want to have. As is obvious, I have serious doubts.

Erwin Marquit:

One should also keep in mind as Hobsbawn somewhere pointed out, when the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat emerged in France in the 1840s, dictatorship meant rule, and not the fascist type of tyranny put in force by the Nazis.

Emile Schepers:

I don't have much time to write right now, but just a few points. First, we in the US have a different way of phrasing things than communists in many other countries, so one must look at essential ideas and not the vocabulary chosen. Looked at from that perspective, I do not find the final statement of the Athens conference or the list of tasks to be done to be sectarian at all. On the contrary, I find it quite inspiring, and endorse the call for us to publish it one one or several of our websites.

Secondly, I do not see any sign of imperialism receding; what is happening is that in some areas of the world, especially Latin America, anti-imperialism has won some victories, which is not the same thing. I think that as the crisis of access to resources (especially energy resources) intensifies, there will be more agressive efforts by the imperialist states to push for control of poorer, weaker countries in which such riches can be found. Witness Sarkozy's actions in Africa, to give just one example.

Thirdly, I would remind you that we were ably represented at the Athens conference by Comrade Sue Webb, who without a doubt can fill in many blanks and supply many details.

Art Perlo:

I don't agree that the SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE document reeks of sectarian rhetoric.

John's main concern seems to be defining the nature of socialist or transition economies and, in a later post, the nature of the capitalist state and the revolutionary process. I agree with much of what you say about the economics of socialism; less so with your ideas on the class character of the state. But how does this discussion relate to the document in question? The document is not a blueprint, does not even discuss, the economic and political organization of socialist society; neither is it an analysis of the nature of state power and the revolutionary process.

I also don't agree with John's implication that the document is a wholesale attack on social democrats or posing SDs (instead of the ultra-right) as the main enemy, or that it demands "revolution now" in contradiction to the democratic struggle.

Writing on the same subjects as SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE for a US audience, I might use different language or emphasize different points. I assume the same would be true for a Greek, German or Japanese audience. And because the situation is different in each country, SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE cannot be interpreted as or used as a guide to strategy or tactics in any given country. It is a description of the global crisis as systemic to capitalism, of the global capitalist assault on the working class and on democracy itself. It is a salute to popular resistance and a call for further resistance, for greater class consciousness, and for building communist and workers' parties as an essential part of the struggle. It is a reaffirmation that capitalism is leading the world to disaster, and that only socialism can solve humanity's problems.

We can quibble about this or that formulations, but I think SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE meets a need -- not as a detailed, dry analysis or roadmap, but as a call for struggle and action against global catastrophe and for a better and attainable future, and a call to strengthen communist and workers' parties as a necessary part of this struggle.

Emile Schepers:

For communists, social democrats are sometimes allies and sometimes not. It is a sectarian ultra leftist mistake to say "never", it is an opportunist mistake to say "always". In the case of the three European countries in financial crisis where social democratic parties were in power -- Greece, Portugal and Spain -- the social democratic parties, respectively the PASOK, the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers' Party, all chose a path of caving in to the pressures of international finance capital and its political allies. They had other options; they could have formed a united front Europe wide to resist the pressures, but instead allowed themselves to be played off against each other (Spanish govt helping to put pressure on the Greek government etc). Some of the social democrats out of power have behaved better than that, but it raises the question of what those people would actually have done if they had been in power and not out.l I do not see how the communist parties of those three countries could have done other than denounce this, and fight against it.

In the case of Portugal, which I have followed particularly closely, the General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party, Jeronimo de Suosa, offered an electoral bloc with Prime Minister Jose Socrates' Socialist Party (still governing at that time) which would have been based on a minimum program of resisting austerity, defending the interests of the masses, and shifting the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the rich. Socrates rejected this. Those three social democratic governments have all been pushed or voted out now, and in the case of Greece, Papandreou's PASOK government caved in to a coalition agreement which lets the fascist LAOS party into government, a very dangerous state of affairs.
In fact, the behavior of those European social democratic parties in power has been worse than that of the Obama administration and many of the US Democrats, who have never claimed to be socialists, but who at least have sometime shown some gumption vis a vis demands that they destroy the social safety net utterly. Compare behavior of Democrats in the Wisconsin state legislature with the Social Democrats of Portugal, Spain and Greece for example.

