People Before Profit blog

Krugman's Attack on China

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:34:00 +0000

Reacting to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's remarks defending the current valuation of China's yuan relative to the US dollar, Paul Krugman has called for "temporary" 25 percent surcharge on Chinese imports to the US. He also discounts fears that this could result in a trade war where China dumps its large reserves of US Treasury securities, asserting that devaluation of the dollar would actually be a good thing for US exports vis a vis its non-Chinese trading partners. Of course the immediate impact of such a tariff would be a big price shock to the those shopping at Wal-mart and other discount chains - i.e. the US working class. I am not sure there is a definite point where one has declared a trade war, but a 25 percent surcharge on imports is a very powerful salvo.

Krugman argues that the US imposed a similar temporary surcharge on German and Japanese goods in 1971 that worked. Its true that German and Japanese currencies appreciated (making their imported goods more expensive). But it also resulted in a huge deployment of their capital reserves in the US as foreign manufacturers built many plants here. German and Japanese market share thus increased. China has been blocked from investing in US firms many times, so it will not have the same options. In addition, trade wars do not always have such salutary consequences - witness the protectionism that arose between World War I and World War II.

Its hard to see how a large surcharge on Chinese imports will not depress overall global production and demand, adding more fuel to the fires threatening a double-dip recession. In addition, workers expecting a boom in domestic manufacturing from the relief a surcharge may bring against Chinese competition will be sorely disappointed unless it is accompanied by a major shift in US industrial policy. Currently, except for military production, the US has virtually no long or medium range industrial policy. It lags in green industries, and is losing ground in knowledge-based industries as well, the ultimate keys to maintaining and growing high income occupations. The huge debts accumulated in Iraq and Afghanistan even before Obama took office are making key steps in restructuring the US economy ever more difficult. Alternatively, major public and public-private investments in the infrastructures and innovations needed to launch the rising tide that can lift all boats are tagged as "socialism" by Republicans who seem to see no farther than the tip of their nose. Well - if there is not a little more socialism in the picture, then a trade war with China will certainly backfire. Exports will rise a little, but investment will continue to head offshore, and rising prices will eat holes in workers' already empty pockets.

Further, how much would an appreciation of the Chinese yuan really affect the balance of trade? Is there not a larger issue in the new structure and saturation of the world market. Does not the shift in the relative balance of economic power globally, the new levels of competition, and the enormous increase in the productivity of East and South Asian workers play an important role? Professor Krugman's recipe seems to be put forward in a very narrow context.

Now, by all accounts China's currency IS undervalued, although the range of estimates is so wide that it is difficult to get a clear picture of exactly HOW much it is undervalued. China has proven that its unique mix of market oriented socialism is capable of extraordinary and sustained growth. No country has done more to lift up the world's poor. It is clear that it will fight very hard to maintain that growth and remain fixed on its ambition to become a "first world" economy. And it is worth saying more than once that reducing global inequality, especially in the era of globalization, is a premier challenge whose consequences for peace and overall prosperity cannot be understated.

The surcharge is not sure bet either, as China is free to peg its currency at an even lower rate relative to the dollar in response. Underdeveloped nations have virtually no way to grow out of poverty except through exports. Pegging one's currency to the dollar is a way to curb speculation and thus inhibit the currency chaos that has plagued many emerging countries.

We must find the mix of policies that accommodate rising incomes for both Chinese and American workers. For the US, investing in the human and fixed capital that does not require Wal-mart to survive, in fact is much richer in public goods like knowledge, culture, education and health, is a surer road than a trade war with China.

President Obama talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao (center). (White House photo)

CD Review: Until You Come Home

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:22:00 +0000

George Mann, Julius Margolin and Friends - ‘Until You Come Home: Songs for Veterans and Their Kin'
Compact Disc, independently released, February 2010 - www.untilyoucomehome.com

With Until You Come Home, singer-songwriter George Mann is able to offer up not only a strong musical statement on behalf of veterans of our recent wars but also one about his own fallen comrade, Julius Margolin. The oft-celebrated Margolin, Mann's duet partner for several years, passed away some months ago at the age of 93 but not before helping to inspire this final product. Julie Margolin has been a beloved figure in the ranks of labor and throughout the Left in the New York City area for generations; his history ranged from working man to labor activist to union organizer and agitator to protest singer--and his absence has been sorely felt by those in the know.

The duet of George and Julius has been a conduit for outreach to other musicians and their recorded output has embraced a wide swath of topical song artists, making all the more effective their fight-back against the forces of reaction. No surprise that this latest release includes not only the leadership of Mann and the visceral presence of Margolin, but guest powerhouse performers Tom Paxton, Utah Phillips, Holly Near and John Gorka as well as strong voices for social change David Rovics, Magpie, Arlon Bennet, Jon Brooks & Rodney Brown, Walt Cronin, Laurie McAllister (of Red Molly) & Amy Speace, Emily Nyman and Eric Schwartz. While some of the tracks were recorded specific to this collection, ‘Until You Come Home' also includes some pieces which were granted to Mann for use in this project. The presence of topical songs by noted performers like Paxton and Near gives us one more opportunity to hear these selections which had been released on earlier albums, and of course for the one piece included here by the late great Utah Phillips.

This disc was inspired by the book Voices of Vets and the work of Veterans for Peace and the Welcome Home Project. In describing the sense of mission about the creation of this compact disc collection, Mann stated, "There is a concerted effort underway to ease the transition back to post-service life for our veterans, in a way that recognizes that they have been affected, and wounded in various ways, by their service. It is up to the community to help in the process and this CD is our contribution to acknowledging the toll that these wars have taken on our service members and their families". And this mission is evident throughout the selections herein. Mann's own recordings open and close the disc; they speak in plain about the struggles of a returning vet, both laying out the format for what's to come and offering an echo of the tracks between. His voice is sober, maybe sounding a bit more lonesome than usual , all the more important to the record's concept. In contrast, Julius' single selection on this disc, recorded before succumbing to the withering of illness, offers a view into the man's vitality. His "Endless War" which had appeared on one of the pair's earlier anti-Bush collections reminds us of which administration began this bloody trek, even if the current one keeps to the dreadful policy...all the more a clarification of the sense of eternal battle.

While this collection would never have reason to deny its strong and serious content, the selections are not downtrodden, blue in emotion. Gentle, ringing harmonies like those offered by Laurie McAllister and Amy Speace, dreamy melodies such as that which Emily Nyman imparts, clear and clean latter-day Country brought to us in the offerings of Arlon Bennet and Eric Schwartz, the integrity of the latter-day topical folk by Rodney Brown and David Rovics, the rough-hewn blues edge of Jon Brooks, the vexations of Walt Cronin and the tapestry of the lovely and forlorn by Magpie (on the 1921 ballad "Michael") only serve to compliment and extend the work of the even more established artists they share sonic space with.

John Gorka's brilliant story song "Writing in the Margins" dates from 2006 but it carries with it the urgency of many Vietnam-era anti-war pieces. Of course one hears this ironic generational blur even more apparently in the work of Holly Near, represented here by her gorgeous song "I Am Willing", and Tom Paxton, one of the most beloved of the 1960s protest singers. Paxton's reedy voice on his late ‘80s piece "the Unknown" acts as a bridge from the time of the ‘60s tumult through the repression of the Reagan years and into our more immediate struggles against the madness of war. Similarly, "Yellow Ribbon" by Utah Phillips. The fallen compadre of radical workers everywhere told a story like few others ever could or will and here in this song from 1991 we feel the intensity of the anti-war movement without ever missing the aspect of the veterans' own viewpoint. Phillips, who served during the Korean conflict, knew of what he sang and he brings to us listening today a strong dose of reality; there ends up being no glory in bloodshed, little fanfare in the aftermath. But then, that's the whole point of ‘Until You Come Home': collectively its artists sing with the utmost respect for the "troops", the favorite symbol of the purveyors of the war machine, while heartily reflecting the sentiment of today's peace movement; this group of cultural workers cries for our nation to support the troops-by bringing them home NOW!

Is the Ultra-Right Insane? (They May Just Be!)

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:03:00 +0000

There is probably no leftist who has not asked herself after encountering some particularly egregious example of right-wing ideology or behavior, "Are they insane?" Recent scientific studies in fields as diverse as research psychology, economics and evolutionary biology offer tantalizing hints that some of those who irrationally espouse an aggressive, dog-eat-dog, virtue-of-selfishness ultraconservatism may indeed be suffering from significant personal or collective mental disorder.

Karl Marx long ago pointed out that individuals' political beliefs and actions do not fall from the sky, but rather have material reasons. Clearly, it would be almost as deluded for a successful billionaire real-estate speculator to embrace Marxist ideas as it would be for an unemployed working person to spend time proclaiming the virtues of laissez-faire, free-market capitalism (as many are now doing!). A man who has materially benefited from sexism (or who imagines he will be able to do so in the future) is unlikely to support equal rights for women. A young person who is sexually active can be reasonably expected to have a very different moral view about birth control than that held by an elderly, celibate clergyman. In short, people's beliefs and ideologies are ordinarily determined by real-world, material factors.

This Marxist insight is an immense improvement over earlier (and later) idealistic analyses proposing that sociopolitical ideas, ideologies and systems spontaneously arise more or less by themselves, stem from some mysterious "zeitgeist" [spirit of the time or moment], or even come down from heaven by divine inspiration.

