People Before Profit blog

W.E.B. Du Bois in Global Contexts, an interview with Gerald Horne

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Editor's note: Gerald Horne is a preeminent American historian. He is the author of many books, the latest of which is W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography (Greenwood Press).

PA: Why, after the monumental, definitive, Pulitzer-prize-winning biography of Du Bois by David Levering Lewis did you undertake this project?

GERALD HORNE: For a number of reasons: One is that I wanted a briefer synthesis, because all readers are not going to plough through 1000 pages on Du Bois. Secondly, I wanted to present a particular point of view with regard to Du Bois, in a particular style. That is to say, I wanted to be more forthright about some of his political ties and more forthright about his evolution than perhaps previous writers have been, and I wanted to write it, hopefully, in a style that was more acceptable to the lay reader, the non-professorial, non-history-graduate-student reader. So those were the main reasons I tackled this topic after the other biographies that have come forward. Then, as well, I thought I had a particular way of looking at Du Bois in light of the fact that this was my fourth book on a Du Bois. I wrote a biography of Shirley Graham Du Bois, co-edited an encyclopedia of Du Bois, and a book on Du Bois’ last years, and so I thought I had something to contribute, given that past work.

PA: Some of the things you address in the book that are maybe not so familiar to some of our readers, are his academic contributions, among them his historical and sociological work. How do you assess him as an academic?

GERALD HORNE: There is no question that Du Bois, even if he had not founded the NAACP, even if he had not been considered to be the father of Pan-Africanism, would be remembered by posterity for his academic and intellectual achievements, and not only the sociological studies. Du Bois is oftentimes referred to as the “father of urban sociology.” I’m thinking particularly of his book, The Philadelphia Negro, which still repays attention as a study of how to conduct social science research. I also think of Black Reconstruction, which probably should be considered his leading academic and intellectual achievement, and presented what was then a novel and revisionist approach to studying the post-Civil War era, putting in the forefront the attempt by the newly-freed Africans to build democracy and establish public schools in the post-1865 South. Not to mention the point he makes about the Civil War preceding Reconstruction, underscoring the pivotal role of Africans in terms of defeating the Confederacy, not only by taking up arms, but by conducting what he considered to be a general strike on the plantations of the South. His novels, I think, are an illustrious achievement as well. Dark Princess, in particular, highlights the role of India in a prescient manner, especially in light of Mr. Obama’s recent trip to India. I think you are going to see India emerging in the 21st century as perhaps the leading nation on the planet, and Du Bois in a sense anticipated that almost 100 years ago.

So much can be said about Du Bois as a writer, about Du Bois as an intellectual, and Du Bois as a creative artist. I just wish I had more space to say more about that in this book.

PA: I want to ask about the role of hi monumental Black Reconstruction as an historiographical work in the academy. There is a tendency to view social history, the history of life from the ground up, as something that was invented in the 1960s by left-leaning social historians who tended to think about history from the bottom up. Didn't Du Bois lay the groundwork for that academic movement in this book?

GERALD HORNE: Absolutely, and I think today it is generally received wisdom in the academy that Black Reconstruction was a landmark work. There is an entire conference on the work Black Reconstruction taking place at Duke University from November 10-12. Eric Foner’s book, Reconstruction, understandably pays fealty to Du Bois’s work, because what Du Bois outlined in that book some 70-odd years ago is basically the predominant wisdom of today. Foner recalls that in the 1930s, and prior to that, before Black Reconstruction was published, the dominant line with regard to Reconstruction is that which you see in the Hollywood film Birth of a Nation, where you have corrupt and venal Black legislators who are plundering and pillaging in the South, and it requires the Ku Klux Klan to restore law and order. Believe it or not, that was the dominant line before Black Reconstruction, and it was the dominant line for some time after Black Reconstruction. It is only with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement that you begin to see different examinations of not only Reconstruction but slavery itself, and there is a lesson to be drawn here about how the times influence the writing of history, something that we should never forget.

With regard to his novel Dark Princess, I think the female characters in Dark Princess are path-breaking and trailblazing in terms of their assertiveness, in terms of their potent role, in terms of the unfolding of the plot, and in terms of their ability to be self-determined. It is quite interesting how he weaves the relationship between an Indian woman and a black American, which is something, in fact, I go on at length about in my book, The End of Empires, African Americans and India. Because in some ways it presents a template for what I talk about in that book, which is the joint struggle, shoulder-to-shoulder of South Asians and Black Americans in the period before Indian independence in August, 1947, and how we aided each other, how the South Asians fought against Jim Crow and how Black Americans fought against British colonialism, and that all comes together in the book Dark Princes in a way that remains illuminating and novel.

PA: In that vein too, his novel Quest of the Silver Fleece, which was path-breaking in that he tells the story from a working-class and feminist point of view. What in his experiences do you attribute that way of seeing the world to?

GERALD HORNE: I think it is fair to say that Du Bois was advanced in many respects. As early as the 1890s – and keep in mind that he passed away in 1963 at the age of 95 – he had been exposed to one of the more advanced socialist movements. I’m speaking of that of Germany. He traveled in Eastern Europe during that time and was able to witness some of the more retrograde conditions then existing in Europe, particularly in the area east of Germany in what is now Poland. Du Bois also was able to travel to the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and came back more fervent in his pro-Sovietism than when he departed. He was impressed by the grand experiment that was taking place there. I think that the entire movement towards Pan-Africanism, which I think still merits more intensive study, was in many ways a product of Du Bois, and also represented an advanced temperament and an advanced ideology. Given this background, it should not come as any surprise that a person who is pro-socialist and pro-Pan-Africanist, is also pro-feminist. It seems actually to fit together neatly.

PA: Well, in his personal life women played a major role as you and others document, and one of those women was Shirley Graham Du Bois. This is something you talk a lot about in Race Women. What impact did she have on the later years of his career?

GERALD HORNE: I think that Shirley Graham Du Bois helped to extend Du Bois’s lifespan. Recall that they married in the early 1950s, and at the time they married he was almost 30 years older than she was. By that time he was in his early 80s. To be sure, they had known each other before they got married, but certainly this marriage obviously took their relationship to another level. In some ways their marriage was rather conventional and traditional insofar as he was rather elderly and she was much younger, and to some extent she was his caretaker, helping to extend his lifespan. And as so often happens when you have a man of some renown who passes away, she did quite a bit to establish his legacy, by pulling his papers together, for example, and collaborating with Herbert Aptheker in that regard. That is one of the reasons why we know so much about Du Bois. This is not uncommon. You see Amy Jacques Garvey, who does that for Marcus Garvey. You see Coretta Scott King, who does that for Martin Luther King. This is a phenomenon that a number of feminist historians have pointed to. So in some ways there was a paradox, in the sense that Du Bois was rather advanced in terms of feminist ideology, but at the same time this marriage with Shirley Graham Du Bois in some respects had the trappings of a rather conventional relationship.

PA: Could you talk about one of his essays that really stands out for me, in that it really ties global issues to the immediate struggles of people here – “The African Roots of War.” What is the significance of that particular essay?

GERALD HORNE: I think that essay, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1915 around the time World War I was erupting, in many ways prefigures Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” In some ways it also reflects Lenin’s classic text, Imperialism, in terms of trying to understand the turbulence that was gripping the planet approximately 95 years ago. Du Bois pointed to what Lenin might have referred to as the re-division of colonial plunder by the leading North Atlantic powers, particularly the European powers, and how this lust for territory and booty helped to generate conflict. Germany had come late to feast at the table of colonialism and did not feel that the division of colonial spoils at that particular moment in time reflected its true strength and its true weight in the imperialist world.

Africa, being the major target of colonial plunder, therefore becomes a major source of conflict. That is to say, as long as colonialism was allowed to reign and fester in Africa, it was going to be a source of tension, if not war, as was evidenced by World War I itself, which, among other things, featured Germany on one side of the barricades and Britain, which had come earlier to the table of colonial plunder, on the other. I think that particular essay reflects Du Bois’s easy familiarity with Marxism, it reflects his Pan-Africanism, and it reflects his anti-imperialism, and I think those are the reasons the essay still resonates approximately 95 years after it was published.

PA: Aside from his scholarship and his creative, imaginative literature, the major accomplishment, I think, of his life was the NAACP, helping to found the NAACP and then his subsequent editorship of its magazine. Could you talk about that, I don’t want to say troubled, relationship a bit?

GERALD HORNE: Du Bois was present at the creation of the NAACP in 1909, and he edited its main journal, The Crisis, which was quite a phenomenon. It is difficult to say today, in 2010, that there is any journal of opinion - Political Affairs set aside, of course - that had as much impact and as wide a circulation as The Crisis. It was quite remarkable, the reach of that little magazine, which not only had thousands of subscribers in the United States but also had many subscribers outside of the United States.

Du Bois had certain conflicts and problems with some of his comrades in the NAACP. Some of it may have had something to do with his personality, which was described as “prickly,” although Herbert Aptheker, who knew him well, says that that was much more a product of shyness and much more a product of an understandably negative reaction to Jim Crow and white supremacy, which complicated some of his relationships with Euro-Americans in particular, who were in the highest councils of the NAACP.

In any case, he also has conflicts with Walter White, who was a dominant leader of the NAACP for decades, and that conflict, in part over questions of the autonomy of the organ, The Crisis, led to his departing the NAACP in 1934 and going to teach at Atlanta University. Then he came back to the NAACP in 1944 during World War II as a sort of minister of foreign affairs of the organization. This was in the midst of an astonishing, even to this day, membership spurt where the organization basically grew ten-fold, from 40,000 in 1940 to 400,000 members in 1944.

Quite frankly, it is hard to say if the NAACP membership in 2010 exceeds that. So he comes back in 1944, but the conflict with Walter White does not cease and takes on an increasingly sharp tone, particularly over the nascent Cold War that was emerging with the conclusion of World War II in 1945. There was also a conflict over the third party, the Progressive Party, the party of former US Vice President, Henry Wallace, which was the party of the Left. Du Bois was present at the creation of the Progressive Party and that third party challenge in 1948, but Walter White and a good deal of the NAACP leadership were pro-Harry Truman, who was something of the godfather of the Cold War, and this leads to Du Bois being sacked by the NAACP in September, 1948.

That was basically the end of his formal relationship with the organization he had helped to found in 1909, although it is also not unfair to suggest that this was a turning point, an ideological turning point, not only in terms of Black America but in terms of the Left as a whole – when you had this rupture between the Left as represented by Du Bois and the Progressive Party, on the one hand, and the major Black people’s organization, the NAACP, on the other. That was a fateful turn. It was a fateful rupture, and if one were to suggest that we have yet to recover from that rupture, it would be difficult to argue with that proposition.

PA: That may have reflected his earlier views when he suggested African Americans break with the Republicans and go with the Socialists or the Democrats. But the later period in his life is something that most people outside the readership of this magazine have little connection to, because of the political turn that you describe him as taking. What was behind that?

GERALD HORNE: This brings us back to your first question. I think that it’s difficult to quarrel with any of the previous biographies generally speaking, but I think the value of my biography, and a good deal of my work on Du Bois in general, has been the stressing of his later years as a key to graphing the true greatness of Du Bois, insofar as his voice was critical. It is very interesting what happens during that particular moment.

Here you have the US ruling elite under tremendous global pressure because of Jim Crow and white supremacy in its most egregious form, not least because of the pressure put on the United States by Moscow and the socialist camp and the international working class movement. And in order to better charge Moscow with human rights violations, the United States had to bend with regard to the more excessive aspects of Jim Crow. It had to yield to the insistent cries on the ground here in this country. What is new, of course, is not the insistent cries on the ground against Jim Crow – that had been in existence ever since Jim Crow first stalked the land. What was new was the new international situation, and in some ways, our leadership was not up to the task – I’m speaking of the leadership of the NAACP – because much of our leadership basically accepted the concessions that were given as a result of mass pressure, particularly mass global pressure. But, in return, they chose to turn their backs on those whom they had been working hand-in-glove with. I’m speaking of people on the Left like Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Ben Davis, and William Patterson, whose biography I am currently writing.