Phil Amadon:

In my view, "to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy" (communist manifesto, Int. Pub.p 30) is still central to marxism and to saving the planet. I prefer "market socialism" and am in favor of all manner of economic experiments to explore the possibilities of this concept. But without the proletariat as ruling class their is no socialism, market or otherwise.

As for the Greek Communists, they seem to have quite a followiing, and when they call for revolution my heart beats with theirs. When the greek social democrats call for more austerity, I see no ground for alliance. It is not sectarian to break with someone who is advocating policies that will destroy you.

And just because I like what the Greek CP seems to be doing in Greece doesn't mean I agree with them on what is going on here. Nor does logic or fact require me to agree.

Norman Markowitz:

I don't think that this debate is necessarily that useful and we have little to gain by engaging in it. However, let me make a few points based on both my understanding and also general world-view, which may be different than some of the others who have expressed their views.

First, what is the relationship of dictatorship to democracy beyond that one is considered in general usage a good word and the other a bad word.

Marx's concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Lenin developed, was not primarily about the form of the revolution, whether it would be peaceful or violent, in terms of taking power, but for Lenin on the character of the new state once the working class took power.

Dictatorship meant for Marx and for Lenin class rule(all capitalist states are in that sense dictatorships of the capitalist class but there are huge differences between military junta states, states without civil liberties and civil rights, etc., and states with constitutions, elections, civil rights and civil liberties).

What both Marx and Lenin were saying was that these capitalist states must be replaced by workers states committed to constructing socialism, which would represent, because a workers state and working class rule would represent the rule aka "dictatorship" of the overwhelming majority of the people, a higher form of political democracy.

On the question of the form of revolution, the political revolution that is, the position that the Communist movement developed was to both work for a peaceful transition to a workers state and, keep our powder dry, so to speak. Whether or not violence would be involved would depend on the actions of the capitalist class and the political balance of forces as it developed. Certainly there are many examples of capitalist classes resorting to martial law--turning power over to military juntas, fascist parties, etc--Germany, 1933, Cuba, 1935, Brazil, 1964, Indonesia, 1965, Chile, 1973, to name but a few--which doesn't mean that we in any way reject the concept of working for the peaceful transition to socialism

I agree with Lenin's formulation. That formulation is a central basis for understanding why Communist parties as against mass factionalized social democratic parties are necessary to organize and coordinate the struggles of the working class-- to lead it to victory. One should remember that Lenin angrily denied the argument of his social democratic opponents that he and the Bolsheviks were "Blanquists" advocate of an armed coup against the state and the use of the seized state to carry out the revolution--policies named after Auguste Blanqui, the French revolutionary who organized such "conspiracies" which failed over and over again, and spent much of his adult life in prison, although both his courage and the causes he identified with made him, as Marx understood, a hero to French workers. Whatever Communists stand for, capitalist propaganda has always and we can expect will continue to portray Communists in violent conspirators in the Blanqui tradition.

As for Lenin's formulation, this doesn't mean that Cuba under Batista, China under Chiang Kai-shek and the U.S. under Eisenhower are the same--that similar tactics and strategies make sense in all these places. It does mean though that one should have no illusions about the "universal nature" of liberal democratic institutions, of constitutionalism and the rule of law superseding class power--Chile is in some respects the best example; a nation with very advanced by Latin American standards civil rights and civil liberties, a strong labor movement and multiparty system, where a revolutionary peoples front coalition government, in a presidential congressional system similar to the U.S., with off year elections, took power and sought consciously to establish a socialist workers state under the existing constitutional system, only to face a bloody U.S. supported counter-revolution

In terms of our own history, we should remember that the Smith Act, on which our National leadership was put on "trial" convicted and imprisoned for "conspiracy" to "teach or advocate the violent overthrow of the government" was countered by our attorneys and party leaders defense of the principle of the peaceful transition to socialism, with the understanding that the more the working class movement becomes stronger here and internationally, the weaker capitalist states and their allies will become and the less likely they will be able to use violence for counter-revolution(for example, many of the cases I cited earlier would have been much less likely without U.S. support

Marx didn't of course deal with the specifics of the revolutionary process and workers state. Lenin in challenging European social democrats contended that the working class could not simply win elections(he didn't reject elections) and take over the existing capitalist state bureaucracies--it would have to establish new workers state forms, institutions, which I believe we would have to do in the U.S. were we ever in that position--for example, rewriting much of the constitution to change separation of powers, establishing rational regional governments that would supersede the present state governments, adding employment, education, housing, to the bill of rights.