However, Marx and Engels recognized the existence and the occasionally decisive importance of the phenomenon they called "false consciousness," where working people adopt a political stance that is blatantly at odds with their own real interests. True, what seems to be false consciousness is sometimes really the result of material bribery or threats. Even then, in many contemporary Left analyses false consciousness is far too often simply acknowledged and then ignored, seen as an unconquerable obstacle shrouded in idealist mystery, or chalked up to ignorance, lack of class-consciousness, enemy control of media and public consciousness, or Left failure to offer credible and practical alternatives.

If the axiom that "ideology follows reality" is applied mechanically and not dynamically it suffers from almost the same fatal error as the capitalist infallible-market theory that led up to the current world economic crisis: both false theories wrongly assume that human beings are ideal rational actors, carefully seeking out and correctly considering available information, objectively analyzing material conditions, and, unless deceived by fraudulent data or fallacious argument, almost inevitably deciding on valid, rational conclusions and correct actions.

Yet we know that the human brain is completely material in nature, with ever-changing strengths and weaknesses, varying degrees of development and vulnerability to disorders, growth and inevitable aging, just the same as any other body part. Marx's correct observation that thought and attitudes are always material seems even more remarkable today when we consider that in Marx's day, and even well into the 20th century, the brain was effectively a "black box," understandable only by outside observation and empirical theorization of behavior, or (later) with crude measurements of brain waves and electrical discharges.

In fact, the idea that material factors like childhood upbringing, past experience, physical and mental health and brain function can all affect a person's politics is by no means new. Over the last century, scientific studies on victims of autocratic, rigid or negligent child-raising have repeatedly found that this abuse is very often reflected in victims' ultraconservative, anti-democratic political attitudes as adults. Avoidance of just such mass personality and behavioral distortions (and the fascist horrors they were seen as having engendered) formed much of the theoretical underpinning of the late Dr. Benjamin Spock's immensely popular post-World War II child raising philosophy (a "permissive" approach which, unsurprisingly, was and still is the target of relentless right-wing attack).

However, the material association of mental disorder with ultraconservatism goes even deeper. One of the most interesting recent studies in this regard was presented at the 2008 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. There, researchers reported close correlation between an abnormally strong startle-response and political conservatism. This study and a related book, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, were reviewed together in February, 2010 by New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof.

Yet another very recent study, this one published in a March, 2010 issue of the journal Science, seems to partially validate Marx's empirical observation that "moral" consciousness, in this case ordinary people's sense of "fairness" and willingness to punish antisocial behavior, increases in direct relationship to the local degree of economic development (and also, interestingly enough, with increasing community size and adherence to some major contemporary world religion). Another, recent study reported in Science found that when scanned, human brains spontaneously "light up" with indignation at an unfair distribution of income (even the brain of the individuals who receive the unfair share react this way!), and show unconscious signs of pleasure at income equality, even if the individual being scanned consciously denies it.

Still another recent study found that political conservatism strongly correlates with the strength of a person's disgust reaction at things he or she sees as physically, socially or morally "dirty" or "nasty."

Studies like these are gradually debunking the 1980's "standard model" of evolutionary psychology, which postulated that human beings (like all other life-forms) are little more than "genetic codes on legs" whose social and individual behaviors are ultimately explainable only by dog-eat-dog evolutionary competition for reproductive success. If one accepts this pseudo-materialist "selfish gene" theory, (a theory that conveniently justifies the economic and social tenets of ultra-right-wing ideology), any and all disinterested solidarity, comradeship, friendship, social service or even charity and almsgiving to non-relatives is, by definition, madness.

However, this badly over-simplified, mechanical, and politically ultra-conservative model of evolutionary behavior has proven incapable of explaining simple, everyday human cooperation, not to mention incidents of heroic altruism or self-sacrifice (or even human care for animal pets!), unless these behaviors can somehow be shown to result in increased reproduction of one's own genes. Over recent decades dozens of researchers have tried all manner of theoretical and scientific "hand-stands," in unsuccessful attempts to cram the obdurately material reality that homo sapiens is a cooperative, and ultimately Communist species, into the false theoretical shell of imaginary, genetically-driven hyper-individualism and merciless selfishness.

Happily, this phony Darwinistic dogma is now being invalidated by repeated experiments that reveal that selfishness, greed, inequality and ultra-individualism, far from being the default human condition, are in fact symptoms of mental disorder (and in some cases, illness or physical brain injury). The possibility that, in not a few cases, extreme conservative, anti-Communist and reactionary attitudes and behaviors may be symptoms of deeper underlying physical or psychological sickness can no longer be minimized or discarded out of hand by thoughtful progressives.

Naturally, one must be extremely cautious before arbitrarily declaring any given right-winger "mad." Long-ago abuses perpetrated by twentieth-century socialist governments in locking up nonviolent dissidents, reactionaries and political enemies as "insane" must never be entirely forgotten. And, anyone of whatever class who is materially prospering from the current state of things, or who has rational plans for somehow doing so, is by no means crazy to oppose progressive change.

And, when overwhelmed by fear (of unemployment, poverty, homelessness or simply of change), some working people may become irrationally conservative even while still perfectly sane. Today, given the immense harshness of the current crisis, honest, thoughtful workers who look backward to some imaginary "good old days" instead of forward for a better model of affordable health care, employment, peace and prosperity can hardly be faulted for a lack of rationality, This is particularly true when the Left has, at least up to now, enjoyed minimal success in educating, agitating or organizing unemployed workers on a mass basis, even as Teabagger-style lunacy stands ready and eager to take up our slack.

However, the first practical lesson that liberals and progressives can draw from recent studies may well be that rather than wasting time rationally answering every new barrage of hair-brained, anti-human, right-wing claptrap that comes across the media, it may be far more fruitful for progressive writers and communicators to concentrate on broadly de-legitimizing conservatism and the right wing by proving that extreme right-wing ideology is, in fact, objectively insane; as disordered and dangerously deluded as believing one is Napoleon or is being pursued by flying pink elephants.

And secondly, these material findings strongly suggest that it is not nearly enough for us as progressives to appeal only to the relatively miniscule number of "rebels by temperament," or to imagine we can coldly and objectively place the facts before some rationally-calculating, fantasy working class who, if given access to solid evidence and free choice, will always logically choose socialism as the best option for themselves and their families. This tactic hasn't worked yet, it isn't working now, and, we can confidently predict, won't work in the future either.

Very much to the contrary, in order to grow as a party or movement we must creatively develop appeals that truly communicate with (and carefully listen to) wounded working people who may have (tragically) been raised by their parents to stand at attention and salute, with fragile workers whose voices tremble with disgust and change-phobia every time their state changes the number on their license plates, with fear-haunted working people who stay awake at night in stark fear of terrorists under the bed, and all those temperamentally wound-up workers who jump through the roof every time the mechanic in the next repair bay drops a wrench.

Of course, "biology is not destiny," but a healthy recognition that working people have widely differing brain-based personality styles and attitudes toward change is no more than an acknowledgement of reality. Part of Lenin's genius was that he was an expert at this. Recognizing this reality, socialism needs to be honestly advocated to workers whose experiences and world-views are wildly different from our own.

This is not two-faced deception, only truth! To freethinkers and rebels, socialism is automatically appealing to some degree simply because it is rebellion. But at the same time, socialism should have an equally strong appeal to workers whose peak value-forming experience was "the woodshed," the high school football locker-room, basic training or boot camp. For these, socialism is the best-planned, most disciplined, most team-oriented and least chaotic system for our future. There may be no "I" in "Team," but you can't even write "Socialism," much less build it, without an "I" in it!

For good working people whose "ick reflex" is instantaneous, socialism is obviously the most elegant and best organized system for ensuring our future health and well-being and that of our children. Under socialism we could finally have a chance to sweep away the horror of stinking, graffiti-ridden slums, rotting schools, uncontrolled air and water pollution and profit-driven ecological degradation. We shouldn't be ashamed to point out that past and present socialist states, even with all their grave shortcomings, are historically the only societies to ever have successfully cleaned up organized prostitution, pimps, and the commercial smut industry. Under socialism we could easily do it here, too! Plus, in a socialist system, you can always see a doctor!

And as for the millions of lonely and marginalized working, retired and unemployed Americans, old and young, socialism is, well, social. This is a plain and proud fact that we should never minimize or gloss over either.

We know that socialism is the most reasonable, sensible road to a better tomorrow, but we must never stop proclaiming out loud, just as Lenin did, that socialism is the happiest, most loving, most humane and most human choice as well! We may or may not have young children of our own, but we must never forget to remind soccer dads and band moms that, under socialism, instead of their having to constantly advocate for their children's needs, their kids and all kids would be the only privileged class. Socialism is a system of love, unity and solidarity instead of "pit bulls," pushy advertisers and vicious union-busters, where all of us could proudly look to the future instead of back at today's profit-and-loss figures for inspiration.