The marginalizing of these figures on the Left did not leave Black Americans in good shape to confront the challenges that inevitably came with the forced retreat of Jim Crow, and I dare say that we are still suffering to a degree from those fateful decisions. I once wrote that Black Americans are involved in an intriguing experiment to see if an oppressed minority can continue to march forward if there is not a strong and vibrant left-wing and radical movement. That’s not an experiment I would recommend, although the story is still unfolding and we will see how it unfolds, but they are not the sort of conditions in which an oppressed minority should have to struggle.

PA: What else can we expect from the Horne scholarship machine?

GERALD HORNE: Well, there’s pre-1959 Hawaii. Basically the Communist Party and the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) were the major forces in bringing democracy to Hawaii. Before the organizing success of these two organizations, Hawaii in the 1930s was the quintessential apartheid archipelago. It was through the organizing of the Communist Party and the ILWU that that changed, and this left the US ruling elite with a difficult choice in terms of this prime colony. Statehood in 1959 came about in no small part because it was felt this was the best way to blunt the force of the Communist Party and the ILWU in Hawaii. That book will be out next year from the University of Hawaii Press.

Then I have written a revisionist antebellum history which should be out next year too, which looks at the fact that African Americans weren’t committed to the idea of an independent Republic. The Africans were oftentimes allied with the antagonist of the Republic. Now, you may want to step back and ask yourself why that might be. It may lead you to a reconsideration of the origins of the nation now known as the United States of America. As opposed to seeing it in the same vein as the French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution, you might see it in the same vein as the revolt against British rule in Rhodesia in 1965, and, if so, that might help to shed light on why conservatism is so deeply entrenched in this republic. That will be out next year too. It’s really a new take on slave resistance, a slave rebellion which brings into play the rear bases in Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Haiti, and Jamaica (Jamaica may have been the nation most hostile to the United States in the antebellum period).

I am also working on the William Patterson biography, although I haven’t finished researching it yet, and when you called I was in the midst of my work on Black Americans in Cuba before the Revolution, which, I have to say, is an endlessly fascinating subject. Cuba was in some ways a de facto state of the United States before 1959, given its proximity and given its neocolonial status. In the era of slavery, you could be a so-called Afro-Cuban one day and a so-called Black American the next day, or vice versa. I mean there was all this back and forth, and there was a lot of opposition in Black America to slavery in Cuba in particular, because slavery in Cuba lasted until the 1880s. That’s another book I’m working on, the relationship between Black Americans and Cuba before 1959. Then there’s another colonial study, looking at the reaction in the thirteen colonies to Somersett’s Case, which seems to prefigure abolitionism within the Empire, and how that might have been a trigger for a revolt against British rule in North America [in 1772 the English high court ruled in Somersett’s Case that slavery was unlawful in England, although not elsewhere in the British Empire-Ed.]

PA: It occurs to me that a great deal of your scholarly work is centered on African Americans in an international context. Why does that interest you so much?

GERALD HORNE: There are many reasons. One is trying to break free from the manacles of so-called “American exceptionalism,” which tends to see the United States as an island unto itself and totally unique and doesn’t take into account the global currents that have shaped this nation inevitably and inexorably. As well, I think – particularly in terms of the destiny of Africans in North America – our destiny has also been shaped indelibly by global alliances. One of the reasons I am here to speak on the kind of work I am doing today has quite a bit to do with the existence of the socialist camp and the pressure it placed on the United States, which helped the country to see the error of its ways and retreat from the more egregious aspects of white supremacy. I think this is even more the case today in 2010, with the great leap forward in the scientific and technological revolution, with the Internet, with the supersonic transportation that whips you virtually anyplace in the world in 15 hours or less, and all the instant communication and globalization of trade and commerce. I think this sort of international perspective is an antidote to imperialism and an antidote to war. I think in some ways it reflects Robeson’s idea of singing in many languages in order to show the underlying unity of humanity. And I shudder to think where we people of African descent would be without our allies in the international community. It’s been our everything, quite frankly.

I think we need to de-center the idea of US sovereignty. With all of its accomplishments, one weakness that I see in the anti-corporate, anti-globalization movement that exploded in Seattle in 1999 was the idea that they were against the WTO (World Trade Organization) because the WTO infringed on US sovereignty. I think that was one of the reasons you didn’t see too many people of color out there, because our progress has come when US sovereignty has been circumscribed, and I think that even though we should always welcome allies within the four corners of the United States, we shouldn’t limit our allies to the four corners of the United States. I think that would be a grave mistake.

New Afghanistan Policy Should Prioritize Troop Withdrawal

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 10:38:00 +0000

The "overinvestment of resources and attention in Afghanistan is out of alignment with core U.S. security interests in the region," says a new report from the Center for American Progress. In addition, the authors of the report urge the Obama administration to "refocus on the political and diplomatic components of its strategy while it transitions U.S. forces out of Afghanistan." Unfortunately the report doesn't address key elements of a plan for a drawdown offered by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., which would repeal the authorization for military action in Afghanistan and confine spending of taxpayer dollars to non-military activities and troop withdrawal.

According to the report, the U.S. and the countries of the region have a strong interest in a stable Afghanistan. The best means of achieving that goal is to begin a transition to Afghan sovereignty and assist with internal political and economic reforms that help build support for the country's government among broader sections of Afghan civil society.” The authors of the report note that "it will be simply futile for the United States and its NATO allies to wage continued war on behalf of a government that cannot consolidate domestic political support without indefinite massive international assistance." The goal should be to complete the transition by 2014.

The report urges the Obama administration to foster talks among the various parties in Afghanistan, encourage local control over economic and natural resources, and begin a diplomatic surge which brings together all the countries in the region to find solutions for both internal and external disputes. This non-military side of the policy should be combined with a reduction in "the U.S. military footprint."

"We believe that the current strategy is not advancing U.S. interests or stability in Afghanistan and beyond," said Caroline Wadhams, one of the report's authors and the Director for South Asia Security Studies at the Center for American Progress. The status quo "will [not] lead to a sustainable outcome in three, five, or even ten years."

Regional powers with specific concerns about the situation in Afghanistan include India, China, Russian, Iran and Pakistan. Disagreements over regional and international trade issues, economic development, and security concerns present the biggest obstacles to united action in the region. According to the report, however, each of these countries has a special interest in achieving a stable Afghan state. "Facilitating discussions on these concerns and interests should be a top priority for U.S. policy-makers and elevated within the strategy," the report's authors note. 

Of special importance to promoting stability is a plan to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan. At over 100,000 U.S. military personnel, this footprint "may bring some insurgents to the negotiating table in the short term, but it cannot address the core factors contributing to Afghanistan’s instability and therefore will not lead to a sustainable outcome without significant changes in the political arena and on the diplomatic stage."

In addition, the presence "of powerful foreign combatants" can have the "unintended consequence" of upsetting "balances of power … through the distortionary economic impacts of our bases, logistics networks, and other infusions of money into a very poor and fragmented society."

The report goes on to say that "insurgents exploit suspicions of and disillusionment with the international forces and their allies to unify their movement and recruit individuals to their cause."

This analysis unfortunately suggests that the thousands of civilian deaths, destroyed homes, and the general economic disruption resulting from foreign occupation are not the primary sources of Afghanistan’s internal instability. Instead, the authors of the report place the blame on Afghan leaders "who have few incentives to compromise and to exert leadership as long as a large foreign military presence remains, freezing an unsustainable dynamic in place."

In the end, the authors stress, "[a] large and indefinite U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is ultimately not a realistic option and it will not effectively advance U.S. national security interests." Citing the likelihood of violent blowback against U.S. interests or assets, the report notes that ongoing U.S. occupation "radicalizes individuals in the region, serves as a magnet for extremists around the world, and complicates our relationships with other important countries in the region who resent our presence in Afghanistan, including China, India, and Russia." An ongoing occupation "will continue to strain our military force and the U.S. economy and it will limit our ability to respond to other crises and threats globally."

As a recent editorial at PeoplesWorld.org points out, growing concern about the U.S. federal budget deficit could be alleviated with a rapid drawdown of U.S. military forces from that Afghanistan.

The Obama administration has announced its desire to stick to an agreement with the government of Afghanistan to begin troop withdrawal in 2011, a process it plans to complete after three years. While this quietly creates a timeline for withdrawal and a visible horizon for the end of the U.S.-led war there, a swifter, more definitive process could be put in place to bring U.S. troops home from Afghanistan and turn the process of economic development, nation-building, and peaceful co-existence over to Afghanistan and its regional neighbors.

One such plan introduced in the House of Representatives this past summer, is a bill authored by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and co-sponsored by 30 Democratic house members entitled “A Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act.” This bill would essentially repeal congressional authorization for military action in Afghanistan and require all funds appropriated for that action to be used for the safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and defense contractors.

Earlier this month, Rep. Lee interpreted President Obama's preliminary statements on Afghanistan policy as a means of likely extending U.S. military involvement. "The President’s recent decision to extend the timeframe for the transfer of security responsibility to Afghan forces to at least 2014 has put us on the path to another decade of costly and counterproductive military occupation in Afghanistan," she said. “Enough is enough. This war is not in the national interest of the United States, nor is it supported by the majority of the American people.

With Republican control of Congress and the new right-wing dip in the political terrain, Lee's plan is unlikely to move forward, however. Emboldened by the recent midterm elections, Republicans – who want an endless occupation of Afghanistan – have even sharply criticized President Obama's recent policy reassessment.

Indeed, Republican Party opposition to a changed Afghanistan policy – one that includes a military drawdown and meaningful economic and political reforms like those suggested in the CAP report – seems to have as its cynical goal the fomenting of deeper divisions in the country in order to spark ongoing violence and prevent the implementation of meaningful solutions. Ironically, Republican demands to continue the occupation at the expense of hundreds of billions of dollars added to the budget deficit over the next few years, comes just as that party is demanding more tax cuts for the rich, elimination of unemployment benefits, the repeal of health reform, and massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare. The Republican Party's political agenda can be simply summed up as this: more war and more tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the unemployed, the uninsured, working-class retirees, the disabled, and the sick.

Photo by DoD, cc by 2.0

You Might be a Marxist If ... You’re Class Conscious

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 10:00:00 +0000

In the opening line of the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote “[t]he history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Marx and Engels were referring to struggles among social classes. It’s important for everyone to become conscious of and to think clearly about social class because 1) every member of society belongs to a class; 2) your class status has a tremendous influence on your social attitudes and life prospects; and 3) class struggle plays the key role in shaping our world politically, economically, and culturally.

What are classes? In the broadest sense, a class is simply a group consisting of members that share specific characteristics. The members of a class can be anything from human beings to inanimate objects, from concepts of any kind imaginable to entire belief systems. For example, the class of bicycles is made up of all two-wheeled, pedal-powered cycles; the class of religions contains all belief systems pertaining to worship of a supernatural power or powers; the class of teachers includes all who instruct pupils; and the class of all even numbers between 1 and 100 contains precisely that. In the case of social classes we are talking about groups of people who share specific social characteristics.

Marx and Engels were referring to specific kinds of social classes called economic classes. Unlike the innocuous examples of classes listed above, the subject of economic class can be as volatile as dynamite. An economic class is made up of all people who share the same economic characteristics. So it is your specific economic circumstances that determine the economic class to which you belong. Which specific characteristics are most important in determining your economic class membership? You might be surprised to learn that Marx and Engels did not consider the size of a person’s income to be the characteristic that determines class membership. Instead, according to Marx and Engels, class membership is defined by your relationship to the means of production, that is, whether you are a capitalist or a worker.

In Marxist terminology, the means of production consist of the factories, farms, machines, and tools that are necessary for producing the essential goods that sustain life and other articles of social wealth. In a capitalist society the means of production are owned by capitalists (also called the bourgeoisie in some Marxist writings). Capitalists make up one of the two major economic classes in capitalist society. The capitalist class is defined by its relationship to the means of production, which is one of private ownership. The other major class in capitalist society is the working class (also called the proletariat in some Marxist writings). The working class is also defined by its relationship to the means of production, which is one of dispossession. Back in the early days of capitalism the emerging capitalist class succeeded in taking the means of production away from the vast majority of society. The capitalists became the private owners of the means of production and the members of the working class were and still are left with nothing but their ability to perform labor, which they must sell to the capitalists in exchange for wages. In other words, the working class must sell its labor power to the capitalist class just to gain access to the means of production that once belonged to the workers. The workers are not even permitted to keep what they produce when they are working for the capitalists because the capitalists appropriate everything the workers create. Instead the capitalists pay their employees a wage, which the working class must then use to buy the products that they produced for the capitalists in the first place.