I personally, as a U.S. historian, much prefer to use the term abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism as the abolitionists called for the abolition of slavery, instead of using terms like overthrow. To abolish slavery a civil war took place because the slaveholders refused to accept the victory of an anti-slavery party in 1860. That new party, the Republicans, was necessary to break with the old party system. The war also produced constitutional amendments, most of all the 14th which changed the character of the federal government in its relationship to the states along with the creation of a larger and stronger federal government and policies to advance the interests of industrial capitalism. Relative to what had existed before, these developments could be seen as revolutionary and the civil war itself seen as the slaveholders reaction to what they considered a threat to their class system aka their wealth and power.

These would be my thoughts on the general question. I think we should be moving forward and trying to get as much copy as we can in PA as we approach what will be a crucial presidential year

Carl Davidson:

At the risk of being reductionist, I usually simply argue that 'dictatorship' is just another word for 'state.' The question then is what class does it serve, who is in charge and does it have democratic rules?

Jean Paul Holmes:

I agree with what Norman has written regarding the Marxist idea of "dictatorship" being the rule of a certain class over another through a general sway of power in any given system. If I am interpreting it correctly, this does not necessarily clash with John's noting those who were capitalists prior to the formation of the USSR still being in positions of power within that nation after the revolution there - one could argue that they may have been powerful, but not in control (who was in control is another debate altogether).

The original "Socialism is the Future" piece seems somewhat vague to me, as it seems to be a rhetorical work. It might have a role to play as such, but I'm not sure its something we (the CPUSA) would want to throw around, given our specific circumstances in the US.

It appears to me that one big obstacle of the US left (which might be similarly represented in the "Socialism is the Future" piece, but I don't know enough about the authors' to judge) is a great amount of energy but a lack of concrete planning (I think of Occupy). I constantly find myself judging my own articles for their lack of direction - I can dismantle capitalist ideology/politics/economy well, as well as make calls for a different formulation,
but find the act of proposing said new formulation greatly lacking in detail compared to the criticism from which the desire for a new order is derived.

The most I have right now is "curb corporate power, nationalize the corporations, turn them over to the unions." :/

To me, it points to the need for a great deal more involvement in linking studied economists, socialism-minded union bureaucrats, health care policy wonks and the like in our project. This is often framed in people's minds as mundane, but such seriousness is greatly needed. I'm only getting started in my study of this sort of thing, and am hampered by it having little to do with my profession.

So, maybe proclamations like the one presented are important to note but not nearly as important as what we can do to build ourselves as an institution?

Hmmm...

Gary Hicks:

Whatever else we think of the recent international conference of communist and workers parties, certainly there should be no objection to publishing the presentation made by our own delegate to that conference, Susan Webb. Link immediately below.

http://www.solidnet.org/usa-communist-party-usa/2345-13-imcwp-contribution-of-the-cp-usa

Emile Schepers:

Hear, hear!

Jean Paul Holmes:

If there were a "like" button, I would click it :)

Colloquy on Thomas Edsall and "The White Working Class"

Political Affairs — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:08:00 -0500

Editor: This post is a colloquy -- conversation -- between Political Affairs Writers on an article by Thomas Edsall that appeared several days ago in the New York Times arguing, among other points, that Obama should disregard the so-called "white working class" in favor of a coalition of liberal "middle-class" whites together with African-American, Latino, Asian-American and other national or racial minorities, women, and the LGBT communities to win the 2012 election. I call this advice on how to lose the election, from a "Fox-News" democrat, or "faux Democrat". But since efforts to divide progressive forces and thus elect a Republican can be expected to come from all directions, it behooves us, I think, to explore the notions behind this "friendly advice" --- friendly somewhat in the manner that a rope supports a hanged man!

Please feel free to join the colloquy in the comment section!

John Case: The thesis of this article -- that only white bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces, not white workers--can be won to multinational, multi-racial positions and unity -- needs to be resolutely defeated -- or there will be little future to the Obama coalition in any progressive sense, in any sense that bears upon the 1% vs the 99%, that bears upon advancing either democracy, or socialism.