Today, in the midst of the "Great Recession," American working people truly have nothing to lose but our fear: the constant and growing fear of joblessness; increasing social atomization and fear of individual isolation; fear of eternal war and acute crisis; unpaid furloughs, wage cuts and cutbacks; fear of trillions in unpayable debt clamped to our children's and their children's ankles like a ball and chain; fear of the real domestic terrorism of poverty, foreclosure and homelessness circling over us like three hundred million very personal 9/11's. Add to this ruling class arrogance, discrimination, racism and exploitation, and we have an inhuman, insane system run by criminals, defensible only by the self-interested, the deluded and the demented, a system whose only real excuse for itself is TINA, "There Is No Alternative."

Our job is to ceaselessly proclaim and effectively prove by successful immediate, medium and long-term struggle that there is a practical alternative, that it does not have to be this way! If we can do this, we can begin to effectively talk about socialism as "a world to win."

And as we do this, we must never be afraid to share the dreadful truth out loud, that those who publicly denounce moderate health care reform as "Armageddon," scream the n-word at the President, worship the "virtue of selfishness," or wear tee-shirts reading "I'd rather be waterboarding," may indeed be clinically, even violently psychopathic, clear and present threats to themselves and to others, with all that legally and logically implies. We have seen again and again what happens when violent individual or collective insanity grabs the wheel of a major country, and we must never let it happen here.

(Photo by Sage Ross, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, cc by 2.0)

Building a New Peace Movement, an Interview with Judith Le Blanc

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:55:00 +0000

Editor's note: Judith Le Blanc is the national field organizer for Peace Action, the country's largest grassroots peace organization with 100,000 members across the country. She is also formerly the national co-chair of United for Peace and Justice.

PA: Currently it seems as though the economic crisis and the health care debate have really pushed peace movement issues off the priority list? What do you think the peace movement can or should be done to re-center that effort?

Judith Le Blanc: The peace movement played a critical role in the results of the 2008 elections, and for anybody who has read Game Change and was active in the anti-Iraq War movement, you can really can see that it made a difference. Behind the scenes in the campaigns, both during the democratic primary and in the general elections, people were concerned about the positions the candidates were taking, because they knew the power of the grassroots sentiment opposing the war in Iraq.

The peace movement is now in a period of transition, transitioning from a kind of historical role of being one of the decisive movements working on one of the most critical issues facing the country. Now organizations that sprang up from the grassroots and formed national coalitions that were able to mobilize hundreds of thousands are in a transition from that historic moment to a moment where we have to build a new kind of peace movement from the grassroots up, a peace movement that links the issues and organizes on the basis of relating to other movements which are adjusting to the economic crisis.

Across the board many organizers at the local level, as well as at the national level, are grappling with how to build this new peace movement. The new peace movement has to find ways to help people understand the impact wars and war spending is having on our lives and on the spending priorities of the federal government. Now 57 percent of the federal discretionary spending is on preparation for war or wars, for the military budget. We need a fundamental shift in spending priorities. So the new peace movement that needs to be built is really a peace and justice movement. It is about making the connections between the sacrifices that go on in our communities, the cuts in human services, and waging a battle to take the money from where it is going now, to begin to reduce spending on the military budget and move that money into funding education, health care, and infrastructure rebuilding. There are some things in the military budget that should not be cut and in fact should be increased: we are talking about things like veterans' benefits and about how to get rid of nuclear weapons. There has been a huge historic increase in the funding going to nuclear weapons laboratories for the research and development of new nuclear weapons, when in fact the money should be going into how to break down a nuclear bomb once we reduce the stockpiles. That is what is needed in today's world.

There are many groups at the local level, especially in communities of color and immigrant communities who have always had strong sentiments against the war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, and always have had a very up close and personal understanding of foreign policy and the impact of US foreign policy on their countries and communities. Many people are driven out of their countries because of wars and occupations, and the economic wars that are the result of US foreign policy.

In communities of color where there is very high unemployment and the budget cuts at the state and local level are hitting very very hard, people understand that there needs to be more money for human services and that the military is a wasteful way to spend money. Many organizations, like the National Priorities Project, have documented that money spent on education, for example, creates three times more jobs than money spent on weapons systems. McCain and Obama both ran on a platform that there was waste in the military budget, and Rep. Barney Frank advocated about a year ago that 25 percent of the military budget could be cut without harming or affecting in any fundamental way national security.

The new peace movement has to begin a process of not only just calling for changing the spending priorities of the federal budget, but looking line by line at the military budget and targeting weapon systems that should be cut because of cost overruns and war profiteering, while also working with Congresspeople in congressional districts which could lose jobs. For example, the F22s were produced in 42 states, and that the F22 fight last year kind of highlighted the fact that when weapon systems are cut from the military budget it does affect jobs at the local level. Given the economic crisis, this means that labor, the peace movement, and local elected officials have to work with Congresspeople to develop new economically sustainable models for how to deal with the impact at the local level of job losses if a weapons system is cut.

What I am saying fundamentally is that we need a new kind of peace movement that deals directly with the economic impact of war spending and wars, at the economic costs, but also looks at the human costs, the human costs on the soldiers, on the people in the countries of Afghanistan and Iraq, but also at the human costs in our communities, where unemployment is skyrocketing and there is no end in sight.

PA: Iraq has been off the front page, except for the recent elections there. What is your assessment of the direction US involvement in Iraq is taking? Is it going in the right direction? Is it going fast enough?

Le Blanc: I think the peace movement under Bush really won very few big victories, but it did win some small victories like increasing the number of Congresspeople who voted in opposition to funding the war in Iraq. Our biggest victory was that we, the peace movement and the antiwar sentiment, played a critical role in the defeat of McCain.

One of the reasons is that Obama from the very beginning, even before he was a senator, opposed the war and spoke at the largest peace demonstration that Chicago had during the Iraq War. And he made a campaign promise that one of the first things he would do if elected would be to gather his military advisors and set a date certain for withdrawal. His second campaign promise, which he also fulfilled, is that he would increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. So on one level, when he made that speech back in February last year about a date certain for withdrawal, and the need for a diplomatic solution to involve the countries in the region to help the Iraqi people regain their national sovereignty, leading to taking back their country, it was big victory. At the same time, we knew in the peace movement that there would be many twists and turns in the road between then and August 20, 2011. Right now the main job of the peace movement is to continue to keep the situation in Iraq on the front burner and keep it in the public eye. People are watching very closely what is going on with the elections in Iraq, and we continue to watch very closely and support the initiatives and struggles the labor movement in Iraq is waging.

In a certain sense, Iraq is not the top priority for the peace movement, because the majority of the people in our country believe that the Iraq War is winding down, and hopefully, if things go as they seem to be going, the troops will be withdrawn and there will be no permanent US bases, which has been the will of the Congress under Bush and continues to be the popular sentiment in our country – that no permanent bases will be left behind. And it looks like the troops will be withdrawn. The problem is where will they be sent and what will happen in Afghanistan. That is the cutting-edge issue.

Going back to your first question, I believe that there are two trajectories for the peace movement. There is going to be a peace movement, a small one in size but continuing to be vocal, to bring all the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is going to another kind of peace movement that is more centered on making the links between the economic crisis and militarism, in effect a new kind of movement that is more, in a basic sense, an anti-militarism movement, one that is taking up some of the basic cornerstones of US foreign policy in the longer term and in the bigger picture.

First by addressing the the growth of the military budget, but also by dealing with the effect of having over 700 military bases around the world, and also by dealing with the issue of nuclear disarmament and how we begin to reduce the number of nuclear weapons that the US has, and the role that the US must morally play in taking the steps that Obama talked about in Czechoslovakia last year in Prague in his speech in April about the moral necessity for the US to take steps towards nuclear abolition.

Then there are a number of issues that are connected to militarism and the cost of that militarism that a bigger, broader movement of peace and community movements - economic justice, social justice, and racial justice movements - need to take up. There are those who say that the troop withdrawal from Iraq is not going fast enough - of course, absolutely it is not fast enough - but it is a deadline, and we have to take credit in claiming that victory next August when the last troops leave. Because if they don't leave we are going to have to re-energize and build momentum, but it looks like the Obama Administration remains committed to that deadline being met.

PA: You mentioned that the struggle end US military involvement in Afghanistan is the cutting edge issue. Could you describe some of the key legislative points at which people who are involved in the peace movement can make Congress set deadlines to bring the troops home, to stop the momentum for more troops there, and that kind of thing? What are some concrete ways we can do that?

Le Blanc: As your readers know, Afghanistan is not Iraq. We can't say, well Afghanistan is just another war for oil. It is a much bigger question. It is a much bigger struggle that has gone on over decades of US involvement, for decades in Afghanistan and in that region. We are talking about a geopolitical struggle that has to do with Pakistan and India, and with China and Iran. One of the most important handles for mobilizing public sentiment for US and NATO forces to leave Afghanistan is public education.

It is a long and tangled web of lies that began to be perpetrated by the Bush administration right after September 11. And we in the peace movement have to find many different ways to help people understand what is going on in Afghanistan, and therefore build pressure on the administration to negotiate, and to help foster international support for negotiations between the Afghan government and all of the militias. Now these kinds of negotiations have been going on, back-channel negotiations. They began under the Bush administration and they continue under the Obama administration, and there is no way out from Afghanistan without negotiations.

As for the legislative handle, right now we are hearing that both on the Senate and the House side there is some motion towards legislation that would ask the Obama Administration to set a deadline for withdrawal. That would be an important and good initiative. It would be a way for us to begin to talk about these issues with our Congresspeople. But I think the peace movement has to be very realistic that between now and the end of this session, and potentially in the next session of Congress after the 2010 elections, it is going to be extremely difficult to move legislation in the Congress.