In addition to being a dispossessed class, the working class is an exploited class. Capitalists want to maximize profits, and they do this by exploiting workers. The basic method of capitalist exploitation is very simple. Capitalists pay workers the lowest wage they can get away with (as close to bare survival as possible) while forcing their employees to do the maximum amount of work in any given period of time. More specifically, capitalists try to maximize the value they get out of workers by increasing the period of time that they must work beyond the time it takes workers to produce enough to cover their wage or salary.

For example, in a previous article we looked at an auto parts worker who was paid $50 per 8-hour day. That worker was able to produce $50 worth of product in approximately 3 minutes. Thus it took the worker an insignificant amount of time to produce enough value to cover the day’s wage. If you consider only those 3 minutes, it looks like an equal exchange between the worker and the capitalist. The worker produced $50 worth of product and will be paid $50 in return. But don’t forget, the factory worker has to stay on the production line for a much longer time—another 7 hours and 57 minutes— just to get the $50. If this had been an even exchange, in which the wage equals exactly what the worker produces, the workday would have ended after those 3 minutes. But if that happened the capitalist wouldn’t make any profit, and maximizing profit is the whole point of capitalist exploitation of the working class. Nearly $8,000 worth of surplus value was produced during the additional 7-plus hours that the worker was forced to remain at work. The capitalist steals this value from the worker; the worker is never paid for producing it. This theft of surplus value is what is meant by the term “capitalist exploitation.”

The fact that different classes have opposed and irreconcilable interests gives rise to class struggle. Class struggle results from the attempts of each class to advance its interests in the face of resistance from other social classes. In capitalist society, the fundamental source of class struggle is the conflict between the capitalist class and the working class.

The working class is dispossessed and exploited – in plain language, robbed – by the capitalist class. The working class is also oppressed by capitalists’ efforts to prevent workers from becoming class conscious, from understanding that they are oppressed under capitalism, and from successfully resisting capitalist robbery and oppression. The capitalist class has an interest in preserving and strengthening its grip on society and its dominance over the working class. Capitalists want to protect private ownership of the means of production and they want to continue to use their control over the means of production to keep stealing surplus value from the working class. By contrast, the working class has an interest in ending exploitation, dispossession, and oppression, in taking back ownership of the means of production, placing them under democratic control, and using them to benefit the vast majority of society. In short, workers have an interest in replacing capitalism with socialism.

The capitalists’ greatest fear is the spread of class conscious among the working class; that workers will awaken to their common interests and become aware of the enormous power in their numbers; that they will come to understand that the way forward for the working class and all humanity is to abolish capitalist exploitation, private ownership of the means of production, and capitalist oppression. In other words, nothing frightens the capitalists more than the threat that workers will gain a clear understanding of their class interests and unite to abolish capitalism. And that is why the capitalists will use any means necessary to keep workers ignorant and divided, to prevent them from becoming class conscious and from acting on that consciousness to liberate their class. Thus capitalists will use race, religion, gender, nationality, income level, immigration status, blue collar versus white collar, and any other type of exploitable difference to divide workers and keep them fighting with each other rather than against their common enemy: capitalism. And when these tactics fail, capitalists never hesitate to resort to the open violence, terrorism, dictatorship, and warfare against the working class that are the hallmarks of fascism.

If you are a worker who understands that all workers must stick together and fight for their class interests regardless of any other differences; and, since capitalism is a global system, that working class unity must be forged not only on the national level, but globally as well, then you are a class conscious worker, and you might just be a Marxist.

Photo by MN AFL-CIO, cc by 2.0

The Economic Crisis and the Great Recession of 2008, an Unfinished History

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:42:00 +0000

In economies, most things produced are produced for sale, and sold. Therefore, measuring the total expenditure of money used to buy things is a way of measuring production. This is known as the expenditure method of calculating GDP. Note that if you knit yourself a sweater, it is production but does not get counted as GDP because it is never sold. Sweater-knitting is a small part of the economy, but if one counts some major activities such as child-rearing (generally unpaid) as production, GDP ceases to be an accurate indicator of production. Similarly, if there is a long term shift from non-market provision of services (for example cooking, cleaning, child rearing, do-it yourself repairs) to market provision of services, then this trend toward increased market provision of services may mask a dramatic decrease in actual domestic production, resulting in overly optimistic and inflated reported GDP. This is particularly a problem for economies which have shifted from production economies to service economies. (Quoted from GDP – Wikipedia article, my emphasis)

The crisis appeared on the surface to began with the so-called 'credit crunch' and global bank insolvency in early 2008, highlighted by the collapse of the US Lehmans investment bank and the failure and massive bail outs of the giant insurer AIG.

At first sight it was the bursting of a property bubble, coupled with an unsustainable rise in asset prices. But underlying this was a huge credit boom. One of the "solutions" to the problem, highlighted by Marx, of the falling rate of profit was to swamp consumers with cheaply available credit. This created asset rises which were not backed by much substance, i.e. a "bubble." For certain reasons this solution became relied upon to a greater and greater extent in recent history, perhaps because it was easy to do, it could almost be an entirely automated, computerized process. The sudden realization that the original problem had not evaporated in spite of all the increased debt then caused the so called credit crisis; the question was: who was holding the most stinking assets? With no clear answer to this conundrum, the bourgeois class returned to its normal response.

That is, when capitalism finds its biggest corporations and banks failing to make their expected profits, and when they do not know where to turn next to solve this, governments’ default to the common ideology of their class, to an ideology that seeks to blame others in the time honoured fashion: anyone who is weak, poor, perceived as less capable of defending themselves against their onslaught. Even old Greek spinsters came into the frame during the Greek bail out. The Roma gypsies were thrown out of France en masse, despite the glories of the EC and its regulations "governing" the free movement of member citizens (Romania was a member country). Such laws in such times are simply ignored, as is almost any "white collar" fraud which might seem to act as a palliative to the problems facing the big profiteers. The poor became, and are, in the crisis figured as an annoying irritation, but even more so when they are expected to pay for ‘their profligacy’ through their future labour, but do not seem to be up to the task. "Beat up the Poor!" (Baudelaire) was the only way forward.

You know the ideology well I assume: love of titles and flashiness and the fast buck, faith in "information technology" but dislike and mistrust of real knowledge, an overbearing sense of self regard, and over confidence, and seeking all this in others to whom they would lend; in short, the banks before the crisis would only lend to people who seemed like themselves. They were foolish, so they lent to fools, and the crisis was partly the consequence of this. I do not mean ordinary householders; I mean their huge corporate loans, their bundling of debts, and their Credit Default Swaps and other "special vehicles." It showed up a total lack of insight and empathy on one level, on another level of course it just disclosed how capitalism "worked" without much regard for that thing: "society." That is, if you did not believe that some aspects of it at least were conspiratorial: that it was a rough way to consolidate smaller nation states into debt slavery. And of course, in the end, these fools were not really so foolish, that is, if they managed to be bailed out by ordinary people, by taxpayers, in fact they seemed dangerously enlightened, in some quarters they were indeed likened to financial terrorists.

The media and press (generally owned by players in this game) tended to argue at first that "sub-prime" borrowers were chiefly to blame because of the widespread taking of ridiculously high mortgages, and that banks were only a secondary factor in obliging this binge. This angle did not succeed for long however, since commercial property became known to be an even bigger burst bubble, and the problem with the banks "special instruments" became more common knowledge.

Most of the larger banks were bailed out, and the debts were taken on by the governments, and thence transferred to the taxpayer in the nations implicated and then onto the poorest people via welfare cuts and higher taxes. Essentially the debts became borrowings on future workers labor time, this caused increasing import/export deficits set against the backdrop of rising unemployment and welfare costs, and falling profits and tax returns.

After the rescue the big banks seemed to feel safer, and the earlier policy to combat the crisis by injecting monetary "stimulus" and "quantitative easing" (or printing money) was generally considered a passed "Keynesian" phase by many "economists" (which had become by now, with the exception of a few individuals, a laughable moniker denoting the total failure to predict the crisis) and "reducing the deficit" became the new mantra, since the banks and their beneficiaries could now apparently reap the financial rewards from their revived position. But the talk of bank revival was actually Scotch mist, and it covered the fact that, in the absence of Keynesian policies working, the bourgeois class needed a culprit to blame other than their own policies and interests.

In spite of the fact that retailers still wanted the consumer to spend more, a new ideology was required to support this new position: the typical post stimulus argument went like this: ordinary folk have borrowed too much and been profligate, now they must pay this back by being thrifty. This meant cutting adrift the poor and those who needed welfare and who ultimately relied on state services. The state was also to blame for "pandering" to these groups and at least notionally it was thought right to cut "government." Those in receipt of state benefits were characterised repeatedly throughout the media as "scroungers," though in reality bankers were quickly becoming the most hated and blamed group for the crisis.

The US situation was a little different in its crisis rhetoric, being such a powerful nation and having the world’s reserve currency meant it could still borrow and spend on "stimulus," and its deficit reduction talk was less strident, also given the politics of the incumbent Democrat administration and President Obama, the "Keynesian" route was not such a taboo, but the arguments were similarly divided with the Republicans calling for more attention to the deficit, for government cuts and savings, targeting welfare reduction.

That ‘people should be better off in work than on welfare benefits’ appeared and appears intuitively true, and for some was the magic answer to the crisis, as well as its secret cause for boneheads, as well as for those intent on deflecting criticism, and those willfully against the working class. They conveniently forgot that there were and are a finite number of jobs and in a crisis this number falls in any case due to industry cost cutting, widespread bankruptcy (such as in the US car industry), as well as the contribution of the governments own austerity policies.

It also forgets society: that many people work in real jobs on wages that already only just separate them from poverty (hence one reason why they begin to rely on the credit drug). If benefits become less than this already paltry sum, the result is self evidently that a person cannot live on it. At the same time, and in reverse, if people on benefits receive a properly livable amount, why would they do the horrible dull jobs that only seek to exploit them and offer them the very lowest wage? Though still, if the unemployed are offered state manufactured jobs at a wage that rewards work rather than being on benefits (and such schemes were and are considered a viable solution to crisis), yet they are on benefits, and this is the only way that they can receive these rewards, then they are being rewarded for being on benefits (!), and they compete with other workers and private employers, that is, unless these jobs are fictitious, ridiculous jobs and the schemes are just frauds which will again fleece the taxpayer.

There is no real solution in capitalism to these contradictions. Capitalism must pay people not to work or its state risks undercutting the very private employers which it champions; hence the inevitable frauds. One way out of these problems is the US system of course, where there are no unemployment benefits after a certain time period and the poor must rely on charity or "fade away."

This, we must assume, was what global capitalism, led by IMF crisis policy, was actually hankering for, although this was happening all the while the U.S. administration at least partly saw the need to do the reverse and put in place greater social welfare, such as in health.

Think of it this way: removing welfare provision at a time of crisis was and is the opposite policy to wartime economics, when the rhetoric of 'we are all in this together' is taken more seriously and welfare is seen as an essential part of the comradely effort. That such socialist type policies work in wartime is a truism, so we might ask why it was and is not considered when we are at war in the competitive economic sense. Of course though, it is, but only for the rich and those corporations "too big to fail," or when protectionism begins to rule the international market, the harder effects of this war must be borne in raw capitalist terms by the workers and the poor. The fact is, the only way that this ruling class would enable itself to look at such socialist policies would indeed only be in the context of war, which it probably feels would be a useful ideological cover for the failure of capitalism.

The first bail outs were probably a necessary evil because there were no social safeguards in place to deal with widespread bank failure. But after this, things should and could have changed, at the very least in the regulatory sense, but they did not. No politician was rising to their responsibilities in the face of the fact that it was still possible, even likely, that the global financial system would collapse; all the politicians could do was throw more money and credit at the already guilty and endanger the sovereignty of whole nations, nations which took on the mountainous debt, a debt which increased every time it was renegotiated.