Norman Markowitz: Edsall has been pushing this line for a very long time, long before Obama, as a voice for defining the white working class as Reagan Democrats who should be won to the Democratic party by accepting a version of Reaganism. ...The kind of leadership that Edsall identifies with in effect took the Democrats down under Carter and Clinton.

Carl Davidson: A few points to start us off on this one: First, on FDR's coalition. We should not forget that a major bloc in it was 'the Solid South,' ie the segregationists. They rebelled some in 1948, but were in open revolt by the 1960s against the gains of the civil rights movement. That was what spurred the mass breakaway of older and more conservative-minded working class whites to the GOP, and changed the Dominant party in the South from the Dems to the GOP, and in other places as well.

We can't win them back by repealing the the 1960s--and although some of them could change positively, they're likely to die of old age first.

I live and do political work at ground zero of this particular battle. My township is 99.5 percent white and 90 percent working class. In 2008, we considered in a major achievement that we only lost by four points--48 percent for Obama, 52 for McCain. Trumka's intervention fired up the unions to press hard for Obama, to tell white workers to vote their interests and not their prejudices. Gradually, people came to see the need to give Obama a chance, given the Bush crash.

But it was tentative. Now Obama has a record to run on, or at least defend and explain. It's not pretty. Most of the things both Black and white workers could unite around--HR 676, EFCA, Out Now from the Wars, Green Jobs, a financial transaction tax to fund a full employment drive, and so on--have been declared 'off the table' by the Dems, ie, they will surrender them all without a fight to Blue Dogs and the GOP

That puts us at an extreme disadvantage this round. One ray of hope is in looking deeper at our returns in my township, where the young white worker voters, with high school degrees as well as with some college, voted for Obama by two to one, going against the trend of their elders. But this layer of voters doesn't turn out unless they are specially energized. The average voter, after all, is over 60.

Right now it's OWS that's energizing at least a part of them that are being crushed by student debt burdens and the lack of jobs. Many of my nephews and nieces with some college behind them are making the most money as waitstaff and bartenders, and they are deeply frustrated. They don't know what to do, but they distrust politicians deeply.

That's the same feeling I saw at the last 'Good Job, Green Jobs' Conference in DC--deep frustration. These young people worked for years in a variety of NGOs and unions coming up with a wide range of decent plans for green jobs in new manufacturing and clean energy. They found themselves banging their heads against a brick wall of 'deficit reduction' madness.

My point is the problem is not so much this article, but whether the Dems will fight in the interests of the working class, and against the sectors of finance capital driving all of us to ruin. So far only PDA and the Progressive Caucus, along with some unions and civil rights groups, are doing so with any consistency. They have 80 votes out of 535. That shows the relation of forces in Congress, but not at the base, At the base, we are stronger, but not strong enough yet.

Bottom line: If you want to deconstruct the 'whiteness' binding some workers to the GOP against their interest, you can't do it without an approach that fights FOR their interests in a straightforward, militant way.

Norman Markowitz: Thomas Edsall's article rewrites the political history of the United States in order to accuse the Obama administration of "abandoning" the "white working class," meaning industrial workers whose jobs have been leaving the nation in large numbers since the 1970s, who media has portrayed as "hard hats," Reagan Democrats," etc. The New Deal coalition of the 1930s which saw the Democrats become a majority party also included African-Americans in large numbers, intellectuals and professionals alienated not only from the depression but from the "business of America is business" Republicans, and industrial unionists. The Democratic machines and Southern segregationists were also there, but their was largely negative, supporting the New Deal because of its payoffs to them and in the case of the Southerners, opposing integration.

The Democrats lived off the political capital of the New Deal, Center-Left coalition as they as a party zigzagged, moving to the right after 1948 and then to the left in the mid 1960s and then sharply to the right in the mid 1970s until Obama election.

Obama has abandonedd the "white working class." His stimulus programs, while inadequate given the dimensions of the crisis and undermined by rightwing Republican governors in many states, have done more to provide jobs for construction workers, many of whom are members of that class, than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton combined. His general motors bailout, however one may be critical of it, saved the jobs of working class people, black and white. If anything, the administration's failure to address effectively the attack on the jobs, incomes, and benefits of public workers at the state and local level has harmed minority and women workers who are concentrated in those areas of the economy more than "white" workers.