Although the peace movement will need and will have a use for legislative initiatives like the one just mentioned, we have to focus on grassroots public education. We have to focus on re-building the public sentiment and the public pressure, and building this new kind of peace movement that deals with some of the fundamental aspects of US foreign policy. Obama won based on the platform, and many people supported it, that the hard edge of US foreign policy should be diplomacy, that the US should be one among many in the world working on an equal footing with countries around the world. Now, of course, objectively, when you have over 700 military bases all over the world then you are not on an equal footing. And when you spend more on the military than any other country in the world, you are not on an equal footing. What we need to do, as a peace and justice movement, is to begin to educate people about an alternative foreign policy, what it is that we want the Obama administration to do on a number of issues, Afghanistan being the first - negotiations not escalation – Afghanistan being the place which in some ways is the hardest hole to dig out of that the Bush administration and the neo-conservatives dug. We have to link what is going on there and what we want US foreign policy to be in Afghanistan, to what we want US foreign policy to be vis-a-vis the rest of the world. So legislation will be a smaller item on the agenda of the peace movement. The big item on the agenda is public education, public discussion, our own national dialog, about why and how we can get US troops out of Afghanistan.

PA: You talk about a new peace movement that takes a bigger look and makes more links between domestic and international questions. Do you know of an example where people are doing that in a way that seems successful and provides a good model for how others can go about doing it?

Le Blanc: I think there are some interesting initiatives, the first small steps toward building this movement. There are a number of places in the country, in Maine, Massachusetts, and Illinois for instance. In Massachusetts, as a result of Barney Frank calling for a 25 percent cut in military spending, a project has been developed in the Boston area, in Dorchester and Roxbury specifically, that is being led by community groups, Black and Latino, and peace groups, to do an educational campaign called "The 25 Percent Campaign." They have educational material about the economic costs of wars and war corporations. They have been holding public forums, and they are actually getting the attention of community groups that may not have marched in opposition to the Iraq War, or do not have antiwar or anti-militarism as a part of their program of work. They are getting groups together to talk about what the military budget has to do with you and me, how it is possible to cut 25 percent from the military budget, and what we need to do in order to make that a reality.

In Illinois there is a project that was initiated by peace groups and involves Jobs with Justice and other labor and community groups. The project is called "The New New Deal." They have a web-site and they just held a four-hour seminar that brought together the labor movement, the peace movement, the health care movement, and the immigrant rights movement to talk about, one year after the election of Obama, where do we go from here? It was on a Saturday afternoon and there were over 200 people who came for this dialog, labor folks, peace activists and community folks, because people at the grassroots level are very concerned about the future direction of the country.

There were a lot of lessons that were learned in eight years under the Bush administration, and one of those lessons was that although the movements, the health care movement and the labor movement, the educational reform and the immigrant rights movement, all have very specific agendas and are fighting like hell to mobilize grassroots pressure on the administration and Congress on their separate issues, they do not work in a unified way. There is now an incredible awareness of the need for united efforts, for solidarity between movements, that things are really interrelated, and that war and foreign policy are, in fact, part and parcel of what communities and labor must address.

PA: How do you assess the President's nuclear weapons policies? What possibilities do they create in terms of the movement for peace and all of the other things you are talking about?

Le Blanc: Last year President Obama made a speech in Prague that outlined the moral necessity for the US to begin to take steps toward a nuclear-free world. People across the world breathed a sigh of relief, because it was such a radical departure from the Bush administration, but also from the direction of all the administrations of the past. But right now within the Obama administration there is an incredible struggle going on between the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the White House about the Nuclear Posture Review, which is the policy that every new administration puts forward about their attitude toward the use of nuclear weapons. It was supposed to be released in December, then it was postponed to January, then it was postponed again to February, and now it is postponed at least until some time in April.

The struggle that is being reported in the New York Times and other publications is about the definition of when nuclear weapons would actually be used. It is clear that Obama is probably the most personally committed of any president we have had to reducing the stockpiles and working toward a nuclear-free future for the world. But the truth is that there are very powerful forces at work who believe that the only way for the US to maintain its position of dominance both in the economic and political arenas is to use nuclear weapons as the cornerstone, as the deterrent, as the way to drive our foreign policy – and to try to control who has access to nuclear weapons. Well, that theory is outmoded.

Looking at the world today, the fact is that the US can no longer control who gets nuclear weapons and who can use them. It is also clear from the horrendous experience of September 11 that no matter how many nuclear weapons you have, it does not make for national security. The nuclear disarmament movement in the US and around the world is beginning to rebuild, premised on the idea that if President Obama is able to challenge those who want to maintain nuclear superiority, it is going to take a grassroots movement like the one in the 1980s that compelled a nuclear disarmament agreement and moved the US government to sign treaties. Now at this point the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has been languishing in the Senate for decades since the Clinton administration and has never been brought to a vote again for ratification after it was defeated. As for the START treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) with Russia, which expired in December and is continuing to be negotiated, if that bill is brought before the Senate at this point, just like many other pieces of legislation the Obama Administration supports, it would be doomed.

So we are in the midst of trying to rebuild a grassroots nuclear disarmament movement that can build on the antiwar sentiments that still remain very strong in our country, building on the idea that, in fact, the best way to change US foreign policy is for the US to take steps to reduce its nuclear stockpiles, but to also take some extraordinary steps that would send a signal to the world that the US is ready to begin comprehensive negotiations on a real nuclear convention, a real document that would set the guidelines and the deadlines for nuclear disarmament, total nuclear disarmament.

The UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is reviewed every five years. It began in 1970 and the majority of the countries in the world have signed on to it. The UN every five years reviews the progress on the implementation of this treaty. This is the first review under the Obama administration, and there are thousands of nuclear disarmament activists and organizations who are coming to New York City for that Review Conference at the United Nations.

We are hoping that it is an opportunity for the US peace and nuclear disarmament movement to voice in a very dramatic way grassroots support for the Obama administration to not only move forward in the negotiations on the START Treaty, but to actually take some extraordinary steps, for example, if the Obama administration were to decide to take all of our nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert, which means that within a minute, a nuclear attack could be launched against another country. This hair-trigger policy is unnecessary.

After the end of the Cold War people began to believe that it was going to be a whole new world, but one of the remnants and relics of the Cold War is that we have nuclear weapons that are still targeting major cities in Russia, and they are on hair-trigger alert. One of the measures the Obama administration could take is to take those weapons off of hair-trigger alert, so that the possibility of an accident happening is greatly diminished, and it would signal to the whole world that we are beginning to move away from the abyss of a nuclear war.

We have a long road ahead of us in helping to educate people about not only the dangers of nuclear weapons, but about why nuclear weapons are not necessary in the 21st century in order to have strong national security, and to show people what could take the place of a nuclear deterrent. What is an alternative foreign policy? Now, the Obama administration has proposed the largest increase in funding for nuclear research in decades. That was a concession to the right wing in Congress. At the beginning of the year in January, 40 Republicans and one former Democrat from Connecticut sent a letter to the Obama administration saying that unless new funding was allocated to renew and modernize existing nuclear weapons, they would not sign or ratify any nuclear weapon reduction treaties.

One of the things we are trying to do in the peace and disarmament movement is to highlight that not only is more money being proposed by the Obama administration for nuclear weapons modernization, but also new money is being allocated to develop more deadly conventional weapons. The outlook of the administration is that there are weapons, conventional weapons, that could be based in the US that would be as effective a deterrent as nuclear weapons have been, nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert targeting cities overseas.

So we have a dual-edged sword here. You really cannot just struggle for nuclear disarmament and the reduction of the stockpiles of US nuclear weapons. What we also have to struggle against is the idea that war is inevitable or that conventional weapons are going to make the country a safer place. The main weapon that is needed is a new foreign policy based on diplomacy. It is a great opportunity for us that the Obama administration is debating the issue of a new nuclear weapons policy and taking some steps back from the nuclear weapons policy that has existed for decades. On the other hand, it is not a struggle that can be waged without bringing into play the full spectrum of military as well as foreign policy issues.

Hopefully in May we will have thousands of people from the US marching in midtown Manhattan to the United Nations to bring the message that the time is now to disarm for peace and justice, for jobs creation, for health care, that the time is now to abolish nuclear weapons and cut military spending. There are going to be thousands of people from around the world. From Japan alone there will be two thousand, and amongst those two thousand there will be a very large labor delegation. There will be people from every continent here to participate in the non-governmental organization gatherings that will be going on, with an international conference happening at Riverside Church from April 30 to May 1, and then marching on May 2. So this is an opportunity to voice those sentiments, but the real work will happen after that international conference and after that international demonstration, to continue the work at the grassroots level to educate people about the dangers of nuclear weapons.

(Photo by Fibonacci Blue, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

To Socialism! How?

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:51:00 +0000

How do we go from where we are to socialism? Not an easy question and there is more than one contradictory approach on the left and even in and around our Party. There is much in Marxist theory and methodology to help give us a general approach, while the actual course of development and struggle will demand concrete answers.