Western democratic politics seemed particularly impotent, traditional left and right wing merely following the fickle dictates of the market, sometimes seeming ludicrously out of touch.

The key to understanding the apparently symbiotic relation of democracy to capitalism in this crisis is that neither of them represents a form of control by human beings over, respectively, their politics or their economics. And politics and economics are intertwined, this is obvious. The love of the free market (so called) is similar to the love of the free voter, who votes with "free will." With democracy chance plays a bigger role than expertise in what happens, and so also in capitalist economics. If both lead to disaster, in tandem, there are consequently few methods or "tools" available to the politicians or economists to assuage the situation, and they eventually resort to laying blame on things other than (their) democracy and the economy.

So they blame the poor, immigrants, the old and the ill, and "the enemy" whoever that may be chosen to be, whomsoever does not represent a threat to their power. They, in other words, personify the problem. Democracy separates the powerful from their power by the process of ceding that power to a representative through the voting system. But this always leaves those who already have the power, before democracy, in the established position of power. Hence we may say every democracy is really a dictatorship of a class which has the de facto power always/already. To be sure, democracy is important in the way it enables a change in the leadership of the class in power, within that class, but it is usually powerless to change the actual power-holding class and the basic economic system.

The best illustration of this, in this crisis, was the Irish government’s situation in November 2010. The Irish government had a very thin majority in a weak coalition. It had tried repeatedly to claim that it did not need a bail out of the government’s finances, which could fund itself until the next year. However, the EU and IMF made their way to Dublin anyway to try and put in place its loans and conditions, given the parlous state of the Irish banks, which were basically insolvent, frozen out of borrowing and having deposits withdrawn. The officials were afraid of ‘contagion’ in the bond markets and the effect of the lack of a ‘solution’ reverberating to Portugal, Spain, and other Eurozone countries. It seemed that these officials were in contact with the Irish central bank and their statements now openly bypassed the Taoiseach and the Irish parliament, rendering democracy apparently null and void.

Yet there was a small political problem, the incumbent government was obediently rushing to secure its new budget which would include the new EU/IMF loan conditions, but the Greens in the coalition demanded a new election, and the government’s now even weaker hold on the reins of power meant there was some doubt as to whether the budget could be finalized if this election were to be demanded to come before the date of the budget. This sent the share markets down and the EU echelons into a panic of secret meetings, because the very existence of the Euro was at stake if more of its countries "fell." Whatever the Taoiseach said or did seemed almost irrelevant amidst these communications between European politicians and the big banking officials, and the Irish parliament itself quite ‘out of the loop’ concerning such grave matters as Irish national sovereignty. For most of these people, it became obvious that in any case, money was of more importance than Irish history or its independence. Essentially the officials needed the bail outs to keep the loans being paid to private investors and private corporations for whom they were their class representatives. But suddenly there was some, understandable, reluctance (perhaps borne by a real fear of the angry Irish people) in the Irish parliament to actually be the party, or indeed individuals, to help sell-out the future of Ireland and to make the Irish workers pay for the crisis.

What the EU/IMF was recommending was that the Republic should gradually cut unemployment benefits the longer a person is out of work, and that the country should reduce its minimum wage to bring it in to line with the general fall in wage levels. The Irish government had already intended to take €6bn (£5bn) out of the economy the next year as part of its four-year plan, it aimed to reduce Ireland's proportion of debt to three percent of gross domestic product, sought a tax of about €200 on every property in Ireland and social welfare cuts of between five percent and 10 percent, weekly payments for jobseeker's allowance were to be cut and child benefit and payments to lone parents were to be slashed by about 5%. Carers' allowances for those looking after dependants were also likely to be subject to a cut of up to 10 percent. Some 600 voluntary and community organizations that worked with Irish people with disabilities were also told there would be a 20 percent cut in their funding and there were also likely to be public-sector job cuts, even though the government had agreed with the unions that there would be no job losses in public services. It is thus easy to see how those least able to help themselves were being targeted to carry the major burden of responsibility for the crisis.

When a government of a people ensures that its public takes the loss for private banks and private foreign investors/bondholders on such a massive scale, then that government is obviously not working for its people but for those same speculators and investors. This reveals the true class relations at work.

In the same way also appeared the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition UK government, which astonishingly, in the midst of all its criticisms of the "European project" and cutting social benefits at home, suddenly committed more than nine billion pounds to the Irish bail out, that this award of credit sat rather awkwardly alongside its much vaunted ideology of austerity and thrift did not matter to it. And only recently it had held up of Ireland as a disciplined "austerity loving" free market example to follow in the crisis! The loan was spun as a pragmatic investment for the UK of course, but when this government and its banks do not find it similarly ‘pragmatic’ to invest in its own nation and ordinary people, even its small and medium sized businesses, it is known to be only pragmatic for its particular class interests.

Could it be true that this crisis would only stop when there was no more money to bail out entire nations? The market did and does not care for the social consequences of its actions, its concerns are its profits, and the politicians did and still do not care because they are run essentially by the market. This was and is a runaway train. The governments were and are weak, and would not adopt socialist policies for the people as well as for the banks.

We may recall that only a few years ago capitalism was warning against triumphalism when the Soviet Union collapsed, but now capitalism was imploding and even the most ardent capitalists (such as Bush) had resurrected some socialism to save them from themselves. Profits were privatised, and gained by the ruling class, but losses were ‘socialised’, and forced onto the working class. There was and is nothing "socialist" about "socialising" such bank losses of course, but still a few right wing pundits did not lose this sad opportunity to blame socialism for the crisis. "Living beyond their means," and "living on unearned income" became two favourite phrases that have been repeated, quite nauseatingly, in this crisis by the right wing to try to blame it on the "socialism" of government policies.

Neither made or makes any real sense. In the first place, the means always change in capitalism, what may be one day entirely within your means is the next day wildly beyond them, and this can happen without you lifting a finger. And, what is 'unearned income' but the basis of the whole of capitalism itself?

By exploiting labour the capitalist derives capital from unpaid labour time, thus, aside from production and use value, it (i.e. capitalism) is all based on 'unearned income'. If everybody lived on "earned income" and "lived within their means" we would probably be talking about a sustainable system with little "growth" – a completely different system, maybe called socialism – but the commentators who always use these trite phrases rarely mean this, what they mean is some kind of mythic, fictional capitalism in which the 'good' are rewarded for their obedient behaviour to the "rules." Sometimes endearingly they confuse a few legitimate moral standards (thrift, honest hard physical work) with the ever re-written (especially in these times of crisis) regulations of the capitalist mode of production. Below I have slightly modified, simplified, and paraphrased some of Marx’s theory (from “Capital III”) that is particularly relevant to this circumstance.

The process of actual economic thrift and abstinence (e.g. by savers, hoarders, stashers, misers), to the extent that it supplies elements of accumulation, is left by the division of labour (which comes with the process of capitalist production) to those who receive the smallest of such elements, and who frequently enough lose even their savings, as do the workers, when banks fail. However, on the one hand, the capital of the industrial capitalist is not "saved" by himself, because he has control of the savings of others in proportion to the size of his capital, while on the other hand, the money-capitalist makes the savings of others his own capital, and the credit (which the reproductive capitalist gives to one another and which the public gives to them), he makes a private source of enrichment. The final illusion of the capitalist system, i.e. that capital is the fruit of one’s own labor and savings is thereby debunked. Not only does profit consist in the appropriation of other people’s labour, but the capital with which this labour (of others) is set in motion is comprised of other people’s property, which the money-capitalist places at the disposal of the industrial capitalist, and which he in turn exploits. For the lender of loan capital money has been transformed into a paper claim to money, a title of ownership (of a debt). The same mass of actual money can therefore represent very different masses of money-capital.

With the development of the credit system in capitalism giant concentrated money-markets are created, such as in London (or New York), which is at the same time a main seat of trade in this kind of paper. The bankers place huge quantities of the public’s money-capital at the disposal of this bunch of gamblers, and these gamblers multiply.

In times of crisis the demand for loan capital and therefore the rate of interest reaches its maximum, but the rate of profit, and with it, the demand for industrial capital has to all intents and purposes dried up. During such times, everyone borrows only for the purpose of paying in order to settle previously contracted obligations or debts. In our crisis, this has even been the case with the biggest banks, which, as we have seen, have been bailed-out by public money, and which have then used the opportunity to purchase other failing banks. In fact now this process has become so bloated and globalized, that is has led to a sovereign debt crisis, as in Europe, that has in turn developed into a dangerous domino effect, in which because the market suspects that each of the obligations to furnish the loans cannot be met except with greater and greater credits and so debts, the race was apparently on to be the final creditor nation rather than the debtor nations.

In times of renewed productive activity after a standard chaotic crisis, loan capital is again demanded for the purpose of buying and for transforming money-capital into productive or commercial capital. The industrial capitalist invests it in means of production and in labour power. But the notion that the market rate of interest is determined by the supply and demand of loan capital tries to jumble up the credit swindler with the industrial capitalist investing in production, and to make this credit swindler seem the only capitalist and his capital the only real capital. In times of austerity, as already implied, the demand for loan capital is a demand for means of payment, and nothing else, it is not a demand for money to purchase. At the same time, the rate of interest may rise very high irrespective of whether real productive capital is in abundance or is scarce. So this demand for means of payment is merely a demand for convertibility into money, as far as merchants and producers have good securities to offer. And it is a demand for money-capital whenever there is no collateral, so that an advance of means of payment gives them not only the form of money but also the equivalent they lack (whatever its form) with which to make payment.

This is the point where, according to Marx, "both sides of the controversy on the prevalent theory of crises are at the same time right and wrong" (and they still are at this same stage in ideology!):

1) a) Those who say that there is merely a lack of means of payment either have only the owners of bona fide securities in mind; or b) they are idiots who believe it is the dutiful power of banks to transmogrify all bankrupt swindlers into solvent, upright capitalists by means of pieces of paper.

2) a) Those who say that there is merely a lack of capital, who are either just quibbling about words, since exactly at such times there is a mass of inconvertible capital as a result of over-imports and over-production, or b) they are referring only to such players with credit who are now in a position where they can no longer get other people’s capital for their own operations and demand that the bank should not only help them to pay for the lost capital, but also enable them to continue their swindles.(!)

Yes, Karl Marx understood such crises as we have been experiencing, but since his death they have grown enormously and become globalized, and the stakes are even higher. It is also doubtful if there will be the return to "normality" after this crisis, and that productive or commercial capital will again be invested. The now grown long in the tooth idea of a "services based economy" epitomizes the new big problem: investing in actual commercial productive capital is, amongst the big morass of interconnected globalized gamblers, today seen as needless and vulgar. The market and its political champions are like a philosophical idealist or worse, a sophist, it believes it can live on thin air, confidence, and computer data, even while every crisis hit nation expects to "kick-start" an "export led" recovery back to the previous boom conditions.

Moreover, the much vaunted "services based" and "knowledge based" economies expect that it will still be able to sell and export these services, which they have latterly concentrated on. And so, prominent in its line up are the very financial services that have been generating the credit bubbles and are a significant root of the crisis. As I write the list of Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer manufacturers than in earlier times, and many products are being transformed into or marketed as services. There has also been a related shift to a subscription pricing model for all goods – rather than receiving a single down payment for a piece of made equipment, many manufacturers are now pulling a regular flow of revenue for ongoing contracts, which can be computerized through banks direct debits (a cherished system that can lead by default to overpaying). This trend encourages the financing of these services, the creation of financing arms of traditional manufacturing companies, and more promotion of credit and thus debt. The concomitant process of electronic digitalization and the move to the internet also enforces the sense of "virtuality" for those engaged in these processes, a feeling that is hard to shift, though in the harsh reality of stringent austerity people suffer the pain of increasing poverty, and are thus prone to see the very mundane problem that confronts them as the horrible thing it is.