Edsall is engaging in "inside dopester analysis" reading pollsters the way betters used to read the daily racing form. There is absolutely no evidence to support his contention. If anything, Obama even with his failings and those of the Democrats in Congress has pursued policies that are more in line with the working class led political coalition that made the Democrats a majority party from te 1930s to the 1970s than any Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson, who both had much larger majorities than Obama and largely abandoned those policies to pursue the Vietnam War escalation.

Perhaps Edsall hopes that his article will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or simply another pundit moment. His analysis is skewed, his evidence skimpy in the extreme, and its only practical effect can be to help the Republicans play the politics of division and resentment which they have used over the last forty years to win elections.

Keith Joseph:I agree with what Carl is saying here.

I just wanted to add two points. First, the definition of working class in the article is very narrow. The NY Times is defining class by education levels and income. Not that the article isn't talking about something real but I wouldn't define class this way (in the Communist Manifesto class is defined by ownership of means of production and in Capital Marx offers, what I think is more useful, a definition of class based on the relationship to suprlus value production, appropriation and distribution).

Secondly, around the question of interest. I think that we need to see that while the Democrats may better represent their economic interest than republicans (not saying much) many "white workers" do feel that the Democrats are elitists around cultural and social issues. And feel the republicans better represent them in these cultural interest.

While some of these "cultural" interests are reactionary some are neutral but treated as backwards or inferior by liberals and even some progressives and revolutionaries.

Many vegetarians on the left, for example, adopt a holier than thou attitude which they extend to practices like hunting and fishing. (When Democrats try to engage these practices they inevitably act the fool like the John Kerry campaign ad in his designer goose hunting outfit. The disdain for things like NASCAR (which emerged out of bootlegging culture), and professional sports in general, as well as popular culture in general are additional examples.

So while it is true that Democrats better represent economic interest of the working class in general, the Republicans are better representatives of cultural interests of at least a portion of the working class.

Joe Sims: What do I think of Edsall's article? Well the short answer is that based on my experience in Ohio in the last presidential election - I spent 5 weeks there, 3 of which were working in the white working class suburbs - the short answer is that I still have Hope. By the way Obama is 5 points ahead of his closest GOP contender in Ohio. A surprise to me but still a hopeful sign.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the vote by age, education, occupation etc in Ohio. I think it would be more indicative of national trends than stats offered by the Edsall which do not account for region, particularly since the South represents a special case regarding the white vote and heavily weights on the national stats.

I did not know that the writers Edsall cites have positions in the Democratic Party or more importantly in the Obama re-election team not that the two are synonymous. So what the actual strategy is regarding white workers may have to be looked for elsewhere, particularly in the trade unions who have the principal task of organizing the working-class vote. Of course, there is no mention of this in the article, nor of the new social movements in the mid-west, the occupy movement etc and its possible impact on the elections. But of course this should not surprise anyone.

In general Edsall offers anything new.

Many of the strata ascribed to petite-bourgeoisie in the article are in fact unionized members of the working class.

In addition there are huge conceptual flaws with the article. Last time I looked there was only one working class in the USA; hence the formulation "white working class" offers little insight into what's going on; and then of course flowing from this is the division of the class according to education - with workers having a h.s. diploma on one side of the divide and petite-bourgeois strata having graduated college on the other. Something to consider yes but the determining factor?

What is new are the polls on race and here there's been a sea change; the youth vote that broke 66 percent for Obama last time; the labor movement's approach to the youth and student movement etc which is unprecedented.

Finally there can be no "winning" of white worker's vote apart from its organization and unionization. And the key to that is card check; and more broadly political and ideological struggle. I suppose Democrats will play a role here; but the source for such movement lies outside that party's structures. Anyway; like I said, I'm still hopeful.

Bruce Springsteen on the New American Depression -- photos

Political Affairs — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:26:00 -0500

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bruce-springsteen-on-america/2011/12/18/gIQAUQSc4O_gallery.html?tid=ts_lifeent#photo=21

A Pall over the Holidays - the Joblessness Crisis Intensifies

Political Affairs — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:55:00 -0500

Left Margin via BlackCommentator

It was fascinating to observe the response, across the political spectrum, to the November unemployment statistics. Pundits on the right and left were quick to correctly point out that there was hardly anything positive or hopeful about the numbers. Republican Michele Bachmann, who opposes extending jobless benefits, hypocritically crowed that "the lower numbers are being propped up by huge numbers of Americans dropping out and giving up on trying to find a job. The labor participation rate dropped again to a tragically low percentage." She must be overjoyed. Earlier this year she expressed hoped that high jobless numbers would help her Presidential campaign.