Lenin's analysis of Marxism is that it consists of three interdependent aspects – its philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism, its political economy of capitalism, and its theory of socialist revolution. The first aspect provides both its methodology and its laws and theory of social development. The second focuses on relations of people to each other in the process of production and the laws and theory of the development of the mode of production. The heart of the theory of socialist revolution is the Marxist theory of strategy and tactics. Strategy deals with the qualitative turns in the balance of forces that it is necessary to seek and the class and social forces and political trends and social movements that can be won for that qualitative turn, and the main opponent in relation to that turn. Tactics deals with the most useful issues, demands, forms of struggle and forms of organization to achieve the alignment of class and social forces, in the first place, necessary to win the strategic objective or qualitative turn in the balance of forces. Tactics should serve the objective of realizing the strategy.

The whole of the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin dealing with advancing the struggle for progress and socialism center on defining what would constitute a qualitative turn in the relationship of class and social forces that moves forward, and then defining the class and social forces for those goals and against them. Beginning in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels call on the developing German working class movement to ally with the German Democratic Party. This was the party of the rising German capitalist class, for the purpose of replacing feudalism. Already we see the concept of alliance of the working class with a temporary ally which will certainly later become its main opponent. This is the same idea that Lenin puts forward in Left Wing Communism of alliances no matter how temporary or partial with other class and social forces. Beginning in 1897, the 27 year old Lenin began to define a strategic stage before that of proletarian socialist revolution, the democratic stage of the struggle against absolutist Czarism. This two stage strategy is what Lenin put forward in his famous work on strategy and tactics, Two Tactics of Russian Social Democracy. He defined the class alignment sought for the democratic stage, and the class alignment sought for the proletarian socialist stage.

In 1935, the world Communist movement at the 7th World Congress, including the CPUSA, agreed there was a necessary stage prior to the socialist revolution and that was the defeat of world fascism and its threat around the world including within the US, that would require a united front of the working class on the basis of the anti-fascist struggle and a popular front of all other class and social forces with the working class, including the democratic section of the capitalist class, to defeat the fascist section of the capitalist class and open the road for further progress.

In 1952-54 the CPUSA concluded in its then new basic program that there was a necessary strategic stage defined as radically curbing the power of the monopolies necessary to open the way to working class political power and the construction of socialism. This was based on the recognition that capitalism was dominated completely by its monopoly capital sector but there were other sectors of capitalism that need not always line up with the monopolies.

In 1980, on the initiative of Gus Hall, the Party called attention to a differentiation in the ranks of the monopoly capitalists between an ultra right sector and a more moderate sector. He projected the building of an all people's front to defeat the ultra right. This position was developed further over the years and codified in the new basic program adopted in 2005 at the 28th Convention. This included the concept that we sought a coalition of class forces led by the working class and labor movement in which there were core allies of the working class consisting of the racially and nationally oppressed, women and youth, allied with additional forces such as the LGBT community, seniors, family farmers, small business, professionals, intellectuals, and self-employed, and even the more moderate and reasonable monopoly capitalist sector to defeat reaction (the ultra right) led by a sector of monopoly capital based in the military-industrial complex; pharmaceuticals, a section of finance capital, etc.

We thus concluded there would need to be three stages of struggle to socialism, (1) that of defeating the ultra right; (2) the radical curbing of the power of monopoly as a whole and (3) the stage of seeking and winning working class led political power in alignment with the other core forces and additional allies for the purpose of constructing a socialist society. The victory at each of these stages would shift the relationship of forces in favor of the interests of the working class and other core forces and would make it substantially easier to move on to the next stage. The stage of defeating the ultra right was not an arbitrary creation of subjective desires. It reflected objective changes in the further development of state monopoly capitalism as a result of internationalization of economic life and the dominance of transnational monopolies ("globalization") and "financialization" of US and world capitalism, which resulted in development of different political trends among sectors of monopoly capital, which had substantial influence on non-monopoly sectors of the population.

In 1952 when the anti-monopoly coalition concept was put forward as a stage before that of working class power and socialist construction, there were those who argued this would slow down rather than speed up reaching the fight for socialism. Why bother with anything prior to winning socialism? Its supporters were called revisionists and social democrats for slowing down the struggle to reach socialism. Some even argued the struggle to reach socialism was simply a matter of the fight of the working class against the capitalist class and nothing else really mattered or was actually a diversion. But this line of reasoning was actually a departure from Marx, Engels and Lenin.

It was based on several wrong concepts. One was a negative attitude toward the fight for reforms that if won could somewhat and for a while ameliorate the lives of working people. This was considered "reformism" that would necessarily give rise to illusions among masses of working people and slow down the development of "revolutionary consciousness". What was needed was exposure of all the evils of capitalism and of the politicians, public figures and organizations that supported it. The logic of this is that fights are waged to "expose" capitalism, not to win anything; "the worse the better" serves best such exposure. What needed to be mastered is the most persuasive propaganda and agitation and the techniques of its delivery to an ever-growing number of people. Learning how most skillfully to make arguments against capitalism and to conduct these exposures and deliver the message in the most attractive manner, that was the entire business of revolutionaries. This propaganda and agitation was the heart of a revolutionary path to winning socialism.

But Lenin argued many times that propaganda and agitation were needed but alone would never win socialism. He argued that the millions learned through their own experience in struggle which required a mass action level based on what masses were willing currently to undertake. This means that the struggle for reforms, no matter how small, were necessary to being able to engage the millions in the experience they needed in struggle to advance their consciousness and activity. The path to revolution was impossible except through the struggle for reforms. The struggle for reforms and "reformism" were different things. The reformist views reforms as completing all that is necessary, as completely satisfying the needs of the working class and thus bringing the struggle to an end in themselves. And Lenin pointed out the working class needed victories, alongside of the inevitable defeats of struggle, to learn their own strength and to develop full class consciousness. Agitation was important when combined with the current level of struggle to prepare to draw the lessons needed to go on to amore advanced levels of struggle. The purpose of putting forward intermediate strategic goals and stages is to be able to involve the millions in struggle at the level for which they are prepared to act and in doing so win a victory which shifts the balance of class and social forces and makes possible millions struggling for the next possible qualitative shift in the relationship of forces, each of which moves the struggle ahead toward socialism and makes the advance easier and more certain because of the prior shifts in relationship of forces achieved in previous stages. Thus the defining of intermediate strategic goals and the struggle for these reforms is the only possible road to socialism. A policy of no fight for reforms, no intermediate strategic goals is tantamount to a policy of only propaganda and agitation and the worse the better. These approaches pose to the masses of working people what one's aims really are, whether they are really on the side of the working people.

Propaganda Lenin defined as being for the ultimate goals, for socialism, relating it to the present level of mass struggle, but not expecting it to become the cause of the millions as yet, but rather something to be seriously considered by the most advanced and thereby to be important to building the organizations of the advanced forces, the Communist Party, etc. Thus it is important but on its own will not win socialism or be the basis of masses entering into and learning from their own experience in struggle. In a certain sense, today when the millions are not ready to follow the lead of the Communists, even when the Party circulates material widely that deals only with immediate issues of struggle and does not discuss socialism, it is still propaganda in its relation to masses and therefore, while being an important part of the work of a Communist Party, it is not the central aspect of participating among mass organizations and masses on the issues on which they are currently ready to move and recognizing that consciousness will go through stages corresponding to the strategic stages of the struggle the Party has outlined. The Party of course wants to increase its own visibility and agitation and propaganda but even more important is to increase its involvement with masses in struggle through the forms of struggle and organization and on the issues with the demands they currently support. In such participation, the central role of the Party is to build unity at that level, help defeat all efforts to break up that unity such as with racism, help activate the broadest masses, and help prepare the ground for the next level of mass action.

Those who do not see the necessity for and possibility of intermediate strategic goals and struggles tend to limit themselves to propaganda and agitation which is an approach of middle strata intellectuals who spend all their time on perfecting their written and oral messages in their many forms and try to "revolutionize" and rope off a tiny sector of people under their "hegemony", and continually add to this group, all the way to socialism. But such hegemony does not last as their isolation off on the side from mass struggle becomes obvious to the people they temporarily roped off.

Lenin not only placed the question of temporary, partial allies but also of long lasting basic allies for the working class. In Two Tactics he saw the poor and middle peasants as allies of the working class in the first, democratic, stage of the Russian revolution and the poor peasants as the ally of the working class in the proletarian stage of the revolution for socialism. In 1922 at the Second Congress of the Peoples of the East, Lenin amended the final words of The Communist Manifesto to read, "Workers and Nationally Oppressed of the World Unite!" He always rejected as a distortion of Marx the idea of "the working class" alone against the "capitalist class." The stage of the struggle determined the possibility of allies for the working class and how temporary or long lasting.

In our basic program we warned that the transition from stage to stage would not be a simple, neat process. On one day we would be in stage one and the next we would be in stage two, etc. The qualitative change from the anti-ultra right stage to the anti-monopoly stage would be a complex process with victories and losses even while on a whole the change moved ahead and was consolidated. Now we would add, it is a more easily reversible process than would be going back from constructing socialism to restoring capitalism. Thus a transitional process from the full domination of the ultra right to full domination of anti-monopoly forces was and is the only way it can take place. We also know the electoral victory of the Obama Administration replacing the domination of the ultra right could only be achieved by a coalition of class and social forces and of political trends that was internally contradictory and was bound to have differences of positions on virtually every issue of importance. The winning coalition consisted of labor, the African American, Mexican American and other Latino peoples, Asians, Native Americans and other oppressed peoples, women, youth, LGBT community and others, including the more reasonable, flexible section of monopoly. In relation to political trends it had a substantial block of progressives who were generally anti-monopoly as a whole and an even larger block of moderates who were not anti-monopoly but only anti the ultra right. These were not only the more moderate monopoly capitalists themselves but much of the mass following that supported Hillary Clinton.