Photo by Bill Burke/AFL-CIO, cc by 2.0

China’s Consumerism and the Implications for Market Socialism

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:41:00 +0000

David Leonhardt’s reporting on his trip to China and his numerous insightful interviews give important insights into development questions of great interest to progressives and socialists everywhere. While its not as long as a book – though I expect Leonhardt will turn it into one – I felt compelled to re-organize the material from the parts that reflect upon some important theoretical and practical questions of market socialism and Marxism. Consider this a review of his "new book," which opens:

When the Wuqi International Hotel was completed this spring, it immediately dominated the modest skyline of Wuqi, a small city in north central China. The hotel is part of an effort by local officials to reshape a city far from the fast-growing export oriented towns and cities on the coast.

But changes here are the kinds that a new breed of Reformers including many industrial workers, service providers and small business/enterprise producers have been recommending for China as a whole. In Leonhardt’s report, the government of Wuqi offers more generous health insurance to its citizens than many places. Its schools are free all the way through high school, rather than through only ninth grade, as is usual in China. Over the last decade, the city has embarked on ambitious tree-planting programs that have brought green to the yellow-brown hills of the Loess Plateau, where Wuqi is located, and where the famed Long March ended in those hills in 1935.

The idea is to build what Chinese leaders call “a balanced and harmonious society.” In that economy and society, families would not have to save 20 percent of their income in order to pay for schooling and medical care, as many do now, and would thus be able to afford better housing, clothing, transportation and communication.

In contemplating China’s likely future as a great consumer society, that expression may have acquired negative connotations in the United States, but it means something very different for China, than in the US.

The means to obtain time and labor saving tools, services and commodities are also the means to acquire advanced culture. Expanded consumer society would improve the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. The benefits of the industrial boom that began in the 1980s would spread more rapidly beyond the country’s eastern coast. The service sector would grow substantially. This would have a dual impact of raising the demands for quality in production and thus in the quality of labor inputs; and – the production sector could afford more environmentally clean processes – dovetailing with a major "green" emphasis in Chinese industrial policy.

For the rest of the world an advance in Chinese consumerism is one of the best hopes for future economic growth. In the years ahead, the United States, Europe and Japan will have no choice but to slow their spending and pay off their debts. Millions of Americans could end up with jobs to design, make or sell goods and services to a growing, consuming China.

Yet some elements of consumer growth are missing. Leonhardt reports that the hardware, liquor and food stores down the block from his hotel were each the size of a storage closet and about as well lighted. They would have great difficulty scaling to handle a rising consumer movement. The parents in Wuqi were indeed “thrilled that high school was free but were still saving an enormous portion of their modest incomes to pay for college or a new home.”

Further, he observed that the ingrained saving culture has a self-reinforcing aspect that has can outlive its usefulness, in which stores don’t flourish because people don’t buy, and people don’t buy because there aren’t good stores.

Why China’s Success?

No one can deny the evidence of a juggernaut over the past thirty years. But it would be wrong to think these growth rates are sustainable or inevitable. China is the world’s most populous country, with a mature civilization extending back into furthest antiquity. It is very proud of reclaiming a long-lost international prestige and independence. Its economy recently passed Japan’s as the second-biggest in the world.

Moreover, at the same time, other poor countries – in South America, Africa and even Asia – with vast pools of cheap labor, have not yet been able to grow as rapidly. Not only other undeveloped nations, but other once-socialist countries, mostly in Eastern Europe, are still suffering from from the collapse of the USSR and have not comparably recovered. Even much heralded India has less than half China’s per capital income, and much greater inequality.

So having a lot of cheap labor or moving toward a market system, or even both, does not guarantee or explain China’s phenomenal growth – among the most rapid in history. That growth has been a mix of good fortune and good strategy. The Maoist “great leap forward” – China’s experiment with command-style socialism in a predominantly agricultural country was an economic failure. It also resulted in a brutal and repressive era. But, despite these setbacks, the socialist revolution in China had bequeathed,for the first time in history, literacy, education and health care to millions and millions of citizens. Thus it emerged with a huge reservoir of human capital. Into this fertile economic ground, Deng Xiaoping and his reformers planted the seeds of a market socialism. Workers gained big incentives to succeed, while central planners, and strategic industrial policy turned China into the world’s factory.

The transition from agricultural to industrial economic and social organization is an inherently unstable, complex, and often very revolutionary process. It requires massive redivisons of social classes and occupations; of the means and tools of living; and mandates the repeated restructuring of public institutions that support and serve the overall division of work. As Leonhardt remarks: “In important ways Chinese policy follows the classic best practices in economic development: investments in physical capital and education make a society qualitatively more productive and are combined with a huge shift of people from farms to factories. England, Germany, the United States, Japan and South Korea have all followed the model over the last 250 years.”

Risks

But there are significant risks and uncertainty going forward. To continue growing rapidly, China needs to make the next transition, from sweatshop economy to innovation economy. This transition is the one that has proved most fragile and difficult elsewhere, and by no means stable even in advanced economies. Once a country has turned itself into an export factory, it cannot keep growing by repeating the exercise. As Leonhardt’s local Wuqi Communist Party officials point out: You can’t move a worker from an inefficient farm to a modern factory, and modernize the farm to participate in large scale productive agriculture – again.

China cannot even retain its industrial might forever. As a country industrializes, workers inevitably combine, organize and demand their share of the bounty, as is happening in the current labor upsurge in China. Economic history teaches that a rising economy needs to take two crucial steps: manufacture goods that aren’t just cheaper than the competition, but better; and create a thriving domestic market, so that its own consumers can pick up the slack when exports inevitably slow.

Innovation

Getting the innovation engine started and running strong is a big challenge for China. It must change its current share of the worlds top 100 universities far upwards from three. (The U.S. has 53 of the top 100). And its markets must run efficiently enough to both test and deploy successful innovations. This means that in the domain of commodities, highly tuned and competitive markets must be fostered. China is taking a much more directed, and less bourgeois, approach to this problem. So far, its a success.

Failures

Yet there is no iron law that it will reach the next stage. Many of China’s challenges can be ascribed to its stage of development. Japan and the Soviet Union, in different ways, yet both failed at critical points to make the full transition to an innovation economy. While they may seem like unimpressive comparisons today, they once occupied a position much like China’s. They were rising powers that appeared to have found a new model for growth.

The Soviet Union failed to take the next steps following initial success at both industrialization and creating a world class educational system. Japan has not merely slowed down but become a global symbol of economic mismanagement.

Challenges

The United States, for all of its current problems, is still easily the world’s largest economy, in large part because it was the first to successfully make the transition from an industrial economy to a consumer economy, a transition stimulated by higher disposable incomes for working people, itself the product of decades, and waves, of class struggles through its history. Average per-capita Income in the United States remains about six times as high as in China. Though the latter has the size advantage over other countries, its hard to consider a more consumer demand-driven economy apart from an economic culture rich in individual choices and preferences. This will indeed be a challenging tiger for market socialism to ride going forward, with or without more political pluralism. No doubt some concessions, even big ones, will be made in this direction –but China is putting a truly original and “Chinese face” on nearly every question.

Bureaucracy

There is another obstacle, perhaps also related to the single party configuration: the government is filled with many officials who have known only industrial-led growth. Reformers will have to persuade their comrades to take significant steps back from the most aggressive industrial policy any country has ever undertaken, a policy that has clouds on the horizon, but has by no means yet failed. China now spends about 50 percent of its gross domestic product on investment – roads, bridges, trains, ports, technology, factories and office buildings. That is the highest share in recorded history. Even during their own impressive booms in the 1960s and ’70s, Japan and South Korea never topped 40 percent. China itself was spending 35 percent only a decade ago.

Now, the massive demographic trends arising from industrialization started put tremendous pressure on pay. This year’s strikes at a Honda plant in Guangdong Province led some companies to lift wages more than 20 percent. Twenty-eight provincial governments increased their minimum wage between 12 percent and 32 percent. At the same time, returns on the massive capital investments required to propel the industrialization transformation are starting to decline – another sign (some loss of efficiency) that a paradigm shift is coming. Leonhardt quotes a local Communist Party official in Wuqu:

“We realize this kind of growth is not sustainable. It’s not the kind of problem like a financial crisis. But if such inefficiencies accumulate for quite a long time, you reach the point where, suddenly, maybe things burst.”

Gradualism

China’s gradualist approach to economic policy has been a big part of its success. The country avoided the turmoil that some of Eastern Europe experienced when it switched almost overnight to a market system. China has also escaped the fate of old-style centrally planned economies like Cuba’s, because, in addition to China's sheer size, Deng and his followers were more pragmatic than ideological. If something worked – if it led to growth and jobs – they usually favored it. To create these jobs, the state relied heavily upon subsidized companies, especially manufacturers that export goods. Some of these subsidies are direct and obvious, like those now benefiting China’s clean-energy industry. But most are subtler. For example, the government holds down the price of coal, oil and other natural resources, which tends to benefit coastal exporter at the expense of interior provinces that produce the resources. It also sets a ceiling on interest rates, which also biases saving against individual savers in favor of capital-intensive businesses that borrow to expand.

The Price of Labor and Currency

An over-emphasis on capital an export, can indirectly suppress the price of labor, too. An old labor-registration system called hukou has long treated many migrants who move from distant provinces to cities to work as if they were illegal immigrants. Basic benefits – free schooling, pension, health insurance – are often unavailable to people who work outside their native regions.

China has kept its currency artificially low to enhance exports. Leonhardt writes, “The renminbi has roughly the same value today as it did in 1990, relative to a basket of other currencies, which is remarkable considering how much faster China’s economy has grown than the world economy. The low renminbi holds down the price of Chinese-made goods in other countries, increasing exports. But it also means that foreign-made products are more expensive within China than they would otherwise be. In effect, China’s government is deliberately reducing the buying power of its own consumers to subsidize its exporters.”

Making big transitions in lifestyle and culture and vast re-divisions of labor and consumption and wealth without social upheaval, or at least keeping the upheaval from reaching warfare, is the evolutionary test every surviving civilization, indeed the planet, must take and pass. China must increase its consumption, and it will. However, some of the alleged “unfair competition” charges from the US are rubbish. American companies have mightily benefited and reaped the whirlwind in profits from their Chinese investments and the low exchange rate on both labor and supplies produced there.

Inequality

Another obstacle is growing income inequality. The subsidies that China showers on its corporate sector have been crucial to building an industrial economy. But they have also led to a concentration of income. The rich receive a much larger share of the national income than they did a few decades ago. Leonhardt reports that this year mainland China and Hong Kong had 89 billionaires, while Japan, with an economy almost as large as China’s and per-capita income several times higher, had just 22.

Education has already played an under-appreciated role in China’s rise. For decades, Chinese children have spent more years in school than their peers in other countries; among the world’s many cheap laborers, China’s have been uncommonly skilled.

The next step is to educate people not just for factory work but for the white-collar work that would be a growing part of a consumer economy. Much of that work requires a full high-school education, if not college too. Today 55 percent of China’s adult population has graduated from high school (compared with less than 10 percent in India). But only about 5 percent of Chinese adults have a college degree of some kind.

Since 2008

The centerpiece of the government’s recent efforts to transform China’s economy was the stimulus program announced in 2008. Relative to the size of the economy, the stimulus was more than twice as large as America’s. It focused on infrastructure, mostly highways, trains and housing. Infrastructure spending is heavy-duty investment that plays off China’s existing strengths.

When tens of millions of workers were losing their factory jobs at the depths of the global recession, the government was able to put many of them back to work quickly on construction projects.

Building infrastructure is not the same as fostering a consumer economy, but it can help. The new apartment buildings going up in hundreds of cities will employ workers now and will later become homes for rural migrants.

Leonhardt has a fitting close to his report on China’sefforts to build a new economy:

[T]here is an intriguing parallel to the United States: Both the world’s largest economy and its latest challenger need to remake themselves. As [a Party official] bluntly told me, “You are facing transformation, too.” The United States needs to shift away from debt-financed consumption with little long-term benefit and toward investments that can create good-paying jobs, like education, infrastructure, energy and scientific research. China needs to invest less and consume more — to keep growing rapidly and, in the process, to stimulate economic growth around the world. In both countries, significant changes are necessary to create more sustainable growth. And in both countries, they inspire fierce internal opposition.

The best outcome would be for both countries to reshape their economies gradually, benefiting both. In neither country will it be easy.