Others have pointed to what is, under the circumstances, dismal news pointing to the urgency of the crisis, its human toll, and the imperative need for action to stimulate the economy to create jobs.

For U.S. working people, "these are the worst times since the depth of the Great Depression," wrote Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of US News & World Report in the Financial Times last week. "The unemployment rate, the highest and most sustained in seven decades, improved last month primarily because more than 300,000 people left the labor force. And the situation is even grimmer than suggested by the dismal statistics, calculated from a base of only 60,000 families. Analysts have concluded that the combined unemployment
and under-employment rate is slightly above a staggering 20 per cent of the labor force."

"Worse, 40 per cent of the jobless have been out of work for six months or more, compared with 10 per cent in 2007," wrote Zuckerman, also a real estate executive. "The average period of unemployment now exceeds 26 weeks, well above the previous peak in July 1983 of just 21.2 weeks. This is critical because the longer that people of any age are out of work, the less likely they are to find another job."

Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that "Pretty much every sector of the economy saw a decline in jobs, but those declines seemingly were offset by a rise in the retail sector. We can speculate that the rise in retail was a result
of anticipating the holiday season and therefore temporary jobs."

Jobs in construction fell for the month in a row while manufacturing employment stayed about the same and public worker jobs decreased by 20.000, bringing to 278,000 the number of public sector jobs lost over the past year.

"Over the last three months, overall job growth has averaged 143,000. It takes roughly 90,000 jobs to keep even with the growth of the labor force," wrote Baker. "At this rate, it will take close to 200 months, or 16 years, to make up for the 10-million-job deficit in the
economy."

Zuckerman says, "For hiring to occur at a pace that would support recovery, we would need at least 500,000 more hires per month. Instead, payrolls today are more than 7 million shy of where they were when the Great Recession began."

According to the Department of Labor, employers added 120,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate dipped from 9 percent in October to 8.6 percent. Experts say this was a result of more people getting jobs and others giving up on their job search altogether. And, it goes without saying, the situation is much worse for African Americans and in other minority communities. The black jobless rate rose
slightly from 15.1 percent to 15.5 percent compared with 8 percent for whites.

For Black workers the decline in labor force participation is a major factor in what is actually a worsening situation.

"The drop in participation was entirely among women and especially black women," economist Baker wrote December 2 (Among married women, employment rose by 194,000, so this was not a case of women as second earners dropping out of the labor force.) Participation numbers among white women fell by 199,000, a decline of 0.2 percentage points. The drop among black women was 164,000, a drop of 1.2 percentage points. These monthly numbers are highly erratic, and it is likely that at least part of this drop will be reversed in future
months. Nonetheless there had been a trend of declining participation rates among both white and black women even prior to the November plunge. This suggests that there is a real issue of women losing access to jobs; although the December figures may show some reversal."

The decline in women's workforce participation rate is directly related to the political right's ongoing assault on public workers.

"Buried in the relatively positive numbers contained in the November jobs report was some very bad news for those who work in the public sector, the New York Times said editorially December 4. "There were 20,000 government workers laid off last month, by far the largest drop for any sector of the economy, mostly from states, counties and cities.

"That continues a troubling trend that's been building for years, one that has had a particularly harsh effect on black workers. While the private sector has been adding jobs since the end of 2009, more than half a million government positions have been lost since the
recession.

"In most cases, states and cities had to lay off workers because of declining tax revenues, or reduced federal aid because of Washington's inexplicable decision to focus more on the deficit in the near term than on jobs."

"Those layoffs mean a lower quality of life when there are fewer teachers, pothole repair crews and nurses," the Times continued. And then, citing a report by its reporter Timothy Williams the previous week, the paper noted that the cutbacks "hit black workers particularly
hard."

"Millions of African-Americans - one in five who are employed - have entered the middle class through government employment, and they tend to make 25 percent more than other black workers," the editorial continued. "Now tens of thousands are leaving both their jobs and the middle class. Chicago, for example, is laying off 212 employees in the upcoming fiscal year, two-thirds of whom are black."