This coalition in which our first African American President plays the leading role was necessary to beat the ultra right in 2008 and remains necessary in order to defeat the sharp counterattack of the ultra right we are experiencing and to complete a decisive victory over it, reflected in a sufficient majority in the Senate as well as the House to pass legislation that moves forward and to remove the ultra right from its last bastions of control such as the Supreme Court. This coalition while holding together as a whole needs labor, the nationally oppressed and the other core forces to play an increasingly big role and for the progressive trend to gain strength, without pushing the moderates over to siding with the ultra right. And it should be kept in mind that there will be some shifting of forces according to the issue and the particular interests affected, so that at moments when the interests of moderate monopoly sectors are being confronted they will tend to shift to the right.

The difficulty is how to keep such a range of forces together, while increasingly meeting the needs of the core forces on issues like jobs and housing and not unnecessarily push moderate "independents" into the arms of the ultra right. How to bring the progressive trend forward increasingly with more of general anti-monopoly demands and issues without pushing moderate sections into the arms of the ultra right. One answer to this is for progressives to support proposals for more aid and concessions for small business and other middle strata in return for their support of the main demands of labor and the nationally oppressed.

Whatever criticisms one may have of the Obama Administration it is clear that the direction of the Bush Administration for the country has been radically changed and moves in the opposite direction. One may say, not fast enough, not with advanced enough alternatives and in a few cases like Afghanistan, not at all. One may also say the Obama appointees are a mixed bag. But given the character of the winning coalition as discussed and the fact that Obama himself is not for socialism and is not opposed to monopoly interests on all issues or to a full extent, it was to be expected the appointees would be well-divided among progressives and moderates. It was expected the moderates would control the economy, on grounds experienced knowledgeable well-respected figures were needed given the crisis and the same in foreign and defense policy and management. And the chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is from that grouping.

On almost no issue did Obama pursue the full demands of the progressives and in a manner the progressives fully desired. That is also to be expected given the character of the coalition that is facing the ultra right. Then, how do we judge the actions taken and how do we ensure the coalition as a whole moves forward rather than stalling out or even moving backward? How can the coalition be consolidated and steadily advance as a result of an internal process of differences on issues and tactics within a framework of consolidating unity?

The first thing is the necessity of recognizing who is the enemy and the strength and danger of that enemy. That enemy is clearly the ultra right dominated by that sector of monopoly and finance capital, which has great resources and still has powerful positions in government, the media and many aspects of US society. It has the Republican Party and most of its internal divisions, including the so-called populist extreme right of tea baggers and other assorted racists and fanatical groups. Its concentration is on the person of President Obama but it uses a range of demagogic positions against "big government", "deficit spending" and for untrammeled competition, etc. These have strong overtones of racism, also. These are the real alternatives to the Obama Administration and the present Congressional majority for the 2010 and 2012 elections. Therefore, no one has a free ride to attack President Obama and his Administration from the left without taking this into account.

Progressives include a left sector with a socialist and Communist component. We do not and should not judge things only by what is needed to completely fix a given social problem. In fact in many cases not even socialism will completely solve every problem immediately. So failing to propose or fight for "what is necessary" can not be the only criteria of judgment. The actual relationship of forces must also be assessed to judge whether the actions stand the test of the times. And some room must be given for knowledge of the concrete situation in Congress that the progressive forces may not have, in terms of why specific members of the House and Senate take the positions they do and to what extent they will respond to mass pressure and to arm twisting by denial of Congressional largess, etc.

The decisive question is the buildup of mass activism, mass movements, mass action to higher and higher levels and in doing that to counter discouragement and loss of confidence. Differences within the coalition can and should and will be expressed, and there will be various pushes and pulls but all must be aware of not helping the enemy and for the need to keep the coalition together including with the Obama Administration, or all the inner differences come to nothing. This sets a framework of how differences are expressed. The right wing and the media will take every difference and try to enlarge it and pose it as a break from the coalition and especially from the President. In any kind of a coalition, whether neighborhood, city-wide or national, differences are inevitable and the same basic rules apply as to how to handle them if one values the existence of the coalition and sees others as the main enemy. The basis of the coalition can not be the maximum position of the most left forces It will vary from issue to issue but can not be too far ahead of the moderates or too far behind the moderates, to be able to hold together, and advance.

It is only with such an approach that we can defeat the counterattack of the ultra right, complete the defeat of the ultra right (they will never be completely defeated during capitalism) and complete the transition fully into the general anti-monopoly stage of struggle. Because of its Marxist outlook and character as a Communist Party, we have been able to establish these strategic stages, strategy for this transition period, and tactics to accomplish it, in a way that is exemplary for all the other democratic forces. The bigger and stronger the Party is the more it will be able to contribute to assuring this direction of development, which is the only possible road to socialism.

Some Sobering Notes on African American Equality

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:02:00 +0000

The fact that institutionalized racism persist in our country is rooted in the historical reality of 250 years of slavery followed, after a brief period of civil war and democratic reconstruction, by over seventy years of Jim Crow terror and state sanctioned racist discrimination. Claude Lightfoot was right when he said that present day racist practices and attitudes carry the stench of the slave market. Ever since the great powers of Europe turned African into a commercial warren for hunting and enslaving Black people racism has been an instrument of capitalist exploitation for super profits. Racism began as crimes against humanity by perpetrating one of the worst holocausts in the annals of human history and its practices today still have a fundamental, genocidal character.

Examples are legion: Take the racist practices of the criminal justice system. I would argue that the phenomenal growth of the African American prison population was a direct consequence of the era of repression initiated by the FBI-CIA (COINTELPRO) against the movement for Black Liberation. Not only were activists who allegedly took up armed struggle, such as Geronimo Prat falsely imprisoned based on fake evidence but also civil rights activists like Maggie Bozeman of Alabama (a senior citizen African American charged with voter fraud in the late seventies), and Mayor Eddie Carthan (first African American elected Mayor was accused of murder) of Tchula, Mississippi were arrested, jailed and imprisoned. There came out of this period a whole series of draconic laws (the Rockefeller drug laws and the federal RICCO statues) that automatically led to a dramatic increase of the African American prison population. There have been successful campaigns to repeal some of these draconian laws and to free the victims.

There also developed out of this era a different mechanics of oppression wherein the local police, the mob and the FBI worked diligently dumping debilitating drugs into the African American community; later on street gangs like the Black Stone Rangers, Crips and Bloods became a part of this drug trafficking which went hand and glove with the escalation of fratricidal violence. Also it went hand and glove with increasing the African American prison population. So the gang violence which has turned some of our communities into war zones is not only a moral issue; it's the bitter harvest of an era of brutal repression started by J. Edgar Hoover that was taken up by Ronald Reagan and the ultra right and transformed into public policy. Parole was abolished from the federal system and severely limited in most states. Prisons were privatized. Whites and non-African Americans make up about 87 percent of the general population but are only 26 percent of the prison population. The criminal justice system practices racism more viciously and openly than any other institution in our country. We must demand an end to these injustices and the freedom of its victims. There are thousands of African American and other minority prisoners who should be given amnesty based on the unjust sentences they were given. Political prisoners like Mumia and Leonard Peltier should be released forthwith given the years of unjust imprisoned they have suffered already.

Other examples are in health care. The AIDS epidemic and the epidemic of drug addiction combined has destroyed and continues to kill hundreds of thousands annually. The Urban League and CBC are forever pressing Congress to do something about these problems. What can we do to bring greater attention to this problem and press for a solution. This is a problem that begs for government intervention on the side of the victims.

Then there is the continued growth of poverty among African American and they continued to endure a ghetto like existence even in this first decade of the twenty-first century.

The Urban League's 33rd edition of The State of Black America features The Equality Index replete with essays and commentaries by leading scholars and ordinary citizens makes more than 30 recommendations to President Obama.

Even with an African American President in the White House The Equality Index for 2009 presents disturbing statistics showing that African Americans "remain twice as likely" to be unemployed as whites and three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as many are likely to be jailed or imprisoned.

JOBS: The unemployment rate for African Americans is 16.5 percent compared to the national unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. This is higher than any annual rate in 27 years. We need a strong jobs bill. The Recovery and Reinvestment Act is basically investments in the infrastructure, transportation and "green" rebuilding retrofits. There are also pass-through funds that help states maintain some jobs in education and other important programs. We are not opposed to these initiatives but we need to get ground-up recovery. The economic stimulus and the jobs bill recently passed by Congress doesn't do enough to target unemployment in poor and African American communities.

INCOME: African American household income has dropped from 64.8 percent to 61.8 percent in the last decade. The Urban League began tracking economic and racial inequality annually in 1974; then African American families made 58 percent as much as white families, a median of $7,808 compared with $13,356. Thirty four years later (2008) African American families made 62 percent as much as white families, $34,218 compared with $55,530. Marc Morial, President of The Urban League, explained that the position of African American working class families is like the caboose of a train. No matter how fast or slow the train goes the caboose remains the last car of the train.