Photo: Streets of Shanghai, China. (by lyng883, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0)

Engels on Skilled and Unskilled Labor

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:19:00 +0000

In Chapter Six ('Simple and Compound Labour') of Part Two of his classic work Anti-Dühring, Frederick Engels addresses a charge made by the German professor Eugen Dühring to the effect that in his work Das Kapital Marx has made a major blunder which amounts to a socially dangerous heresy regarding socialism. What could this heresy be?

Dühring says that Marx's theory of value is only the common theory that all values are the result of labour and measured by labor-time. But Marx sheds no light on the difference between skilled and unskilled labor. In fact Marx is wrong when he tries to explain the difference by saying one person's labor can be worth more than another's because it has more average labor-time compounded within it. See below where Engels says Marx has no such conception regarding the "worth" of labor.

Dühring says that all labor-time is of absolutely equal value but one worker can have another's labor-time hidden within his own. For example, when I use a hammer made by another to do my work. The reason Marx can't see this, and actually thinks, one person's labor may be worth more than another's is his prejudice against giving the same value to the labor-time of a porter and to that of an architect. He also refers to Marx's theory as hazy lucubrations.

Engels tells us that the wrath of Dühring has been brought forth by a passage in Das Kapital (it is found in section two of Chapter One of Vol. 1) in which Marx distinguishes between skilled and unskilled labor. It runs as follows:

But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part, so here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, i.e., of the labour power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is given. Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone. The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. For simplicity’s sake we shall henceforth account every kind of labour to be unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save ourselves the trouble of making the reduction.

The main thing to notice is that Marx is talking about measuring the value of commodities that their producers exchange with one another in a simple society of commodity production. There is no such thing as "absolute value" involved and Marx is only setting up his definitions and categories in this first chapter of Das Kapital. Here he only states the relation between simple and compound labour, or skilled and unskilled labor. Engels remarks that this process of reducing skilled to unskilled labor in order to quantify it as a measure of value, at this point, "can only be stated but not as yet explained." Dühring is jumping the gun.

Not only that, but, Engels maintains, labor itself can have no value because value "is nothing else than the expression of the socially necessary human labour materialized in an object." Labor is the measure of value and speaking of the value of labor is like speaking of the weight of heaviness. Here Engels remarks on Dühring's "brazenness" in his assertion earlier that Marx thought the labor time of one person was more valuable than that of another and that labor has a value. It was Marx "who first demonstrated that labor CAN have NO value, and why it cannot" (it is the measure of value not value itself).

This notion of Marx's is very important for socialism, Engels insists, as it is crucial for the socialist goal of liberating labour power "from its status as a COMMODITY." It is also the clue to the view, unlike Dühring's that distribution and production are completely separate departments within capitalism, that distribution will be geared to the interests of production and that production itself will be governed, reciprocally, "by a mode of distribution which allows ALL members of society to develop, maintain and exercise their capacities with maximum universality."

Dühring is simply wrong if he thinks every worker creates the same amount of value in the same amount of time. One worker works faster, another slower, one has more skill, another less, that is why an average has to be arrived at which is the basis of the notion of "socially necessary labour time." This is also why the slogan "Equal wages for equal labour time" is really a bit utopian. Unions of course demand equal hourly wages for all workers in the the same job grade because of the difficultly of measuring the value that each worker actually creates. Now that some unions have agreed to a two tier wage system even they are tacitly admitting the impracticability of "Equal wages for equal labour time." Anyway, women and minorities and nonunionists have often been paid less for the same labor time. This results in a tendency for union wages to decline, as we now see happening. If working people only understood the socialist model of economics they would never tolerate the treatment dolled out to them by the owning class.

How will the distinction between unskilled (simple) and skilled (compound) labor be handled under socialism? Engels says that under private production the costs of training a worker to become a skilled worker is paid for by private individuals and so they reap the rewards. A trained slave sells for more money and a skilled worker gets a higher wage.

However, under socialism the cost of training is borne by society (or the state). The worker therefore has no right to higher pay for the extra values he creates. The extra value is reaped by society and used for general social purposes (education, medical care, food subsidies, the fire department, etc). This explains why medical doctors in socialist societies are seen as underpaid. They are not. The state paid for their skill and they work for fair wages, not having astronomical debts to pay off to private lenders, etc. Another slogan bites the dust here as it is not possible to adhere to it in either capitalism or socialism and that is the worker's demand that they should get "the full proceeds of labour." Under socialism the full precedes of labor are collectively distributed throughout society on the basics of social needs. It is only in this sense that the workers can receive the "full" proceeds of their labor.

Photo by normalityrelief, Flickr, cc by 2.0

Extreme Makeover Goes Too Far

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:08:00 +0000

C.J. Atkins, in his recent article "Living in an Era of Change," expresses a desire for a bigger socialist movement. To achieve it, he prescribes an “extreme makeover” for the CPUSA: first dropping communist from its title; and second dropping the designation “party” and becoming instead a socialist group within the Democratic Party.

In his own words, “I would suggest that we ponder whether it may be appropriate to drop not only the “communist” half of our title, but the “party” half as well.”

For comrade C.J., anti-communism is so deeply embedded it is impossible to overcome; “The communist ‘brand’ is undeniably sullied beyond reprieve for the vast majority of Americans,” he contends.

Impossible too are third party and independent efforts, though for different reasons. “Efforts to operate in the electoral arena in opposition to both the Democratic and Republican parties only results in splitting the center-left vote and helping the right wing back into office” C.J. says.

These ideas, while not necessarily related, seem born of a single ideological thread: a fixed, static and deeply pessimistic view of the flow of politics and ideas. Terms like “undeniably,” “sullied beyond reprieve,” suggest no movement. Real life, however, offers little in the way of such absolutes.

The phenomenon of mass anti-communism is seen as seemingly immutable, existing outside of time and space. If C.J. is correct, today is no different than the 1950s. One could just as well be jamming in 2010 with Lady Gaga while turning down the volume on Glenn Beck as hanging with “The Fonz” during the “Happy Days” of the McCarthy period.

So too with politics. Notwithstanding new avenues for political independence, particularly with the Internet, C.J. sees little movement outside of official Democratic circles, even with one third of the voting public being independent and one-half of those eligible not voting.

But, clearly, the U.S. has entered a new political moment. Heightened class and democratic struggle, the Great Recession and its aftermath, Obama ‘s ascent to the presidency, the assertive posture of the AFL-CIO, the growth of social networks, the counter-revolt of the extreme right, all have combined to produce an unprecedented situation – and opportunity.

U.S. ideological life is also in flux. A broad radicalization process with its roots in capitalism’s deep systemic crisis is at work. As polls repeatedly indicate, a broad left current flows in the streams of public consciousness: fully a third of America’s youth have favorable views of socialism.

Anti-communism too is not the force it once was. Just recently in the deep south, a labor council bought an ad for the Illinois People's World annual banquet, congratulating the PeoplesWorld.org and its labor editor, John Wojcik, for a prize-winning article, an inconceivable event in the not too distant past. In Connecticut, state AFL-CIO leaders participate in PW events where the CPUSA anniversary is celebrated; in Cleveland a well-known communist, Rick Nagin, running in a non-partisan race for City Council received the city’s AFL-CIO endorsement and nearly won.

Granted, these examples are anecdotal and opposite ones could be found, but C.J. seems unaware. And for good reason. Experiences of party clubs, party press or activists are not offered, nor is other evidence presented.

Of course, there is no doubt that the communist movement while growing remains small. There is also little doubt that its problems are not unrelated to similar ones in the labor and democratic movements.

The socialist left and Marxists in particular face difficulties: in recent years sections of it have stagnated, declined, or disappeared all together. Non-Marxist democratic socialists, too, are facing similar challenges without significant growth.

The CPUSA from this standpoint has held its own with several hundred spontaneous applicants for membership a year for nearly decade. Its websites reach 5,000 readers a day, or 30,000 in a week. With all its weaknesses, the party has a national infrastructure and an experienced group of organizers and activists. This background unfortunately is missing from Atkin’s analysis.

Of C.J.’s two proposals, neither of which can be supported, the idea that the character of the party be changed is the most significant: “It is my belief that we could be more effectual operating as a socialist and working-class political organization which does not present itself as a 'party' as such,” he asserts.

There are several issues at stake here. Among them are the role a Marxist party, the concept of the necessity of the political independence of the working class, and historical precedents.

The role of the party

Comrade C.J.’s concept of what he would replace the CPUSA with is ambiguous. It seems the new group, while independent, would work in and through existing parties. “Our members can freely participate in the Democratic Party process, with the Working Families Party or other independent political formations, etc. as appropriate to the circumstances,” our writer suggests.

C.J. makes an important point in stressing the importance of electoral politics. It is certainly the case that in the U.S. the real stuff of politics and governance occurs through the two mass political parties. Here is where the action is and it is here, mainly through the vehicle of the Democratic Party, that the peoples' movement fights for its interests. Serious politics cannot stand apart from these struggles.

Also correct is his implicit criticism of a section of the U.S. left, including voices in the CP, that minimizes electoral struggle in general and show particular disdain for working with the Democratic Party.

For the foreseeable future Democratic Party circles will be an area of engagement for those wanting to make a difference.

That said, even with the growth of newly independent forces operating within the Democratic Party, it’s hard to see how the role of a communist party could be realized within these confines. Electoral work by itself cannot be understood as constituting the sum of a party’s activity, particularly a revolutionary party.

A fighting party’s role requires timely engagement in strikes or protests against evictions, police violence, racist, sexist and homophobic attacks etc. It has to constantly link these issues to the crisis of the system and advocate for its replacement. Building class unity, consciously developing socialist consciousness, the supreme importance of maintaining an independent financial structure, (without which political independence is a joke) are all vital aspects of its role. It is here that the fight for the short-and-long term interests of the working class is realized. This naturally requires a system of organization (clubs) and methods for making its views known and developing them (press/Internet, schools).

A working-class party therefore needs complete financial, organizational and political independence.

But what, it might be asked, of the newly independent groups in the Democratic Party? Are their experiences not suggestive? Do they not have freedom of movement and fundraising? And more importantly are they not contesting within the Democratic Party over its direction and program, with labor going toe-to-toe with capital? Is it not possible that trade unions and allied partners could win such a contest and turn it into an instrument of radical reform and change?

These are important questions and the answers are uncertain, depending largely on circumstances that cannot be foreseen. One does not have a crystal ball and even an unlikely outcome such as capturing the Democratic Party cannot be completely ruled out.

What is certain is that the CPUSA must be part of this broad struggle in which two trends – the old Democratic Party machine and the all peoples coalition – continue to coexist in cooperation and antagonism. What is also certain, however, is that in this great contest the working class component of this coalition has only one thing on which it can safely rely: its own capacity for self organization and defense of its interests.

While engaging in where the action is, it must also guarantee its independent action and initiative.

This suggests that the self organization as a political party of its most consciousness element, those with a scientific socialist outlook, has to be part of this effort, for even with independent efforts, awash in sea of big business money and local patronage politics, a socialist/communist oriented group would stand to lose more than its name.

Pitfalls of independence in DP

The rich experience of the left-of-center Rainbow Coalition and the historic bids of Rev. Jesse Jackson for the presidency is a case in point. When the Rainbow’s influence grew uncomfortable to business interests in the Democratic Party, the plug was pulled and its independent structure dismantled, leaving the organization a shell of its former self and Rev. Jackson with a short-lived TV show on CNN.

Indeed, 20 years later even President Barack Obama’s independent Organizing for America, its membership and fund raising lists became an issue in Democratic Party circles. The group’s initial reluctance to hand them over to the DNC was overcome only after the election of 2008.

There are other precedents from further on the left. For example, previous efforts like Dorothy Healy’s New America Movement and the Communist Workers Party’s reincarnated New Democratic Movement found themselves unable to maintain organizational integrity to say nothing of ideological and political independence after going into the Democratic Party. Healey’s outfit merged with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (forerunner of DSA). And the CWP’s ill fated venture dissolved completely. Without a clear ideological mission, a firm political platform, an established working-class base and identity, such efforts are doomed to die a death of a thousand buy-offs and cuts: a job here, an appointment there, a spot as a prominent radio or TV talking head.