"Many Republicans, however, don't regard government jobs as actual jobs, and are eager to see them disappear. Republican governors around the Midwest have aggressively tried to break the power of public unions while slashing their work forces, and Congressional
Republicans have proposed paying for a payroll tax cut by reducing federal employment rolls by 10 percent through attrition," said the editorial. "That's 200,000 jobs, many of which would be filled by blacks and Hispanics and others who tend to vote Democratic, and
thus are considered politically superfluous.

"The layoffs are not expected to end any time soon," Williams wrote. "The United States Postal Service, where about 25 percent of employees are black, is considering eliminating 220,000 positions in order to stay solvent, and areas with large black populations -
from urban Detroit to rural Jefferson County, Miss. - are struggling with budget problems that could also lead to mass layoffs.

"The postal cuts alone - which would amount to more than one-third of the work force - would be a blow both economically and psychologically, employees say."

"But every layoff, whether public or private, is a life, and a livelihood, and a family. And too many of them are getting battered by the economic storm," said the Times.

There was also scant good news for the group that is consistently hit the hardest historically by joblessness and particularly amid the current economic crisis. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for African Americans between 16 and 19 years old was 39.6
percent in November. That's down from 46.3 percent a year ago but up from 37.8 in October. The black youth workforce participation rate - 37.4 percent - has remained practically the same over the past 12 months.

The average jobless level for young African Americans for the third quarter of this year is 43.4 percent, up from 40.7 for the same period last year and 30.9 percent in 2008.

For white teenagers the jobless rate is 21.4 percent, up from 20.8 percent in November 2010 and down from 21.8 percent this October.

As could be expected, the policy responses of the two sides of the aisle have been quite different. With most - but not all - of the Democrats seeking to extend existing jobless benefits and the Republican mostly united around a proposal to reduce them. GOP
Congressional leaders are actually proposing to decrease the number of weeks jobless benefits would be available, execute new spending cuts and curb the pay of federal employees. They have actually introduced a measure to that effect into the House of Representatives that could be voted on this week.

Meanwhile, according to the Times, "If Congress does nothing, benefits for the long-term unemployed will begin to expire early next year, and two million people could lose benefits by mid-February."

It is estimated that if Congress does not act before New Years to extend benefits nearly 6 million people will lose federally funded unemployment compensation over the course of next year.

According to the Center for American Progress, 1.2 million African Americans and 1 million Hispanics would benefit from an extension of unemployment benefits.

The proportion of unemployed African Americans over the age of 16 who have been out of work for 27 weeks or
longer as of October 2011 is 48 percent. For Hispanics it's 39 percent.

Then there are the 99ers, those workers who have already exhausted their unemployment benefits and about whom there is ever hardly a mention in the major media (about half the jobless are currently receiving no assistance at all). There is a measure before Congress
- HR 589 - which would give them some assistance. During a recent House of Representatives debate on jobless benefit extension, the only member to bring the matter up was Rep. Barbara Lee (D - Ca) who has, as noted by Crewof42.com, brought the issue up "repeatedly
in conversations with the White House, on the House floor, at press conferences and in meetings."

In California alone an estimated 305,000 workers will be left without income if the benefits are not extended. The state's unemployment rate for young people 20 to 24 years old is 19 percent. For African Americans as a whole the rate is nearly 20 percent and close to 15 percent for Latinos.

"With California unemployment hovering around 12 percent, job seekers far outnumber actual jobs," said California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski. "It's deplorable that Republicans in Congress and their special interest friends are attempting to sever the one remaining lifeline for California's jobless. California's Republican members of Congress need to get their priorities in order. Our state's jobless need an extension of benefits far more than the richest 1 percent needs yet another fat tax break."

"The outlook is bleak," wrote Zuckerman. "Over 20 per cent of companies say that employment in their firms will never return to pre-recession levels. Another 40-plus per cent say revenues would have to rise around 40 per cent to return to pre-recession employment levels. Moreover, most of the new jobs available don't match the pay, the hours or the benefits of the positions that vanished during the recession. Millions of Americans face a lost decade, living from paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay their bills, having to
borrow money and go deeper into debt."

"The prospect of losing benefits during the holiday season takes a tremendous toll on those suffering the hardship of unemployment," said Pulaski