HOUSING: In 2006 the American dream of home ownership was seemingly being realized by more working class people than any other time in modern U.S. history. Just two years later the group United for a Fair Economy issued a report called "Foreclosures: State of the Dream 2008". This report predicted that due to the subprime mortgage crisis $213 billion would be lost to people of color. For African Americans the "lost of wealth" would be between $72 billion and $93 billion. This is the greatest swindle ever perpetrated against the working class. Presently the rate of African American home ownership is down 2.6 percent from its peak in 2006. In the last quarter of 2009 the African American home ownership rate fell 46 percent. The Urban League proposes passing a homebuyers' bill of rights that would protect and educate consumers and provide home-buying help. Of course an immediate issue is to stop the foreclosures now underway and provide relief for the victims of foreclosures due to the subprime mortgage crisis. We must build a politically focused movement that can help the Obama administration and Congress stand up to the financial barons, banks and lobbyists in order to pass laws that will bring an end to the foreclosure crisis.

The stats in the categories of jobs, housing and income demonstrate the economic consequences of discriminatory practices motivated by the greed of the capitalist bosses. For Black workers racism means being underpaid in the face of inflated living costs and for white workers if means a continuous deterioration of living standards.

Now is the time to call for a united struggle of white and minority workers to fight for affirmative action because in the last 30 years the ultra right Republicans have been able to reverse or stay the hand of affirmative action.

(Photo by Old Sarge, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Health Reform, a Working-class Victory

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:43:00 +0000

President Obama's major victory on health reform in March was a defining moment in his presidency. More importantly, the passage of the law stands as a significant victory for the working class and the American people. We join with the labor and people's movements in celebrating this historic milestone.

A number of commentators have described the law as the biggest reversal of inequality in America since LBJ's Great Society program. We agree with that assessment, and below are discussed some of the ways the law attacks inequality to provide healthcare to nearly every American with an improved system. There are some points, however, on the reform that need improvements and should lay the basis for future political struggle. In addition to this, the health reform victory has likely reshaped the terrain of political struggle and puts the labor and people's coalition on an exciting new footing moving forward.

Regulatory reform

Reform under the new law, means, first of all, that key regulations on the insurance companies will be put in place for the first time. Women, for example, will see the elimination of gender discrimination in the insurance market place, for example. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, insurance companies have consistently denied coverage to women because of incidents of rape, domestic violence, and previous c-sections, labeling them as "preexisting conditions." In addition to eliminating the use of "preexisting conditions" as an excuse to deny coverage to women, insurance companies will now be required by law to provide coverage for maternity, newborn, and pediatric care, including dental and vision care.

Simply put, the health reform law will ban the insurance company practice of "gender rating." These provisions earned the law high praise from National Partnership for Women and Families Vice President Kirsten Sloan, who said in a statement, "Every woman who has been overcharged because of her gender won a victory."

This year, the law puts into place two other insurance company regulations: it will ban the common insurance monopoly practices of canceling the policies of people who contract serious (and expensive) illnesses and make it illegal to deny coverage to children with preexisting conditions. Millions of people who have been locked out of the insurance market because of such issues will receive subsidies to buy into a new insurance program created under the law.

The reforms contained in the law prompted Dr. Mandy Krauthamer Cohen, Executive Director of Doctors for America, an organization of over 16,000 doctors and medical care professionals, to applaud the law. “We are particularly pleased that so many patient protections go into effect immediately – including closing the Medicare part D drug program’s donut hole, eliminating the many excuses health insurance companies use to deny care and increased funding for Community Health Centers and more doctors to care for those who need it most," she said.

By 2014, the lifetime caps insurance companies currently impose on people will be banned.

According the Commonwealth Fund, some 12 million people were denied care in 2007 alone because of these insurance company policies.

Taking on the insurance monopolies

The new law also requires insurance companies to explain and justify their profits. The biggest complaint many people have about the private insurance market is that the profit motive causes insurance companies to deny coverage and care. Insurance companies profit most when they cover healthy people and ignore the people who need coverage most. In addition, much of the high cost of coverage pays for an expensive corporate bureaucracy that administers insurance companies' systematic denial process. The new law requires the insurance monopolies to open their books and show where our premium dollars are spent.

As part of this new corporate transparency, patients will also have a stronger appeals process for claims denied by the insurers.

Under the new law, families will be allowed to keep their adult children, up to the age of 26, on their insurance plans, unlike the current rules that cut children off at 18 or 19.

In addition, the law will help people who lose their employment-based insurance to keep their insurance or find new affordable coverage rather than trying to make the big COBRA payments that most working families cannot afford.

Expanded public programs

Over the next couple of years, the law will expand access to Medicaid to individuals (for the first time) and to families who make about 133 percent of the federal poverty rate. Every individual earning about $15,000 or less and every family of four earning about $30,000 or less will have access to this new program. Key concerns remain about ongoing funding for this part of the law, but the coverage will have to meet the new federal standards enacted in the law, including new requirements that checkups and preventive care will be completely free.

Individuals and families without insurance who earn between 133 percent and 400 percent of poverty will also be eligible for subsidies on premiums through new health insurance exchanges. Depending on income, premiums are capped at between three percent and 9.5 percent of income.

The law also closes the so-called Medicare prescription drug "doughnut hole" enacted under the Republican Medicare privatization scheme in 2005. In 2011, retirees who fall into the doughnut hole will get a 50 percent discount on prescription drugs, and within the decade the hole will be completely closed.

Small businesses, which now employ about 14 million of the almost 50 million uninsured workers in the US and pay an average of 18 percent more than bigger companies for health benefits, will get a range of tax subsidies to help provide health benefits for their employees.

A new program will encourage businesses to provide early retiree benefits to people over 55.

The health reform law will also add about $10 billion in federal funding for community clinics. This provision alone will allow an additional 20 million patients, mainly immigrants and people living in rural areas, get access to health care, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers. Currently, community clinics get a paltry $2 billion each year from the federal government.

Mandates, taxes and exchanges

What about the insurance mandate? Penalties will be imposed on a sliding scale on individuals who do not buy insurance and who earn taxable incomes. The point is for any health insurance model to work, everyone has to participate. Because it is reasonable to assume everyone will need some kind of health care at some point in their life, it is reasonable to expect everyone to pay to make the system work. Businesses with more than 50 employees who fail to provide coverage will pay a penalty of $2000 per full-time employee.

The law also creates several mechanisms for funding. First, the law phases out the overpayments of taxpayer dollars to the privatized Medicare Advantage program created by the Republicans in 2005. This is the main reason Republicans, who have always hated and tried to privatize or eliminate Medicare, suddenly care about changes to Medicare under this law. No loss of benefits for retirees will result from this change, but taxpayers will save about $20 billion each year.

In addition, the law raises the Medicare poll tax on the richest Americans earning over $200,000 (individuals) and $250,000 (households) annually. So don't be fooled when you hear Republicans claim the bill creates a new tax on the American people. This is their bogus way of implying that all Americans are rich, or that all rich people are "middle class." There also will be a new surcharge on indoor tanning salons, which have been blamed for increasing the risk of skin cancer.

While the newly create regional health insurance exchanges (or marketplaces) will not include a public insurance program, they will provide more affordable choices to people and businesses seeking insurance coverage. Before the law, many states saw one or two insurance companies hold virtual monopolies on the insurance market. For example, a Department of Health and Human Services study last year found that 85 percent of the market in the state of Montana is controlled by just two insurance companies. Similar situations exist in many other states as well. These monopolies allow the insurance companies to collude on prices and practices. With new exchanges in place, however, they will have to compete with many more companies and follow new federal standards and guidelines.

What's missing?

Ideally, these exchanges should be national and include a public insurance program. As the President repeatedly underscored during the fight to win passage of the law, the choice of a public insurance program both would be inexpensive and would create added pressure on the insurance monopolies to follow new federal laws, keep prices down, and provide meaningful coverage. Without the public option, the fight for enforcement of the provisions in the law will be harder.

A Medicare buy-in for older workers would reduce their typically high premiums and help cover one portion of the population that struggles to maintain their coverage.

The fee on larger businesses who fail to provide health benefits, at $2000 per full-time worker, may be too low. One critique of this provision is that while larger firms tend to provide coverage more often, this new fine will likely be lower than what the company currently pays for health benefits for each full-time worker. Such a fee might encourage large companies to opt not to provide coverage. If this happens, one effect may be that companies encourage their employees to seek federal subsidies and purchase insurance individually in the new exchanges.

This could mean the beginning of the end of the employment-based health insurance system. But it may also represent little more than a big cost-shift from large employers to workers for their health insurance costs, especially for workers on the higher end of the scale of eligibility. For example, if your household income is less than but close to $88,000 for a family of four, under the law you will be eligible for a federal subsidy that would keep your annual premiums at around $8400, or $700 per month. If your employer refuses to share this cost, this added financial burden could prove difficult to afford. The fight for an affordable public program and expanded subsidies to cover these costs, then, will be ongoing.