It must also be noted that Earl Browder’s earlier effort, the Communist Political Association, did not survive the Cold War or a bitter factional fight that resulted in a much weakened, though reconstituted Communist Party.

While the end of the Cold War certainly creates a different political climate for independent left efforts, the larger lessons remain: ongoing pressure from the right gnaws incessantly away at the structures of independence.

The growth of the danger from the extreme right has added to this problem, which leads us to the next point: how C.J. presents the CPUSA’s understanding of the right danger.

Premising his thesis on the capture of the GOP by the extreme right, C.J. argues that “not all elements of the progressive left have drawn the appropriate lessons from this historical development.”

That lesson of course is that third party and independent bids only strengthen the right.

Certainly this was the case with some Green Party races. Ralph Nader’s candidacies in particular, with its plague-on-both-your-houses politics, are examples of how such campaigns can contribute to the problem C.J. is concerned with.

On the other hand, third party and independent bids focused on the extreme right and big business, working in concert with progressive forces in the Democratic Party could play a very positive role as exemplified by Senator Bernie Sanders and the Vermont Progressive Party.

While the Party’s tactical adjustment now requires more work alongside the Democratic Party, this cannot and should not preclude where possible other local alternatives. The lack of such CP-led campaigns after 1991 arises not so much from a lack of need, but from organizational weaknesses.

Party formation and membership

The matter cannot be left here, however, as C.J.’s argument for replacing the CPUSA flows at least in part from his appraisal of the differences between political parties in Europe and the U.S.

C.J. seems to suggest that communist parties were formed with a distinctly European model in mind. “The question here is not as simple to answer as it is in multi-party parliamentary systems ...,” he writes.

He continues. “political parties in the latter types of systems are organizations contesting for office around an agreed ideological platform and having official membership rolls. Communist parties … have historically been formed with such a system in mind.”

C.J. then asserts, “The CPUSA for instance, was formed as a political party in this sense.”

The CPUSA was “formed as a political party in this sense?” A more careful reading of the early histories of the parties of the Third International seems in order here. Such a review would show that most of these parties after their birth downplayed the need for electoral and parliamentary effort as the primary means of effecting change: influenced by the Bolshevik revolution, their eyes were on “seizing the state” not getting elected to Parliament. Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism was a response to to this problem. The early history of the CPUSA will show a parliamentary system was hardly in mind when it was created. The left social democrats and Marxists who founded the CPUSA adjusted fairly quickly to the U.S. experience.

But comrade C.J. has another point. In the U.S., he writes, "Political organization, especially as illustrated by the primary system for candidate selection, is relatively loose."

This is correct: U.S. politics employs a looser concept of party affiliation based on voter registration forms where one declares a political party. Voter preference is expressed in ballot casting.

In this respect, the Communist Party’s concept of membership is borrowed from one introduced with Lenin's thesis on the "party of a new type."

C.J.'s main point seems to be that the Communist Party’s concept of membership which requires active participation in clubs is very different than the one understood by most Americans where less emphasis is placed on participating in a Democratic or Republican club.

The CPUSA’s own recent history reveals the degree of the problem. Several thousand people over the past decade have tried to join the Communist Party online, many of whom may still consider themselves “members” in the American understanding of the term. The Communist Party itself, however, because of the legacy of “cadre” concepts of the party has been disinclined until recently to accept them. Sadly, a decade of possible growth was lost.

In the age of the Internet and social networks, the CPUSA needs to completely break with the concept of a cadre party. It wasn’t correct even before the Internet; it certainly doesn’t fly today. In embracing social networks and the multi-platform possibilities of the Internet, the CPUSA will discover a dynamic method of press and party building.

Ideological Challenges

What then are the prospects for addressing the underlying problems of revitalization that C.J. seeks to solve? That the CPUSA can and should continue the process of reforming itself is beyond dispute. The question is on what ideological basis?

Comrade C.J.’s article raises this issue sharply. Saluting the party’s effort to revive itself, he goes on to pay tribute to its broader outlook and to a “open, innovative, and creative methodology that has – to a great extent – left behind the dogmatism and sectarianism of what passed for ‘Marxism-Leninism’ in the past.”

While sharing C.J.’s healthy respect for a creative methodology, the sweeping shot at “dogmatism and sectarianism of what passed for ‘Marxism-Leninism’ in the past” is unfortunate.

A more generous spirit toward the contributions of the men and women who led the U.S. communist movement in the 20th century would seem more in keeping with C.J.’s enthusiasm for a more open and creative Marxism.

Whatever the deficiencies – and there were some – to refer to the CPUSA’s ideological legacy as simply dogmatic is a mistake.

That a sectarian concept of Marxism-Leninism has become the rallying point of a smattering of factional individuals with a website, should not allow one to cast off a body of thought and practice in one fell swoop.

Indeed, a 21st century articulation of the socialist and communist idea must be built on an acknowledgement of both the accomplishments and mistakes of the past.

And regarding the mistakes one cannot be sparing: the single party state, the crimes of the Stalin and Pol Pot periods, the lack of democracy, over reliance on central planning, the skipping of stages, the U.S. CP’s seemingly blind faith in the Soviet experiment of “real existing socialism,” ideological stiffness and onesidedness, all.

Here the issue is what is the best means to confront anti-communism? Cast off the name; disown it. Create distance from 20th century experience, in favor of a still undefined 21st century socialist project? Or critically assimilate it, condemning its crimes, historicizing its experiences, defending its achievements. It’s an important question: the “traditions of the dead generations” still weigh heavily and the countries still engaged in an attempt to build socialism will not go away.

This is not just a problem for the Communist Party: anti-communism is not just directed at the CPUSA. It is a challenge for the entire working-class and progressive movement as evidenced attacks by Glenn Beck, et al, on Obama, the labor movement and others. Without taking it on, like ruling-class racism, the entire working-class movement will not advance to its potential, will not even fully complete the anti-ultra right stage. The rejection of anti-communism is part of the rejection of anti-ultra right ideas by U.S. public. Martin Luther King Jr was correct in his call to end an acceptance of anti-Communism as if it was a method of scientific thought. If an advanced democrat and Christian like King understands this, can Marxists do less?

Unfortunately there is no getting around this long and difficult ideological struggle.

But as has been suggested there is good news. The CPUSA is holding its own and changing. For a decade its leadership has fought for a deeper involvement in mass movements and electoral work. In 2008 it built a new web portal, reestablished the daily Marxist press, and is attempting to master social networking. Members who join online are now treated more seriously.

In so doing it is laying the basis for building a much bigger party, but there are no shortcuts. There are however more effective means. A qualitative improvement in the level of organization will result in greater quantitative growth. Any concept of renewal and party growth that stands apart from these means seem illusory.

There are no magic wands, no "extreme makeover” that will result in sudden spurts of growth.

The only path forward seems to be the slow steady political, ideological and organizational work of building the CPUSA as a working-class political party around its main strategic concepts and with a firm ideological foundation and program.

On such foundation, the Party should not be afraid to boldly experiment. Here thought should be given to reviving the idea of creating online a group called “bill-of-rightssocialism.org" that would work along the CPUSA and others in advocating the socialist idea.

In addition, the CPUSA should consider new forms of party organization on and offline with a much broader concept of membership.

The CPUSA’s public presence, greatly narrowed because of attrition and some retrenchment must be given much more attention. Advertising on social networks and cable should be given every consideration. “Rebranding,” a concept borrowed from capitalist marketing techniques, can and should be based on a class struggle basis.

Those who say that even with this, Communists will never gain mass acceptance should be reminded of the rapidly shifting thought patterns of the generations coming into political life today.

In this rapidly changing political environment, the seemingly impossible can become possible. In this regard one need only recall how many in our ranks and beyond considered it impossible that an African American could be elected president, particularly one who was incessantly red-baited.

As is evident in retiree organizations like SOAR and AFSCME, even among the oldest generations there are significant declines in anti-communism. And while among this group there may be less of a chance of escaping the Cold War influenced public perception of who we were, that is not true among workers who are now coming of age. It is here that we will shape the concept of who we can and must become.

Photo by docpi, Flickr, cc by 2.0

Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:06:00 +0000

Almost all of us have been touched by cancer. My father just successfully fought off kidney cancer (knock on wood), aided by his ability to access quality (and expensive) medical facilities. Medicare ensured that the bills wouldn't ruin him or our family financially. If ever faced with that disease, I hope I too can face it with the same courage and determination with which he did. Despite the pervasive impact the disease has had on many families, until the publication of Rebecca Skloot's award-winning and best-selling book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many of us have had few opportunities to learn more about the history of how scientists have come to understand the disease and the ongoing fight to find a cure.

One person who stood at the center of this fight, despite being forgotten for a half a century, was Henrietta Lacks. At the age of 30, Lacks, an African American working mother, was diagnosed with cervical cancer likely contracted through the Human Papilloma Virus, more commonly referred to as HPV. It was 1950 in Baltimore, Maryland. Jim Crow ruled, even in charity hospitals like Johns Hopkins.

After her diagnosis, a cell researcher by the name of George Guy, who followed a common practice of undertaking research without consent on the hospital's poor and African American patients, took a sample of Lacks' cancerous tissue for a study he was conducting. Guy, as Skloot relates, had been trying for years to keep a line of human cells alive outside of the body in order to conduct new scientific experiments. So far, all of his attempts had failed.

But Henrietta Lacks' cancerous cells, now known in the scientific community as HeLa, proved different. Not only did they stay alive, but they grew so rapidly that within a few years researchers all of the world were using them to study and discover polio vaccines, genetic research, cancer research, and so much more. Scientists today still use her cells for a wide variety of purposes.

For most of that time, however, no one knew Henrietta Lacks' name. George Guy had kept it a secret, out of the desire to preserve her family's privacy, he said. But quite possibly also because he didn't want the world to know that the basis of much of the experimental medical and scientific research of the century derived from the body of a Black woman. Can you imagine the racial theorists of the 1950s having to deal with the irrefutable fact that cell tissue from an African American woman had turned the scientific world on its head?

Skloot's book is important for both its accessible but detailed discussion of the medical research involved as well as the poignant story of the Henrietta Lacks' life and the ongoing struggle of her children and grandchildren to know her story and to fight for her recognition. Through her contact and years' long relationship with Deborah Lacks, who was two when her mother passed away, Skloot wonderfully pieces together the details of life that would otherwise have remained anonymous. Indeed, the it was Deborah and her brothers who fought to ensure that their mother's memory would not be left to the dustbin of history.

This story resurrects Henrietta Lacks the woman, the mother, the caretaker, the fun-loving, beautiful young woman, from the the abstraction of the name given by George Guy to her cells, HeLa. In the process, with the constant aid of Deborah LAcks, Skloot humanizes Henrietta's family, uncovers details about race and the healthcare system, and brings to light the social forces that make a life and a family.

It is a powerfully moving story, a must read; it is also a book you will find yourself unable to put down until the end.

Podcast #125: W.E.B. Du Bois in Global Contexts, an interview with Gerald Horne

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 08:53:00 +0000

On this episode we play our recent interview with historian and author Gerald Horne, about his new book W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography. Plus listener comments.

Download as mp3

Book Review: Generations of Resistance

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 06:56:00 +0000

Generation of Resistance: The Electrical Workers Unions and the Cold War
by John Bennett Sears
Conshohocken, PA, Infinity Publishing Company, 2008.

In the first half of the 20th century, there were two major schools of labor history. The established, anti-socialist one represented by John R. Commons, Selig Perlman and Philip Taft dealt with the institutional political history of the trade union movement, relating in a fairly narrow fashion that history to the larger pattern of U.S. history.

The class conscious, socialist-oriented school, nurtured by the Communist Party and represented most by Philip Foner, also dealt with the political and institutional history of the trade union movement, but in a much broader context. This school of thought related that history to class struggle and a larger social development. The Cold War in the universities saw the purge this socialist-oriented labor history just as labor history itself was struggling to get off the ground and left a vacuum in labor scholarship as it left a vacuum in the larger labor movement.

When a new progressive labor history took shape in the 1960s, it too, in the work of David Montgomery, Herbert Gutman and many others, was clearly Marxist and socialist influenced, but it looked to labor’s social history – to the experiences of workers and communities, away from trade union political history and to a lesser extent the larger political history. While much of this was very positive, in both exploring workers experiences and making questions of ethnicity and gender central to understanding American labor history, the significance of traditional institutional labor history was put on a back burner. (Perhaps because to confront the Commons school on those questions was too dangerous at a time when the defenders of ideological and institutional red-baiting remained very powerful both in labor scholarship and the labor movement.)

In Generation of Resistance, John Bennett (Ben) Sears has written a remarkable book which uses the institutional political history methodologies of the Commons-Perlman Taft school and their many imitators over the generations to stand their interpretations on their collective heads. Using both primary sources, interviews with participants, and a wide variety of secondary sources, he has traced the history the electrical workers unions in a remarkably even-handed manner.

Sears has written a history of which the late Philip Foner would have been proud and those in the leadership of trade unions today at all levels, would respect. It is the sort of careful narrative of events which will aid both students of the specific history of the UE and the larger narrative of postwar labor.

First, Sears shows that even under the worst conditions, short of open dictatorship, left trade unionists can mount a serious resistance to employers, factional rivals, and government if they continue to work with and for the workers they represent. The UE had been a large industrial union whose leadership cadre was drawn from CPUSA activists and non Communist class conscious industrial unionists in the 1930s and 1940s. This leadership had prevailed over internal opposition, which routinely used red-baiting against it, by developing and implementing policies which membership could understand, accept and benefit from.

The development of the cold war, which saw employers, the CIO leadership, opposition within the union, and the U.S. government portray the UE leadership as an “enemy within,” posed special problems the both the UE and the industrial labor movement.

Sears follows this larger political history as it was developed through struggles in the UE locals and national leadership. What he finds is the opposite of generations of Cold War stereotypes and conventional wisdom, which in more subdued forms, continues to influence work on labor history today.

The left leadership of the UE for example was in most instances flexible, seeking alliances to defend traditional industrial union positions, appealing to the immediate economic interests and the reason, class and social consciousness of its members.

The anti-left opposition, represented most consistently through the period by James B. Carey, used anti-Communist ideology as a justification for its own shifting policies, allied itself directly with government and indirectly with employers to gain power, and had little trust in its own members.

In short I would say the old Freudian theory of projection has some relevance for Sears study. The anti-left forces in the UE often acted in the ways that they and the larger cold war ideology portrayed their opponents, shifting policies, pursuing anti-democratic internal union politics, and later establishing a dual union, the IUE, when they failed to gain control of the UE.

In the process, they failed to confront important questions like automation which the UE leadership was exploring and undermined the labor unity that was necessary if the postwar worsening of federal labor law was to be reversed and major questions like the effects of automation and later the export of capital on employment was to be addressed.

Sears is very even handed in developing his carefully reasoned complex political narrative, avoiding polemical attacks on the right within the union in order to connect the history of this remarkable left union with the larger history of the U.S.

In the process, Sears makes clear both the achievements and the setbacks that the union faced until the cold war consensus in labor finally collapsed in the late 1960s. His conclusion that the left and center-left labor politics remained an important factor in the UE (and he suggests the larger CIO) through this period, is perhaps his most important analytical contribution. It helps break down simplistic distinctions between the “old” and the “new” left in our understanding of labor history. Historians dealing with the postwar civil rights movement are also finding similar developments, that is, pre-Cold War left and Communist activists continuing under very different circumstances to play an important role in developing civil rights struggles.

What the left UE leadership was about is best captured in Sears quotation from Pat Barile, president of local 428, a Communist activist then and now, in these words: “practically every day of my life, we would have to be—the local leadership—giving out leaflets, explaining what was going on in the world; the Cold War, red-baiting, what it was; lies about the UE, what the split was….negotiate a contract, there would be another raid…and not only in my shop…we were consuming money and we were consuming workers rights in the struggle and it had to end….”

I have known Pat Barile for many years and have had the pleasure work with him in many peoples struggles. In 1969, while working on my doctoral dissertation, I interviewed James B. Carey, then head of the American Association for the United Nations, a position his cold war liberal friends had gotten for him. Carey had been the leader of the right faction of the UE, in his name the raids Pat Barile fought against were organized. Carey took me to a bar afterwards. He was a sad, lonely man, reminiscing about some of his old union comrades, including those he had fought against and tried to purge.

James B. Carey is long gone and in terms of playing any positive role in the workers movement, was gone decades before he passed away. Pat Barile on the other hand is still in the struggle and has never been since I have known him sad, lonely, or isolated.

For both students of U.S. labor history and activists of all kinds, John Bennett (Ben) Sears, Generation of Resistance is an enormously valuable work in relating larger issues to the day to day detailed struggles of the labor movement in the U.S.

The 2010 Election, Culture War, and Class Consciousness

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:16:00 +0000

The exit polls from the 2010 mid-term elections demonstrate the domination of the "culture war" narrative over class consciousness throughout the statistics and in both liberal and conservative politics.

One of the most alarming statistics of recent electoral history is the degree to which working class white people have voted for conservative politicians. The white majority has identified more with the ideas of white capitalists and less with the reality of those they work with everyday.

In this year's election, white voters making less than $50,000 a year voted 55 percent to 42 percent for Republicans over Democrats.

Further, an AP poll conducted before the election found white voters without a four-year college degree favored Republicans by 18 points, 58 percent to 36 percent. In 2008, exit polls indicated these same voters favored Republican congressional candidates by 11 percent. In 2006, the Republicans won these votes by 9 percent points.

Where working-class whites most likely vote with a progressive tendency is where they are members of labor unions. Since 1976, labor union households have backed Democratic congressional candidates by an average margin of 62 percent to 35 percent. However, only 17 percent of voters were members of unions this election.

People of color, and others who continue to experience oppression in our society, have primarily voted for politicians that represent more progressive ideas. This year, African American voters voted 90 percent to nine percent for Democrats, Latinos voted 64 percent to 34 percent for Democrats, and Asians voted 56 percent to 40 percent for Democrats. Women's votes were evenly split, but this may seems to be because so many progressive voters did not vote this election. LGBTQ voters favored Democrats 68 percent to 31 percent for the Republicans.

This can be understood as a result of people, on both the left and the right, being encouraged to link their politics more and more with their specific social or cultural identity. There was only a six percent Democratic advantage coming from white voters making below $50,000 a year compared to white voters making over $50,000 a year, and a slightly larger difference between working class people of color and their wealthier counterparts (they primarily represent huge Democratic voting blocs racially).

Class consciousness plays a secondary role to other social differences in modern United States' politics, and this lack of class consciousness is now, more than ever, a major problem for the progressive movement.

Why is the culture war narrative such a factor in U.S. elections?

In part, it is because it represents the backlash against the peoples' movements of the 1960s. It was Bill O'Reilly who most explicitly revealed this in a 2006 book titled Culture Warrior. In it, he frames U.S. politics as a battle between the values of a religious U.S. majority and a small but powerful group of secular progressives. It takes little sociological and historical study to understand what he was really doing in his work was pushing religious individuals to link their religion with the pre-1960s values of both a dominant white culture and unapologetic capitalism.

This perverted narrative was seen in the polls this year, where white Protestants were convinced to vote for Republicans over Democrats 69 percent to 29 percent. This is a six percent increase in the Republicans' share of the 2008 white Protestant vote, and an 8percent increase for Republicans compared with 2006 results.

This conservative culture war frame is the primary ideological build of the modern conservative movement in the U.S. O'Reilly's book is a small part of this. The idea that "religious" values are under attack by the government is repeated both on Fox News and radio programs hosted by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and others. For a deeper analysis of this, and how conservatives have purposefully smashed the Christian religion into a doctrine that coincides with their own white, capitalist values, see my previous PA article "Defeating the Ultra-Right: Know your Enemy."

Another reason the culture war narrative has become so strong is rooted in the way white voters perceive class. This perception has been molded by both the capitalists themselves as well as efforts by conservative pundits and the Republican Party.

The capitalist class began working long ago on minimizing their appearance as a distinct class. In John K. Galbraith's 1958 book The Affluent Society he noted that capitalists, especially since the presidency of FDR, shunned overt displays of wealth. After the Great Depression, news reports on the wealth of the nation's most powerful industrialists plummeted. They continue to enjoy the wealth and power they have always had, to even greater and greater degrees as disparity has increased over the past 40 years, but take care not to appear as if this is so.

The epitome of this phenomena can be seen in how Bill Gates or Steve Jobs represent themselves in public, wearing casual clothes or answering specific customer inquiries into company business directly, via email or their smart phones. This mythology runs so deep that Bill Gates is often the person used to reinforce the idea that anyone can become a multi-billion dollar capitalist tycoon if they simply have the will to do so.

And this idea is widespread. A 2000 Time/CNN poll found that 39 percent people living in the U.S. believe they are in the wealthiest one percent or soon would be. Obviously, this is an impossibility.

Where class is observed by most white people, it is observed through the conservatives' culture war frame. It is astonishing to notice the rise of the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has always been focused on making people view reality through the culture war frame, during Ronald Reagan's presidency. Before the Heritage Foundation conservatives relied on groups more focused on economic policy for ideas. The National Association of Manufacturers is one such group, which now works more behind the scenes and is delegated to focusing on specific tasks, such as combating legislation focused on protecting the environment.

Conservatives have used the culture war narrative to make people believe the wealthy are all secular progressive types who, according to them, seek to destroy the culturally conservative values of the average U.S. citizen. Key to doing this is the idea of the "latte liberal," the focus on wealthy progressive celebrities in "sinful" Hollywood, and other ideas that can be heard on talk radio or read about in Thomas Frank's excellent book What's the Matter with Kansas?

The Republican Party is in on this scheme, and plays with it to manipulate working class people. George Bush's mansion is referred to as "Crawford Ranch," he took care to appear folksy in his public appearances despite being a Yale graduate and being the member of a millionaire family his whole life. He may have worn a tie, but he was sure to put on the cowboy hat just as much.

This charade was briefly revealed only a month ago, when a PR group working for the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a casting call for an ad to attack West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. The casting call, first reported on the Politico website, stated "we are going for a 'Hicky' Blue Collar look," and asked that potential actors wear clothes that looked "beat up."

The greater progressive movement has to refuse the culture war frame, but it has thus far done so poorly.

Part of this is due to some progressives actually reacting to the culture war frame rather than refusing it as false. It has been tempting to do so, as the frame comes from the backlash which reacted to those sections of the progressive movement that fought racism, sexism, and heteronormativity in the 1960s. As such, the conservative culture war frame provides a perfect enemy for the progressive movement to battle.

Accepting the conservatives culture war frame, however, means that the progressive movement may agitate people who would be on their side if it were not for the frame in the first place. White, Christian people are currently under the idealistic frame's spell, thinking in terms of it to varying degrees.

The left has to shatter this frame if they want to move this country in a more progressive direction, and it can do this by emphasizing all people's right to self-determination.

The majority of the progressive movement often discusses class as it relates to other oppressive forces. This has been very important in making sure progressive groups do not reinforce gender, race, LGBTQ, and other oppressions in their own activity. This has also led people to realize how all oppressions are interrelated.

This has provided progressives with a new frame that relates class consciousness and race cognizance, that links gender discrimination and men's economic dominance, and so on.

BUT, the left also has to talk about class relations being represented as power relations as a phenomena in and of itself if it is to bring working class white people back into the progressive movement. It is not enough to talk about wealth disparity among people of different classes. It is better to talk about power differences, as this can be related to all forms of oppression.

Some of the ideas that can be most helpful in responding to the culture war frame I have already detailed in my previous article "Communists Advance the Progressive Idea."

I believe the Communist Party and the labor movement do a good job of this already.

We must keep in mind what the current relations are and move forward. The 2010 elections were a battle lost, but they by no means represent the end of the war.

Photo: Devoid of a meaningful agenda, Tea Partiers typically directed both anti-immigrant and anti-Black racially coded messages at President Obama, as this fellow aptly demonstrates. (Photo by FibonacciBlue, cc by 2.0)