Provisions in the new law regarding the coverage of abortions and immigrants remain serious setbacks. Abortion should be covered on demand. Exclusion of immigrants from many of the laws new programs violates the "equal protection" clause of the Constitution, which reads "no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This means equal protection is a human right, not a citizenship right. In addition, the potential exclusion of millions of people from affordable coverage plans because of their legal status represents a roadblock to the goal of improving public health under the new law.

Overall, the law is expected to add 32 million uninsured people to the insurance rolls, making coverage nearly universal.

Health reform and the economy

In a recent summary of two academic studies of the effects of rising health insurance premiums on job creation, health economists David Cutler (Harvard) and Neeraj Sood (University of Southern California) concluded that controlling the growth of health insurance costs will lead to job creation. In fact, in the next decade with a healthcare system like that created under this law, the US economy could create as many as 250,000 to 400,000 additional jobs per year, they found.

The report found "that every 10 percent reduction in excess health care cost growth – a decrease in cost growth from 2.2 percentage points above GDP to 1.98 percentage points – leads to about 120,000 more jobs." And by contrast to the impact of healthcare costs on the US economy, job creation in Canada, which has a publicly financed healthcare system, is "not influenced by health insurance costs."

As costs grow, employers who provide insurance are less inclined to add workers to their payrolls. For their part, workers tend to accept lower wages in exchange for better health benefits. The study concluded that with lower costs of insurance premiums, employers would be more inclined to create new positions, and workers will see the benefits of higher wages.

As to the number of jobs directly resulting from the passage of the health reform law, the Cutler-Sood report predicted the creation of 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing and 900,000 jobs in services – all in the private sector – by 2016. (The report did not include a study of the growth of jobs in the public sector caused by health reform.) Workers in industries ranging form agriculture, mining, construction, transportation to information technologies, professions, financial services, and hospitality will likely see new opportunities in the next few years as a result of the passage of this law, the study showed.

Political implications

The monumental nature of this political victory, most political observers have noted, has shifted political momentum back to President Obama and his allies in Congress, especially as the popularity of the law has grown steadily since its passage.

What most pundits have failed to notice, however, is the role of the labor and the people's coalition in refusing to give up on this fight, even when the corporate media talking heads declared health reform to be dead or dying.

The President now has a real opportunity to press forward on an aggressive finance regulatory reform package, follow-ups to the jobs bill already passed in Congress earlier in March, immigration reform that provides millions of undocumented workers with a path to legality and citizenship while protecting their rights as workers, climate change legislation, and, who knows, maybe even a turn around on proposed labor law reforms that make unionization easier for workers.

This seems like an ambitious agenda, but with the steadfast activism of the labor and people's coalition and some (admittedly surprising) gumption most congressional Democrats showed during this health care fight, the sky might just be the limit.

It also seems to us that the victory and the growing public support for the health care law's provisions signal that Republican hopes to use this national issue to impact congressional elections this fall may be dashed. In fact, Republicans seem entrenched in the "party of no" position and the seething anger and nastiness of the tea-bagger movement. This extremist stance won't appeal to centrist voters – Republicans, Democrats or Independents.

But some Republicans will try to have their cake and eat it too. Just as with the President's economic recovery act, we're going to see Republican lawmakers hypocritically try to take credit for some of the provisions in the health reform law. Already, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is reportedly touting his role in crafting the legislation, despite his repeated votes against the bill and his description of it as a "big government takeover."

The history of US elections shows that a new President's ruling party typically loses seats in Congress during the subsequent midterm elections. This year may be no different, but the healthcare law won't be the cause.

The biggest factor in the November election will be the economy. If the President's economic policies come to be viewed as creating new job growth for the first time since the recession began back in December of 2007, voters will minimalize Democratic Party losses. This makes the working-class struggle for economic recovery of signal importance, and it highlights the bad spot Republicans have trapped themselves into. They cannot seem to be blocking legislation that helps workers or aids in economic recovery. But at the same time, they can't appeal to the zealots in the teabagger movement with pro-Obama/pro-worker votes. For example, they appear to be divided over the political viability of blocking unemployment insurance extensions.

In addition to a turn-around on the economic question, more legislative victories for Democratic supporters will energize that base to the same levels of activism and energy with which they fought for President Obama's election victory in 2008. More victories will makes us fired up and ready to go!

(Photo by ProgressOhio, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Communists Advance the Progressive Idea

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:07:00 +0000

Proponents of center-left politics in the United States have largely opted to associate their political standpoint more with the label "progressive," rather than "liberal," during the presidency of George W. Bush. This was partly a reaction to the thorough smear campaign the latter label has endured from right-wing propaganda efforts ever since the Reagan years -- as the term liberal polled less popular, progressive became the preferred identifier. However, this change in terminology also marks something greater, which those engaged in left-associated ideological stances other than liberalism, such as communism, would be keen to note.

The progressive movement is something more open to cooperation among proponents of multiple ideologies, as the term does not denote a single ideology with which to measure the collaborating parties' propositions. Mimicking the Democratic Party's position as a "Big Tent Party", a party that allows for cooperation among a wide range of opinions, the progressive mindset is open. Environmentalists, Feminists, Marxists, and others are included.

Regardless of the positions the Obama administration has taken since being elected to office, the people's coalition that was active in putting him there was broader and a great deal more left-wing than those who supported Al Gore just ten years earlier.

Undoubtedly, liberals make up a large proportion of the progressive movement, but the movement is not strictly defined by liberalism. Progressives are currently defined by an over-arching value more than a specific ideology. Progressives, including anti-racists, queer activists, feminists, socialists, and communists, are interested in the self-determination of the disenfranchised and oppressed, be them racial minorities, queer people, women, or the working class.

Within this progressive movement, Communists have the opportunity to play an important role.

Marxism gives Communists powerful analytical tools which they can use to contribute to the effectiveness of the progressive movement.

Many progressives recognize that class inequality and other power inequalities are related, as control over the instruments of producing our society rest primarily in the hands of straight, white men.

Marxism addresses the problems related to this in a number of ways.

First, it is important to acknowledge that the private ownership of the means of production and distribution is an incredibly powerful tool one can use to mold the rest of society to fit one's liking. In many of his works, especially "German Ideology", Marx describes how those with power over the economy influence not only the construction of our environment, but the very way in which we think.

The progressive movement widely accepts the idea that our mindsets are products of our environment -- that we are "socialized". Marxism explains that those who have the most power in socializing individuals are those in command of the economy, for it is they who have the final say in the construction of the majority of our work environments, the media we view, and the very products we use on a daily basis.

This is important to consider in light of the fact that the majority of those with economic power are inundated with the values of wealthy, heteronormative, white men.

Once this is recognized, the most important concept Marxism can bring to the progressive movement can be identified as the concept of alienation.

By introducing the notion of alienation, which describes the disconnect between both the workers desired method of production and the actual products they make (both determined by the socially privileged capitalist), Communists can illustrate the fact that social inequalities will persist until production is determined via a democratic method.

This is important to do because, while many other progressives recognize the correlation between social privilege and economic power, there still exists the notion that privilege can be done away with without addressing capitalism's splitting society into subservient workers and commanding capitalists.

The concept of alienation describes more than simply the feeling of disconnect between the workers and the work they are charged with performing. It also describes how the workers, in working under the command of an un-accountable executive board, are producing products which have properties reflecting the wishes of the executives. In a society where divisions still exist among gender, sexuality, and race, people of color, women, and queer individuals are predominantly engaged in work determined by straight white men, for straight white men.

Further, even if laws are designed that create a work environment that protects the disenfranchised from discrimination, those able to advance in such an environment (defined only by tolerance, rather than inclusion) will advance only with the permission of those already in power.

In less-than-philosophical terms, this process is known as "selling out". It is most often noticed when those who produce art engage in it, because people notice a change in the messages conveyed in their work when they rely on a specific company's resources.

Perhaps one of the most insidious results of this perversion of people's ideas is encountered in cultural commodification, where an entire group of people, disenfranchised under the current mode of production, has aspects of their culture mass-produced and sold, stripped of any deeper meaning that the cultural items once held.

As the economic base in our society produces the commodities and material that define our culture, anyone interested in the right of people to be self-determining should advocate for peoples' control of the economy.

Communism is too often confused with a battle limited to the empowerment of the working class, when Marxist theory truly aims to eliminate alienation, as Marx’s early work indicates (work like the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts"). Marx himself described the end of alienation as the emancipation of humankind. We cannot end alienation unless the means of producing our society are administered in a way representative of the diversity of those historically oppressed.

To combat alienation, its manifestation as a feeling and its root in class divisions, Communists should emphasize dedication to an active form of inclusion. It needs to be understood that capitalism is a system that, no matter what laws are passed, will continue to allow the dominance of the capitalists and their bourgeois, heteronormative, white male values above those of all working people. Further, tolerance, while preferable to bigotry, only allows the rule of the privileged over the disenfranchised to persist. Inclusion can be presented as the alternative to alienation, and Communists can promote such inclusion by insisting that private industry be replaced by a democratic economy that, through proportional representation and minority protections, makes inclusion real.

Communists need to explain that the class struggle, defined by Marxism's desire to end alienation, necessarily includes the empowerment of all oppressed groups, as all hold alienation in common. Any failure to reach equality maintains class.

Simply stated, Communists believe that all people ought to be included in the production of society.